Tonight on Terminator: Sarah Connor Chronicles, someone stole the Connors’ credit cards and made a charge at a bowling alley called Alien Lanes. The bad terminator calls up the credit card info on his computer:
Alien Lanes is, of course, one of Guided by Voices’ best albums:
I never thought to research the title of this GBV album before, but a quick Google search seems to reveal that there’s no L.A. bowling alley by that name.
The site PopMatters, however, has a possible explanation for the title. From an interview with Eric Johnson of the Fruit Bats:
I’ve heard that Bob Pollock of Guided By Voices gets a lot of his song titles by misreading signs while he’s driving around. Like Bee Thousand, came from driving by this movie theater where they were playing this Charles Grodin dog movie Beethoven, and [he] misread Beethoven as Bee Thousand. And I think Alien Lanes came from a bowling alley called Allen Lanes.
And there you have it. From Allen Lanes to Alien Lanes to a sly reference in The Sarah Connor Chronicles.
I so was excited when I saw that!