When Christopher walks into the room and sees Lorelei knitting, he jokingly calls her "Madame Defarge". That is a character from Charles Dickens' novel "A Tale of Two Cities", a villainess who knitted the names of her potential victims into her needlework.
The basketball game that Christopher and Jackson are watching at the bar is the University of Kentucky vs. the University of Alabama game played at Freedom Hall in Louisville, KY (home of the University of Louisville Cardinals) on January 21, 1998. UK won 70-67.