VLVL Takeshi

[Terrance]

At VL.129 Prairie asks DL how the guys (DL & Takeshi) met. DL replies
with a scream. In the world of Vineland proper, the scream's intensity
is unparalleled: more intense than anything Prairie has ever heard
outside of a Saturday-morning cartoon.

Saturday-morning cartoon screams are heard throughout this novel. For
example, when we meet Frenesi and Flash they talk about hearing each
other scream at cartoon level intensity. In that same chapter, Brock
Vond's screams cold be heard above the traffic noise 
 (pg. 69).

Looks like a cartoon, acts like one, screams like one 
 must be a
cartoon, right? Not exactly.

In this novel (for example, beginning at page 68) the Screen between TV
land and Vineland proper is permeable. In fact, just like in GR, all of
the worlds interpenetrate and all of the membranes between the worlds
are permeable. Frenesi's surfacing is not simply a matter of the
her-story  that Zoyd and Sasha told Prairie being popped like a cherry
and a cartoon balloon  by DL, she surfaces from underground from and to
several different levels.

Also, it's not only that the characters flash in and out of cartoon mode
(Two-ton Carmine and the Vomitones VL96-96) ) or TV sitcom mode (Zoyd
weeping at the Hawaiian hotel VL.60), or monster movie mode, or
western,  or hard boiled detective novel mode, dream mode, drug dream
mode, and so on, the worlds around them are flashing in and out as well.
Zapping (McHale's term) does not quite explain this. It's far more
complicated. 
That being said, McHale is the best Intro to what's going on here. 


For example, Flash and Frenesi have a son and his name is Justin. Justin
enters Vineland space at page 87. He has been watching cartoons. He
moves into Vineland space because he is taking an extended (30 minute)
commercial break between cartoon programming (what he's been watching)
and the next best thing on the Tube (what he plans to watch after the 30
minute break). For 30 minutes, he will play Reagan (President and Actor)
and cast his parents in the roles of Reagan's press conference.   They
were about to begin playing a game, a kind of two -player video game. As
he enters, his father asks him how the Transformers (cartoon world
characters) are making out. Justin zaps, changes channels, shifts into
news programming, Reagan press conference mode, pretends not to hear the
question about cartoons he calls on his mother. His mother (being a 60s
person and a Gates she is driven by revenge) explains that the questions
are revenge for all those crazy non-stop questions kids ask parents as
they move through early childhood, the parents are now asking the kid
the questions. 

Of course, the kid isn't going to answer any questions because he's in
Reagan mode. 


Frenesi's favorite Justin question? 

How do we know when we are dreaming and when we are not dreaming?
Another epi/onti realm. 



> 
> Why dismiss only this section as hallucination? Takeshi's booze and speed
> habit is chronic (see eg. 142.25-8 and DL's comment at 100.27-8). How are
> these things any more "surreal" (i.e. far-fetched) than the giant Godzilla
> footprint episode, the invisible robot on the plane, or the "Vibrating Palm
> of Death"? These are portions of Takeshi's narration as well. And DL seems
> to be acting as a corroborating witness to the veracity of Takeshi's yarn.