AtDDtA1: An Enthusiastic Ukuleleist

[robinlandseadel at comcast.net]

See also: Vineland---

     "A dryin'-out place for Tubefreeks? You
mean . . . Hector. . . . "  And Zoyd remembered
him humming that Flintstone theme to calm himself 
down, and all those "li' buddy"s, which as they both 
knew was what the Skipper always liked to call Gilligan, 
raising possibilities Zoyd didn't want to think about.
     Dr. Deeply shrugged eloquently. "One of the most 
intractable cases any of us has seen. He's already 
in the literature. Known in our field as the Brady 
Buncher, after his deep although not exclusive 
attachment to that series."
     "Oh, yeah, that was ol' Marcia, right and then the
middle one's name was---" till Zoyd noticed the piercing 
look he was getting. "Maybe," said Dr. Deeply, "you should 
give us a call anyway."
    "I didt'n say I could remember all their names!" Zoyd yelled. . . ."
Vineland, pg. 33


Believing that the rays coming out of the TV screen 
would as a broom to sweep the room clear of spirits, 
Frenesi now popped the Tube on and checked the 
listings. There was a rerun of the perennial 
motorcycle-cop favorite "CHiPs" on in a little while. 
She felt a rising of blood, a premonitory dampness. 
Let the grim feminist rave, Frenesi knew there living women, 
down in the world, who happened, like herself, to be 
crazy about uniforms on men, entertained fantasies 
while on the freeway about the Highway Patrol, and 
even, as she was planning to do now, enjoyed masturbating 
to Ponch and Jon reruns on the Tube, and so what? 
Sasha believed her daughter had "gotten" this uniform 
fetish from her. It was a strange idea even coming from 
Sasha, but since her very first Rose Parade up till the 
present she'd felt in herself a fatality, a helpless turn
toward images of authority, especially uniformed men, 
whether they were athletes live or on  the Tube, actors in 
movies of war through the ages, or maitre d's in restaurants, 
not to mention waiters and busboys, and she further believed 
that it could be passed on, as if some Cosmic Fascist had 
spliced in a DNA sequence requiring this form of seduction and 
initiation into the dark joys of social control. Long before any 
friend or enemy had needed to point it out to her, Sasha on her 
own had arrived at, and been obliged to face, the dismal 
possibility that all her oppositions, however just and good, to 
forms of power were really acts of denying that dangerous swoon 
that came creeping at the edges of her optic lobes every time the 
troops came marching by, that wetness of 
attention and perhaps ancestral curse.
Vineland, p., 83



"It seems that Pynchon's sister Judith once taught at Suffolk
Community College and a colleague of [John Krafft, editor of Pynchon
Notes]'s actually dated her, and actually asked her, one time, 'What's
your brother likely to be doing right now?' and she said 'Watching The
Brady Bunch.' This, I learn, is a wholesome family sitcom which was
run and rerun throughout the Seventies, and it's Pynchon's favourite
show. So, Tom is just like you and me! He watches cruddy TV!"

http://www.pynchon.pomona.edu/bio/influences.html