VL-IV 1: orientational vibes pgs 6, 7

[Robin Landseadel]

Zoyd, thinking he can do a change-up on his annual act of pre- 
meditated insanity, heads over to the “Log Jam”, once a hillbilly hang- 
out for hard cases but now yuppified into a fern bar featuring a sleek  
new interior and a “new-age” juke box. The subtext here points to the  
cash influx of George Lucas and Return of the Jedi (I983). It also  
points to Charles Hurwitz:

http://www.mcn.org/e/iii/politics/hurwitzm.htm

While Charles Hurwitz wasn’t really in the mix till the following  
year, having picked up Pacific Lumber in 1985, the rape of the pacific  
northwest was already well underway:

	Everybody knew it was high times for the stiffs in the woods -
	though not for those in the mills, with the Japanese buying
	up unprocessed logs as fast as the forests could be clearcut -
	but even so, the scene in here was peculiar.

Back in 1984, Judi Bari was working as a carpenter in and around  
Sonoma County, CA. By 1988 she was the contact person for Earth First!  
and organized the workers inside the mills, Unlike most “treehuggers”,  
she was remarkably effective as she was operating more like an old- 
fashioned union organizer rather than an dude in sandals and dreads  
with a 50 lb. sack of sprouts. But one way or the other, by 1984 the  
clear-cutting loggers decisively moved up in pay grade:

	One of the larger of these, being among the first to notice Zoyd,
	had chosen to deal with the situation. He wore sunglasses with
	stylish frames, a Turnbull & Asser shirt in some pastel plaid,
	three-figure-price-tag jeans by Mme. Gris, and apres-Iogging
	shoes of a subdued, but incontestably blue, suede.

Just like in “The Crying of Lot 49”, we are presented with a snap-shot  
of the moment just before everything really goes nuts. CoL 49 is  
issued in 1966, just before the LSD scare is about to peak and  
Vineland is issued a few months before Judi Bari has a bomb blow up  
under her car seat.

Meanwhile, the dude in the Blue Suede Shoes talks Z.W. down like a  
veteran of E.S.T. or Scientology:

	"Well good afternoon pretty lady and how fine you're looking,
	I'm sure in another setting and mood we'd all like to know you
	as a person with your many fine points and so on like that,
	but from your fashion message I can tell that you are a sensitive
	type person who'll appreciate the problem we have here in terms
	of orientational vibes, if you follow-"
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