VL-IV 1: “Love Your Outfit”, pgs. 10/11

[Robin Landseadel]

Hector is waiting to  be re-introduced to Zoyd as he pretends to play  
a Zaxxon machine. [The Zaxxon is a video arcade game made by Ikegami  
Tsushinki, inventor of the hand-held video camera]. Another plot  
thread is dumped into the mix with the introduction of the manager of  
“The Cuke” Ralph Wayvone, Jr.:

. . . a remittance man from San Francisco, where his father was a  
figure of some substance, having grown successful in business areas  
where transactions are overwhelmingly in the form of cash. . .

. . .eventually leading to one of the book’s best set-pieces, Billy  
Barf & the Vomitones playing at a Mob wedding straight out of "The  
Godfather" [1972]. Yet another passage of description of class  
positioning expressed via OTT apparel:

. . .Today Ralph Jr. was all dolled up in a Cerruti suit, white shirt  
with cuff links, touch-them-you-die double-soled shoes from someplace  
offshore, the works. . .

. . .reminiscent of the scene at the Log Jam.

Ralph Jr., after kvetching about a lack of musicians for his sister’s  
upcoming wedding, re-introduces Zoyd to Hector:

	"Uh-huh." He and Hector exchanged the briefest of thumbgrips.”

Go to the “urban dictionary” now and you’ll find “thumbgrips” mutated  
into the two little dimples found at the small of a woman’s back, but  
in this case it’s more like a miniaturized variation on the whole slap  
& dap routine that’s somehow associated with Inner City types/Vietnam  
War vets, at least in terms of Blaxploitation and the subgenre of  
Vietnam War flix, like “Who’ll Stop the Rain” [1978], “Apocalypse  
Now” [1979] and “Tropic Thunder” [2008]. [see: “The Big  
Lebowski” [1998].] Just a few pages later:

Isaiah, in their greeting, wanted to slap and dap, having always  
somehow believed that Zoyd had seen combat in Vietnam. Some of this  
was bush-vet and jailyard moves Zoyd recognized, some was private  
choreography he couldn't keep up with, though he tried, Isaiah  
throughout humming Jimi Hendrix's "Purple Haze." "Hey, so, Mr.  
Wheeler," Isaiah at last, "how you doing?"
Vineland, pg. 18

I guess this makes the Hector/Zoyd thumbgrip the exact opposite of  
“R-2 D-2’s” species of blatant ass-kissing. Page 22 has some serious  
explain’ goin’ on about this whole Hector/Zoyd thing:
IT was a romance over the years at least as persistent as Sylvester  
and Tweety's. Although Hector may from time to time have wished some  
cartoon annihilation for Zoyd, he'd understood from early in their  
acquaintance that Zoyd was the chasee he'd be least likely ever to  
bag.  . .

Vineland is the land of the Tube, and a Tubal signifier here is the  
Animated Cartoon. “The Tube's” TV cartoons [in the sixties, many "TV  
cartoons" were in fact the raiding of MGM's and Warner Brothers  
archive of cartoons for Movie theaters] have a major impact of  on  
language and culture. The genre of “Comix” or “Underground Comics”  
owes as much to Tex Avery and Chuck Jones as it does to George Grosz  
and Ed Rusha. And Road-Runner cartoons have had more impact on  
Pynchon’s writing than Foucault. Vineland has the best cartoons of any  
of Pynchon’s books and if everything here seems scaled down here, it’s  
because Vineland is scaled down to the size of a cheap, portable TV in  
the back of a double-wide in Aptos, instead of the Wide Screen  
Technicolor of L.A.'s  Orpheus Theater found in Gravity’s Rainbow.  
It's "White Noise" vs. "Underworld."

Hector and Zoyd continue their comic sniping. Hector’s gonna prove  
just how “bad” he rilly is. Comic complications snake around like a  
Bach fugue in this sequence as Zoyd attempts to blow off Hector, sets  
up an appointment in a bowling alley with Zuniga, dances around a TV  
studio’s worth of equipment, recalls a mantra he paid for with money  
he really didn’t have, musters up enough nerve to jump through a plate  
glass window and the very moment he hits, he realizes something’s  
wrong . . .
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