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

[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. . .

This eventually leads to one of the book’s best set-pieces, Billy Barf  
& the Vomitones playing at a Mob wedding. Yet another passage of  
description of class positioning 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 his sister’s upcoming wedding, shows  
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 consideration here is  
the animated cartoon, “The Tube” and the impact of TV cartoons on  
language. 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 its now scaled  
down to the size of a cheap, portable TV in the back of a double-wide,  
instead of the Wide Screen Technicolor of the Orpheus Theater in  
Gravity’s Rainbow.

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 these parts as Zoyd tries 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 . . .