VL-IV 48, 49, 50, 51

[Michael Bailey]

"more attachments than a vacuum cleaner...more liens than the tower of
Pisa...more garnishes than a California burger"
"...it's what you all get for leading these irregular lives"
"Looks like it's what *you* get," Zoyd had remarked.
"Is why most of you ringdings keep gettin' paid off the books."

for their mutual convenience, then...but leading to tax accounting
hassles for Blodwen
http://www.celticleague.org/history_5-04a.html
("In 1880 [Welsh composer Joseph Parry]  teamed up with the Welsh bard
Mynyddog ("Mountainous") to compose the world's first opera written in
the Welsh language. "Blodwen" is set in the time of Owain Glyndwr's
revolt in the early 1400s, and tells the story of the Welsh knight
Howell Ddu and his fiancé Blodwen caught in the turmoil of war and
English invasion.)

...and Millard ("milord") whose history (and the inclusion of LSD
therein) converted them from theatrical aspirants to lordship of
Vineland turf.

covertly sexy is this line:
"deep in the Vineland redwoods in a cabin by a stream from whose bed
they could hear gold-bearing cobblestones knocking together at night"

"Pat Sajak in The Frank Gorshin Story"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Gorshin
of note: Frank Gorshin played The Riddler in the Batman series
Moments of high drama:
"He was still in high school when he obtained his first paid
employment, which he secured as the prize in a Pittsburgh talent
contest in 1951: a one-week engagement at Jackie Heller's New York
nightclub, Carousel. His parents had insisted that he take the
engagement, even though his 15-year-old brother had been hit by a car
and killed just two nights before."
and
"In 1957, he fell asleep at the wheel of his car after driving from
Pittsburgh for 39 hours without sleep. He was on his way to a
Hollywood screen test for the part of Officer Ruby in Run Silent, Run
Deep. He sustained a fractured skull and spent four days in a coma; a
Los Angeles newspaper incorrectly reported that he had been killed."

Pat Sajak's name has already been invoked in Chapter 2.  Here,
Millard Hobbs, then, is a Tube freak...
(side note: breathes there a person who does not, upon reading or
hearing the name "Hobbes" even without the "e", who doesn't at least
silently recite "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short?" - like the
Escondido, I don't know exactly what this signpost points to
(although, thanks, Dave! for the several indications on the Edsel
Escondido) but it's ironic that the name of the Leviathan State's big
booster be attached to the Marquis, who helps his workers avoid court
orders and taxes)

Zoyd, considerate borrower, upon hearing that Millard can't give him
disguise advice till 1030, calls "Trent, a sensitive poet-artist from
the City"...


page 49:
...and learns that his house is occupied.  He is cool enough about it,
having been alerted by the presence of Hector, and warned by Blood.

"proceeded in the cedar-shake eyesore"
a recurrence of disrespect for the vehicle (maybe not every doper's
idea of imbrication, or beauty, is perfectly realized)

"...Bodhi Dharma Pizza, which he could hear tonight before he saw it.
All the occupants of the place were chanting"
 customers able to chant together in Tibetan loudly enough to be heard
down the road, and/or Zoyd so attuned to the vibes of his fellow
Vinelanders that he perceives it so.  Hector on the table facing this
protective chant, "eyes inflamed, haircut askew"
the resistance is not only determinedly non-violent but erudite and
world-musicky
-- I don't think it's too far astray to surmise they had intervened in
Hector's attempted abduction of Prairie...and that Hector isn't as
scary as Vond, so it worked on him...
...but Hector likes it about as much as Zoyd likes their pizza...

"a Justice Department strike force, they got military backup"
Yikes!  Dude!

Page 51
"My diary?  My hair stuff, my clothes?  Desmond?"

Hector's aria:
"It ain't that I don' have Hollywood connections.  I know Ernie
Triggerman.  Yeah and Ernie's been waitin years for the big Nostalgia
wave to move along to the sixties, which according to his demographics
is the best time most people from back then are ever goin to have in
their life -- sad for them maybe, but not for the picture business.
Our dream, Ernie's and mine, is to locate a legendary
observer-participant from those times, Frenesi Gates - your ex-ol'
lady, Zoyd, your mom, Prairie - and bring her up out of her mysterious
years of underground existence, to make a Film about all those
long-ago political wars, the drugs, the sex, the rock an' roll, which
th' ultimate message will be that the real threat to America, then and
now, is from th' illegal abuse of narcotics?"

ends in a question mark?  that's mostly just an "ear" thing, I think
(the way people lift the end of a sentence not in question but seeking
agreement is what I hear), but here it also reminds that Hector's in
dubious mental shape and maybe even a bit aware of it himself.

"...have you brought Cap'n Vond on board"
Hector was looking down at his shoes.  "We didt'n finalize it."

Like the leather hat, probably, way back in '66, his plan is not
official issue...
also it doesn't answer why the task force is confiscating Zoyd's house?





..


-- 
--
"Feliz Navidad"
"