VL-IV (15) Es posible, pages 343/345

[Robin Landseadel]

	. . . suddenly I am lifting the bag of G. Gordon Liddy - Nixon's
	rent-a-thug, the Watergate burglar, the far-right shock jock
	extraordinaire - into the boot of a taxi and reeling at his
	smallness. . .
	http://www.johannhari.com/archive/article.php?id=505	

	Above-the-line checks started clearing the bank, motel rooms
	were booked, weather maps consulted, and crews assembled,
	and nobody had the least idea of what the movie, in fact, was
	supposed to be. Sid and Ernie, by now both deeply afraid of
	Hector, dared not ask, stuck with only vague assurances that
	the star element would be Frenesi Gates.
	VL, 345

"Chuck's Superslab of Love Motor Inn and Casino" sounds like mash-up  
of "Billy the Mountain" and some imagined 4 am. truck stop, bleary- 
eyed after too many miles of decidedly hard road.

For some weird reason neither can recall, Hector and Frenesi have  
their meeting at ". . .the Club La Habanera, deep within a thousand- 
room resort-casino much too close to the airport, designed after the  
legendary gambler's paradise of pre-Castro Havana. . .", reminding us  
again of the CIA, the Bay of Pigs and just how much brinkmanship goes  
into this drug war, the FBI/CIA internecine warfare, and the scab-land  
garrison state we have become:

	On the night of April 23, 1973, Herbert Joseph Giglotto, a
	hardworking boilermaker, and his wife, Louise, were sleeping
	soundly in their suburban house in Collinsville, Illinois.
	Suddenly, and without warning, armed men broke into their
	house and rushed up the stairs to the Giglottos' bedroom.
	Giglotto later recalled, "I got out of bed; I took about three steps,
	looked down the hall and I [saw] men running up the hall
	dressed like hippies with pistols, yelling and screeching. I
	turned to my wife. 'God, honey, we're dead.' " The night
	intruders threw Giglotto down on his bed and tied his hands
	behind his back. Holding a loaded gun at his head, one of the
	men pointed to his wife and asked, "Who is that bitch lying
	there?" Giglotto begged the raiders, "Before you shoot her,
	before you do anything, check my identification, because I know
	you're in the wrong place." The men refused to allow the
	terrified couple to move from the bed or put on any clothes
	while they proceeded to search the residence. As books were
	swept from shelves and clothes were ripped from hangers, one
	man said, "You're going to die unless you tell us where the stuff
	is." Then the intrusion ended as suddenly as it began when the
	leader of the raiders concluded, "We made a mistake."

	http://www.edwardjayepstein.com/agency/prologue.htm

Hector and Frenesi are still in the midst of brokering a movie deal,  
all arrows pointing to the artificiality of it all—we're still on a  
movie set, much like the Cuke' at the novel's start:

	. . .Deeply tanned customers in dimly white tropical suits, with
	straw hats on the back of their heads, danced lewdly with hot-
	eyed packages in spike heels and tight bright flowered dresses,
	while beyond the seething blur of flame and parrot colors,
	sinister creatures, wrapped objects of unusual shape passing
	among them, bargained in the shadows. They were all yuppies
	on a theme tour, from places like Torrance and Reseda. . .

. . . and these characters can't seem to drop character, still in some  
weird species of made-for TV movie made out of spare TV parts:

	Here came some sentimental pitch, delivered deadpan—cop
	solidarity, his problems with racism in the Agency, her 59¢ on
	the male dollar, maybe a little "Hill Street Blues" thrown in, plus
	who knew what other licks from all that Tube, though she
	thought she recognized Raymond Burr's "Robert Ironside"
	character and a little of "The Captain" from "Mod Squad." It was
	disheartening to see how much he depended on these Tubal
	fantasies about his profession, relentlessly pushing their
	propaganda message of cops-are-only-human-got-to-do-their-
	job, turning agents of government repression into sympathetic
	heroes . . .	
	VL, 345

"I'm not making this up, you know," as Anna Russell used to say.
As for TV and all those anti-drug spiels that wind their way through  
Hector 's mouth as he Pitches his film to Frenesi:

	The plan to mobilize the media developed in March, 1970.
	President Nixon had instructed his chief domestic advisor, John
	Ehrllchman, to "further utilize television as a too] in the fight
	against drug abuse." Ehrlichman then turned the project over to
	Egli Krogh, his assistant, and Jeb Stuart Magruder, the deputy
	director of the Office of Communications in the White House.
	Magruder, a thirty six-year-old former advertising salesman and
	merchandise manager for a department store, found initially
	that officials in the various federal agencies resisted his plans
	for a publicity hype of the drug issue. He recalled in his
	autobiography, "The first meeting we called was hilarious-I
	couldn't believe those people [in the federal agencies] were
	working on the same problem.... We encountered the usual
	hostility the White House people meet in the bureaucratic
	world." But eventually "everyone agreed that television was the
	single most effective means to reach young people and alert
	them to the hazards of drugs."

Much more, very on-point material at:

http://www.edwardjayepstein.com/agency/chap20.htm

http://www.edwardjayepstein.com/cyberbooks.htm

	. . .Nobody thought it was peculiar anymore, no more than
	the routine violations of constitutional rights these characters
	performed week after week, now absorbed into the vernacular
	of American expectations. Cop shows were in a genre right-
	wing weekly TV Guide called Crime Drama, and numbered
	among their zealous fans working cops like Hector who should
	have known better. And now he was asking her to direct, maybe
	write, basically yet another one? Her life "underground," with a
	heavy antidrug spiel. Wonderful. . .
	VL, 345

Interesting side-note: TV Guide, a periodical that's now tanking, was   
once a money-making powerhouse and the monetary source for the  
Annenberg Foundation, that organization that got William Ayres and  
Barack Obama together so famously.

There's an ad running on USA network for "Law & Order, Special Victims  
Unit"—"If you like coffee & doughnuts, late nights and a little  
flexibility with constitutional rights . . .:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PMR2qMdVk64

	. . ."If indeed television is a subliminal stimulus," Donfeld
	suggested to Ehrlichman, "you are urging the producers to
	focus their creative genius to effect changes in people's
	attitudes about drugs ... [and offering] to guide them in
	presenting efficacious programs." . . .

http://www.edwardjayepstein.com/agency/chap20.htm

At the same time there's Frenesi framing the situation in terms of  
lessons from the Tube: "Hector, you ever just think about beaming up,  
getting yourself out of this?", yet another reference to "Star Trek"— 
always a Pynchon favorite.