Re: IVIV (15) 269/274—7000 Romaine Street Revisited

[Robin Landseadel]

On Nov 22, 2009, at 3:34 PM, alice wellintown wrote:
> Robin Landseadel >
>>> Why is Nixon named in the text, as Nixon, while
>>> HH is named Mickey Wolfman?
>>
>> Why is Aleister Crowley named Nicholas Nookshaft on page 220 of  
>> Against the
>> Day, you T.W.I.T.? Why satirize and parodize? Why ask why?
>
> This is your M.O., man. You float a bomb over our heads on conspiracy
> gas and when a tough question is tossed at you, you toss out insults
> and dig out a reference from any text but the one we are discussing.
> You have nothing. "Sometimes,"  as cool hand Luke sez, "nothin can be
> a pretty cool hand."  This ain't sometimes.

It's a reference to a character created by the same author, this time  
a fictionalized version of an occult figure that figures into  
Gravity's Rainbow—something of a cross-development of themes found in  
GR's prelude. I do not think Mickey Wolfmann IS Howard Hughes, the way  
that Nicholas Nookshaft is purdy dern close to Aleister Crowley.  
Hughes is Hughes in Inherent Vice, & Trick Dick is just as trickey and  
just as dickey as in real life. It's a fully justified parallelism. I  
don't think Mickey Wolfman is Howard Hughes, but his story says a lot  
about the America of Howard Hughes'.

On Nov 22, 2009, at 4:33 PM, Richard Fiero wrote:

>> http://tinyurl.com/ygq7ca4
>
> I know the area well. It's a mile or so dude. A half-hour walk. It's  
> not happening.
> Draw a one-mile radius circle anywhere in LA and you can find all  
> sorts of shit.  Been that way since the town was nothing but whores  
> and cowboys mid-nineteenth century.
> This stuff doesn't even come close to the real byzantine-class power  
> plays of the town.

Well, glad to see somebody else disliking my ideas as much as  
Terrance, I like the idea that I'm starting a movement.

Let's talk about he time frame of Doc 'n Bigfoot's soirée—anybody got  
a watch on? Doc runs into Bigfoot at waste-a-perp just as the sun goes  
down. That's on South LeBrea. And the corner of Santa Monica and  
Sweetzer happens to be West Hollywood City Hall. When Bigfoot leaves  
that corner with Doc they've already spent considerable time talking  
at a place called "The Raincheck Room" about all sorts of interesting  
things like:

	"Can I say something out loud? Is anybody listening?"
	"Everybody. Nobody. Does it matter?"

	"Say Adrian Prussia iced this Detective X, or had it done. And
	what happens? nothing. Maybe everybody in LAPD knows he
	did the deed, but there's no back-channel outcries in the paper,
	no vigilante revenge by horrified fellow officers .... No, instead
	IA locks it all up tight for the next thirty years, everybody
	pretending it's another cop hero fallen in the line of duty. Forget
	about decency, or respecting the memories of all the real dead-
	cop heroes-how can you people be that fuckin unprofessional?"

	"It gets even worse," Bigfoot said in a slowly stifled way, as if
	trying in vain to call to Doc out of years of history forbidden to
	civilians. "Prussia has been prime suspect in ... let's say a
	number of homicides-and each time, upon intervention from the
	highest levels, he's walked."

	''And you're saying what? 'Ain't it awful'?"

	''I'm saying there's a reason for everything, Doc, and before you
	get too indignant you might want to look at why Internal Affairs
	should even be duked into this in the first place, let alone be the
	office that's sitting on the story."

	"I give up. Why?"

	"Figure it out. Use what's left of your brain. The trouble with you
	people is you never know when somebody's doing you a favor.
	You think whatever it is, you're entitled because you're cute or
	something." He got up, dropped a handful of shrapnel on the
	table, tossed a disgruntled salute to the barkeep, and prepared
	to step out into the street. "Go look in a mirror sometime. 'Dig'
	yourself, 'man,' till you understand that nobody owes you
	anything. Then get back to me." Doc had seen Bigfoot out of
	sorts now and then, but this was getting downright emotional.

That sounds like some kind of heavily mobbish operation wired to the  
top of the food chain, the LAPD and U.S. government included.

Now ask yourself, with the number of incidents occurring during this  
little stroll . . .

	They stood on the corner of Santa Monica and Sweetzer.
	"Where were you parked?" said Bigfoot.

	"Off of Fairfax."

	"My direction as well. Walk with me, Sportello, I'll show you 	
	something." They begin to stroll along Santa Monica. Hippies
	were thumbing rides up and down the street. Rock 'n' roll was
	blasting from car radios. Musicians who'd just come awake
	were drifting out of the Tropican a looking for evening breakfast.
	Reefer smoke hung in pockets up and down the street, waiting
	to ambush the unwary pedestrian. Men were murmuring to
	each other in doorways. After a few blocks, Bigfoot turned right
	and ambled down toward Melrose. "This looking familiar yet?"

http://www.leninimports.com/romaine_street_photo_hh_5_web.jpg

That much hubbub could easily fill 30 minutes.

	Doc had an intuition. "It's Puck's old neighborhood."

Puck & Adrian Prussia work for Hughes, above and beyond any other  
allegiances.

	He started looking for the overgrown courtyard complex Trillium
	had told him about. His nose began to run and his clavicles to
	shiver, and he wondered if somehow one or all of the happy
	threesome were about to appear, to what Sortilege liked to call
	manifest, and from the corner of his eye he noticed Bigfoot
	watching him closely. Yes and who says there can't be time
	travel, or that places with real-world addresses can't be
	haunted, not only by the dead but by the living as well?

And 7000 Romaine was haunted by the living. Howard Hughes left that  
building around 1966 at the very latest.

	It helps to smoke a lot of weed and to do acid off and on, but
	sometimes even a literal-minded natchmeister like Bigfoot
	could manage it.

	They approached a courtyard apartment building nearly
	dissolved in the evening. "Go have a look around, Sportello. Sit
	out by that pool there under the New Zealand tree ferns.
	Experience the night."

Shifting from sunset to night takes something like 6:00 to 8:00 pm if  
it's April in L.A..

	He made a show of looking at his watch. "Regretfully, I have to
	be moving along. The missus will be expecting me."

	"One special lady for sure. Pass on my regards."



On Nov 22, 2009, at 12:44 PM, Joseph Tracy wrote:

> So the question prevents itself to this reader- who was killed that  
> might have prevented Dick Nixon from getting elected?

I'd do a little switcheroo and ask: who would kill to make sure  
Richard Nixon—who's already on same dude's hook from previous bribes— 
would become president?