IVIV (8): Downstairs Eddie

[alice wellintown]

On Sat, Oct 3, 2009 at 4:32 PM, Michael Bailey
<michael.lee.bailey at gmail.com> wrote:
>  alice wellintown wrote:
>
>> they are parodic figures, Now they are satirized for their copy-cat
>> lives and for modeling TV characters.
>
> wait, that's not all they do.  Leo's a wine salesman.
> Doc hasn't called in a week and a half, they are worried (not frantic,
> but concerned)  They are able to combine a "check-up pop-in" with
> a romantic getaway.  I would wager many couples check in under
> false names, back in the day you could do that (another nostalgia
> touch like the perking coffee) -- actually, I remember checking Marie
> and me in under false names not quite that long ago before you
> had to show ID.

He sells Midnight Express; uses his discount to buy cases of it for
his future father-in-law who gives it to Larry when Larry is but a
baby-- yet one more "baby-sitting tranqualizer"  used by parents and
grandparents in a P novel.

Give the baby LSD. That''s what Frenesi's friends tell her to do.

Something the Man who played W.C. Fields would not do,  since,
although not a perfect father or grandfather, W.C., while he played a
cheap wine drinking booze hound who hated and abused kids and
sometimes women, was not a child hater or abuser.

But Leo's father-in-law  imitates the act, the WC Fields abuse of children.

The names they choose for their cute meet are significant as I noted
in a prior post.


> Also, it occurs to me that it is plot-significant in that his concern
> for his parents is probably part of the reason for his eventual deal...
>
>>They zap into sentimental
>> sit-com channels and appear to be normal, that is, if we take "Jewish"
>> Sit-Com Family as anything appraoching normal--mostly neorotic,
>> infantile, loud, rarely funny.
>
> - wine salesman, symbolic purveyor of the blood of the Lamb...
> - ...not a "cute meet" but a "love at first sight" meet, interrupting
> a game of chance with knowledge of certainty...
> - "Now you're sure you don't want that" - could Pynchon be asking the
> Elect if they really
> want to discard the Preterite?
>
> what is high-pitched or infantile (or "Jewish", and for that matter,
> where is it written in stone that the conflicts and humor of say
> Portnoy and his folks aren't fairly typical across ethnicities?)
> about any of their exchanges?
>
> Elmina is able to hold her own with a grad student.
>
>>All this, of course, defuses Brock
>> Vond, Reagan, the CIA. Far more insidious than a Rocket, this is no
>> CIA tool of torture or Big Brother in your living room. It's Gnostic
>> Control and it defines what is REAL.
>
> wait, Doc's folks -> TV stereotypes -> gnostic control?
> that's actually a fairly cool idea.
> However, I don't think it exhausts the possibilities of the scene.
>