IVIV: In tha Club

[John Bailey]

Club Asiatique is the kind of decky-dance joint you expect from TRP,
rather than a realistic venue. It blurs all kinds of distinctions (hot
sake with iced champagne? Please). The staff wear cheongsams (a
tourist image of 'Asia'); all kinds of drugs are floating around the
place. The band are covering The Doors. Cookie and Joaquin show up
looking as ridiculous as the zoot-suited dudes at the Casino Hermann
Goering.

The two vets are also foolishly trying to get in on a Golden Fang
scheme. They're chasing a bunch of cash that we know has been lagan-ed
by the Golden Fang boat; they don't seem to realise that it's bogus
stuff. In fact, everybody seems confused here. When they see their
contact approaching, they're worried he looks pissed off.

It's Blondie-san, a Japanese yakuza dude (who seems straight out of a
Takashi Miike film) and his henchman Iwao, whose job-related confusion
as to whose ass he's supposed to be kicking actually gets to Doc: "Doc
hated to see anybody that confused." Huh? Showing a little too much
sympathy for the devil, there.

The stewardii, neglected, are starting to get antsy again (in that
Three Stooges way Michael B has noted) and their boyfriends have been
just as competitive with each other.

Jade conveniently airlifts Doc out of the whole situation and I think
this is the last we hear of Blondie-san, LNM and Cookie and Joaquin.

As a final note, though, Motella makes a weird joke/slur suggesting
that Doc and Jade must have known each other in Tehachapi... a max
security prison in California. The place gets mentioned again late in
IV.