Re: IVIV: Chapter 3—Swedish Fish

[John Bailey]

I laughed at Pat Dubonnet's name, though probably not for the right
reasons. In Australia (and the UK I think) 'bonnet' is the equivalent
of the 'hood' of a car in the US. So the image of a cop patting his
car came immediately to mind, furthering that
auto--anthropomorpho-fetishism of P's novels.

Then again, I think 'pat' might be a local version of the US 'pet',
and with the French suffix that would cross-culturally translate as
'pet of the (masculine) hood'.

Uh, don't know where I'm going with this, really.

On Tue, Sep 8, 2009 at 11:14 PM, Robin
Landseadel<robinlandseadel at comcast.net> wrote:
> Chapter three [all three and a half pages] serves the same function as many
> similar episodes in Chandler's stories. The P.I. needs to tease out some
> info from the local police without saying much of anything about his
> clients.
>
> Pat Dubonnet is the cop who called Hope Harligan with the news about Coy
> Harligan's "OD".  Pat Dubonnet works at the "Gordita Beach" police outpost.
> The Manhattan Beach Police outpost looks like this:
>
> http://www.code2high.com/Manhattan%20Beach%20Police/mbpd_station_3.jpg
>
> http://tinyurl.com/nlp2wx
>
>        He drove past the Gordita Beach station house twice before he
>        recognized it. The place had been radically transformed,
>        courtesy of federal anti-drug money, from a pierside booking
>        desk with a two-coil hot plate and a jar of instant coffee into a
>        palatial cop's paradise featuring locomotive-size espresso
>        machines, its own mini-jail, a motor pool full of rolling weaponry
>        that would otherwise be in Vietnam, and a kitchen with a crew
>        of pastry chefs working around the clock.
>        IV, page 46
>
> Easy to imagine local enforcement agencies getting flooded with Federal cash
> during the dawn of the Nixon administration.
>
> Doc enters the station with "a foil wrapped object about a foot long" which
> sounds potentially like a drug but turns out to be a hot dog—"one with
> everything" though that's not a quote, it's a punch-line. Pat inhales the
> dog while Doc works on getting under Pat's skin. What Doc finds out from Pat
> is that Mickey'nBigfootarethisclose. Meanwhile, there's echos of Hector's
> fantasies of getting on the Tube from Vineland:
>
>        " . . .It's bound to be a Movie for TV, ain't it, whatever happens .
> . ."
>
> I've heard of the Surfer-Lowrider wars but have little to offer on the
> subject save that the "Locals Only" attitude of some surfers erupted at the
> time and continues long afterwards. Google "surfer-lowrider wars" and all
> you get is a reference back to the Inherent Vice wiki.
>
> As for Swedish Fish:
>
>        Swedish Fish are chewy winegum candies especially notable
>        apart from other varieties of winegums in Sweden. They have
>        been developed with special flavors specifically for the North
>        American market[1] by the Swedish candy producer Malaco,
>        which exports products to North America.
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_Fish
>
> This ad for the little fish candies is a little masterpiece of surrealism:
>
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v0MGFJK7YRM
>