IVIV: The Feds

[Mark Kohut]

Borderline might signify the borderline between private citizens and The State?

--- On Tue, 9/15/09, John Bailey <sundayjb at gmail.com> wrote:

> From: John Bailey <sundayjb at gmail.com>
> Subject: IVIV: The Feds
> To: "Pynchon Liste" <pynchon-l at waste.org>
> Date: Tuesday, September 15, 2009, 12:48 AM
> Doc walks Penny back to work at her
> request, which is really just an
> excuse to hand him over to Special Agents Flatweed and
> Borderline.
> 
> Anyone with "flat" in their name, or "border" or "line" is
> bound to be
> up to no good in a P novel. Not so sure about the weed
> though...
> 
> Did some googling and came across someone asking a dope
> forum what
> "flat" weed refers to. Answers suggested that it's cheap,
> mass
> produced marijuana packed into bricks. Not good quality. As
> one puts
> it: "flat weed is a mass produced schwag weed usually seedy
> and low
> quality..
> they plantations that grow this "flat weed" will grow 100's
> some time
> 1000's of plants at a time and will stick the finished
> product in a
> large vice and compact the shit out of it and cut them into
> the
> quantity they're selling them in pounds or kilos..."
> 
> Like the vice reference.
> 
> Borderline was a 1950 film in which customs agents attempt
> to sort out
> and capture a complex dope-smuggling ring in Mexico.
> Starred Fred
> MacMurray (whose big noir moment was of course Double
> Indemnity) and
> the bad guy was Raymond Burr (who's mentioned in
> Vineland).
> 
> Borderline also brings up borderline personality disorder,
> but I don't
> see how BPD would be relevant here.
> 
> ------
> 
> "Gotta say I've always admired you guys, eight P.M. every
> Sunday
> night, wow, I never miss an episode!" says Doc. He's either
> obviously
> taking the piss or doing that fake "I'm just a dumb doper"
> routine.
> 
> What show is this referring to? "The F.B.I"? That's what
> I'm guessing,
> and we get a ref to the show's lead character Lew Erskine
> shortly.
> Fits in with Doc's frequent lament regarding the
> conditioning effect
> of 60s/70s law enforcement TV.
> 
> In fact the first comment on the IMDB listing for FBI is a
> case in point:
> 
> "I swore I was going to grow up to work for the F.B.I. --
> that's how
> wonderful and influential this program was...
> 
> He had a convertible RED Mustang!!! He would travel the
> world, take
> out the criminals...and then at the end cruise Washington,
> DC in a RED
> CONVERTABLE MUSTANG!!! And...end up at his Washington, DC
> Brownstone!!
> I mean, how cool of a job was THAT?!?!?! "
> 
> ------
> 
> Doc is pretty straight in this scene. Penny excuses herself
> to the
> bathroom, but Doc knows "her gait when she had to piss, and
> this
> wasn't it."
> 
> That's pretty amazing detective work. I doubt I'd ever make
> that kind
> of observation.
> 
> -----
> 
> Doc takes "a second and a half to get spiritually
> prepared". Odd little phrase.
> 
> -----
> 
> "Come on, Larry, let's find us a cup of joe." Dialogue
> right out of a
> TV script. And the feds start off by suggesting a nice
> legal drug they
> can share. Doc wonders when he'll get to smoke a joint
> again.
>