Re: IVIV: chapter seven—Zucky's

[Robin Landseadel]

On Sep 25, 2009, at 6:24 AM, Michael Bailey wrote:

> Robin Landseadel wrote:
>
>> basketball. Wonder if Ol' Pynch is starting to scramble his  
>> basketball
>> stats?
>
> maybe, as you suggest, there's a reason for placing the KAJ name  
> change
> a year earlier.  It's fiction, I for one encourage it to be different
> from (or, as
> John Carvill might say, 'different to') reality

LSD is BIG in The Big Sportello! And the time traveling/journey to  
mythos aspect of Acid is on full display in chapter seven of Inherent  
Vice. Hoping Joseph Tracy joins in on this one. Seems like if you're  
looking for a Jungian Journey [or at least a real good parody of one]  
LSD Investigations is the place to go for Action, Adventure & Acid!

But yeah, heavy Lysergic action often feels like riding in a defective  
time machine. "What year is this, anyway?"

>> not anywhere at all, if you can dig that jive, Porgie.
>
> Porgie, Tirebiter, he's a spy and a girl delighter...

And you seriously must listen to "Roller Maidens From Outer Space",  
Phil Austin's solo debut. It's the Biblical Apocalypse as set on  
Fresno Television where all the characters on the shows are from  
daytime re-runs and they're hiring a detective from one of these shows— 
Dick Private, Private Dick—to explain all these lights in the sky and  
the strange but beautiful dream they're all dreaming. Features Cal  
Worthington [believe he's Lord Crappington here] and some déclassé  
gospel/country-western hybrid tunes that move the action forward. The  
role of Nick Exxon is played by Dick Nixon. The role of Jesus Christ  
is played by Jesus Retardo, brother of Tricky Retardo who shakes his  
maracas for wife Juicy. In the end we get to read everybody's  
personals. Turns out ol' Nick is really kinky.1973, bw & color, 50  
minutes.

And of course Lew Basnight's importance in Against the Day is elevated  
due to the relation of Doc to Lew, being as they're both psychical  
detectives. Remember that the full name is "Nick Danger, Third  
Eye! ! !".

>>       shamus of shamuses Johnny Staccato
>
> never heard of him before, John Cassavetes as a piano-playing solver
> of bad deeds...

Obviously need to see that, a certifiable Boho artiste who works with  
the boni-fied Jazz Ensemble to solve crimes and look Italian. Coolness  
and the most obvious direct link to:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KYULQT2ObkU

Also related:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I8sgbx70wAw

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jqd7kXrzpdM&NR=1

>> Then comes page 98, a page I have no intention of spoiling by  
>> attempting to
>> summarize, explain, link or otherwise spray graffiti on.

> geeze Robin, I've been operating under the assumption that we are
> painting here, if you will, in like water-soluble poster paint and no
> matter how much we throw at the wall, none of it will stick.  Or at  
> least
> it'll wash off easily
>
> If I let myself worry about defacing this wonderful art of that  
> author whom we
> feel deeply affectionate towards...gaah, Kreplach! I wouldn't have  
> anything much
> to say about any of this
>
> but, yeah, it is a good page, ol' 98.

Every book by Pynchon has a passage or two where you have to stand  
back for fear of being burned. Those poster colors will fuse with the  
persian designs of the tiles of the building, producing the murpy  
shellfish grey of glittering po-mo indecision. I wonder what kind of  
pillow those health waffles make? I find it  poetic and a close  
relative to Hunter S. Thompson's:

	There was madness in any direction, at any hour. If not across the Bay,
	then up the Golden Gate or down 101 to Los Altos or La Honda... You
	could strike sparks anywhere. There was a fantastic universal sense
	that whatever we were doing was right, that we were winning...

	And that, I think, was the handle — that sense of inevitable victory  
over
	the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we  
didn't
	need that. Our energy would simply PREVAIL. There was no point in
	fighting — on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum; we were
	riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave...

	So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in  
Las
	Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost
	see the high-water mark — that place where the wave finally broke and
	rolled back.

Pynchon's wave reversal is in the form of the Santa Anas. Climate  
change figures heavily in the picture as well:

	It was late winter in Gordita, though for sure not the usual weather.  
You
	heard people muttering to the effect that last summer the beach didn't
	have summer till August, and now there probably wouldn't be any
	winter till spring.

Coming up—Tiny Tim sings about climate change:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fYEnpo2rma0

"Dawn Weirdness" sounds like a conscious allusion to H.S.T. and the  
state liquor stamps over the tops of tequila bottles in the stores  
coming unstuck coupled with dim, lurid and biblical, sailor-take- 
warning skies adds up to coming attractions of Pynchon's little homage  
further on down the road.


But beyond my usual fanboy preoccupations, I'm very curious what others 
—Joseph? Alice? Dave?—think of the passage.

> "Our only hope today lies in our ability to recapture the
> revolutionary spirit and go out into a sometimes hostile world
> declaring eternal hostility to poverty, racism, and militarism." -
> Martin Luther King

	"7. And the Angel of Eris bade of the Lord: Go ye hence and lift the
	Stash, that ye may come to own it and, owning it, share it and, sharing
	it, love in it and, loving in it, dwell in it and, dwelling in the  
Stash,
	become a Poet of the Word and a Sayer of Sayings - an Inspiration to
	all men and a Scribe to the Gods.
	Principia Discordia

http://www.principiadiscordia.com/book/5.php