"Maxine, whistling 'Help Me Rhonda' through her teeth" (p. 7)

[Fiona Shnapple]

Be careful what you wish for, whistle for, whistle while you work for, be
careful who you work for...so Maxine works for herself now, or for her
clients now, and customer base is, well, look what happened to KK, lost
customer loyalty when they expanded their market share faster than a
speeding bullet, and even faster on the cooked books than jiffy pop and pop
n press dough in a Suzy bake oven. So Maxine's KK ticket was back in the
business section of the news this week, new CEO, mister clean, not mr slow,
and the stock is sweeeeet once more. Just thought you might want a hot
stock tip. so, like Maxine is whistling while she works, whistling for a
Rhonda to help get her out of her warehouse work,  this stupid crazy KK
counting and weighing ticket. Not bad work, but, her and crazy KK can't go
on like this. What she needs is somebody who works for Ice man. Here's Reg.

Ice is buggy whipping old trades, like the one Horst is in. Like Molley's
Job (good book, check it out on Amazon). But South, off shore and outsource
is so Jobs in China, so Ice is Turning workers into temps, expanding North,
where the cooling bill is lower, here the planet, whatever is left of it,
is warming up faster than an instant message in a snail mail marathon.

The song was big, number one, everybody knows it. Well, not everybody.
Also, the younger gens has got a thing for the co- opted, the kind of
nostalgia Ray Gun voo doo economics got going.

http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2012-10-20/business/sns-rt-us-ice-floor-closingbre89j03o-20121019_1_open-outcry-open-outcry-ice-futures


http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=VksAuB0CJn4&desktop_uri=%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DVksAuB0CJn4

On Saturday, December 7, 2013, Markekohut wrote:

> To me, as well, the lyrics only have that catchy all-purpose pop "
> universality" and I can see no connection in the story.
> When I googled the Britney Spears' song, I learned it is among the most
> popular songs ever listened to. And here TRP did connect the lyrics to the
> story.
>
> So, I read them as more direct right-on "cultural" allusions, more pop as
> life allusions......more the way we live now life-surround ( as some music
> runs through my mind a lot more than does Proust)
>
>
>
>
> Sent from my iPad
>
> On Dec 7, 2013, at 4:42 AM, Kai Frederik Lorentzen <lorentzen at hotmail.de<javascript:;>>
> wrote:
>
> >
> > Why this song? I don't see any relevance of the lyrics for the
> interaction of Dizzy and Maxine. And when the song appeared in 1965, Maxine
> was still a toddler. So it cannot be 'her song' in the emphatic sense of
> the phrase since it wasn't hot when she was a teenager or twen.  Neither is
> it likely that she associates early family memories with it, because Ernie
> and Elaine are opera fans. So my guess about this song here in the novel is
> that it is Pynchon's way to even out the very first musical reference.
> Earlier on the page we read "Oops, I did it again, as Britney always sez",
> which refers to a rather trashy smash hit. To me it seems that Pynchon did
> not want to finish the first chapter without balancing this out with a
> reference to a song of quality, a song he really likes. In the 1960s
> Pynchon met Brian Wilson personally and Beach Boys songs do pop up in
> Vineland as well as in Inherent Vice. The only reason for Maxine, who's not
> especially fond of Cali culture, to whistle 'Help Me Rhonda' seems to be
> that the song is, like so many from the Beach Boys, easy to whistle and
> fun. Or is there something happening on page 7 that I simply do not get?
> >
> > The Beach Boys - Help Me Rhonda<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Te_lCF69Aw>
> >
> > -
> > Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
> -
> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?listpynchon-l
>
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