SLPAD - 119 - “Low-Lands” - 30

[Michael Bailey]

“a rogues’ gallery of faded sensation fragile as tabloid paper, blurred as
the common humanity of a nine-day wonder.”


This summing up of the photos Bolingbroke’s mounted on the shed walls is
pretty interesting.

I’ve been letting it settle for a couple days but still haven’t come up
with anything super great to say about it: religious resonance of nine-day
wonder (novena) - bridging over to reinforcing the “angel of history” idea
- “common humanity” ie photos geared to exciting momentarily strong
impressions at a lowest-common-denominator level - Bolingbroke connecting
to (or at least acknowledging) the larger society with these images with
(afaict) no coherent or overarching theme - nervous of his actual neighbors
in the dump, closing himself off, booby-trapping the area, surrounding
himself with images from the media…


Moving on: as they polish off the gallon of wine, they start telling sea
stories.

Pig Bodine & somebody named Feeny stole a horse-drawn taxi in Barcelona,
attracted Shore Patrol pursuit, drove the taxi a long way off a short pier
into the Balearic Sea, decided to swim out to the carrier Intrepid

- a real ship
https://artsandculture.google.com/story/aboard-the-uss-intrepid-a-navy-aircraft-carrier-intrepid-sea-air-and-space-museum/bwWxXVMTPZrsJg?hl=en#
-

and “stomp hell out of a few airedales” …

“They would have made it had it not been for the Intrepid’s motor launch,
which caught up with them a few hundred yards out. Feeny managed to throw
the coxswain and the bow hook over the side before some wise-assed ensign
with a .45 stopped all the fun by shooting Feeny through the shoulder.”

This Feeny apparently even a tougher hombre than Pig, and more reckless to
the point of eliciting official gunfire from a .45 (colt 1911?) - Pig, one
gets the impression, is a little more circumspect?
Ready to fight the law, but knows when to admit the law won a particular
round, & fight again another day.

Also “Pig as instigator” one wonders if he egged Feeny on the way he did
Flange with the bachelor party.


Then Flange breaks out a story about fraternity prank, which isn’t a sea
story at all.
His explanation for that choice shows extremely muddled thinking.