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Post by skepticatfirst on Aug 6, 2021 5:39:20 GMT -5
I wish I could go back and read this again and again, without knowing where it's heading. An amazing post, and (as you probably already know) I agree on a lot of this. To me, the lyrical shift in THS wasn't all that clear at the time, but Open Door Policy made me look back on the last few albums in a different light, and I also sense a clear shift around Teeth Dreams. Not only in content as such, but as you say (when you talk about sketches), in style. There's less of characters doing stuff, moving from A to B or setting of actions X or Y. And there's a lot more emphasis on conversation, relationship and general scenic descriptions. Just as Craig himself have said about looking closer on this and that detail. I would also like to dig deeper into how the solo material translates to all of this. Not in a narrative way, but with all this in mind, it's even more interesting to try to understand what he does there that he won't or can't do under the THS umbrella. And with that, maybe even understand more about the alpha couple, and how and why they are the sole center of the LP/THS world. Such a thrill, really. I can't believe these posts have been coming five days a week for over half a year. I've been extremely curious about that GIDEON sitting at the bottom of the list of posts, and I'm looking forward to read it tomorrow. Thanks. It's taken a very long time to tunnel up through the details to the broad conclusions of the last couple of posts, but with those conclusions in hand, I think coming to terms with the details of individual songs becomes a lot more intuitive. I'm glad it resonates with you, in any case! There's obviously a ton of interesting material in the solo stuff, but it's really hard to try to look at it systematically, just because there clearly isn't a presumption of narrative continuity to lean on. Still, even going through it piecemeal, there's a lot to look at. All right (alright!), let me wrap this thing up. :-)
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Post by skepticatfirst on Aug 5, 2021 7:40:32 GMT -5
THS CHARACTERSOne of the satisfying things about having finally worked through the LP material is that it lets us in on the rationale behind the names of the THS characters. Gideon is the only character whose name we actually nailed in the Here Goes thread ( heregoes): he's named after the Biblical judge who routed the Midianite army using visual and sound effects (trumpets and torches; see Judges 7:17-22). "Mary" we correctly identified with Mary, the Queen of Heaven, and the Sapphire Throne of God ( heregoes); but we missed the allusion to "Mary"=marijuana. Now, seeing that Mary is the THS version of Juanita, that "Juanita"=marijuana, and that most of the other girls' names in the catalog are also slang for different kinds of drugs (see LACED SUBSTANCES above), we're in a position to appreciate this aspect of the name too. "Charlemagne" we've first worked out here in Alright Alright, along with the LP metaphor of Charlemagne returning to the Vatican to have himself crowned Emperor (see CHARLEMAGNE above. If the "big fella" meaning of the name itself is not coincidence, then we had that right in the Here Goes thread too, see NIGHT CLUB DWIGHT above; but it's hard to be certain that that's intentional). That leaves "Jesse" and "Holly." We'd already noticed in the Here Goes thread ( heregoes) that the two important prayers to Mary the Queen of Heaven mention Jesse and Halleluiah, respectively, and that the spelling of "Jesse" without an i, very unusual in a woman's name, makes this unlikely to be a coincidence: The Ave Regina Caelorum ( wikipedia) begins: The Regina Caeli ( wikipedia) begins: Now that we recognize Mary as the avatar of Juanita in THS, we understand that "Root of Jesse" is literal: Holly, Mary, and Jesse are all drawn up from different aspects of the character of Juanita (Jesse's the one who's into music, Mary's the one with the bloody hands, Holly's the one who makes noises during sex, etc.), but Mary is the root of the three; Jesse and Halleluiah are branches of her main line. In the Open Door Policy release thread, somuchjoy identified the "she" of Parade Days as "the SHE" ( link), and that's exactly right. There's one alpha girl in the LP/THS world; her name's now Juanita, now Mary; Katrina, Holly and Jesse are what William Blake might call her emanations; but in the fundamental story we've worked so long to uncover, they're all the same person.***We've noted this already (see KATRINA above), but it's worth noting again how the LP background illuminates the development of the "Hurricane Jesse" motif from the advent of Hurricane Katrina in August 2005. Craig plotted out the THS story first, and was well into it before the fortuitous discovery of an obscure but real Hurricane Holly that happened to fit the timeline ( link). ***A major and truly surprising consequence of the shift from a "negative" story in LP to a deliberately "positive" story in THS is the rehabilitation --- or better, rehumanization --- of Night Club Dwight. Looking past the evil things Dwight did, in the THS story Craig brings him "on side" as one of the kids; though enriched with some sympathies of the LP Narrator, Charlemagne is, in essence, the THS avatar of Dwight, transformed from villain into a deeply flawed human hero.This is a dramatic act of reimagination in its own right, but what's doubly interesting about it is that Craig seems to feel that it's not enough --- it's clear that he continues to be unsettled, in retrospect, by the story of the LP Narrator's personal revenge on Dwight. We see this in several places. In the 2012 Good Times interview, when asked whether the story has come to an end or not, Craig's answer is revealing ( link): Of all the hanging questions, "what happened to Charlemagne?" [DLME] --- what happened to Dwight? --- is the one at the front of his mind. And the question persists: now that we've recognized not just Charlemagne, but Dwight, in the character of "Blackout Sam" (see 15TH AND FRANKLIN above), we know what's being worried about here: Take a little comfort it's just thunder. Put another sticker on the van. Now that it's a haunted house Break the lease and empty out. Somebody should check on Blackout Sam. Somebody should check on Blackout Sam [BSam] All the bad feelings, the negative story of the Nice Nice and Party Zero --- it's time to leave those things behind; while we're at it, somebody should go back and make sure that Dwight's OK. Finally, there's the evidence of T-Shirt Tux: A boy and a girl were draining their beers. He said Stalin was a weatherman to start his career. Johnny Cash was in the service When the news came through the wire. And its weird how you feel when bad people die. She said yeah I guess, whatever. All your fun little facts are never gonna keep us together [TSTux] This is a deliberately funny take on what happened at 15th & Franklin (for all of the below points, see 15TH AND FRANKLIN above): - "A boy and a girl were draining their beers": refers to the LP Narrator and Juanita shooting "beers"=meth (see LISTED above) after they've "killed" Dwight.
- "Stalin was a weatherman": refers to Dwight, the "guy who got [Juanita] high/ and the drum and bass sounds a lot like rollin' thunder" (for drugs as weather, see "fooling around with thunder and lightning" [ASitS], "last winter there was weather and his eyes they iced right over" [CiS], and "thunder," "lightning," and "ice" in LISTED above). Stalin, along with Hitler, is the unexceptionable True Bad Guy for Americans who like tidy moralities; like Dwight, he's "the devil [in] person" [NF] (see NIGHT CLUB DWIGHT above).
- "Johnny Cash was in the service": "Johnny Cash"=the musician, that is, the LP Narrator; "cash" and "in the service," because he's working the Lifter Puller ATM (literally, servicing Dwight before he "killed" him, see CASH MACHINE and 15TH AND FRANKLIN above).
- "When the news came through the wire": a reference to the fact that the LP Narrator is about to be fitted out with a wire (see WIRED above).
- "And its weird how you feel when bad people die": this is the line we're here for. The Narrator got his revenge, after all; but now he feels weird about it.
- "She said yeah ...": of course, things didn't work out too well with Mary, or Juanita, either.
***There's a crucial presupposition in the notes about Dwight above that we haven't clearly stated, but want now to make explicit: namely, that *there's material in T-Shirt Tux and Blackout Sam that isn't about the THS characters at all, but is in fact about Dwight, Juanita and the LP Narrator.* This isn't the first time we've seen this, though we've managed to pass it by without comment before. What exactly is going on here? Let's pan out to the wide view for a moment. Just as every album in the LP and THS catalog has its own sound, one that evolves in quantum leaps from each record to the next, so too Craig's narrative style evolves from release to release. It's illuminating to track the progression: - Almost Killed Me is uncannily similar to Fiestas & Fiascos. Both albums have lots of "jump cuts" from a line or two about X to a line or two about Y, description without narration, radical points of view; both feature many new names (Night Club Dwight and the Nice Nice on the one hand, Mary, Holly, Charlemagne, Gideon, and the Cityscape Skins on the other). Both albums are intensely focused on story: F&F represents the beginning of an attempt to bring the LP story full circle, while AKM aims to set the remixed THS story on a strong footing from the beginning.
- Separation Sunday and BAGIA are pretty different albums, but both have multiple references to Holly, Charlemagne, Gideon, and (obliquely) Mary; the songs on both are strongly "voiced" from the point of view of individual characters; both make assiduous strides in working out the story.
- Stay Positive is still story-focused, something we can follow because we know enough now to recognize the main events and characters of the THS universe; but other aspects of Craig's style have changed dramatically. The album has just one glancing reference to Mary in Both Crosses ("Hail Mary, full of grace"), and B-side Ask Her For Adderall tells us the last we'll ever hear of Charlemagne and Gideon by name. The jump cuts are gone, replaced by what appear to be self-contained vignettes about unnamed characters. The strong POV "voicing" has disappeared too (One For the Cutters is a narration about, rather than by, Mary; Joke About Jamaica is a narration about, rather than by, Jesse). If it weren't for the fact that the Skins reappear in Slapped Actress, a superficial listener would wonder if we weren't done with the world of the first three albums.
- Heaven Is Whenever kind of holds the line: it's not as exclusively focused on the story as earlier albums (we get SitC, Touchless, SV); but against that, Jesse is finally given a name, the Skins are still around, Holly gets one more mention in outtake Wonderful Struggle, and we get three strong POV songs (A Slight Discomfort and Wonderful Struggle from Gideon's, and Criminal Fingers from Jesse's). After that, though, things change in a big way.
- Teeth Dreams clocks in after a four-year break in the life of the band, and is strikingly different. It's true that we get Runner's High from Gideon's POV, the strong storytelling of The Ambassador, and a Cityscape Skins sighting. But the center of gravity has shifted hard toward sketches rather than particular events, and especially toward the Narrator's late meditations on Mary. We get the impression that the focus is narrowing in on his relationship with her, that the Narrator's omniscient POV is crowding out the carefully unreliable voices of the other characters, and that the story as such is pretty much behind us.
Which brings us around to Thrashing Through The Passion. Five years and a major THS hiatus came and went between Teeth Dreams and the release of TTtP. Craig spent the interval focused, deliberately, on material that he described as "mundane" in comparison with THS fare ( link); by the time he came back to THS writing, he'd only doubled down on the tendencies in evidence on Teeth Dreams. On TTtP, it's abundantly clear that Craig is no longer interested in the intricacies of the THS plot with "stuff taped up all over my walls, drawing arrows, trying to envision the whole thing" ( link). The Stove & the Toaster excepted, he wants to focus on sketches, and on the intimacy of the Narrator and Mary. Other THS characters are still peripherally present (e.g. Gideon in "The Maharaji" [CitM]), but the complex elaboration of the original story which they represent has mostly been relegated to the background. With TTtP, in short, Craig's come back to the core of what he cares about, back to the story that he doesn't have to keep taped to the walls in order to keep it straight: basically, he's come back to writing about Dwight, Juanita, and the Narrator of Lifter Puller.Take a look the individual tracks, and at the details that we've reviewed in the course of this thread: Thrashing Through The Passiontrack | details | comments | DH | Focus on alpha couple. Party Zero gangrape. Revenge on Dwight | DAWN, BREWERY BAR: THE CORNER, ON THE FLOOR: MUSIC, ON THE FLOOR: VISIONS, 15TH AND FRANKLIN | Epaulets | Juanita coming out of bathroom at Party Zero. Jeep Encounter. | THS REVISITED, CONTRITION, ON THE FLOOR: VISIONS, LABOR DAY, BORED, BACK TO THE CITY | YDGK | Focus on alpha couple. Detailed account of Party Zero. LBI arrival. Narrtaor wired. | A LITTLE BIT, CONTRITION, VARIETIES OF PHYSICAL ASSAULT, MAGAZINES & VIDEOS, ON THE FLOOR: INJURIES, ON THE FLOOR: MUSIC, CRUCIFIXION, THE JOKE, NIGHT CLUB DWIGHT, BORED, WIRED | TV | Party Zero confrontation. LBI arrival. Summer House details. | SHORT BY AN OUNCE, YOUR LAUGH, PERFUME COUNTER GIRL | BSam | Two Weeks w/Juanita in Summer House. Party Zero betrayal. "Killing" Dwight at 15th and Franklin. | CONTRITION, ON THE FLOOR: CARPET & HARDWOOD, 15TH AND FRANKLIN | EC | Focus on alpha couple. Jeep Encounter. Searching for Juanita on West Coast. | THE RIPPLE AND THE CHAMPAGNE, REAR VIEW MIRROR, WIRED | TSTux | Focus on alpha couple + doofus dealer. Party Zero (Pilate, dawn, roofies). "Killing" Dwight at 15th and Franklin. | ROOFIES, CRUCIFIXION, DAWN, SHERMAN CITY, WIRED | Star18 | Calls with Juanita on West Coast. Summer House transactions. Jeep Encounter and Juanita departure with gangster. | DAWN, THE WEST, OSSEO, STAR 18 | TS&tT | (exception to rule, but) Party Zero injection and gangrape. | (exception to rule, but) THE KITCHEN, CORNERED, THE RIDE, A LITTLE BIT, SHOT IN THE SHOULDER, BREWERY BAR: THE ROOF | CitM | Focus on alpha couple. Juanita on "west coast" phone. Narrator desire for revenge. Final party confusion, car theft, story crumbles. Juanita back from mission. | DAWN, EYEPATCH GUY, BACK TO THE CITY, WIRED | ASitS | Party zero: laced joint; failed joke; terrible decision; words won't save your life. | THE JOKE, NIGHT CLUB DWIGHT, LABOR DAY | Eureka | Jeep Encounter and Juanita departure with gangster. West Coast. Summer House. | JEEP ENCOUNTER: ORIGIN, THE WEST, DETECTIVE, LOOKING FOR K, ROUGH RIDERS, NOSEBLEED, IN THE PARKING LOT, WRONG WAY | Esther | Focus on alpha couple. First bust and Jeep Encounter. Mission Party. Detective. Party Zero summary. Summer House w/Juanita's room. | LACED SUBSTANCES, THE KITCHEN, ROOFIES, JEEP ENCOUNTER: ORIGIN, ESTHER, TWO WEEKS, CANDY'S ROOM | TLTtSTtM | Focus on alpha couple. Party Zero (ride, kiss, tape deck). | WALK AROUND, SINCERITY, SHOT IN THE SHOULDER, ON THE FLOOR: VISIONS, NIGHT CLUB DWIGHT |
All along, there have been *occasional* details of the THS lyrics that seem to fit the THS story poorly, only to appear with the clarity of hindsight as references to events of the LP story ("They did the been caught stealing into dancing on the ceiling" [CiS], "Drove the wrong way down 169/ Almost died up by Edina High" [HH], "I'm gonna walk around and drink some more" [PP], "I've been thinking about both crosses" [BCrosses], "two kids died" [JaJ, R&T]). But as of TTtP, *most* of the material fits this description. We're told that kids got a ride to the THS version of the Mission Party [RP]; but in Esther, the Narrator and Mary end up sitting in her car, because the LP Jeep Encounter has emerged from the shadows and taken over the scene (see ESTHER above). The original cast of the THS kids only learn of Holly's fortunes in Hollywood after her return [MINTS]; but in Star 18, the Narrator is in contact with the alpha girl in California by phone, and this for the same reason (see STAR 18 above). What we're getting now is the Lifter Puller story, seen anew through the lens of THS positivity.***Since I wrote the above about TTtP, we've had the release of Open Door Policy, which vindicates the conclusions of the argument. [*1] Like TTtP, ODP revisits the Lifter Puller story in its original version, where the Narrator, on a rescue mission, follows the alpha girl to a Summer House/Ambassador that's unambiguously located in The West (rather than ambiguously in St. Paul; see again THE WEST and DEPARTMENT STORES above). Gideon, Holly, and Jesse are nowhere to be seen on the album; even Charlemagne's presence is limited to the appearance of Dwight as the Heavy Covenant music club guy who'll take a date in the back seat of his taxi on the frontage road in lieu of the full 40 bucks for a breakdown (see FRONTAGE ROAD and TWO TWENTIES above). The surprise in ODP, and the big difference with respect to TTtP, is the amount of attention it lavishes on Shepard (see NICE NICE and SHEPARD'S MANSION above); referred to just once in passing on TTtP (in Star 18), on ODP he is featured as a primary character in Feelers, HCovenant, TPProcedure, Riptown, and M&M. All the other tracks on the album add detail about life in the Summer House as well. It's true that the LP narrative doesn't distinguish Shepard from the other "teachers" of KatKH; but the story in which he figures is beyond doubt the story of Lifter Puller. [*2] [*1] ODP strengthens the evidence for other patterns on offer in TTtP as well. It used to be, for example, that technology references in the songs were a close fit for the era in which they were set (from coin-operated pay phones in TGatSD, to answering machines in Viceburgh and Magazines, to cell phones in AE); now, in making a late return to the world of the LP story, Craig has abandoned this pattern, bringing the metaphors of firmly 21st-century technology to bear on the world of 1994 (texting in Epaulets; internet shopping in TVillage; "airplane" mode in Heavy Covenant; computers in TPProcedure and Riptown). [*2] The late development of these details surrounding Shepard gives a clear illustration of how to understand the inference, drawn all the way back in STORY: WORKING THEORY, that the telling of the Lifter Puller story was never completed. Without the significant additional detail furnished by later reflections in the THS world, we would have struggled to untangle the LP story start to finish. But the beginning, end, and main events of that story were already all documented in the original LP canon; it's only the details of those events that left, and still leave, room for what Craig characterized as "Let's talk in more detail about that little scene" ( link). It's evident too now what Craig means when he says of his storytelling, in the lead-in to the quote about arrows taped up on the walls, that "It's a method" ( link) for writing songs. He's got a story, but he's not in any kind of hurry to lay it out for the listener (it took 10 years after Ascension Blues came out before we found out anything more about what happened in Shepard's mansion). The goal is not to tell the story and get it told; the goal is to write songs. It's a pretty good method.
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Post by skepticatfirst on Aug 5, 2021 6:33:00 GMT -5
I forgot to mention how the guitar tone and the tempo [of 11AF] reminds me a lot of Sketchy Metal. It's a song in the same vibe, sort of. Yes, stepping up and down a really short scale of just three or four notes. Nice catch. #45: SOLID GOLD SOLEAnother pretty grim and disjointed jam from the debut album, and another song I think is pretty cool, but never grabbed me in a major way, emotionally. It struggles to find it’s right gear - or maybe that’s the entire point, the start/stop dynamic, shaky and searching. It’s a decent middle-of-the-road example of what the debut album really is. Not a coherent statement or stylewise streamlined effort, but a pretty diversive mix of fuzzy indierock, postpunk, noise and grit, with occasional moments of pop bliss. Solid Gold Sole is a mix of all of this, but it sounds a little like a result by accident rather than something preplanned. Listening back to it, I think it could have ranked even lower. I’m a little in love with the drama-building intro and the line about Normandy, but as a song, it’s pretty mediocre. Yeah, the "one week ago" intro and ending are actually good, and i like the "now these discos make her sad" verse too. But I agree that the whole middle expanse doesn't really add up to something more than the sum of the parts, or create much space for itself. I have it at #40. #44: KOOL NYCAnother one of these songs who have a slight interlude feeling, but this is a little different. It starts out like a real song, but after one single verse, three small lines, the songs just disappears. Kind of like the even shorter version of the things going on in Candy’s Room (the hi-hat intro is pretty similar too). As with other short songs, it works well in the context of the album, and the clean little riff opening everything is damn fine. This could easily have been turned into a three minute long indiepop song, and it’s a little weird that they didn’t. Agreement that this barely registers as a song in its own right; it's good but it's almost not there. #49 on my list.
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Post by skepticatfirst on Aug 4, 2021 14:45:54 GMT -5
Hope you don't mind my responding to all of this with my own rankings --- it's your thread, but it's really interesting to dive into these questions. #48: RENTALOne more from the debut, and yet again a song who’s by no means bad, but just feels a little too lush and shy. I get that’s the kind of vibe they probably aim for, but it lacks a little tension and release, some sort of at-stake feeling. There’s plenty of that in the lyrics, though, and as with so many other songs from the debut, Alright Alright have lifted my interest for that part of the songs many levels. I still think it’s interesting to hear how much and how quick Craig developed as a singer, and maybe most important, frontman. Half Dead And Dynamite was released in the same year as the self titled debut, and on that record, he’s a totally different beast. For reference, if your not that familiar with the records, just check out the opening 30 seconds of the opening song on Half Dead, To Live And Die In LBI. In that sense, it feels good to have songs like Rental - songs that display that both the band and Craig had a more sensitive, less confident maybe, side. Completely agree with this take. Prior to the more polished examples on later albums, most of the slower/quieter songs are low on my list, pretty much for the reasons you state. Another thing (and maybe Rental isn't as good as an example of this as, say, Slips Backwards, but it's not a bad example either): I have the impression that Craig got stronger as a singer/frontman when he stopped worrying about actually *singing* and embraced the shouty delivery of HD&D. Anyway, I have Rental at #51. #47: PLYMOUTH ROCKIt’s tough to rank songs less than a minute long against other, “real” songs. Plymouth Rock is cool as fuck, and it serves the function as an opener of the Entertainment And Arts EP in a perfect way. A fist in the face, a rush of adrenaline, a band just bursting onto the scene. From the opening screams and riffs, this quickly turns into a rock’n’rollercoaster, filled with backing vocals and sweet fills. And then, it’s over. It surely would have ranked a hell of a lot higher as a full song, but for a close to 50 seconds long intro to the EP, I can’t put it any higher. Also, re: what skepticatfirst wrote about Lake Street Is For Lovers: If I could shake the feeling that these aren't song-songs, both Lake Street and this would probably be well into the top half. They're both so damn cool, and they sound perfect as they are, doing the job they're supposed to do. I guess I just had to decide wheter they should rank as experiences or songs, and I've sort of chosen the latter. I hear you. For me, LSifL is long and colorful enough to distinguish itself as something more, but I feel the same way about Plymouth Rock. #48 for me. #46: 11TH AVENUE FREEZEOUTAfter getting pretty deep into Fiestas And Fiascos, my next step into Lifter Puller was (a illegally downloaded, which seemed to be the only option at the time) Soft Rock. I remember playing it a lot from my iPod Classic, sometimes on shuffle, and anyway without any real sense of when and where these songs were from. I think it took years before I realised that there were two full albums on those CDs. They were just songs to me, and that made me discover them in a way I rarely discover music. There was a stretch midway through the first disc I liked a lot, with Mick’s Tape, The Pirate And The Penpal, Langelos and this one. It had a different vibe than the songs that came before and after them, and I later learned that these four songs were outtakes from something right after Half Dead And Dynamite, pieces of what could have become a lost Lifter Puller album. 11th Avenue Freezeout sounds like a really accomplished song, an idea fully realised. But as with many other Lifter Puller songs, it’s rough around the edges, deliberate hard and rocky, not very melodic. Sure, there’s a melody here, but that seems a little beside the point. The seasick saxophone in the latter part of the song sounds almost creepy, like it’s coming from another, and not very welcoming room. It never reached me like those other songs did, and sometimes I still skip it when I play Slip Backwards on Spotify. So, funny enough, I have a soft spot for 11AF because it's just about the only fully-developed song in the Lifter Puller catalog (along with Nassau Coliseum) that someone who isn't Craig Finn can actually *sing*; and while I would definitely feel self-conscious about singing NC out loud, it's pretty damn satisfying to belt out "Juanita thinks she's a roller rink" at high volume. THS got better at the sing-along scriptures, but this kind of connection is pretty rare in LP. I have it at #22.
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Post by skepticatfirst on Aug 4, 2021 7:21:21 GMT -5
POSITIVE JAMWe've established that the THS story is a deep rewrite of the LP story. It remains to be asked: *why* did Craig rewrite it in this way? ***In the 2006 Pulse interview, Craig states his reason for wanting a second crack at the same material ( link): This desire for an expressly positive do-over is stated emphatically in the Brokerdealer track Do Me Nails (written in 2001, after the dissolution of Lifter Puller and before the formation of THS): I want to say I'm sorry that I used to be engulfed in negativity Cause the new me is going to be all about the positivity Too many parties ending loud and fast and violently Cause animosity just leads to reciprocity [DMN] Here we clearly recognize the LP story (referred to elsewhere in Brokerdealer as the "vision/fever dream" [INFHP]; see PARTY ZERO above) as the focus of the do-over. The parties ending loud and fast and violently are Party Zero and the Final Party; the Narrator's negative rage at Dwight and the gangsters just leads to the reciprocity of the Eyepatch Guy's revenge. With the "new me" THS story, Craig wants to do something different; he wants to turn that animosity into something else --- to transform his rage into a positive rage, and his jam (see DOUBLE TAKES above) into a positive jam. One crucial aspect of this transformation is that, where the Eyepatch Guy ends up taking revenge on Dwight in the LP story, the THS Narrator and Charlemagne's desire for vengeance is overcome by Gideon's ideology of non-violence ("no one wins at violent shows" [BBreathing], and see EYEPATCH GUY and CHARLEMAGNE above). This commitment to non-violence takes care of the problem of "reciprocity" [DMN]; but the underlying "animosity" requires a still deeper solution. ***A hint of the solution already appears at the end of the LP canon, in the "don't blame" formula of Back In Blackbeard. The guys and girls blame each other for the fights and the drugs, but that's "not right" [BiB]. Who's actually to blame, then? The song's final suggestion is "blame the boredom, blame the basements" [BiB]; but the boredom and basements are themselves already consequences of the fights and the drugs, not their causes (see BORED and CANDY'S ROOM above). So, really, who is to blame? ***The great change vis-a-vis the Lifter Puller story --- the epiphany of The Hold Steady --- is that the things that happened aren't to be blamed on anyone at all; on the contrary, they're "just what we wanted" [RP] (see ROOFIES and MAGAZINES & VIDEOS above). It's a lesson that has to be learned the hard way, but the *willed* character of the THS kids' choice is emphasized over and over: If you want to get a little bit light in the heady It's gonna have to get a little bit heavy [MPADJs] You know, the last guy, I guess he didn't even have to die But the first four looked so nice, I wanted five [Knuckles] They want a double order of love [SPayne] She said it's my party and I'll die if I want to [HF] And song number four on that first D4 You want the scars but you don't want the war [GLS] Everybody wants to suck on something sweet [NS] Maybe our anxiety lives in the spaces in between who we really are and what we want to be and the things that we let other people see when all we really want is to be in magazines [Spectres] I guess we all got pretty close to the roles we chose to play [Spectres] We used to want it all, now we just want a little bit [Smidge] Isn't this what we wanted? Some major rock and roll problems ... This is just what we wanted [RP] But you shouldn't be the singer in a be yourself band If you don't want to be yourself [GoaH] Eureka (literally, "I found [what I was looking for]") [Eureka] Pontius Pilate played to the crowd. And they all thought they knew what they wanted [TSTux] Ingested every offering. Tried to make it interesting. Caught up and consumed what we desired [BSam] And you want them all to love you [FFarm] Anything you want he can cover it [TPProcedure] ***But there's more. It's not only that the kids got "just what [they] wanted" [RP]; it's that every bad thing that happens to the LP kids, the THS kids take back, reclaiming it under their own authorship: - They take back gonna walk around and drink some more: from Juanita's last words at Party Zero before being lured to the bathroom and emerging resurrected as Katrina, to what appear to be Holly's first spoken words after her resurrection.
- They take back the crucifixion: from the LP Narrator being 'stabbed' by the gangster rapists, to the THS kids' own staging of Charlemagne's death.
- They take back Easter: from the weekend of Party Zero, to the weekend of Holly's resurrection & the THS kids' liberation from the gang.
- They take back the dying: from the LP Narrator being "murdered" at Party Zero, to the THS Narrator willingly letting himself be turned by Gideon into the Phil-Lynott-dead-rock-star "new kid."
- They take back the unified scene: from the Party Zero gangrape, to the world where the kids forget where they differ, and get big picture.
- They take back being connected: from sucking dicks for drugs, to the supernatural connection of Mary and the THS Narrator when sequestered in the interrogation sessions [AE].
- They take back the separation: from the Party Zero division of Juanita and the LP Narrator, to the sequestration through which Mary and THS Narrator maintain their connection and support each others' alibi.
- They take back the betrayal: from Juanita's turning the Narrator over to Dwight and the gangsters at Party Zero, to the kids' deliberate staging of the Judas moment in the Party Pit.
- They take back the kiss: from Juanita's perfidious Party Zero kiss, to Mary's staged kiss of Charlemagne's ghost in the Party Pit.
- They take back music: from the metal mixtape of Party Zero, to embracing the songs (see SHEPARD'S MANSION above) where everybody finally sings along.
- They take back the clicks and hisses: from the background noise of the Party Zero tape deck turning over, to the noise of Gideon's projector during the staged crucifixion.
- They take back the movie: from the Party Zero video of the gangrape, to the THS kids' own special-effects projection of Charlemagne's ghost.
- They take back the hot soft light: from the fill light of the Party Zero videocam, to the light of Gideon's projector after the end of the film.
- They take back the videos: from the Party Zero gangrape videos, to Mary's visions of going down on dealer Charlemagne.
- They take back the pictures: from the Party Zero gangrape pictures, to Jesse's (and the others' [Spectres]) desire to get her picture in the paper/be in magazines.
- They take back the tattered dress: from Juanita's torn dress after the Party Zero gangrape, to her deliberate "costume" for Holly's birthday party.
- They take back the summer: from the cocksucking summer of LP, to the constructive summer of THS.
- They take back the no touching: from Juanita not being interested in fucking the Narrator and the Eyepatch Guy failing to respond to her advances, to Mary deliberately following visionary Charlemagne's instruction not to touch him.
- They take back joining the gang: from getting jumped in at the Mission Party, to deliberately joining up with the Skins in order to fake Charlemagne's death.
- They take back being awake for two weeks straight: from the enforced deathmarch of the LP Two Weeks, to Charlemagne and Gideon working in shifts to carry out their plan (heregoes).
- They take back the pipe: from Dwight's badge of addiction (compare also Brokerdealer TLOUBL), to Gideon's device of salvation.
- They take back the haircut: from the gangsters shaving the LP Narrator's head, to Gideon shaving Charlemagne's head in order to save him.
- They take back the falling on the floor: from the gangsters raping the LP alpha couple on the floor of the brewery bar, to the Skins falling down in terror before the staged stabbing of Charlemagne's ghost.
- They take back the resurrection: from Juanita becoming Katrina under the influence of the gangsters' drugs, to Gideon bringing Holly back from the dead.
- They take back words won't save your life: from the LP Narrator's failed attempt to escape with a joke at Party Zero, to Gideon's decision that publicizing the rumor of Charlemagne's death on its own, without a body to back it up, wouldn't be enough.
- They take back the frontage road: from the place where Dwight transacted sex with Juanita for drugs, to the place where Charlemagne tries to connect with Mary, and Holly with Gideon.
- They take back i really don't remember: from a traumatic aftereffect of the Party Zero roofies, to the witness-stand testimony sealing Charlemagne's liberation.
- They take back their savior: from the predatory dealer who comes through with a hit when they're desperate, to the kids themselves ("we are our only saviors" [CSummer], "you could save yourself" [CSTLN]).
- They take back the dreams: from the nightmares about Party Zero, to dreams of a genuine Unified Scene.
This deliberate authorship redeems the great failing recounted in the LP story, when, under interrogation, the LP Narrator blames Juanita for what happened, and sells her out to the cops; unlike the LP Narrator, the THS Narrator owns that he and Mary were in it together willfully, and doesn't crack: In daylight she looked desperate That's alright, I was desperate too [SiM] ***With this, the motivation for the most outrageous parts of the THS story suddenly becomes plain. 1) One, Craig is deliberately going out of his way to put as many LP events as possible into the willing hands of his THS protagonists. Apparently crazy elements like Gideon's special-effects movie and Mary's Noli Me Tangere turn out to be, literally, the result of his asking himself, "how can I rewrite the story so that the kids *wilfully* make a movie at some point? how can I rewrite the story so that the kids *wilfully* institute a no-touching rule?" 2) Two, while Craig is clearly a master of realism and motivated real-world detail, narrow definitions of unrealistic or deus ex machina writing are not going to get in the way of the goal outlined in (1) above. Difficult matters like Gideon's pipe, the movie-slash-laser-show, the magic body switches, the future visions, the sequestered connections --- all are constructed as they are in service of a purpose stronger than the demands of conventional literary critique. The story is still amazing work by conventional standards; but it's not beholden to them. ***In the Lifter Puller lyrics, Craig expressly frames his vocation as news reporting, telling hard truths that the newspapers won't touch (see the Pulse interview quote --- "you’re seeing what happens" --- and NEWSPAPERS above). In The Hold Steady, this is changed; the mission is no longer reporting the news, but spreading the gospel: We mix our own mythologies, we push them out through PA systems We dictate our doxologies and try to get sleeping kids to sit up and listen And I'm not saying we could save you, but we could put you in a place where you could save yourself If you don't get born again at least you'll get high as hell ... We gather our gospels from gossip and bar talk then we declare them the truth We salvage our sermons from message boards and scene reports and we sic them on the youth We try out new testaments on the guys sitting next to us in the bars with the bars on the windows, alright Even if you don't get converted tonight, you gotta admit the band's pretty tight [CSTLN] We are our only saviors [CSummer] The gospel of liberation is that we're the ones who author the news; we're the ones who make the movies: We are the theater, they are the people ... We're the projectors, we're hosting the screening ... We are the actors, the cameras are rolling ... We're the directors, our hands will hold steady ... Man, we make our own movies [SA] I guess we all got pretty close to the roles we chose to play [Spectres] ***It's the rewrite of the story that brings volition, authorship, and salvation to the fore in The Hold Steady; but at some level this really is just a fresh look at the same events from another perspective, and Craig exploits his hand with ambiguities to make the same point. There are several important examples of this: In Lifter Puller, the emphasis of the "half dead" state clearly weighs on the side of death; but while the same fate persists in the world of The Hold Steady [SN], now it's the other side, namely survival, that's emphasized: But people keep calling me Five Alive 'Cause the last guy didn't really die, I just lied And the first four didn't really die, I just lied [Knuckles] The darkness of the Lifter Puller story still shadows the events of the THS story, but now it's the light casting the shadow, rather than the shadow itself, that's in focus: you wouldn't be so impressed with the sunrise if it wasn't for the darkness [YDGK] Craig goes so far as to acknowledge this ambiguity as a condition of all stories, and asserts that it's an authorial, i.e. a personal, choice to take one side over the other: Every single story has a few different versions You tell the one that makes you look better [R&T] In this light, the intensive use of words with double meanings appears as part of deliberate strategy: the ambiguity permits a transformation of base negatives into positive things, rape "jam" into making music "jam," rape "unified" into spiritually "unified," drugged "heaven" into real "heaven," cynically "saved" into actually "saved." ***To bring the argument full circle back to Positive Jam: it's the rewrite of the story in terms of the kids' volition that puts what muzzleofbees has called "the redemptive power of music" ( link) front and center. The kids in the LP story are bored, and the boredom leads them to drugs and destruction: don't blame your daughter's downfall on her dancin don't blame your baby's binging on the bass bins blame the boredom, blame the basements [BiB] She says she loves the way these little flames Make everything all black and grey. But sometimes all that smoke can make you sick. Still a scorch mark or a blistered hand Seems a whole lot better than Sitting around and waiting for the click [Epaulets] In the THS rewrite, the answer to the boredom is the will to do something different, expressed repeatedly as the will to make one's own music: Baby take off your beret Everyone's a critic and most people are DJs And everything gets played [MPADJs] Someone saw her breaking off the tape machine. All I really said was that the clicks were in her head [TLTtSTtM] And I got bored when I didn't have a band And so I started a band, man We're gonna start it with a positive jam Hold steady [PJ] It's a gospel Craig got from his favorite song, The Replacements' "I Will Dare" ( link), and from Saint Joe Strummer's teaching "The Future Is Unwritten" (see SHEPARD'S MANSION above); he's got his own band now with which to gather these gospels, and to "get sleeping kids to sit up and listen" [CSTLN].
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Post by skepticatfirst on Aug 4, 2021 6:42:10 GMT -5
Two things I've been thinking of, one a little meta, one pretty specific (and I'm not sure if it's really relevant): Who's driving the car?I've been quickly reading through what you wrote about 15th and Franklin, the way the kids "rent" Dwight's car and wreck it, but I can't really get a grip of how you put The Narrator in the driving seat - and if it's important to the aftermath. I seem to remember plenty of ambigious references to someone outside of the song ("you", even "she"?) driving the car, but it could the THS stuff bleeding over ("She drove it like she stole it", "I remember SHE had satelite radio"). I just wanted to check if you're certain that The Narrator is driving the car, and if it really matters when you read what comes after the crash. I would assume the legal aspect would be different, if The Narrator believe Juanita is dead for real. It's a good question. For a long time I myself thought that the guy in Rental (before I was sure it was the Narrator) was sitting in the passenger seat; at first this was because of the "credit card" [Rental], which I understood literally as the credit card used to rent the car, and figured belonged to the girl described elsewhere as one of the "credit card chicks" [TCMamG], making her the likely driver; then, when I got used to seeing THS parallels, this idea was reinforced by the THS "she drove it like she stole it" [MoC] story. But no; things in the THS story have been rewritten to put Mary behind the wheel; it's definitely the Narrator who's driving in the LP story. Reasons to be confident about this include: - specifically, she's the one who pulls the gun out of the glove compartment, which puts her in the passenger seat [TCMamG] - specifically, she fires the gun, which she can't do if she's driving, in order to try to impress him, which indicates that he's in charge and driving [TCMamG] - specifically, she "tries to undress [him]" [TCMamG], which she can't do if she's driving - generally, she's super unstable at this point in the story and in no shape to drive - generally, he's the one who's running every aspect of the show at this point in the story, and is trying to get her out to Edina, where for the rest she's never been and can be presumed not to know how to drive to Those latter two points are more of the has-to-be-consistent-with-everything-else-we-know type of evidence than direct evidence, but consistency/plausibility is important in these arguments too. There might also be other reasons that I'm not thinking of, but anyway that's off the top of my head. "Started"I could probably go back to check the single phrases, but I figured it was easier just asking: Do you see a pattern in all the lines opening with "It started"/"It starts"? Is there any reason to believe this points back to the same event/scene? I've been thinking a bit about this phrase the past couple of weeks for a number of reason. It has this weight to it, because it - strictly linguistic - implies a narrative, a time frame. It's also not very poetic or metaphorically loaded, it's a pretty straight-forward statement - that something started at some point, with a certain action or even. "Guess it all started in your appartment" "It always starts of with a kiss" "It started when we were dancing" "It always seems to start when somebody takes a bottle outside" I just wonder if there's a bigger/deeper meaning to the phrase. Like the "it" is important, in a broader sense - it's not just the particular scene in the particular song who starts off they way Craig describe it, it's The Story. Again, it might not be a pattern in this, and I'm not sure if it really matter, but Craig has this way of breaking the fourth wall now and then, and this could be a small example of that. Like he's saying "this is what the story, everything I tell you about, actually started". This is probably something I should think about longer, because I suspect that there's a more complete answer here, but let me give a first reaction anyway. Craig regularly makes a point of digging into how things start for at least two reasons: 1) He spends a lot of time thinking about the causes of things that go wrong; see all the discussion of blame and volition in today's post (POSITIVE JAM below). 2) He spends a lot of time thinking about things in terms of beginning-to-ending symmetry: "it started ice cream social nice and ended up all white and ecumenical" [HSL], etc.; an illuminating real-life case of this is his story about coming "crazy full circle" with the Replacements, from learning about them on a tennis court as a teenager, to opening for them on a tennis court as an adult (see CANDY'S ROOM above). I think "it" in particular serves his elusive/evasive/allusive style --- "there's this thing, it's bad, you kinda want to be warned plus it's an interesting story, here's where it started." And I think "it" also points to the fact that he really does regard all of the bad things as being related (once you start chasing the drugs, you're going to wind up with a plateful of consequences whether you like it or not). But when you dig into different uses of "it" in this phrase, it's frequently different bad things that he's talking about: sometimes it's the whole story, or maybe more specifically the story of the Narrator's attempt to rescue Juanita from Katrina ("i guess it all started in your apartment" [Sublet]), but sometimes it's one or another party ("it started ice cream social nice" [HSL]="these parties they start lovely" [HaRRF]), or violence ("It always seems to start when somebody takes a bottle outside" [Touchless]="the fighting started friendly enough" [TMS]), or other things like the hunt of the cops and the Eyepatch Guy for Dwight ("it starts with the sharks" [Manpark]="the manhunts always start down in the manpark/ the manhunts always start out in the manpark" [Manpark]). I'll leave it at that for now, but I'll think about it at a little more too.
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Post by skepticatfirst on Aug 3, 2021 6:31:39 GMT -5
LIFTER PULLERFinally, this is a standalone LP abstraction, not a shadow: but as a first-class double-take, it's worth our time to consider the name "Lifter Puller" in its own right. ***In the 2014 Magnet magazine interview "The Hold Steady: Ten Years After," interviewer Jonathan Valania records a paraphrase of Craig's account of the name ( link): This isn't a false account, but Valania's ascription of it to Twin Cities slang suggests that he knows it's not very satisfactory. Let's take a closer look. ***First of all, "lifted" is common 90's slang for "high" ( gdict). Second, "puller" is a documented term for a drug pipe mouthpiece ( ondcp): Power puller - Rubber piece attached to crack stem So the extension of these meanings to - lifter: something that gets you high
- puller: one who sucks the smoke out of a pipe
is entirely plausible. But let's compare these meanings to the evidence of the lyrics. ***The words "lifter puller" and variants occur three times in the LP lyrics. 1) Prescription SunglassesThe use of "lifter" in PSunglasses fits our working definition well enough: she came out of salon and she was walking sideways she got into her car and turned the steering wheel my way the lifters only pulled her into the corners of her eyes the walls fall all around her sunny skies [PSunglasses] Note that plural "lifters" reads awkwardly as a reference to bongs in particular; some more general sense, like the "something that gets you high" formulated above, must be meant. On the other hand, "pulled" in the third line clearly doesn't fit our working definition of "puller" at all. That doesn't mean our working definition is wrong; but it does mean (as for the rest is typical of Craig) that there must be multiple meanings in play here. ***2) Lifter Puller vs The End Of The EveningThe lyrics of Lifter Puller vs The End Of The Evening clearly describe the kids' struggle to keep Party Zero going, and keep it from turning bad, as the night rolls on toward dawn: we hit the nightlife like deer in the headlights ... it's too late for liquor but we could get some 3-2 ... and it seems pretty dangerous 1-2-3, yeah is this still a party 3-2-1, they just got too many guns too many guns and too many tongues [LPvtEotE] From this it's evident that "Lifter Puller" in the title refers to one of the kids, which in turn confirms that "Lifter Puller" a) is the epithet of a person; b) is a loose fit for our working definitions, in view of the kids' use of drugs at the party. But it's odd, in view of this, that we haven't seen *any other evidence at all* of the kids smoking a pipe or a stem, or hitting a bong, during their Party Zero misadventure. ***3) To Live And Die In LBIThe final instance of the term occurs in the words spoken by Juanita, on waking up after the end of Party Zero: and they all woke up at the airport in the arcade at the western concourse that's when she said that we should do this all over she wipes the blood from her mouth with her shoulder said i just need a little diet cola, or maybe just a little lifter puller [TLaDiLBI] In "diet cola" we recognize a drug reference ("cola"=marijuana, "diet coke"=Ritalin=speed; see LISTED above), which in turn calls to mind the first rule of LP lyric interpretation (see SEX FOR DRUGS IN METAPHORS above): The rule holds here as well. Compare "diet cola" and "the person who sucks the smoke out of a bong" (from the interview with Craig) with the following established examples of bjs-for-drugs exchange (see CASH MACHINE above): sucking off a soda [Bears] went down on the smoke machine [SdS] blowin smoke [BiB] Per Green's Dictionary of Slang, the verb "to lift" doesn't just mean "to get high"; it also means "to have an erection" ( gdict). "Lifter Puller" doesn't really mean 'a person who sucks the smoke out of a bong'; it means 'a person who sucks dicks for drugs'.
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Post by skepticatfirst on Aug 2, 2021 21:17:40 GMT -5
Interesting that you have it here near Summer House (separated, like on the album, by one song). I've also got it at #42, one spot above Summer House, from which I can't detangle it even if I'm trying to focus on more than just the lyrics and narrative. (And there's a lot of narrative going on in four short lines, here.) To me it's got that weird Oaks thing finale going on, too, which gives it some extra power. #50: LAKE STREET IS FOR LOVERSJust like it’s hard to rank Crucifixion Cruise as a song-song, it’s impossible to rank Lake Street Is For Lovers. I love what it do for Fiestas And Fiascos, a jolly interlude, packed with funny and loaded lines. The entire vibe of Steve (?) hollering “smoking weed and making money!” is just perfect, and “the bathroom stalls is speaking volumes of your ethical slips” is extremely Craig-y. But after all, it’s mostly an interlude, and in competition with fully fleshed out songs, most of them really, really good, it can’t be ranked much higher. I like the comparison to Crucifixion Cruise, that's a good one. But I have to disagree about the ranking ... LSifL is genius, brilliant filler spun up out of absolutely nothing, and the first song I went out of my way to hunt up in the car when I first started listening to LP (where I took "alright alright" from, after all). I have it at #18. Yes to the "ethical slips" line being extra Craig-y, that is so true. The "livin large," "alright alright," and "smokin weed and makin money!" baseline is key to the brilliance of the song ... it's a slice-and-dice repurposing of the opening of Jeep Beep Suite (the "creedo," per the liner notes and the old website? I don't even know what that is), done by Damon Locks, vocalist of Trenchmouth. Too funny. #49: THE GIN AND THE SOUR DEFEATLifter Puller is, at it’s core, something different. I’ve said it before, but Hold Steady is the feeling of watching a story unfold retrospectively, at safe distance, with some of the rougher stuff rounded off or hidden in euphemisms, told by a narrator with experience and Big Picture scope. On the other hand, Lifter Puller is like being out in the streets while the madness unfolds. The narrator isn’t telling us of one time back then, when he was in trouble, he is in trouble, right here and right now. This is amazingly well said. I've got the song at #35, but could be persuaded that it belongs above or below that.
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Post by skepticatfirst on Aug 2, 2021 20:22:30 GMT -5
This is what I wrote in early 2016: ... Well, you certainly called it. I remember generally this one about Viceburgh and your other post about ILtL when I hear the songs, but I hadn't been back to read either post since I started work on Alright Alright, and damn ... 100% bullseye accurate. I've often wondered whether I could have worked out the stories in the opposite order, i.e. LP first and then THS; but I don't think I could have, given how thin the telling of the LP story is, and how often I needed to lean on the THS reflections for confirmation that I was on the wrong track. Doing it this way, the LP analysis has mostly just been stubborn grinding, whereas a couple of the THS breakthroughs during Here Goes (the body switches and the special-effects ghost especially) were about as close to a supernatural epiphany as I've ever experienced, about anything. It's a little strange how this has worked out, but here we are. you either have to accept that these two universes are story-wise connected to each other I have a very specific account of the relationship between the two universes that I've hinted at here and there, but I'll finally lay it out properly on Wednesday and Thursday of this week (in the posts POSITIVE JAM and THS CHARACTERS below). Hope it resonates.
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Post by skepticatfirst on Aug 2, 2021 6:07:06 GMT -5
It's as awkwardly put together as anything Craig Finn ever wrote. I have a soft spot for it because of the weird comparison to Holy Roman Emperor Charlemagne all the way back in 1994, but it's not something I'm going to put on in the car. I have it at #52 also, ha.
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Post by skepticatfirst on Aug 2, 2021 6:01:46 GMT -5
Man, I was hoping you were going to do this. The THS ranking was a lot of fun, and I expect this will be too, but with much more suspense about the outcome, especially at the top half of the list. So this made me laugh out loud. The first thing I thought when I saw you were going to do this list was, "I'm gonna have to get used to thinking about where the songs rank musically, instead of about which are most important to deciphering the story; like, I can't expect that Summer House is going to be in the top three." And here we are. Summer House is one of those tracks I really can’t wrap my head around. Craig sings withdrawn, almost a little shy, the band seems to know where they’re going, but not with great certainty, and the song never really comes out of it’s shell. Some amazing snippets in the lyrics, but if we can agree on the album being 8-10 minutes too long, Summer House is one of the songs who’s (musically, at least) expendable. So this Summer House opener prompted me to put together my own ranking, one that of course is still personal but that downplays narrative aha-moments in favor of 'what do I enjoy listening to' factors more broadly. I think your point about how Craig sings on these early songs versus later really is probably the most important factor in the difference in quality, and I agree that the band seems to be following his lead here. In that sense, the uncertainty kind of smothers the experience of the song. But there are two things about Summer House that lift it off the bottom of the list for me. One is that *lyrically* it's a very strong standalone song. I remember hearing it for the first time, before I had any way to connect it to the other songs, and getting a powerful image from it: there's this guy whose girlfriend has gone away for the summer and kind of written him off, with a subtext of trouble on her part; he's trying but failing to engage her, and yet there's a weird vibe of resolution on his part that he's not going to be defeated. It's rich, it's a little creepy, it definitely feels real. And, two, the uncertainty of the voice actually fits this probing quality of the things he's saying. Altogether, pretty great storytelling. I'm responding at this level of detail mainly because Summer House really is a top-three song, and maybe even #1, in terms of the keys it provides to understanding the larger story, starting with the cool little connection to Mono and spiderwebbing out from there (I won't write up a list of those keys here, but it's a long one). Can't disagree, though, that it's not super listenable. I have it at #43.
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Post by skepticatfirst on Aug 2, 2021 4:47:15 GMT -5
DOUBLE TAKESNow, with the complete Lifter Puller story behind us, we can take a step back to consider a big-picture account of the combined LP and THS worlds. It's abundantly clear at this point that the THS story is constructed almost entirely from the events of the LP story, cut up and rearranged. We'll come to the motivations for this rewrite (see POSITIVE JAM below), and for the creation of a new cast of characters to carry it (see THS CHARACTERS and GIDEON below), in a moment. Before that, I want to pause for a few general observations. ***When I first came to an idea of what Craig had created in the THS story, there were a lot of things that blew me away: the ambitious scope covering decades; the fearless inventiveness, with supernatural phenomena (future visions, body switches) built on top of natural elements that were every bit as wild as the supernatural ones (Gideon's special effects, Mary's rationale for not touching Charlemagne); the extended metaphors with deep resonance in the gospels, books, movies, and American history; the way in which these things were all brought together in a genuinely human, and satisfying, story. Now that I know that THS was actually Craig's second crack at the same material, it does seem, in one way, less miraculous. The multi-decade canvas turns out to have been projected from a single continuous summer. The wild/supernatural elements are revealed to have simple and prosaic underpinnings. The extended metaphors prove to have had a multi-year round of development in LP before being deployed for THS use. The core of the story, which was embellished but not fundamentally changed for THS, turns out to have been an organic whole in LP already. Still, the leap in complexity from LP to THS is enormous, and the fact that this radical rearrangement of fine-grained elements comes together as well as it does is truly impressive (there are places at the edges where the pieces don't quite fit, leaving questions like "who's driving after the THS Crucifixion," see BLOODY CAR WRECKS above, or "where's Mary when she's living at the Ambassador," see DEPARTMENT STORES above; but these really are exceptions at the margin). And Craig's feat in being able to un-see one fully-formed story in order to re-see its parts in another is itself pretty unbelievable. ***This brings us back to the topic of LP "shadows" on the THS story, the gratuitous, dark ambiguities that are only visible by the light of the LP material in which they are founded (see LP SHADOWS above). We've already talked about several of these along the way; particularly memorable to me, at least, are the ones hanging over the high-school prom scenes, like "chaperone" [MN] and "I want to go to heaven on the day I die" [OWL] (see LP SHADOWS and HALF DEAD above, respectively). But there are many others, and the sudden shock of hearing these LP echoes after so many years of easy familiarity makes it worth drawing out a few more before we're done. ***The phenomenon of "double takes" is itself loaded with deliberate double meaning in the opening verses of Stay Positive: I gotta lotta old friends that are gettin' back in touch And it's a pretty good feelin, yeah it feels pretty good I get a lotta double-takes when I'm comin' around the corners And it's mostly pretty nice, yeah it's mostly pretty alright 'Cause most kids give me credit for being down with it When it was back in the day, back when things were way different When the Youth of Today and the early 7 Seconds Taught me some of life's most valuable lessons [SPositive] These words mean everything they seem to mean: the surface reading is a true reading. But look again, and the entire passage *also* appears as an affirmation of the lessons learned from being gangraped and turned into a drug slave by the gangsters: - "old friends": the gangsters; compare HDaD, LiaL, 4Dix, CSongs, KP, CC, YCMHLY, LiD, CF, BCig, CitM, NRoof.
- "touch": always with sexual subtext, and specifically gangbang/rape reference in Langelos, TMS, HH, SN, Smidge, Touchless, GoaH.
- "pretty": almost always a hedge, a sign that the speaker is suppressing bad shit: see ILtL, LPvtEotE, CaAoC, LDoL, MPADJs, SM, KP, PP, 40B, etc.
- "double-takes": double-teaming; compare MTape, LiaL, MiM, DStraps.
- "corner": the corner of the brewery bar where the Party Zero assault begins (see CORNERED above, etc.).
- "down with it": going down (giving bjs)/lying down (getting fucked); see SCity, Bears, Viceburgh, SdS, LDoL, TFatBR, BBlues, MPADJs, MM, CatCT, etc.
- "Youth of Today": the "positive youth's shootin hoops slippin roofies in your jungle juice" [NN]; "Youth of Today" in the brewery bar [BBreathing].
- "early 7 Seconds": a probable reference to 7 Seconds' early (1985) album "Walk Together, Rock Together," understood in the sense of 'if you do drugs ("rock"=meth; see LISTED above) with people, you have to go the rest of the way with them'; see next note about "you gotta dance with who you came to the dance with" [YGD].
- "valuable lessons": see previous note about "Walk Together, Rock Together"; the valuable lesson is specifically the moral of You Gotta Dance: "you gotta dance with who you came to the dance with" [YGD]. Narrowly, this says that if you get a ride to a drug party with a dealer, you can expect to end up fucking the dealer (see DANCING above); but the broader lesson is one of authorship and control (much more on this exact sense of "we gotta stay positive" at POSITIVE JAM below).
***We've looked at a number of lines from You Gotta Dance already, but the double-take effects in that song are so strong that it's worth bringing them together in one place. There's the obvious stuff about the Narrator going down to St. Paul to meet the "Gangster Disciples" and missing his "bicycle" ride (see THE RIDE and THE GREATER TRIP DOWNTOWN above), but there's even more in the next verse about fucking the gangsters: You gotta go with what got you there. I came with chipped teeth and some bleached blonde hair. You gotta make do with what they gave to you [YGD] The "chipped teeth" and "bleached blonde hair" are references to greasers Steve Randle and Ponyboy from The Outsiders ( heregoes); they're the gangsters of the LP/THS world, and the "what they gave to you" is both needles and dicks: I was a Twin Cities trash bin I did everything they'd give me I'd jam it into my system [MPADJs] We've already considered these lines from MPADJs, and the term "jam" as slang for 'fuck anally' upthread (see THS REVISITED above, and "jamming jetskis into the jetty" with Charlemagne in STUMBLING & RESURRECTION above), but consider the further echoes in YGD: They powered up and they proceeded to jam, man [YGD] where "jam" combines the musical sense of the verb with 'to have anal intercourse' ( gdict). Compare too the noun senses of "jam," as alluded to by "positive jam" [PJ] and "jam jar" [SN]: 'a problem or difficult situation'; 'a drug overdose'; 'a spontaneous gay party that ends in an orgy or a big fight'; 'semen', and 'amphetamine' ( gdict; gdict; gdict). Again, we'll come to "positive jam" itself, and the reasons for this ambivalent framing, shortly (see POSITIVE JAM below). There are in addition other details which we now recognize as references to the Party Zero catastrophe. There is the allusion to the Narrator producing $10 in an attempt to pay Dwight for $20 of stolen drugs (see TWO TWENTIES above), and then being stripped for the gangrape: They took ten bucks and my tennis shoes [YGD] There is the allusion to Dwight "killing" Juanita via meth injection en route to prompting her resurrection as Katrina (see KATRINA above), who in turn smashes her hand on the mirror in the bathroom (see SMASHED HER HAND above) and from then on rebuffs the Narrator's advances (see EAST VS MIDWEST above): and my one friend got two girls in a twist. I got stuck with some priss that went and sliced up her wrists [YGD] As a THS song it's pretty fragmented. But as a reflection of LP events it's brutally on-topic. ***Following the above notes on "jam," the same extended double take opens up for Positive Jam as well. We'd already had a look at this subtext with "Queuing up for soup with scabby sores" [PJ] (see THE QUEUE above), but it's the final verse that's most eye-opening: Gotta start it with a positive jam All the sniffling indie kids: hold steady And all you clustered-up clever kids: hold steady [PJ] In the same way that "bloodsucking" [Swish] is a radio-friendly cover for "cocksucking" (see BREWERY BAR: THE STAIRS above), "clustered-up" now clearly appears as a cover for "cluster-fucked," that is, (literally) gangraped. The clever kids who thought they could catch a ride with a dealer to a dangerous party ended up getting stuck there, with ugly consequences; it's going to take "the steady type" [TLaDiLBI] to get them out. By the same token, "sniffling indie kids" looks like a reference to Juanita at the end of the Jeep Encounter, dressed in her "indian" costume and crying (see LAZY EYE above. "Sniffling" may also carry an overtone of "sniffing," which Juanita/Mary are seen to do in RtF, BBlues, and OftC). Finally, while the THS canon begins with a positive "jam" in the musical sense, it's the LP story, not the THS story, whose narrative wakes up in the "20's" with the "fruits" of the Party Zero gangrape (of course the THS story has the analogous metal bar party, but that's not where it *starts.* See TWO TWENTIES, FRUIT, ROOFIES, and THE CRASH above). ***There are several album titles that feature prominently in the "double take" mix. For "Separation Sunday," see HALF DEAD above; for "Open Door Policy," see SHEPARD'S MANSION above; for the "dark" sense of "Stay Positive," see Craig's comment in his 2015 Rolling Stone interview ( link). We've already noted that "Thrashing Through The Passion" makes reference to being gangraped on the floor with music going in the background (see ON THE FLOOR: INJURIES above); "Heaven Is Whenever," as it turns out, alludes to the same event: Heaven is whenever we can get together Sit down on your floor and listen to your records [WCGT] "Heaven" is a drug reference (see LISTED above), and more specifically a metaphor for the a drugged-out void where "we're gonna all be friends" [ABlues; see also A&H, FB, TSPotC, Smidge, RP, LA], in the recognizable sense of "friendly friends that will love you like a brother" [KP] (see THS REVISITED above). We know that the alternate title Craig had in mind for Separation Sunday was "Youth Services" ( clicksandhisses); we know now who the positive "youth" are, and we know what the "services" in question are too. ***I don't know what ironic God sent Seth Meyers to Craig saying, "my kid was born in the lobby of our apartment building and I'm doing a special about it; I need someone who can write a song about waking up on bloody carpets in the vestibule. Can u help??"; but apparently, this happened ( youtube). Meet Me In The Lobby is nothing more than one super uncomfortable allusion to the Party Zero gangrape after another, from plans gone wrong (see A LITTLE BIT above), to waiting around (see STRANDED above), to the struggle for freedom (see ESTHER above), to waking up surrounded by giant anonymous strangers (see THE CENTER above), to taxicabs (see THE RIDE above), to the city (see THE CITY above), to photos and a spotlight (see MAGAZINES & VIDEOS above), to the building (see BREWERY BAR: THE ROOF, etc., above), to the speed, to the blankets on the floor (see ON THE FLOOR: CARPET AND HARDWOOD above), all wrapped up in the fateful invitation to "meet me in the lobby" itself (see BREWERY BAR: THE VESTIBULE above). Watch the video, and you can see that Craig is really enjoying the joke, but man ... ***Finally, there's another kind of uneasy that comes with revisiting the familiar lines of Sweet Payne: I always dream about a unified scene I always dream about a unified scene There's James King and King James and James Dean At a table in the corner of my unified scene They want a double order of love and respect [SPayne] This is all too familiar, now: we know that the "double order of love" refers to the double-teaming "in the corner" of the brewery bar (see THS REVISITED above). Locally to the THS story, "James King and King James and James Dean" are the THS Narrator (band), Charlemagne (savior dealer), and Gideon (rebel who died young); but in the shadowing of the LP original, they're the Narrator, Dwight, and the gangsters, all tangled in the "unified scene" of one big homosexual gangrape. When the THS Narrator says that he "always dream(s)" about this scene, he is again deliberately exploiting the ambivalence of "dream"; the outward meaning, that he yearns for this it an ideal, is layered on top of a different one, to the effect that he has recurring nightmares about it. And the LP shadow lets us understand, too, why Mary figures so prominently in his dreams, with the gangsters, her bloodied hands, and the spotlights [AE].
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Post by skepticatfirst on Jul 30, 2021 5:41:43 GMT -5
FINAL PARTY: SUMMARYHere's a summary of the events of the Final Party: ***- The gangsters with cars drive down with the merchandise and set up in an adjacent parking lot, from which (through open windows) they can transact with the partygoers [WE ALL WENT DOWN].
- The rest of the gangsters, including the Narrator and Juanita, take the crosstown bus from the US-169 corridor down to the east side of St. Paul [WE ALL WENT DOWN].
***- The party kicks off in the usual way, with Juanita and the Narrator (and other addicted kids?) blowing gangsters in the shrubbery and doing drugs [LASER SHOW].
- The Narrator ducks offstage, where he's stashed a backpack that he's brought along, and reappears in costume as the Eyepatch Guy [LASER SHOW].
- He meets Juanita and gives her a bag of shermans (joints laced with PCP) and a lighter, with instructions to hand them out to the partygoers [LASER SHOW, SHERMAN CITY].
- He announces to the crowd that he's come to free their party. Outwardly, it's the "party favors" that are free; secretly, his plan is to free Juanita [LASER SHOW, SHERMAN CITY].
- Just as people start tripping, the cops raid the party [SECOND BUST].
***- The Narrator grabs Juanita and Dwight and flees through the park to the Kittson Street lot, where Dwight's car is parked [15TH AND FRANKLIN].
- The Narrator has Dwight, who thanks to the PCP is in a compliant state but still functional, drive them back up I-94 (their old route) to 15th and Franklin [15TH AND FRANKLIN].
- On arrival, Dwight wakes up enough to recognize Juanita and the Eyepatch Guy, and to note that Juanita is looking straighter than before [15TH AND FRANKLIN].
- The Narrator has Dwight obtain the usual dose of meth from the 15th and Franklin wholesalers, and then accompany him and Juanita to the bathroom [15TH AND FRANKLIN].
- The Narrator stands Dwight in front of the toilet and goes down on him in a deliberate bid to knock him out completely [15TH AND FRANKLIN].
- The Narrator takes the meth off Dwight's hands in payment; then he has Dwight sit on the toilet, while Juanita raises a vein in his neck [15TH AND FRANKLIN].
- The Narrator repays Dwight for the original "shot in the shoulder" by injecting the meth in his neck, while Juanita looks on [15TH AND FRANKLIN].
- With Dwight shooting off into outer space, Juanita rifles his pocket, taking his keys, his wallet, and the drugs on his person [15TH AND FRANKLIN].
- Juanita and the Narrator exit the stall, leaving Dwight "halfway gone," i.e. "half dead," i.e. "dead in his grave," the owner of a terrible new addiction [15TH AND FRANKLIN].
- Juanita and the Narrator shoot up the meth she stole from Dwight. Seeing this, Juanita thinks she understands why the Eyepatch Guy blew Dwight earlier [15TH AND FRANKLIN].
***- With Dwight's car in their possession, Juanita and the Narrator are home free. She rides shotgun; he heads for his parents' house in Edina [RENTAL, WRONG WAY].
- They drive west on Franklin past Electric Fetus, then south to 31st Street, and take the 31st Street onramp to 35W southbound [RENTAL, WRONG WAY].
- Juanita tunes the radio to Radio K, and sings along to In A Jar by Dinosaur Jr [RENTAL, WRONG WAY].
- They make it through the Crosstown Commons interchange to Highway 62 (i.e. the Crosstown) westbound without incident [RENTAL, WRONG WAY].
- Heading west, they both start jonesing again. Juanita gets the idea to search the car, to see if Dwight has anything stashed that they can take [WRONG WAY].
- As they drive past Edina High School, she opens the glove compartment and finds a gun [WRONG WAY].
- Trying to impress the Narrator (who, still in costume as the Eyepatch Guy, she's still excited about), Juanita shoots the gun off in the car [WRONG WAY].
- The Narrator (sleepless, jonesing, driving a stolen car at highway speed, without his glasses) panics, and briefly loses control of the vehicle [WRONG WAY].
- Thanks either to the bullet or the uncontrolled car, the Narrator almost dies [WRONG WAY].
- In the short interval before he regains control of the car, they blow through the US-212/Hwy 62 split and end up on the wrong side (US-212, on the left) [WRONG WAY].
- He'd meant to stay on Hwy 62 in order to hook up with the US-169 N entrance ramp; now he's blocked by the barricades between US-212 and Hwy 62 [WRONG WAY].
- They miss the US-169 N onramp. Juanita is dangerously unstable; he's desperate to get them to their destination before she completely loses it [WRONG WAY].
- With the onramp past, the barricades come to an end, reopening a short gap between US-212 and Hwy 62 [WRONG WAY].
- In a moment of inspiration, the Narrator darts through the gap just in time to catch the entrance ramp to US-169 S [WRONG WAY].
- Whipping the car 810 degrees through 3 full turns of the Hwy 62/US-169 cloverleaf junction (W to S, S to E, E to N) he gets them back onto US-169 N at last [WRONG WAY].
- The Narrator sprints the last half-mile up US-169 to the Londonderry Rd/Bren Rd exit in Edina, where things start to get a little residential [WRONG WAY].
- The cloverleaf run put Juanita over the edge; she wants drugs, and wants them now. Desperate, she tries to go down on him to provoke an exchange [WRONG WAY].
- Fending her off, it occurs to the Narrator that they've looked in the glove box, but haven't yet checked the tape deck [WRONG WAY].
- He reaches for the tape deck and feels a bag in there; but while trying to get it out, he runs the car off the road and wrecks it [WRONG WAY, BLOODY CAR WRECKS].
***- He wakes up to find his hand jammed in the bloodied tape deck, and Juanita apparently dead in the passenger seat [BLOODY CAR WRECKS].
- Still clutching the bag of powder from the tape deck, he crawls out of the car, sticks the bag in his pocket, and flees on foot for home [BLOODY CAR WRECKS].
- He never makes it. The cops stop him; finding the pocketful of powder, they take him down to the station for questioning (Oct 6) [BLOODY CAR WRECKS, APPREHENSION].
- The cops also find the wreck; they extract Juanita from the car and send her to Methodist in St. Louis Park, the nearest hospital [BLOODY CAR WRECKS, APPREHENSION, WIRED].
- The cops interrogate the Narrator but deliberately play down the trouble he's in, telling him that they found the car empty [WIRED].
- The Narrator, utterly exhausted at this point, gets tired and caves in, revealing that the wreck is connected to the Party Pit bust in St. Paul [APPREHENSION].
- Under pressure, he rewinds back to Party Zero and tells them the whole history of the parties, including Juanita's role in the story [APPREHENSION, WIRED].
- He doesn't tell the cops where to look for Juanita; believing that she left the car, he supposes that she's going back to the gang somewhere [WIRED].
- At the end of the confession, the cops get him to agree to become an informant and wear a wire (though he never returns to the gang to use it) [WIRED].
- On the morning of Oct 7, 1994, the cops finally release the Narrator. He goes to Methodist Hospital to be treated [WIRED, CALENDAR: THIRD PASS].
- The hospital gives him a methadone prescription and releases him. He visits Juanita, who's been admitted, in her hospital bed [WIRED].
- After sixteen sleepness nights, the Narrator leaves the hospital and finally goes home to rest [WIRED].
- Juanita has a rough time in detox, and is angry at the Narrator for caving to the cops; but she gets clean, and doesn't go back to the gang [WIRED].
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Post by skepticatfirst on Jul 29, 2021 6:36:29 GMT -5
CALENDAR: THIRD PASSThe last line of Rental contains a key piece of information for calendar purposes: that whole september seems so blurry [Rental] What this tells us is that the Narrator's intermittent career as the Eyepatch Guy, with glasses off and eyepatch on ("blurry"), is a close overlap with the month of September (see RENTAL above). We already knew that that career begins on Friday, September 2 (see CALENDAR: FIRST PASS above); now we learn that it ends approximately a month later. [*1] This fact resolves our remaining uncertainty about how much time has passed between The LBI on Labor Day weekend and the events that follow; the one-month timeframe leaves just enough room to sandwich in the three Wednesday night parties (separated by two-week intervals) at the end of the story, which in turn constrains all of the remaining dates. We already know (see CALENDAR: SECOND PASS above) that the Wednesday night party of Solid Gold Sole takes place on September 7; from this it follows that the Mission Party takes place two weeks later on September 21, and the Final Party two weeks after that, on October 5, exactly one month after Labor Day. ***One indication that this is correct is found in the THS calendar: the succession of LP episodes [1] Summer House -> [2] Two Weeks -> [3] Final Party is mirrored in the succession of THS episodes [1] Charlemagne stays with Gideon on Columbus between 28th and Lake -> [2] two weeks with the Skins -> [3] THS Crucifixion party That first THS episode, during which Charlemagne stays with Gideon, is described by One For The Cutters as lasting precisely two weeks ( heregoes): She gave him a ride to some kid's house in Cleveland He stayed there for two weeks, the cops finally found him [OftC] The fact that the THS story features two consecutive two-week cycles in the runup to the final party provides good evidence that the deduced two-week timeframes for the corresponding LP episodes are correct. ***These anchor dates confirm that the events of the Summer House period for which we knew the day of the *week*, but not the day of the *month*, in fact occur on the earliest-possible dates which we calculated upthread (see CALENDAR: SECOND PASS above; these dates are now set out explicitly in the calendar below). The same dates also let us check our handling of the two-week sleepless stretch reported in TGatSD (see TWO WEEKS above). We can now say the following: - The dating of the Mission Party to Wednesday, September 21, 1994, means that the last night the Narrator slept before being jumped into the gang (see CARGO VAN above) was the night of Tuesday, Sept 20.
- The statement "it's been 15 days" [SShoes] is made by the THS Narrator during the day of the THS Crucifixion party, prior to going down to the Party Pit for the festivities (referred to by "later at some party" [SShoes]). The analogous day in the LP story would be the day of the Final Party on Wednesday, Oct 5, which is in fact exactly the 15th day since the Narrator's last night of sleep on Tuesday, Sept 20.
- After the raids, revenge and highway madness of the night of the Final Party, the Narrator is apprehended by police in the wee hours of Thursday, Oct 6.
- In Minnesota, a suspect arrested without a warrant is supposed to see a judge within 36 hours, and can be detained for up to 48 hours without the judge's further authorization (link). Those limits are meant to allow time for thorough investigation of the suspect before presentation to the court; the police have every incentive to let that time elapse while they wait for more information to emerge. Star Wars Hips indicates that the detention and interrogation of the Narrator is a lengthy process ("i got tired" [SWH]), and that the police are acutely interested in his connection to the gangster arrests --- this being the motive for making him wear a wire --- which the St. Paul police are investigating during the same timeframe ("Now the cops want to question everyone present/ They parade every townie in town through the station" [OftC]). The most probable implication of this is that the Narrator was held for something more than 24 but less than 36 hours, and released on the morning of Friday, Oct 7.
- After leaving the police station, the Narrator checks in at Methodist hospital, gets a methadone prescription, and is released the same day (see WIRED above); having paid a visit to Juanita in her hospital bed, he finally goes home to sleep.
The dates all check out, and in fact result in a stretch of exactly sixteen consecutive nights without proper sleep, satisfying the "he stayed up for sixteen nights at a stretch" [TL] constraint of Teenage Liberation. ***From beginning to end, then, the final calendar covers April-October of 1994 ("I spent seven months in another town" [Western Pier]; see SHEPARD'S MANSION above), letting us state with confidence that we know which year is referred to in the lines from Girls Like Status: It was song number three on John's last CD, I'm going to make it through this year if it kills me And it almost killed me [GLS]
1994 ----- FRI APR 01 - Ride in Dwight's car down to brewery SUN APR 03 - Easter Sunday. Party Zero assault WED APR 20 - Wednesday night party --| WED MAY 04 - Wednesday night party | WED MAY 18 - Wednesday night party | WED JUN 01 - Wednesday night party | somewhere(s) WED JUN 15 - Wednesday night party |-- in here, the WED JUN 29 - Wednesday night party | frontage road WED JUL 13 - Wednesday night party | WED JUL 27 - Wednesday night party | WED AUG 10 - Wednesday night party --| MON AUG 22 - Narrator turns 24 WED AUG 24 - Wednesday night party: attempted drowning WED AUG 31 - Narrator leaves apartment, moves into Jeep FRI SEP 02 - Return to brewery, The LBI costume party SAT SEP 03 - Jeep Encounter. Juanita leaves with gang WED SEP 07 - Wednesday night party of Solid Gold Sole FRI SEP 09 - Summer House Call 1 (Narrator/Juanita) SAT SEP 10 - Driving around looking for Juanita day 1 SUN SEP 11 - Driving around looking for Juanita day 2 MON SEP 12 - Planned day to bring Juanita home (failed) MON SEP 12 - Summer House Call 2 (Eyepatch Guy/Juanita) [earliest possible date] TUE SEP 13 - Narrator has phone number, hires detective [earliest possible date] FRI SEP 16 - Detective comes back with photo of Juanita [earliest possible date] WED SEP 21 - Wednesday night party: the Mission Party THU SEP 22 - Early morning meetup with Shepard WED OCT 05 - Wednesday night party: the Final Party THU OCT 06 - Car wreck, Narrator arrested, interrogated FRI OCT 07 - Released; visit to Juanita at Methodist
[*1] The implication is that Juanita's post-comeback exclamation: cash advances and jenny's back on campus i can't believe that it's september [SSC] is also subject to the same month-end approximation; her end-of-story return coincides closely with the new school year, but it's not strictly September (and she won't be going back to school for a while, either).
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Post by skepticatfirst on Jul 28, 2021 6:31:39 GMT -5
WIREDWhen the Narrator says that he "sold [Juanita] out" [SWH], then, it doesn't mean that he laid the blame for the "nightclub fires" at her feet, but rather that he implicated her in the criminal life of the gang --- the same implication from which he'd earlier tried to shield her by not going to the police when she was interned at the Summer House (see DETECTIVE above). and hey, juanita, well i sold you out got the pliers on my fingers and your name slipped out [SWH] It's also not the case that he "sold [Juanita] out" in the sense of turning her over to the cops: he explicitly states that he didn't tell em 'bout your whereabouts [SWH] This protest is surprising for two reasons. One, the cops already know about the wreck (which the Narrator knows they couldn't have missed anyway) and have asked him questions about it ("it wasn't just an accident" [SWH]): which *should* mean that they already know exactly where Juanita is. Two, he left Juanita for dead ("your girlfriend's dead and you've got blood on your stereo system" [RfLB], "calling you and me the chappaquiddick kids" [LiaL]): which *should* mean that he doesn't need to protect her from arrest in any case. What can it mean, then, that he didn't tell the cops about her whereabouts? It must mean two things: 1) The cops must have told the Narrator, falsely, that the car was empty when they found it. This is of course an inference, but it has two strong points in its favor: a) it's exactly consistent with the THS version of the interrogation, in which the cops tell the THS Narrator the same thing (the THS cops are described, in allusion to John 20:12, as "a couple bona fide angels" [NS] for reporting that they found the wrecked car empty --- in other words, for announcing that Charlemagne, like Jesus, has left the tomb; heregoes; heregoes). b) it's a plausible real-world development: "minimization" of the crime of which a suspect is accused is a standard police technique for extracting a confession ( wikipedia. In this case, "minimization" would mean reducing the scope of the Narrator's alleged wrongdoing to only that minimum which is clearly on the table, i.e. crashing a car and possessing a small amount of drugs --- which for a "rich kid" [MiM] from the suburbs amounts to no more than a fuckup --- while leaving out the serious part, i.e. running from the scene of an accident and abandoning the injured victim, in a bid to make him relax and get him talking). 2) The Narrator, believing this report, can't actually *know* where Juanita's gone; the implication of "didn't tell em 'bout your whereabouts" is that he assumes that she's headed right back to the gang. This assumption on the Narrator's part is consistent with the farewell advice he gives her, which is to go back with the gangsters to one of the two "coasts": - either (East Coast) to go back with "the train" (see THE RIDE and THE GREATER TRIP DOWNTOWN above) to "get lost" in the downtown St. Paul brewery bar gangbang "crowd" [SGS, TLaDiLBI, LGI]:
take the train downtown get lost in the crowd [SWH] - or (West Coast) to go back to her internment, hidden from the sun, at the Summer House:
my advice is dye your eyes and stay inside [SWH] We can't miss the fact that this ambiguous East-Coast-or-West-Coast fate is exactly how Mary ends up in the aftermath of the THS story: I was sitting on the kitchen tryna guess where she was living now. Hotel room in Houston with the shades against the sunshine Or maybe still in Scranton like in 1999 [EC] Here "Scranton" is The East (see FRONTAGE ROAD and BACK TO THE CITY above; for "1999" in association with the Final Party, see LASER SHOW and 15TH AND FRANKLIN above); "Houston" is The West. Note that "shades" is a word with multiple meanings, [*1] including: 1) drugs ("the shades against the sunshine"="the speed against the sedatives" [Eureka]; see LISTED above); 2) literal curtains ("Bedsheets for curtains" [NF], "Saw the sun through a crack in the curtains" [R&T]); 3) literal "shades"=sunglasses, as in "she always wore sunglasses" [PSunglasses], consistent with "dye your eyes" [SWH]. Lord I'm Discouraged indicates that it's the Summer House back in The West where she winds up after all: There's a house on the south side Where she stays in for days at a time [LID] The correspondence of "stays in for days at a time" to "stay inside" [SWH] is self-evident. (For "house on the south side," see the Summer House's location on the southernmost border of Osseo; see OSSEO above.) ***Once the cops get the Narrator's confession and learn that he's in the gang, they offer him a chance to cooperate and become a wire-wearing "informant" in order to avoid prosecution: got a tape deck, not the regular kind it's a secret, you can't see it you can't believe it, i'm the informant [SWH] and those guys got me wired [SWH] This deal is the "amnesty" referred to in Math Is Money (we've already identified "new bedford" with Edina; see RENTAL above): well hello, new bedford, mass won't you hit me with a little bit of amnesty [MiM] ***This episode is the LP source of the "wire" referred to in several THS songs, only in THS it's been turned into something else: in Chicago Seemed Tired Last Night, "tired" and "wired" apply to the police, not the Narrator; in T-Shirt Tux and You Did Good Kid, it's become a metaphor for a kind of alien perception of unanticipated feelings: but the things they didn't tell you when you went off to work how does it feel? where does it hurt? you can't see the wires when they're under your shirt but they're taking down every single detail [YDGK] Johnny Cash was in the service When the news came through the wire. And its weird how you feel when bad people die [TST] This change is linked to the single biggest point of difference between the LP and THS stories, namely, the fact of the Narrator's confession. Under the pressure of police interrogation, the LP Narrator "sold [Juanita] out" [SWH]; but in the same situation, the THS Narrator defends Mary and refuses to cooperate ( heregoes). The THS Narrator never ends up wearing a wire; instead, he and Mary go free. Still, the THS story maintains a memory of the LP outcome, both in the above references to a "wire" (which again have no natural basis in the THS plot) and in generic allusion to "cracking and caving in" [HM]. We'll come to a broader discussion of this difference between the stories shortly (see POSITIVE JAM below). ***The Narrator's betrayal of Juanita, bad in its own right, is made worse by Juanita's strong defense of the Eyepatch Guy (the Narrator gives in to the "pliers" [SWH], but Juanita is ready to stand up to "electric shocks" [Bloomington]): [*2] cause i'm a spy girl, i'm just old fashioned i never took to callin it espionage cause I'm a spy girl you must know all about it i just never had you figured for the other side and you can burn me in the name of revolution you can try to make me talk with electric shocks i never saw his face, don't know who the man is he just puts his instructions into my mailbox [Bloomington] His incrimination of Juanita in order to save himself is alluded to in Sherman City as well: i guess she caught what was coming for me [SCity] ***And yet the LP story ends on a note that isn't totally negative, in that Juanita does get away from the gangsters, and does get clean (it's not quite Holly's "ok in the end" [SN], but there's no hint of Mary's post-"thought it got better" [TOT] relapse, either): queen went clean yeah she ran out of screen she said it's too much hassle, it's too much hustlin i'll miss the people but i won't miss the feeling of six am burnin like split lips and bourbon [Viceburgh] The "screen" [Viceburgh] she ran out of is drugs (see PHARMACY GOODS above); the "people" [Viceburgh] she'll miss are the gangsters. The line about who/what she'll "miss"/"won't miss" [Viceburgh] lets us identify the THS version of the same end to the story: Came back from the mission and her hair was in her mouth again. It's just another part of her don't wanna take the medicine. She wont miss the city but she'll miss all her friends. I said "Vice versa for me, man. Vice versa for me" [CitM] This "mission" [CitM] is the same rescue "mission" [Esther] that began with the Mission Party (see LOOKING FOR K above), and that now, in the LP world, is finally at an end. The "other part of her don't wanna take the medicine" [CitM] is the Katrina drug fiend in the alpha girl, forced now to suffer through detox in the hospital. Compare to this the account of the THS Narrator's visit to Mary at Methodist Hospital in Almost Everything; they both go in and get "medicine" [AE], but she's kept there under observation, while he's allowed to go: [*3] We checked into Methodist We met with some residents. They maxed out my medicine. And let me back loose again [AE] Finally, the "friends" [CitM] who she'll miss are the gangsters. But for the Narrator ("Vice versa for me"), it's the other way around: even after everything that happened down at the brewery bar, he still loves The City (see THE CITY above), he's just happy to be done with the gang: I like the party favors but I hate the party people [EC] [*1] The close association of "shades" with Juanita's room in the Summer House suggests that lovers in the lockdown under shady circumstances [TCMaMG] refers to her internment, and to the Narrator being brought back with her to the Summer House under guard (see CARGO VAN above), rather than to the kids' sequestration by the cops, which is an invention of the THS version of the story, rather than the LP version. [*2] I suspect (but can't be certain without more evidence) that the Narrator's dejection at having caved is the reason why "you did good kid" [YDGK], which I take to be the cops' reassurance after he spills the story and agrees to become an informant, is repeated with such bitter insistence (for the implicit reference to the LP version of the story, see THS CHARACTERS below). [*3] The opening lines of Almost Everything: Something might happen but nothing will be never ending. Right from the start I told you I can't spend the night [AE] carry a double shadow of the original LP story: One, this visit to the alpha girl in the hospital is not the "ending" of the THS narrative (which has yet to progress to the trial of Gideon, the confrontation of Jesse and Holly, etc.: heregoes), but it *is* the ending of the LP story. Two, "right from the start I told you I can't spend the night" suggests that the Narrator and the alpha girl see each other after entering the hospital separately, after the Narrator has been evaluated and told that he won't be admitted; this doesn't square with the progression of events in the THS story ( heregoes), but it *is* consistent with what we know about the LP story (the implication being that the cops sent him to Methodist after the interrogation was over). Note too that Methodist Hospital is the closest hospital both to the Londonderry Rd/Bren Rd exit in Edina (the approximate location of the wreck; see BLOODY CAR WRECKS above) and to the Edina Police Department ( gmaps), a clear indication of the LP origin of this THS detail as well.
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Post by skepticatfirst on Jul 27, 2021 7:01:25 GMT -5
APPREHENSIONThe Narrator gets hauled down to the station; separately, and without the Narrator's knowledge, Juanita is found and taken to the hospital. It may be presumed that the suspicious circumstances of the wreck --- the gun, the vanished driver, signs of drug addiction in her physical person --- mean that Juanita is in police custody as well ("she left the ATM and she headed straight into the DEA" [LiaL], i.e. the Drug Enforcement Administration [ wikipedia]); but even if she isn't already a person of interest to law enforcement, she will be soon, thanks to the Narrator. ***Like the THS Narrator, the LP Narrator is subjected to an "interview" [SiM], i.e. an interrogation "session" [HSL], about his activities. After two weeks of not sleeping and a night of sheer insanity, he's exhausted; he tries to resist, but soon breaks down to reveal a version of what happened: ... i told them 'spose you heard about the nightclub fires i've got two big scoops: it wasn't just an accident, this is not coincidence i got tired i got tired i got tired [SWH] The "accident" is the car crash about which he is being interrogated. What he reveals is that it "wasn't *just* an accident" with no relation to a bigger picture; on the contrary, it's "not coincidence" that it happened on the same night as the "nightclub fires" of the Final Party --- an event of which the Edina cops may be presumed to be aware ("'spose you heard") due to the St. Paul cops' massive bust earlier in the night (see SECOND BUST above). [*1] ***The "two big scoops" framing is an allusion with several layers: - There's the obvious meaning of "scoop" as "exclusive news" (gdict) --- he's revealing something that his interrogators didn't know. In this principal sense of the word, the count of "two" is gratuitous: he's really only revealing one thing, the fact that their car wreck is linked to the gang bust at the Final Party.
- The count of "two" is clearly specified for the sake of the phrase "two scoops," which is an allusion to the famous "two scoops of raisins in every box" slogan of Kellogg's Raisin Bran cereal, used from the 1960's through at least the 80's (link). It was the cereal slogan that inspired Common's 1992 "Two Scoops of Raisins" (link), in which "two scoops," in the sense of 'ass', is used to refer to sex (urbandictionary). Recall that Craig references Common's early work as far back as Emperor (see REAR VIEW MIRROR above), and it seems likely that this specific meaning is what's being alluded to here as well.
- Finally, "scoop" is slang for date-rape drug GHB (see LISTED above).
The suggestion of the last two meanings is that the Narrator confesses everything about his involvement with the gang and their parties to the police, beginning with the Party Zero roofies and gangrape. By the light of this information, we understand the opening lines of the song to be the opening lines of his confession (as if in double quotes): here's what happened at the back of the restaurant couple debutants, hundred bottles of wine i walked into the walk-in cooler [SWH] The "restaurant" is the brewery bar (see THE KITCHEN, PERFUME COUNTER GIRL, and SECOND BUST above), the "couple debutants" are Juanita and himself at Party Zero, and the "hundred bottles of wine" are, per slang expression "bottle"=penis (with homosexual overtones: gdict), the rapist gangsters. [*1] It's when the cops realize that the gang member in their custody has a tony Edina address, that they say nice place for a guy who changes filters [RfLB] which exactly recapitulates an already-familiar statement: what's a rich kid doing that far up on jefferson [MiM] In other words, the MiM line is quoting/paraphrasing the cops (for further MiM description of the interrogation scene, see WIRED below). In showing that the "jefferson" address is applicable to the time of the Narrator's gang membership, it provides the best and final proof that the Summer House is indeed the building located at 8532 Jefferson Hwy, Osseo, MN (see OSSEO above). There's barely 1000 feet of highway up there on which to locate the house in question, and no other structure remotely fitting the profile; as the alpha girl puts it, "this must be the place" [FFarm].
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Post by skepticatfirst on Jul 27, 2021 6:36:22 GMT -5
This is really satisfying, in a weird way. The entire car scene in the THS universe always seemed messy to me. There were a couple of loose ends, and some of the events seemed a bit scattered together (especially the crash). But it makes a ton of sense, in light of Lifter Puller. A couple of quick thoughts: - It's easy to think of Preludes, reading this. Not just the song itself, but what Craig said of it in interviews around its release - I've always liked Lonley In A Limousine, but just this post made me appreciate it a LOT more. I've never really paid attention to the issues/action thing running through it, and even though I've sort of caught the Ted Kennedy reference, I now realize I haven't taken it fully in - before now. Yes, I had the exact same feeling about the car scene in THS --- I was pretty certain that there wasn't another way to account for the evidence, but it was such a fragmentary story with so many dangling or loosely motivated bits that I found it pretty frustrating. The LP version is not only much more of an organic whole in its own right, it makes it much easier to see how the THS version was put together. This is true to some degree of most THS episodes, but the car flight is a standout. Preludes is pretty rich, but I'll leave that as an exercise for the reader. Lonely In A Limousine is like some of the other F&F tracks that don't have a strong narrative core for the listener to latch onto --- the first impression is mainly one of chaos, but with a clear idea of the story in hand you can reread them and get a strong picture of what's being described.
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Post by skepticatfirst on Jul 26, 2021 6:28:04 GMT -5
BLOODY CAR WRECKSAgain, Rental tells us that the crash happens somewhere along the transition between the highway (at/past the Londonderry Rd/Bren Rd exit) and residential Edina: pulled over when it looked a little residential [Rental] There, after briefly losing consciousness: slept beneath a race car [DStraps] the Narrator wakes up to discover that his hand's in the tape deck and that he's wrecked the car: and you wake up and you don't know how your hand got in the tapedeck ... and new rochelle is full of bloody car wrecks [TCMamG] ***The lyrics' persistent linkage of car wreck, blood, and tape deck, culminating in the Rock For Lite Brite line which draws Juanita into the picture, confirms that casualties have now reached multitude levels: i was jammin to my tape deck, lookin for my paycheck lookin for some car sex, checkin every car wreck with bated breath [SBackwards] laughing at the car wreck. bleeding on the tape deck [SBackwards alt lyrics] Kids with broken hearts, kids with broken bones Kids with kidney stones giving birth to bloody stereos [BBlues] your girlfriend's dead and you've got blood on your stereo system [RfLB] The literal reading of all this is straightforward: the Narrator comes to in the wrecked car to find his hand stuck in the tape deck, blood on the dashboard, and Juanita apparently dead. But there are still a couple of subtleties in these lines: - "paycheck" [SBackwards] is the drugs concealed in the dashboard; compare "a skimpy outfit for a lousy paycheck" [TCMamG] (sex for drugs), "I spent half the time trying to get paid from our savior" [Swish], "trying to get paid/ From some guy she originally thought to be her savior" [HaRRF]. Similarly, "hearts"=amphetamines, "bones"=crack, and "stones"=crack (see DRUG SLANG and LISTED above).
- "stereo equpiment" [RfLB] is twice used earlier in RfLB in reference to Juanita herself as the "little sister with your stereo sound" [TGatSD] and "boom box" [SGS] of the story (see STEREO SOUND above). There's a double meaning here: the tape deck in the car dashboard is bloody, and Juanita's bloody too.
***The Narrator is exhausted, running out on residue, and in physical shock from the collision; thinking that he's just killed Juanita, he panics. Still clutching the bag of powder he found in the tape deck as he withdraws his hand, he crawls out of the car (compare "shady shady strangers comin crawlin from the wreckage" [Brokerdealer INFHP]), shoves the bag in a pocket, and flees on foot. The wreck is no more than a half mile from the proxy destination of Walnut Ridge Park, from which we can infer that he's close to home; but he never makes it. Like Charlemagne running from the THS car crash, [*1] the Narrator gets stopped by the cops, who find the tape deck drugs on his person ( heregoes): [*2] cops got him with a pocketful of powder [SWH] Compare the descriptions of Charlemagne in the "ripping high" version of the THS Getaway in CiS, and in YLHF: we had some sweet stuff stuffed into our socks [CiS] I got stopped by the cops and they found it in my socks [YLHF] ***Further confirmation of this account is found in Lonely In A Limousine, which covers the full arc of Final Party events from the cops' raid on the Party Pit through their eventual arrest of the kids: yeah we're drippin wet with pigs and it's high time we got off of the cape i think we best get outta this game ... and you're drinkin and you're drivin and your friends are calling you and me the chappaquiddick kids and the police have just released an announcement calling for the immediate apprehension of the issues and the action [LiaL] There are several things of note here: - "pigs" on "the cape" clearly refers to the cops' raid on the Party Pit (gdict; see SECOND BUST above). In keeping with the East Coast beach party metaphor for east St. Paul referenced in "the LBI" [Manpark], "Coney Island" [Sublet], "Jones Beach" [Sherman City], and "Jersey Shore" [LSifL], "the cape" must refer to Cape May in New Jersey (see AIRPORT & LBI and THE EAST above).
- "i think we best get outta this game" looks forward to the Getaway; it also recalls Juanita's "don't it all feel like one big game with the lights and the dust and the security" [Bloomington], where "lights"='meth' and "dust"='laced joint' (see LISTED above), and "security" refers both to the gangsters preventing their escape, and to the raiding cops.
- "you're drinkin and you're drivin" brings us to the Getaway itself, with the kids driving high (for "drinks"=hits, see WRONG WAY above).
- "and your friends are calling you and me the chappaquiddick kids": this, a reference to the 1969 Chappaquiddick incident (wikipedia), is the primary confirmation of the Narrator's actions after the crash: it refers to the notorious incident in which Ted Kennedy, having wrecked his car with Mary Jo Kopechne in the passenger seat, abandoned the vehicle, leaving Kopechne to die.[*3]
- "the immediate apprehension/ of the issues and the action": the police have issued an all-points bulletin for the Narrator and Juanita, who are themselves correlated with the "issues" (drugs, see LISTED above) and "action" (sex) earlier in the song: "she's got the action, you've got the issues ... you've got the action, she's got the issues" [LiaL].
***Fortunately, Juanita is not dead, only bloodied; the cops find the wreck, and, like the Narrator, she too is taken into custody. We can now account for the remainder of the description of the Getaway in TPatP, since the crash itself accounts for the "glass and explosions", and their arrest for the "police and the prisons": we made it to the getaway but there were highway barricades and there was glass and explosions and there were gunshots and sirens and the police and the prisons and she prays for probation [TPatP] [*1] The fact that Charlemagne got picked up by the cops was always a little odd; it's hard to see how being out on foot on a major St. Paul thoroughfare on a Sunday morning ( heregoes) should constitute grounds for being stopped, especially since his documented use of the ride for detox purposes means that he shouldn't have been behaving erratically. But the LP Narrator's case is very different: he's on foot in a well-to-do suburban residential neighborhood --- where no one really walks to get anywhere --- in the middle of the night, and out of his mind; the fact that he got picked up is more or less inevitable. Once again, we see the rough edges of the THS story accounted for by the fact that it's a remix of elements of the LP story. Compare the "who's driving?" problem in the THS Crucifixion Cruise: we're told that Mary steals the car at the beginning [MoC] of the drive and crashes it at the end [PP], yet somewhere in the middle we find her in the backseat with Charlemagne. This patched-together quality is explained by the fact that the episode is a recombination of the theft and crash from the Getaway, the backseat of the Frontage Road, and the failed intimacy of the Jeep Encounter, all from the LP story. [*2] Just as "airplane" in LiaL refers to the "little bit" Juanita stole from Dwight in the bathroom at Party Zero, so "an airplane" [Rental] refers to this residual stash taken from Dwight's car (see RENTAL above). [*3] Curiously, this allusion to Ted Kennedy makes him the third Kennedy brother to appear in the LP/THS lyrics, along with John [PJ, DLME] and Robert [PJ, Ambassador]. It's not strictly necessary to read "your friends" as referring to the gangsters (compare 11AF, HDaD, KP, CC, CitM), but this seems like the likely sense.
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Post by skepticatfirst on Jul 23, 2021 3:34:22 GMT -5
WRONG WAYUnlike the one-song "gentle" [Rental] version, the "ripping high" [CiS] version of the Getaway is told in scattered pieces. We know from Secret Santa Cruz and from Rental that the kids make it something like halfway home without incident --- high as fuck, but managing to keep it together long enough to (a) agree on an alibi for the laser show "blazes" [TBatFR] if the busted gangsters finger them (compare "arson" [SSC]): her name was sally but they all called her sal mineo she was lit up like an arson but she burned out like arsenio her name was sandy but they all called her san antonio she can't remember where she slept last night but she won't forget the alamo sandy, don't forget our alibi [SSC] as well as (b) tune the radio and sing along with In A Jar [Rental]. That's enough time to get them, say, most of the way down 35W (for map of their route see RENTAL above). But there's a problem. We already have a lot of data points [*1] establishing that, at this stage of the kids' addiction to speed, their high wears off after a few minutes. We saw that Juanita repeatedly gets high at The LBI, but is already coming down by the time she and the Narrator reach the other end of the park (see BORED and TWO AT A TIME above); in the same way, she's high when they leave the Final Party, and "straight" again by the time they get to 15th and Franklin (see 15TH AND FRANKLIN above). What this means is that they're not going to make it all the way back to Edina without coming down; which is to say, they're in for a rough ride. ***Under the shadow of the LP background, Charlemagne In Sweatpants --- a major source of information about the Getaway, both with respect to being "ripping high" [CiS] and in general --- describes the situation exactly: speed shooters drivin around, comin down, tryin to hook up with an entrance ramp [CiS] (More about that entrance ramp in a minute.) Comparing the travel times for their current route (see RENTAL above) and the one between the Party Pit and 15th and Franklin, it's a fair guess that they make it as far as the Crosstown Commons junction (from 35W onto the Crosstown, i.e. Hwy 62, westbound) in OK shape. But at some point on the Crosstown, they really start to feel the jones. What do they do then? ***The good news --- news that will have occurred to them right about now --- is that they're in a drug dealer's car. Juanita, sitting in the passenger seat, begins to search for merchandise, starting with the glove compartment. As it happens, she doesn't find any speed, but she does find something else that goes hand-in-hand with the dealing and the tinted windows: jenny's pretty jumpy, pulls a gun out of the glove compartment [TCMamG] This (compare "riding around with Walter" [CF], as in Walther PPK, in Criminal Fingers) is another point of agreement with the CiS "ripping high" account: We had a gun in the glove box [CiS] More importantly, it describes the moment in the LP story at which things start to go sideways: and she shoots it off to try to impress you [TCMamMG] ***We don't know *exactly* what happens here, in the sense that we don't know which way the gun was pointed, or whether Juanita opened a window first, or how much (if any) warning the Narrator had that she was going to shoot. We do know that, for a driver running on two weeks of no sleep, jonesing in earnest, hurtling up the Crosstown at highway speed in an unfamiliar car with tinted windows, and not wearing his glasses, a shot fired in the passenger seat is likely to have been very impressive indeed. Maybe he pulled away to the left, away from the shot, by instinct. Maybe he briefly lost control of the car. Maybe he was just distracted for a few seconds. Whatever the exact mechanics of that moment --- whether there was a near-miss with the bullet, a near-collision with another car, or a close call with a highway divider --- we do know with certainty that it had two outcomes: 1) The Narrator, in his own estimation, almost died. 2) The car blew past the split between US-212 and Hwy 62 on the left side of the divide between them, when, in order to get to Edina, they needed to be on the right. ***Let's take a minute to examine the lay of the land. Here are two pictures of the split taken from Google Street View, obviously in the present day: Recall their trajectory back to Edina (see RENTAL above): they need to stay on the Crosstown (Highway 62) on the *right* in order to "hook up with [the] entrance ramp" onto US-169. But the split between US-212 and Hwy 62 comes up a full half mile ahead of the junction with US-169, and in the chaos of the moment, it catches our hero by surprise. Back to Google Maps, where we can see just how far east of the junction the split is located, and something else as well: Look closely at the landscape to the south of the Crosstown; that's not a coincidence. Juanita's gunshot, happening at some point in the 30 seconds before the split, is the incident referred to in the Hornets Hornets line: Almost died up by Edina High [HH] ***For us, another major problem is cleared up; the Narrator, on the other hand, is still fucked. He's now westbound on US-212, rather than Hwy 62. The median between the two highways is very low, and he might have had a second to hop it right at the beginning, but after just 50 feet, intermittent barriers (you can see them already in the second picture of the split above) begin: These are not barriers that will necessarily kill someone in an accident, but they are definitely enough to keep a tardy driver from trying to switch highways on purpose. Note, in the second of the last pair of pictures, that the barriers extend just past the "entrance ramp" to US-169 --- in other words, they have been deliberately placed in order to prevent people who missed the early split, like the Narrator, from jumping the median in time to catch the junction. These barriers look pretty ad hoc, and we can't be certain that whatever existed in their place back in 1994 looked *exactly* like these. But we do know that there were barriers back then too, because The Pirate And The Penpal makes explicit mention of them in its account of the Getaway, calling them "highway barricades": we made it to the getaway but there were highway barricades ... and there were gunshots [TPatP] ***The situation is dire, but our Narrator is holding pretty fucking steady right now; he's a smalltown boy on his home turf, and he's got one more trick up his sleeve. Again, the barricades are set up to prevent people from making a dangerous maneuver to catch the onramp to US-169; once the onramp is past, they serve no further purpose, and in fact we see that they end immediately after access to the ramp is no longer possible: That ending leaves a short space of about 500 feet between the last of the barriers and the US-169 underpass, a space in which it is again possible for a motivated road warrior to hop the division between the highways and get back on Hwy 62. Why is that of interest? Why would the Narrator do that now, when the ramp to US-169 northbound is already firmly in the rear view mirror? Because the junction with US-169 is a cloverleaf junction, meaning that *there's still a way for someone with presence of mind to get there by taking the next exit to US-169 southbound*: From which we get the second half of the solution to the Hornets Hornets mystery, in close conjunction with the first: [*2] Drove the wrong way down 169 [HH] ***Careening through three wild circles at highway speed, our hero pulls out into the northbound lanes and, in triumph, approaches the Londonderry Rd/Bren Rd exit, where things get "a little residential" [Rental] at last. But in the meantime something else has gone off the rails. Juanita is unstable as fuck, and jonesing now for real. The exhilaration of the gunshot, the near crash, the missed exit, and the 810-degree slingshot turn have wound her right up into a manic state. Nothing else matters any more; she wants drugs, now, and reflexively does what she always does when she's desperate for drugs (see JUST STARTED TALKING above) --- she tries to go down on him: [*3] first she gets off then she tries to undress you [TCMamMG] Not for nothing is our Narrator the steady type. Fighting off her attempts to make him "feel gentle" [Rental], he has a last idea: the glove box was the obvious place to look for drugs, but she never checked the tape deck. [*4] He puts out a hand --- hey, there's something in there --- ***Reproducing the entirety of the TCMamG description of the Getaway, just to cement the sequence of events: jenny's pretty jumpy, pulls a gun out of the glove compartment and she shoots it off to try to impress you first she gets off then she tries to undress you and you wake up and you don't know how your hand got in the tapedeck a skimpy outfit for a lousy paycheck and new rochelle is full of bloody car wrecks [TCMamG] Unfortunately for the Narrator, checking the tape deck was his last idea in a strictly literal sense. Distracted by Juanita and by the discovery, against hope, that there's actually something hidden in the dashboard, he lost control of the car and "pulled over" [Rental]; which is to say, they crashed. [*1] Lyrics that refer to a hit lasting just a brief time include: "that didn't seem like fifteen beers" [Hardware]; "the h and the k, the way we get with every guy that we meet" [LDoL]; "she said i just got back and i'm already bored" [JBS]; "a straight looking chick" [Manpark] (after having been "high in exaltation" [Manpark] shortly before); "i'm so strapped for cash it goes through me so fast" [TCMaMG]. For a more detailed description, we have the solo song Three Drinks: It takes 1 2 3 drinks And now she’s not so frightened It takes 4 and 5 and 6 And then she’s sick But in the hour in between She feels holy and redeemed Blessed and blissful. Painless and serene [Three Drinks] where "drinks," like "water" and "beers," refer to drugs (see LISTED above). In the best case, with heavy dosing on the way up, she gets to enjoy an "hour" of calm; but once she's past that peak, the downturn comes on quickly. [*2] After first noticing the Osseo/US-169 connection, I spent a while street-viewing my way through all the T-junction exit ramps from US-169, looking for a place where someone could conceivably get on the highway and end up headed south on the northbound side; but having studied them closely (there are not many to review), I'm certain that any reading of the line that understands "wrong way" in the sense of "against traffic" is impossible. Anyone trying to do this would be very unlikely to make it as far as the highway, and if they somehow did make it, they'd die. While on the subject, it's worth noting explicitly that "up" by Edina High makes no sense as an index of latitude on US-169, from which it's quite far away; but it makes perfect sense as an index of longitude on the Crosstown, to which it's immediately adjacent. Understood in the familiar up : down :: Uptown : Lowertown :: west : east frame of reference (compare "cruising down the crosstown" [SBackwards alt lyrics]), this line confirms that the near-fatality happens when the kids are westbound on Hwy 62. [*3] The THS kids' ride in the stolen car after the Crucifixion (the THS Crucifixion Cruise) is a reflection of the original LP Getaway, and is similarly marked by the desperate attempt of Holly (in Mary's body) to go down on Charlemagne (in Gideon's body) in order to get drugs. But the Crucifixion Cruise in its totality is remixed from several LP events, including the Jeep Encounter, the Getaway, and the Frontage Road; so while we made love to the interstates [PJ] in a THS context is certainly connected to the Crucifixion Cruise, it's hard to say whether this particular line is meant to reflect all three of these original LP episodes, or just the Frontage Road (see FRONTAGE ROAD above). There's an argument to be made for all three, insofar as all three involve "trying to hook up" [CiS], and all three are connected to the highway system; note that Kittson Street (site of the Jeep Encounter) is itself an exit ramp of US Hwy 52, providing a different pretext for the *liner notes* version of the Charlemagne In Sweatpants line: trying to hook up with an *exit* ramp [CiS] [*4] Compare the Eureka account of Holly in the car of the drug dealer "kid from California"; she went with him for the sake of the drugs, and the drugs come from the dashboard: The dashboard almost swallowed them whole [Eureka]
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Post by skepticatfirst on Jul 22, 2021 6:06:47 GMT -5
RENTALSo the kids stole Dwight's car fast [*1] --- leaving behind the first of what will be a multitude of casualties --- and they drove it fast too. Like other events in the story, we want a name for this trip: let's call it the Getaway. But where did they drive exactly? If they're "home free" [MTape], where's "home"? ***Again, "home" for the Narrator is the "here in the same house" [SH] residence mentioned in Summer House (the song); while we don't know exactly where that's located, we have every reason to believe that it's near the "tennis court" [SH] of Walnut Ridge Park in Edina (see TENNIS COURT above). Over to Google Maps. What's the best way to drive from 15th and Franklin to Walnut Ridge Park in Edina? At the time I'm writing this, the 31st Street onramp onto 35W southbound is closed for construction (see the red circle with a white bar on the map), which means that I can't actually draw a path through it; but even with a huge detour around the closure and other delays, the 35W route is still faster than the alternatives, and it's clear that this is the one someone in the Narrator's position would take (it's also the route from Electric Fetus back to Edina, meaning that a kid from the suburbs who's into the Minneapolis music scene is likely to be able to drive it with his eyes closed). The construction-free version of this trip takes the following trajectory: 1) West on Franklin past Electric Fetus, then south to 31st Street 2) 31st Street onramp to 35W southbound 3) 35W south to the Crosstown Commons interchange with Highway 62 (Hwy 62="the crosstown" [SBackwards alternative lyrics]) 4) Highway 62 west to US-169 5) US-169 north to the Londonderry Rd/Bren Rd exit in Edina ***Information about the Getaway is scattered all over the place, but basically we get two takes on it: the "gentle" [Rental] version, and the "ripping high" [CiS] version. Let's start with the gentle one; this has the advantage of being encapsulated in a single song that we can work through line by line. *** tinted windows, no one can see you [Rental] They're in a drug dealer's car; the windows are tinted. The Narrator's driving, looking over at Juanita, thinking that she's finally hidden away from the eyes of all the people that want to exploit her. *** no one can get to us, there's gonna be justice [Rental] They've gotten away from the gangsters, many of whom have been busted. The Narrator's had his revenge; now Dwight's going to find himself enslaved to the same "tooth" he put on them. *** i'm not even nervous [Rental] Being nervous is a symptom of jonesing ("i was nervous i was nauseous i was dripping wet with heat rash" [TFatBR], "She's got some pills some in her purse/ One to wake you up/ One if you're nervous" [BCig], etc.). He's not nervous because he's still high from shooting up in the bathroom. As we'll see, this isn't an incidental comment; the bubble of tranquillity in which they find themselves just now is in pointed contrast to what's coming when the hit wears off. *** you told your boyfriend that you had some midterms [Rental] Juanita said something when she left the stall that was calculated to make Dwight jealous (see 15TH AND FRANKLIN above). The Narrator doesn't care that Dwight was too high to hear it; what bothers him is that she said it. *** we're up in new hampshire drivin' around in a rental [Rental] As noted upthread (see GEOGRAPHY: FIRST FIVE TRACKS above), you wouldn't hear Dinosaur Jr's "In A Jar" on the radio driving around New Hampshire; but you would hear it on Radio K in the Twin Cities. As usual, we're in metaphor country. (See comments on the lines about "In A Jar," and about Massachusetts and New York, below.) This "new hampshire" is, along with "new rochelle" [TCMamG] and "new bedford" [MiM], one of three "new" suburban/exurban places identified as the destination of a vehicular escape in Lifter Puller; the Narrator's taking them out to his smalltown world (see THE CITY and FEELIN SMALL above) to start over. [*2] In the 2009 Vulture interview, Craig explicitly identifies "new bedford" as a "small town" ( link): (Compare, too, the urbanized THS version of the car episode, where the kids' stolen "new Mustang" [SiM] is the first leg of a journey that leads them into "bright new Minneapolis" [PP].) *** make me feel special like i'm essential like we've got potential [Rental] He's still in love; he wants her to feel the same way, but he knows that's not really where she's at. *** pulled over when it looked a little residential [Rental] Again, they're heading out to the suburbs (see the residential streets around Walnut Ridge Park in Edina). We'll pick up the "pulled over" part when we come to the "ripping high" version of the Getaway. *** made me feel special, remember our rental [Rental] Their "rental," like Mary's Mustang ("I guess it might be a rental" [SiM]), is actually stolen. But besides softening the tone, "rental" sets up the main conceit of the song: the Narrator sees that he's a "rental" boyfriend, that Juanita is happy to use the Eyepatch Guy as a prop to make Dwight jealous. *** make me feel gentle, make me feel central makin me crystal clear, makin me see thru [Rental] The allusion to "crystal" confirms that he's high on meth (see LISTED above), in a bubble of lucid calm. *** and i can see through this you're makin him jealous and i don't deserve this i deserve justice cause i'm cooler than he is cooler than he is cooler than he is cooler than he is [Rental] See the notes above about the Eyepatch Guy being out for vengeance, and about Juanita making Dwight jealous. Like Charlemagne, Dwight is a Trevor, a doofus (see STRANDED above); the Narrator knows he's cooler than him. *** a fake name, an airplane, a credit card, a rental car [Rental] The "fake name" comes with the Narrator still appearing as the Eyepatch Guy. "Airplane" and "credit card" are both drug terms; "airplane" is used of the "little bit" Juanita stole from Dwight in the Party Zero bathroom (see STUMBLING & RESURRECTION and LISTED above); "credit card"='crack stem', i.e. the crack pipe Dwight keeps in his car (see LASER SHOW and LISTED above). The implicit allusion to the fact that you need a credit card in order to buy a plane ticket and rent a car suggests that this is an extension of the "rental car" tongue-in-cheek; they've stolen Dwight's car and his "wallet" [MTape], and they're about to steal his "taxi" stash too (see APPREHENSION below). *** sang along with the radio playin "in a jar" [Rental] Juanita's tuned the radio to Radio K, and when In A Jar by Dinosaur Jr comes on, she starts singing along (her favorite song is another Dinosaur Jr track, Forget The Swan [TPatP]). The title "in a jar" reflects their situation in the moment, under (tinted) glass and sealed off from the world. In the THS analogue to the Getaway, Mary's Mustang also has "satellite radio" [SiM]. [*3] *** Massachusetts valleys and the new york city east side 20's are not what i remember that whole september seems so blurry [Rental] Looking back on this September, what the Narrator remembers is not the weeks spent in the US-169 "valley" (see THE WEST above), nor again the two-20's-for-a-breakdown in The City on the east side of St. Paul (for the "20's" see TWO TWENTIES above; for the "city east side" see THE CITY and THE EAST above). Put another way, it's not The West nor The East of the Twin Cities that's memorable to him, but their time in the car escaping to the smalltown "midwest" together (see the comment on New Hampshire above). ***The final remark about the whole of September seeming so blurry is a fantastic bit of typical Craig indirection. It sounds like he's saying that he doesn't remember The Valley or The City because it's all a blur; but in fact what he's saying is that the parts that he *does* remember best, the Jeep Encounter from the beginning of September and the Getaway from its end, were the two times he was in the car with Juanita in the guise of the Eyepatch Guy, **without his glasses.** This reference to "september" is, for the rest, the last piece we need to sew up the open calendar questions; we'll come to that shortly (see CALENDAR: THIRD PASS below). [*1] Confusion In The Marketplace has a nod to the theft, too: I'll distract the manager and you obscure the license plates [CitM] [*2] The Narrator's intent to start over with their relationship is cued by the full phrase: new rochelle is for the new romantics [TCMaMG] [*3] The "cool car" that the THS kids stole in MoC is the same as the "cool car crankin Krokus" of GLS; like the SiM "rental" with "satellite radio," their ride is epitomized by this moment with the music.
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Post by skepticatfirst on Jul 22, 2021 5:47:57 GMT -5
Haha, this is a nice one. Maybe I should watch those Star Wars movies after all. That's funny! When I was writing this up I thought "home free" might need a definition and a citation, but I figured everybody must have seen the original Star Wars trilogy. I don't know that you're missing that much; on the other hand, if you have literally one minute, this is worth your time: www.youtube.com/watch?v=eWkHjJJDVuo&ab_channel=SteveBarone
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Post by skepticatfirst on Jul 21, 2021 5:33:25 GMT -5
STAR WARS HIPSBefore following the kids into Dwight's car, we have to stop for a quick look at Star Wars Hips. ***The expression 'star wars hips' is a joke, riffing on 'snake hips' ( urbandictionary; I myself recall the expression being used in this sense in the 90's): The joke is made in allusion to Juanita, who, unlike the gangsters' "chesterfield chicks" [LiaL], was slim to begin with: you're flat-chested and you're angry about it [TPatP] and the false starts make me jumpy and those chicks were just so dumpy [TFatBR] and, like Mary, has only gotten slimmer since her discovery of speed: now you're tanner you're thinner you drink right through dinner [LPvtEotE] famine is so glamorous removed your ribs before cosmetic work was even scandalous [4Dix] It'll probably get druggy and the kids'll seem too skinny [SPositive] i kinda like the high but i really love the weight loss [SBackwards alternate lyrics] The principal point of the joke is just that a girl with 'star wars hips' sounds cooler and more badass than a girl with 'snake hips'; but the point of the song title goes further than the joke. ***As an allusion to the Star Wars movies extant in the early 90's, it's clear that "star wars hips" must be used in reference to Princess Leia: not only is she the only *character* to whom the phrase can possibly refer, there's exactly one *scene* that makes the point of comparison obvious, and that's the famous one at the beginning of The Return Of The Jedi in which, as Jabba the Hutt's captive, she appears dressed, hips on view, in a bronze bikini. What happens in that scene? To summarize at a high level (on the assumption that everyone's seen the movie): - A "princess" [Viceburgh, C&N, A&H, ASD, CitM] with braids and slim hips (Princess Leia) is trapped in a gang's "fortified fortress" [TS&tT, FFarm].
- A hooded guy (Luke Skywalker) comes in to "break [her] out of there" [Emperor].
- The hooded guy rescues her with the help of "the laser show" [RfLB, SPayne, NS, JaJ], i.e. blasters and light saber.
- The girl killed her captor Jabba by "put[ting] her fingers on [his] neck just like a tourniquet" [Manpark].
- They light the place on fire on their way out and send it "up in blazes" [TFatBR].
- They steal the gangster's vehicle and are "home free" [MTape].
Sounds familiar! Only, for the Lifter Puller kids, getting from "home free" to home isn't just an offscreen afterthought ...
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Post by skepticatfirst on Jul 20, 2021 7:00:58 GMT -5
15TH AND FRANKLINSo the cops burst in, and a scene that was already spinning out of control under the command of the Eyepatch Guy becomes even more chaotic. There's exactly one line of firsthand reporting from this moment: katrina this is serious, juanita eat the evidence [Manpark] We've already considered the question of the "evidence" (see SECOND BUST above), but there's another question we haven't answered: why is Juanita addressed twice, once as Katrina, once as Juanita? Both of these appeals are *heard* by Dwight, from whose perspective Manpark is reported (see DEPENDS ON WHO'S ASKIN above); but only the first, the warning to Katrina, comes from his own mouth. Dwight's the one for whom Juanita is essentially Katrina, his drug-dependent "girl" [SH1999; compare KatKH]. The one for whom she's essentially Juanita --- the one who has the presence of mind not to panic, but instead tells her to "eat the evidence" --- isn't Dwight; it's the Eyepatch Guy, i.e. the Narrator. [*1]***In short, the first reaction of both Dwight and the Narrator is to reach for Juanita; then, as indicated by the manhunts always start out in the manpark [Manpark] they flee --- or more specifically, as indicated by the manhunts always start *down* in the manpark [Manpark] they flee *west* (see WE ALL WENT DOWN above). The out-of-order presentation of events distracts from, but doesn't hide, the fact that their destination is the same post-party stop from earlier in the summer (see FRONTAGE ROAD above): woke up up on 15th and franklin [Manpark] ***In planning for the Final Party, the Narrator can't have anticipated that the cops would show up; his preparation of the "laser show" indicates that he meant to engineer an escape independent of their interference (see LASER SHOW above). But while their appearance forces his hand with respect to timing, everything else is going exactly according to plan. Dwight has a car, provides "big and strong" [CRoom] protection against stray gangsters they might meet, and is compliant under the effects of the sherman (see SHERMAN CITY above). So the Narrator seizes his opportunity and, still in the guise of the Eyepatch Guy, flees with both Juanita and Dwight toward the Kittson Street lot, where they leap into Dwight's car and drive off. While it's clear from Dwight's sudden reaction: woke up up on 15th and franklin [Manpark] that he doesn't remember the trip west, that doesn't mean he wasn't the one behind the wheel. Dissociatives like PCP impose a state of suggestibility, not catatonia; Dwight is perfectly capable of navigating a route that he knows well (and that he's driven stoned before: see "he pulled out a pipe in the taxi" [ILtL]) under the Eyepatch Guy's direction. This fraught scenario is, for the rest, the true referent of the seemingly anodyne detail from You Can Make Him Like You: You don't have to know how to get home Let your boyfriend tell the driver the best way to go [YCMHLY] ***So the Eyepatch Guy directs Dwight to take them to 15th and Franklin, where he wakes up. What happens then? woke up up on 15th and franklin with a straight looking chick and the prick that she picked up at the nankin [Manpark] The "straight looking chick" is Juanita, "straight looking" both because she's coming down from her "hurt and high in exaltation" [Manpark] state back in the park, and because she's responding to the presence of the Eyepatch Guy; the "prick that she picked up at the nankin" is the Eyepatch Guy himself. We recall that the "Nankin"/"city center" [4Dix] is a handle for The City in East St. Paul (see THE CITY above); besides being, in point of fact, the place where Juanita joined up with the Eyepatch Guy, it's the place, in Craig's loaded words, where "you would get a fruity drink" (see ROOFIES above), and where "a huge drug bust" took place ( link; see FIRST BUST and SECOND BUST above). ***The Eyepatch Guy tells Dwight that they've come to 15th and Franklin in order to engage in their usual transaction, and suggests that he use his credentials to score them some meth. Here again Dwight "the chainsmoker" (see LASER SHOW above) complies: well the chainsmoker he called the stockbroker he said hell i hate to sell we've been doin really well but i need a little liquidity you know i think they might be onto me [TFatBR] Note that Juanita is personally present for this interaction, consistent with the fact that TFatBR is told from her perspective. Beyond that, there are several things to unpack in these lines: - The "stockbroker" is the drug wholesaler (in the dealer's sense of "stock") at 15th and Franklin.
- Dwight's fear that "they might be onto me" is ambiguous, born of a combination of the sherman and the bust; the implication is that he both thinks the cops are after him ("manhunts" [Manpark]) and feels the menace of the Eyepatch Guy closing in ("1999's comin up on a cool corvette" [Manpark]; see EYEPATCH GUY above).
- Dwight's "hell i hate to sell we've been doin really well" suggests that he's scared enough to want to lay low for a while; whether that's his intention or not, this is in fact the last time he'll be coming to 15th and Franklin looking for "stock" to deal to others.
- The "liquidity" he's looking for, like "liquid soap" [JBS] and "liquid tan" [MTape, TMS, LDoL, TFatBR], is injectable drugs (see LISTED above); from what follows, and from the role played by 15th and Franklin as Dwight's source of merchandise (see SHOT IN THE SHOULDER and FRONTAGE ROAD above), we know that it's injectable meth, specifically.
***To recap, then: Dwight and the kids drive to 15th and Franklin; Dwight does his "handshake ... with the doorman" [TSTux] to gain admittance; [*2] they go in to the counter, where he acquires the meth they came for; then the three of them duck into the bathroom to complete their usual transaction. There, in the "bathroom stall," is where Dwight "got the margin call" [CRoom], with everything coming together at once under the Narrator's direction: 1) The Eyepatch Guy/Narrator, "perched" [compare Juanita in TCMamG] on the toilet while Dwight stands in front, goes down on him. he popped me in his mouth just like a cigarette [Manpark] 2) The Narrator takes a dose of meth in payment. Then he leads Dwight, who's now well and truly knocked out, to sit on the toilet, where Juanita raises a vein in his neck: she put her fingers on my neck just like a tourniquet [Manpark] 3) The Narrator repays Dwight for the original "shot in the shoulder" (see SHOT IN THE SHOULDER above; for the meth implications of "my little bit" see A LITTLE BIT above) by injecting the dose in his neck, while Juanita looks on: did my little bit in the bathroom [Manpark] she said didn't know you did it too i knew you did a little distribution [LDoL] 4) As Dwight shoots off into outer space, Juanita picks his pocket, taking his drugs, keys, and wallet: she's small and sweet but she's a straight up thief she puts the lipstick in her pocket [CRoom] and then you reached into his pocket, grabbed onto his wallet and his car keys, yeah we're home free [MTape] 5) Juanita gives Dwight, who's no longer really present to hear it, a flirty excuse for her departure: you told your boyfriend that you had some midterms [Rental] 6) Juanita and the Narrator exit the stall (she "leaves" [CRoom]; he "split" [Manpark]), leaving Dwight "halfway gone" [CRoom], in other words "half dead" [HDaD], in other words "dead in his grave" [TFatBR] Lifter-Puller-style: [*3] livin large and feelin small (livin large, livin large) gettin nice with night club dwight in the bathroom stall, he got the margin call now let's get a little marginal she's small and sweet but she's a straight up thief she puts the lipstick in her pocket and then she casually leaves he's big and strong but he's halfway gone he puts the pipe up to his mouth then he casually breathes [CRoom] and then he split [Manpark] 7) Outside the stall, Juanita and the Narrator use the rest of what she took from Dwight (the "lipstick" [CRoom]) to shoot up; Juanita, who's seeing the Eyepatch Guy do meth for the first time (in their only other meeting, he'd spent the whole night trying to keep hard drugs out of the picture, see RIPPLE AND THE CHAMPAGNE above), thinks she suddenly understands why he blew Dwight earlier: i shoulda known that no one clean would ever lie down quite that easy [TFatBR] The real reasons behind the Narrator's actions are of course more complex: - with regard to the blowjob: when they entered the stall, "big and strong" Dwight was still awake ("woke up up on 15th and Franklin") --- awake enough for the Narrator to still be afraid of his reaction to a needle he wasn't expecting. Going through with the charade of the transaction avoids tipping Dwight off to the fact that something is wrong, while the bj itself serves up the final knockout. Notable in all this is that the Narrator doesn't let Juanita perform the service (it is for the rest likely that the reprise of the kitchen corner incident is a deliberate part of his vengeance[*4]).
- with regard to the drugs: Juanita, the "straight looking chick" [Manpark], has been coming down for a while now; this time (unlike during the Jeep Encounter, see REAR VIEW MIRROR above) the Narrator has no intention of losing her over a fit of jonesing. As for himself, he's been speeding and sleepless for two weeks straight; it's likely enough that he needs a little more fuel for the final stretch. We'll see more confirmation of #7 as we work through the end of the story.
And that's what happened up on 15th and Franklin. ***Note that we have confirmation of #4 from an unexpected corner: Denver Haircut twice describes what are evidently the same events, only with Charlemagne rather than Dwight at the center of the action: Found a man with a handful huddled over some car keys [DH] While he was floating in space that chick took his wallet. Wasn't really a date. Wasn't sure what to call it [DH] Blackout Sam too (again substituting Charlemagne [*5] for Dwight) mentions his authorization ("credentials"/"laminate" [BSam]) to buy drugs at 15th and Franklin, and provides detailed confirmation of #3 ("neck"), #4 ("keys") and #6 ("waking up in parking ramps") as well: Blackout Sam has got credentials. He keeps flashing them his laminate. He keeps scratching at his neck [BSam] Blackout Sam doesn't have the answer. He keeps waking up in parking ramps. He can never find his keys [BSam] All of this is consistent with the principal THS question, here posed side-by-side with the LP original: what happened on 15th and franklin [4Dix] what happened to Charlemagne [DLME] and the answer: Charlemagne got caught up in some complicated things [DLME] ***At any rate, the kids have escaped from the gangsters, paid back Dwight, and scored some strong stuff; now, with the keys to Dwight's car in hand, they're "home free" [MTape]. [*6] So they jump in the car and blast off, leaving Dwight to eventually wake up and face the hell of his new life as a meth addict. [*7] [*1] It's tempting to understand the moment described by this line to be the one referred to in Spices as well: We're in the woods with the difficult decision The majorettes not paying much attention [Spices] The kids are in the "woods" [OftC] of Swede Hollow; Katrina/Juanita are the "majorettes" (compare "majorettes" [OWL] for Mary), whom Dwight and the Narrator are emphatically trying to get to pay attention. But "difficult decision" is itself difficult; unless the Narrator is seriously thinking of letting himself and Juanita be arrested --- which would be an effective way to escape the gang, but is also one that he's deliberately avoided until now (see DETECTIVE above) --- the decision to run seems straightforward. (Compare "big decision" [BBlues], referring to the THS Narrator's decision to walk away, or to throw in with Mary again and sign up for a major helping of trouble). [*2] The entire opening verse of T-Shirt Tux: There's that girl from your work and she's here with some guy. He's got a t-shirt tux and a piano key tie. The rest of us were rolling our eyes. At the handshake he did with the doorman. But thats how he gets the stuff that makes him feel so important [TSTux] isn't just a more literal and more detailed account of the "secret knock"/"mail slot" negotiation described in the song Nice Nice; it's also a reflection of this exact scene at 15th and Franklin: - "the girl from your work" is Juanita; the scene is set after they've been working together for two weeks at/out of the Summer House.
- "some guy" is Dwight, who drove them there.
- the fact that the purpose of the handshake is to get "the stuff that makes him feel so important" makes clear that he's not getting them admitted to a club; they're there, in a group, for the purpose of acquiring drugs.
Most of T-Shirt Tux, as it turns out, is about what happened up at 15th and Franklin. [*3] The "1999" that Dwight foresaw coming up has caught up with him; Prince's "judgment day" ( link) is here with a vengeance. [*4] This attention to charged symmetries across the beginning and the end of plot arcs is typical of Craig's writing in general: the Narrator going down on Dwight at Party Zero and again at 15th and Franklin (the first time as victim, the second time as agent of vengeance) joins a list that includes the "basements" of the brewery bar and Juanita's room in the Summer House (the first a thrilling portal, the second a desperate dead end), the "spotlights" of Charlemagne's streetlamps and the film projector (the first a petty preoccupation, the second a transforming epiphany), the "killer parties" (the first a crime scene, the second a scene of liberation gone wrong), and the visits to 15th and Franklin themselves (the first as hapless bystander, the last as ruthless mastermind; for earlier discussion of these symmetries see CANDY'S ROOM and SHERMAN CITY above). [*5] The use of the name "Sam" for Charlemagne dates to Records And Tapes, in which the Skins at the THS Crucifixion party are described as falling on the ground in terror like Saul, "spooked by the spirit of Samuel" [R&T], i.e. Charlemagne's ghost. [*6] For the sake of non-native English speakers: "home free" is an expression from children's games; it means that the in-game obstacles that prevent a player from getting back to home base have been lifted ( wiktionary). [*7] The song Nice Nice documents Dwight's "toothy" [NN] new obsession in the wake of this episode with the "roofies" [NN]: he's talkin 'bout the diamonds and where we can find them and who we can sell em to and stuff like that [NN] Final "stuff like that" tells the whole story; Dwight's ambitions as a street hustler ("fiddler": gdict; gdict) aren't going to be able to stand up to his addiction (to say nothing of the fact that he no longer has a car; from now on he'll be taking "a taxi back to 15th and franklin" [Manpark] to satisfy his new "tooth" [NN]).
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Post by skepticatfirst on Jul 19, 2021 5:26:59 GMT -5
SECOND BUSTSo the Eyepatch Guy takes over and roofies the party, including Dwight, with shermans. Then the cops show up. ***Once more, it's useful to recall Craig's description of the scene in the real-world Party Pit (including Swede Hollow and the brewery; see THE EAST and FIRST BUST above), now clearly established as the location of the Final Party ( link): "Parties," plural, would get shut down early, and the LP "busts" [TMS] too are plural. The first bust was when the cops broke up The LBI, in the brewery bar (see FIRST BUST above). The second happens now, during the Final Party, in Swede Hollow. ***Evidence that the bust happens now is found in several places. First, the description of the partygoers indulging in "liberties" (see LASER SHOW above) is linked directly to the appearance of the cops, not only in Touch My Stuff: [*1] and the right brigade, that's the funny thing it ain't just a money thing it's a question of community the liberty, the ecstasy, the love, the drugs, the unity and the busts they look just like the hey kool-aid commercial breakin down the walls and they're tippin over tables and it tastes great [TMS] but also in La Quereria: the pigs came in so forcibly almost didn't bother me the kids are living liberally loving all their liberties [LQ] ***A more explicit connection between the bust and the Final Party is found in Manpark, which concludes with a description of the appearance of the cops in the park: katrina this is serious, juanita eat the evidence the manhunts always start down in the manpark the manhunts always start out in the manpark it starts with the sharks [Manpark] The instruction to Juanita to "eat the evidence" only makes sense if the cops are involved: there are other menacing figures present (the gangsters, even the Eyepatch Guy himself) who could be imagined to be behind a "serious" situation, but it's only the cops who care about evidence, or drugs. [*2] More on the police "manhunts" originating from this moment shortly. ***The reflection of the LP Final Party in the THS Crucifixion party extends to the bust as well. There's the evidence in Both Crosses that the cops arrive on the scene and carry Charlemagne's body away from the park: She saw him gushing blood right before he got cut She saw them put a body in a bag in the trunk [BCrosses] as well as the suggestion of One For The Cutters that their appearance leads to a roundup of the partygoers: Now the cops want to question everyone present They parade every townie in town through the station But no one says nothing and they can't find the weapon [OftC] ***We're now finally in a position to revisit the account of Charlemagne's death, cooked up by the kids in preparation for the Crucifixion party, that's related in Killer Parties (see LP SHADOWS above; heregoes): If they ask about Charlemagne Be polite and say something vague Like another lover lost to the restaurant raids [KP] The "restaurant raids" shadowing this fiction are the busts of the gangster parties at The LBI and the Final Party, respectively. The appearance of the cops at the Final Party marks the last time that Dwight, of whom Charlemagne is the THS projection, is seen alive in public. [*1] "tippin over tables" [TMS] in the TMS account of the bust is not literal; the gangsters are selling their drugs out of their cars (see WE ALL WENT DOWN above), not at tables set up in the park. Rather, it's a metaphoric allusion to Jesus driving the merchants from the Temple: This same Biblical episode is mentioned by Gideon in anticipation of the THS Crucifixion party, of which the LP Final Party is the original: He likes the part where the traders get chased out from the temple [CatCT] as well as alluded to in the title of Confusion In The Marketplace (also linked to the Narrator's Final Party revenge, see CHARLEMAGNE above): We can take advantage of confusion in the marketplace. I don't wanna dick around. I just wanna devastate [CitM] [*2] "Juanita eat the evidence" [Manpark] is again consistent with our understanding (a) that the Narrator entrusted a supply of drugs to Juanita for distribution, and (b) that this is a bag of laced joints, rather than speed, mushrooms, peyote, LSD, or any of the other substances in the story that take effect via ingestion (see LASER SHOW and SHERMAN CITY above, respectively).
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Post by skepticatfirst on Jul 16, 2021 6:26:51 GMT -5
SHERMAN CITYThe other half of the Eyepatch Guy's unfolded plan applies specifically to Night Club Dwight: i want night club dwight dead in his grave [TFatBR] Like "i want the nice nice up in blazes" [TFatBR], this has a double meaning. On the one hand, he's indulging a "violent red vision" of homicidal vengeance which may or may not actually be in play; on the other, he's talking about a practical milestone in their immediate goal of escape. At this point it's established that being "dead" in Lifter Puller means being *half* dead: either still alive on the inside but killed in body, like the kids after the gangrape, or alive in body but dead on the inside, like the kids addicted to meth (see HALF DEAD above). It's the latter death that the Narrator has in mind for Night Club Dwight. He can't think of attempting this before getting Juanita and himself out of the hands of the gang; but in fact his first step toward revenge and his first step toward escape are one and the same. Just as Dwight set the Narrator up before he killed him ("Set up for the slaughter and shot in the shoulder" [TS&tT]), the Narrator now sets Dwight up by hitting *him* with "roofies": one night dwight he got a little bit toothy now they all call him the good doctor tooth one night dwight got all goofy on the roofies now they all call him the fiddler on the roof [NN] The "toothy" part --- the vampire-fangs murder by meth injection --- will happen a little later. But the administration of the "roofies" is happening now; the same dose that Juanita is distributing to the rest of the partygoers (see LASER SHOW above) is the one that will make Dwight a tool in the Narrator's hands. In fact, the sight of the Eyepatch Guy "tak[ing] the pulpit" of the party and sending Juanita around with the goods: hadn't seen the eyepatch guy since the LBI [Manpark] is the last thing Dwight remembers before waking up at 15th and Franklin: woke up up on 15th and franklin [Manpark] ***We now know definitively which drug it was that the Eyepatch Guy brought to the party, and Juanita distributed to the crowd. The various descriptions of the "laser show" make clear that the drug is a hallucinogen (see LASER SHOW above). The repeated references to "lasers" and "liberties" suggest psychoactive mushrooms. The reference to a "vision quest" and "buttons" [MoC] after the THS Crucifixion suggest peyote, another psychoactive substance. And the references to "blazes" [TBatFR] and "lightin fires" [CaAoC] suggest marijuana. But from the Nice Nice lines above, it's clear that Dwight was hit with something analogous to roofies. How can this be squared with the rest of the data points above? The answer is that everyone, Dwight, gangsters, everybody, were given joints spiked with something that has hallucinogenic properties *and also* functions as a date rape drug. *The Narrator's handing out the same thing that he himself was hit with during Party Zero*: here's everything i remember last dance and somebody must've slipped me a sherman [HDaD] To recap what we've laid out upthread (see LACED SUBSTANCES and LISTED above): a sherman is a joint laced with PCP, which, like fellow ester and date-rape drug Ketamine, of which it is the forerunner ( wikipedia), is a dissociative hallucinogen ( wikipedia). The Narrator both hooks up the "laser show" *and* "roofies" Dwight by giving Juanita a bag of shermans to hand out. All of the partygoers get one; they kindle the "nightclub fires" when they blaze up. [*1] We get confirmation of this (along with another textbook example of Craig being evasive in interviews) from the 2009 Vulture interview, in which Craig talks about Sherman City ( link): We've long since established that The City refers to the St. Paul brewery bar area, including Swede Hollow where the Final Party takes place; the Final Party is precisely "Sherman City, a place where every joint was a sherm." [*2]***The term "sherman" is documented in the ONDCP list, and in fact is pretty well known, thanks to Frampton's "Do You Feel Like We Do" (see "frampton" [LPvtEotE] and ORIGINS OF SIGNATURES above). But the more common term (see the DEA list and Green's) is "sherm," and we note that in the Vulture interview Craig too calls it a "sherm." If he's familiar with the more common term, why go with "sherman" in the LP lyrics, and in the title of Sherman City specifically? There are a few reasons for this. For one, we've already proposed that "Sherman City" replaces an original "Vatican City" as the title of the song (see CHARLEMAGNE above); this is borne out by the Final Party "takes the pulpit" [LQ] moment (see LASER SHOW above), which completes the identification of the Narrator with Charlemagne taking the platform of St. Peter's Basilica to have himself crowned Emperor (again, see CHARLEMAGNE above). [*3]But the congruence of "Sherm-an City" with "Vatic-an City" isn't the only reason for preferring "sherman" to "sherm." The lines from Sherman City that pertain to the Final Party itself (see LASER SHOW above) suggest another reason. and hey jones beach don't you freak when you see me mc sweet lemme free your party [SCity] Like the Charlemagne-in-the-Vatican metaphor, which locates the triumphant Narrator back at the scene of his original defeat, the reference to East Coast "jones beach" is further confirmation that the Final Party park is located near the brewery in East St. Paul (see AIRPORT & LBI and EAST VS MIDWEST, and compare WE ALL WENT DOWN above). But the really interesting bit is in the second line: "lemme free your party." There's a lot of language in the LP and THS lyrics that characterizes the kids' drug addiction as slavery, including with respect to Holly's internment on the "west coast": the clubs are just like caves, these club kids are just slaves and these afterbars are just like their graves [NN] cause the turntables have enslaved us [LQ] the schoolbuses are slave trains [LQ] And it's not like she's enslaved, it's more like she's enthralled [CiS] St. Louis had enslaved me [HaRRF] the clanking of the shackles [UBreakfast] There are of course also a lot of references to the Narrator's undertaking as a "war," both a Charlemagne-style "holy war" [Emperor, TMS] and "war" as sustained hostilities [4Dix, PJ, GLS, etc.]. Against this background, "lemme free your party" [Scity] has a wider resonance (compare also "Teenage Liberation" [TL]): the Narrator's Final Party campaign is framed as the decisive battle in a war to free the enslaved, namely, the American Civil War; and the Narrator himself takes on the mantle of William Tecumseh Sherman, the Union general ( wikipedia). There are three major pieces of evidence supporting this reading: - You Did Good Kid frames Party Zero as "the slaughter at Shiloh" [YDGK] in allusion to the first major slaughter of the American Civil War (wikipedia; see COMMEMORATIVE PLATES above), and the beginning of the Union's successful "war of attrition" [OwtB, TSTux] strategy (wikipedia).
- The title of the song Viceburgh is an allusion to the city of Vicksburgh on the Mississippi River (see CONVENTIONS above); the Siege of Vicksburgh was the first major victory of the Union Army under the leadership of Grant and Sherman (wikipedia), and the point from which the Union's "war of attrition" [OwtB, TSTux] strategy made Confederate defeat inevitable (wikipedia).
- Craig of course has an entire solo album named after a different narrator's identification with a Union Army general: "I'm Grant at Galena/ I need a new war" [GaG]. (We now know that the "new war" he had in mind is the First Opium War of 1839-1842, fought between China and Great Britain over drugrunning via "clipper ship" [Feelers], and out of whose treaties the original Open Door Policy was forged: link.)
***The identification of the Narrator with Grant and Sherman parallels his identification with a third general as well; we know that Grant and Sherman came out on top at Vicksburgh, so we don't spoil anything in pointing out that the commander who saved the alpha girl from slavery is mentioned by name: St. Louis had enslaved me I guess Santa Ana saved me [HaRRF] Santa Anna ( wikipedia) was the general who defeated the Texans at the Alamo; when the Narrator says of Juanita she can't remember where she slept last night but she won't forget the alamo [SSC] he's talking about the Final Party. ***Taking all this into account, we have three further details confirming that the Narrator spiked the Final Party with shermans, in Girls Like Status, Math Is Money, and Killer Parties. ***1) Girls Like StatusIn the Here Goes thread I noted that I couldn't disentangle Gideon from Charlemagne in GLS; with the benefit of hindsight, it seems clear that that's because GLS is ultimately looking through them to the LP Narrator (see THS CHARACTERS below). What we learn here is that the Narrator comes for the liberation of the alpha girl armed with "vegetation": He was dreadlocked in the dorms in the Colorado corn He says he's got your vegetation She was sitting on the edge of the bed smoking trying to reach emancipation [GLS] - He's "dreadlocked" in the sense that he's the Rastafari Guy, having joined the crust punk gang on the "west coast" (see RASTAFARI GUY above).
- The "dorms in the Colorado corn" refers to the Summer House (dorms because both Juanita and the Narrator are living/crashing there, see RASTAFARI GUY, SHEPARD'S MANSION, and ROUGH RIDERS above; Colorado because they're high).
- The "vegetation" is the marijuana of the Narrator's shermans.
- She's "sitting on the edge of the bed smoking" in her room in the basement of the Summer House (see CANDY'S ROOM above).
- The "emancipation" she's trying to reach is a deliberate echo of the Emancipation Proclamation (wikipedia) following the American Civil War theme of liberation of the enslaved.
***2) Math Is MoneyIn Math Is Money, we're told that the Narrator came out to the place he got double-teamed with the Peter Pan bus line (headquartered in Springfield, Mass: wikipedia): peter panned out here from springfield, mass [MiM] Lonely in a Limousine corroborates this, adding that the destination of the bus was the brewery bar (see THE CITY above), from which we understand that the "bus" is another framing of Dwight's "taxi" (see THE RIDE above): peter panned into NYC took the non-stop night into gay paris [LiaL] Math Is Money goes on to suggest that the bus, that is, Dwight's "taxi," was the means by which the Narrator returned home, which is correct as far as it goes (see 15TH AND FRANKLIN below): peter panned back into springfield, mass [MiM] But in all of these lines, the *other* meaning of "Peter Pan" as slang for PCP (see LISTED above) is operative as well. It was by the agency of a sherman down in The City that the Narrator got in trouble in the first place, and by the agency of shermans, again down in The City, that he gets himself out of trouble at the end. [*4]***3) Killer PartiesThe two key parties of the story --- Party Zero and the Final Party of LP, which become the metal bar party and the crucifixion party of THS --- are the two parties whose turning point is marked by the deployment of shermans: they are, literally, the killer parties, "killer" being understood in the slang sense of marijuana laced with PCP, i.e. a sherman (see LISTED above). [*5] [*1] The Narrator's against-the-odds bid for rescue and revenge that began with his capture at the Mission Party two weeks earlier gets a mention in the opening lines of Denver Haircut (see CARGO VAN above): He shaved his head at the airport In a bar at the end of the concourse. He said you're kind of catching me at a transitional time. I'm a bright light burning into a dark horse [DH] He's becoming a "dark horse" both in that he's turning toward the darkness of vengeance, and in the usual sense of being a competitor facing long odds ( wikipedia); it's not a coincidence that the other horse of that description is named "Chips Ahoy!," where "chips"=shermans (see LISTED above). [*2] Sherman City is a city full of shermans, and Riptown, apparently, is also one. From the ONDCP document ( ondcp): Rip -- Marijuana See Craig's comment from Tim's Twitter Listening Party ODP runthrough (text, in case the tweet rots: 'CF: A friend used to talk about “setting up a rip zone” which means a party. So I guess a Riptown would be a whole town that’s a rip zone.'): [*3] The fact that it's Sherman City that characterizes the clubs as "domes" now appears with a double significance: "domes" is not only a reference to the Pantheon and St. Peter's Basilica (see ROME and CHARLEMAGNE above), but also to "domes"=LSD, which like PCP is a hallucinogen (see LISTED above). [*4] Compare the "movie" account of the THS Crucifixion party in Almost Everything: Went to some movie. It was loud dumb and bloody. The third act took place in a wormhole [AE] Here too, "worm"=PCP (see the DEA and ONDCP documents linked at LISTED above: ondcp). [*5] This Party Zero/Final Party symmetry is observed in the static loop at the end of Fiestas & Fiascos, too; it's clear from the last lines of TFatBR that this is the sound of the Final Party nightclub fires blazing, but it also mirrors the clicks-and-hisses interval between the sides of the endlessly looping mixtape from Party Zero (see ON THE FLOOR: VISIONS above).
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