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Post by skepticatfirst on May 21, 2021 7:06:24 GMT -5
So much to take in here. I love the mapping of how The Narrator corresponds with The Eyepatch Guy, and especially the intriguing tease about how and why the characteristics of them are mixed up when we get to the THS story. Thanks! I hope things aren't going *too* fast now; I know it's a lot. I've been thinking about a thing this morning, which is a little bit outside of the story as such, but I'll pop in with it anyway: It seems pretty obvious that "dance" is a sexual metaphor, and that it's usually used to describe someone performing sexual favours for drugs. The very first time I heard Craig sing "dance" was when I first heard Chips Ahoy!, back in 2006. And the chours of that song is a little confusing to me in the light of all this. "How am I supposed to know that you're high if you won't even dance?" I know this refers to Mary, and how she's not letting Charlemagne touch her. But I think it's fair to say that this is mirrored in Lifter Puller as well, the way The Narrator returns to the parties to have a shot at getting laid with Juanita. Still: At this point, it should be pretty clear to the two narrators (The LP Narrator and the THS Charlemagne) that for these girls, dancing is strongly connected with doing drugs. Juanita dances in order to get drugs, and Mary takes drugs and then wants to dance. Is it just that this isn't all clear to Charlemagne at this point? And if we translate it into the LP world, shouldn't the narrator be painfully aware that Juanita -not- dancing, is the best way to tell that she's actually high? It's true that Charlemagne's not too bright, but that's not really what's going on here. The real answer, I think, is that the standards of storytelling are different between LP and THS. The LP story is really tight. If you can accept the starting premise that the Narrator likes Juanita enough and is singleminded enough to put up with a lot of shit, the rest is rock solid. Questions about the finer points of cognizance and motivation are going to have sharp answers. The THS story isn't quite like that; it holds together pretty damn well considering that it's weirdly remixed out of the LP story, but it's inevitably looser around the edges. When you say I know this refers to Mary, and how she's not letting Charlemagne touch her. But I think it's fair to say that this is mirrored in Lifter Puller as well, the way The Narrator returns to the parties to have a shot at getting laid with Juanita. you are 100% correct, these two things both go back to the same narrative source. But in terms of primacy, it's the other way around: the Narrator/Juanita episode is the original, organic, fully developed version; the Charlemagne/Mary episode is a remixed reflection of that original, and you can see the seams where it's been sewn together. The sentiment "how am I supposed to know if you're high if you won't let me touch you/won't even dance?" makes total sense coming from the LP Narrator: the experience with Juanita that was so amazing for him was precisely their shared experience of going to another world together (The City), getting high together in an innocent way (marijuana etc.), and having sex (going down on each other). It's not about being high as such, it's about sharing the high. It's the intimacy of her letting him know that she's high that he's after. In the THS rewrite, the no-sex-no-touching element is transferred to Charlemagne/Mary, and so this sentiment gets put into Charlemagne's mouth also, where it doesn't quite fit in the same way. But it's still a real sentiment and a good one to build a song around; so from Craig's position as a writer for whom the story isn't so much an end in itself as it is a song factory, it makes all the sense in the world to run with it. Does that make sense? The main thing is to focus on the LP story as the primary one, and to see the THS story as derivative; once you do that, all the THS fuzziness flips from "that's a little bit of a stretch, but OK" to "holy shit, on top of 20 other repurposed things that he packed into this scene, he found a way to work that in too."
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Post by skepticatfirst on May 21, 2021 7:18:01 GMT -5
FIRST BUSTLet's dig into the events of The LBI prior to the alpha couple's disappearance, working backwards from the end of the party. ***It's Labor Day weekend, and the gangsters have returned to the brewery bar for the first time since the original Party Zero. The plan is to use the three-day weekend to mount another epic bash. The holiday weekend promises a relaxed level of security at the still operating, but declining, brewery (see BREWERY BAR: THE HISTORY above). What could go wrong? The problem with this plan isn't self-evident, but it isn't hard to anticipate, either. Party Zero was not a party to leave no trace of itself on the premises. At the very least, the bathroom mirror was broken and bloodied ("the bathroom looks like wounded knee" [SGS]; see SMASHED HER HAND above), and the carpet in the barroom stained with blood ("the dance floor looks like normandy" [SGS]; "bloody carpets" [PJ]; see ON THE FLOOR: INJURIES above). The bar might no longer have been open to the public, but it was not yet abandoned (see BREWERY BAR: THE HISTORY above). Someone will have found the damage and reported it to the owners, who will have taken measures to prevent it from happening again. ***Exactly what measures did they take? There's a suggestion, made with respect to a different "club" in the THS world, that they did the obvious thing and changed the locks (compare "deadbolt locks" [SCity]), not that it made any difference in point of fact: Didn't make a difference when the owners came and changed the locks [SShoes] But that's not all they did. In a model application of early 90's surveillance technology, they also installed infrared motion detectors and bugs on the premises: little sister with your stereo sound crash at my place but you can't make a sound they've got wires in the walls rats in these halls yeah they've got cops at the malls they've got the spies on our stalls [TGatSD] still got bugs all over your bathroom [RfLB] and you and me and me and you and all our friends are under observation they got the cameras with infrared vision they got the radiation to remedy the gunshots they got cops and they got soldiers stationed around the nation [Brokerdealer INFHP] ***In short, the party did indeed get underway on Friday night as planned. But when the partygoers set off the motion detectors and the owners "went and called the cops" [SShoes], it got interrupted early: the pigs are comin outta the woodwork the pigs are comin in through the windows [SWH] the pigs came in so forcibly almost didn't bother me [LQ] rooftop cops and the deadbolt locks [SCity] and we all get freaked out when the guys come around with microphones riot police they've got the megaphones [TGatSD] Note here - the mention of "microphones" [TGatSD], consistent with "bugs" [RfLB] and "wires" [TGatSD] above;
- the reference, in a pun on "out of the woodwork" --- idiomatic English for "appear[ing] suddenly and unexpectedly" (link) --- to the prominent "woodwork" [SWH] of the brewery bar (see BREWERY BAR: THE LAYOUT above).
***Taken by surprise, the partygoers "all get freaked out" [TGatSD] and try to "get underground" (through the basement tunnels of the brewery complex, see BREWERY BAR: THE LAYOUT above) back to the "subway," here as elsewhere a metaphor for the rides that brought them to the party in the first place (see THE RIDE and THE GREATER TRIP DOWNTOWN above): 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 i hate these strychnine shakes, looking for a closer clawin through the record crates, primpin like a poser slippin through the subway grates, and you're tryin to get underground [TMS] The Narrator is driven out of the bar with the others; note the DStraps reference to the incongruous appearance of the cops amid the bar's faux woody decor: i got kicked out of a fern bar [DStraps] ***Confirmation that this bust happens during The LBI is found in both of the two main songs documenting that event (see LABOR DAY above), Cruised And Accused Of Cruising and To Live And Die In LBI: and there's laws against loitering so we all started walkin [CaAoC] friends like the beach patrol, they got the muscles, you can hold the soul [TLaDiLBI] The "beach patrol" appeared; the kids "started walkin" because their presence on the premises was unlawful. ***As noted upthread (see BREWERY BAR: THE HISTORY above), Craig's sketch of these events reflects the real-world Twin Cities party scene of that era ( link): But plural "busts" in Touch My Stuff isn't just a historically accurate generalization; there are in fact two busts in the story, this one during the LBI, and another one to come (see SECOND BUST below). ***Back to the particulars: the kids "all get freaked out" [TGatSD], but the Eyepatch Guy/Narrator, who with Juanita has bigger things to worry about, remains unusually calm ("almost didn't bother me" [LQ]); taking her by the hand, he runs with her out of the bar and down the stairs, where they finally stop for breath and begin to talk: i met this girl underneath the stairs she says she won't come up for air little sister with your stereo sound crash at my place but you can't make a sound they've got wires in the walls rats in these halls yeah they've got cops at the malls they've got the spies on our stalls i met this babe at a rave you know she took to me by the stairs [TGatSD] Score one for the steady type. Note that there's a passage in the solo song Calvary Court that sounds a lot like an account of this same incident: Where were all your friends when the pigs came rushing in And you were shaking in the waiting room? [CCourt] In "waiting room" we clearly recognize the vestibule/lobby/foyer etc. of the brewery bar (see BREWERY BAR: THE VESTIBULE above); it's entirely consistent with what we know of Juanita that she would be active in the back half of the bar, and would need some assistance to flee. ***Because we've started from the end of the party, a lot of the gaps in this picture can already be filled in. But to resolve them in an orderly way, we want to answer two questions next: 1) With "she won't come up for air" [TGatSD], the Narrator makes a double reference to the fact that he almost drowned Juanita the last time he saw her (see UNDER WATER above), and to the fact that he's now going to try to get her to "come up for air" a different way. If she quit him over the assault, why does she "[take] to him" [TGatSD] now? 2) This fictional party may have lasted longer than Craig's "ten minutes," but it was in any case short-lived. What happened before its abrupt ending?
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Post by skepticatfirst on May 21, 2021 8:43:39 GMT -5
Man ... in researching these topics, and now posting my findings, I've often wondered what the hell I'm doing to the profile of me maintained by Google and other advertisers. Starting to get some answers:
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Post by star18 on May 21, 2021 10:31:04 GMT -5
These discoveries are free at first, but the terms apply a little later.
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Post by skepticatfirst on May 24, 2021 5:18:58 GMT -5
COSTUME PARTYThe LBI is a big event, the first weekender after months of Return Parties on Wednesday nights, and the first time back in the brewery bar since Party Zero. Juanita, who's on the edge of outright boredom with the scene ("gets pretty grey after labor day" / "bored on the boardwalk" [CaAoC]), wants to make something special out of this one, which she does by organizing a costume party. [*1] In other words, The LBI is the party described in Hardware: took the handjob at the hardware store, made me feel just like a man it only took me eye contact to make him understand swinging from the porches, your dorothy outfit's gorgeous your costume party's awesome just some guys being anonymous dressed like a pirate with a head full of amyls and a gun full of ammo key to the bathroom, you were dressed like a viking, skintight biking shorts [Hardware] ***We've already looked at Hardware a couple of times (see THE BEARS and ROME above), but now we can finally explain what's going on with the costumes. "You" is Juanita; she's wearing a costume that's sexy ("gorgeous"/"skintight"). As for what the costume actually *is*, Hardware doesn't tell us; on the contrary, it reports two versions of her outfit: 1) "dorothy" 2) "viking" that both contradict each other directly, and also reference major running metaphors of the LP story (the Wizard Of Oz and football, respectively; see THE BEARS and EAST VS MIDWEST above), suggesting strongly that both are metaphorical, rather than literal descriptions of what she's wearing. [*2]But there's a third literal-costume candidate in the Lifter Puller lyrics, and it's an obvious one: looks like a blast she said it felt like a binge woke up with your friend in the indian fringes [SH1999] your friend in the indian fringes looked an awful lot like frampton [LPvtEotE] Juanita's wearing a caricature sexy "Indian" costume. The solo song Wild Animals describes its construction --- suitable for a costume, but not for actual clothing, and revealing: ... a difficult dress With burlap and feathers pressed up against mesh [Wild Animals] We recognize this same costume from the "indian fringes" [SPayne] and "fringes and feathers" [SShoes] of THS as well; the fringes are produced by the unhemmed burlap ( link). Obviously this kind of costume is racist; I'm not going to dig up internet pictures, or document the offensive names that were used to refer to it, just to prove that it was a common thing as recently as the 90's and 00's; but it definitely was. Craig is merely describing something he's seen in real life, here. And leaving aside the sexy variant, "indian" costumes made of burlap were very common for kids as well. I myself remember being dressed in one on multiple occasions (a kindergarten play, YMCA "Indian Guides," etc.); their popularity was due in part to the fact that the materials were super cheap, and you could just hand the kids a pair of scissors and Elmer's glue and let them decorate the fabric themselves. Speaking from my personal experience, the most common decorations were the fringes of the burlap itself, feathers, pieces of colored felt, and sequins; which leads me to assert that and i was so impressed with your sequin dress [JBS] is another reference to Juanita's costume. As we'll see, Jeep Beep Suite is mostly about the events of The LBI. ***To come back to the other Hardware costume: the elided subject of "dressed like a pirate" is the Narrator. This line, which marks the first appearance, chronologically, of the Eyepatch Guy in the story, tells us something very important: namely, that he first wore the eyepatch as part of a pirate costume for the sake of the party, and only afterward adopted it as a uniform along with the Eyepatch Guy persona. ("I guess we all got pretty close to the roles we chose to play" [Spectres] ...) The idea of adopting this persona came to the Narrator as the result of two things that happened while he was wearing the costume. 1) He "took the handjob" [Hardware] from one of the gangsters, resetting his standing among them from one of subservience to one of equality; it "made [him] feel just like a man" again, with the power to do something about his situation in their world. [*3] 2) Juanita attached herself to him in that persona ("could you be the boy who takes me away?" [CaAoC]; see EYEPATCH GUY and LABOR DAY above), giving him a new influence with her that he lacked in his own right. The fact of Juanita's attraction lets us work out something about how *his* costume is constructed, too: i was standing in my sister's raincoat, you said that i looked debonair the long island cops, they pulled off the top they were wastin those longhairs, i just happened to be there [NC] Like the "overcoat" that was part of Craig's own documented pirate outfit ( link), the Narrator used his "sister's raincoat" for his costume for The LBI. Juanita said he looked debonair in it. The rest is consistent with what we know, too. The cops burst into the party and started wasting the gangster "longhairs" (see FIRST BUST and HESHERS above). One of the cops grabbed the detachable hood of the raincoat, but it came off ("pulled off the top"); leaving it behind, the Narrator made his escape with Juanita. ***The reflection of this party in the THS world leads to some very interesting observations. In LP, "your party" is Juanita's costume party, whereas in THS, "your party" [HF] is Holly's birthday party --- which throws into relief the fact that Holly's birthday party is *also* a costume party. Consider: - Gideon comes dressed as a magician ("long black shawl" [SN], "stovepipe hat" [Swish], "magic wands" [MM]; Here Goes discussion: link)
- Mary comes dressed as an "Indian" ("White Swan" [SN] was a Native American scout in Custer's cavalry regiment, and, like Judas, a traitor: wikipedia; compare "faithless in fringes and feathers" [SShoes], and see Here Goes discussion: link).
- Holly as hostess sets the costume agenda: "She said the theme of this party's the Industrial Age/ And you came in dressed like a train wreck" [Weekenders].
The seems-a-little-complicated THS blending of the "fringes and feathers" of the "Indian" costume and the "stylish tatters" [NS] of "dressed like a train wreck" [Weekenders] is now much better explained. There are namely *two* events, one from each of the two "weekenders" in the Lifter Puller world: 1) Juanita arriving at The LBI 2) Juanita stumbling in from the bathroom in Party Zero that simultaneously cast their shadows on Mary's appearance at Holly's birthday party in THS. [*1] Juanita really is "the queen of the clubs" [DStraps]; there's other evidence besides "your costume party" [Hardware] to indicate that she's able to exert a commanding influence on the Scene's social agenda, but we'll come to the rest slowly (see JEEP ENCOUNTER: ORIGIN, BACK TO THE CITY, and INVITED below). Her influence is owed to the fact that, unlike the gang's "crusty girlfriends" (see ORIGINS OF IMAGES above), she's hot: those chicks were just so dumpy [TFatBR] i like some funky drums but i hate some chunky drummers and i saw what your girl did last summer [SH1999] The girlfriends (the "chesterfield chicks") hate her because she's an interloper and uptown girl (taking "pearls" in the literal sense, as opposed to the drug sense) who's blowing their boyfriends ("filthy mouths"): and all these chesterfield chicks, they hate the camel lights girls with their filthy mouths and their long strings of pearls [LiaL] But Juanita doesn't care: The girls gave her glares but the boys were quite pleasant [OftC] [*2] Both "dorothy" and "viking" costumes are compatible with sexy, in any case: Dorothy as a fetish figure is proverbial, and Twin City Viking hotness from the era is immortalized on the back cover of The Entertainment And Arts, and in the video epics of The Hawaii Show ( youtube). [*3] The emphatic "only took me eye contact to make him understand" [Hardware] suggests that he's conscious of being on the other side of the usual "makin eyes" [JBS, LSifL, CSongs, HF, WaW, Oaks].
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Post by skepticatfirst on May 25, 2021 5:33:35 GMT -5
BOREDThe triumph of boredom becomes official in the wake of The LBI ("gets pretty grey after labor day" and "bored on the boardwalk" [CaAoC]; see LABOR DAY above), but the truth is that the kids have been getting increasingly bored throughout the summer, for reasons that have everything to do with drugs. ***The excitement of the Wednesday night Return Parties scene is all about getting high; by corollary, any time spent not high or getting high is boring: and now you're 24 and the shore's a bore everybody's waitin on the very same score [DStraps] waiting on the wednesday shipment [RfLB] In the same way, the kids' whoring themselves to the dealers is blamed on boredom, because the point of their doing it is to get drugs to relieve the tedium. See Back In Blackbeard (for "dancin"=sex see DANCING above): (and mom and dad) 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] See also Emperor (for "multiplex" compare "we mostly eat it [dick] in the back half of the theaters" [MoC]; for "pushed every button" compare "every single speaker gets blown" [YDGK]; for "felt my very best" compare "the fists, the foam and the fingerless gloves they felt so right" [RtF]): and on the elevator down at the multiplex i just pushed every button, i was just bored i guess as i stopped and started i felt my very best [Emperor] ***But it's not only waiting for the drugs that's boring; it's the fact that the drugs themselves are losing their kick (compare "Dead receptors" [OwtB]). This is the meaning of the last lines of Hardware: there's war against euphoria, we're up on the battle line that didn't seem like fifteen beers [Hardware] The kids are fighting to regain their euphoria, but it's a losing battle. Here at The LBI, the Narrator has taken major doses of meth (fifteen "beers"=meth, see LISTED and ROME above), but doesn't feel anything like what he would expect to feel with that amount; Juanita has taken some similar quantity ("your eyes lit up like fifteen beers" [Emperor]), and has the same problem. They've learned, in the words of the THS Narrator, that we can't get as high as we got on that first night [FN] ***It's unlikely that the verb "maintain" needs documentation in this sense, but just in case, we have the evidence of the 2014 Magnet interview in which Tad describes the same progression in his own addiction ( link): By the end of the summer, the LP kids are just maintaining; the ineffective "fifteen beers" of Hardware and Emperor (both referring to the Labor Day Weekend party) are reflected in the "maintenance beers" of Epaulets: We'll dissipate. We'll disappear. In neon, cigs, and maintenance beers [Epaulets] The "neon signs/fluorescent lights" of The LBI / bathroom are there (see LABOR DAY above), as are the "cigs" of the gangster dicks (see THE QUEUE above), as is "then she disappears with the Eyepatch Guy" [TLaDiLBI] (see LABOR DAY above). ***Upthread (see ON THE FLOOR: VISIONS above), I wrote: There will be still more to say about this later; but already we can see how boredom has become a defining feature of the kids' landscape, and how the story is turning into a war between the Narrator and the Scene for the soul of Juanita. The "clicks were in her head" argument he's making here is a major front in that war: he's arguing that she doesn't have to be bored, if she chooses not to be; she doesn't have to be bored, if she comes with him. But she's not listening to him yet. We'll revisit this argument when the "teachers" get involved and take it to the next level (see SHEPARD'S MANSION below).
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Post by skepticatfirst on May 26, 2021 8:29:51 GMT -5
COMMEMORATIVE PLATESNow that we've worked out the broad outlines of what happens at The LBI, let's go back and fill in a key detail from the beginning of the party. We've established that Juanita really has become "the queen of the clubs" [HDaD], and that she's the presiding genius of the costume party in particular (see COSTUME PARTY above). To celebrate the occasion of their first weekender and first return to the bar since her "introduction" to the Scene, the gangsters add a special touch of their own, putting up a little festive decor in the form of prints of the Party Zero gangrape photos (see MAGAZINES & VIDEOS above) pinned to the wooden beams of the walls. Evidence for this is found in a few places. ***The most important source of evidence is Traditional Village. We've already looked at the final two lines of the song (see SHORT BY AN OUNCE and YOUR LAUGH above), but glossed over the point that the Narrator sees the face of "thief" Juanita *in a picture after the fact,* not in real time. Context established in the foregoing lines makes it clear that that's what's happening: They marched us into museums. We were always all carsick and bored. Stood in front of some painting And I just started laughing When I saw the expression on The thief to the left of our Lord. The pastor's reminiscing about the holiday pageant And it's coming off more creepy than nostalgic. And the guys that he said would make us fishers of men Were just grifters and grey alcoholics. ... Yeah I saw the whole score. In the sideways smile on the thief to the left of our Lord [TVillage] By way of background, several points here come in for comment: - "always all carsick and bored": for some time now, the kids have been getting rides to the parties, and getting sick from coming down, in Dwight's taxi (for "taxi" see THE GREATER TRIP DOWNTOWN and FRONTAGE ROAD; for "sick" see THE QUEUE above); they're bored because they're maintaining, losing ground against the dead receptors (see BORED above).
- "museums": the clubs of the Nice Nice. Note that "museum" implies a gallery of pictures, suggesting that more than one photo is posted.
- "the pastor's reminiscing about the holiday pageant": the symmetry with "guys" (the gangsters) suggests that the "pastor" is Dwight; the fact that he's "reminiscing" about what transpired, besides being "creepy," makes clear that this is a later party, in the aftermath of Party Zero (for "holiday" see CALENDAR: FIRST PASS below).
- "the guys that he said would make us fishers of men": the gangster dealers, who like Dwight are described with the attributes of Jesus as "Lord" and "Savior," are in reality no such thing.
Now we come to the critical bit, the "painting," which is a not a painting at all, but a photograph. What does it show? The reference to "the thief to the left of our Lord" is an allusion to the thief crucified at the side of Christ on the cross (Matthew 27:38). In this framing, "the thief" is Juanita (see A LITTLE BIT above); "our Lord" is dealer Dwight (see SHORT BY AN OUNCE above). The Narrator is not mentioned here, but he's in the photo with them too. The "expression" on Juanita's face is her drugged-out, stumbled-up-sideways smile when the Narrator is forced to go down on Dwight in the corner. ***Let's pan out for a moment to the level of the story as a whole. There are many descriptions of particular pictures in the LP/THS lyrics. As varied as they appear to be, it turns out that all of them describe one of just two literal photos. This one --- the Party Zero shot of the Narrator blowing Dwight while Juanita looks on sideways --- is the first of the two; it's the one that's referred to by the lines in TVillage above, as well as by DStraps, SM, JBS, NC, CatCT, DH, YDGK, and (visually) by the cover of AKM. Let's look at these one by one. ***We've already noted that Juanita says "like that" [DStraps] in reference to the Narrator blowing Dwight (see THE QUEUE above): you look so cute like that, i want your autograph [DStraps] The point of her "autograph" joke is precisely that there's a photo of the event for him to sign. ***We recognize an allusion to the same photo in the shadow over Jesse's words in Sketchy Metal: And his son, our savior You get your picture in the paper if he lets you in his trailer [SM] In this THS context, "our savior" is literally Charlemagne, but he's shadowed (compare "our Lord" [TVillage]) by Dwight, and it's the shadow significance that hits with precision: if he singles you out for sex, they'll publish a photo of it. ***We recognize this photo in the second verse of Jeep Beep Suite (which we've already connected to The LBI, see note on "sequin dress" in COSTUME PARTY above): ... we get up to the register i said mister, can i please just have this paper i think it's got my picture [JBS] Here "i" ("i was so impressed with your sequin dress" [JBS]) is the Narrator. The "register" of the "drugstore" is a gangster selling drugs at the party. Besides corresponding with "paper" in the SM quote above, "this paper" has two meanings: - First, "paper"=meth (see LISTED above). As is habitual at this point, the kids are trying to get the dealers to "give them something chemical" [RtF] even though they don't have money ("can i please just have"; see TWO TWENTIES above). The Narrator refers to the picture by way of suggesting to the dealer he's talking to what he's willing to do for a hit (it's difficult to bring that sort of subject up; you can't just put it out there, you have to know the perfect words to say).
- Even if the question is really just cover for a transactional offer, it is also formally a request to be allowed to keep the printed photo ("i think it's got my picture"). This wouldn't be the only time one of the kids thinks of taking a compromising photograph out of circulation; Juanita tries to do the same with the other photo in the story ("you never gave me back that photograph" [Bloomington]).
***Unlike Juanita, who never got the other photo back, the Narrator *did* get this one; we know this, because it's the same photo that's described in Nassau Coliseum: i've got a picture of us as sophomores i'm in a sportcoat, you're in a stupor you still look super, just super sonic kind of bionic, sort of ironic i was impressed, you fell out of your dress you fell off of the porch swing, we were kind of a mess we were kind of uncertain as to where we should kiss didn't think that you'd diss me did you sleep with that hippie? [NC] All the bits at the end of the verse about the kids being a mess (see ROOFIES above), about the kiss (see THE KISS above), about the Narrator's fresh shock that she's fucked Dwight and the gangsters in the bathroom (see HESHERS, WALKED IN and SMASHED HER HAND above), and about the dress coming off (see DAWN and ON THE FLOOR: CARPET & HARDWOOD above), we recognize as descriptions of Party Zero. Juanita's "bionic"='joint laced with PCP' (see LISTED above). They're "sophomores" in the literal sense of fools who've just gotten the worst possible first lesson in wisdom. (And while it's pointless to speculate, I'm imagining the "sportcoat" as one of those 90's Nautica windbreaker jackets, something like the one Craig is wearing in the fourth photo, from 1995, reachable from the link here: http://instagr.am/p/B7WJv_PjHum Finally, Juanita looks "sort of ironic" because she's wearing the "sideways smile" described in TVillage. It's the same picture. ***Above, we suggested that multiple of the photos from Party Zero were on display at The LBI. Besides "museums" [TVillage], there are a few strong pieces of evidence to suggest this. [*1] First, there's the cover of Almost Killed Me, done up as a collage of old-school underground porn photos on display. ***Second, among the Party Zero mixtape soundtrack details laid out in Denver Haircut (see ON THE FLOOR: MUSIC above) is the following: The montage set to The Time Of Your Life [DH] A "montage" is a series of photos presented via a film sequence. This could just refer generically to the photos taken for "those magazines" [TMG, SSC] (see MAGAZINES & VIDEOS above); but the reliably "reminiscing/nostalgic" [TVillage] character of montage when it's used in movie credits suggests that these are a specific reference to the printed copies displayed at The LBI. ***The third and strongest piece of evidence for the display of multiple photos is the one provided by You Did Good Kid: he came into the club with the commemorative plates a depiction of the slaughter at Shiloh and the light in his eyes was diminished but they announced his arrival [YDGK] The details here are recognizable, and especially interesting: - "he came into the club": like in Jeep Beep Suite ("walked between these velvet ropes" [JBS]) and Traditional Village ("they marched us into museums" [TVillage]), specific mention is made of the Narrator's entrance to the party; we're at the short-lived opening of The LBI.
- "the commemorative plates": these are the photos, plural, "commemorative" of Party Zero in direct analogy with "reminiscing/nostalgic" [TVillage].
- "a depiction of the slaughter at Shiloh": "slaughter" is used of the Party Zero gangrape in Manpark and TS&tT (and evidently At Least Not Tonight as well); "Shiloh" was the first major slaughter of the American Civil War (wikipedia), and the beginning of Grant's "war of attrition" [OwtB, TSTux] (wikipedia. For the framing of the Lifter Puller story as a reprise of the American Civil War, see CONVENTIONS above, but especially SHERMAN CITY below).
- "the light in his eyes was diminished": the LP shadowing here is especially fun; the light in the Narrator's eyes is diminished, because he's wearing an eyepatch. ("They announced his arrival" suggests that, in costume, the Eyepatch Guy is transformed into an important guest; see COSTUME PARTY above.)
[*1] There's additional weak evidence of the display of multiple pictures in the fourth verse of Cattle And The Creeping Things: She said I was seeing double for three straight days after I got born again It felt strange but it was nice and peaceful and it really pleased me to be around so many people Of course, half of them were visions, half of them were friends from going through the program with me Later on we did some sexy things, took a couple photographs and carved them into wood reliefs [CatCT] Reviewing this closely, it's pretty clear that Holly's description of her resurrection can be read, via extended double entendre, as a description of Katrina's resurrection at Party Zero (see STUMBLING & RESURRECTION and KATRINA above). While the part about "wood reliefs" is still obscure, it's at least plausible that "took a couple photographs and carved them into wood reliefs" is meant to refer to Party Zero photos of the kids tacked on the woodwork of the bar at The LBI, where both the vertical posts and upper horizontal beams are ideally placed to support the gallery display of pictures:
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Post by muzzleofbees on May 26, 2021 15:27:37 GMT -5
I sometimes feel that stopping by this thread is the internet equivalent of walking up to some of your favourite musicians, only to say "I really liked that show, you guys were so good, thank you for doing this". I just don't know what more to say, haha.
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Post by skepticatfirst on May 27, 2021 8:25:44 GMT -5
I sometimes feel that stopping by this thread is the internet equivalent of walking up to some of your favourite musicians, only to say "I really liked that show, you guys were so good, thank you for doing this". I just don't know what more to say, haha. All good, man! The hard work is all done, now I'm just unrolling it. Good aha moments coming pretty much on a daily basis at this point, I hope.
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Post by skepticatfirst on May 27, 2021 8:35:30 GMT -5
TWO AT A TIMEBack again to the disappearance of Juanita with the Eyepatch Guy at the end of the party. Besides CaAoC and TLaDiLBI, there are two other important accounts of their departure that we want to look at before moving on. ***1) Jeep Beep SuiteThe first of these is the first verse of Jeep Beep Suite: driving down the street in my jeep givin beeps to all the people on the sidewalk listen to the loose talk, eye to the sky, ear to the mci everybody's talkin 'bout a woman that's a friend of mine, picked her up at the airport she said i just got back and i'm already bored [JBS] There's lots to connect here: [*1] - "my jeep": we've already linked the title of Bruce Bender with the Eyepatch Guy (see CHARLEMAGNE above), and anticipated the fact that the Narrator in the first verse of the song itself is addressing Juanita in the character of the Eyepatch Guy (for more detail, see LAZY EYE below). In that song, he drives a Jeep; here, he drives a Jeep also. It's the Eyepatch Guy who's speaking.
- "a woman that's a friend of mine, picked her up at the airport": the Eyepatch Guy picks up Juanita at the "airport," i.e. the Nice Nice qua brewery bar (see AIRPORT & LBI above).
- "she said i just got back and i'm already bored": all summer long the the kids have been losing ground to boredom; Juanita had hoped that a return to the brewery bar would let her recapture something of the high of that first night, but now they've just got back (the party was broken up not long after it began) and she's already come down from a disappointing peak despite taking something on the order of fifteen doses (see BORED above).
***2) SubletThe second account is in Sublet. Sublet is a fantastic and obscure song; we've had to come a long way to be able to push past the college-indie veneer and "oops, he meant the Parthenon" hurdles to do some real analysis. But we're finally here. The key to the song is that the Narrator is talking to Katrina ("you") about Juanita ("she"), who's still a suboccupant of the drug-addicted body that's become Katrina's space. The first verse is a description of the Narrator and Juanita at Party Zero: guess it all started in your apartment you were in europe, she was your sublet and i thought that she looked like an angel i put my mouth up against her halo [Sublet] - "guess it all started in your apartment": like "her southside hardwood floor apartment" [SGS] (see ON THE FLOOR: CARPET & HARDWOOD above), this "apartment" is the brewery bar. There are several reasons for the "apartment" framing (see CANDY'S ROOM below), but the main one here is that it serves as a pretext for the "sublet" metaphor. Everything started in the bar, with Party Zero.
- "you were in europe, she was your sublet": again, Juanita is described as Katrina's "sublet" because she's a suboccupant, not of the "apartment"=bar, but of the *body* now occupied by Katrina, like Mary somewhere inside the body occupied by Holly in THS (see KATRINA above). "Europe" is, again, the brewery bar (see GEOGRAPHY: SELF-TITLED ALBUM above.)
- "and i thought that she looked like an angel": it's Juanita the Narrator fell in love with, not Katrina.
- "i put my mouth up against her halo": he went down on Juanita early in Party Zero, before the birth of Katrina (see SUCKING OFF EACH OTHER above).
With the second verse we come to The LBI: after your party in front of your roommates we walked out the doorway and got on the subway we went two at a time through the turnstiles we went two at a time through the turnstile [Sublet] - "after your party": after The LBI was broken up; "your party" because it was her costume party (see COSTUME PARTY above).
- "in front of your roommates": in front of the gangsters of the Nice Nice (the "greasers" of "Greece"; see GEOGRAPHY: SELF-TITLED ALBUM above).
- "we walked out the doorway": this is the Eyepatch Guy disappearing on foot with Juanita; for "walked" compare "stepped out of the neon signs" [TLaDiLBI] and "we all started walking" [CaAoC].
- "and got on the subway": they're heading for the place where the partygoers' cars are parked (for "subway"=cars, see THE GREATER TRIP DOWNTOWN above); compare "slippin through the subway grates, and you're tryin to get underground" [TMS] of the kids fleeing the bust (see FIRST BUST above). More on this next (see THE RIPPLE AND THE CHAMPAGNE below).
- "we went two at a time through the turnstile": this line is a really tremendous bit of Craig Finn deception. You can hear it a hundred times and never hear anything but the description of a couple's romantic escapade, slipping through the subway turnstile together on a single fare. Only on stopping to examine the words closely do we realize that the expression "two at a time" is used of *multiple* pairs in succession (like the animals entering Noah's ark). There are *two* pairs here: the Narrator/Eyepatch Guy leading her, and Juanita/Katrina following him.
More Sublet coming up shortly. [*1] The second line is difficult and obscure, so I'm putting my handling of it in a footnote. Each of the three phrases listen to the loose talk, eye to the sky, ear to the mci [JBS] describes an act of vigilance (listening, looking, listening). The subject, in continuation from the first line ("in my jeep") is the Narrator. The third line suggests a conclusion that he's reached through this vigilance: everybody's talkin 'bout a woman that's a friend of mine [JBS] which means the three objects of his vigilance must add up to "everybody." Who exactly are they? a) First, a comparison of "eye to the sky" with The Langelos' can't you tell that these helicopters haunt me [Langelos] suggests that it refers to looking out for the cops who busted up The LBI, in analogy with the memorable helicopter scene from the then-recent 1990 film Goodfellas. (The Langelos line refers, in fact, to a similar flight after a later raid; see SECOND BUST below.) The Narrator and Juanita have escaped from the cops, so he can't *listen* to them; but he knows they're still after him and after Juanita, and he's still watching out for them. b) Second, "listen to the loose talk" appears to be symmetric with don't listen to the whispers of the kitchen knife, the bathtub and the rain [TPatP] in TPatP; this suggests that the "whispers" are the luring voices of the gangster dealers, inviting Juanita to the suicide of sex-and-drugs half-death (for "kitchen" see THE KITCHEN above; for "knife" see CRUCIFIXION above; for "bathtub" see BATHROOM STALL above; for "rain" compare "white rain", and see THE FOAM above). This reading appears to be confirmed by other examples: sex is just whispers and abdomens [BBender] The way the whispers bit like fangs in the last hour of the party [SN] Listen up closely to the lit tips of your cigarettes. Can't you hear the serpent hiss? Saying, sweet baby, suck on this [MM] c) Finally, "ear to the mci" refers to the phone company MCI Communications (which emerged as a major US telecom after the breakup of AT&T in 1984, and in 1993 launched the then-famous 1-800-COLLECT service for collect calling). All the phone calls (both real and metaphorical) in the Lifter Puller story are calls between Juanita and the Narrator, either in his own person or that of the Eyepatch Guy; the person on the other end of the "mci" call must be Juanita herself, who's presently in the Katrina state. In short, these expressions appear to refer to the (a) cops and (b) gangsters from whom he's trying to shield Juanita --- compare the evidence of Rental, describing a later episode in another car: tinted windows, no one can see you no one can get to us [Rental] and to (c) Juanita inside Katrina, with whom he's trying to connect over the "phone" --- compare, again, the evidence of Heavy Covenant: In the taxi to the airport ... Then right back at my phone to find a friend It seems a single body is a couple different people in this one life [HCovenant]
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Post by skepticatfirst on May 28, 2021 6:41:01 GMT -5
THE RIPPLE AND THE CHAMPAGNESo the Eyepatch Guy and Juanita have slipped out of the party, past the cops, and have made their departure on foot through the woods of the Party Pit. Where do they disappear to? ***From TMS, we know that they were heading for the "subway," i.e. back to the cars that brought them to the party (see FIRST BUST above); Sublet informs us that they did in fact make it aboard the "subway" (see TWO AT A TIME above); JBS specifies that this destination is literally the Narrator's Jeep (see TWO AT A TIME above). So far so good. Separately from these accounts, TGatSD (recounting their flight from the party, see FIRST BUST above) tells us that the Eyepatch Guy invited her back to his place: little sister with your stereo sound crash at my place [TGatSD] while CaAoC confirms that they in fact made it back to his place and started drinking: we ended up back at my place, we mixed the ripple and the champagne [CaAoC] So where exactly is "[his] place"? We find clues to the answer in unexpected corners: 1) In the aftermath of her visit to "[his] place," Juanita is left with the impression that he doesn't have a home phone (we're in the era before cellphones): he always takes his calls at the megamall [Bloomington] 2) His home bar is stocked with hobo wine. The line we mixed the ripple and the champagne [CaAoC] refers to a joke about mixing Ripple and champagne to get "champipple" ( urbandictionary) from the 1973 "Superflyer" episode of Sanford And Son ( wikipedia); the point of the joke is that if you get your hands on some champagne, you can mix that, instead of ginger ale, with your Ripple to make a really high-class drink. Ripple, per urbandictionary ( link) is "globally recognized as the bum wine of bum wines." 3) At the time of his flight from the cops through the park (see FIRST BUST and TWO AT A TIME above), he's eating his meals in his car: 'Twenty-three' was a shot of straight frustration Flying down the pathways, he was dying in the bars He mostly ate all his meals in his car [TL] The conclusion is there for the drawing: the Narrator is living in his car now; "my place" [CaAoC] *is* the Jeep [BBender, JBS]. More confirmation of this to follow (see JUST STARTED TALKING below). ***The fact that Juanita doesn't recognize the Eyepatch Guy as the Narrator as soon as she sees the Jeep has a few important implications. 1) It means that Juanita hasn't seen the Jeep before. It's plausible (and we'll come back to this topic later, see RASTAFARI GUY below) that the Narrator has acquired it recently, since she broke up with him; not only does he no longer need a place to bring her back to, but by shedding the costs of apartment rental, he's in a better position to support his "hundred dollars a day" [SM] drug habit. 1a) The implication that he's moved out of his place and into his car shortly before Labor Day is consistent with September 1 being, by a significant margin, the statistically likeliest date for lease turnover in student/twentysomething neighborhoods in the US in general, and in the Twin Cities specifically ( link). 2) It means that the Narrator and Juanita have departed from their Return Parties practice and come to the party separately. This is consistent with the fact that she dumped him after he tried, abortively, to kill her (see UNDER WATER above); it can be presumed that she came with Dwight, as usual, and that the Narrator, being now definitively persona non grata, came on his own. 2a) The fact that Dwight hasn't appeared (and, as we'll see, won't appear) to "reclaim" Juanita indicates that he's one of the partygoers who's been detained by the cops. (We do know that Dwight is present at The LBI, because he recalls the party by that name in Manpark.) [*1] ***Fleeing the party, then, the Narrator and Juanita make it to his Jeep in the parking lot on the far end of the Party Pit, and climb in. The Narrator's goal is to get her out of there, but now his costume trips him up. On the one hand, Juanita's only talking to him because she doesn't know it's him; but it's also true that the Eyepatch Guy is a stranger, and while she's definitely intrigued by the persona, "she won't go to a second location" [Lanyards] with him ("never go to a second location [with a stranger]" was a safety tip launched into mainstream/pop culture by a 1991 Oprah interview: link). So they don't drive anywhere (see also LAZY EYE below); instead, the Narrator pulls out some cheap white wine and six-packs of clear beer that he's got stashed behind the seats, [*2] and (as described in CaAoC) they start drinking and talking. For future reference, we'll refer to this part of The LBI as the Jeep Encounter. To unpack what happens there, let's begin with the drinking. The kids aren't drinking for drinking's sake. Juanita's a mess after doing too much meth and peaking way too soon (see BORED and TWO AT A TIME above); the Narrator is using the alcohol to try to bring her back carefully to earth. Emperor, which as we've already seen focuses closely on the events of The LBI (see CHARLEMAGNE and BORED above), adds some color to his attempt to do this: your eyes lit up like fifteen beers ... up all night, i'm getting drunk and weird we've got clear beer, i think you're gonna like it here among the windmills, baby we can just chill we could all be friends again [Emperor] The distinction between "clear beer" and "beers" is emphatic: like "tallboy cans" [YGD, BBlues] in the THS world, "clear beer" unambiguously means low-alcohol lager, by contrast with "beers"=meth (see LISTED above). The Narrator is, in fact, trying to guide her through a controlled "Tecate landing" [EC]. The meaning of the Entitlement Crew pairing of "Tecate landing" with what was always obviously Mary's "Tequila takeoff" [EC] wasn't clear before this ( heregoes), but now it comes into focus as a reflection of Juanita's LP trajectory, and we realize that we have, in fact, seen this scenario in THS already: - here, we have the LP Narrator in the Jeep using beer/wine to try to recover the Juanita lost inside of drug fiend Katrina.
- there, we have Charlemagne in his car using wine to try to recover the Mary lost inside of drug fiend Holly (the operation referred to with "wandering the Sonoma" [MoC], "going through the program with me" [CatCT], "coming down" [CiS], "hard to slow down when you're picking up speed" [SK], and "detox dream" [HM]: heregoes [linked and following posts]).
So much for the drinking. On to the talking. [*1] We've already noted that Nassau Coliseum uses the story of the concert bust to retell the story of the raid on The LBI (see COSTUME PARTY above): in this framing, the "guy selling domestics/ [who] got himself busted/ didn't have a license/ couldn't be trusted" is evidently Dwight. [*2] The evidence for what they're drinking is surprisingly detailed; rather than let it derail us now, we'll come back to it later (see INDIAN FRINGES below).
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Post by skepticatfirst on May 31, 2021 17:28:46 GMT -5
JUST STARTED TALKINGThe encounter starts out simple, with the two of them drinking to come down; but soon enough the Narrator remarks that he's "getting drunk and weird" [Emperor] and that "things got kinda strange" [CaAoC]. [*1]This weirdness comes on the heels of both drinking and "just started talking" [CaAoC]. What exactly did they talk about? ***From the Narrator's point of view, he's successfully picked Juanita up [JBS]; now he's trying to bond with her in conversation, to draw her out. That's part of what's going on in "baby we can just chill/ we could all be friends again" [Emperor] (in the wake of their violent fight, see UNDER WATER above); it's also what's happening in the third verse of Sublet: and i thank you, wanna say i'm sorry that i got your sublet and i lit her cigarette and she smoked and i made some progress we've all got our little secrets [Sublet] We know that he did make some progress, because Juanita is eager to keep talking to him afterward (as described in Bloomington, TPatP, and Mono; see EYEPATCH GUY above). There are lots of secrets in and around their talk, too, some his and some hers: the fact that the Eyepatch Guy is actually the Narrator; the fact that she's bored with the scene and wants to leave [CaAoC]; other things that we'll find out about later. At any rate, he has these goals for the conversation, and manages to advance them to some degree. ***A more interesting question is whether *Juanita* has goals for the conversation. On the one hand, like Holly hoping to get to California, she's hoping the Eyepatch Guy might be "the boy to take me away into fortune or fame" [CaAoC]; on the other hand, like Holly in the car after her resurrection (the Crucifixion Cruise), she wants him to hook her up with more speed. Her "taking" to him is consistent with both the one and the other; as they get closer to each other in the Jeep, he can't be sure if it's Juanita being genuinely responsive to him, or Katrina trying to engineer a transaction. [*2] This is the meaning of "cruised and accused of cruising" [CaAoC]: Juanita's been cruised by the Eyepatch Guy; he's unable to shake the suspicion that she's cruising him too. [*3]***How exactly does this play out? First, there's a lot of evidence (see below) that Juanita's "cruising" turns into a literal offer to fuck the Eyepatch Guy; The Langelos indicates specifically that, like Holly in the backseat trying to "put her mouth around a difficult question" [CC], she tries to blow him. [*4] And this is where things get weird: because, against everything the Narrator's done to get to this point, and unlike everyone else on the Scene, he declines the offer. Why does he decline, when the chance to fuck her again was his main motivation for following her back to the parties in the first place (see ROME and EAST VS MIDWEST above)? There's good reason (compare "I've had kisses that make Judas seem sincere" [Citrus]) to imagine that he doesn't want to fuck her in Katrina mode, when he suspects that she's just trying to suck him off for drugs. But as it turns out, it's not so much that he doesn't *want* it like that, it's that he *can't* fuck her even if he wants to. *He can't get it up.* There's no shortage of explanations for his failure: her drug-seeking proposition isn't what he wants; he's already taken the handjob earlier (see COSTUME PARTY above); he's sick from drinking all night and coming down [Emperor, ALNT]. The fact remains that it's a failure, and that it has big repercussions. Let's start by reviewing the evidence for what happened, broken up loosely by song. ***1) The Gin And The Sour DefeatIn the same verse of TGatSD that describes the Narrator meeting Juanita during the bust and spiriting her away (see FIRST BUST above), we find these lines: little sister with your stereo sound crash at my place but you can't make a sound [TGatSD] We've already shown that Juanita's "stereo sound" refers to the noises she makes during sex (see STEREO SOUND above); "my place" is the Jeep in which the Narrator is living now (see THE RIPPLE AND THE CHAMPAGNE above). What he's saying here means: you can come back to my car and "crash" [*5], *but we're not going to have sex.* Stronger evidence is found in the phrase "the gin and the sour defeat" itself. This is a reference to the 1991 Simpsons episode "War Of The Simpsons"; there, a booze-fueled party is highlighted by the fight of a drunk married couple, John and Gloria, in which Gloria says ( link): The implication is unambiguous: the Eyepatch Guy can't cut it, man-wise, either. ***2) The Pirate And The PenpalFrom the Narrator's point of view, the central fact of the encounter is his failure to perform; but Juanita interprets what's happened very differently. For her part, she feels physically rejected by the Eyepatch Guy, concludes somehow that she's not sexy enough to attract him, and begins to idealize what she thinks she can't have: you're fifteen and you're six feet tall you're flat-chested and you're angry about it don't wear those push-up pants to the football dance, you've got enough nicknames already i asked the postmaster, he said penpals really can't be going steady ... yeah so he's a criminal at least you know he loves you for your brain [TPatP] Two important notes about these lines, before getting to the main point: - Juanita isn't fifteen years old; like Holly when she died (and Jesse when she didn't), she's "roughly twenty years old" [CSongs], a little younger than the 24-year-old Narrator ("now you're 24" [DStraps]).[*6] "Fifteen" here refers to the "fifteen beers" [Hardware, Emperor] in her system at this moment (see BORED above); "six feet tall" refers to the companion fact that she's peaked way too early ("that didn't seem like fifteen beers" [Hardware]; "decreasingly high" [Viceburgh]), which is to say that she can't get as high as she got on that first night, like Alice "when she's ten feet tall" (see the famous lyrics to Go Ask Alice: link; and compare the "decreasingly high" THS Alice reference in "First it makes her feel tall, then it makes her feel small" [CiS]).
- Besides the drug-fueled sex party allusion in "football dance" (see DANCING, LISTED, and THE BEARS above), this reference to the American institution of a homecoming dance to kick off the high school football season at the beginning of the school year confirms that the scene is set on Labor Day weekend.
And to come to the main point: "postmaster" and "criminal" both refer to the Eyepatch Guy (who "puts his instructions in my mailbox" [Bloomington], see EYEPATCH GUY above); in both instances, what he says to Juanita is understood by her as a message of physical rejection: "penpals really can't be going steady"; "he loves you for your brain" [TPatP]. ***3) The LangelosIn looking at Hardware, we'd noted that the Narrator (see COSTUME PARTY above) We'd noted, too, that it was Juanita's attachment of herself to him while in costume that gave him the idea of adopting the Eyepatch Guy as a persistent role. But it's the final verse of The Langelos, which we've already identified as an account of a later bust (see TWO AT A TIME above), that points back to the Jeep Encounter as the moment when the role was really handed to him: walked real fast down the boulevard tourists taking pictures of the sidewalk stars and all those pretty boys with the sideways scars all stood at attention Never asked to be king of these rats this position it just kind of fell in my lap [Langelos] The "rats" are the gangsters' kid victims (see RATS & CATS above), whom the Eyepatch Guy will lead to their revenge in The Flex And The Buff Result (see WE ALL WENT DOWN below); the moment this authority was conferred was when Juanita fell in his lap to go down on him (pun on sexual "position"), and he declined. ***4) Bruce BenderDespite this physical rejection, Juanita does believe that he loves her ("at least you know he loves you for your brain" [TPatP]), and not only because they're "penpals" [TPatP]. The fact is that, while they didn't have sex, they did kiss: kissed you goodnight once or twice in my car i detest the midwest, but the east is a priest [BBender] The Narrator has followed Juanita here because the "midwest" is boring without her, but the "east is a priest": there's no sex happening there. We can now see that the "midwest" of Bruce Bender is not only related to, but strictly the same as, the "windmills" of Emperor (see EAST VS MIDWEST above): they're two different words used for the same image, framed by the Narrator in the same moment in the story: here among the windmills, baby we can just chill we could all be friends again [Emperor] We see too that the platonic character of "baby we can just chill/ we could all be friends again" [Emperor] is significant (compare THE RIPPLE AND THE CHAMPAGNE above); the Narrator wants to persuade Juanita that it doesn't matter if sex isn't happening, that they can just be friends again. ***5) At Least Not TonightApart from the fact that it comes from the THS side of the equation, At Least Not Tonight is pretty much free of the narrative scaffolding we'd normally use to connect the lyrics to the story; but there's one line (in the voice of the THS Narrator, "sick" from coming down, see above) that really can't refer to anything other than this scene: So so sick that I won't even stiffen [ALNT] [*1] This strangeness is mentioned in the THS version of the car encounter too, nuanced by Holly's double-vision awareness that the person she's talking to is more than one person: "It felt strange but it was nice and peaceful and it really pleased me to be around so many people" [CatCT] (see COMMEMORATIVE PLATES above). [*2] The ambiguity of Juanita's motives here is directly comparable to the ambiguity of the Party Zero kiss: there, the Narrator was unable to distinguish her contrition from her sincerity (see CONTRITION and SINCERITY above); here, he can't tell whether her come-on is genuine or mercenary. [*3] One of my great frustrations in this investigation is that I know there's a legal phrase "[X]ed and accused of [X]ing" to which "Cruised And Accused Of Cruising" is an allusion, but I can't recall what it is, and no amount of internet searching can scare it up. I doubt we're missing much of importance by not having it; but if anyone is able to identify the phrase, please share. [*4] That she tries to go down on him now, during the Jeep Encounter at the end of The LBI, is demonstrated in one of the THS reflections of the event: Then she kicks off her moccasins. The buckskin always sucks me in [Epaulets] The "moccasins" and "buckskin" belong to Juanita's "indian" costume. [*5] The ONDCP document ( link) defines the particular sense of "crash" intended here (see comments on Juanita's "Tecate landing" [EC] in THE RIPPLE AND THE CHAMPAGNE above): Crash -- Sleep off effects of drugs [*6] We've already proposed (see COMMEMORATIVE PLATES above), and the Narrator's reference to himself "now you're 24" [DStraps] confirms, that "sophomores" [NC] must be metaphoric when applied to both kids; but Juanita appears to be literally the age of a college sophomore.
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Post by muzzleofbees on Jun 1, 2021 1:51:59 GMT -5
Quick question here: With so many similarities between the car scenes in LP and THS, is there anything suggesting that "theater" being a metaphor for a car?
I'm mostly thinking about the line from Almost Everything, about "sit in the back of theater just drinking and talking", since "drinking and talking" seems to be very close connected to the comedown of Juanita (and also the comedown in the THS story), but I also see how "listen up at the back of the theater, I think they really love one another" could be an euphemism for sex in the backseat of a car.
I'm not sure if this holds up, and if the metaphor could possible extend to movies too. If I remember correctly, you interpret "all ages hardcore matinee shows" as the rape in the brewery bar, right? And I guess the stuff about the chaperone telling The Narrator to leave also is set elsewhere than in a car, but it could also be consistend with Dwight telling The Narrator to get out of the car, so that he can begin his late night/early morning hardcore show with the (literal) sophmore. The Narrator is reduced to a spectator.
As usual, this is more a random thought or digression than a real alternative way to read this stuff, but the latest chapters have made me curious. And the further we dive into these narratives, the smaller the geographical scope seems to get.
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Post by skepticatfirst on Jun 1, 2021 6:40:34 GMT -5
Before anything else, apologies for the late post yesterday, it was a holiday here and I forgot it was Monday. No big deal, I'm sure, but I do want to avoid confusion and stay on schedule. Quick question here: With so many similarities between the car scenes in LP and THS, is there anything suggesting that "theater" being a metaphor for a car? I'm mostly thinking about the line from Almost Everything, about "sit in the back of theater just drinking and talking", since "drinking and talking" seems to be very close connected to the comedown of Juanita (and also the comedown in the THS story), but I also see how "listen up at the back of the theater, I think they really love one another" could be an euphemism for sex in the backseat of a car. I'm not sure if this holds up, and if the metaphor could possible extend to movies too. If I remember correctly, you interpret "all ages hardcore matinee shows" as the rape in the brewery bar, right? Most of the time, "theater" looks like another metaphor for "club" to me; the "listen to the back of the theater" line in particular has got to be primarily a dark joke about the Narrator's experience hearing Juanita yelling while she's getting fucked in the bathroom of the brewery bar. But, beyond even the usual disclaimer about Craig's aggressive ambiguities making both readings possible, in this case there really is some evidence for a car metaphor as well; the alternative Star Wars Hips lyrics have Talked straight through the drive-in movie [SWH alt lyrics] which seems pretty explicit. The huge scope of meaning carried by movies/videos/visions, projectionists/directors/actors, etc., makes it pretty likely for "theater" to be used in some pretty aggressive ways. And I guess the stuff about the chaperone telling The Narrator to leave also is set elsewhere than in a car, but it could also be consistend with Dwight telling The Narrator to get out of the car, so that he can begin his late night/early morning hardcore show with the (literal) sophmore. The Narrator is reduced to a spectator. I'd never even thought about the specific line When the chaperone said that it was time for me to leave [MN] as referring to the Frontage Road, but that too has got to be right. Excellent catch. As usual, this is more a random thought or digression than a real alternative way to read this stuff, but the latest chapters have made me curious. And the further we dive into these narratives, the smaller the geographical scope seems to get. Hold tight! The geographical world is about to get a little bigger (Thursday), then it's going to get a lot bigger (next week).
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Post by skepticatfirst on Jun 1, 2021 6:51:01 GMT -5
I should add one more note about
Sat in the back of the theater just drinking and talking [AE]
Nothing says that "back of the theater" has to refer specifically to the backseat in order for this to be an indirect allusion to a car scene. But I'm pretty sure the Jeep doesn't have a full back seat (check out Wrangler models of the late 80's early 90's), plus there's explicit evidence (coming up tomorrow) to the effect that the Narrator and Juanita are sitting in the driver's and passenger's seats, respectively. Just want to make sure to get the literal level nailed down first --- once that's solid, it'll be much easier to feel out the metaphoric details.
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Post by skepticatfirst on Jun 1, 2021 6:59:30 GMT -5
LAZY EYEThe story of the end of the Jeep Encounter is related in Lazy Eye, told from the perspective of the Narrator as he sits in the driver's seat of the Jeep. It's a simple song; we know enough now to be able to go through the whole thing line by line. ***The first verse begins: let me lick your windows clean, take a clearer look at me [LE] The voice is the Narrator's; talking to Juanita, he thinks: your vision's cloudy with drugs ("her vision's kinda cloudy" [TLaDiLBI]); let me get you cleaned up (see THE RIPPLE AND THE CHAMPAGNE above). get up off your lazy eye and look into my brighter side [LE] Through an impressive fusion of the expression "get up off your lazy ass" ("come on, let's go") with "lazy eye" --- which is both an indictment of Juanita's failure to see, and a way of working in a reference to the Eyepatch Guy via the common name for amblyopia (see EYEPATCH GUY above) --- the Narrator silently chides her: "look at me; don't you recognize the brighter me in here, behind the dark front of the Eyepatch Guy?" and i'm not afraid to quit, i'm just used to it so i deal with it [LE] Juanita *is* afraid to quit; the Narrator has cajoled her into accepting alcohol in lieu of the drugs she wants, taking a hard line that sounds pretty hypocritical coming from an addict who's done a lot of meth tonight himself (see BORED above). But he's not a hypocrite; he's pretty much only going through this to stay after Juanita, and is ready to quit if he can just get her to come away with him. she's takin off her makeup and she knows we'll both be better off without it [LE] Ultimately, his persuasion has prevailed: "takin off her makeup" means she's coming down; she recognizes that it's the better thing for both of them to come down (the metaphorical meaning of "makeup"=drugs explains why *he'll* be better off without it too; see PHARMACY GOODS above). *** let me treat you like a queen, it could boost my self esteem [LE] See the comments about the narrator's self-worth and struggle to recover standing upthread (see ROME and COSTUME PARTY above). dig your nails into my hands when i show you to my friends nitrous oxide laugh at your birthday bash right before you crashed [LE] These are backward-looking references to Party Zero, to the Narrator's crucifixion ("nails into my hands"), Juanita's laugh, and the crash, specifically (see CRUCIFIXION, YOUR LAUGH, and THE CRASH above). she's takin off my glasses and i've only seen her once before without em [LE] Up to this point, the only time the Narrator has seen Juanita without his glasses on was during the Party Zero gangrape (cued by the references to Party Zero in the preceding two lines). "She's takin off my glasses" is not literal, but combines two observations in a double meaning: one, she's making a move on him, trying to initiate sex, which normally would involve the glasses coming off; two, the reason he's not wearing his glasses is because he's got the Eyepatch Guy costume on, which by definition excludes wearing glasses (a fact to which I can attest from personal Halloween experience). *** let me drop you like a bomb, make me put your clothes back on [LE] This shows the effect on Juanita of his failure to respond: it hits her like a bomb; she takes it as a rejection (see JUST STARTED TALKING above). see you walkin to your car, the way your tears reflect the stars [LE] Crying, she leaves the Jeep. It's still nighttime, with the stars still out; but these are also the "stars" of the speed still in her system, the speed for which she's desperate ("shootin stars" [MV], "your stars are shootin up and down my arm" [SBackwards]; see DRUG SLANG above). "Her" car, as we'll see, doesn't belong to her --- she's in no shape to drive. Rather, it's the car that will turn out to be her *ride.* i'm not saying how cause it's not allowed but we're even now [LE] He doesn't intend to give up his progress by revealing who he is, and in fact doesn't, as we know from the phone calls still to come (see EYEPATCH GUY above). She's rejected him all summer long (see EAST VS MIDWEST above); now he's rejected her. They're even. she's takin off tomorrow says she's gonna start all over when she gets there [LE] Dawn's coming up again, and she's going to leave; where she goes, we'll find out after wrapping up the story of The LBI (see PERFUME COUNTER GIRL below). *** let this be a testament to every lightbulb filament that burnt itself out before it got turned on let this be a lesson learned for every single finger burned reachin out for something that was already gone [LE] In "before it got turned on" we have another subtle reference to the Narrator's inability to get it up when she comes on to him (see JUST STARTED TALKING above). The rest is testament to his disappointment and his failure, and to the fact that she's now gone.
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Post by skepticatfirst on Jun 2, 2021 8:34:56 GMT -5
REAR VIEW MIRRORAt this point we've examined enough key elements of the Jeep Encounter to put them all together and fill in the remaining gaps. ***When they first get into the Jeep, Juanita's in rocky shape: only high enough to be semi-stable, and that not for long. The Narrator gets her drinking, talking, and smoking cigarettes, trying to ease her down for a "Tecate landing" [EC]: she smoked and I made some progress [Sublet] smokin and drinkin, gettin sick trying to kick [LiaL] As Juanita re-emerges from her suppressed state (as Katrina's "sublet"), she beomes more human, but also more unstable as her jones kicks in. The talking brings them close; coming close, they kiss; with the kissing, things heat up; in the heat of the moment, she tries to go down on him. But when her overture elicits no response, she's hurt, and loses her tenuous grip on herself completely. ***From Lazy Eye, we know that she cries, and that she leaves the Jeep to go to another car (see LAZY EYE above). This is confirmed by Bruce Bender, in which the Narrator relates that he kissed her "goodnight": kissed you goodnight once or twice in my car i detest the midwest, but the east is a priest and all these greasers are creeps, throwin rocks at my jeep [BBender] The "greasers" are the gangsters (see HESHERS above), scattered around his Jeep in the parking lot: heshers hangin on the hoods of the cars [TCMaMG] The lot where the Narrator is parked is the same lot where Dwight left his car during the weekend of Party Zero (before having the kids "walk the remainder" [YDGK] through the park to the brewery; see BALTIMORE BELTLINE below). The gangsters who've driven to The LBI are using this same lot; the ones who made it safely past the raiding cops to their "subway" (see FIRST BUST and THE RIPPLE AND THE CHAMPAGNE above) have regrouped here afterward, at a safe distance from the site of the raid. For as long as the Narrator continues to make progress with Juanita, the surrounding heshers, with their whispered offers of meth ("creeps throwing rocks," where "rocks"=meth, see LISTED above; compare "I'm sure they'll come up in the parking lots and at parties" [WaW]; for "whispers" see TWO AT A TIME above), can be kept at bay. But when she becomes violently distressed at his lack of response, he loses control of the situation: fuck intimacy, now she wants speed again. Hysterically, she demands that he give her something to get her high, like what the gangsters are offering. ***The Narrator's response to this demand is documented in Emperor [*1]: and i've got stuff to pick you up, what were you expecting? [Emperor] Trying to save the situation, he says that he'll give her what she wants, [*2] and pulls out a bottle of amphetamines ... but they're only Sudafeds. We've already seen that "her vision's kinda cloudy" in the opening verse of TLaDiLBI refers to the Jeep Encounter (see LAZY EYE above), and the next line of the song [*3] does too: the sudafeds are downs, the crowd cheered when she threw up her beer [TLaDiLBI] Sudafeds *are* amphetamines, not downers; but Juanita wants meth, and for her this lightweight over-the-counter shit is worse than nothing. Angrily, she shoves open the door of the Jeep, the exertion making her throw up all the beer the Narrator's been plying her with, while the lurking gangsters cheer. [*4] A snapshot of this moment is captured in The Gin And The Sour Defeat (also about The LBI, as we've seen, see FIRST BUST and JUST STARTED TALKING above) as well: there's always chicks throwing up in my car there's always trash hanging out at the track they got their copenhagen hats [TGatSD] Several important details here come in for comment: - "trash" is the gangsters, the ones carrying roofies ("roach clips," see LISTED above), the tweaky "trashers" of Viceburgh.
- "the track" is a reference to the railroad tracks in the vicinity of the Party Pit (Swede Hollow) and the brewery. The main Swede Hollow parking lot (on the opposite end of the park from the brewery) overlooks a major artery of these tracks, but so do several other lots in the vicinity; more on this shortly (see BALTIMORE BELTLINE below).
- the "copenhagen hats" are painter's caps promoting Copenhagen chewing tobacco (compare Skoal chewing tobacco, referenced in The Bears); the connection to the "painter's cap" [HM] worn by newly-jumped-in gangster Gideon is self-evident (compare also the liner-note alternate lyrics to Sangre De Stephanie). These hats aren't merely a true-to-life detail of gangster fashions at that place and time; in the same way that Skoal bandits and menthol tobacco serve as a drug metaphor (see "Mint," "Fresh," and "Menthol" at LISTED above), so the Copenhagen branding is here being framed as an advertisement for drugs concealed under the hatband (see "beneath your baseball cap" [DStraps], "blues from his hatband" [LDoL], and SHOES AND SOCKS above). Finally, note that the guys wearing these visored "copenhagen hats" are the same "guys with their eyes in their visors" that appear in Katrina And The K-Hole.
***So Juanita flees the Jeep, drops to her knees, performs her service, gets a hit of real meth, and becomes Katrina again, while the Narrator, still sitting in the driver's seat of the Jeep, takes it all in: and in the rear view mirror i saw the resurrection [Emperor] This is the same reversal of his "progress" [Sublet] that is described in the back half of Entitlement Crew: Tecate landing. Tequila takeoff [EC] It's also the background of the second meaning of a line from The Gin And The Sour Defeat that we've already looked at once (see FIRST BUST above): she says she won't come up for air [TGatSD] He's been working all night to get Juanita to "come up for air" from inside Katrina; but she won't do it. ***Juanita's gone back to the gangsters and turned into Katrina again; now, as foreshadowed by "see you walkin to your car" [LE], she leaves with them. Her resolution to "start all over when she gets there" [LE] is reflected in the "clean break" of Emperor (just as "a quaalude and a vacuum" refers to her getting "quaalude"=drugs for a "vacuum"=blowjob, see SEX FOR DRUGS IN METAPHORS above); in fact, Emperor's entire "moving out" trope is an extended portrait of this same departure: you said your head was finally clear you told me that you're leaving here [Emperor] The Tecate landing was on the point of succeeding ("your head was finally clear"), bringing Juanita back, just for a moment; but now she's leaving again. The extended Emperor metaphor gives more detail about "your car" [LE], i.e. the car in which she leaves: and a quaalude and a vacuum means a clean house and a clean break and her knee shakes but no earthquake and her ride home's on the freeway at the exit by the campus, it's gonna bring her back to connecticut [Emperor] She's jonesing so hard she's shaking; there's another suggestion that she's been on her knees. The Narrator doesn't know where they're going, but in his mind's eye he sees her "ride home" taking her away by the usual route on I-94 (see FRONTAGE ROAD above), accessed via the "exit by the campus," that is, the Mounds Blvd exit by the Metropolitan State University campus, adjacent to the Party Pit: Only she's not getting the usual ride home with Dwight; this time, she's going with the gangsters. The Narrator himself failed to "connect" with her, i.e. either to have sex with her or to give her the drugs she wants (for the definition of "connect" see DRUG SLANG above): and i'm sorry when you came through that we didn't connect [SBackwards] and now she's going "back to connecticut," a place where she's going to "connect" for sure (see GEOGRAPHY: THE FIRST FIVE TRACKS above). ***So the Narrator is left sitting in his Jeep while Juanita rides off with the gang to wherever they're going. [*5] Remembering his "i lit her cigarette" [Sublet] from earlier in the night (see JUST STARTED TALKING above), we can put the pieces together and identify this moment as the situation underlying the end of The Mezzanine Gypoff: i lost my limousine license ... i'm just her cigarette lighter and i'm her limousine driver i like to ride inside her [TMG] He wants to fuck her ("i like to ride inside her"); in analogy with Dwight's "taxi," his Jeep is the "limousine" in which he'd hoped to drive her home. But he "lost [his] license," that is, lost his chance both to fuck her and to take her away with him, and now he's left sitting there alone, "lonely in a limousine" [LiaL]. These same details --- the "limousine" is his Jeep; she's been smoking in the passenger seat; he's left alone in the driver's seat to brood on his "shot of straight frustration" [TL] --- let us read the second verse of solo song Indications as an account of the same incident, with confirmation that this was the episode that pushed him over the edge: [*6] Turns out these big black cars aren't really so fancy There's smoke in the seats and the drivers, they get so enraged [Indications] [*1] We can't pass by the opening lines of Emperor without taking a moment to deal with their labored phrasing and generally bizarre placement at the beginning of the song: and i've got stuff to pick you up, what were you expecting? and in the rear view mirror i saw the resurrection [Emperor] The awkwardness of these lines is due to the unusual fact that *Craig is here cobbling his own narrative together out of homages to other songs*. The two halves of the first line are names of songs from Craig's 1994 I've Got Drugs mixtape: I've Got Drugs (The Frogs, 1989) What Did You Expect? (Archers of Loaf, 1994) http://instagr.am/p/B-Zo3qejYJx I've Got Drugs is from The Frogs' "It's Only Right And Natural," an album whose lyrics anticipate many familiar Lifter Puller expressions and themes, including farcical homosexual situations, and whose song titles feature the terms "greaser" and "savior," and "pinned" in a sexual sense. The second line, too, is built from a pair of homages: Rearviewmirror (The Frogs, cover of Pearl Jam song, 1995) Resurrection (Common, 1995) Among the indie/punk titles of the mixtape and the other three songs, the hip-hop hit "Resurrection" looks out of place, but in fact this isn't the only place Craig references it: the second half of the Back In Blackbeard line and now i've done it on the d-line and bathed in all your bass lines [BiB] is lifted from its second verse ( link): I bathe in bass lines [*2] Compare Charlemagne, who, after trying to bring Mary down in the back seat, panicks and promises to give her what she wants: Saint Barbara, I'm calling your name Don't let me blow up We'll hook it all up I guess there's fields of speed where there's fields of grain Saint Barbara, don't let me explode I can feel the whole scene Starting to corrode When we're fooling around on the frontage roads [DLME] [*3] The whole opening verse of TLaDiLBI is about what happens when Juanita leaves the Jeep; "breakdown" looks like an ambiguous reference both to her emotional breakdown in the passenger seat, and to the packet of drugs she got from the gangsters in the parking lot (see TWO TWENTIES above). In the former reading, the first "crowd" refers to Juanita and the Narrator and their alter egos in the Jeep (compare "so many people" [CatCT]); in the second reading, "the crowd cheered" makes an out-of-order reference to what happened before the "breakdown" (an easy stretch in the service of a double entendre). [*4] Juanita throwing up her beer en route to her parking lot "suicide" appears to be another referent of outside the club is where we spill our drinks in memory of all those guys that didn't make it till the dawn [SCity] [*5] This is the second sense of "The Gin And The Sour Defeat" (for the first, see JUST STARTED TALKING above): "gin" as a regular gangster identifier (see LACED SUBSTANCES and LISTED above) signals the Narrator's defeat, in the struggle over Juanita after Dwight's arrest, at the hands of the gang. [*6] This reference to the Narrator's "rage" recalls Charlemagne's backseat plea, "don't let me explode" [DLME]; see footnote [*2] above.
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Post by skepticatfirst on Jun 3, 2021 5:27:40 GMT -5
BALTIMORE BELTLINETime, finally, to ask: where exactly is the parking lot? ***It's been clear all along that the lot is located somewhere near the western end of the foot paths that wind through Swede Hollow (see AIRPORT & LBI and LEAVING above). But with the new information that it's located next to the railroads ("there's always trash hanging out at the track" [TGatSD], see REAR VIEW MIRROR above), we can narrow it down further. Here's an aerial image of the area, in which the railroad tracks are visible running through from NW to SE. The situation of the image with respect to established landmarks is shown by two chokepoints that the kids pass through on their way to/from the parties at the brewery bar: - yellow X: the "7th street entry" [BBreathing] where the footpath through Swede Hollow passes under East 7th St and into the park.
- yellow Y: the top of the Mounds Boulevard entrance/exit ramp to/from I-94 ("the exit by the campus" [Emperor]), by which Dwight's taxi and the other cars enter and leave the area.
The red letters, A-G, all represent candidates for the parking lot of the story. We'll examine them one at a time, enumerating the points for and against each. ***A) The actual parking lot of Swede Hollow park itself (street view: link) PRO: Of all the candidates, this is the closest to the brewery bar (about 1/2 mile away by foot); it's both directly connected to the paths through the park and adjacent to the railroad tracks. CON: There are lots of reasons to doubt that this is the lot in question. First, it's tiny, with only 8 parking spaces (excluding those for disabled motorists). Second, because of the way the bluffs are situated, it hardly provides a view of the railroad at all (see the street view link). Third, it belongs to the park and is located on a major thoroughfare: even back in the early 90's (when the area was rougher than it is now), a car left parked there for a weekend would attract police attention, as would a crowd of "heshers hanging on the hoods of the cars" [TCMaMG]. It seems unlikely that this is the lot we're looking for. ***B) The parking lot of the electrical substation on Commercial Street (street view: link) PRO: Connected by footpaths, secluded. CON: Doesn't overlook, and isn't even adjacent to, the railroad tracks. Very small lot. Close to a mile from brewery. Presence of cars might not attract attention quickly, but (due to public infrastructure) would certainly elicit a response once noticed. Can't be this either. ***C) Parking lots behind Minnesota State Government buildings on Lafayette Rd (street view: link) PRO: Spacious lot, overlooking tracks. Accessible on foot via informal path across tracks further south. CON: Not particularly close to brewery (3/4 of a mile); more importantly, the gangsters couldn't use a state government parking lot without attracting instant attention. Zero chance that this is the lot. ***D) The lot behind the present-day Minnesota Music Cafe on Payne Avenue (street view: link) PRO: Adjacent to tracks, sort of overlooks them. Close to the brewery (1/2 mile) and readily accessible on foot. CON: As with (A) above, the bluffs interfere substantially with the view of the tracks. The lot is bigger than (A) but not much bigger. More importantly, it's a private lot, and certain to be watched over the course of a weekend. Doesn't seem likely that this is it. ***E) The easternmost lot of the Union Depot train station (street view from overpass running above: link) PRO: This is not only adjacent to the tracks, but has such a great view of them that there's a picnic area (appearing on the satellite view above) set up next to the lot to take in the view. The lot is enormous, and being the one furthest from the train station, it's largely empty (again see satellite view). CON: It's paid parking for the station (street view: link), meaning that vehicles left there overnight would be subject to scrutiny. It's not really secluded, meaning that heshers on the hoods of the cars would attract attention. It's also far from the bar, and the path (via the 4th Street underpass) is indirect, making it at least a full mile on foot. Doesn't seem possible that this is the lot. ***F) The undeveloped lot just north of the Union Depot train station parking area (street view with two interesting features, an underpass on the left, and a pretty cool Minnesota musical reference on the right: link) PRO: Unlike the paid parking lot for the station, this area is open for anyone to drive their car into. It's big. And it has something else important: the underpass on the left of the street view image above is the *only* bridge with a railroad passing over it in the entire area. Strictly speaking, it's an underpass, not a proper bridge, and there's very little room (even taking into account the second section 30 yards further east, see street view from far end: link) to congregate and drink beneath it; but it's really tempting to see this and to connect "back then we used to drink beneath this railroad bridge" [YLHF] with the Jeep Encounter in the parking lot. CON: It's closer than the station lot, but still about a mile away from the brewery bar. It's obviously not a public access lot, and it's in full view of the station lot gatehouse, so cars or kids would still attract attention. And as tempting as the "railroad bridge" identification is, it's really hard to imagine the kids leaving the lot to go drink in the cramped, wet space of that underpass. Probably the best candidate so far, but it still doesn't seem possible that this is the lot. ***G) The Kittson Street parking lot in the dead-end loop across the train tracks from the park entrance (street view from the northern end: link; street view from the southern end: link; street view from the middle looking east over the tracks: link) This, now, is attention-getting. Consider the points in favor: - It's very close to the brewery bar, only a couple hundred feet beyond the parking lot of the park itself (A).
- It's accessible on foot; in the satellite photo you can see the unpaved but well-worn path that leads from behind the present-day Minnesota Music Cafe straight across the tracks to the Kittson Street lot. See also the street view and close-up satellite photos at the end of the post.
- It's right next to, and overlooks, the railroad tracks.
- It's a large parking lot, with room for a lot of cars.
- It's an actual parking lot, so you're allowed to park your car there, plus it's not paid parking and it's not a private lot, so you can leave it there, or sit on it all night, without attracting attention. It's no-man's land.
- It's in a sunken area, passed only by local traffic speeding down the Lafayette Bridge exit ramp, in a dead-end loop, half-hidden under the 7th Street overpass, and in great part blocked from view by the shadow of the car wash next to it. It's the definition of secluded.
That this, far and away the best of all the candidates, is the parking lot we're looking for is confirmed twice: 1) It's located directly beneath a railroad bridge --- not a railroad going over a bridge, as we might have expected, but *a bridge going over a railroad.* The line "back then we used to drink beneath this railroad bridge" [YLHF] is in fact a THS reflection of the Jeep Encounter. 2) The same "trash" (gangsters) from "trash hanging out at the track" [TGatSD] appears a second time in The Mezzanine Gypoff, in connection with the Narrator losing his limousine license (see REAR VIEW MIRROR above); there, Juanita is described resorting to the trash's stash in the attempt to wash herself clean: i lost my limousine license i took a little tip from the way insider wrote it on her hip with a magic marker washed it all off with a warm wet wash cloth stashed in the trash back behind the car wash [TMG] which is consistent with the description of the kids in Jeep Beep Suite, already established to be primarily about The LBI (see COSTUME PARTY, COMMEMORATIVE PLATES, TWO AT A TIME, and THE RIPPLE AND THE CHAMPAGNE above): entertaining the soldiers, makin eyes at the sailors and we walked between these velvet ropes, went straight for the bathroom soap tried to make ourselves clean tried to make ourselves sparkle, i mean india seems just like a dream i left with five bucks and i lived for five months like a queen [JBS] as well as Holly's statement in the THS version of this event in Same Kooks: She said it's hard to feel holy when you can't get clean Now she's bumping up against the washing machines [SK] That plural "washing machines" may have an immediate THS referent in Charlemagne's-soul-plus-Gideon's-body in the Crucifixion Cruise backseat, but it has the shadow of the Lifter Puller parking lot gangsters all over it. To sum up, the "trash hanging out at the track" is the same as "the trash back behind the car wash"; these are references to the same scene in the Kittson Street lot, overlooking the track, and situated behind the car wash. [*1] ***With that, back to The Gin And The Sour Defeat: the newspapers are suppressing information wanna talk about the chick with the chalk outline on the side of the baltimore beltline [TGatSD] It's clear now that the "baltimore beltline" (a railroad: wikipedia) refers to the train track across from the Kittson Street lot; this is where Juanita, having once again been resurrected as Katrina after the failure of the Jeep Encounter, once again "died" (hence the "chalk outline" [TGatSD], compare "chalk on the sidewalks" [LQ]; see HALF DEAD and REAR VIEW MIRROR above). And she didn't just "die": this time, in getting her "ride home" [Emperor] with one of the gangsters, she vanished. That's why the Narrator wants to talk about her; she's literally disappeared, and the newspapers haven't reported a word about her disappearance. But that's the next chapter in the story, which we'll come to (see PERFUME COUNTER GIRL below) after closing out The LBI. Images of the Kittson street lot: 1) Street view from the northern end, with a clear view of the footpath down the embankment behind the present-day Minnesota Music Cafe: 2) Street view from the southern end, with a clear view of the situation of the parking lot behind the Downtowner Car Wash: 3) Street view from under the bridge, facing the tracks, again with a view of the footpath (the Narrator's Jeep, parked in the place of one of these cars, looks out on the same view): 4) Satellite view with a closeup of the lot and the worn footpath across the tracks: [*1] I actually wrote to the St. Paul library "Ask A Librarian" service (and sent them a donation --- public libraries FTW) to ask them to check the St. Paul Yellow Pages from the late 80's and early 90's, and can confirm that the Downtowner Car Wash (now Mister Car Wash, but see the street view image from the south above) was the first car wash to appear in this location, and that it opened here in 1993-94. Note that the Downtowner Car Wash does not appear in the 1992 St. Paul Yellow Pages (first image), but does appear in the 1994 version (second image). From 1992: From 1994:
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Post by skepticatfirst on Jun 4, 2021 8:23:00 GMT -5
INDIAN FRINGESNow that the events of the Jeep Encounter are established in sufficient detail for us to be able to recognize allusions to it, it's worth going back to tidy up two ambiguities: (1) the beverage on offer in the Jeep; (2) the indian fringes. ***1) The BeverageThere's a lot of evidence that the Narrator and Juanita were drinking wine in the Jeep, and a lot of evidence that they were drinking beer. In cases where Craig's lyrics present strong ambiguities between two readings, the answer is usually not one or the other, but both, and this case doesn't even really involve an ambiguity; there is, after all, no reason why the Narrator couldn't have had both wine and beer stashed behind the seats, and that Juanita couldn't have drunk a lot of both. But to summarize the evidence: Beer- "we've got clear beer, i think you're gonna like it" [Emperor]: unambiguous evidence that the Narrator offered Juanita beer.
- "Tequila takeoff, Tecate landing" [EC]: unambiguous evidence that the alpha girl was in fact drinking clear beer.
- "the crowd cheered when she threw up her beer" [TLaDiLBI]: unambiguous evidence that Juanita had been drinking quantities of beer.
Wine- "we mixed the ripple and the champagne" [CaAoC]: unambiguous evidence that Juanita was drinking wine, possibly champagne.
- "Now we just need something to celebrate/ I wanna open some bottles up/ I'm getting tired/ Of all these styrofoam coffee cups" [SK]: a THS reflection of the Jeep Encounter (see BALTIMORE BELTLINE above), with again an allusion to champagne in "celebrate." The "styrofoam coffee cups" detail is compelling evidence that she's drinking wine, rather than beer.
- "We spent a few months just wandering the Sonoma" [MoC]: a distant THS reflection of the LP event, but unambiguous evidence for wine.
- "Flat champagne and inbound trains" [Spinners]: no more than the reflection of a reflection, but again suggestive of wine (=literal "flat champagne"), and maybe actual champagne.
- Even in a THS-only world, Mary's characteristic wine-drinking already appeared to be focused on the Crucifixion Cruise backseat as her Wedding at Cana moment (heregoes); now that we see this episode as a reflection of the LP Jeep Encounter, it seems especially likely that the wine theme has a concrete origin with Juanita in the Jeep.
Both- "She had quite a few drinks/ You had one or two less" [WA]: only a reflection, but "drinks" is ambiguous (though more suggestive of beer than wine. We'll link this line to the Jeep Encounter in JEEP ENCOUNTER: ORIGIN below).
- "The banquet beers with emotions and wine" [R&T]: clear beer (Coors, the Banquet Beer) and wine both explicitly mentioned in the context of a wedding.
- "White wine and some tallboy cans" [YGD]: only a reflection, and unconnected to further context; but in view of their combination as a regular theme, a strong suggestion that both beer and wine were involved.
***I think the way to read this evidence, both in terms of its literal meaning and its evolution through successive reuse of the same story elements, is as follows: In the original Lifter Puller story, Juanita and the Narrator were drinking both clear beer in tallboy cans, and cheap white wine (not red; it's Labor Day weekend and it's hot) in styrofoam cups. The Narrator's living-in-his-car status leads to the hobo wine "ripple and the champagne" joke. The stage is set for later elaboration of beer, wine, and champagne themes in THS and elsewhere. In the main THS reworking, this episode is recast as the Crucifixion Cruise and failed Wedding at Cana, for which wine (Jesus' water-into-wine miracle), "banquet" beers and champagne are all appropriate celebratory beverages. But like Juanita and the Narrator failing to "connect," the wedding fails, which is Holly's point in saying "now we just need something to celebrate" [SK]; she's not satisfied, and like Juanita, of whom she is here the reflection, her thoughts turn to the gangsters who can hook her up with the real stuff: - "I want to open some bottles up": "bottle" is slang for penis (gdict); like Juanita, Holly's getting agitated, and ready to go back and suck dicks for drugs again. (The other transparent use of "bottles" for "dicks" in LP is the Star Wars Hips sketch of Party Zero as the adventure of a "couple debutants" with "a hundred bottles of wine" [SWH]; the same meaning appears to be subtext in Brokerdealer's Give Me Back My Body, THS' Touchless, and solo song Plattsburgh as well.)
- "I want to open my body up" [the background voice in Same Kooks]: this has a double meaning, referring both to Holly wanting sex in the backseat, with her "legs wide open on the opening night" [NS], and also to the act of suicide (see "razor blades" [SK]) implicit in going back to the gangsters to get high again. In both respects, Holly appears as a reflection of Juanita, who wants to fuck the Eyepatch Guy but doesn't get to, and who willingly leaves the Jeep to become a "chalk outline" resurrected as Katrina (see BALTIMORE BELTLINE above).
- "I'm getting tired of all these styrofoam coffee cups": she's getting tired of the wine; in thinking of what she really wants, she gratuitously describes the cups as "coffee" cups, where "coffee" is slang for meth ("Biker's Coffee"=meth, compare "biker drugs" [TMS], and see LISTED above).
In the secondary THS reworking of this material, "flat champagne" [Spinners] alludes to Jesse's failure to finally win Charlemagne through *their* car trysts (compare "She never gets in their cars" [Spinners]; none of her later suitors meet the standard of Charlemagne). ***2) Indian FringesWe've established that the "indian fringes" refer, in the first place, to the costume worn by Juanita to The LBI party, the costume that she is in fact wearing all throughout the Jeep Encounter (see COSTUME PARTY above). With this knowledge, we can see that the "india" metaphor in the Jeep Beep Suite account of the alpha couple trying to get clean in the Jeep refers not just to the Aveda line of beauty products (see GEOGRAPHY: SELF-TITLED ALBUM above), but to her costume as well: tried to make ourselves clean tried to make ourselves sparkle, i mean india seems just like a dream [JBS] That's quite a pun on "indian." There's enough ambiguity in Craig's use of "fringes," too, that it's hard not to hear the full phrase as a reference to a place, as well as a costume. With what we've learned about the LP story, we're now in a position to clear this up. Costume- "your friend in the indian fringes looked an awful lot like frampton" [LPvtEotE]: unambiguous reference to a costume.
- "She appeared faithless in fringes and feathers" [SShoes]: unambiguous reference to a costume.
Place- "It's a small scene already and it gets dirty on the fringes" [MM]: unambiguous reference to a place.
- "So park it up and hit the locks/ Our lives play out in parking lots/ The prayers against the chemistry/ On the fringes of the scene" [Tracking Shots]: an unambiguous reference to a place, and an impossible-to-miss recap of the Jeep Encounter.[*1]
Both- "woke up with your friend in the indian fringes" [SH1999]: can be easily read as referring both to a costume and a place (somewhat stronger reading for the latter).
- "We got wrapped up in the indian fringes" [SPayne]: strongly suggests a place, but can still be read as a costume reference (compare "wrapped in tattered taffeta" [Brokerdealer INFHP], "wrapped up in robes" [Riptown]).
***It's clear, then, that the "fringes" are also a reference to the area around The City, i.e, around the brewery bar, Swede Hollow park, the Kittson Street parking lot, and the banks of the Mississippi River, a usage echoed in "edges" ("It was dark along the edges of the city" [SM]), "side" ("The east side is where we met with those guys" [SPayne]), and possibly "margin" ("now let's get a little marginal" [CRoom]). But what about specifically "indian" fringes suggests this geographical usage? It turns out that the path-crossed parkland along the banks of the Mississippi River in downtown St. Paul belongs to Indian Mounds Park, named for the Native American burial mounds that once covered the area. The Mounds Boulevard exit and Mounds Boulevard itself, which take the kids from the highway directly to Swede Hollow and environs (see NIGHT CLUB DWIGHT and REAR VIEW MIRROR above), take their name from these same mounds, and the wikipedia article on the park connects the mounds with the "railroad yard" [LA] as well ( wikipedia): [*1] "Hit the locks" indicates that the Narrator, being surrounded by the gangsters in the lot, did the obvious thing and locked the doors when he and Juanita climbed into the Jeep.
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Post by skepticatfirst on Jun 7, 2021 5:27:17 GMT -5
JEEP ENCOUNTER: ORIGINOne aspect of the Jeep Encounter that we have to stop to appreciate is the sheer extent to which it's reused by Craig in his later work. Again (see KATRINA above), one of the hardest-to-accept conclusions of the Here Goes thread was its claim about the THS characters switching bodies and souls, culminating in the backseat Crucifixion Cruise scene in which Charlemagne's-soul-in-Gideon's-body meets Holly's-soul-in-Mary's-body and everything goes off the rails. I still think the arguments advanced for this reading in Here Goes stand on their own; but there's no denying that it's a complex plot twist, and fantastical, and that it requires a certain suspension of disbelief. What we see now, though, is that the THS Crucifixion Cruise is merely the elaboration of a far simpler LP Jeep Encounter, in which the the double identities of the-Eyepatch-Guy-in-the-Narrator's-body and Katrina-in-Juanita's-body require no suspension of disbelief whatever --- both kids are literally in costume --- and in which the kisses and the failure to perform sexually set a straightforward baseline for the fantastical THS reworking to come. Compare the experiences of the LP alpha couple with those of Charlemagne/Gideon and Holly/Mary during the Crucifixion Cruise: Same kooks don't shoot but they sure do sniff Same kooks can't fly because their wings are clipped Same kooks can't come but they sure do kiss Making love to the girls with the wrapped up wrists [SK] And there's much more. We've seen other LP scenes that end up reflected in more than one episode of the THS story, but nothing on this scale; the alpha couple's failed connection in the Jeep is the source of more THS plot development than any other single event in the world of Lifter Puller, and it's not close. ***To review, the Jeep Encounter: - is the origin of the backseat Crucifixion Cruise debacle, and, as such, the occasion for appealing to the wisdom of Sal Paradise: "Boys and girls in America, they have such a sad time together" [SBS].
- is the origin of Charlemagne obsessively kissing, but carefully not fucking, Holly ("a movie about me and you/ They made it half nude and half true" [Swish]; heregoes).
- is the origin of Jesse falling hard for Charlemagne, the one guy who doesn't take advantage of her availability for sex, but who instead helps her get cleaned up (heregoes).
- is half of the origin of Gideon's riverbank attempt to lure Holly into sex with the offer of meth ("Hey sweet recovery, come on, won't you wade into the water with me?" [BCamp]). Like Juanita (see UNDER WATER above), Holly declines sex because she doesn't want it once she's high; but Gideon suggests, ironically, that she's declining because she's trying to get clean ("sweet recovery"). This difficult packing of two takes on the situation is explained by the fact that there are *two* LP episodes contributing to the one THS scene: the Narrator holding Juanita's head under water on the one hand (see UNDER WATER above), *and also* Juanita's sobered-up "Tecate landing" followed by her "chalk outline" death at the hands of the parking lot gangster on the other.
- is the origin of Jesse's romantic obsession with trysts in cars (heregoes). She's obsessed with "heaven" [WCGT], described more specifically as "paradise by the dashboard light" [WCGT, CSongs]; when Charlemagne refers to her "place that always makes you smile" [HJ], it must be that he's referring, either literally or in shadow, to the Kittson Street parking lot under the 7th Street bridge.
- is the origin of the Narrator's admonition to Jesse: "I'm sure they'll come up in the parking lots and at parties" [WaW]; her experience with Charlemagne there is why Jesse, unlike Juanita, "never gets in their cars" [Spinners].
- is the origin of Mary's "Noli Me Tangere" belief that Charlemagne, her Christ, has told her not to touch/go down on him (heregoes).
- is the origin of Holly's rides in the gangsters' "big black cars" [BCamp] and "GTOs" [CSongs].
- is, similarly, the origin of Mary's "Out on the parkways after the parties/ It was always arousing when they'd rev up their engines" [OftC].
- is the origin of Holly's "It's my party and I'll die if I want to" [HF] (compare Juanita's volitional "chalk outline" in the parking lot, after her LBI costume party).
- is the origin of the THS Narrator and Mary sitting in her car while she tells him about her life [Esther].
- is the origin (compare the Narrator reversing course and offering her Sudafeds when she gets angry, see REAR VIEW MIRROR above) of Charlemagne suddenly giving in to Mary's demand for drugs, but not being able to deliver: "We'll hook it all up/ I guess there's fields of speed where there's fields of grain" [DLME].
- is the origin, in solo song Jester And June, of an alternative future history in which the alpha couple (both with fake identities) return to the parking lot in the hopes that she'll remember: "Now the cops got our names/ As Justin and Jane/ The only people waiting at the car wash in the rain" [J&J].
***If we dilate out even a little bit from the failed connection, there are even more echoes of this episode. We mentioned above that Juanita's hope to be taken "away into fortune or fame" [CaAoC] prefigures Holly's hope of getting to California (see JUST STARTED TALKING above). We know that Holly eventually takes up the offer from the "kid from California [who] turned out to be an asshole" [MINTS] to go out there, and ends up doing porn. The development of that story is told in Eureka, with lots of sketchy detail filling out the middle and end of the song; but if we reread the opening verses with Juanita and the Eyepatch Guy in mind, we immediately recognize the parallels: It was a strange request and they'd just barely met But somehow he didn't seem like a stranger. She knew what her sister always said about the angels. How they show up when you never expect them. And she never expected. When she was mostly in the phone booth at the end of her rope. Spending half her time just hope hope hoping. Then someone finally showed up with a shot at the coast. So she gets in the car and they go [Eureka] It matches the story at such a rich level of detail: "it was a strange request" (ostensibly "lookin for a fire lighter for hire," but certainly 'come with me and have some wine'), "they'd just barely met" ("hey my name's juanita"), "somehow he didn't seem like a stranger" (the Narrator under the eyepatch). He's catching her at a time when she's "mostly in the phone booth at the end of her rope" (enslaved, "ropes"=roofies, giving blowjobs in the "booths in the back," hanging off the "phone"="hangin off the video games"; see LISTED and BATHROOM STALL above), "spending half her time just hope hope hoping" (half dead). Then we get a jump cut past the jeep to the end of the night, and the gangster who drives away with her: "Then someone finally showed up with a shot at the coast/ So she gets in the car and they go." (It's a jump cut in the sense that, if we didn't know better, we'd think we were still talking about the angel-stranger; but we're not.) ***Even more eye-opening, look at the solo song Wild Animals: The Dominican restaurant, a difficult dress With burlap and feathers pressed up against mesh Man alive and the spirit put to death in the flesh She had quite a few drinks You had one or two less She said "Hey, thanks for coming Can I ask you a question?" Man alive and the spirit put to death in the flesh [Wild Animals] Here, we start with a girl clothed in the "indian" costume from The LBI, in the just-raided "restaurant" ("And the cops they all crowded around us" [Wild Animals]; see THE KITCHEN and LP SHADOWS above) of the "Lord" ("Dominican": link). She's accompanied by a man whose spirit has been "put to death" in the flesh, like the THS Narrator who "died" to become "the new kid" inhabiting the same body (see ORIGINS OF IMAGES and HALF DEAD above), which now appears to be a THS reflection of the LP Narrator becoming the Eyepatch Guy. This is followed by the girl having quite a few drinks together with her slightly less intoxicated companion, very like the Narrator and Juanita drinking clear beer/wine in the Jeep. This in turn is followed by her thanking him for coming, a gesture easily ascribed to Juanita thanking the Eyepatch Guy (who she thinks she's never met) for coming to her costume party. Finally, she asks him a question, in parallel with "could you be the boy who takes me away into fortune or fame?" ***Dwelling for a moment on that last point: the quiet insistence on the alpha girl's question here is slightly unsettling. It's framed differently in different places: could you be the boy who takes me away into fortune or fame? [CaAoC] she put her mouth around a difficult question She said Lord, what do you recommend to a real sweet girl who's made some not-sweet friends? Lord, what do you prescribe to a real soft girl who's having real hard times? [CC] can i ask you a question? [Wild Animals] The times when we're told what the question is, it's diverted into a wish for fortune or a plea for drugs; at the end, what remains is only the fact of the question itself. I have no reason to think we're missing something, per se. But it seems that we're here in the presence of something important, and still not totally known.
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Post by muzzleofbees on Jun 7, 2021 6:24:56 GMT -5
I love the stuff about The Jeep Encounter, and it makes totally sense to see/hear it as a origin story - a sort of a crossroad, where the Alpha Couple almost re-connect, but where the female part of the couple breaks it off, and heads into something dark and murky.
I don't think you've mentioned it, but with the emphasis on drinking to come down, it's quite easy for the mind to wander back to Three Drinks as well.
"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"
and
"It goes 7 8 9 For a while I thought she died But she was smiling when she was rolling back her eyes"
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Post by skepticatfirst on Jun 8, 2021 6:25:00 GMT -5
I love the stuff about The Jeep Encounter, and it makes totally sense to see/hear it as a origin story - a sort of a crossroad, where the Alpha Couple almost re-connect, but where the female part of the couple breaks it off, and heads into something dark and murky. Dark and murky is right! A lot of the LP story is somewhat familiar from THS, but what's coming up in the next "chapter" is pretty new, and yeah, it's heavy. I don't think you've mentioned it, but with the emphasis on drinking to come down, it's quite easy for the mind to wander back to Three Drinks as well. "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" and "It goes 7 8 9 For a while I thought she died But she was smiling when she was rolling back her eyes" Great call. The bit about "now she's not so frightened" makes it clear that "1 2 3 drinks" are drinks in the sense of the "Tequila takeoff," where tequila implies margarita implies roofied drink implies drugs; Went down on the Denver slums and she woke up in the Rocky Mountain dawn. Felt all freed up from the fears that you can never put your finger on [MM] Same thing for "rolling back her eyes" --- it's not alcohol that does that, but drugs: these kids want something new to get their eyes rollin back into their dreams [LGI] Doubting Thomas had the party supplies He said he likes how it looks When I roll back my eyes [NRoof] (Compare the second verse of Mission Viejo, too, where the rolling eyes back after shooting up isn't explicit, but implied.) We've already noted that "sick" is regularly used in reference to coming down (see THE QUEUE above). So "4 and 5 and 6" are consistent with the clear beer "Tecate landing." So "drinks" in this song is evidently switching back and forth between a metaphor for drugs --- which isn't new: we've noted many times that "beers"=meth, "water"=meth, "drink"=PCP (see LISTED above) --- and literal alcohol. In fact, the framing is the same as the framing of the Jeep Encounter: first it's Tequila takeoff [1 2 3]. Tecate landing [4 5 6]. but the attempt to clean up doesn't quite take: Tecate landing [4 5 6]. Tequila takeoff [7 8 9]. What's presented here is a general picture of a girl struggling with addiction, not a detailed narrative; but as far as that framing is concerned, it looks like it owes its origin to the Jeep Encounter, too.
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Post by skepticatfirst on Jun 8, 2021 6:49:18 GMT -5
CALENDAR: FIRST PASSWe've come all this way without talking about a calendar yet, but now we're finally ready to take a crack at it. ***We know that The LBI takes place on Labor Day weekend (see LABOR DAY above). To this, we can add a key piece of information supplied by Jeep Beep Suite. After the Eyepatch Guy picks Juanita up "at the airport" [JBS], and they've been drinking in the Jeep trying to get themselves clean, he says (and it's he, the Narrator, who's speaking, not Juanita; see TWO TWENTIES above): tried to make ourselves clean tried to make ourselves sparkle, i mean india seems just like a dream i left with five bucks and i lived for five months like a queen [JBS] Foreshadowing Gideon's "went down with like fourteen bucks" [BBlues] trip to the metal bar party, the Narrator's "left with five bucks" refers to his original ride down to Party Zero with Dwight (see THE RIDE above) and subsequent inability to come up with $20 to save his "life" (see HALF DEAD, THE JOKE, and TWO TWENTIES above). Since then he's been living like a queen ("queen"=male homosexual: gdict), blowing gangsters at the Return Parties to support his habit. [*1] *All of which took five months, start to finish.* ***Let's push this further. The party part of The LBI was both kicked off and broken up on Friday night [TLaDiLBI]. Since then they've been "up all night getting drunk and weird" [Emperor], trying to make themselves clean; which means it's now Saturday in the wee hours of the morning. If we look at the date of Saturday of Labor Day weekend for every year from 1985 through 1995, take that as the end point, and subtract five months to get the starting point, we see that in four out of those 11 years --- 1986, 1988, 1991, and 1994 --- the start falls *exactly* on Easter Sunday. (In the remaining years, Easter is at least a week and in some cases a couple of weeks off.) In other words, Party Zero, the original "weekender" and "three-day rave" [PSunglasses], took place on Easter weekend. Just as they did with The LBI, the gangsters took advantage of the holiday, marked by lax security at the brewery, to throw their party (see FIRST BUST above); the three-day run from Friday to Sunday (see THE FIRST FIVE TRACKS and DAWN above) turns out to have been the span between Good Friday and Easter Sunday. [*2] ***The next obvious question to ask is whether we can identify the *calendar year* in which the story takes place. Prescription Sunglasses, which describes the "three-day rave," was recorded in 1994 (see ORDERED CATALOG above), making that the latest possible setting for these events. References to, for example, the Agnostic Front [TGatSD] and Skoal Bandits [Bears] put the earliest possible date in the mid-80's; from what we've followed of the history of the brewery it's clear, in fact, that it can hardly predate the mid-90's. But the evidence that clinches the date is provided by the car wash that anchors the Jeep Encounter scene; as we've shown, a car wash (the Downtowner) first appeared at the 7th St & Kittson St location in 1993-94 (see BALTIMORE BELTLINE above). The only possible year with the correct five-month spread between Party Zero and The LBI, then, is 1994. This is the date that makes the most sense in any event. Craig is a writer whose method is known to rely on eavesdropping, compulsive note-taking, and the observation of concrete details; it's only expected that he would spin up the story out of the world that was actually in front of him while he was writing it. There is also this scrap of evidence from Double Straps: and now you're 24 and the shore's a bore everybody's waitin on the very same score [DStraps] which we now recognize as a reference to The LBI ("the shore," and see especially BORED above), meaning that the Narrator's turned 24 just ahead of Labor Day weekend. A 1994 setting for these events puts the Narrator's date of birth in late August 1971, a birth date shared with the THS Narrator (born between September 1970 and September 1971: heregoes) and Craig Finn, whose alter ego he is (born on August 22, 1971: wikipedia). The Sunday of Party Zero is April 3, 1994. The Saturday of the Jeep Encounter is September 3, 1994. With these two anchors in place, we can start to lay out a calendar, with more detail to come:
1994 ----- FRI APR 01 - Ride in Dwight's car down to brewery SUN APR 03 - Easter Sunday. Party Zero assault MON AUG 22 - Narrator turns 24 WED AUG 31 - Narrator leaves apartment, moves into Jeep FRI SEP 02 - Return to brewery for The LBI costume party SAT SEP 03 - Jeep Encounter. Juanita leaves with gangsters
[*1] The summer leading up to The LBI on Labor Day --- the summer of the Return Parties --- is evidently the original of the "cocksucking summer" in the alternate Swish lyrics ( heregoes): It was a blockbuster summer Moving pictures got us through to September They made a movie about me and you They made it half nude and half true It was a bloodsucking [alt: cocksucking] summer I spent half the time trying to get paid from our savior Swishing though the City Center I did a couple favors for these guys who looked like Tusken Raiders [Swish] This is the LP summer in its essence: the alpha couple (a) aren't having sex with each other, and (b) are sucking a lot of cock for an uncertain payout. [*2] Note that dawn on Easter weekend 1994 shifted from 5:51am to 6:49am, due to the clock change for daylight savings; the "6 6 6 am on the weekend" [ILtL] framing is necessarily approximate, but correct ( link):
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Post by muzzleofbees on Jun 8, 2021 7:56:21 GMT -5
Magnificent stuff! All the things you spin out of Three Drinks too.
Just a quick, and very thin thought: Could it be that the daylight savings switch is somehow mirrored in two precise-but-not-really references to numbers in Arms And Hearts and Lord I'm Discouraged? "His visits they only take five or six minutes", and "to me it felt like six or seven seconds" - these lines have always sound a bit weird to me. What's supposed to be the real life difference between five and six minutes, or six and seven seconds (apart from the obvious band reference in the latter)? With the daylight savings occuring on the night of the party, it could make sense that Craig mix up these numbers to underline the uncertainty about the duration of the events. Different clocks could give different answers.
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Post by skepticatfirst on Jun 9, 2021 10:42:45 GMT -5
Magnificent stuff! All the things you spin out of Three Drinks too. Just a quick, and very thin thought: Could it be that the daylight savings switch is somehow mirrored in two precise-but-not-really references to numbers in Arms And Hearts and Lord I'm Discouraged? "His visits they only take five or six minutes", and "to me it felt like six or seven seconds" - these lines have always sound a bit weird to me. What's supposed to be the real life difference between five and six minutes, or six and seven seconds (apart from the obvious band reference in the latter)? With the daylight savings occuring on the night of the party, it could make sense that Craig mix up these numbers to underline the uncertainty about the duration of the events. Different clocks could give different answers. My take on that would be to say that there's a few different things in play here (these points are mostly pretty obvious, I'm just trying to tease them out in an orderly way). First of all, Craig uses uncertainty to downplay and deflect attention all the time: "pretty," "pretty much," "I guess," "you could say," "some chick," "some guy," etc. I think "five or six minutes" and "six or seven seconds" are examples of that minimizing vagueness. (The reality beneath both expressions is momentous and heavy: it takes Mary a few minutes to suck off the dealer from the north side in payment for her drugs; Charlemagne felt only a few seconds go by between being blinded by the bright light of the projector, and finding himself switched into Gideon's body.) Another thing Craig does all the time is exploit a chance to work in a second or third layer of meaning: as you say, "7 Seconds" [A&H] is one of those; the Number of the Beast "666" [ILtL] is another. So I don't think we're supposed to be in real doubt about "was it five minutes? or six?" This transaction between Mary and the dealer is a regular thing ("his visits"), and it takes a few minutes for her to complete it. Similarly, we're not supposed to be in real doubt about "six seconds? or seven?"; he's just turned "a few seconds" into "six or seven seconds" so he could get the 7 Seconds reference in there. Similarly, we're not supposed to be in real doubt about when dawn occurred on Sunday at Party Zero; he just saw an opportunity to use the actual hour to get a reference to 666 in there. Another way to look at it is to note that Craig *started* with a basic plot rooted in concrete, real-world dates and places, and *then*, once he had that in hand, he was able to use those concrete realities to spin up new material as much as he wanted. To take a trivial example: part of the story is set at the brewery; the brewery has these huge, light-red brick buildings overlooking Swede Hollow; at some point he riffs off that real-world fact and calls the brewery "big pink" in allusion to the house used by The Band. That wasn't something he had in mind when he first put the story together; but it was available to him because he had a real setting to draw from. To take a major example: part of the story happens to be set on Easter Sunday 1994; at some point he riffs off that real-world date to work in a whole layer of allusions to Christianity and Jesus' death on the cross and resurrection. Again, this wasn't something he had in mind when he first put the story together; it was just available to him because he had a real setting to draw from. (How do we know that all of the Christian stuff is spun up as an afterthought? Because we know that his first use of a term loaded with Christian significance, namely "resurrection" in the first verse of Emperor, is actually a reference to Common's 1995 hip-hop hit, rather than anything in the gospels; for that discussion, as well as the Labor Day weekend rather than Easter context, see REAR VIEW MIRROR above.) In the same way, with the 1994 setting, he had a real-world calendar as a basis on which to improvise; the fateful dawn happened to coincide with the imposition of daylight savings time, so it was around 6am; he could exploit that to get a reference to the Number of the Beast. It's just poetic opportunism, of which Craig happens to be a world-class master. That was a bit of a ramble, hope it makes sense. On the same note, I'm about to set out the summary of the The LBI now, hoping to lock down a pretty wide-ranging discussion in very plain detail. If there's anything about the literal events of this "chapter" that still isn't clear after that, please let me know and I'll try to clear it up before we move on.
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