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Post by skepticatfirst on Jun 9, 2021 11:07:26 GMT -5
THE LBI: SUMMARYHere's a summary of the events of The LBI. ***[flashback] - In the aftermath of Party Zero, the owners of the brewery discover the damage and debris left by the gangsters and the kids [FIRST BUST].
- They change the locks on the bar, and install infrared motion detectors and bugs on the premises [FIRST BUST].
[flashback] - After Juanita leaves him, and the better to support his drug habit, the Narrator quits his lease, acquires a Jeep and moves into it [THE RIPPLE AND THE CHAMPAGNE].
[present] - Juanita, maintaining now and starting to get bored with the scene, wants to make something special out of it, so she organizes a costume party [COSTUME PARTY].
- Juanita, who's dumped the Narrator after his attempt to drown her, gets a ride to the party with Dwight, as usual [THE RIPPLE AND THE CHAMPAGNE].
- Her costume is a caricature sexy "indian" dress made out of burlap with unhemmed fringes, mesh, feathers, and sequins [COSTUME PARTY, INDIAN FRINGES].
- He parks beneath the 7th Street overpass in the Kittson Street lot, with the gangsters, & from there walks to the brewery through the park [REAR VIEW MIRROR, BALTMORE BELTLINE].
- Tacked up on the woodwork of the bar like a museum exhibit are photos of the Narrator and Juanita being gangbanged at Party Zero [COMMEMORATIVE PLATES].
- One of the photos is a picture of the Narrator blowing Dwight in the corner while Juanita looks on, smiling. The Narrator takes and keeps the photo [COMMEMORATIVE PLATES].
- The party gets into gear with the usual mix of drugs and sex; trying to get high, the Narrator does a lot of meth ("15 beers" [Hardware]) early [COSTUME PARTY, BORED].
- Observing Juanita from a distance, he admires her look in costume. She too is desperately trying to get high ("like 15 beers" [Emperor]) [COSTUME PARTY, BORED].
- Thanks to the costume, which lets him assume a new role, the Narrator, normally the servicer at scene parties, takes a handjob instead [COSTUME PARTY].
- The activity of the partygoers triggers the infrared motion detectors/bugs on the premises; the owners are alerted, and call the cops [FIRST BUST].
- Coming around the back in their kevlar vests and appearing "out of the woodwork," the cops arrive to bust up the party [FIRST BUST].
- Holding steady, the Narrator grabs Juanita from the vestibule and runs for the stairs, trying to get back underground and out of the complex [FIRST BUST, TWO AT A TIME].
- A cop grabs the hood of his sister's raincoat, which he's borrowed for the costume; but it pulls off, and he gets away [COSTUME PARTY].
- They make their way back across the railroad tracks north of the E 7th St overpass to the Kittson Street parking lot, where the cars are parked [BALTIMORE BELTLINE].
- When they reach the Narrator's Jeep, he proposes to take her away, but she won't go to a "second location" with a stranger, even if she likes him [THE RIPPLE AND THE CHAMPAGNE].
- He manages to keep her attention, despite the whispered offers of the gangsters hanging on the hoods of their cars with drugs under their Copenhagen hats [JUST STARTED TALKING, REAR VIEW MIRROR].
- The Narrator wants to respond; but between the sickness of coming down, the handjob, the alcohol, and his exhaustion, he can't get it up [JUST STARTED TALKING, LAZY EYE].
- Juanita, unstable to begin with and now feeling rejected, becomes hysterical; she demands that he give her something to get her high again [REAR VIEW MIRROR].
- Desperate not to lose control of the situation, the Narrator agrees to give her what she wants, but can only produce a bottle of Sudafeds [REAR VIEW MIRROR].
- Juanita is enraged; shoving open the door of the Jeep, she throws up her beer, while the gangsters in the lot all cheer [REAR VIEW MIRROR].
- In the rear-view mirror, the Narrator watches Juanita's "suicide" and Katrina's "resurrection": going down on one of the gangsters, she gets her meth reward [REAR VIEW MIRROR].
- Juanita drives off with the gangster while the Narrator is left behind, lonely in the driver's seat of his would-be limousine [REAR VIEW MIRROR].
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Post by skepticatfirst on Jun 10, 2021 6:33:20 GMT -5
PERFUME COUNTER GIRLSo Juanita disappears with one of the gangsters. This ride's different from the ones back from the Return Parties with Dwight: she puts it all into boxes on a big truck its just bad luck, its a tough school 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] The Narrator says "ride home," but then clarifies: it's going to take her "back to connecticut," to a place where (as already noted, see REAR VIEW MIRROR above) she can "connect" for drugs and sex. It's not her *own* home, and it's not the brewery bar, which they can't go back to anyway, but a *new* home: she's takin off tomorrow says she's gonna start all over when she gets there [LE] So where exactly has she gone? ***Initial clues are provided by the song Summer House. We've now arrived at the point in the story at which the phone call described in Summer House takes place --- a point after she's established a relationship with the Eyepatch Guy (see EYEPATCH GUY above), and after she's "gone": the first week you were gone i got so bored [SH] The song informs us that she's staying with the gangsters ("townies"=gangsters; see HESHERS and TENNIS COURT above) in a "summer house" away from the "city": do you really like hanging out with hicks and townies what do you mean you ain't never comin back to the city my parents never got me a summer house we'd just sit here in the same house and we'd sweat it out [SH] We've already observed that "house" has the regular meaning of 'trap house' ("party house" [TLTtSTtM, BSam], "after hours house" [MMarker], "House of Balloons" [Oaks], etc.; see NIGHTCLUBS above); the "summer house" too is one of these. We've also established that "the city" refers to The City, i.e. the brewery with its party scene in downtown St. Paul (see THE CITY above). From this we can surmise that Juanita has taken up residence in a trap house --- but one that isn't the brewery bar in St. Paul, and isn't in the Narrator's tennis-court suburbs, either. It's somewhere out in the "hicks and townies" periphery towns. ***So what's she doing in the trap house besides fucking gangsters and taking drugs? First of all, she's really living there; in leaving The LBI, she says: i'm sick and tired of being stranded by the subway trains i deserve a little fuck-up every once in a while i'm sick of being scared of falling off the side of my bed [TLaDiLBI] Actually living in the trap house means that - she won't be stranded at parties any more (see STRANDED above), because she never has to leave to go home.
- she won't be "waitin on the very same score" [DStraps] any longer, since she can have a little fuck-up as often as she wants one.
- she doesn't need to be scared of falling off the side of her bed any more, either, having access to a constant supply that lets her "skip the sleep" [11AF], and, more to the point, a bed that's just a dirty mattress on the floor [SGS, OwtB, DH, Spectres, YDGK] (see CANDY'S ROOM below).
Second, because she's living in the house, she's got an actual job there [*1], running orders from the porch to the customers in the cars outside: department stores go on for miles those retail chicks, they always smile the new perfume counter girl tears apart my world [SGS] That's Juanita, the new perfume counter girl: - "new," because she's just taken up residence in the Summer House
- selling "perfume," in keeping with the standard LP metaphor of pharmacy goods=drugs (see PHARMACY GOODS above)
- working "retail" at the "counter," because she's the one who's interfacing with the customers (with echoes of "over the counter" [Swish], too).
***The Pirate And The Penpal gives us further information about Juanita's new start. Like Summer House, TPatP is set during this same period, after she's left the Eyepatch Guy behind and is reduced to keeping in touch with him by what's described (in Bloomington, TPatP, etc.) as a combination of telephone and mail (see EYEPATCH GUY and JUST STARTED TALKING above, and MAILBOX below). There, the Narrator says of her: you spent the summer at the strawberry stand there wasn't much that you could do about it ... all the money from the strawberry stand slips through your hands cause you buy too many stamps [TPatP] This confirms that: - she's the retail face of the drug house: "strawberries"=drugs (see FRUIT above); the "strawberry stand"=the 'perfume counter'.
- she's badly addicted: "there wasn't much that you could do about it"="someone powerless" [HCovenant].
- she's in a desperate state otherwise, too: on the one hand, all her "earnings"[*2] go toward "stamps"=drugs (technically, acid on paper: urbandictionary); on the other, all her thoughts are turned to the Eyepatch Guy, waiting for a chance to communicate with him via "stamps"=postage stamps.
***La Quereria expands on her new situation in even more detail: undisclosed sources have reported that the kids look like corpses, warped and all distorted a summer wrecked on X and house arrest transacting sacks to the yards from the porches and wild horses can't carry away california divorces copenhagen hats, and the skintight pinstripe blue jeans and the bright white Nike Air Forces [LQ] The fact that "summer house" is glossed as " summer [wrecked on X and] house [arrest]" already tells us a lot. But more specifically, we note that:
- the scene described takes place at the end of the summer.
[/a][li] the gangsters are present in their "copenhagen" hats advertising drugs (the same painter's caps they were seen wearing in the parking lot when they took Juanita away, see REAR VIEW MIRROR above). [*3][/li][/ul] - Juanita's a wreck, in the "too skinny" [SPositive] stage of speed addiction; she looks like a corpse.
- she's caught in the vicious cycle where the drugs won't wash away the "stains" [CRoom, NN, SK] of the sex used to get the drugs (see THE FOAM above); "wild horses can't carry away california divorces" means exactly the same thing as "liquid soap won't get you completely clean" [JBS] ("horse"=heroin, see LISTED above; "california divorce"='informal relationship that still confers sex privileges': urbandictionary).
- she's stuck wherever she is under the equivalent of "house arrest"; compare "there wasn't much that you could do about it" [TPatP] above.[*4]
- her job as the gangsters' retail face specifically entails "transacting sacks to the yard(s) from the porch[es]" of the trap "house."
***Juanita's experience here is the LP source of two major THS plot elements: it's reflected in both - Mary "pretty much living in/ A 3.2 bars a stretch to call a club/ It was called the Ambassador" [Ambassador].
***Like Party Zero, the Return Parties, and The LBI, we need a name for this chapter of the LP story. We also need a name for the physical trap house (like "brewery bar" for the Rathskeller in east St. Paul) that distinguishes it from the other locations where the Scene's nightclub/dome/stadium/theater etc. materializes. At risk of confusion with the song title, I'm going with capital-T "The Summer House" for the chapter, and "Summer House" for the house itself. It's the best identifier the story provides for both the episode and the physical location, and doesn't overspecify what we know about either one. [*1] Note the strong resonance between the townies' "town" and the "village" of Traditional Village: When you live in a traditional village. We all do our own little part. This is the future. We can make a new start. Click on the icon. Drag to the cart [TV] The consistency of themes is impossible to miss: - "village": compare the "town" of the townies.
- "live": she's "pretty much living there" [Ambassador].
- "We all do our own little part": she's got her job as "the new perfume counter girl" [LQ].
- "new start": this is the same start referenced in "clean break" [Emperor] and "she's going to start all over when she gets there" [LE].
- "click on the icon. drag to the cart": she's the retail arm of the trap house.
[*2] She's not paid in money; what "slips" (see SLIP AND TRIP above) through her hands are the gangster dicks she's blowing. As in other cases we've seen, the various elements of the sex-money-drugs transaction are metaphorically fungible (see CASH MACHINE above). [*3] We've shown how the branding of the "copenhagen hats" [LQ] is here understood as an advertisement of the drugs concealed under the hatband (see REAR VIEW MIRROR, and more generally SHOES AND SOCKS above); the same is true of the gangsters' jeans with the "pin" stripes (advertising injection), and their "bright white" shoes (advertising "white"=amphetamine and "lights"=meth, compare "lights, and i like em pretty bright" [ILtL]; see LISTED above). [*4] We've noted that Juanita declined to leave the Kittson Street parking lot with the Eyepatch Guy because she wouldn't "go to a second location" [Lanyards] (see THE RIPPLE AND THE CHAMPAGNE above) with him; the irony, called out in Riptown, is that she ended up going to a second location with the Kid From California instead. The Summer House, in other words, is the story's second "second location" of which Juanita had reason to "be careful" [Riptown] (see WALKED IN above); this one "stuck to her shoes" [Riptown] in the sense of being de facto impossible to leave. (Compare "Tried to duck out but we still got stuck/ Like a sneaker in the Mississippi mud" [RH].) [*5] An additional detail about Jesse's "waitressing" is found in the ONDCP document. Speaking of her savior Charlemagne, who got her cleaned up, Jesse says: He said, Let this famine end and let the 2-for-1s begin And bless the beasts and the children and the water and the waiters [SM] The weight loss from her meth addiction (compare Juanita looking like a corpse [LQ] above, and "famine" [4Dix, CatCT]) has come to an end; but she's still working for the gangsters, and dealer Charlemagne too is still hanging around them. So he blesses the "beasts"="creeping things"=gangsters, the "children"=kids, the "water"=meth, and the "waiters" like Jesse herself, and (in joking allusion to Jesus and the miracle of the loaves and fishes) promotes the "2-for-1s" ( ondcp): 2-for-1 sale -- A marketing scheme designed to promote and increase crack sales
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Post by skepticatfirst on Jun 11, 2021 6:55:22 GMT -5
THE WESTWe've noted (see PERFUME COUNTER GIRL above) that the Summer House is located somewhere in the "hicks and townies" periphery towns around the Twin Cities. What are the chances we can locate it more narrowly than that? ***There's not a lot to go on here. In the entire THS catalog there's exactly one example of a townie-town that's identified as such, and that's Osseo [YLHF] ( heregoes; heregoes). So Juanita's in a place like Osseo. That doesn't get us very far. Google Maps has served us pretty well up till now, though, so we should probably just pop "Osseo, MN" in there and see what we can learn from that. Pretty far out there, northwest of Minneapolis, and way north of the familiar reference points of Bloomington and Edina. Suppose we zoom in? At this closer level of detail, we notice a second THS landmark in the map of Osseo: US-169, well-known from the final lines of Hornets! Hornets!: Drove the wrong way down 169 Almost died up by Edina High [HH] That's interesting: the line running north-south from "up in Osseo" [YLHF] down to the latitude of "Edina High" [HH] *is* the line "down 169" [HH], explicitly laid out. It's a long shot, but worth asking: is there something along that stretch of highway that could explain the obscure "wrong way" lyric from HH? ***Reading down the list of towns adjacent to 169 from north to south, we get: 01) Maple Grove 02) Osseo 03) Brooklyn Park 04) Plymouth 05) New Hope 06) Golden Valley 07) Minnetonka 08) St. Louis Park 09) Hopkins 10) Edina 11) Eden Prairie 12) Bloomington #1 Maple Grove; #2 Osseo; #3 Brooklyn Park; #4 ... wait a second. I didn't even know there was a Plymouth in Minnesota, let alone one up along 169 near Osseo; but there is one. We still have very little to go on here, just the beginnings of a pattern. But the pattern itself is enough to let us propose with some confidence that - the title of the song Plymouth Rock is an allusion to "rock"=meth (see LISTED above) being distributed out of periphery towns like Plymouth, Minnesota.
- the ambiguous reference to Plymouth Rock in Massachusetts is an allusion to the Pilgrims' landing as a metaphor for Juanita's "new start" and "clean break" (see PERFUME COUNTER GIRL above; wikipedia).
That's a strong start. Let's keep going. ***We have #2 Osseo and #4 Plymouth connected by both (a) US-169 and (b) insinuations of gangster speed distribution. Are any of the other towns along US-169 candidates for inclusion in the same group? #8 St. Louis Park looks like a winner: St. Louis had enslaved me [HaRRF] In the Here Goes thread ( heregoes) we'd speculated that this line had something to do with Methodist Hospital [AE, LA] in St. Louis Park, where the Narrator and the gangsters got their medicine maxed out [AE, SPayne]. But that doesn't stand up to scrutiny; the point of getting medicine (e.g. methadone) at the hospital clinic is to *treat* drug addiction, not to provoke it. Like Plymouth "rock," Holly being "enslaved" by St. Louis Park points to speed distribution in the area. ***Are there other towns from the list that we've missed? If St. Louis Park is referred to elliptically by "St. Louis," might there be other half-namings that we never noticed because we weren't looking for them? Come to think of it, the TLaDiLBI line: and she lives in the brooklyn heights, she came down on a friday nights [TLaDiLBI] describes Juanita coming down for The LBI in the *past* tense, but it describes her "living" in the brooklyn heights in the *present* tense --- the same present in which the closing lines ("sick and tired of being stranded by the subway trains," etc., see PERFUME COUNTER GIRL above) defending her move to the Summer House are framed. It looks then as if #3 Brooklyn Park too is a candidate for the list: there's the shorthand reference to "Brooklyn" on the model of "St. Louis"; she's described as living up (by contrast with "down") in the "Heights," with the Rocky Mountain High drug overtones of "Shaker Heights" [Swish] and "euphoric heights" [GoaH]; most importantly, there's the telltale verb "lives" to describe her presence there. ***That's four towns so far. Are there others? In The Langelos, the Narrator says: i came from the dust bowl and i was looking for an orange grove ... sending those boys up to the hollywood hills i said take what's yours energy is courtesy of pharmacy pills you know it feels so pure and when we touch you know it seems like we're one big machine picking up speed somewhere in the valley bring it to the city [Langelos] These "boys" who are "picking up speed" to "bring it to the city" look like the gangster Crabs of Math Is Money, who in the same way are bringing their "supply if you got demand" in to try to get a piece of the "money in the city" [MiM]. They also look like the Skins under the direction of Shepard, the "Maestro" [Feelers] running the wholesale trade of drugs through the city: The vibrations were impatient he said he's sick of running out But first we set the prices and then we talk about amounts ... Shepard ... ... Each daybreak there's a new parade From uptown through the old arcades [Feelers] The implication, then, is that the "boys" of The Langelos are gangsters, based outside of the city in the surrounding towns (which in turn accounts for their insistent characterization as "townies"; see HESHERS above). So what exactly does The Langelos say about their location, again? The Narrator starts out "looking for an orange grove" and ends up with the gangsters "picking up speed/ somewhere in the valley." As noted upthread (see GEOGRAPHY: FIRST PASS above), the first verse of the song is cast in images from Steinbeck's The Grapes Of Wrath; "orange grove" is a part of that framing ("a grove of yella oranges" appears in chapter 18 of the novel, p. 281 in the Modern Library edition). Like other allusions to "fruit" in the lyrics, the phrase is clearly used with reference to a trap house: the "orange grove" of The Langelos *is* the "strawberry stand" of TPatP (see FRUIT above). But suppose the primary pretext for this particular metaphor is actually "grove" as shorthand for #1 Maple Grove, like "St. Louis" is shorthand for #8 St. Louis Park? "Valley," for its part, can be read not only as shorthand for #6 Golden Valley, but as a literal reference to the valley of US-169 itself, after which the town is named (referring specifically to the part of the valley between the hill of the present-day Golden Valley Country Club, and Medicine Lake on the far side of the highway: link). Alone, either of these readings might be a stretch, but the fact that they appear together in a song explicitly describing the distribution of drugs around the periphery of the city, in a wider context that includes similar and clearly-established references to Brooklyn Park, St. Louis, Plymouth, and Osseo, makes them compelling. ***Finally, there's #12 Bloomington. In the song of that name, Juanita says of the Eyepatch Guy: his idea of fun is bloomington he always takes his calls at the megamall he left me by the phone at the metrodome [Bloomington] There's a lot more going on here than in the simple references to Plymouth and St. Louis Park above, but there are common themes. We recognize "domes," "stadiums," and "malls" ("megamall," "metrodome") as terms for the places where the Scene gets together and drugs are obtained (see NIGHTCLUBS above). "Malls" are also on that list because that's a literal location where the gangs retail their merchandise, as described in Stevie Nix: They counted money in the motels, they mostly sold it in the malls [SN] Compare also the Brokerdealer song Do Me Nails, which charts a hunt for drugs that goes from mall to mall and ends up in what appears to be a box drawn around 15th and Franklin (see red X on image below): I went from Rosedale to Ridgedale from Ridgedale to Brookdale from Brookdale to Southdale from Southdale I set sail I ended up east of 35W west of Hiawatha south of downtown and up north above the Do Me Nails [DMN] So Bloomington too is referenced in its capacity as a drug outlet, with a gangster angle to the dealing that's made explicit in Southtown Girls ("I got a brown paper bag and black buckle shoes"), whose Southtown Center mall setting is also in Bloomington. ***Another way of exploring the theme of US-169 adjacency is just to drive down the highway on Google Maps and see what appears. In doing this, some of the exit signs leap out pretty graphically; there's Brooklyn, up around Brooklyn Park: There's also Rockford, up around Plymouth: Rockford Road is so named because it leads to Rockford, MN, situated on the Crow River parallel to and west of US-169. The idea of driving around Rockford calls to mind the allusion to The Rockford Files ( wikipedia) in 11th Avenue Freezeout: i get high watching rockford files juanita lives just like jimmy drives screech those tires, yeah and scrape the sides find that little bit left inside [11AF] That's a pretty gratuitous "Rockford" reference, and comes complete with drug associations; nevertheless, I originally planned to leave it out of this discussion on the grounds that, unlike the other towns on the list, Rockford isn't located on US-169 itself. But then ODP came out, prominently showcasing *another* city along the Crow River, west of US-169 at the altitude of Osseo: One might be a coincidence, but two is pretty good grounds for adding both Rockford and Hanover to the list. ***In short, over half of the towns in the US-169 list, and two more a little further west, are presented as gangster beachheads for the distribution of speed into Minneapolis: Osseo, Plymouth, St. Louis Park, Brooklyn Park, Maple Grove, Golden Valley, Bloomington, Rockford, and Hanover. [*1] There's obviously a theme here. How can we characterize it? Look again at the first map above, the one situating Osseo in the broader Twin Cities geography. US-169 runs down the western edge of the map from Osseo past Edina High to Bloomington, on the opposite side of the Twin Cities from the brewery bar and Swede Hollow on the eastern edge. We've already seen the brewery bar referred to metaphorically as The East, i.e., the east coast of the United States (see EAST VS MIDWEST above). What does that make US-169 and environs? The Grapes Of Wrath framing of The Langelos, along with the "hollywood hills," the "sidewalk stars," and the pun on Los Angeles in the title, points us to the answer. US-169 is not only the Valley: US-169 is California; US-169 is the west coast of the United States; US-169 is The West. ***In clear confirmation of this conclusion, we have the evidence of Slips Backwards: then i heard that you were living on the west coast girl i had to call twice, felt like such a big dick [SBackwards] What those two calls are, we know, because there's a specific track dedicated to each of them: the first is the phone call of Summer House; the second is the phone call of Mono (see EYEPATCH GUY above). This is our smoking gun: Juanita's "living" on the "west coast" is the same as Mary's "living" in the Ambassador (see PERFUME COUNTER GIRL above); the "west coast" is the swath of towns along US-169 where the Summer House is located. [*2]***This is a watershed, bringing clarity to a host of things that before were muddled (here I also have to acknowledge the intuition of muzzleofbees , who asked me years ago now whether Holly's California wasn't really some place in the Twin Cities; it's taken me until now to catch up with that insight, but he was right). In no particular order: - Holly's departure with the "kid from California" [MINTS] is a THS reflection of Juanita's departure from the Kittson Street parking lot; the bit-player anonymity of this "kid" confirms our inference that Juanita left with an anonymous gangster from the trap house, not with Night Club Dwight (see REAR VIEW MIRROR above).
- Like Juanita "moving" [Emperor] to go take up residence in the Summer House, Holly's change of address in THS ("McKenzie Phillips doesn't live here anymore" [CatCT]) is to a townie trap house on the "west coast" of the Twin Cities, rather than to the actual state of California.
- The identification of Holly's destination with "Modesto" [MINTS] isn't just for the sake of the "modest" pun, but also for the contrast of suburban to big-city California as a metaphoric parallel to the literal contrast of Osseo and the other towns to big-city Minneapolis.
- Eureka is now confirmed to be an account of Holly's departure to "California"; the surprising new elements of this version of the story are explained by the fact that it is, in its entirety, a reflection of the story of Juanita: the apparently Jeep-Encounter-like beginning to the song (see JEEP ENCOUNTER: ORIGIN above) is really there, and leads directly into a Summer-House-like account of how Holly "crashed with his friends" in the "tenements" of the "coast" [Eureka] (compare Mary "pretty much crashing there" [Ambassador] for "crash" in the exact same sense).[*3]
- The apparent connection between the fact that the "kid from California" disappears on Holly "for days at a time" [MINTS] while she's living in the trap house, and the fact that Mary has "a house on the south side/ Where she stays in for days at a time" [LID], turns out not to be coincidental; it's Juanita staying inside "for days at a time" in the Summer House that's here being reflected in the descriptions of both Holly and Mary.[*4]
- The reference to Ketchum, Idaho in Star 18 is a "west coast" reference in this same sense: "Disseminating from a central source" [Star18] refers to the dissemination of speed from St. Cloud (see NIGHTCLUBS above) through the western townie trap houses; "Hemingway on the Ketchum porch" [Star18] is a fantastic mashup of Mariel Hemingway's character getting killed by the guy who took her to California in Star 80 (wikipedia), Ernest Hemingway committing suicide in Ketchum, and Juanita, who's committed "suicide" (see REAR VIEW MIRROR and BALTIMORE BELTLINE above) in order to go to the Summer House, taking up her new job there "transacting sacks to the yards from the porches" [LQ] (see PERFUME COUNTER GIRL above). I say "Juanita" in lieu of trying to disentangle the Holly (18, etc.) parts from the Mary (Mariel, etc.) parts of Star 18; we'll return to this later (see THS CHARACTERS below).
[*1] The Brokerdealer references to the Brookdale mall in Brooklyn Park, the Ridgedale mall in Minnetonka, and the Southdale mall in Edina are all real, too; but they don't seem to me to be described as part of this Juanita-somewhere-in-the-hick-towns framing, so I'm leaving them out of this discussion. [*2] Other references to the alpha girl living on the west coast include "your sister's in Seattle and she's sleeping with the sharps" [EC] (note the West Coast/East Coast symmetry in the pairing of this line with "your brother's in Boston and he's acting like a dick" [EC]). [*3] "Eureka!" (I found it!) is the proverbial cry of the prospector striking gold during the Gold Rush in California and the Yukon ( wikipedia); the LP/THS framing of The West includes the "gold rush" and "Yukon Club" of Sweet Payne; the girls are going west for drugs ("yeah they just can't get enough" [SPayne]). [*4] "There's a house on the south side" [LID] is of course meant to bring to mind the south side of Minneapolis; but it doesn't actually *say* Minneapolis, a point that will be of interest in the hunt for the actual Summer House.
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Post by muzzleofbees on Jun 12, 2021 1:48:35 GMT -5
This might be your best so far. That Star 18 line is just mindblowing.
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Post by skepticatfirst on Jun 14, 2021 5:58:46 GMT -5
OSSEOThe brewery bar in St. Paul is a real place. The Summer House is located with pretty insistent specificity among the towns along US-169; what are the chances that it, too, is not a real place? What are the chances that we can find it? ***Let's try to cut the problem down to size. Seven towns along US-169 are identified as part of the Summer House's "west coast" setting: Osseo, Plymouth, St. Louis Park, Brooklyn Park, Maple Grove, Golden Valley, and Bloomington (see THE WEST above; the very late reference to Hanover suggests that it and Rockford are both secondary to the US-169 group). All seven contribute to the metaphor of The West, but it's not clear that they're all equally likely to situate ground zero. The town we're looking for has to meet two criteria: - it has to have plausible drug-house real estate, i.e. the right kind of house(s) in the right kind of neighborhood(s).
- it has to be capable of anchoring the "west coast" metaphor, i.e. of justifying the US-169-as-coastline framing.
With that in mind, let's try to narrow it down among them. ***Plymouth and Golden Valley are tony, with lots of money; a Google Maps survey of both towns is immediately and very obviously discouraging, if you're looking for a trap house. Neither of these is likely. ***St. Louis Park is pretty damn nice, too. Yes, it gets a little more urban near the border with Minneapolis, maybe enough that there was some grit there back in the 90's; it also has the advantage of being situated at the western end of Lake Street, in symmetry with the brewery bar down at the eastern end. But the "west coast" metaphor is built around US-169 as the coastline, and the highway side of St. Louis Park is all parks and golf courses. It's really hard to see this being what we're looking for. ***Bloomington has neighborhoods with potential, but again, not on the US-169 side. And while it's adjacent to US-169 at its western end, Bloomington in its entirety is more properly south of Minneapolis than west of it; it really doesn't work as the anchor of a metaphorical "west coast" that runs all the way up to Osseo. ***Osseo, Maple Grove, and Brooklyn Park, on the other hand, are indeed properly west of the Twin Cities, are perfectly situated to anchor a coastline that runs down US-169 past Edina and Edina High [HH], and aren't so fancy that the presence of a drug den is improbable. Plus (see the last image in THE WEST above) the function of Rockford and Hanover as secondary representatives of The West points to something at the latitude of these towns. So it seems very likely that we're looking at one of them. But there's a problem with Maple Grove, in that only the southernmost end of it is adjacent to US-169 before it gets boxed out by Osseo, and that southern end is all empty industrial landscape, with only a handful of buildings. In other words, there's no place in Maple Grove near the highway where a trap house could be located. Which leaves Osseo and Brooklyn Park. [*1] Let's start with Osseo. ***Besides the fitting characteristics mentioned above, Osseo is also prominently named in the lyrics, and is one of the two places (together with St. Louis Park) explicitly described as playing host to the THS girls in their drug-seeking. It's also tiny, and sits in its entirety atop an eastward bend in US-169 like a little capstone on the highway "coastline." All very promising for our search. So, what's in Osseo? And here all of a sudden our search becomes absurd, because thanks to Google Maps it's over pretty much the second it begins. Osseo isn't fancy, but it's a nice little town, and you can look over the whole thing in just a couple of minutes to discover that there's literally one house in all of it that fits the bill, 2000 feet straight north from the point where US-169 veers east, at 8532 Jefferson Hwy, Osseo, MN ( link). Here's a picture: Closeup shot of porch: Let's take stock of what we're looking at here. - It's a proper house, with outbuildings; - It has a porch; - It's completely isolated, surrounded by depopulated industrial zonage, suitable for sketchy activity; - Its windows are hidden from the street by trees; - It's located *precisely* on the north-south axis of US-169; - It's on a local highway (and frontage road!) right off the freeway, for the convenience and security of visiting cars; - It's situated on the corner: specifically, the corner where Osseo, Maple Grove, and Brooklyn Park come together, for optimally ambiguous policing; - It's located on the south side [LID]: it is, along with a couple of others, literally the southernmost property in Osseo; - It's got a driveway-yard offering fast access for those who have to "wait in the car" [Star18] while the perfume counter girl holds the money. ***There's another piece of evidence arguing in favor of the identification of this property with the Summer House. We've just noted (see WEST COAST above) that the gangster Crabs of Math Is Money are described as townies, aiming their "supply if you got demand" at the "money in the city" [MiM] from out on the periphery. They're also described as loitering on the corner of Jefferson Ave in St. Paul: this is the story of the kids called the crabs they used to loiter on the corner up on jefferson ave they're always chanting on their mantra, you only get what you grab and there's money in the city, but the money's in handbags ... newspaper said that some crabs stabbed some rich kid but what's a rich kid doin that far up on jefferson [MiM] To be clear, there's only one Jefferson Ave in the vicinity of the Twin Cities, and that's the avenue running east-west in St. Paul, parallel to and south of Selby Ave (of "Selby and Griggs" [YGD] fame). But on close inspection, this identification presents a few problems: - For one thing, just as Lowertown in St. Paul is located down Lake Street with respect to Uptown in Minneapolis, *every single other description* of going off to find trouble in St. Paul is framed as going "down": "down to the taverns" [OwtB], "down to the railroad yard" [LA], "down to Ybor City" [SA], "down in Lowertown" [MoC], "down by Selby and Griggs" [YGD], "went down with some crust punk junk" [BBlues], "bloodshed down below" [GoaH], "down around the waterpark" [TMG], "down in the manpark" [Manpark], "down at the nice nice" [NN], "down by the docks" [LDoL], etc. Always "down" --- except in this MiM line, where it's "up on jefferson ave" and "up on jefferson" [MiM].
- For another, Jefferson Ave in St. Paul is a *really nice* residential street. Maybe, possibly, the intersection with 7th Avenue at its far eastern end might once have been sketchy enough to host some streetcorner drug activity, back in the 90's. But it can't possibly have supported a streetcorner-loitering *gang.* Plus, that intersection is down at the literal bottom of Jefferson Ave, the diametric opposite of *up.*
- Finally, the characterization of the Crabs as based in the towns outside the city is internally at odds with the suggestion of a base down in St. Paul.
All of these problems disappear if we read "up on jefferson" (note that the second time around, there is no "ave") in tandem with "up in Osseo" [YLHF], and take it to refer to Jefferson Hwy in Osseo --- a stretch of highway barely 1000 feet long having nothing on it but a few commercial buildings and the Summer House, with Juanita living under "house arrest" [LQ] inside: Listing in the lobby of a hotel on the highway Not sure you even want to be rescued [FFarm] ***Final confirmation that this is in fact the Summer House will need to wait for the end of the story (see APPREHENSION below). Even so, the circumstantial evidence gathered to this point makes a very strong case that we've found the right location. There's another respect in which this is a testable hypothesis, though I haven't been able to take advantage: namely, that, whereas stockhouse #4 and the brewery bar were demolished in 2011 (see BREWERY BAR: THE HISTORY above), the house at 8532 Jefferson Hwy still exists. It would be pretty interesting, for example, to visit the property and see whether there's a kitchenette on the premises. [*1] Brooklyn Park has a couple of suitable houses up at its northern end, which might make acceptable candidates if we hadn't found exactly what we were looking for in a location that's nearer to Minneapolis, right off US-169, on a highway, on a corner, with a porch, etc.
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Post by skepticatfirst on Jun 15, 2021 5:48:54 GMT -5
MAILBOXWhile she's living in the Summer House, Juanita is described as communicating with the Narrator/Eyepatch Guy in two different ways, by phone and by mail (see EYEPATCH GUY and PERFUME COUNTER GIRL above). These communications are characterized as conversations by mail three times: in Bloomington, in The Pirate And The Penpal, and in Sublet. We know that these postal exchanges are metaphorical, not literal, for the simple reason that the Narrator, like Charlemagne hunting for Mary when she's living at the Ambassador [CF, ABlues], *doesn't yet know where Juanita is* (we will have a lot more to say about this shortly; see DEPARTMENT STORES below). Juanita is in no shape to carry on a written correspondence in any case. But the real obstacle is that a letter requires a physical address, and the Narrator doesn't have hers. A close look at each of these three songs makes it easy to explain how the "mail" metaphor arises out of the literal circumstances of the story. Let's take them one at a time below. ***1) BloomingtonIn Bloomington, Juanita says of the Eyepatch Guy: he just puts his instructions into my mailbox [Bloomington] Every other allusion to their communications in this song refers to the phone ("calls"; "phone"); it's likely, then, that "mailbox" is meant in the literal sense of voicemail. In fact, we have the evidence of Viceburgh: the callgirl stalls and lets her voicemail take it she says hey i ain't here besides i quit that business [Viceburgh] to show that voicemail is a real part of the Lifter Puller communications landscape. (For the rest, the rhyme with "talk" and "shocks" accounts readily for the use of the term "mailbox" in Bloomington.) That these lines in Viceburgh refer to the communications of Juanita and the Narrator while she's at the Summer House is shown by - "i ain't here": this is after Juanita's "gone" [LE, SH, SCity]
- "i quit that business": this is after the Narrator tried to drown Juanita and she quit him (see UNDER WATER above).
***2) The Pirate And The PenpalIn TPatP, the metaphor is presented in much fuller form: i asked the postmaster, he said penpals really can't be going steady ... all the money from the strawberry stand slips through your hands cause you buy too many stamps spend your days just waitin on the mailman when he gets here you should ask him for a dance [TPatP] Here the focus is on the figure of the postmaster/mailman, to whose arrival Juanita looks forward both for the messages he brings, and because, per the old joke about housewives putting out for the mailman, she wants to fuck him ("going steady"/"a dance"; see DANCING and JUST STARTED TALKING above). A literal phone call doesn't work for these purposes; the person of the mailman is what ties it all together, and it's this that accounts for the elaboration of the "mail" metaphor in these lines. The characterization of Juanita and the Eyepatch Guy as "penpals" is a joke on the Narrator's part: their life as a couple, when they were one, didn't amount to more than being pals who went out and sucked dick together ("pen-"=penis; compare "pestilence presented us with a kickass pen and pencil set" [4Dix], and see WALKED IN above). ***3) SubletIn Sublet, the Narrator tells Juanita: and i got your postcard, it was from the pantheon it was the first peek at greece that i'd had in weeks [Sublet] These lines identify the principal reason for the development of the postal metaphor: at a certain point during the period in which they're connected by phone, the Narrator receives a picture of Juanita --- though this happens to be a photograph, not a literal postcard ("that photograph" [Bloomington]). How he comes to acquire it is probably obvious, now that I've connected the dots; but in any event we'll get to that shortly (see DETECTIVE below).
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Post by skepticatfirst on Jun 16, 2021 7:58:21 GMT -5
STAR 18So at the literal level, the Narrator's communications with Juanita while she's away at the Summer House in The West are by phone: [*1] Princess on the payphone with an angle on some western states [CitM] But there's still one more reason why the "mail" framing, with its ambiguous mailbox/voicemail allusions (see MAILBOX above), works as a metaphor: *their phone exchanges aren't direct dials from party to party, but are patched together out of pages, messages and returned calls.* ***Let's come at this starting with the evidence of Bloomington. There, Juanita says of the Eyepatch Guy: his idea of fun is bloomington he always takes his calls at the megamall he left me by the phone at the metrodome [Bloomington] Again, "megamall" and "metrodome" are metaphors for the Nice Nice, for the places where the Scene gets together (see NIGHTCLUBS and THE WEST above); cued by "metro-," for "city," the "metrodome" must specifically refer to The City around the brewery (see THE CITY above). Juanita's saying two things here: - "metrodome": she's saying that the Eyepatch Guy left her wanting to talk to him more, i.e. by phone, down in The City ("metro-"). That's a funny way of framing things, seeing that she was the one who abruptly left him (see REAR VIEW MIRROR above); but the details --- the location of their parting down on the East Side of St. Paul, and the fact that she's eager to keep talking to him on the phone --- are accurate.
- "megamall": she's saying that the Eyepatch Guy "always takes his calls at the megamall" [Bloomington] in the belief that, like her, he's talking to her from a base of operations somewhere among the drug houses of the periphery. We've already noted that her "questin through investin" [Bloomington] image of him as a criminal mastermind is false, the product of a story which the Narrator tells her in order to plausibly account for the Eyepatch Guy's vendetta against Dwight (see EYEPATCH GUY above). Her idea that he "always takes his calls" from her in some drug headquarters is similarly false.
But there's still a grain of straight reporting in her statement that he "takes his calls," and this yields two pieces of clarifying information: - nevertheless, he *chooses* where to take his calls.
It's not the case, in other words, that she calls him on a fixed line, and he picks up when the phone rings. Rather, what it must mean is that 1) he carries a pager (for pagers in the LP world see Viceburgh, LSifL); 2) she pages him, placing the call from a phone at the Summer House (from his end of the line, the Narrator, who's never seen the Summer House and doesn't even know exactly where it's located, imagines her "talkin on the hall phone" [Mono] like the one in the party house that he does know well, i.e. the brewery bar; see BREWERY BAR: THE VESTIBULE above); 3) he calls her back from what she believes to be a criminal den, but is in fact the same tennis-court-neighborhood Edina house from which he speaks to her in his own person in the song Summer House (see TENNIS COURT above). ***But this doesn't account for all the mechanics of their calls. There are still other factors to explain: For one thing, how did Juanita get the Eyepatch Guy's pager number? The Jeep Encounter ended suddenly and angrily; his objective before it ended was only to bring her down and take her away with him, not to make arrangements for later contact. What's more, he hadn't yet assumed the role of the Eyepatch Guy in a premeditated way: at the time, he was just the Narrator in costume, caught up in an unanticipated situation, without any reason to have acquired a pager with a number she wouldn't recognize. In short, not only did he not give her the number during their talk, he didn't even have the pager yet. For another, we have the Narrator's own statement to the effect that *he* was the one to initiate the calls (see THE WEST above): "girl I had to call twice" [SBackwards]. So what's the proper order of events here? ***We know that the Narrator's call in the song Summer House precedes the Narrator-as-Eyepatch-Guy's call in Mono (we know this because he references the news that "your boyfriend finally scored" [Mono], a fact that he himself had communicated to her during the first call). The very first communication of all, then, takes place when *the Narrator calls Juanita at her home phone number and leaves a message.* He doesn't call her at the Summer House; he doesn't have that number. Nor does he call her on a cell phone; this is 1994, no one has cell phones yet. The way leaving messages worked back in 1994 --- compare "her message machine" [Magazines] --- is the following: - you'd call someone at their home phone number;
- their answering machine would pick up;
- you'd leave a message.
- later, they'd call in (it's the specific case of remote-access voicemail that we're interested in: wikipedia);
- their answering machine would pick up;
- they'd punch in a code;
- the answering machine would recognize the code, and would play back their messages over the phone.
So the Narrator, from his suburban Edina house, calls Juanita at her home phone number, and leaves a message on her answering machine, asking her to call him back. ***This first call to Juanita's answering machine is the moment alluded to in Star 18: So hit me back when it's back in style. Star 18 on the rotary dial [Star18] Star codes, or vertical service codes, were again a feature of telephone communications back in the 90's. There was no *18 code ( wikipedia), but there was a *69 code that could be used to call a calling party back; this feature, called "last-call return" ( wikipedia) was the most widely advertised and popular of the vertical service codes, and "hit me back" confirms that this is the feature being alluded to. This is one of the most densely packed pair of lines Craig's ever written; [*2] for clarity, a few notes: - The title of the song combines references to three things: "Star 18" is a reference to Holly turning 18 and going off to "California" to do porn (heregoes; heregoes); "Star 69" is a reference to the last-call return code described above; "Star 80" is a reference to the Mariel Hemingway movie about a girl who goes off to California to be photographed for Playboy and gets killed by the guy she goes with (wikipedia; see THE WEST above). In other words, "18" is a reference to the legal age for appearing in porn; it's not literal with respect either to the movie or to the telephone code.
- The expression "hit me back" adds a deliberate sexual overtone to the "69" of *69; recall that the first sexual encounter of the LP Narrator/Juanita couple as well as of the THS Narrator/Mary couple was a two-stage reciprocal bout of oral sex (see SUCKING OFF EACH OTHER above); he goes down on her first, and has to wait for her to "hit him back" --- an act for which the actual expression used in You Gotta Dance is "hit it again" ("hit it again on the south side of the gym" [YGD]). The driving force behind the Narrator's persistent attempts to draw her out of the Summer House is still the fact that he's in love and wants to fuck her.
- On rotary phones (which didn't have a star key) the last-call return feature was accessed by dialing 1169, rather than *69; there was no star-anything "on the rotary dial" (wikipedia). "Rotary" here is poetic, an allusion to his hope that their love will come back around "when it's back in style."
In short, the *69 feature is a metaphor; Juanita did not literally use it to call the Narrator back. But she did call him back, and they did have the conversation documented in the song Summer House. ***The mechanics of the Narrator's second call, when he tries to contact Juanita in the person of the Eyepatch Guy, are a little more complicated, but still simple: 1) The Narrator got a pager (at the "pager store" [LSifL]) with a number that Juanita didn't know. 2) He left another message on her answering machine in the person of the Eyepatch Guy, telling her to page him at that number. 3) She paged him back, leaving the phone number at the Summer House. 4) He returned her page at that number, and they had the conversation documented in Mono. But a lot transpires before that second call. We'll work through the intervening events next. [*1] Both the Narrator, and the Narrator posing as the Eyepatch Guy, talk to Juanita at the Summer House by phone; these phone communications seem to be the point of the reference to her as "Stephanie," and to the Velvet Underground song "Stephanie Says" [LPvtEotE]: Stephanie says when answering the phone What country shall I say is calling From across the world [*2] The Hemingway motif in the song, to which these lines are connected through Mariel Hemingway's role in Star 80, is itself one of the most complicated in any of the lyrics. The first of the three "Hemingway" passages reads: Hemingway at Cafe Select. Donna Summer in the discotheque [Star18] The first line is a reference to Ernest Hemingway's novel The Sun Also Rises; the novel's main character, Jake, who is based substantially on Hemingway himself ( wikipedia) and like him frequents the Cafe' Select in Paris (see chapters 4-9: link), has a war wound which makes him unable to have sex ( wikipedia). The opening scene of Chapter 4 describes Jake in the backseat of a taxi en route to Cafe' Select with leading lady Brett, whom he kisses once or twice, while she expresses her anguish over the fact that they can't go further ( link); the parallel to the Jeep Encounter is obvious, and deliberate. The second line is a reference to Juanita's "summer" in the "discotheque" (see NIGHTCLUBS above). How "Hemingway on the Ketchum porch" [Star18] combines the earlier allusions to both Ernest and Mariel Hemingway to reference Juanita's "suicide" on leaving the Jeep to go to the Summer House, and her new role there running drugs from the porch, is detailed upthread (see THE WEST above).
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Post by skepticatfirst on Jun 17, 2021 7:01:08 GMT -5
DEPARTMENT STORESBack to the sequence of events, following the first message left by the Narrator on Juanita's answering machine. ***The subtext of the phone calls is that the Narrator is still trying to take her away from the Scene and get her back to his world: To tell the truth if I were you I'd rather sleep over than telecommute. 'Cause when you're in the same room I think we make a much better connection [Star18] But the problem now is that he doesn't even know where she is; before he can go and get her back, he has to find her. I was sitting on the kitchen tryna guess where she was living now. ... It would probably be easier if I knew where she was living now [EC] Juanita is receptive enough to the Narrator (when he calls as himself, before he tries again as the Eyepatch Guy) to return his first call; but though she's more bored than ever (see BORED above), she's also desperately addicted to speed, and so terrified of the prospect of leaving the Summer House that she not only tells him she's "never coming back" [SH], but deliberately refuses to tell him where she is. Ascension Blues records the THS reflection of this refusal in Mary's statement to Charlemagne: She said she's sick of all the sucking up She said I'm terrified of coming down ... She said I know you've got a lot of love to give But now you know you can't know where I live I know you're trying to keep it pretty positive And if it makes you feel a little bit better We're gonna all be friends in heaven [ABlues] Like Mary in the phone call of Ascension Blues, Juanita in the phone call of (the song) Summer House knows where she is, but she won't tell the Narrator. If he wants to find her, he's going to have to hunt her down himself. ***His first approach to locating her is simply to get in the Jeep and hit the drug houses out in the townie towns, driving from one to another until he finds the one she's at. Solid Gold Sole's description of Juanita working as the Summer House's "new perfume counter girl" records this search, and his eventual realization that it's futile: department stores go on for miles those retail chicks, they always smile the new perfume counter girl tears apart my world [SGS] The houses and the towns go on for miles --- too many for him to cover them all in his search (whereas our own hunt was limited to a few already-named towns and known proximity to US-169, his is unconstrained). The girls working in these places, who "come right up to your windows" [Trapper Avenue] to take his order, always smile; but none of them are Juanita. He needs to figure out another way to find her. ***The LP Narrator's drive around the towns hunting for Juanita is reflected in Charlemagne's search for Mary late in the THS story: [*1] Wednesday night I saw you riding around with Walter We all know what you were looking for [CF] The LP origin of this episode clears up a genuinely confusing issue with the THS framing. The main THS analogue to Juanita's living at the Summer House is Mary's living at the Ambassador; the Ambassador in turn is clearly identified with the brewery bar (which, having been abandoned by this point in the THS timeline, could plausibly, if improbably, be inhabited). But then why does Charlemagne have to drive around St. Paul to find her, when he knows very well where the bar is? The LP backdrop clarifies that, like "Nice Nice," "Ambassador" is a moveable name, applicable in principle to any of the drug houses around the Twin Cities that play host to the Scene. The reason Jesse (voice of the song Criminal Fingers) is in a position to see Charlemagne driving around in the first place is that she herself is one of the "retail chicks" whom he meets during his fruitless search (see PERFUME COUNTER GIRL above). ***So Juanita won't tell the Narrator where she is, and he can't find her without more information. He calls to leave a message again, hoping to get further, but now she won't even call him back: the callgirl stalls and lets her voicemail take it she says hey i ain't here besides i quit that business [Viceburgh] So what can he do now? Then he has an idea: betting on the progress he made during the Jeep Encounter, he contacts her again in the person of the Eyepatch Guy, in whom he hopes she's still interested. Again he leaves a message on her answering machine, this time giving her the number at which she can page him *with the phone number at which she in turn can be reached* (see STAR 18 above). [*2] When his pager goes off, he knows he has enough to find her. But now he's going to need some help to run the number back to the source. [*1] Note that, like the LP Narrator, Charlemagne's driving his own car; see FRONTAGE ROAD above. As a drug dealer, Charlemagne keeps a gun, "Walter," in the glovebox. [*2] Note that, while he achieves his goal just by acquiring the phone number, he does also call her back; as Mono, even in its extreme brevity, makes plain, he wants to talk to her, even if he has nothing to say ("but i'll stay up if you wanna talk some more" [Mono]).
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Post by skepticatfirst on Jun 18, 2021 8:16:05 GMT -5
DETECTIVEIn 1994, before the internet, it wasn't possible for an ordinary person to simply look up the street address associated with a phone number; only the phone company could provide that information, and in order to get them to provide it, some kind of authorized inquiry was required. The Narrator is obviously unwilling to get the police involved in his search, which would be the most direct way to bring in that authority. But he has no such objection to hiring a licensed private investigator, who, like the police, is authorized to ask the phone company to link an address to the number, and to use it confirm Juanita's whereabouts. So the Narrator hires a detective, and gives him the telephone number as a lead for tracking Juanita down. This hire is recorded in 11th Avenue Freezeout: [*1] What am I supposed to tell our friends? That you walked into a bender I haven't seen you since But I know that you've been Getting loose with the gin and juice The proof is in the photo shoot ... Made amends with your dealer friends The truth is in the camera lens So don't come home With a stick in your nose I hired a detective He's got a tiny camera [11AF] Note the context in the 11th Avenue Freezeout passage, which clearly describes the time of Juanita's Summer House disappearance, after The LBI: - "I haven't seen you since [the] bender" refers to her disappearance after The LBI. (Note that "bender," like "cuz" in DStraps, has one meaning with respect to what comes before and another with respect to what comes after. The foregoing lines about the smashed hand refer "bender" to the first weekender, Party Zero; the following "I haven't seen you since" refers "bender" to the second weekender, The LBI; "what am I supposed to tell our friends?" is ambiguously "how am I supposed to explain your injury?" and "how am I supposed to explain your disappearance?")
- She's "made amends with [her] dealer friends" after having ditched them for the Eyepatch Guy, and having almost left with him, at the end of The LBI.
- His statement "don't come home/ with a stick in your nose" refers to the fact that she's not at home; she's living with the dealers.
***The interesting *new* information in the 11AF lines is not just that the Narrator has "hired a detective" with "a tiny camera," but that the detective brings back "proof" of having found her in the form of a photo. This is the second important photo of the story (for the first, the one taken during Party Zero, see COMMEMORATIVE PLATES above). It shows her "getting loose" with the "gin and juice," i.e. the gangsters (see LACED SUBSTANCES above); the combination of "getting loose" and "made amends" with "friends," plural, is suggestive of her being caught by the camera in the middle of a crowded sex act, a suggestion which Juanita herself confirms in Bloomington: i'm condescending, i've got my reasons you never gave me back that photograph if it's offending, get used to it darlin well i wasn't even lookin but i saw the flash [Bloomington] She's "condescending" in the literal sense of "going down" (compare BiB, and see THE QUEUE above); she speculates that the photograph is "offending" to him; she "wasn't even lookin" because she was blowing one of the gangsters when it was taken. ***There's a thinly-disguised reprise of this same moment in the solo song Blankets: The detective was expensive But he thought it was something he could solve Found her serving breakfast In a cafe in the Skyway in St. Paul [Blankets] That is, she was giving "service" when the detective found her; "breakfast ... in the Skyway in St. Paul" suggests a scene in analogy to dawn in the brewery bar (see DAWN above; compare "morning whores yourself to the night before" [Langelos], etc.), in keeping with the THS relocation of the place the alpha girl is "living" to the Ambassador (see NICE NICE, THE WEST and DEPARTMENT STORES above). ***We've already identified the events of Eureka as a THS reflection of Juanita's residence in the Summer House (see THE WEST above), and there too we're treated to a description of photos, video, and crowded sex acts: When they got to Eureka they crashed with his friends. They had five in one room. They had four in one bed. ... There was this whole long scene with some mountains and some lakes. And most of it was real but some of it seemed fake. Try not to judge me by the pictures that I take. I've always had some pretty shaky hands [Eureka] ***Secret Santa Cruz also describes Juanita in a group fuck at the end of the summer during which she "interned at some law firm" [SSC], i.e. the Summer House ("interned"='confined', as when under "house arrest" [LQ]: ahdict): twenty-seven lovers in the back half of the summer i know you think it's way too many [SSC] ***Sherman City connects the dots between the fact that she's living in the Summer House, and the fact that there's a "bed" [Eureka] there, to note that she has a "bedroom" where the group sex takes place: and she's proud of her sound-proof bedroom it gets so loud, there's like thirty threesomes [SCity] ***Navy Sheets gives us a little extra detail about the mechanics of this crowd-fuck (we'll return to the furnishings of her bedroom later; see CANDY'S ROOM below): Everybody's coming onto navy sheets [NS] ***Spices gives us a graphic description of the photo, again with the bed, the crowd, [*2] the spread legs, and the drugs that fired it up in the first place ("chips"='cigarettes/joints laced with PCP'; see LISTED above). She sent a picture of a plethora of poker chips Spread out on the bed between a mouth and a leg She said there's pretty many people already, still I wish you were here [Spices] ***Hanover Camera adds more detail about the lighting of the photo (compare "the flash" [Bloomington]) and her physical attidude in the shot; it also notes that it's taken in "her own apartment" (see CANDY'S ROOM below), where she's been "captured" (compare "hostage" [HCamera], "interned" [SSC] and "house arrest" [LQ]): The lighting made her look like she'd been captured Sitting up and staring into space ... The coolest part about her was she had her own apartment It's still an inconvenient place to die [HCamera] ***This is the same photo described in Unpleasant Breakfast: Last summer at the shoreline When you walked into the water Went out up to your waistline And turned back to face the camera Rolled your eyes back in their sockets Then you raised your middle fingers Defiant and undamaged That's when I took the picture [UBreakfast] Again, the details here can be unpacked on the basis of what we already know. The "summer at the shoreline" setting locates the scene in the Summer House, on the "West Coast" of the Twin Cities (see THE WEST above). For "walked into the water," we know "water"=meth (see LISTED above. The photo about to be described is the source also of "Kids out on the west coast are taking off their clothes/ Screwing in the surf" [CSongs], where "surf" is another meth metaphor; see THE FOAM above). Next follows a lot of detail about the captured image. The combination of "out up to your waistline" and "raised your middle fingers" describes Juanita's pose: she's in a gangbang, sitting on one gangster who's doing her vaginally from underneath ("up to your waistline"), and holding a cock in each hand ("raised your middle fingers"). This is consistent with the facts related elsewhere, that she's "sitting up" [HCamera], and that they have "four in one bed" [Eureka]. To this we can add The scene stuck in my head of her spread out on her bed Like she's showing off her wingspan [Lanyards] to conclude that she's oriented toward the camera, with the two gangsters she's holding in her hands on either side of her. Regarding her facial expression, "rolled your eyes back in their sockets" tells us she's high; this is, again, consistent with "staring into space" [HCamera] and "wasn't even lookin" [Bloomington]. The Narrator's "I took the picture" is heavy with meaning; here he's referring not just to the technical fact that the detective is his agent, but to the point, emphasized so strongly in Slapped Actress, that he and Juanita are the authors of their own films: We're the directors, our hands will hold steady ... we make our own movies [SA] Compare again the deeply ambiguous statement in Eureka about "hands" and "pictures that I take," meant in the sense both of *authoring* pictures, and of *being* in them: Try not to judge me by the pictures that I take. I've always had some pretty shaky hands [Eureka] ***As for the detective himself, we know a little bit about his equipment, and about how he got the picture. 11th Avenue Freezeout tells us plainly that He's got a tiny camera [11AF] This camera is called a "Hanover camera" not because it's an actual Hanover camera (h/t muzzleofbees : link), which is not tiny and not something that could practically be used as a portable camera. Rather, it's called that because of the ambiguity between (a) its identification of an actual camera, (b) Hanover, MN on the "West Coast" (see THE WEST above), and probably (c) Hanover, PA, the home of the real-world Sheppard Mansion (h/t star18 : link; wikipedia). [*3]As to how he got the picture: we'll soon learn more about security at the Summer House (see LOOKING FOR K below; it was literally a "fortress" [FFarm]), which would have made it impossible to penetrate, and scary even to approach. The only way we can realistically conceive of him getting a shot of her is through a window, and in fact it seems that that's how he did it: She appeared as a wraith in the drapes Still life with cigarettes, morbid mistakes Trying to suppress a small case of the shakes [R&T] Compare "the shakes" [R&T] with "pictures ... shaky hands" [Eureka] above, and "appeared as a wraith" [R&T] with "look like she's a hostage" [HCamera]; making allowances for the fact that the LP Summer House has been translated into the THS Ambassador in St. Paul (see again THE WEST and DEPARTMENT STORES above), this scene looks very much like the one the detective observed in pointing his camera through the window and past the drapes. To return to the "painting" [TVillage] metaphor for photos (see COMMEMORATIVE PLATES above), this "still life with cigarettes" *is* the photo of Juanita holding a dick in each hand (for "cigarettes"=dicks see THE QUEUE above). In short, the detective got his photo, but getting it will have been genuinely dangerous; the Narrator's report that The hand that held the camera was trying not to tremble [M&M] can be taken at face value, at the same time that it makes a statement of the kids' own authorship (see the notes on "our hands will hold steady" [SA], "I've always had some pretty shaky hands" [Eureka], and "I took the picture" [UBreakfast] above). ***To conclude with the photo: the detective's photograph is the "postcard" of Sublet, [*4] referred to in the same terms 26 years later by the classic postcard text "wish you were here" [Spices]: and i got your postcard, it was from the pantheon it was the first peek at greece that i'd had in weeks [Sublet] That "first peek at greece that i'd had in weeks" [Sublet] is important information; from "the first week you were gone i got so bored" [SH] we'd already suspected (see PERFUME COUNTER GIRL above) that the Summer House episode lasts at least two weeks, and this confirms: by the time the detective has returned to furnish the Narrator with Juanita's location and photograph, at least two weeks have passed (see CALENDAR: SECOND PASS below). ***What about the "whole long scene" mentioned in Eureka --- a description consistent with filming a video, rather than taking a photograph? We already know that the gangsters have a video camera, which they used to film the Party Zero gangrape (see MAGAZINES & VIDEOS above). According to the description of the photo in Eureka: They had five in one room. They had four in one bed [Eureka] it's implied that Juanita is in the bed with three of the gangsters, while a fourth --- the fifth person in the room --- is standing apart from the bed, filming. This scene is the LP source of what will become Holly's career in porn in THS. We have evidence for this in the "California"/"Hollywood"/"Modesto" [Eureka, C&N, MINTS] setting of this episode in The West; Holly's "videos" [C&N], too, reflect the group sex aspect of the film: She did a movie called North Dallas Foursome [C&N] which tallies with the count of "four in one bed" described in Eureka. ***This leaves us with a final ambiguity to be cleared up. The "whole long scene" mentioned in Eureka is filmed at the Summer House, but "the shoot" described in Riptown is the one from Party Zero: The lens cap was lost so they stretched out the shoot ... The director's distracted, he's losing his light The actors are wrapped up in robes for the night ... But she tries not to date other actors [Riptown] We know that this refers to the Party Zero video shoot for a few reasons. First, "the lens cap was lost" refers to Juanita's theft of "a little bit" (see A LITTLE BIT above): "lens" and "cap" are both slang terms for drugs (LSD, see ondcp). Her theft was the precipitating event that led to the gangrape and filming (see SHORT BY AN OUNCE above). Second, "she tries not to date other actors" identifies the Narrator as her co-star, since he's the only one on the Scene who she won't fuck (see UNDER WATER above. "The actors are wrapped up in robes for the night" identifies this, retroactively, as a porn shoot). We recognize "the director's distracted," then, as another statement of the Narrator's authorship of his own movie, one consistent with "the kids are all distracted" [BBreathing] (compare also J&J; see THE JOKE above), while "he's losing his light" parallels his "window sucking up all the available light" [DH] experience of the Party Zero video shoot (see MAGAZINES & VIDEOS above; for "light"=meth, see LISTED above). The ambiguity to be cleared up, then, turns on the "lens cap" of Riptown versus the "cap/lens" mentioned in Hanover Camera. Riptown describes the Party Zero filming, but the film scenes from Hanover Camera are from the shooting at the Summer House. And the final HCamera statements about Heather and the lens cap are saying something else again: It ends Once she puts her hand over the lens [Hcamera] As recounted in Lord I'm Discouraged, the story ends with the alpha girl reaching for the drugs again (see "lens"=LSD above). It ends When Heather puts the cap back on the lens [HCamera] And this is a particularly heavy line: the story ends when she disclaims her own authorship, and stops making her own movie. ***In short, the detective finds Juanita in the middle of a scary situation; but she's there of her own free will. If the Narrator wants to get her away, the detective tells him, it's going to take a particular act of courage on his part: i know that you're scared, but i suggest you go back to the bears [Bears] [*1] The line "felt like such a big dick" in Slips Backwards' account of Juanita "living on the west coast" refers to this hire also: "dick" is slang for "detective" ( gdict). [*2] "Pretty Many People" is the name of a 2014 album by Three Man Cannon ( discogs); whether this is meant to allude to Juanita's simultaneous engagement with three men's "cannons" in the photo is hard to say for certain, but it's a likely reading. [*3] Hanover, PA is also known as the "Snack Food Capital of the World" ( wikipedia); its homonymity with Hanover, MN and status as the location of the original Sheppard Mansion (compare "Shepard's mansion" [ABlues]; see SHEPARD'S MANSION below) may be the rationale behind the following line from Me And Magdalena: The grackles at the snack bar waging war for popcorn and potato chips [M&M] where "snack food" is metaphor for drugs: "popcorn"='marijuana' ( dea), "potato chips"='crack cut with benzocaine' ( ondcp), "chips"='joints laced with PCP' (see LISTED above), and the "bar" is the Nice Nice. [*4] Putting everything together, there's a gratuitous but still real possibility that the sound of "pantheon" [Sublet] is meant, on top of everything else, to recall the "panther" [Viceburgh, SShoes] gangsters who live there as "house cats" (see RATS & CATS above); compare the similarly constructed pun according to which Katrina's gone to "greece" [Sublet] to get with the "greasers" [BBender] (see GEOGRAPHY: SELF-TITLED ALBUM above).
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Post by muzzleofbees on Jun 19, 2021 3:17:52 GMT -5
I keep dropping my jaw over the density of Star 18, and this thing about a possible real summer house somewhere out of town, is very exciting!
I just need to let all the stuff about the photograph(s) sink in for a while. And try to make sense of why the emphasis on it is so huge on Open Door Policy. I guess there's nods to it earlier in the Hold Steady catalog too, but it seems like it's at the center of attention on a few of these newer songs.
I just dropped by to say that this thread have made me appreciate the self titled debut a LOT more. I put it on the other day, and realized that I've read about almost every single lyric over the past few months. It just made the experience a lot bigger and better. And I've grown into like the dirty, 90s indie sound of it, it's raw and rambling in a very cool way. Earlier I tended to hear more Pavement in it, but it's just a couple of songs who really goes in that direction, some of the noisier ones seem genuinely unique and interesting in their own right.
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Post by skepticatfirst on Jun 21, 2021 7:27:02 GMT -5
I keep dropping my jaw over the density of Star 18, and this thing about a possible real summer house somewhere out of town, is very exciting! Star 18 is crazy. Obviously, writing densely-packed lyrics is what Craig does, but in that song he seems to take it to another level. I just need to let all the stuff about the photograph(s) sink in for a while. And try to make sense of why the emphasis on it is so huge on Open Door Policy. I guess there's nods to it earlier in the Hold Steady catalog too, but it seems like it's at the center of attention on a few of these newer songs. Yeah, it's a lot. Tomorrow is the chapter summary, hope that helps to frame things plainly and simply. I'm tempted to answer the question about ODP, but we'll get to it in just a few days. More than any other album so far, it's got a consistent narrative focus (all centered around a particular place with a door, and someone's policy with regard to keeping it open). Almost there.
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Post by skepticatfirst on Jun 21, 2021 8:02:19 GMT -5
CALENDAR: SECOND PASSWe've got a lot of new information affecting the calendar to catch up on here. ***We began our review of the events of this "chapter" by establishing that Juanita, newly moved into the Summer House, is "the new perfume counter girl" of Solid Gold Sole. In our earlier discussion of the Return Parties (see DO THIS ALL OVER above), we'd looked at the opening lines of that song: one week ago she wouldn't have missed one wednesday night for all the gold that you're holdin in your hands now these discos make her sad [SGS] and seen that they presuppose both a "now" at one of the Wednesday night parties, and a "one week ago" just before something happened to make her sad about them. In working through the Jeep Encounter, we observed the emergence of this sadness, when the Eyepatch Guy didn't respond to Juanita's advance and she returned tearfully to the gangsters ("the way your tears reflect the stars" [LE]; see LAZY EYE above). This happened early in the morning of Saturday, September 3, 1994 (see CALENDAR: FIRST PASS above). With these details lined up, we are able confidently to date the "now" Wednesday of Solid Gold Sole to September 7, 1994 (the Wednesday for which "one week ago" falls on the other side of September 3, 1994); this, together with the knowledge that the Wednesday night parties are held at regular two-week intervals ("every other Wednesday night" [CRoom]), lets us backfill the rest of the Wednesday night calendar around it (see below). ***Now that we can line up the dates of the Wednesday night parties, a date for the Narrator's attempted drowning of Juanita suggests itself. We have here three facts to work with: - The Narrator's disappointed expectations of sex with Juanita coincide with the Wednesday night parties (see EAST VS MIDWEST above).
- Double Straps ("now you're 24 and the shore's a bore/ everybody's waiting on the very same score") indicates that things are still in the Return Parties holding pattern on the Narrator's birthday, which we've dated to August 22 (see CALENDAR: FIRST PASS above).
- The crisis of the attempted drowning and breakup took place shortly before The LBI kicks off on September 2 (see CALENDAR: FIRST PASS above).
There's one Wednesday night party between August 22 and September 2, and that's the one on August 24. It is very likely, then, that August 24 is the date of the assault. Apart from squaring with the calendar constraints, this sequence of events stands up to scrutiny: a premise of "birthday sex" two days after turning 24 would plausibly have added an "if not now, when?" edge to the Narrator's Wednesday night expectations; the August 24 date would in turn give him a week to acquire a used Jeep and avoid renewing his apartment lease on September 1. ***As for the dates associated with the episode of The Summer House itself: so far, we can only pinpoint the start date of Sep 3 and the first Wednesday night party of Sep 7 with precision. There are additional dates to be worked out, but, like the Wednesday night parties, they'll have to be backfilled from the perspective of later developments (see CALENDAR: THIRD PASS below). Having said that, we do have constraints to work with, and it will be valuable to set those out now for reference later: 1) At least two weeksThe Summer House episode runs for *at least two weeks* starting from Sep 3. Evidence for this is twofold: - The Narrator's statement "the first week you were gone I got so bored" [SH] implies a second week of her absence that is distinct from the first;
- Sublet confirms that the Narrator received the photograph from the detective "weeks," plural, after the end of The LBI on September 3.
2) MondayThe Narrator's reaction during his first phone call with Juanita, "what do you mean you ain't never coming back to the city" [SH], is evidence that she's told him she won't be coming back. In spite of this, he ends the call by saying "when you get home monday" [SH]. Why does he say this, after what she's just told him? Which Monday does he mean? We can stitch together an explanation from a series of fragmented facts: a) As noted (see STAR 18 above), the Narrator's call in Summer House precedes the Narrator-as-Eyepatch-Guy's call in Mono. When he says "girl i had to call twice" [SBackwards], he means that he had to call a second time because *the first call didn't work* (see DEPARTMENT STORES above). It didn't work in the specific sense that he tried to persuade her to come back or at least tell him where she was, but she refused. His recourse to a second call is evidence that he doesn't accept that refusal. b) The perspective of (a) makes clear that his "when you get home monday" is itself a rejection of her refusal to come home, expressed before the first call is even finished. Dismissing her wish to stay, he's formulated a plan to go and get her, which he expects will end with her being back home on Monday. c) We know what his plan to go and get her is: that's the driving for "miles" [SGS] around the townie trap houses plan, which ends in failure (see DEPARTMENT STORES above). It's this failure that leaves him in the position of "[having] to call twice," i.e., having to place the second call documented in Mono. d) His statement about Monday continues "and when you get home monday, then you'll barely know me/ cause i'll be green and empty" [SH]. We recognize in this the reference to the Eyepatch Guy as a Hulk-like wreaker of vengeance (see CHARLEMAGNE above). His attempt to rescue Juanita by force is analogous to Charlemagne's driving around looking for Mary with apocalyptic visions ("revelation songs" [CF]) in his head and Walter, the gun, in the glove box; again, like Charlemagne's search, the LP Narrator's search fails. e) We've observed that the Narrator's search fails because there are too many "miles" [SGS] to cover (see DEPARTMENT STORES above), and indeed it's evident from what he himself says during the first call that he knows it's going to be a challenge --- that is, he specifies "monday" because he imagines needing the entire weekend to find her. (This focus on the weekend only makes sense if he's busy with a job or classes on weekdays, and in fact there's evidence that this is the case, which we'll come to in a moment; see RASTAFARI GUY below). Very early in this thread (see THE FIRST FIVE TRACKS above), we noted that the search for a girl that's described in the middle section of Nassau Coliseum (from "i've got a feeling" through "used to believe em" [NC]) bears an uncanny resemblance to Charlemagne's search for Mary. This resemblance, it turns out, is not coincidence: it is in fact the Narrator's search for Juanita in the Summer House that's being described. An important detail in the NC account that's missing from SGS is the description of the Narrator's increasing tension behind the wheel as time drains away and he still hasn't found her: and i've got a feeling like i'm in the beatles bigger than jesus, i'm getting shot at it's getting hectic, there's so much traffic i might never get it, it's behind the buildings it's guarded by cameras, studied by doctors wrapped up in plastic, it sleeps at the airport skips all its classes, skips like a record [NC] He's under time pressure because he only has a fixed window, what's left of the weekend until Monday, to find her. [*1]3) Earliest-case datesThe reason we can't pinpoint dates yet is because we don't yet know if "at least two weeks" means something a little over two weeks, or if it means something substantially more than two weeks. A useful exercise, while we have the data in front of us here, is to set out the *earliest possible* dates for the events of this period. - The earliest possible date for the first phone call would be Friday, September 9, at the end of "the first week you were gone" [SH] (again, a week for the Narrator means the workweek, organized around a job or classes; see RASTAFARI GUY below).
- If the first phone call is Friday the 9th, that makes "monday" [SH] Monday the 12th, and the Saturday and Sunday of September 10-11 the weekend of driving around looking for Juanita.
- We can't propose specific dates for the rest, but it's certainly reasonable to imagine the second phone call, detective hire, investigation, and detective report taking another week-plus, which gets us to two-and-some weeks total.
So the known dates to this point, along with placeholders for the uncertain ones, are: 1994 ----- FRI APR 01 - Ride in Dwight's car down to brewery SUN APR 03 - Easter Sunday. Party Zero assault WED APR 20 - Wednesday night party --| WED MAY 04 - Wednesday night party | WED MAY 18 - Wednesday night party | WED JUN 01 - Wednesday night party | somewhere(s) WED JUN 15 - Wednesday night party |-- in here, the WED JUN 29 - Wednesday night party | frontage road WED JUL 13 - Wednesday night party | WED JUL 27 - Wednesday night party | WED AUG 10 - Wednesday night party --| MON AUG 22 - Narrator turns 24 WED AUG 24 - Wednesday night party: attempted drowning WED AUG 31 - Narrator leaves apartment, moves into Jeep FRI SEP 02 - Return to brewery, The LBI costume party SAT SEP 03 - Jeep Encounter. Juanita leaves with gang WED SEP 07 - Wednesday night party of Solid Gold Sole ? ? - Summer House Call 1 (Narrator/Juanita) SAT - Driving around looking for Juanita day 1 SUN - Driving around looking for Juanita day 2 MON - Planned day to bring Juanita home (failed) ? ? - Summer House Call 2 (Eyepatch Guy/Juanita) ? ? - Detective brings back photo of Juanita
[*1] The Narrator's time spent stuck in heavy traffic in The West, around the time he received the detective's photo, is again mentioned in Lanyards: The scene stuck in my head of her spread out on her bed Like she's showing off her wingspan I sat in heavy traffic I drowned in the Pacific Then I went back to the heartland [Lanyards]
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Post by skepticatfirst on Jun 22, 2021 7:12:53 GMT -5
THE SUMMER HOUSE: SUMMARYHere's a summary of the events of The Summer House "chapter." ***- Juanita takes up residence in the house; she works as an order taker, holding the money and transacting sacks from the porch to customers' cars [PERFUME COUNTER GIRL, OSSEO].
- The Narrator retreats in his Jeep back to his parents' house in the suburbs, somewhere near the Walnut Ridge Park tennis court in Edina [TENNIS COURT, STAR 18].
- Days pass with no word from her. The Narrator is bored. He scores drugs from a gangster at the tennis court [EYEPATCH GUY, STAR 18].
- He calls Juanita's home phone number and leaves a message on the answering machine, telling her where to reach him [STAR 18].
- Juanita calls in to check the answering machine, hears the Narrator's message, and calls him back at his parents' home [STAR 18, DEPARTMENT STORES].
- The Narrator refuses to accept her farewell. Deciding that he's going to go find her and bring her back, he tells her that she'll be home on Monday [DEPARTMENT STORES, CALENDAR: SECOND PASS].
- His efforts are foiled by the fact that there's too much territory to cover in too much traffic; the weekend runs out, and he still hasn't found her [DEPARTMENT STORES, CALENDAR: SECOND PASS].
- Grasping at straws, the Narrator has an idea. He goes to the pager store and acquires a pager with a number Juanita doesn't know [STAR 18, DEPARTMENT STORES].
- He leaves another message on her answering machine, this time in the voice of the Eyepatch Guy, with instructions to page him at the new number [STAR 18, DEPARTMENT STORES].
- Juanita, who's bored again and is excited to hear from the Eyepatch Guy, pages him back, leaving the number at which she can now be reached [STAR 18, DEPARTMENT STORES].
- He tells her things, chatting about his own score in the third person just to talk to her; like in the Jeep, she latches on to his conversation, and he gets her talking [EYEPATCH GUY].
- The Narrator hires a detective, explaining the situation and giving him the phone number as a lead for finding Juanita [DETECTIVE].
- The detective finds the drug house. Under cover of darkness he gets up to the windows to scope it out [DETECTIVE].
- With his tiny camera and flash, he takes a photo of Juanita, who happens at that moment to be engaged in a gangbang, as proof that he's located her [DETECTIVE].
- The detective returns to the Narrator and delivers to him both the photograph and the address of the drug house [DETECTIVE].
- He acknowledges that the Narrator's scared, but tells him that if he wants to extract Juanita, he's going to have to go back to the gang to do it [DETECTIVE].
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Post by skepticatfirst on Jun 23, 2021 5:57:55 GMT -5
LOOKING FOR KSo the detective finds Juanita, but along with her photo and location gives the Narrator some tough news: not only is she there of her own free will, but the Summer House is under serious guard. If he wants to break her out of there, his best bet is to go and try to bring her back himself: i know that you're scared, but i suggest you go back to the bears [Bears] Out of options that don't involve the police, the Narrator decides that that's what he's going to do. But how's he going to pull it off? ***One thing he *can't* do is drive up to the Summer House and demand that she come with him. It's not just that she's already told him she won't leave, although he's pretty sure that's going to be a problem too: Not sure you even want to be rescued [FFarm] You got to want to be rescued [Riptown] It's that, as the detective will have told him and he himself must have realized, it's too dangerous. We have the evidence of Nassau Coliseum to suggest that the Narrator was shot at during his weekend drive around the drug houses ("i'm getting shot at/ it's getting hectic, there's so much traffic" [NC]; see DEPARTMENT STORES and CALENDAR: SECOND PASS above). This is the response he got to inquiries in the *wrong* places. What will he get if he shows up at the right house and insists on taking her away? We can see now how the dogs fit into the picture; Eureka's description of the drug house to which the Kid From California takes Holly includes not only a guard at the door and a gun within reach, but an attack dog on a rope: There was a guy at the door. There was a gun on the bed. There was a dog on a rope It had a cross on its head [Eureka] This is confirmed by Banging Camp's description of the dogs being "called in" to attack unwelcome visitors: She said if they think you're a Christian then they won't bring in the dogs [BCamp] Family Farm (itself a euphemism for the Summer House, see DETECTIVE above) emphasizes the "so heavily armed" [LGI] security: ... a fortress she called the family farm Out along the towers there were guards with heavy arms [FFarm] Between guns, dogs, and Juanita herself, getting to her while she's at the Summer House is out of the question. ***But there's still one other place where he has an opportunity to reach her, in a venue that's accessible to outsiders by design: [*1] namely, the Wednesday night parties. On the next every-other-Wednesday following the detective's return, the Narrator heads back to the Scene with intent to find and extract Juanita. Mick's Tape states expressly that he's "jettin off" to the Scene in The West to meet her there and "jettison" Katrina, Juanita's "ghost"/"facelift": jettin off to the coast where the girls all taste like toast i'm getting off at the coast where the boys all taste like soap and when i get to pasadena, gonna jettison your ghost i'm getting off at the place where the boys all taste like paste i'm getting off on the place where the girls all get so wasted and when i get to sacramento, gonna jettison your facelift [MTape] As usual, we need a name by which to distinguish this party from the others in the story. Both as a matter of factual description and following the lead of Esther, we're going to call it the Mission Party. ***Going into the Mission Party, the Narrator is every bit as scared as the detective said he was: I didn't even want to go out 'cause I was way too frightened [RP] Giving the gangsters a wide berth, he approaches one of the "chesterfield chicks" [LiaL] (one of the other girls on the Scene; see THE QUEUE and COSTUME PARTY above) to ask her if Juanita is there. There's a misunderstanding: she says this isn't a rave, it's a party and i said i'm sorry, god bless the dj [KatKH] What's elided in this account is the Narrator's opening question, in which he asks for Juanita by her K (Katrina) nickname, leading the girl to think he's looking for Ketamine, as if they were at a rave: Narrator: Hey do you know where I can find K? Girl: This isn't a rave, it's a party! Narrator: I'm sorry! God bless the dj ... Note the girl's insistence on "party," affirming that this is one of the Wednesday night parties. [*2] The Narrator's reflexive "god bless the dj," meaning himself (see THE KISS above), is further evidence of how frightened he is to be returning; we note that the THS Narrator has the same reaction under the same circumstances in You Gotta Dance, in which he asks the listener to "say a prayer for the boys in the band" [YGD] on the occasion of his "going back in" to the Skins. [*3] Thinking that he's looking for Ketamine, the girl points him to the guys with the Copenhagen hats (see REAR VIEW MIRROR above): these guys with their eyes in their visors are a good place to start if you're lookin for k [KatKH] The Narrator, still hoping to avoid the gangsters, doesn't want to accept the irony of the fact that he's got the right answer to his question, even if the girl thought she was answering a different one. He tries again to explain to her who it is that he's asking about. You know, K, Katrina, the girl who was always with Night Club Dwight (the boy with the pipe in ILtL, Manpark, CRoom, NN; see NIGHT CLUB DWIGHT above)? our teachers they call her katrina but really when you're speeding towards sunrise, katrina's a bit much to say now we just call her k, and her boyfriend's the bass he's got guts he's got grace, he's the boy with the pipe in his face [KatKH] ***The title of the song, Katrina And The K-Hole, makes a triple allusion, to 1) Katrina And The Waves ("Katrina and the ___"; see KATRINA above). 2) K-hole, slang for "Periods of ketamine-induced confusion; the depressant high associated with ketamine" ( ondcp), or "a state of dissociation with visual and auditory hallucinations" associated with excessively high doses of Ketamine ( wikipedia). 3) A-hole, i.e. Night Club Dwight, Katrina's asshole boyfriend. We can't take for granted that the title of the song is related to its contents; [*4] but the implied "A-hole" link to Night Club Dwight is supported by the last two lines of the song, and it's probable that "K-hole" refers literally to the state in which the Narrator finds Juanita. We already know from Solid Gold Sole that her attendance at the Wednesday night parties is now purely a matter of servicing her drug habit (see CALENDAR: SECOND PASS above): one week ago she wouldn't have missed one wednesday night for all the gold that you're holdin in your hands now these discos make her sad she only goes to check her bag and bring it back into her southside hardwood floor apartment stashed in the battery pack of her boombox [SGS] The clear implication of this is that she does in fact attend the party (traveling with the gangsters) on leave from her drug house residence, [*5] that the Narrator does eventually find her there, and that he finds her in a confused/hallucinating state. ***As implied above, the LP Mission Party has a THS analogue in the party to which the "frightened" [RP] Narrator and the other kids travel in order to rejoin the gang ahead of Charlemagne's crucifixion. (The primary descriptions of this party are in Rock Problems and Most People Are DJs; the rejoining itself is alluded to fragmentarily in You Gotta Dance; the journey to the party is described a second time in Snake In The Shower; additional conversational detail is related in Esther.) The LP and THS versions of the event differ in that Mary travels to the party along with the other THS kids, as opposed to already being there in the company of the gangsters ( heregoes; heregoes). The THS version also provides details of the alpha couple's interaction at points where the LP version falls silent: - Mary is described as "weird-talkin" [MPADJs]
- Mary is described as wanting to go straight to the room in the back [RP]
- The Narrator ends up falling in love and feeling sweet in spite of everything [MPADJs, RP]
- Mary criticizes the Narrator for being unhappy, since he's got exactly what he wanted [RP]
Three of these reports [*6] are a strong fit for the LP Narrator's reunion with Juanita at the Mission Party. We know he doesn't find her when he first enters the party, implying that she's in the back (see ESTHER below). We'd already surmised that she's in no shape to talk coherently. And after searching so hard for so long, he must be happy to find her, in spite of everything else. [*1] A Slight Discomfort suggests that public access to the parties is controlled via managed publicity, while confirming that they are deliberately open to outsiders for reasons of business: I thought you're through with all the bougie guys, don't you wonder about the other side? They only get invited 'cause they think that they might buy [ASD] [*2] Almost more interesting than the line itself ("this isn't a rave, it's a party" [KatKH]) is the shadow it casts over the First Night party of THS (documented in The Swish and Barfruit Blues), suggesting that it, too, was specifically a Wednesday night "bar" party: "This was supposed to be a party" [BBlues] ( heregoes). In general, the fact that Mary partied with townies "when there weren't any parties" [OftC] is consistent with the implication that these were Wednesday night events (there *are*, in general, other parties on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday). [*3] Here too there's an LP shadow hanging over "half are getting sprung and half are going back in" [YGD]; it's true that the THS' kids return to the Skins is a roundabout way of getting Mary sprung, but the more precise reference to Juanita and the Narrator, one of the two "getting sprung" and the other "going back in" to get her, reveal the presence of the LP alpha couple in the background (see NICE NICE above). [*4] There are lots of songs in the LP catalog whose titles refer to details of the story that are entirely unrelated to the ones elaborated in the songs themselves: Star Wars Hips, Mick's Tape, Sangre De Stephanie, Lonely In A Limousine, Back In Blackbeard, etc. [*5] Here "southside hardwood floor apartment" [SGS], like "hall phone" [Mono], deliberately superimposes the physical presentation of one of the Scene's "clubs" (the brewery bar) on top of another (the Summer House); the "hardwood floor" comes from the bar, but the "apartment" as residence comes from the Summer House proper. This mashup handling is part of an extended pattern which we'll look at shortly; see CANDY'S ROOM below. [*6] The fourth of these points is not unrelated, but requires a little more discussion; see POSITIVE JAM below.
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Post by skepticatfirst on Jun 24, 2021 6:40:30 GMT -5
CARGO VANSo the Narrator finds Juanita in the back of the party, mired in a K-Hole, but alive. We know that the Wednesday night parties move around from place to place, and that it takes a car to get there (see NICE NICE, THE RIDE and FRONTAGE ROAD above). The Rock Problems account of the THS version of the Mission Party makes this point explicitly: The girls want to go to the party, but no one's in any shape to drive So we called up your guy, and when he comes we're gonna ask for a ride [RP] We can be sure, then, that the Narrator goes to the party in a car, that is, in his Jeep. It can be presumed, too, that an event that's meant to draw customers from the public (unlike the weekenders in the brewery bar) will have a place to park in the immediate vicinity. So once he's found Juanita, all that's left for the Narrator to do is to take her by the hand like he did at The LBI, lead her out to the car, and go. In her dissociated state (this being the point of Ketamine's use as a date-rape drug, see LACED SUBSTANCES above), she follows him out of the party without resisting. They get to the parking lot where the Jeep is. And then they run into a problem. ***Rock For Lite Brite takes it from there: now here's the situation the streets got hot and you got caught there's dogs out in the parking lot just weren't ready when the shit got heavy there's sharks out in the parking lot then it all became like an action/adventure looking in the mirror, reaching for your holster bang bang now you're shooting like a soldier [RfLB] The Narrator got outside with Juanita, only to find that the parking lot is now guarded by the gangsters ("sharks"; see SHARKS & JETS above) with their dogs. We know that the dogs belong to the Summer House (see LOOKING FOR K above); these are Juanita's keepers. The Narrator's got himself caught. [*1]He wasn't ready for this --- and now the shit gets seriously heavy; with the failure of his rescue mission, [*2] he's drafted to become a "soldier" in the gang (for "shooting" during the THS Narrator's time in the gang following the THS version of the Mission Party, see both "took a couple shots" [SShoes] and "pinpricks" [AfHA]). [*3]Note that MPADJs uses the same term "get heavy" ("It's gonna have to get a little bit heavy" [MPADJs]) to describe the chaos that begins with the THS version of the Mission Party (see LOOKING FOR K above), confirming that these RfLB lines are indeed about the events of the LP original of that party. ***The Narrator's induction into the gang won't be formally decided on until a little later (see SHEPARD'S MANSION below), but it begins now, when the gangsters detain and take him away with them. This is a plausible reaction on their part: they've caught him attempting to make off with Juanita, their "queen" (see COSTUME PARTY above) and de facto possession; rather than let him leave and try again with the help of the authorities, and knowing him as well as they know Juanita, they choose instead to keep him close, under their influence and supervision. This induction is, for the rest, the LP original of Gideon getting "jumped in" to the Skins. The description of Gideon's experiences in Barfruit Blues and Hostile Mass lets us fill in details of that experience that are missing in the LP source: - the gangsters drive the Narrator and Juanita back to the Summer House in a "cargo van" [BBlues], one of the vehicles in which they came; [*4]
- when they get back to the Summer House and formally jump him in, they haze the Narrator, shave his head, and rape him.[*5]
The Ambassador supplies the detail that they not only shaved his head, but burned the hair after shaving it; this is consistent with the smell of burning hair being the THS Narrator's first impression ("at first" [Ambassador]) of the place where the alpha girl is staying: While you were still staying there. All the halls smelled like burning hair. In the end it made you sick but at first you didn't mind [Ambassador] On close inspection, the THS implication that the hair comes from the Skins themselves doesn't hold up, because shaving your head only produces enough hair to burn the first time you do it; in other words, the burning can only have taken place during an initiation. This is consistent with what we observed upthread: Gideon (and in deliberate imitation of him, Charlemagne) is the only shaved head in the THS story, reflecting the precedent of the LP Narrator, who is the only shaved head in the LP story; the gangsters are heshers, not skinheads (see HESHERS above). The other inference we can make from the Gideon parallel is that the LP Narrator wears a Panama Jack painter's cap (with the flaps unbuttoned [SdS alternate lyrics] to keep the sun off his newly-unprotected neck [HM]). This, too, is consistent with the fact that the Summer House gangsters wear Copenhagen painter's caps; the Narrator gets a cap in the same style, but with a "jack"=dealer [DStraps] version of the "Copenhagen" advertisement of drugs concealed in the hatband (see REAR VIEW MIRROR above). [*1] "The streets got hot and you got caught" [RfLB] is one of Craig's "aggressive ambiguities" (see CONVENTIONS above); the rest of the song describes two events, and this line refers to *both* of them. "Hot streets"/"the streets are hot" is slang for a situation in which a criminal act has put the authorities in a state of high alert, making the area "dangerous, thus unsafe for criminal activity" (for an example along with the definition, see "hot," entry 5a, in Green's Dictionary of Slang: gdict). The first of the two events referred to, beginning with "there's dogs out in the parking lot," is the one we're reviewing now: in trying to steal Juanita, the Narrator puts the gang on alert, and is caught by their guards out in the parking lot. The second event, beginning with "your girlfriend's dead," happens a little later; we'll come to it shortly (see BLOODY CAR WRECKS below). [*2] The Narrator's mission to rescue the girl from the house where she's held captive is the point of the reference to the movie Taxi Driver ( youtube; youtube): then it all became like an action/adventure looking in the mirror, reaching for your holster [RfLB] [*3] The term "soldier" is regularly used of gangsters, from the description of the Skins in Cheyenne Sunrise and Look Alive: Onward Christian soldiers We're gonna bash right through your borders I bet your next party gets sketchy I saw the new kids nodding off [CSunrise] They hang up at the Methodist So hard to be a Christian soldier there [LA] to the dealers of the Nice Nice in Jeep Beep Suite: entertaining the soldiers, makin eyes at the sailors [JBS] to the trap-house inhabitants of La Quereria: and the words came from the porches and the kids stood just like soldiers and every murdered raver was just dying at the hands dealt by the dealers [LQ] [*4] The "cargo van" of BBlues is referred to again in the "camper van" of Lanyards: She took me home to her place in a camper van behind some old warehouse Said she couldn't come down and crash until we listened to 'Wipe Out' [Lanyards] There's a lot of misdirection here: - the emphasis on "camper" makes it sound like "in a van" goes with "her place"; but in fact, it goes with "took me." It's a "van behind some old warehouse" in the sense that it's parked behind the old warehouse where the Mission Party is being held.
- the alpha girl's not driving, but the fact that she's the one who wouldn't "come down and crash" at The LBI, instead heading off to the "surf" of the West Coast ("Wipe Out"; see THE FOAM above) and drawing the Narrator after her, makes her the agent.
[*5] We've looked at the gangrape implications of Gideon getting jumped in upthread (see THS REVISITED above); his no-shoes-no-pants-Porky-Pig experience [HM] (compare the "squeal like a pig" rape scene from Deliverance: youtube) is a reflection of what happens to the LP Narrator during his induction after getting caught at the Mission Party. Interestingly, the MPADJs account of the Mission Party contains another reflected detail bearing on this same LP origin. The description of Charlemagne getting raped by the gangsters (see STUMBLING & RESURRECTION above): They're jamming jetskis into the jetty now With some guy who looks like Rocco Siffredi And I've heard he's been dead once already [MPADJs] confirms that the Mission Party gangrape is the second of *two* such episodes, where the first ("dead once already"; see HALF DEAD above) is the Party Zero episode that's reflected in the THS metal bar party.
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Post by skepticatfirst on Jun 25, 2021 6:29:11 GMT -5
ESTHERThe other important account of the Mission Party is found in the song Esther. There are five verses worth looking at in context; it'll be clearest just to set out the whole text and then talk about the details of interest after. In the middle of a mission I met Esther in the kitchen Drinking something blue. It looked like Windex. She could shake but couldn't really sing. Sharpened like a feral thing. Helped me with my part when I lost interest. She said her name was Esther. I said baby that sounds biblical. Ain't she the one that came up after Vashti? Yeah and then some other stuff. At some point there I fell in love. Then she heard a song she liked and lost me. ... When we're this deep in the valley You can see so many stars. When Esther told her story We were sitting in her car. She said her folks were never close. They had me because they had to. No one named me Esther That came up a little later. It was after some detective Came around here with some questions. I went out to Colorado. I was mostly in the motels. Started living pretty reckless. Started calling myself Esther. I just felt like someone different. ... She's never going home. Her folks were never close. We mostly watch the tv. Crack the windows when we smoke. Her aura is amazing But her room is kind of bleak. I met Esther at a party Been together for a week [Esther] Rather than talk about reflection or shadowing, we should just point out the obvious ("detective"!) and say that this is, to all appearances, the Narrator talking about Juanita during the period of The Summer House and after: [*1]- "In the middle of a mission I met Esther in the kitchen": the "mission" is the LP Narrator's quest to spring Juanita from her captivity among the gangsters (it fits the story of the THS kids rejoining the Skins too, though not as simply); "in the kitchen" means that she's back on the Scene, in the warehouse where the Wednesday night Mission Party is being held (see LOOKING FOR K and CARGO VAN above).
- "Drinking something blue. It looked like Windex": ingesting a roofied drink (compare Mary's green margaritas and Juanita's purple drinks; see LACED SUBSTANCES and ROOFIES above), in this case apparently Ketamine (see LOOKING FOR K above).
- "She could shake but couldn't really sing. Sharpened like a feral thing": this is late in the summer, late in the story, and Juanita is both "weird-talkin" [MPADJs] (see LOOKING FOR K above) and looking like "corpses/ warped and all distorted" [LQ] (see PERFUME COUNTER GIRL above), thanks to the "sharps"=needles/gangsters (see BREWERY BAR: THE VESTIBULE above).
- "Helped me with my part when I lost interest": there's nothing pleasant about being the new kid in the gang, but the Narrator sticks it out in order to stay close to Juanita. (In the THS version of the Mission Party, the "new kid" [BCrosses, MPADJs] is, expressly, a part played by the Narrator; see ORIGINS OF IMAGES above.)
- "She said her name was Esther. I said baby that sounds biblical./ Ain't she the one that came up after Vashti?": Ketamine is an ester; "Esther" is the drug fiend personality that "came up after Vashti," just as "K"=Ketamine is the drug fiend personality that came up after Juanita (see LOOKING FOR K and LACED SUBSTANCES above).
- "At some point there I fell in love": the THS account of the Mission Party describes the THS Narrator "fall[ing] in love" [MPADJs] with Mary at the end (see LOOKING FOR K above).
- "When we're this deep in the valley/ You can see so many stars": the "valley" is the valley of US-169 where the Summer House is located (see THE WEST above); when Juanita's there, she's gazing at the "shootin stars" [MV, SBackwards] of the drugs in her system (see DRUG SLANG above). Compare Summer House's "at night ... you can see the whole galaxy" [SH].
- "No one named me Esther/ That came up a little later": see above about Esther/Katrina.
- "It was after some detective/ Came around here with some questions": we are in the period after the detective's visit to the Summer House; "here" is the Summer House (see DETECTIVE above).
- "I went out to Colorado./ I was mostly in the motels": Colorado and the motels are hallmarks of Holly's disappearance with Gideon [MM, SN], which, like her disappearance with the Kid from California, is ultimately based on Juanita's disappearance with the gangster at the end of The LBI. Colorado is located in the West (see THE WEST above), and the motels are a prominent feature of both the LP [Langelos] and THS [GoaH, SShoes] versions of the chapter now beginning (see TWO WEEKS and ROUGH RIDERS below).
- "She's never going home": this is the same assertion made by Juanita in her Summer House phone call with the Narrator: "what do you mean you ain't never comin back to the city ... when you get home monday, then you'll barely know me" [SH].
- "Her aura is amazing/ But her room is kind of bleak": again, this refers to Juanita in the Summer House, where she has her own room: "and she's proud of her sound-proof bedroom/ it gets so loud, there's like thirty threesomes" [SCity] (see DETECTIVE above, and CANDY'S ROOM below).
- "I met Esther at a party": the LP Narrator met Katrina, i.e. was reunited with Juanita, at the Mission Party.
- "Been together for a week": Their time in the gang together isn't going to last indefinitely, but it lasts longer than a week (see TWO WEEKS below).
Most of the song is such a straightforward account of this stage of the Lifter Puller story, that the one deviation from it is thrown into high relief: namely, the fact that "Esther told her story" when they "were sitting in her car" [Esther]. Even in the THS version of the Mission Party, Mary's car doesn't enter the picture (the kids get a ride to the party from a dealer [RP], see CARGO VAN above); this little scene looks like it's just been tacked on to the rest of the narrative, almost without regard for consistency. What's going on here? In all the telling of the THS story prior to the release of Thrashing Thru The Passion, there was no description of an episode in which the THS Narrator and Mary recapitulated the intimate Jeep Encounter conversation between the LP Narrator and Juanita. [*2] In other words, for fifteen years, Craig had this fundamental material in perpetual reserve, ready to be reused if it could ever be worked in; and this is where he chose to work it in, buttoned onto the parking lot scene of the Mission Party, in an ideal world before the sharks show up (see JEEP ENCOUNTER: ORIGIN above, along with further discussion of this choice in THS CHARACTERS below). [*3] [*1] Separately, the fourth verse of the song looks back on Party Zero and the Return Parties: The times that we were powerless were times that I remember best. When it first came on it felt just like a blanket. Once we had a little bit we pretty much just wasted it. Traded in our tickets for drinks and little trinkets. That scene back in the city was the opposite of freedom. We were always so damn broke. It was this whole dependent fallacy. They started shooting. I sort of saw into the future. And Esther always wants it how it used to be [Esther] - "powerless": addicted and desperate for a hit (see TWO TWENTIES above).
- "When it first came on it felt just like a blanket": compare "first it feels like a prick and then it hits you like a jumbo jet" (see SHOT IN THE SHOULDER above).
- "Once we had a little bit we pretty much just wasted it": a little bit, or half a breakdown, of meth (see A LITTLE BIT and TWO TWENTIES above).
- "That scene back in the city": The Scene; The City (see THE CITY above).
- "the opposite of freedom": compare "we thought that we were so free but it was a chemical reaction/ we thought we were experienced but we were mostly crashing" (see THE CRASH above).
[*2] Craig couldn't possibly have attached a THS version of the Jeep Encounter to the end of Holly's birthday/costume party (the THS version of The LBI): Mary spends that evening cold-bloodedly foisting Holly onto Gideon in order to get closer to Charlemagne; a segue into intimacy with the THS Narrator would be out of the question. [*3] "Crack the windows when we smoke" is evidence of the underlying Jeep Encounter setting: compare "she smoked and I made some progress" [Sublet] and "there's smoke in the seats" [Indications] (see JUST STARTED TALKING and REAR VIEW MIRROR above).
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Post by muzzleofbees on Jun 25, 2021 7:19:27 GMT -5
CARGO VANSo the Narrator finds Juanita in the back of the party, mired in a K-Hole, but alive. We know that the Wednesday night parties move around from place to place, and that it takes a car to get there (see NICE NICE, THE RIDE and FRONTAGE ROAD above). The Rock Problems account of the THS version of the Mission Party makes this point explicitly: The girls want to go to the party, but no one's in any shape to drive So we called up your guy, and when he comes we're gonna ask for a ride [RP] We can be sure, then, that the Narrator goes to the party in a car, that is, in his Jeep. It can be presumed, too, that an event that's meant to draw customers from the public (unlike the weekenders in the brewery bar) will have a place to park in the immediate vicinity. So once he's found Juanita, all that's left for the Narrator to do is to take her by the hand like he did at The LBI, lead her out to the car, and go. In her dissociated state (this being the point of Ketamine's use as a date-rape drug, see LACED SUBSTANCES above), she follows him out of the party without resisting. They get to the parking lot where the Jeep is. And then they run into a problem. ***Rock For Lite Brite takes it from there: now here's the situation the streets got hot and you got caught there's dogs out in the parking lot just weren't ready when the shit got heavy there's sharks out in the parking lot then it all became like an action/adventure looking in the mirror, reaching for your holster bang bang now you're shooting like a soldier [RfLB] The Narrator got outside with Juanita, only to find that the parking lot is now guarded by the gangsters ("sharks"; see SHARKS & JETS above) with their dogs. We know that the dogs belong to the Summer House (see LOOKING FOR K above); these are Juanita's keepers. The Narrator's got himself caught. [*1]He wasn't ready for this --- and now the shit gets seriously heavy; with the failure of his rescue mission, [*2] he's drafted to become a "soldier" in the gang (for "shooting" during the THS Narrator's time in the gang following the THS version of the Mission Party, see both "took a couple shots" [SShoes] and "pinpricks" [AfHA]). [*3]Note that MPADJs uses the same term "get heavy" ("It's gonna have to get a little bit heavy" [MPADJs]) to describe the chaos that begins with the THS version of the Mission Party (see LOOKING FOR K above), confirming that these RfLB lines are indeed about the events of the LP original of that party. I'm wondering if gun shots are ever fired in this part of the story, or maybe later on? The heavy emphasis on "guards with heavy arms" (Family Farm), the gun on the bed, along with the dogs (Eureka) and this Rock For Lite Brite scene, made me think it's plausible. And even before reading this, actually while making dinner yesterday, I heard Unpleasant Breakfast in a new light. It has this pretty well developed maritime theme, which I know hear as a deliberate way to place (at leaste some of) the events in it at the coast/shoreline, which we know believe is 169. If so, the line "...all the shells made me think of you"could be about gun shells rather than sea shells, which is the natural way to hear it, in a normal context.
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Post by skepticatfirst on Jun 25, 2021 7:44:28 GMT -5
I'm wondering if gun shots are ever fired in this part of the story, or maybe later on? The heavy emphasis on "guards with heavy arms" (Family Farm), the gun on the bed, along with the dogs (Eureka) and this Rock For Lite Brite scene, made me think it's plausible. And even before reading this, actually while making dinner yesterday, I heard Unpleasant Breakfast in a new light. It has this pretty well developed maritime theme, which I know hear as a deliberate way to place (at leaste some of) the events in it at the coast/shoreline, which we know believe is 169. If so, the line "...all the shells made me think of you"could be about gun shells rather than sea shells, which is the natural way to hear it, in a normal context. Gunshots are fired twice in the LP story. Once is the time when the Narrator's driving around the townie trap houses trying to find Juanita, and gets shot at after making inquiries at the wrong one (the drive is described in DEPARTMENT STORES and CALENDAR: SECOND PASS; a note about "i'm getting shot at" in this context is in LOOKING FOR K above). So you're right about this, only it's the guards with heavy arms at some *other* gang's trap house, and not the "Family Farm" (the Summer House) where Juanita is. Your idea about "all the shells made me think of you" is a great reading of "shell," I hadn't even thought of that; the second time a shot is fired is in fact the one documented in TCMamG: jenny's pretty jumpy, pulls a gun out of the glove compartment and she shoots it off to try to impress you [TCMamG] Say hello to Walter! We'll get there in just a few weeks ...
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Post by skepticatfirst on Jun 28, 2021 7:29:11 GMT -5
SHEPARD'S MANSIONFor the purposes of this thread, the number one benefit to having had ODP released just now is that we get The Feelers. Like Esther, it's a THS song, but it might as well be a direct account of what happens after the LP kids arrive at the Summer House early in the morning after the Mission Party. Why and how that's the case, we'll discuss when we wrap up the thread (see THS CHARACTERS below). But in the meantime, let's look at what it tells us about the kids. *** It was an early morning meet-up at the mansion up the mountain The Maestro still had glitter on his face They led us to the office and once my eyes adjusted I took a little look around the place [Feelers] First: the Maestro is Shepard [ABlues, IHTWTDFY, SShoes], leader of the gang. The *published* lyrics of the Feelers have "The shepherds" for "Shepard," "The cowboys" for "The cowboy," "This scene" for "The Scene," and "The pirates" for "The pirate"; but as we saw when we crowdsourced the lyrics of the Massive Nights V live performance, and as many other details in the song confirm, it is in fact "Shepard," "The cowboy," "The Scene," and "The pirate" (for detailed argument see NICE NICE above). The mansion is "Shepard's mansion" [ABlues]. It's "up the mountain" in the sense of being a place to get high (for the metaphor, see CONVENTIONS above). It's the Summer House. [*1]It's a "meet-up" in the same sense as the "meeting" reported in Star 18: [*2] Once upon a time I had a meeting with a man in a mansion. He pulled a few strings just to demonstrate how it's all connected [Star18] Shepard is "the man in the mansion." (More about "pulled a few strings" in a minute.) Finally, it's an "early morning" meet-up, and he's still got "glitter on his face," because the gang has just returned to base after the Wednesday night Mission Party where the kids were apprehended ("they led us"; see CARGO VAN above). *** On the mantle was a portrait of his father and the fortune He'd amassed from being ruthless but polite And a bottle with a model, a specific British clipper ship On his desk there was a pistol and a pipe [Feelers] There's a lot going on here, metaphorically. This is the verse that establishes the double meaning of "Open Door Policy": Shepard keeps the door open for the kids to come into his Hotel California, as it were; see Craig's note on The Prior Procedure ( link): At the same time, the "British clipper ship" reference establishes the link to the historical Open Door Policy ( wikipedia) associated with the First Opium War and British opium-running, via clipper ship, to China ( link). Just as the historical Policy was an American insistence on keeping China open for trade with any nation, so the other side of Shepard's welcome is an insistence on the openness of his drug market to all comers ("Everybody rise, we're an American business" [OwtB]). The "pistol and a pipe" sound genteel, but refer to the hard edge of the drug trade: the "pipe" is a drug pipe, and "pistol" is as likely (see SHOT IN THE SHOULDER above) to refer to a needle and syringe as it is to refer to a handgun. As for the "specific" British clipper ship: this can only be the Ambassador ( wikipedia). We've noted repeatedly (see NICE NICE above, etc.) that the "3.2. bar a stretch to call a club" Ambassador of the Teeth Dreams song is associated with the brewery bar; here, we find the same name associated with the Summer House. This is the second time (see LOOKING FOR K above) that we're seeing the brewery bar and the Summer House superimposed on one another in reference to Juanita's "living" quarters; we'll examine this striking pattern in its own right shortly (see CANDY'S ROOM below). ***The story continues in the second verse: Now while you're here in person I was kind of, sort of hoping I could ask you 'bout a girl I met last night She had the aura of an angel But she had a couple problems I guess the big one is she's someone else's wife And she didn't bring it up with any sort of plan in place She said she was just putting out the feelers When she asked if she could choke you Underneath the blacklight poster With a spaceman saying, "Take me to your dealer" [Feelers] Finding himself face-to-face with the guy who runs the Scene, the Narrator asks him, carefully, about Juanita, with whom he was finally reunited last night at the Mission Party (for "aura of an angel" compare "her aura is amazing" [Esther], also a description of Juanita at the Summer House; see ESTHER above). He explains that she's his girlfriend ("someone else's wife"), and that when she offered to blow the anonymous gangster ("asked if she could choke you"; compare "choke the chicken" and variant expressions for jacking off: gdict, urbandictionary) back in the Kittson Street lot (see REAR VIEW MIRROR above), she was just exploring what she could get from him in exchange ("putting out the feelers" in the negotiation sense, with a creeping-things insect pun: ahdict), not proposing to be taken off to captivity in the Summer House ("didn't bring it up with any sort of plan in place"; "take me to your dealer"). In short, on the grounds that it wasn't really her intention to come and stay here, he asks for Juanita's release. ***Shepard's reaction is a simple demonstration: Once upon a time I had a meeting with a man in a mansion. He pulled a few strings just to demonstrate how it's all connected [Star18] What "connect" means, referring both to making a connection with a dealer and connecting sexually, we know (see DRUG SLANG above); like "puppeteer" [C&N] Charlemagne, but at a much bigger scale, Shepard is the "Master of Puppets" [DH] who pulls people's strings --- always, in Star 18, C&N, and BCamp, the strings of a girl like Holly --- with drugs. (This the reason for the bizarre emphasis on "a cord to connect it" in the Denver Haircut couplet with "Master of Puppets"; the clock radio on Juanita's bed stand is framed as the cord that tethers her to the Summer House, the string by which she's "connected"; see CANDY'S ROOM below.) Shepard offers Juanita a hit; Juanita drops right down on her knees. [*3] You see, he says to the Narrator: I've got an open-door policy; she's just taking advantage of it. She *wants* to be here. In other words, "Open Door Policy" has a double meaning: - it's the informal but still sketchy social policy described by Craig during Massive Nights V as (paraphrasing) "party at my house any time, as long as you bring some chicks";
- it's also the formal economic policy of keeping a market open for trade (wikipedia).
Shepard's maintaining an open market. Juanita's there for the exchange. That exchange happens to be a "pretty heavy covenant/ To make with someone powerless" [HCovenant]; but she's there for it. For the social policy, compare what's said in The Prior Procedure (here "He"=Shepard; note also "family" --- the "family farm" is the Summer House): He said large scale displacement is such a major modern tragedy That's why I instituted this open door policy Been thinking about kicking off some new kind of family I'm really glad that you're here [TPProcedure] For the economic policy, compare what Craig himself says about the song in the "really rich guy" quote above ( link). ***So Juanita won't be leaving, not because Shepard won't let her go, but because she doesn't want to go. What about the Narrator? The open door policy applies to him as well as to Juanita: he's free to go if he wants. The solo song Western Pier describes a scene that we can't fail to recognize as this very conversation, in The West of the LP/THS world: I spent seven months in another town At night I'd walk down on the beach One night I saw them watching me They rolled up. They put the cuffs on Then they drove me deep into the valley The just judge looked me over and said I'm sorry You don't have to keep running But you best be leaving [Western Pier] - "I spent seven months in another town": the precise arc of the Lifter Puller story (see CALENDAR: THIRD PASS below).
- "At night I'd walk down on the beach": the parties of the Scene ("jones beach" [SCity], "jersey shore" [LSifL], "the LBI" [Manpark], etc.; see AIRPORT & LBI above).
- "One night I saw them watching me": the Mission Party, when the Narrator got caught.
- "They rolled up. They put the cuffs on/ Then they drove me deep into the valley": the Narrator was apprehended and taken in the cargo van to the Summer House (see CARGO VAN above; for "valley," see THE WEST above).
- "The just judge looked me over and said I'm sorry": this is Shepard (compare his framing as Just Judge=Jesus=savior=dealer later in the song; compare also "Love's been such a letdown" [Western Pier] to Shepard's "Love will tear us apart" [TPProcedure], see WALKED IN above).
- "You don't have to keep running/ But you best be leaving": you don't have to become a drugrunner in the gang (see DRUG SLANG above); but if you don't, you need to leave, and you'd be better off leaving.
To this, the Narrator makes a reply which he explains, elliptically, in the next verse: You can't take away all the parts of you That make you do the things you do The girls that live inside my heart Keep coming up the boulevard [Western Pier] He can't not be how he is; Juanita's still in his heart, and he can't leave her. ***So the Narrator agrees to become a runner in the gang. The first chorus documents Shepard's explanation of how the business works: The sunrise wasn't perfect but it was close enough to count The vibrations were impatient he said he's sick of running out But first we set the prices and then we talk about amounts [Feelers] Three things here: - The sunrise recalls the "Cheyenne sunrise" that Mary appreciates when she's not living at "home" [CSunrise] (h/t muzzleofbees : link).
- Shepard is impatient and gives off a dangerous vibe, saying he's sick of the drugrunning business; compare "Shepard started spinning out/ The cowboy trying to dismount" [Feelers] and the violent, hair-trigger descriptions of him on Teeth Dreams [SShoes, LA, IHTWTDFY].
- Shepard teaches the Narrator the basics of the gang's business; the Narrator is really being inducted as a runner in the gang ("I almost rolled my eyes when they asked me how to score/ But sometimes it feels sweet to be the teacher" [FFarm], see comment on "teachers" below; compare also the Panama Jack painter's cap identifying him as a dealer).[*3]
***The last thing Shepard does before the interview ends (and before the Narrator is initiated) is to impart to the kids his wisdom about the future. [*4] This is already hinted at in IHTWTDFY: I guess Shepard came out of St. Cloud with a little ideology Some new way of thinking, man A view to the future [IHTWTDFY] But now we learn what he actually tells them, namely, that The Future Is Now, and that they need to embrace it and not entertain naive ideas about things changing: Did you think about the thing The Maestro mentioned? How tomorrow's pretty much today And I don't predict a major change Seems like you and me have got momentum [Feelers] The title "Maestro" means 'music teacher' ( oetymdict, ahdict), and is related not just to the various descriptions of Shepard as a player/singer of music [*5], but to the description of the gangsters as "teachers" [KatKH]. In other words, Shepard's "ideology" is being framed as a direct contrast to the teaching of the *other* Maestro of the THS universe: Raise a toast to Saint Joe Strummer I think he might have been our only decent teacher [CSummer] Unlike Shepard, who tells the kids to stop expecting anything to change for the better, Saint Joe's message is that we are our own saviors; when the THS Narrator says, "I swear I saw him right by 7A" [Spectres], he's talking about the Strummer mural at the corner of 7th St and Avenue A ( link; clicksandhisses), [*6] on which Joe is quoted: The Future Is Unwritten. [*7]
[*1] The Summer House "mansion up the mountain" [Feelers] is also referred to in the "house in the mountains" from A Snake In The Shower, which the Here Goes thread previously connected to the THS version of the Mission Party ( heregoes): While we've been in between places we’ve mostly been staying At some house in the mountains her friend isn't using. She said he used to be a pretty huge producer. He doesn't seem that huge anymore [ASitS] From the point of view of both the LP and THS stories, the kids are in between places right now (compare Craig's description of them as "kind of displaced, wandering the desert, so to speak": link). The house isn't used by "her friend" Dwight/Charlemagne, who in reality is only a small-timer; this is the big leagues of drug dealing. This is Shepard's house. [*2] The wider context of these lines establishes a thick web of links to the Summer House: And some creep with a camera who says he's gonna make her a star. You gotta wait in the car. Once upon a time I had a meeting with a man in a mansion. He pulled a few strings just to demonstrate how it's all connected. Disseminating from a central source Hemingway on the Ketchum porch [Star18] Here we find ourselves in the place out West where our heroine's gone with the Kid from California to become a "star" (see THE QUEUE above), the place where she's working running orders from the "porch" to the cars ("you gotta wait in the car" [Star18]; see PERFUME COUNTER GIRL and OSSEO above). In the middle of all this is Shepard, the guy who controls the dissemination of speed from St. Cloud into the Twin Cities (see NICE NICE above). He's the man in the mansion. [*3] Not only was the Narrator inducted into the gang as a runner, there's evidence that he made a certain amount of money at the job, and in very short order. Gideon, the THS reflection of the LP Narrator with respect to this experience (see CARGO VAN above), finds himself having rapidly made about $16K after he gets jumped in: Went down with like fourteen bucks and woke up with like sixteen grand [BBlues] The narrator of the solo song Magic Marker, whose experiences are looking more familiar the more we learn about the LP story (see SHOT IN THE SHOULDER above), also makes a quick $16K after meeting "a man" (compare "meeting with a man in a mansion" [Star18]): Spent the best part of the summer Tryin' to come up with a plan Made a couple little changes And I met up with a man Did somethin' kinda strange But I made like sixteen grand [MMarker] The solo song Eventually I Made It To Sioux City records yet another take on the same story, again following a meeting with "a man" of supremely evil character: Last summer I met a man so evil Don't even want to think about his face I made a good amount of money In a little bit of time [EIMItSiouxCity] [*4] Shepard has a pretty high opinion of the sound of his own wisdom: How a new billionaire in an Underdog shirt Built a statue to honor his ways and his words [TPProcedure] The comparison of Shepard to St. Francis turns on the analogy between this sermon and the saint's legendary preaching to the birds ( wikipedia; for the kids as birds, see EAST VS MIDWEST above): St. Francis with the pigeons on his shoulder [Feelers] [*5] Shepard isn't looking for a blowjob as such; this is purely a demonstration of power. I bring this up both with respect to the "power, wealth, and mental health" theme of ODP ( link) and specifically with respect to the exploration of "powerless[ness]" in Heavy Covenant, which includes the following passage: First I watched him play his instrument A resonator with a missing string Then I asked him about the songs he did How he decides what songs he's gonna sing [HCovenant] The recurrence of the "string" metaphor in the context of a respectful one-on-one dialogue indicates that the music master (Maestro) here is Shepard; this surmise is confirmed by Me And Magdalena, where the "sing[er]" is also identified as a "psychopath" (see discussion of Shepard's violent instability, especially in Saddle Shoes and Look Alive, above) and one of the "rich guys" (see Craig's comments pointing to Shepard as the proprietor of the Summer House: link) for whom entering heaven is as difficult as it is for a camel to go through the eye of a needle ( Mark 10:25): But I still admit that psychopath can sing. Distances are difficult. Precious is the time. When he cancelled all those concerts there were rumors that he died. Someone made a joke about the camel in his eyes. I guess the needle was implied [M&M] The "singer" metaphor appears, then, to be directly related to the Maestro dealer playing his "strings" (and to the idea of the Wednesday night parties as "concerts" [MaM]; for "shows"=parties, see THE TUNES above), with the suggestion that the stringed "instrument" is Juanita herself: she's a "resonator" because of her habit of noisemaking during sex (see STEREO SOUND above), "with a missing string" in the sense that right now "She could shake but couldn't really sing" [Esther] (compare "she's that sweet missing songbird" [LID]). Hanover Camera confirms that the "singer" is the recipient of blowjobs from the addicted kids: The singer put his finger in my mouth We were up the against the miracle, maxed out every night Our knees were shot from way too many prayers [HCamera] For another context in which the act of compelling an addicted kid to perform sexual service is framed as singing a "song," see Roman Guitars: The only songs this singer sings Are songs about his victim things And no one ever loved him like you did And then he points at every kid ... And no one ever loved him like you do And now he's pointing right at you [Roman Guitars] This reading of "song" suggests that Shepard's "demonstrat[ion]" [Star18] is the moment at which the Narrator and Juanita's renewed Mission Party connection comes to an end: Then she heard a song she liked and lost me [Esther] It also lends a very dark construction to the second and third verses of Entitlement Crew: Now here's the church, here's the steeple I like the party favors but I hate the party people. Got distracted by the chorus where the kids all sang along. Move to the rogue set. I always really liked that song. You like that song too. I know that you do. I saw you mouthing all the words When you didn't know I was watching you [EC] More on the portrait of Shepard as a "musician" shortly (see RASTAFARI GUY below). [*6] Note that the Strummer mural and 7A are located in Tompkins Square, birthplace of the American crust punk scene ( link). [*7] As observed in the discussion of "open door policy" above, Craig's album titles (see DOUBLE TAKES below) are heavy with multilayered meaning; it's the contest between these two teachers' precepts that gives us Faith In The Future.
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Post by skepticatfirst on Jun 29, 2021 6:31:54 GMT -5
RASTAFARI GUYSo the Narrator is initiated into the gang, and joins the other runners as they drive back out "to work through the weekend" [TPProcedure]: The sweet parade the morning brings The drifters wearing angel wings [Feelers] We know that the "parade" refers to the gangsters' cars, thanks to Spices' description of them leaving what looks like the Kittson Street lot after The LBI (with cars, cops, and kisses): She slept over on a Saturday night And in the morning we watched the parade All the majorettes had the sun in their eyes And all the old cars looked fatigued The cops in the kilts had me nervous as hell But it felt pretty cool when she kissed me [Spices] This account of the "parade" is consistent with the portrait of the gangsters bringing their supply from the periphery towns into Minneapolis where the money is (see THE WEST above), starting in Uptown and spreading east from there: Each daybreak there's a new parade From uptown through the old arcades [Feelers] ***The launch of the Narrator's new life as a gangster is described in Rock For Lite Brite: you got a bong you call the babylon you picked the name up from a bad brains song hey rastafari heard you're quittin school smoking weed and cleaning swimming pools [RfLB] The Rastafari Guy is the Narrator: the kid who bonds with Juanita in liking "hardcore" [SBackwards] is the same one who likes Bad Brains. But what else is going on in these lines? ***The bong is called the "Babylon" after the Bad Brains song "Destroy Babylon" on the album Rock For Light (the same album on which the song "Right Brigade," referenced in Touch My Stuff, appears). In the Bad Brains canon as in the Bible, Babylon is the city of vice and corruption, like Lifter Puller's Rome; the allusion to "Destroy Babylon" is another token of the Narrator/Eyepatch Guy's meditation on retribution (see CHARLEMAGNE above), and his budding plan to send "the Nice Nice up in blazes" [TFatBR]. ***What "smoking weed and cleaning swimming pools" means, we don't need to guess: as already noted, "pool" is slang for a meth den (see DRUG SLANG above) and "clean" is a metaphor for sucking dick (compare "cleaning freak" [OWL], "i'll do anything but clean" [RP]; see THS REVISITED above); this line is a ganja-dropout variation on the usual "doing drugs and blowing dealers" theme. ***But the interesting new bit of information here is "quittin school" [RfLB]. Surely the Narrator isn't literally in school? What is this actually describing? The Narrator is not, in fact, in school; like in Emperor, "quittin school" here is a trope, a metaphor for "dropping out" of society in general. But to be able to drop out, he must be engaged in some kind of regular activity in the first place, and in fact, there are several reasons to believe that the Narrator has a job, namely: - He has a car (the Jeep), which requires money (see RIPPLE AND THE CHAMPAGNE above. Anyone who's worked in one of the US' big cities in the last decade of insane rent hikes knows that living in your car and holding down a job are not at all mutually exclusive; it's a time-honored way to make the paycheck go farther. It's particularly doable if you're in your 20s, and your parents have a house nearby that you can retreat to [SH]).
- He's got an expensive drug habit; the THS Narrator's version is "a hundred dollars a day" [SM].
- Per the solo evidence, "the detective was expensive" [Blankets], and there's no reason to believe that this isn't true of the LP version as well.
- We've already talked about the Narrator being written as an alter-ego Craig, and specifically about the fact that the Eyepatch Guy's investor story is based on 24-year-old Craig's job as a financial broker for American Express in Minneapolis (see NEWSPAPERS and EYEPATCH GUY above).
- A state of regular employment is consistent with our inference regarding "the first week" and "monday" in the calendar calculations upthread (see CALENDAR: SECOND PASS above); up to this point in the story, the Narrator's "week" has been the workweek, and "monday" the day the weekend is over.
- Ten-plus years on, "The office girls are offering their take on what went wrong with him" [Spectres] still can't be connected to anything else in the THS lyrics; but it fits right in with the story of a LP Narrator who's continued at his office job while falling into meth addiction, up until the point he finally crashes out and disappears.
***It remains to be asked: where does the Rastafari framing come from, exactly? Thanks to Steve (see ORIGINS OF IMAGES above) and to @skywaywalker and eyepatchgary (see HESHERS above), it's confirmed that the gangsters' identification with crust punks comes with a connotation of dreadlocks. The fact that the Narrator has now joined them in their drifting and dealing (see also ROUGH RIDERS below) is, in principle, enough to account for the "rastafari" handle. But why are we hearing about rasta and dreadlocks only at this point in the story? At Party Zero, the same gangster longhairs were literal "heshers," with emphasis on their love of heavy metal and thrash, as opposed to rasta (see HESHERS and ON THE FLOOR: MUSIC above). What's different now? [*1]The main difference is the presence of Shepard himself. Shepard didn't attend the weekenders at the brewery bar; he's the "local legend" [BSam, Riptown] who's referred to in absentia up on the roof: [*2] There were some dudes on the roof deck that were sitting with a sweet view of the sunset They said you got to meet the guy that gets the tab for this Anything you want he can cover it [TPProcedure] and though he supervises the Wednesday night parties ("glitter on his face" [Feelers]), he's not accessible there either, not until the party is over: Now while you're here in person I was kind of, sort of hoping [Feelers] Shepard is older than the gangsters working under him: He's paranoid and he's obsolete [LA] He said he's through with computers 'cause they can't understand [TPProcedure] The idea that it's the grunts who are into metal and thrash, but Shepard who's into rasta, seems to be supported by the evidence of Star 18: I know we made plans to meet in Spokane But the way I make plans you gotta take it with a grain of salt. ... Sorry I'm late I got caught in a mosh. With this dude who said he used to play with Peter Tosh. But he never brought it up again. Once I said man I don't believe you [Star18] Here, the Narrator starts by apologizing to the alpha girl for failing to pull off their meeting in The West as planned (for the established pattern of the Narrator's "plans" gone wrong, see A LITTLE BIT above); the reason is that he "got caught," repeating verbatim the RfLB account of his Mission Party screwup (see CARGO VAN above). [*3]Then he describes the guy who caught him. If there's one individual, as opposed to the collective "sharks" with "dogs out in the parking lot" [RfLB], who gets the credit for catching him, that can only be their leader, Shepard; which would make Shepard the one claiming an association with Rastafarian Peter Tosh. If Shepard's "musicianship" consists in playing people and pulling their strings with drugs in exchange for sex (see SHEPARD'S MANSION above), and "bring it up" is code, as it is in Feelers and Heavy Covenant, for the proposition of that same exchange, then the Narrator would appear to be saying that he broke Shepard's power to control him when he dissented from The Future Is Now: again, ... he never brought it up again. Once I said man I don't believe you [Star18] This reading is consistent with the THS Narrator's MPADJs attempt to persuade Mary to stop "playing" other peoples' figurative "music" ("baby take off your beret" [MPADJs]), and to seize control of her own future instead ( heregoes). [*4]***There's one last Rastafarian detail which we're finally in a position to explain, namely Gideon's statement: He said I got to the part about the exodus And up to then I only knew it was a movement of the people [CatCT] This reference to Bob Marley's "Exodus" ("Exodus, Movement of Jah people!": link) is now confirmed to be made in analogy to the "displacement" of The Prior Procedure; as Craig says ( link): The Bad Brains songs "Leaving Babylon" ( link) and "Destroy Babylon" ( link), referred to in Rock For Lite Brite, refer in their turn to the lyrics of "Exodus" ( link): We're leaving Babylon We're going to our Father land The alpha couple are like the Israelites of the Exodus, displaced from home, enslaved, and wandering with the drifters in the desert of The West. More on this shortly (see ROUGH RIDERS below). [*1] If Wikipedia's description of Kiss as a heavy metal band ( wikipedia) is taken at face value, then the story's sudden shift from heavy metal/thrash to rasta/crust punk themes is exactly what is described in the opening lines of Me And Magdalena: But the boys that we'd been twisting with suddenly got wildly inconsistent. Like first they're into Kiss and then they're into crust [M&M] [*2] Against this there's the line from Look Alive: "Man, I've seen him destroy a dude before" [LA], which still seems likely to identify Shepard as the one who beat up Charlemagne at the metal bar party. But like the kids getting a ride to the THS version of the Mission Party with a dealer (see ESTHER above), this looks like an artifact of the original THS plot remix (see THS CHARACTERS below). [*3] "I got caught in a mosh" [Star18] makes ambiguous reference both to thrash metal and rasta; "Caught in a Mosh" is the name of an Anthrax song (thrash metal), while the term "mosh" itself is credited to both H.R. of Bad Brains (rasta/hardcore) and Vinnie Stigma of the Agnostic Front (thrash; wikipedia). As with Milkcrate Mosh ("surrendered in the corner" [MM]; see PARTY ZERO above), the reference is to a gangrape --- this time to the second gangrape of the story, when the Narrator, having got caught at the Mission Party, gets jumped in (see CARGO VAN above). [*4] The suggestion here is that a "dj," in the LP/THS universe, is not just someone who follows the command of someone else's tune, but is also specifically a dick sucker (a "dick jockey"?); The Ballad Of The Midnight Hauler seems to confirm this reading (compare the slang expression "haul [ashes/rocks]"='give sexual pleasure': gdict; gdict). The Midnight Hauler is a drug addict: - "He was a TNT trucker": "TNT"='heroin+fentanyl' (ondcp)
- "100,000 watts of power": meth (for "power"=speed, compare "all powered up on some new upper drug" [MN], and see TWO TWENTIES above)
- "he set the needle down on 'It's Time For Me To Fly'": reference to shooting up
- "he's still a pretty speedy guy": "speed"=meth/amphetamine (see LISTED above)
The Midnight Hauler services the guys who run drugs through the gauntlet of "Weather, gas, cops, and whores" [TBotMH]; he brings them "comfort": When a trucker needed comfort, he'd play that song right away [TBotMH] including, for example, to "frustrated" "Dick": So this goes out to Denver Dick He's feeling all frustrated up on I-seven-six [TBotMH]
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Post by muzzleofbees on Jun 30, 2021 5:18:37 GMT -5
Little to add here, but I keep coming back to a general point, which might be to general to really matter, and also not 100% though through. But I get a feeling that both of Craig's new beginnings as an artist - Almost Killed Me and Clear Heart Full Eyes - focus in more on the core story from Lifter Puller than subsequent THS- and solo releases.
Almost Killed Me is obviously filled with stories about the new characters, and the story arc they're going through. But a lot of this comes even more into focus on Separation Sunday and (I would argue) on Stay Positive, while Almost Killed Me at a surface level is more concerned with "the kids" in general. I can't really quantify this, and there's plenty of lyrics, lines, verses and songs who's very much at the core of the THS narrative too. But I still feel it contains more parts who sounds like mirrors of the Lifter Puller story than the albums coming after it.
Clear Heart Full Eyes even more so. There's entire songs on this record who doesn't really connect all that well with the THS stuff, but fits pretty perfect with the core LP story. On the later solo albums, I get the feeling that Craig more deliberately have written short stories with different characters, allthough they too share characteristics with know characters, or experience stuff compatible with the characters in the LP/THS narratives. But songs like No Future, Terrified Eyes, Balcony (and others) sounds a lot more in sync with a (not the) narrator suffering betrayal and despair, losing someone he care about to someone else. It could be heard as a more generic way to write songs, even more personal, but with the LP story laid out here, I think it's hard not to draw comparisons between them.
It's almost like Craig, at the beginning of a new thing, starts out with different takes on the very first core story, and then elaborate from that - and the further we get away from the new start, the more "unique" the lyrical style of that project seem to get.
The major exception here is (again, to me, and mostly rooted in a feeling more than hard facts or numbers) Open Door Policy, which sounds a lot like Craig putting LP story events into the THS world. I guess it started in the TTTP era (another new beginning, in many ways), but it's even more visible on ODP.
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Post by skepticatfirst on Jun 30, 2021 6:46:47 GMT -5
Little to add here, but I keep coming back to a general point, which might be to general to really matter, and also not 100% though through. But I get a feeling that both of Craig's new beginnings as an artist - Almost Killed Me and Clear Heart Full Eyes - focus in more on the core story from Lifter Puller than subsequent THS- and solo releases. Almost Killed Me is obviously filled with stories about the new characters, and the story arc they're going through. But a lot of this comes even more into focus on Separation Sunday and (I would argue) on Stay Positive, while Almost Killed Me at a surface level is more concerned with "the kids" in general. I can't really quantify this, and there's plenty of lyrics, lines, verses and songs who's very much at the core of the THS narrative too. But I still feel it contains more parts who sounds like mirrors of the Lifter Puller story than the albums coming after it. Clear Heart Full Eyes even more so. There's entire songs on this record who doesn't really connect all that well with the THS stuff, but fits pretty perfect with the core LP story. On the later solo albums, I get the feeling that Craig more deliberately have written short stories with different characters, allthough they too share characteristics with know characters, or experience stuff compatible with the characters in the LP/THS narratives. But songs like No Future, Terrified Eyes, Balcony (and others) sounds a lot more in sync with a (not the) narrator suffering betrayal and despair, losing someone he care about to someone else. It could be heard as a more generic way to write songs, even more personal, but with the LP story laid out here, I think it's hard not to draw comparisons between them. It's almost like Craig, at the beginning of a new thing, starts out with different takes on the very first core story, and then elaborate from that - and the further we get away from the new start, the more "unique" the lyrical style of that project seem to get. The major exception here is (again, to me, and mostly rooted in a feeling more than hard facts or numbers) Open Door Policy, which sounds a lot like Craig putting LP story events into the THS world. I guess it started in the TTTP era (another new beginning, in many ways), but it's even more visible on ODP. These are good thoughts, and I agree emphatically with some of them. I've got a post, THS CHARACTERS, coming up at the end that deals pretty thoroughly with the THS side of the question (once we've reached the end of the LP story and have the evidence of the complete thing to work with). The solo stuff, I haven't got a comprehensive theory of. I've never sat down, looked at all of it, and tried to account for it in any complete way, the way I have with LP and THS --- besides the fact that it's just a daunting prospect (so much material, so much work to study it all!), I don't have any *reason* to believe that he's doing any kind of systematic thing with it, so I've never looked for one. Instead, I've just taken bits here and there that have too much apparent relevance to chalk up to chance (bits from Western Pier, No Future, Wild Animals, Indications, etc.), and have thrown those on the pile of perspective fragments. But you're right that it would be worth taking a survey of those bits once I'm done, and seeing if any themes or trends emerge. I'm making a mental note to come back to this at the end.
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Post by skepticatfirst on Jun 30, 2021 8:15:25 GMT -5
TWO WEEKSSo begins the fifth chapter of the Lifter Puller story, which, after the lyrics of The Gin And The Sour Defeat, we'll call the Two Weeks. Like it says on the tin, this Two Weeks covers a period of exactly "two weeks" [TGatSD]. Why? Because the Mission Party at which the Narrator gets caught to begin the chapter is one of the "every other Wednesday night" [CRoom] parties (see LOOKING FOR K above), and now he's waiting for the next one in order to make his next move: hey rastafari heard you're quittin school smoking weed and cleaning swimming pools ... waiting on the wednesday shipment [RfLB] ***The Narrator's specification of "two weeks" [TGatSD] includes some additional descriptive detail: two weeks maybe we should sleep [TGatSD] which lets us recognize its reflection in THS' Teenage Liberation: He stayed up for sixteen nights at a stretch, he was wrecked [TL] Let's take a minute to connect the dots around these lines. Upthread, we've linked the TL "sixteen nights" lyric to the Eyepatch Guy (see CHARLEMAGNE above); in Here Goes, we linked the same line to the two weeks that the THS kids spend among the Skins in the run-up to the Crucifixion showdown ( heregoes). In other words, the "two weeks" [TGatSD] that follow on the heels of the LP Mission Party are the LP original of the "couple of weeks" [GoaH] that follow on the heels of the MPADJs/RP party in THS. Like the later THS version, the LP Two Weeks are in essence a stretch of sex, drugs, frenetic criminality, and sleeplessness through which our heroes are just trying to hang on until their plans to turn the tables on the gangsters can come to fruition. The principal evidence that there's a THS analogue to these "two weeks" [TGatSD] is found in three sources ( heregoes): Teenage Liberation ("sixteen nights"), Saddle Shoes ("fifteen days"), and Going On A Hike ("couple of weeks"). It's worth revisiting all three songs for the perspective they afford on the Two Weeks in Lifter Puller, as well. ***1) Teenage LiberationWe've already looked at this once (see CHARLEMAGNE above), but to review: 'Twenty-nine' was the end of the line He stayed up for sixteen nights at a stretch, he was wrecked You could see all the veins in his neck when he flexed [TL] All of the detail here is relevant to the LP story. We are in the final stretch before the "end of the line," when the Eyepatch Guy, alluded to via his "veins in his neck" framing as The Hulk (see CHARLEMAGNE above), will return to burn down the Nice Nice in The Flex And The Buff Result (the same exercise of vengeful rage that's referred to in "flexed" [TL]). ***2) Saddle ShoesMany aspects of Saddle Shoes that were obscure in a THS context are suddenly clear when read as referring to the LP story: We still sleep at the saddle shop It's been that kind of summer We tried to stay with your sister now we're staying wherever She appeared faithless in fringes and feathers It's been fifteen days but it feels like forever [SShoes] The "saddle shop" appears to be a literal reference to the Schatzlein Saddle Shop at 413 Lake Street, and that's how I treated it in the Here Goes discussion ( heregoes). But what I'd missed there is that "saddle" is yet another ambiguous metaphor for drugs and sex, being on the one hand slang for ketamine ( urbandictionary), and on the other hand slang for sex/pussy ( gdict; gdict). In other words, the "saddle shop" is simply another place where kids "connect" (see SEX FOR DRUGS IN METAPHORS above), another of the gathering places of the Scene (see NICE NICE above). It's a different place than the Summer House, where Juanita is (as indicated by "tried to stay with your sister now we're staying wherever" [SShoes]); it seems to be a temporary location ("Didn't make a difference when the owners came and changed the locks" [SShoes]); but it's definitely a gang bivouac, complete with the vices that entails. This is a strong fit for the concrete realities of the LP story, much stronger than anything that appears in the haziness of the THS story at this stage. Similarly, the Schatzlein Saddle Shop and neighboring Yukon Club on Lake Street, while they do fit the explicitly western theme of the song, are only superficially motivated as a "wild west" locale in THS; whereas their status as waystations of the "parade/ from uptown through the old arcades" [Feelers] driving in from the towns of The West is deeply integral to the LP story, and makes for a much better fit. The scene described in these lines is explicitly set at summer's end ("It's been that kind of summer"); what's being said is that the drugs-for-bjs gangster life the kids are leading is the same one they've been leading all summer. Again, this applies much more clearly to the LP story than it does to the THS story (this same "summer" gave me problems in the Here Goes thread, now it's clear why: heregoes). The onstage presence of "Holly" [AHfA]/"Esther" [Esther] during this part of the story makes "we tried to stay with your sister" awkward for THS purposes, too. [*1] But it's a very clear fit for the LP circumstances: the Narrator, having been brought back to the Summer House with Juanita and jumped into the gang, wants to stay there, where she is, but instead is sent out to work the arcades and the malls with the rest of the gangsters (see ROUGH RIDERS below). He sees her on occasion when they return to base, but the theme of these weeks is one of protracted separation. [*2]***3) Going On A HikeThe western theme of GoaH is, again, a strong fit for the LP metaphor of The West: Yeah, there's blood down in the valley We come in to the prairie Waiting out in the heat A couple motels and a couple saloons They can eat a couple of weeks up I saw a small town parade and the lead majorette She made me feel all weak in the knees [GoaH] There are many connections here to the present moment in the Lifter Puller story: - We get the western framing of bars as "saloons."
- We get "motels," which again links back to pairing with the "malls" (see THE WEST above).
- The THS kids are described as "waiting," like the LP Narrator "waiting on the wednesday shipment" [RfLB]; "eat a couple of weeks up" indicates that they're literally biding their time waiting for two weeks to pass.
- We get a likely reference to US-169 towns Golden Valley in "valley" and Eden Prairie in "prairie" (see WEST COAST above).
- We get another reference to the gangster runners' cars and to Juanita in "a small town parade and the lead majorette" (see RASTAFARI GUY above).
***In short, THS' "two weeks" is a definitive relic of the LP story. Note, in closing, two things about these lines' accounting for time, which is very precise: - The statement "it's been fifteen days" is made at a time when the Narrator is still waiting, and not yet at the end of his insomniac stretch, which began the last time the Narrator slept properly before the launch of his action/adventure (see CARGO VAN above), that is, *before* the Mission Party.
- The statement "he stayed up for sixteen nights at a stretch" is made from an omniscient perspective, and represents the total number of nights between the last time the Narrator slept properly, and the first time he slept afterwards.
These points will be important when we come to sort out the remainder of the LP calendar (see CALENDAR: THIRD PASS below). [*1] "Your sister" [SShoes] can be read by the light either of the THS story or the LP story: it can be understood to refer to Holly, insofar as Mary spends these two weeks masquerading as her cousin ( heregoes); it can also be understood to refer to Katrina, insofar as Juanita is now in a perpetual drug-affected state (see LOOKING FOR K above). [*2] For details of the Narrator's occasional reappearances at the Summer House, see ROUGH RIDERS and NOSEBLEED below.
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Post by skepticatfirst on Jul 1, 2021 7:54:14 GMT -5
ROUGH RIDERSThe principal THS songs that describe what *happens* during the THS Narrator's two weeks with the Skins are Saddle Shoes ( heregoes) and Ask Her For Adderall ( heregoes). The picture drawn by these songs is one of running around the city dealing drugs, doing drugs, engaging in acts of random violence, and sleeping wherever. Saddle Shoes: Shepard showed up when we were wrapping up the counting up He's coming off some problem block ... We tried to stay with your sister now we're staying wherever It's been fifteen days but it feels like forever ... Shepard showed up then somebody took a couple shots The neighbors went and called the cops ... I never rode a horse but I'm sleeping at the saddle shop Man this whole summer's been strange The Wild West begins where your body ends Rough riders on the wide open ranges [SShoes] Ask Her For Adderall: I'm living hand-to-mouth ... I've been sleeping on your couch ... I've been wasted since last week ... I almost died ... bloodshed in the streets ... the pinpricks and the throwing up ... ask her for some Adderall ... we're too far gone to deal ... don't tell her about the kicked-in doors ... we ain't even keeping score no more [AHfA] This THS account is consistent with what we know of the LP Narrator's two weeks with the gangsters from the Summer House, as described in The Langelos: street rats hanging out with the house cats i came from the dust bowl and i was looking for an orange grove and all i got was a bloody nose i came for the scenery and i woke up in the shrubbery i think i hit another pharmacy i've been through liquor stores and jewelry stores banks, tanks and music scores i've had busted scores, open sores and morning whores yourself to the night before can't you tell that these helicopters haunt me house cats making moves on the street rats and every single motel room is shady street rats making out with the house cats sending those boys up to the hollywood hills i said take what's yours energy is courtesy of pharmacy pills you know it feels so pure [Langelos] All the essential aspects of the THS experience are recapitulated in these verses: Experience | LP | THS | sleeping in random places | "shrubbery" [Langelos] | "saddle shop" and "wherever" [SShoes]; "on your couch" [AHfA] | injuries | "bloody nose" and "open sores" [Langelos] | "bloodshed" and "almost died" [AHfA] | getting fucked | "morning whores yourself" [Langelos] | "rough riders" [SShoes] and "living hand-to-mouth" [AHfA] | doing drugs | "energy is courtesy of pharmacy pills" [Langelos] | "wasted since last week," "pinpricks and the throwing up," and "ask her for some Adderall" [AHfA] | failed scores | "busted scores" [Langelos] | "ain't even keeping score" [AHfA] | motels | "every single motel room is shady" [Langelos] | "the counting up" [SShoes], compare "counted money in the motels" [SN] | robberies | "hit another pharmacy/liquor stores/jewelry stores/banks" [Langelos] | "kicked-in doors" [AHfA]? (doubtful in light of new ODP evidence; see NOSEBLEED below) |
***Evidently, then, "rough riders" [SShoes] has a double meaning: 1) The presence of "wild west" [SShoes] shows that this is, on the one hand, a reference to the cast of "Buffalo Bill's Wild West and Congress of Rough Riders of the World," a famous traveling Wild West show from the end of the 19th century ( wikipedia); the point of the allusion is to color the gangsters' rampage through the banks, liquor stores, pharmacies, and motels [Langelos, SShoes] of the towns of The West as the activity (a) of drifters (b) in a western setting (see HESHERS and THE WEST above). 2) The other sense of the term is provided by the allusions to mercenary sex ("morning whores yourself to the night before" [Langelos]; "I'm living hand-to-mouth" [AHfA]): [*1] the Narrator spends these two weeks being ridden by the gangsters, roughly. The misery of this hazing is apparently what Juanita has in mind when, in disdain/pity for the Narrator, she asks him why'd you have to try and go and join my crew [Bloomington] It also accounts for the Narrator's preoccupation with not showing weakness during this time: it's not just that he's putting up a brave front for the outside world ("don't tell her that we're living hand to mouth" [AHfA], etc.), but specifically that he's trying to appear less vulnerable in front of the other gangsters (compare his THS reflection in jumped-in Gideon, the softie who desperately wants to appear "hard" [Knuckles], and solo "Tryin' to seem a little hard" [Magic Marker]). ***The additional detail in this picture confirms our surmise about the "wherever" line from Saddle Shoes (see TWO WEEKS above): We tried to stay with your sister now we're staying wherever [SShoes] Read in the context of the THS story, "we" refers to the THS Narrator and Charlemagne ( heregoes); read as a reflection of the LP story, "we" must be understood to refer to the one protagonist who's left once the alpha girl is excluded, namely, the LP Narrator. When the Narrator first returns from the Mission Party and is jumped into the gang, he hopes to stay with Juanita at the Summer House. But Shepard (the "billionaire" rich guy, see SHEPARD'S MANSION above) sends him out to work along with the rest of the gangsters instead: He said he's through with computers 'cause they can't understand The fawn in the traffic or the failures of man How a new billionaire in an Underdog shirt Built a statue to honor his ways and his words While the rest of these martyrs got marched off to work through the weekend [TPProcedure] That "marched off to work through the weekend" is literal is demonstrated by the account of Holly's time in The West in MINTS: I heard that kid from california turned out to be an asshole. I think I could have told you. You left with burning bridges but you never saw the beach. You had stars in your eyes but Modesto's not that sweet. When you only know one guy and he disappears for days at a time [MINTS] It doesn't matter whether we read the "one guy" she knows as a literal reference to the Kid From California, or a shadowed allusion to the LP Narrator, both of whom are on the scene at this stage of the story. What it tells us is that the rank-and-file gangsters are literally sent out to work for "days at a time" between reappearances back at the Summer House. So the street fights, drug deals, and pharmacy robberies are the Narrator's job, now; whereas Juanita's job is to work as the "perfume counter girl" (see PERFUME COUNTER GIRL above) and provide sexual service back at home base. [*2] Or again: I never rode a horse but I'm sleeping at the saddle shop And so are most of my friends [SShoes] The Narrator's out "wherever" with *most* of his friends, i.e. the gangsters. But his most important friend is the one who's still back at the Summer House. ***After recounting the Narrator's capture at the Mission Party and induction into the gang, Rock For Lite Brite (see CARGO VAN and RASTAFARI GUY above), referring to his time in The West with the "rough riders," says: then it all became like an action/adventure [RfLB] This characterization is paralleled by Holly's departure for the "west coast" in pursuit of "adventure": She never thought it was love. It was mostly about the adventure [Eureka] as well as by Multitude Of Casualties: And after your party we got off the grid ... Yeah, we were hoping for an action adventure [MoC] Like many of the passages we've been looking at, these lines in MoC can be read two ways. In the context of the THS story, they refer to Gideon and Holly living the motel/mall drug-dealing life (see TWO WEEKS above) with the Skins after Holly's birthday/costume party. But in the context of the LP story, they refer to the period after Juanita's costume party/The LBI (see COSTUME PARTY above), which is precisely when they "got off the grid" to head west for this period of The Summer House/Two Weeks. [*1] At this point, most of the "don't tell her/just tell her" lines in AHfA can be clearly understood as the THS Narrator's instructions to Charlemagne to avoid revealing to Jesse that their lives amount now to uninterrupted personal violations and drug whoredom: "bloodshed" and "too far gone to deal" are self-explanatory, while "hand to mouth," "sleeping on your couch," "love ... and respect" (see THS REVISITED above), "almost died," "pinpricks ... throwing up," and even "kicked-in doors" (see NOSEBLEED below) all have strong precedents indicating reference to fucking gangsters for drugs. Which leaves just the last of the list: If she asks just tell her that we opened for the Stones It's her favorite band except for The Ramones [AHfA] This is a pair of lines that's caused a lot of speculation, due to the obvious real-world reference to The Hold Steady opening for the Rolling Stones at Slane Castle in 2007 ( link). It seems to me that there's a double meaning here, too: besides telling us that it's the Narrator (the "band"; see NIGHT CLUB DWIGHT and NEWSPAPERS above) speaking, and that he's talking about music-loving Jesse, the reference to the Slane Castle concert puts an in-narrative mask of decency over another allusion to sex-for-drugs exchange: - for the sexual sense of "opened," compare "the new girls are coming up like some white unopened flowers" [JaJ] ("we opened up three buttons" [MoC] could arguably also be included).
[*2] Again, this division of labor is what's being described in the opening verse of Traditional Village (see PERFUME COUNTER GIRL above): Everyone has such an important position When you're living in a traditional village [TVillage] There are scenes from the brewery bar in this song (see SHORT BY AN OUNCE and COMMEMORATIVE PLATES above), but the overt sense of "traditional village" (like "family farm" [FFarm]; see SHEPARD'S MANSION above) is a reference to the Summer House. From this, it seems likely that the second verse of the song: The waiter walked up with his arm in a sling. The doctor says it's sort of suspicious. Pretty sure that he's not even injured. He's just fishing for another prescription [TVillage] is also a description of a scene from the Two Weeks, from one of the occasions on which the Narrator revisits the Summer House. Per the "waitress" metaphor (see PERFUME COUNTER GIRL above), the "waiter" must be one of the gangsters who's running the operation out of the house itself. This is consistent with the following lines from Going On A Hike, which we've already identified as one of the principal songs describing this chapter of the story (see TWO WEEKS above): It's not funny that you used my name So you could get another prescription [GoaH] The Narrator is the "new kid" [BCrosses, MPADJs] in the gang, the "rich kid ... far up on jefferson" [MiM]; it's entirely plausible that one of the cleverer gangsters would try to exploit his identity in order to get a prescription of pain meds.
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Post by skepticatfirst on Jul 2, 2021 6:06:21 GMT -5
NOSEBLEEDThe release of ODP has given us just enough new information to link up another event that took place during the Two Weeks, on one of the occasions when the Narrator was personally present at the Summer House (see ROUGH RIDERS above). We know that the Kid From California isn't a good guy, and we know that the alpha girl doesn't discover that until after she's left with him to go to the Summer House: But the guy that she left with Ain't the things that he said he is. He's a dick when he drinks And she's scared of his friends [Eureka] I heard that kid from California turned out to be an asshole. I think I could have told you. You left with burning bridges but you never saw the beach [MINTS] We know, too, of at least one incident to justify her fear. Per 11AF, while she's away from home at the Summer House, after the detective takes the photo, something happens to her nose: made amends with your dealer friends the truth is in the camera lens so don't come home with a stick in your nose i hired a detective he's got a tiny camera juanita thinks she can skip the sleep the sun sneaks up on the boardwalk freaks maybe next time we get together the deviated septum will feel a little better [11AF] What exactly happened? A deviated septum "is most commonly caused by impact trauma, such as a blow to the face" ( wikipedia). Lanyards (explicitly situated in "California") lets us infer the missing bits: the alpha girl was in her room with the Kid From California (and/or his scary "friends" [Eureka]). They had a loud and violent fight. The Narrator tried to open the door, and found it locked: [*1] Banging on the door again She just wasn't answering Showbiz is a struggle, man [Lanyards] Others in the house, responding to the shouting, kicked in the door to find her bleeding profusely: [*2] When they kicked in the door They said, That's way too much blood for a nosebleed [Lanyards] So they called an ambulance, and took her to the hospital: [*3] Someone called an ambulance Straightened out her necklace And we sped to Good Samaritan [Lanyards] ***It's this incident that accounts for "the blood on the bed" [SPayne] and the corresponding description of the alpha girl's room at the THS version of the Summer House, i.e. The Ambassador: It was called The Ambassador She was pretty much crashing there. The space between the skin and all her blood [Ambassador] Not much diplomatic there, for sure. [*1] Final "again" in "Banging on the door again" [Lanyards] casts a look backward to the first time the Narrator found himself banging on the door trying to get through to her, namely on the threshold of the Party Zero bathroom (see A MESSAGE above). Note that "I haven't seen you since" [11AF] could be read as suggesting that the nose injury happens while Juanita is away at the Summer House, but *before* the Narrator is reunited with her; against that there's "Banging on the door again" and "we sped" of Lanyards, and the "kicked-in doors" of AHfA, to suggest that he's a present witness to the event. It seems to me that the latter reading is much stronger, and that "since" [11AF] can just be read to refer to the deviated septum incident itself, after which the Narrator heads out again with the other runners on the "wide open ranges" (see SHEPARD'S MANSION and ROUGH RIDERS above). [*2] The nose injury is characterized by Barfruit Blues as a consequence of Mary's indulgence in roofied drinks (which, distantly, it is): Mary got a bloody nose from sniffing margarita mix [BBlues] [*3] "Straightened out her necklace" [Lanyards] refers to the necklace with a cross that the alpha girl wears when she's trying to stay clean, but takes off when she's a bad girl hunting drugs (compare "Holly wore a cross to ward them off" [BCamp] vs. "that necklace she sold" [LID], and "She's got a cross around her neck ... She likes how it looks on her chest with three open buttons" [CatCT] vs. "We opened up three buttons/ But all we saw was desert trash" [MoC]). The implication is that the Narrator and the gangsters tried, for the purposes of the hospital visit, to make her *not* look like someone in the throes of heavy drug addiction. And apparently these measures worked, in that hospital staff not only treated her without getting law enforcement involved, but even freely prescribed her painkillers or some other meds with intoxicant value (we're told that her residence at the "family farm" is characterized by "a willingness to trade [her] medications" [FFarm]).
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