|
Post by skepticatfirst on Jul 5, 2021 8:02:12 GMT -5
INSTRUCTIONSThe Narrator's familiarity with the Summer House (evident in the casual but detailed descriptions of Curves & Nerves, Eureka, etc.) and documented "days at a time" disappearances (see ROUGH RIDERS above) indicate that he does occasionally return to the Summer House during the Two Weeks. But most of his time is spent out "on the wide open ranges" [SShoes], and it's while he's out that one of the story's most important exchanges takes place. ***Blackout Sam begins with the description of a scenario that at this point is familiar: That winter we were dealing with unrest in the interior. Be careful when they mention local legends. He was down there in the trenches. She was holding down home office. Still in constant correspondence [BSam] There's no winter in the LP story; chalking that up either to THS transformation or to non-literal usage, we recognize the rest as a description of the kids' situation during the Two Weeks: - "unrest in the interior": reference to the "rough riders on the wide-open ranges" [SShoes] (see ROUGH RIDERS above).
- "be careful": compare "be careful of the second location," where this "second location"=the Summer House (see PERFUME COUNTER GIRL above).
- "local legends": the "local legend" with the "presentation" [Riptown] is identified by "presentation" [TPProcedure] as Shepard (for "they mention," see "They said you got to meet the guy that gets the tab for this" [TPProcedure], and RASTAFARI GUY above).
- "He was down there in the trenches": the Narrator out dealing/robbing/fighting as one of the gangsters (see ROUGH RIDERS above).
- "She was holding down home office": Juanita working back at the Summer House (see ROUGH RIDERS above).
The last line, "Still in constant correspondence," tells us something new: namely, that the Narrator and Juanita are still (after their exchanges during her first weeks at the Summer House; see MAILBOX above) in constant contact with each other. What does this "correspondence" consist of? ***As was the case before the Narrator joined the gang, Juanita no longer has anything to say to him in person (especially true after Shepard's demonstration, see SHEPARD'S MANSION above). This is inferable from Saddle Shoes, whose first mention of any alpha-couple communications comes at the party at the *end* of the "fifteen days"/Two Weeks: Later at some party all the girls want to talk a lot [SShoes] This same disinterest in talking to the Narrator is reported explicitly in Ask Her For Adderall (already unfolded as an account of the Two Weeks; see ROUGH RIDERS above): [*1] Now Holly won't say hi to me 'Cause I'm in love with my anxiety [AHfA] ***But Juanita *does* want to talk to the Eyepatch Guy. She may be doing bedfuls of gangsters while she's at the Summer House (see DETECTIVE above), but she's still obsessed with him: [*2] Said faithful has its limits I just want to see his face [FFarm] That she's here referring to the Eyepatch Guy is shown in the lines from Bloomington we examined earlier (see EYEPATCH GUY and MAILBOX above): i never saw his face, don't know who the man is he just puts his instructions into my mailbox [Bloomington] This is why Blackout Sam describes the alpha couple's communications as "correspondence": as detailed upthread (see MAILBOX above), they're communicating during the times he's out on the "ranges" [SShoes] by phone, using her voicemail and his pager to complete the circuit. ***This is, again, not the first time they've communicated via "mailbox" [Bloomington]; as demonstrated upthread (see EYEPATCH GUY and STAR 18 above), the phone call documented in Mono relied on the same elaborate mechanics. But the Eyepatch Guy didn't give her any "instructions" in the Mono call, which was in fact conspicuously content-free (see DEPARTMENT STORES above). Whatever instructions he gives to Juanita are imparted now for the first time. What are they? We want to start by clarifying what they are *not.* The insinuation of Bloomington, with its tight coupling to Star Wars Hips (see FIRST CONNECTIONS above), is that she's being directed to set "the nightclub fires" [SWH]; that is however *not* what's happening. Juanita is "interned" [SSC] in the Summer House, under "house arrest" [LQ]. She is not visiting the "clubs," neither to commit arson nor for any other reason. The Summer House, as a gathering-place of the Scene, is itself ambiguously a "club" (see NIGHTCLUBS above); but she isn't trying to burn the house down around her head, either. ***What is true is that the Narrator gets the *idea* for Juanita's participation in the schemes of the Eyepatch Guy around this time, when he observes that she *likes lighting fires*: [she] said ... the blue looks beautiful toppin' off the torch you don't have to go inside to buy, you can buy it off the porch [SSC] The context is significant: her adoration of the flame is followed in the next line by an allusion to her job in the Summer House ("transacting sacks to the yards from the porches" [LQ]; see PERFUME COUNTER GIRL above), and in the line thereafter by an allusion to the detective's photo of her there ("twenty-seven lovers in the back half of the summer" [SSC]; see DETECTIVE above). This adoration isn't confined to Juanita in the LP world. Mary too loves the flames: She says she loves the way these little flames Make everything all black and grey. But sometimes all that smoke can make you sick. Still a scorch mark or a blistered hand Seems a whole lot better than Sitting around and waiting for the click [Epaulets] Note the allusions to boredom in "grey" and "sitting around and waiting for the click"; she does the drugs and lights the fires because she's bored (see BORED above). This allusion to "grey" boredom brings us back to the original recruitment scene of CaAoC: she said these sea-side towns they get pretty grey after labor day [CaAoC] What emerges here is that there's a temporal ambigiuity in "after labor day" that Craig is playing both ways. Juanita, already bored at the LBI, appears to be looking ahead with trepidation at the prospect of worse to come (see TWO AT A TIME above); but in fact she's speaking from *experience* of life in the Scene after Labor Day --- in other words, from experience of her dreary internship at the Summer House. We can conclude, then, that Eyepatch Guy's actual recruitment of Juanita as fire lighter: i been lookin for a fire lighter for hire do you like lightin fires, do you like lightin fires [CaAoC] *doesn't* happen during the Jeep Encounter (see JUST STARTED TALKING above); it happens later, after her departure for the Summer House, and after his plan to rescue her at the Mission Party has already failed. The fires are part of a *new* plan that he formulates after being jumped in, and after the Two Weeks are underway. The "instructions" pertain to the setup of that plan, rather than to the fires; what that setup entails, is the next item on the menu (see BACK TO THE CITY below). [*1] "Holly" here is Mary disguised as Holly; "anxiety" links her silence to the same "this is just what we wanted" critique that, according to Rock Problems, takes place during the THS version of the Mission Party ( heregoes; see LOOKING FOR K above). [*2] Note the symmetric Rolling Stones allusions in this line: "I Just Want To See His Face," the 13th track on Exile On Main St., cues us to understand "faithful" as a reference to Marianne Faithfull, whose early-70's addiction and homelessness ( wikipedia) is a figure of Juanita's own situation at this time.
|
|
|
Post by skepticatfirst on Jul 6, 2021 2:04:00 GMT -5
BACK TO THE CITYThe "instructions" the-Narrator-as-Eyepatch-Guy leaves Juanita are a directive to her *to arrange to have the next Wednesday night party held back in The City* (see THE CITY above). The opportunity for this setup is provided, obviously enough, by the every-other-Wednesday-night schedule; but the means and motive for it are worth some additional comment. ***Regarding the means: The Narrator has every reason to expect that Juanita can do what he's asking. She's already successfully organized the Labor Day weekend costume party (see COSTUME PARTY and TWO AT A TIME above), setting a strong precedent. And the authority conferred on her by her status as belle of the ball is openly acknowledged; she's the queen of the clubs [HDaD] to whom the gangsters look for the spark of inspiration: They said, "You're the one who really makes it happen If you're ever on the West Coast give a shout" [HCamera] So the Narrator's premise --- that she can propose a location for the party with the expectation that the gangsters will follow her lead --- is a plausible one. ***Regarding the motive: First off, the Narrator *wants* to go back to The City. Compare the statement of the THS Narrator in CitM: She wont miss the city but she'll miss all her friends. I said "Vice versa for me, man. Vice versa for me" [CitM] We know he likes the "sweet view of the sunset" [TPProcedure]; but he also likes The City because, as of this point in the story, the two times they've been there are the two times Juanita's "[gone] down on [him]" --- the first time at Party Zero (see SUCKING OFF EACH OTHER above), the second time, unsuccessfully, at the end of The LBI (see JUST STARTED TALKING above): [*1] i know that rome's the place she always goes down on me, and it's not just gravity because i tell her things and things sound the way that james brown sings the sex machine i feel good now that you're gone [SCity] In other words, The City is part of his plan: if he can just get her down there and talk to her, he knows he'll be able to draw her in ("Later at some party all the girls want to talk a lot" [SShoes]; see INSTRUCTIONS, and compare JUST STARTED TALKING and MAILBOX above). And this time, he knows she won't be afraid to come away. [*2]More detailed evidence of this motivation is found in Summer House, Bloomington, The Pirate And The Penpal, and Sublet. ***1) Summer HouseImplicit in the Narrator's remark at the end of the first verse of Summer House is that he wants Juanita to come back to The City: what do you mean you aint never coming back to the city [SH] In the next two lines, he adds a subtle reproach: My parents never got me a summer house we'd just sit here in the same house and we'd sweat it out [SH] As noted upthread, the word "here" indicates that the Narrator is calling from his parents' house in the suburbs (see TENNIS COURT above). But his emphatic reference to "the same house" sets up a second meaning, and a second contrast, in addition to the first. Why, he asks, does she have to go off to the "summer house" with the gangsters? What's wrong with "the same house" in which they've been partying in St. Paul? Note too the similarity between the Narrator's expression "sweat it out" [SH] here, and "ride it out" [TMG] and "slug it out" [LDoL] elsewhere. He's not denying that the brewery bar is a brutal environment; he's just willing to endure the brutality for the sake of another chance to get close to her, and to get her away. ***2) BloomingtonWe've already taken note (see THE WEST and STAR 18 above) of Juanita's comment about the Eyepatch Guy: his idea of fun is bloomington [Bloomington] This too suggests that he's trying to persuade her of the fun of a "club" scene *other* than the one where she is and he isn't (for "bloomington" and "megamall"=Nice Nice, see NIGHTCLUBS and STAR 18 above). ***3) The Pirate And The PenpalIn TPatP, the Narrator (as Eyepatch Guy) describes his conversations (by phone) with Juanita: told her all about the tighten up the way they used to dance down in houston, texas [TPatP] This isn't literal: the reference to the 1968 hit Tighten Up ("hi everybody, I'm Archie Bell, and the Drells, from Houston, Texas. We don't only sing, but we dance, just as good as we want": wikipedia) is, via "tighten up"='to give or sell narcotics to' ( gdict; compare "tightened up its tentacles" [HSL, RP]) and the "dance"=sex metaphor (see DANCING above), a coaxing reminder of the sex-and-drugs party scene down in St. Paul. [*3] ***4) SubletAgain, in Sublet, the Narrator (as Eyepatch Guy) ends with trying to persuade Juanita to return to the "city" and the "coney island" party scene, which is to say to The City in East St. Paul (see THE CITY, AIRPORT & LBI and THE EAST): angel have you ever seen the way these city slickers look i think they look incredible angel have you ever seen the way that coney island looks i think it looks incredible [Sublet] ***From the events that follow we'll learn that Juanita is successful in her mission to bring the party back to The City (see WE ALL WENT DOWN below). In the meantime, Me And Magdalena introduces evidence of her willingness to run with the Narrator's instructions. In the final verse, following the description of the kids' meeting with Shepard (see SHEPARD'S MANSION above), we're told: Last night Magdalena rang me really late. Said nothing ever works. Only so much I can take. If I make it back to Scranton can I clean up at your place? [M&M] The pieces of this picture are all familiar at this point: - "Magdalena": Mary (Mary Magdalene), the alpha girl.
- "rang me really late": this is one of their "constant correspondence" [BSam] phone calls, while she's at the Summer House and he's out with the "rough riders" (see INSTRUCTIONS above); she paged him, and he called her back.
- "nothing ever works": the drugs are less and less effective with time (see the note on "six feet tall" [TPatP] while she's at the Summer House in JUST STARTED TALKING above, and compare "decreasingly high" [Viceburgh], "that didn't seem like fifteen beers" [Hardware], "can't get as high as we got" [FN], "Dead receptors. Body limitations" [OwtB], etc.). "Only so much I can take" is meant *literally.*
- "If I make it back to Scranton can I clean up at your place?": she's ready now to do what she wouldn't do at The LBI, namely, to go home with him and clean up for good. She's asking whether she can have a do-over, if she brings the party "back" to The City (for "Scranton"=St. Paul/The City/The East, see GEOGRAPHY: THE FIRST FIVE TRACKS and FRONTAGE ROAD above).
[*1] The striking assertion that Juanita "always" goes down on him there, the second time being when she was wearing her "indian" costume in the back of the Jeep (see INDIAN FRINGES above), comes in for a surprising repeat in THS: Then she kicks off her moccasins The buckskin always sucks me in [Epaulets] [*2] The three phrases "sex machine," "i feel good," and "now that you're gone" are allusions to James Brown hits "Get Up (I Feel Like Being A) Sex Machine (Part 1)" ( link), "I Got You (I Feel Good)" ( link) and "Please, Please, Please" ( link) respectively. These allusions let us know that the verse is set during the Two Weeks, while Juanita is "gone" [LE, SH, SCity] at the Summer House; looking forward to the coming party, the Narrator feels confident that he can talk her into wanting to leave with him. [*3] Here, Houston is identified with the sex-and-drugs party scene of The City; but in the THS world of Teeth Dreams [Ambassador, RH], Houston is identified with NASA's Mission Control as the location of Gideon's "touchdown" ( heregoes). How can these two associations be reconciled? I have tableinthecorner to thank for figuring this one out: "the way they used to dance" [TPatP] correlates with "football dance" [TPatP] earlier in the song, and "touchdown" [Ambassador] confirms that a football metaphor is operative here. The gangsters are cast as the Houston Oilers of the mid-90's, where "oil"=PCP (see LISTED above), and "oilers" suggests "greasers" (see HESHERS above), exactly as they're elsewhere cast as the Dallas Cowboys ( heregoes), where "cowboys" suggests "drifters" (see HESHERS above). The NASA metaphor attaches to the Houston football metaphor in the same way that the Kennedy metaphor attaches to the Dallas football metaphor (and, as tableinthecorner notes, the Washington football metaphor, since the real-life Skins played at RFK stadium, named after the Kennedy who was shot at the real-life Ambassador). The trajectory that began after the Mission Party two weeks earlier is now coming down toward a landing.
|
|
|
Post by muzzleofbees on Jul 7, 2021 0:00:12 GMT -5
I'm hanging on here, and it's still a thrill! Even with five posts per week, it's almost too much to take in in full, and I keep having these little thoughts and questions, and the forgetting about them. Gonna post a couple of them while they're still fresh in my mind. Some of them might be more linked to the THS story, but I think it's increasingly hard to separate the two universes. That's not your fault, I think you're doing a great job making it clear what belongs where. But still, in my mind, they bleed a little together at this point.
And if some of this is tied up later in the thread, I'm totally fine with that!
1. California
It's really interesting to see California/the west coast turn into a Minnesotian thing. I think it makes a ton of sense. But how does this affect the way Charlemagne use the phrase/motif in the THS story? Back in Here Goes you separated between Charlemagne's California (which was a metaphor for hitting the big time, the dream of finally achieving success) and Holly's California (which was a real place she actually went). Is this still a valid separation, or is it more likely that Charlemagne too is refering to a physical place when he talks about it ("Some borderline whore asked me how I was liking California/ I just cried")?
2. The docks
There's plenty of references to "the docks", "the harbour", or anything related to it, both in LP and THS. I don't have the full list in front of me, but just to take two examples I have in my head: Lie Down On Landsdowne and Hurricane J/Certain Songs, but also Lanyards. I got the impression from Here Goes that this was a reference to the place the sailors, the music boys -> the gangsters were hanging out. Somewhere Jesse went to make Charlemagne jealous, somewhere reminding Charlemagne of Holly's downfall. Then, in Lanyards, it seems very much connected to California and the (west) coast - that the maritime themes (see also Magazines and others) bleed a little bit together. That might be a deliberate thing from Craig's side, but it gets a little confusing to me. Don't really know what I'm asking here, but still, haha.
3. The teachers/musicians
Just wanted to add from upthread that there's two other musicians framed as teachers, or at least someone giving advise (which should qualify as the same thing here, right?) in Craig's lyrical world: Freddie Mercury and Johnny Rotten. In No Future, they're both described as guys the narrator takes advise from, and even the title of that song have a possible reference/antidote to Strummer's "The future is unwritten" (which, by the way, was the title of a documentary dropping in the midst of THS/right before Craig's solo endeavour). The combination of Mercury being gay, his advise ("If you can't beat them, join them") and his appearence in Knuckles too, seems especially significant. Again, not really a question, more of an observation on how the musician/teacher theme is potentially elaborated elsewhere.
|
|
|
Post by skepticatfirst on Jul 7, 2021 7:59:08 GMT -5
I'm hanging on here, and it's still a thrill! Even with five posts per week, it's almost too much to take in in full, and I keep having these little thoughts and questions, and the forgetting about them. Gonna post a couple of them while they're still fresh in my mind. Some of them might be more linked to the THS story, but I think it's increasingly hard to separate the two universes. That's not your fault, I think you're doing a great job making it clear what belongs where. But still, in my mind, they bleed a little together at this point. And if some of this is tied up later in the thread, I'm totally fine with that! Thanks. I appreciate the hanging on ... now that we're deep in it, I can see that some of these long posts just to tie up a minor point are, ahem, a lot of reading, even if I need every brick to put the wall together. From my end I'll say that I'm really glad there's only 5 weeks to go :-) ... while slowing it down would have been good in some respects, it'll be a huge relief to have it off my back, and to be able to just point to the 6 summary posts and the final calendar and say, "ok, there it is." 1. California It's really interesting to see California/the west coast turn into a Minnesotian thing. I think it makes a ton of sense. But how does this affect the way Charlemagne use the phrase/motif in the THS story? Back in Here Goes you separated between Charlemagne's California (which was a metaphor for hitting the big time, the dream of finally achieving success) and Holly's California (which was a real place she actually went). Is this still a valid separation, or is it more likely that Charlemagne too is refering to a physical place when he talks about it ("Some borderline whore asked me how I was liking California/ I just cried")? I should probably state here that all my wrestling with the metaphors is aimed at one thing, namely, breaking through to an account of the literal story that holds up no matter what new metaphorical framings (which can be generated without end) Craig whips up on top of it. I'm really happy with the breakthrough to the literal LP story chronicled in these posts --- by the time we're finished here, we'll have a complete story, plausibly motivated throughout, with every lyric accounted for, and no recourse to supernatural forces. Thanks to its being a weird artificial remix of the literal LP story, the literal THS story doesn't really hit that bar, and so a question like this is hard to answer without leaving a door open to other answers. At a minimum, it definitely seems to me that: 1) the LP story: - uses "California" as an elevating-to-epic-status name for the geographical strip along US-169 in the western suburbs - uses *that* name in turn as a fulcrum for metaphors like - the Okies heading west from the dust bowl to the groves of California - kids from the midwest heading to Hollywood to become stars 2) the THS story: - uses "California" as an elevating-to-epic-status name for the geographical strip along US-169 in the western suburbs - uses *that* name in turn as a fulcrum for metaphors like - the prospectors heading west for the gold rush - kids from the midwest heading to Hollywood to become stars So far I think that's all very straightforward. The question is whether the THS story then *also* adds an allegorical usage (California understood as "making it big," apart from any geographic connection), on top of all the other things. That's just tough to answer. The fact that the THS story makes Charlemagne an "inside" character adds a whole new dimension to "making it big" that seems to need accommodating. The story element of Charlemagne and Holly leaving Lynn, Massachusetts to come west in a real and true geographic sense also seems to call for a broader understanding of the idea as well. It's thinkable that all of the THS places that I identified as allegorical --- Colorado=getting high, California=making it big, Massachusetts=state of hostility, etc. --- are just LP geographic locations that have been cut by the THS story remix from their original geographic coordinates, leaving only the metaphoric freight intact in a way that then looks a lot like allegory. I could probably be persuaded that that's the case, but I'd have to think it through. I will say that I don't think it makes any difference from the point of view of the underlying literal story, which is the main thing I want to get to; it's pretty simple to argue for each of these metaphoric meanings in context, even if the bigger picture of how they work as part of an ever-growing system of associations is hard to do with certainty. 2. The docks There's plenty of references to "the docks", "the harbour", or anything related to it, both in LP and THS. I don't have the full list in front of me, but just to take two examples I have in my head: Lie Down On Landsdowne and Hurricane J/Certain Songs, but also Lanyards. I got the impression from Here Goes that this was a reference to the place the sailors, the music boys -> the gangsters were hanging out. Somewhere Jesse went to make Charlemagne jealous, somewhere reminding Charlemagne of Holly's downfall. Then, in Lanyards, it seems very much connected to California and the (west) coast - that the maritime themes (see also Magazines and others) bleed a little bit together. That might be a deliberate thing from Craig's side, but it gets a little confusing to me. Don't really know what I'm asking here, but still, haha. This is another one that could be rethought. I'd always thought the docks/harbor references pivoted on the fact that the St. Paul harbor district (the northernmost harbor on the Mississippi) starts just below downtown, where the brewery is. But maybe the real fulcrum underlying these images is the idea of the "waterpark" in TMG, where "water"=meth; or maybe it's the literary trope of the docks as a down-and-out underworld setting --- compare I was down around the docks but I never saw anyone surfing From a distance it looked pretty much perfect but it's different in person [Lanyards] with these denver slums they look so good in text [SBackwards] Here again I think it's pretty easy to make an argument about where the metaphor is going. Real certainty about its genesis is a little harder to nail down. 3. The teachers/musicians Just wanted to add from upthread that there's two other musicians framed as teachers, or at least someone giving advise (which should qualify as the same thing here, right?) in Craig's lyrical world: Freddie Mercury and Johnny Rotten. In No Future, they're both described as guys the narrator takes advise from, and even the title of that song have a possible reference/antidote to Strummer's "The future is unwritten" (which, by the way, was the title of a documentary dropping in the midst of THS/right before Craig's solo endeavour). The combination of Mercury being gay, his advise ("If you can't beat them, join them") and his appearence in Knuckles too, seems especially significant. Again, not really a question, more of an observation on how the musician/teacher theme is potentially elaborated elsewhere. I'd completely missed this, that's amazing. My immediate thought is that there really does seem to be some kind of argument between the Narrator and the alpha girl out there in the west, an argument that pits his "come on, you can make a choice here, we can write our own future, let's go!" against her "there's no point" resignation: She said you get what you get when you push too far ahead They put us in these places for a reason Shaking your head with resignation masquerading as wisdom [FFarm] Both "No Future" and "if you can't beat them join them" seem to weigh in on her side of the argument. I don't want to say more than that in the way of interpretation without thinking about it more, but the pattern definitely seems to be there.
|
|
|
Post by skepticatfirst on Jul 7, 2021 8:29:16 GMT -5
IN THE PARKING LOTAs noted early on (see LIST OF CHARACTERS above), Sherman City is both the most obscure of all the Lifter Puller songs, and also one of the more important sources of information about the story. For thoroughness, this post follows up the discussion of "rome's the place she always goes" [SCity] (see BACK TO THE CITY above) with a look at three other parts of the song that are also linked to the Two Weeks. ***In describing the Narrator's time with the "rough riders on the wide open ranges" [SShoes] (see ROUGH RIDERS above), The Langelos mentions 1) that their rampage is fueled by pharmacy pills ("energy is courtesy of pharmacy pills" [Langelos]); 2) that they've knocked over multiple pharmacies along the way ("i think i hit another pharmacy" [Langelos]). Seeing this, it's not surprising to find that Eureka (already identified as a THS reflection of events during the time of Juanita's residence in the Summer House, see THE WEST above) combines the sleeping-in-random-places of this period with a reference to pharmacies, plural, in a single line: Sleeping in the parking lots of pharmacies [Eureka] This is consistent with other aspects of the original Langelos account, too: sleeping in random parking lots means waking up in random parking lots, which in turn agrees in principle with "woke up in the shrubbery" [Langelos]. ***But this detail from Eureka grabs our attention, because waking up in parking lots directly recalls the two important passages of Sherman City: she says we'll wake up tomorrow in the parking lot at rainbow but every time i see an eagle, it's a filthy fucking seagull grab my clothes and tap my toes i tell myself this ain't no place like rome [SCity] she says we'll wake up all bloody in the parking lot at friendly's but every time i chase a squirrel it rips apart my world i grab my clothes and blow my nose i sell myself this ain't no place to jones [SCity] The double "wake up ... in the parking lot" is an indication that these lines connect to the period of the Two Weeks. But how do we untangle them? ***The place to start is with the second passage; in every time i chase a squirrel it rips apart my world [SCity] we hear a deliberate echo of the new perfume counter girl tears apart my world [SGS] indicating that the Narrator is speaking during the time of Juanita's employment as the "perfume counter girl" in the Summer House (see PERFUME COUNTER GIRL above). He's chased her there ("squirrel" is slang for 'girl': gdict; see also the SGS rhyme); now he's getting his world ripped apart at the hands of the "rough riders" (see AHfA, and "i grab my clothes and blow my nose ... this ain't no place to jones"). The second passage, then, is firmly set against the background of the Two Weeks, which suggests that "the parking lot at friendly's" is built on the contrast between the Narrator's *actual* situation during the Two Weeks, and where he *wants* to be at that time: - in *actuality*, he's waking up a wreck in pharmacy parking lots with gangsters; whereas
- he *wants* to be waking up in the Jeep Encounter intimacy of the Kittson Street parking lot, down in the City, with Juanita.
This is strictly consistent with our understanding of the "rome's the place she always goes/ down on me" [Scity] passage, and with his instructions to Juanita, trying to get her to return to The City (for the identification of Friendly's as the brewery bar, see EAST VS MIDWEST above; for the Kittson Street lot as the parking lot of the brewery bar, see BALTIMORE BELTLINE above; for the Narrator's attempt to steer Juanita back there, see BACK TO THE CITY above). ***The reference to "the parking lot at Rainbow," then, is constructed in parallel with "the parking lot at Friendly's": it's a parking-lot framing of the place he ultimately wants to get to, the place he's wanted to be all summer long, namely, back with Juanita in smalltown suburban Minneapolis, scoring in the safety of the parking lot at Rainbow Foods. (Compare Southtown Girls, where the Rainbow Foods in whose parking lot the drug deal goes down is the one at 2600 American Blvd W in Bloomington, at the Southtown Mall. Again, waking up together is understood as a figure of intimacy; for a discussion of the relevance of this passage to the alpha-couple tensions of the Return Parties, see EAST VS MIDWEST above.) ***With these two passages now clearly set against the background of the Two Weeks, it's pretty clear that the opening line: now we live in domes [SCity] must refer to the situation of the Two Weeks as well: - "live" is consistent with descriptions elsewhere of the alpha girl's trap house residency (compare "pretty much living in/ a 3.2 bar" [Ambassador], "living on the west coast" [SBackwards]; for discussion, see THE WEST above).
- "we"/"domes" plural is consistent with the Narrator and Juanita's shared home base in the Summer House (identified by Sublet as the dome of the Pantheon in Rome; see DETECTIVE above), and their now shared goal of returning to The City (identified by Emperor as the dome of St. Peter's Basilica in Rome; see CHARLEMAGNE above).
***At the beginning of the thread (see CONVENTIONS above), I said I would mostly refrain from exploring rejected theories. But Sherman City is obscure enough that one question we've already answered seems worth the public exercise of a second look (plus we'll learn something about THS in the process). The question is this: If, as we've now shown, a substantial part of Sherman City is recounted from the perspective of the Two Weeks, what does that mean for the final two lines of the song? if we're really gonna wait, baby can't we take a shower look just like an otter when i push you underwater [SCity] We've already proposed that these lines --- the clearest description we have of the Narrator's attempt to drown Juanita --- refer to an event at the end of the period of the Return Parties (see UNDER WATER above); but we came to this conclusion without the support of a fixed link to a date. In light of everything else we've learned about Sherman City, we have to second-guess this conclusion: could it be that the assault takes place during a reunion in the course of the Two Weeks, rather than during the Return Parties? We've already made other arguments for consistency (see THE RIPPLE AND THE CHAMPAGNE and MAILBOX above) that make the Return Parties reading a pretty secure one; it would, for the rest, be difficult to square this assault, and the expectations of sex out of which it arose, with the Narrator's later focus on his mission of rescue. But there's also additional evidence, which we're only now (as of the Summer House/Two Weeks analysis) able to appreciate, that the drowning incident happened *before* Juanita's departure for the Summer House with the gangsters. This evidence is found in the LP shadow over the following verse of Yeah Sapphire: Yeah, Sapphire I know the last time we touched I came on a bit rough, please forgive me Yeah, Sapphire After you left, it was a big sketchy mess, they almost killed me [YS] The THS-timelines-and-arrows-taped-up-on-the-wall explanation for what's happening here, is that Sapphire is Mary's dream of herself when her body is occupied by Holly after the crucifixion (discussion of these points is all over the back end of Here Goes thread). This explanation is correct, as far as it goes. But the fact that both Holly and Mary are THS reflections of Juanita provides a much simpler and more intuitive account of Sapphire's identification with both girls. In terms of the *THS* narrative, "I came on a bit rough" [YS] in the first couplet obviously applies to Gideon drowning Holly, and "after you left" [YS] just as obviously applies to Holly leaving for the California. There's no doubt about which events are meant, but narratively speaking they're referred to out of order, weakening their force. But in terms of the *LP* narrative, the two events being alluded to --- the Narrator attempting to drown Juanita, and Juanita departing for the Summer House --- *do* happen in the stated order, and the dramatic crescendo from the first allusion to the second makes it clear that they are in fact related: as inferred earlier (see THE RIPPLE AND THE CHAMPAGNE above), the fact that Juanita attends The LBI without the Narrator, leaving her vulnerable to the Kid From California, is itself a direct consequence of his earlier assault.
|
|
|
Post by skepticatfirst on Jul 8, 2021 5:27:59 GMT -5
INVITEDThe Narrator's having a rough time of it, but the two weeks between parties are coming to an end on schedule, and he's ready to make his move. In summary, he's done three things to prepare: 1) He's instructed Juanita to arrange to have the next Wednesday night party held down in The City (see INSTRUCTIONS and BACK TO THE CITY above). 2) He's gathered some supplies that he'll need in order to carry out his plan (we'll see the evidence for this when we come to the final party itself; see LASER SHOW below). 3) He's made a date with Juanita to see her at the party (in the person of the Eyepatch Guy). ***Let's review the evidence for the third point, about the date. We know that the Eyepatch Guy shows up at the final party, because The Flex And The Buff Result, which is the story of that party, tells us as much: you see we all went down to meet that guy with the eyepatch [TFatBR] A subtler detail from the lead-in to this same event comes to us from Sangre De Stephanie, which describes Juanita getting ready for the party and dressing up sexy in her excitement to see someone: she's gettin stoned when i came down the stairs tryin to decide what the fuck she could wear and i helped her to take off that hair shirt slide right into that slit skirt and i'm glad you invited him like to know what i'm up against [SdS] It's clearly the Narrator speaking in these lines, and clearly Juanita about/to whom he's speaking. That leaves the question, who's the "him" who she's "invited"? Whoever it is, he is, like Night Club Dwight, a rival for Juanita's affections. But it can't be Dwight; "like to know what i'm up against" indicates that, as far as Juanita knows, this person and the Narrator have never met before, whereas the Narrator and Dwight have known each other ever since Juanita introduced them at the Riverside Perkins ahead of Party Zero (see NIGHT CLUB DWIGHT above). The only other person to whom this can possibly refer is the remaining object of Juanita's affection, namely, the Eyepatch Guy. The Narrator's defiance of his rival, stated for Juanita's benefit, is tongue-in-cheek. ***Juanita's anticipation of finally seeing the Eyepatch Guy after their long "correspondence" [BSam] appears to be another justification (along with the drug references in "the Waves" and "Walking On Sunshine"; see KATRINA above) for picking up the name "Katrina" from the name of the band Katrina And The Waves. The band's hit Walking On Sunshine begins ( link): I used to think maybe you loved me, now, baby, I'm sure And I just can't wait till the day when you knock on my door Now every time I go for the mailbox, gotta hold myself down Cause I just can't wait till you write me you're coming around This is precisely the situation in which Juanita finds herself during the Two Weeks, right down to the "mailbox" [Bloomington] (see MAILBOX above) as her medium of communication with the Eyepatch Guy. ***Note, finally, that Juanita's authority to invite the Eyepatch Guy is taken for granted; this doesn't in itself prove that that authority is special, but it's consistent with the other evidence we've seen of her ability, as "queen of the clubs" [HDaD], to dictate the staging of the gang's parties (see BACK TO THE CITY above).
|
|
|
Post by skepticatfirst on Jul 9, 2021 8:22:06 GMT -5
CANDY'S ROOMLet's take a second look at those lines from Sangre De Stephanie in which we find Juanita dressing up sexy for the party: she's gettin stoned when i came down the stairs tryin to decide what the fuck she could wear and i helped her to take off that hair shirt slide right into that slit skirt and i'm glad you invited him like to know what i'm up against [SdS] This is the same wardrobe-assistance episode described in the opening verse of Sherman City (see THE GIRLS above), a verse which we've already identified as an account of the Two Weeks ("now we live in domes" [SCity]; see IN THE PARKING LOT above): [*1] she lets me braid her hair but she never lets me pick out what she wears [SCity] The same moment is also described by reflection in Navy Sheets, where the party she's getting dressed up for is the Crucifixion, THS analogue to the final party of LP: All dolled up for the funeral feast [NS] ***Looking past Juanita's dress-up dilemma, another especially interesting feature of the SdS passage is the reference to the stairs. The only place where Juanita can conceivably be getting dressed (let alone stoned while getting dressed) in preparation for the party is in the Summer House itself. The fact that the Narrator meets up with her there squares with the presumption that the gangsters gather in one place before traveling down to the festivities together (see WE ALL WENT DOWN below). We understand, then, that these lines describe the action on Wednesday afternoon, ahead of the party, in the moments after the Narrator's "rough riders" have returned to the Summer House to join up with the rest of the gang. When they arrive, the Narrator's first order of business is to go and see Juanita. Where exactly does he go to find her? He goes downstairs. This explains why Juanita's bedroom with the "thirty threesomes" [SCity] (which we've already identified as a reference to her bedroom in the Summer House; see ESTHER above) is described as "soundproof" [SCity]; it's in the basement. ***The evidence of Family Farm further confirms this inference. We've seen that the heavily guarded "family farm" is the Summer House (see LOOKING FOR K and SHEPARD'S MANSION above). The song describes how the alpha girl "brought" the Narrator there after the Mission Party; two verses earlier, it describes how she herself first arrived there after The LBI: She came into the cantina singing This Must Be The Place [FFarm] The literal meaning of "cantina" is 'basement' (specifically, the basement as a storage place for liquor; wiktionary). This is "Candy's Room": like in the Springsteen original, it's the room of a girl who entertains "strangers from the city" ( link), and the room where the Narrator of the song wants to be. ***Note that the real-life Summer House candidate we identified on Jefferson Hwy in Osseo (see OSSEO above) does have a basement; see the window well at ground level ( link): ***Back In Blackbeard introduces us to a strange but important reflection on this topic. Namely, it confirms that the basement is the origin point of Juanita's world, but also indicates that there's more than one of them: don't blame your daughter's downfall on her dancin don't blame your baby's binging on the bass bins blame the boredom, blame the basements [BiB] The "basements" alluded to here aren't basement shows (it's not the "bass bins," i.e. the music, that's to blame for her "downfall"). [*2] Rather, they're specific places to which Juanita goes in her hunt for drugs (like her boredom, they're a symptom of her addiction; see BORED above): 1) The first basement is the Hamm's brewery bar, originally the Rathskeller, literally "council cellar" in German ( wiktionary; see NICE NICE and ON THE FLOOR: VISIONS above). 2) The second is her basement bedroom in the Summer House. Having identified these two rooms as the twin centers of the Lifter Puller underworld, Craig does a very strange thing with them: [*3] in the same way that he unites all the caves and domes and clubs where the Scene gets together as manifestations of the singular Nice Nice (see NICE NICE above), here he goes to extreme lengths to paint the physical environments of the two "basements" as symmetric mirrors of each other. | Brewery Bar | Candy's Room | Both have a "bed" | the carpet (see ON THE FLOOR: CARPET & HARDWOOD above); "Blood on the carpet" [OwtB]; "Waking up on the carpet" [DH] | a dirty mattress on the floor [Spectres]; "your mattress" [SGS]; "Mud on the mattress" [OwtB]; "Rolling off of the mattress" [DH] | Both have a "stand" | the milkcrate | the bed stand | Both have a music box on the stand | the boombox (see THE TUNES and ON THE FLOOR: VISIONS above) | a clock radio (see ON THE FLOOR: MUSIC and ON THE FLOOR: VISIONS above) | Both have window coverings | shutters, "bars on the windows" [CSTLN], "venetian blinds" [SdS] (see BREWERY BAR: THE CORNER above) | "Hotel room in Houston with the shades against the sunshine" [EC], "bedsheets for curtains" [No Future] | Both have a window where she spends time | "All the burns on the windowsill/ Says she's crazy about horses still" [UB] | "She appeared as a wraith in the drapes ... Some nights St. Paul seems so holy ... Saw the sun through a crack in the curtains" [R&T] | Both have, or are near, a "kitchen"/"bar" | the "kitchen" and the actual bar (see THE KITCHEN above) | the "kitchenette" with wineglass/black and tans [C&N, HCovenant] | Both rooms are otherwise empty | "snuck into the ballroom and made echoes in its empty" [UB] (see ON THE FLOOR: VISIONS above) | "her room is kind of bleak" [Esther] | Both have hallways outside | the hallways of the stockhouse; "hundred miles of hallways" [UB] | "all the halls" [Ambassador] | Both are characterized as her apartment | "luxury apartment on the top floor of some high-rise building" [TPProcedure], "your apartment" [Sublet], "southside hardwood floor apartment" [SGS] | "she had her own apartment" [HCamera], "southside hardwood floor apartment" [SGS] | Both are linked to "porches" | metaphoric reference to swinging: "you fell off of the porch swing" [NC], "swinging from the porches" [Hardware] | the actual porch of the Summer House; "you can buy it off the porch" [SSC], etc. | Both have a door behind which she's shut | "open up the bathroom door" [Emperor] (see A MESSAGE above) | "banging on the door again" [Lanyards] (see NOSEBLEED above) | Both are described as bloodied | "we woke up on bloody carpets" [PJ], "Blood on the carpet" [OwtB] | "bloody mattresses" [Spectres], "too much blood for a nose bleed" [Lanyards] (see NOSEBLEED above) | Both are described as loud with the sound of Juanita's shouting | "man it's gettin loud out/ i'm shaking in the downtown" [SBackwards] (see STEREO SOUND above) | "it gets so loud it's like thirty threesomes" [SCity] | Both are characterized as a storage space | stockhouse #4 (see AIRPORT & LBI above) | "sleeping in a storage space by the airport" [TOT]; "cantina" [FFarm] | Both are characterized as being in a house | "party house" [TLTtSTtM, BSam] | "summer house" [SH], "house arrest" [LQ] | Both are characterized as being in a fortress | "earpiece dudes in a fortified fortress" [TS&tT] | "She brought me to a fortress she called the family farm" [FFarm] |
This insistent superimposition accounts for the fact that the two locations are regularly described in ambiguous terms, as if one is the other: - the "southside hardwood floor apartment" [SGS] is described both as the place Juanita brings her stolen drugs back to (the brewery bar), and the place with a mattress where she's sad at the end of the summer (the Summer House).
- Denver Haircut describes a room that is otherwise unambiguously the brewery bar as having a clock and a mattress; You Did Good Kid similarly puts a spray-painted mattress in what is otherwise evidently a description of the bar.
- the Ambassador, where Mary ends up living in the THS story, is identified with the brewery bar, rather than with the "west coast" equivalent to the Summer House where Holly went (see NICE NICE above).
- Mary smokes and looks out from her room over the view of St. Paul [R&T].
- the "detective" in Blankets, like the detective in 11AF, finds the Narrator's girlfriend, but he finds her "in the skyway in St. Paul" [Blankets], rather than in a house in the western suburbs.
- the brewery bar (and, separately, the Ambassador) is described as having a bloody "bed" [SPayne] in it, when this is a furnishing of Juanita's room in the Summer House (see NOSEBLEED above).
and so on. Of course this ambiguous treatment of two objects under a single aspect, or one object under a dual aspect, isn't new in Craig's work. But it's especially pronounced in the case of the "basements." ***The dirty mattress on the floor in the Summer House basement deserves a few more comments: 1) Among the reasons adduced by hysterical Juanita for leaving with the gangsters at the end of The LBI (see PERFUME COUNTER GIRL above) was the following: i'm sick of being scared of falling off the side of my bed [TLaDiLBI] This is how we know that her bed is a mattress on the floor; moving into the Summer House means that she doesn't have to be scared of falling off the edge any more. 2) The reflection of the LP Narrator's visit to Juanita's room on the THS version of the kids' time among the gangsters illuminates the otherwise obscure line Everybody's coming onto navy sheets [NS] "Everybody," here, is involved in analogy to Juanita's "thirty threesomes" [SCity]; the bed in Juanita's bedroom has navy sheets, and the visiting Narrator is treated to an after-the-fact view of how "the sheets stain" [NS]. 3) The "bedsheets for curtains" mentioned in No Future as the ultimate legacy of the meeting with Dwight at the Riverside Perkins seem likely to have been taken from the navy pile, too. We can believe it when we're told that "her room is kind of bleak" [Esther]. [*1] Seeing that the sexy "indian" costume was a hit with the Eyepatch Guy the first time around, it is likely that Juanita is trying to recreate the effect of the "indian" costume from The LBI, and that the reference to braids is therefore literal. [*2] The "basements" [BiB] aren't basement shows, but it's very much to the point that basement shows are held in basements because they're soundproof (compare "she's proud of her soundproof bedroom" [SCity]). [*3] The idea of framing the story in the symmetry of basement at the beginning to basement at the end is unusual, but we have strong evidence that this is *exactly* how Craig is inclined to order things. A notable example from Craig's fiction is the arc of Charlemagne's presence in the THS story, from his first appearance on stage under the "spotlights" in the opening line of CiS, to his final (physical) appearance under the "hot soft light" of the projector at the end of HSL and SShoes. An even more revealing example from real life is documented in Ryan Leas' recent (2021) Stereogum interview "We've Got A File On You." In the interview, Craig describes opening for The Replacements at New York's Forest Hills Stadium --- a tennis stadium --- and says ( link, link):
|
|
|
Post by skepticatfirst on Jul 12, 2021 6:34:22 GMT -5
TWO WEEKS: SUMMARYHere's a summary of the events of the Two Weeks. ***- Though he's scared, the Narrator heads back to the next Wednesday night party determined to find and extract Juanita [LOOKING FOR K].
- He drives his Jeep to the old warehouse where the party is being held, and parks in the lot outside [CARGO VAN].
- Entering the warehouse, he doesn't see Juanita. Trying to avoid being noticed by the gangsters, he approaches one of their girls instead [LOOKING FOR K].
- He asks the girl if she knows where he can find K, referring to Juanita by her drug-fiend Katrina nickname [LOOKING FOR K].
- The girl misunderstands, thinking he means Ketamine, and tells him "this isn't a rave, it's a party" [LOOKING FOR K].
- The Narrator apologizes for the confusion, and blesses himself; he's terrified of this "party" [LOOKING FOR K].
- Thinking that he wants Ketamine, the girl directs him to the gangsters with the Copenhagen hats, saying that they're a good place to start [LOOKING FOR K].
- The Narrator clarifies that he's talking about K, Night Club Dwight's girlfriend [LOOKING FOR K].
- Finally understanding, the girl points him to the room in the back where Juanita's been giving blowjobs and getting high [LOOKING FOR K].
- The Narrator finds Juanita in a K-hole, wrecked and weird-talking. In her dissociated state, she follows him out, unresisting [CARGO VAN].
- Their escape does not go unnoticed; the Narrator's unpreparedness is exposed when the gangsters meet him with their dogs out in the parking lot [CARGO VAN].
- The gangsters restrain the Narrator, and lead the kids to a cargo van behind the warehouse [CARGO VAN].
*** - They arrive before sunrise. The kids are marched into the office of Shepard, the gang's leader, who's also just returned from the party [SHEPARD'S MANSION].
- Shepard is very much in charge. He tells the Narrator to give an account of himself [SHEPARD'S MANSION].
- Carefully, the Narrator explains that [SHEPARD'S MANSION]
- Juanita is his girlfriend;
- when she offered to blow the Kid from California for a hit, it wasn't with any plan of moving to the Summer House permanently;
- he'd like Shepard to let her go.
[/ul] - Shepard replies that the door is open for Juanita to stay or leave as she pleases. As a demonstration, he proposes a test [SHEPARD'S MANSION].
- He tells Juanita that she can either leave with the Narrator, or else suck his dick and get a hit of meth [SHEPARD'S MANSION].
- Juanita drops to her knees, sucks Shepard off, gets her reward, and withdraws into her high [SHEPARD'S MANSION].
- You see, Shepard says: she wants to be here. This is where she can connect [SHEPARD'S MANSION].
***- Now, Shepard says, the door's open for you too [SHEPARD'S MANSION]:
- if you want to join up, I'll put you to work as a runner;
- but you don't have to join, and it's probably better for you to leave.
[/ul] - The Narrator looks at Juanita; there's no way he can leave. He agrees to join the gang [SHEPARD'S MANSION].
***- The Narrator is officially jumped in; they haze him, rape him, shave his head, burn the hair, and give him a Panama Jack painter's cap to wear [CARGO VAN, SHEPARD'S MANSION].
- Shepard reveals his impatience with the business, but explains to the Narrator how to do his job: first set the price, then agree on the amount [SHEPARD'S MANSION].
- Before sending everyone back out to work, Shepard shares with them his wisdom: The Future Is Now [SHEPARD'S MANSION].
***- Juanita resumes her role waiting on visiting cars from the porch of the Summer House, and servicing the gang [ROUGH RIDERS, INSTRUCTIONS].
- The Narrator is made to run with the "rough riders" through a sleepless two-week crime spree of sex, drugs, injuries, robberies, and dealing [ROUGH RIDERS].
- He's abandoned his job and the world completely; the two-week horizon is only visible in the prospect of the next Wednesday night party [RASTAFARI GUY, TWO WEEKS].
- He makes a point of trying to seem "hard," both to fit in and to protect himself against exploitation [ROUGH RIDERS].
- He returns to the Summer House often enough to observe how it works and be abused by other gangsters, but is always sent out again [ROUGH RIDERS, INSTRUCTIONS].
- One of the gangsters at the Summer House fakes a broken arm and uses the Narrator's name to get a prescription of pain pills [ROUGH RIDERS].
***- During one of the Narrator's visits to the Summer House, Juanita gets in a fight with the Kid From California (or one of his friends) in her room [NOSEBLEED].
- The guy hits her hard in the face, resulting in a deviated septum; she bleeds profusely from the nose, all over the bed [NOSEBLEED].
- The Narrator bangs on the door, which is locked, but she doesn't answer [NOSEBLEED].
- Others in the house arrive and kick in the door to find the room a bloody mess. The guy tells them it was a nosebleed [NOSEBLEED].
- Someone calls an ambulance; they clean Juanita up a bit and accompany her to the hospital [NOSEBLEED].
***- While out on the ranges, the Narrator calls Juanita's answering machine and leaves messages in the person of the Eyepatch Guy [INSTRUCTIONS].
- Knowing her influence over the staging of the gang's parties, he sees a chance to coordinate a return to St. Paul for the upcoming Wednesday night [BACK TO THE CITY].
- He leaves instructions for her to arrange to have the party held back in The City, promising (as the Eyepatch Guy) to meet her there if she succeeds [INSTRUCTIONS, BACK TO THE CITY, INVITED].
- In anticipation of the party, the Narrator stocks up on some supplies [INVITED].
***- When the Wednesday of the next party arrives, the Narrator and the "rough riders" meet up with the rest of the gang at the Summer House [CANDY'S ROOM].
- The Narrator goes downstairs to find Juanita in her basement bedroom, getting ready for the party [INVITED, CANDY'S ROOM].
- It's a bleak room, with very little furniture [CANDY'S ROOM]:
- its main furnishing is a mattress on the floor with cumstained navy sheets.
- it has a basement window with a lighter-burned sill, and bedsheets for curtains.
- it has a bed stand with a clock radio on it.
- outside it are hallways and a kitchenette with a microwave, a coffee can ashtray, and wine and beer.
[/ul] - Juanita tries to put together a sexy outfit for the party, telling the Narrator that she's going to meet the Eyepatch Guy there [INVITED].
- The Narrator doesn't get a say in her choice of clothing, but ends up braiding her hair in the same style she wore with her "indian" costume at The LBI [CANDY'S ROOM].
- The Narrator tells her that he's glad she invited the Eyepatch Guy, that he's looking forward to seeing what he's up against [INVITED].
|
|
|
Post by skepticatfirst on Jul 13, 2021 6:46:00 GMT -5
WE ALL WENT DOWNAt last the Two Weeks come to an end, and the kids stand on the threshold of the next Wednesday night party. Like other episodes of the story that need a simple handle, we'll refer to this one as the Final Party. The Final Party takes place in Swede Hollow, but this is by no means self-evident; we'll look carefully at the evidence *for* and *against* locating it there in separate sections below. ***FOR #1: Back to The CityThe Narrator, both in his own right and as the Eyepatch Guy, has been campaigning to get Juanita to bring the party back to The City in East St. Paul (see BACK TO THE CITY above). Her evident anticipation as she gets dressed up to see the Eyepatch Guy (see INVITED above) is a first indication that she's been successful in making this happen, and that that is in fact where the Final Party will take place. The gang won't be returning to the brewery bar per se, both because the Wednesday night parties need space on the scale of a warehouse, and because they know from their experience of The LBI that the bar is under guard now. The adjacent Swede Hollow park, on the other hand, is an ideal location for their purposes. ***FOR #2: THS Crucifixion partyIt's clear that the Final Party is reflected in the THS world by the party of Charlemagne's crucifixion; to start with the obvious parallels, - both are the last parties of their respective stories;
- both are the long-awaited culmination of the kids' two weeks with their respective gangs (see TWO WEEKS above).
The fact that the THS Crucifixion party takes place in Swede Hollow park (see heregoes for beginning of extended discussion) is, then, a second indication that the Final Party takes place in the same park. The discovery that the THS Crucifixion party is based on one of the LP Wednesday night speed distribution parties explains a formerly obscure point. In describing the Crucifixion party, One For The Cutters says: Windows wide open to let the hard rock in [OftC] This refers to the distribution of drugs into the park from the windows of vehicles parked somewhere adjacent to it. [*1] If the party had been for the gangsters' own entertainment, they could have carried a recreational supply on their own persons; the fact that it's an organized event for business purposes means that they need to keep their supply behind a "counter" of some kind. The fact that the Crucifixion party is organized by the gang for commercial purposes is, for the rest, the reason why the THS Narrator accounts for his presence there by saying I went there on business [SiM] ***FOR #3: Direct evidenceThe LP lyrics contain little *direct* evidence for the location of the Final Party, but what evidence there is also points to the park in Swede Hollow. Most of this comes from Manpark, which describes events of the Final Party from Night Club Dwight's perspective. a) First, there's evidence of the title, repeated in the description of the locale at the end: the manhunts always start down in the manpark [Manpark] which explicitly references a park; the implication in the name, that the park is a hotbed of homosexual activity, makes it a match for Charlemagne's "Penetration Park" [YHLF], which in Here Goes we showed to be a reference to Swede Hollow ( heregoes; heregoes). b) This identification is reinforced by the direction "down"; as we've already observed (see OSSEO above), *every* lyrical reference to going "down" to find trouble is a reference to the East St. Paul brewery area. Juanita's return to the brewery bar for The LBI is also located "down" with respect to Brooklyn Park in The West (see THE WEST above): and she lives in the brooklyn heights, she came down on a friday nights [TLaDiLBI] c) Furthermore, the action which is described as "start[ing] down in the manpark" ends up moving "up" from there: woke up up on 15th and franklin [Manpark] which again (see NIGHTCLUBS above) situates the Manpark down in St. Paul. d) Also, the party is explicitly located on the outskirts of the downtown [Manpark] which is a clear fit for Swede Hollow, immediately across the tracks from the Downtowner Car Wash (see BALTIMORE BELTLINE above) on the outskirts of downtown St. Paul. e) Finally, these guys they gather in the public garden they're duckin into shrubs, crawlin out all smilin [Manpark] specifies a park with sufficiently thick greenery to permit discretion in the addicts' bj-drug exchanges, something that's important at a Wednesday night party when there are new/prospective customers around ("they only get invited cause they think that they might buy" [ASD]; the shrubs are the equivalent of "the room that's all the way at the back" at the Mission Party). Not all parks have this kind of shrubbery, but Swede Hollow does. ***In making the above points we want to take a look at two other candidates for the location of the Final Party: the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden and Loring Park. AGAINST #1: Minneapolis Sculpture GardenAn alternative candidate for the location of the Final Party is the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden. Arguments in favor of locating the party there include: a) the reference to the "manpark" as "the public garden": these guys they gather in the public garden they're duckin into shrubs, crawlin out all smilin [Manpark] b) the fact that the Garden is located "on the outskirts of the downtown" [Manpark], but of Minneapolis, rather than St. Paul. c) the If Not For Hipster Pictures (Brokerdealer) reference to a drug party with "statues in the park": it was drugs that made your party seem like a party that was created in claymation it was drugs that didn't seem to have a purpose except for maybe recreation it was the statues in the park screamin in the dark tauntin all the teens sayin we need some desecration it's how you and me and me and you and you and me and me and you and you and me and me and you and all our friends are under observation they got the cameras with infrared vision they got the radiation to remedy the gunshots they got cops and they got soldiers stationed around the nation [INFHP] ***AGAINST #2: Loring ParkYet another candidate is Loring Park. Arguments in favor of locating the party there include: a) the fact that it's located "on the outskirts of the downtown" [Manpark] Minneapolis (as opposed to downtown St. Paul). b) the fact that Craig himself famously answered a question about Penetration Park in Matthew Fritch's 2005 Magnet interview by saying ( link): Though pointedly vague ("I was thinking of"), this early tidbit has become a commonplace of THS interpretation, and even Craig is now able to rattle it off without the open hedging ( link). If this is really meant to say that the Penetration Park events of the THS story are set in Loring Park, then the correspondence of Manpark to Penetration Park would argue for putting the Final Party in Loring Park as well. ***But there are multiple problems with both the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden and Loring Park as candidate locations: a) Neither park has shrubbery capable of concealing a sex act amid a public gathering. b) Both parks are located up above 15th and Franklin, rather than down below it. c) The Brokerdealer description of "your party [with] cameras with infrared vision" [INFHP] is a very strong match for The LBI (see COSTUME PARTY and FIRST BUST above); it is much easier to take "statues in the park" as a metaphoric reference to the kids fleeing The LBI through the park (see TWO AT A TIME above), than it is to try to reorient all the other details around a proposed literal reference to the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden. d) The fact that we have *two* alternative locations to choose between must mean that one of them is in any case not literal (which makes this analogous to the Hardware costume problem: the ambiguity between explicitly described "dorothy" and "viking" costumes could only be resolved by an arbitrary choice if we didn't bring the evidence of the entire lyrical universe, including the "indian fringes," to bear on the question; see COSTUME PARTY above). e) The THS Crucifixion party with the woods and the water tower ( heregoes and following) clearly takes place in Swede Hollow; it also clearly takes place in the "Penetration Park" where Charlemagne is "punctured" [YLHF]. If "Penetration Park" is taken to be a literal reference to Loring Park, this opens up a cascade of violations of constraints that cannot easily be resolved. It is, in short, much simpler to account for these apparent alternatives to Swede Hollow by appealing to documented habits of speech on Craig's part, specifically via the understanding - that "public garden" and "Penetration Park" are real-world handles for the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden and Loring Park that Craig has appropriated for the Swede Hollow of his stories, just as he's appropriated "City Center" for The City in the same location (see THE CITY above);
- that the 2005 Loring Park comment is a case of Craig being evasive in interviews, like his dismissal of the last lines of Sherman City with "I think it just rhymed" (see CHARLEMAGNE above; for additional discussion see link).[*2]
***A final scrap of evidence in favor of Swede Hollow comes from The Flex And The Buff Result, in which Juanita (the song is told from her perspective; see EYEPATCH GUY above) says of the runup to the party: you see we all went down to meet that guy with the eyepatch [TFatBR] Here again "down" means down to the East Side of St. Paul. The THS reflection of this trip (the Skins' journey to the Crucifixion party) is described in Look Alive, and described in very similar terms: Crosstown, everybody was pooling their money Rolling on down to the railroad yard ... These bodies on this bus, it looks like they don't feel so good about themselves [LA] The implication is that the main body of the gangsters (not all of them have cars), including the Narrator and Juanita, travel to the party on the crosstown bus (compare "crosstown bus" [SPayne]) from the US-169 corridor in the west to the East Side of St. Paul where the railroad yard is located (see BALTIMORE BELTLINE above). [*3]As for the TFatBR line specifically: it's not that all of them are going down for the purpose of meeting the Eyepatch Guy, but simply that all of them are going down to the party where, unbeknownst to them, he will make his appearance. It's Juanita for whom the prospect of meeting the Eyepatch Guy is front of mind; for her, he really is the object of their journey. [*4] [*1] In the Here Goes discussion, influenced by the identification of the Ambassador with the brewery bar in St. Paul, we'd come to the conclusion that the drug-distribution windows belonged to one of the brewery outbuildings at the northern end of the park ( heregoes); along with much of the other detail in the linked post, that conclusion has been overtaken by developments in this thread. [*2] The 2005 Magnet interview is packed with deliberate directions and indirections, such as the artful reference to Jesus in Craig's description of Charlemagne as "someone who would wear a purple suit, a second-generation drug dealer" ( heregoes), or his sly connection of Stevie Nix with urban myth operating "magically or mystically" ( heregoes). [*3] This bus ride down to the park for the Crucifixion loops in yet another Minneapolis park (along with the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden and Loring Park) whose name is appropriated for metaphoric purposes; for "up in Penetration Park" [YLHF, BCamp] Beer On The Bedstand substitutes "up in Painter's Park": This girl comin down to the south side. He's going to meet her up in Painter's Park. She usually keeps her distance He's too rough when he's all the way up. But no one's holding anything And she saw him on the bus [BotBedstand] Painter Park is located at 620 W 34th St. in Minneapolis, off of Lyndale; the point of the allusion is to characterize the park as the haunt of drug dealers, via "paint"=meth (see LISTED above). Beyond the bus ride, the rest of the details are all familiar: - "This girl comin down" and "he's going to meet her": compare "we all went down to meet that guy with the eyepatch" [TFatBR]
- "She usually keeps her distance": Juanita, who's been through with the Narrator since he tried to drown her (see UNDER WATER and MAILBOX above).
- "He's too rough when he's all the way up": the Narrator trying to drown Juanita (see UNDER WATER above).
[*4] In this sense, "we all" can be read as referring to just Juanita and the Narrator; compare "we all" in reference to exactly two people in MV and TLaDiLBI, and "these rats" in reference to just the two of them in "never asked to be king of these rats" [Langelos] (see JUST STARTED TALKING above).
|
|
|
Post by skepticatfirst on Jul 14, 2021 6:09:00 GMT -5
DEPENDS ON WHO'S ASKINThe Final Party is very thinly documented relative to its importance in the story. It's useful to take a look at how that documentation is meted out before diving into the details of what actually happens. Fragments aside, all of our narrative information about the party comes from two sources: Manpark, and The Flex And The Buff Result (see WE ALL WENT DOWN above). About these two songs, consider: ***1) perspectiveIt's significant that Manpark and TFatBR are two out of only four songs in the entire LP catalog that are told from a perspective other than the Narrator's: Manpark from Night Club Dwight's, and TFatBR from Juanita's (the other two are Bloomington from Juanita's perspective, and SH1999 from Dwight's. We know now that CaAoC and Mono, apparently in the voice of the Eyepatch Guy, are in the voice of the Narrator after all; see EYEPATCH GUY above). In other words, *both of our narratives about the party come from someone who doesn't see the whole picture, and who in fact is under a false impression both about the person of the Eyepatch Guy and about what's objectively happening.* ***2) drug-addledBoth songs confirm that both Juanita ("i was nervous i was nauseous i was drippin wet with heat rash" [TFatBR], "angel's hurt and high in exaltation" [Manpark]) and Dwight ("now dwight's never home now that dwight's got a jones" [TFatBR], "did my little bit in the bathroom" [Manpark]) are fucked up on drugs, adding to the confusion of the stories they tell. ***3) out-of-orderThe events of both songs are told out of order. Manpark starts out in the park, then describes Dwight's waking up on 15th and Franklin, then rewinds back to the park to describe the beginning of the "manhunts" [Manpark]; TFatBR rewinds from a later scene back to the beginning of the party ("you see we all went down to meet that guy with the eyepatch" [TFatBR]). ***4) late in catalogBoth songs appear on the last Lifter Puller album. In Steve's Back To The City podcast interview with Simon Calder --- which everyone should listen to --- Steve gives a long answer to a question about TFatBR (for about two minutes starting at 30:30: link) in which he includes the following note: Steve hedges his guess here, and in fact we've seen Craig say something partly contradictory (with respect to the band's future) in the May 2000 "All the Right Moves" interview with Mike Daily (see STORY: WORKING THEORY above, and link): But hedges aside, both remarks are in agreement about the main point, that, from F&F on, Craig is engaged in a deliberate effort to progress the story, and arguably (in Steve's words) to "come full circle" with it. This accounts for the first appearance of actual narrative treatments of the Final Party in the form of Manpark and TFatBR on F&F; it also accounts for the fact that the remaining fragments pertaining to this last episode (found in Rental, SWH, TPatP, MTape, SCity, RfLB, LiaL, CRoom, NN, TMS, LDoL, SSC, LQ, and 4Dix) skew heavily toward F&F and the final "comps and seven-inches." ***In looking at this it's impossible not to notice the strongly *avoidant* character of Craig's approach to the climax of his story. It's an essential part of the work he's created, a work which he evidently wants to finish presenting in its entirety; but he puts off a real handling of that climax until late, and then, when he does finally start to dig into it, his recourse to indirections in order to avoid spelling out what happens goes through the roof. The very last of the Final Party fragments makes an observation about Dwight's "woke up up on 15th and franklin" [Manpark] that bears directly on this point: what happened on 15th and franklin depends on who's asking [4Dix] We've already quoted Craig on his use of the "unreliable narrator" technique in THS storytelling (see LIST OF CHARACTERS above); in fact, *this is where his use of that technique begins,* with Manpark, TFatBR, and the mystery of the Final Party. Whether he's deliberately trying to heighten the mystery, or leaving room for more storytelling, or both, it's evident that he doubles down on this approach in THS, which not only makes heavy use of unreliable narration from the beginning, but plumbs new depths of evasiveness when it comes to the analogous but much more complicated events of the THS Crucifixion (see heregoes and following posts).
|
|
|
Post by skepticatfirst on Jul 15, 2021 7:36:06 GMT -5
LASER SHOWEven amid the perspective shifts and out-of-order narration of the Final Party, we can still work out what happens. Let's take it from the beginning. ***The party kicks off after the kids and the gangsters go down to Swede Hollow, as described by Juanita in TFatBR (after the rewind from the first verse; see WE ALL WENT DOWN above): you see we all went down to meet that guy with the eyepatch [TFatBR] Things start in the usual way, with the "kids" [Manpark] doing gangsters and doing drugs; in the very next line, Juanita remarks on her "drippin wet" state (see VARIETIES OF PHYSICAL ASSAULT above): and i was nervous i was nauseous i was drippin wet with heat rash [TFatBR] In fact, we have two different descriptions of this same moment in the party, the first from Juanita's perspective in TFatBR, the second from Dwight's in Manpark. and i was nervous i was nauseous i was drippin wet with heat rash [TFatBR] angel's hurt and high in exaltation slip slidin on the lubrication [Manpark] The implication of Dwight's statement, coming after the first three verses of Manpark in which he celebrates the sex-for-drugs trade and his own agency in it, is that he's taken advantage of seeing Juanita again in order to fuck her. Finally, looking ahead a few lines, he was drippin wet with gin fizz he was half dead and dynamite [TFatBR] will confirm that the Narrator has been working the shrubbery at the same time as Juanita, blowing gangsters ("gin"; see LACED SUSBSTANCES above) and doing drugs ("dynamite"; see LISTED above). ***With the party now going in full gear, and having fortified himself with speed, the Narrator steps offstage to wherever he's stashed the supplies he brought (see INVITED above), and returns in costume: finally the guy with the eyepatch arrives [TFatBR] So Juanita is finally reunited with her Eyepatch Guy. They talk. The Eyepatch Guy starts by dissing "her boyfriend" [KatKH] Dwight, telling her a story about having loaned him money to set him up in business as a dealer. Most of this backgrounder is a lie (see EYEPATCH GUY above), but there's one detail that's true: dwight's got a jones [TFatBR] From our first meeting with Dwight at the very beginning of the story (by which point he's already established as a dealer, meaning that these events postdate the Eyepatch Guy's fictitious "loan"), he always appears nursing a crack pipe. It's with him - the first time he hits on Juanita, before Party Zero ("well i like you dwight but i don't like the pipe" [NN]; see NIGHT CLUB DWIGHT above);
- through the Return Parties ("he pulled out a pipe in the taxi" [ILtL]; see FRONTAGE ROAD above);
- at the Mission Party (the Narrator identifies him to the townie chick as "the boy with a pipe in his face" [KatKH]; see LOOKING FOR K above);
- at the Final Party itself ("i'm like a pied piper" [Manpark]; "the chainsmoker" [TFatBR]).
Relatedly, in Secret Santa Cruz, Juanita describes the Dwight who invited her to Party Zero as a "crackhead" (see NIGHT CLUB DWIGHT above): and the night of all that bloodshed i was kissin' on some crackhead who said he knew about a party [SSC] And coming back to the present, she calls him a "chainsmoker" [TFatBR]. These details confirm that Dwight's "jones" is a pre-existing condition, used by the Eyepatch Guy to add color to his story. (Clarity on this point helps reduce the scope of uncertainty about the remaining events of the Final Party.) ***Now the Eyepatch Guy issues his call to action, in two lines that wrap the heart of the mystery of the Final Party in an extended double meaning. We want to take on the second line first: i want the nice nice up in blazes [TFatBR] On the surface, this is straightforward: it's the point at which the Eyepatch Guy tells "fire lighter for hire" [CaAoC] Juanita to burn down the "club." The terms "nightclub fires" [SWH] and "arson" [SSC] have prepared us to imagine a literal act of arson --- a framing which is, for the rest, a real reflection of the Narrator's fantasy of violent revenge on the gangsters (see CHARLEMAGNE above). But in fact it's *not* an act of arson that's being described. Leaving aside the vengeful framing, the Narrator's overriding goal is the same one he's had for a month: namely, to grab Juanita by the hand and get her away from the gang. His attempt to do this at the Mission Party two weeks earlier failed because he wasn't "ready" [RfLB] for the gangsters' parking lot "security" [Bloomington] (see CARGO VAN above). But now he's wiser: he knows that they'll be keeping a close eye on things, and that he needs a way to distract that collective eye from his planned escape. ***So what, finally, does the Narrator do? From under his raincoat (he is in full Eyepatch Guy gear), he pulls out a bag that he's brought along, containing a supply (see INVITED above) of a certain kind of drugs, and hands it to Juanita. Then he stands up in the middle of the party and announces to the crowd that she's giving them out for free. [*1] Evidence for this is found in several places. In its description of the Narrator dropping out to join the gang and "waiting on the wednesday shipment" [RfLB] (see RASTAFARI GUY above), Rock For Lite Brite includes the following detail: and you're hooking up the laser show we can use a couple visuals [RfLB] "Lazers," we recall, is slang for psilocybin mushrooms (see LISTED above); the drugs the Narrator has brought are *hallucinogenic.* His plan, and his reason for bringing them along, is to fill the heads of the Final Party-goers with "visuals," so that he and Juanita can escape in the confusion. [*2] Further confirmation of this is found in La Quereria, which describes both the kids enjoying their "liberties" and the Narrator "saving" the party with his party favors (compare Gideon's "party saviors" in Milkcrate Mosh): the kids are living liberally loving all their liberties [LQ] ... he took the porches like a preacher takes the pulpit he says the nightlife is the only thing that could possibly save us [LQ] The liberties *are* the party favors; "liberties" is, again, documented slang for psilocybin mushrooms (see LISTED above). This image of the Eyepatch Guy seizing the metaphoric means of distribution ("the porches") and freely dispensing hallucinogens to the party is also reported in Sherman City: and hey jones beach don't you freak when you see me mc sweet lemme free your party [SCity] MC Sweet was the rapper who put out "Jesus Christ (The Gospel Beat)" in 1982 --- a Christian rap single about how Jesus "set us free" ( discogs; youtube). Here again, the Eyepatch Guy seizes control of the party "like a preacher takes the pulpit" [LQ], through free distribution of the "sweet" stuff (see LISTED above). Another angle on "liberties" and freeing the party is found in Touch My Stuff, which, in alluding to Bad Brains ("Right Brigade" is the 13th track on Bad Brains' self-titled first album), recalls the Narrator-as-Rastafari-Guy and "laser show" of RfLB (see RASTAFARI GUY above): and the right brigade, that's the funny thing it ain't just a money thing it's a question of community the liberty, the ecstasy, the love, the drugs, the unity [TMS] The Final Party is one of the Wednesday night parties, but it's not only "a money thing": the "liberty" of the Narrator's laser show is free. The Final Party is the "total party [when] you'll barely know me" [SH] promised by him to Juanita during the phone call of Summer House (the song). Of course this freedom isn't beneficent; "don't you freak when you see me" [SCity] reveals the Eyepatch Guy's intent to strike fear into his enemies (a fear which Dwight, for his part, feels, as documented in "hadn't seen the eyepatch guy since the LBI/ yeah 1999's comin up on a cool corvette" [Manpark] and "you know i think they might be onto me" [TFatBR]; see EYEPATCH GUY above). Recall, too, Craig's statement to Keith Harris that "Blackbeard would twist bits of flaming rope into his beard so his face would be smoking when he went into battle" ( link, and see EYEPATCH GUY above); Craig's point in saying so is to note that, when going into battle, *Blackbeard brought the visuals.* ***Juanita's involvement as the "fire lighter for hire" [CaAoC] serves a practical purpose. It's one thing for the Eyepatch Guy to announce that he's buying a round for the house; it's another thing for him to go around among the gangsters and Dwight, and physically try to foist a dose on each. He can't do that and expect to be trusted. But Juanita can. [*3] That her role as the Narrator's agent in the "laser show" [RfLB] consists in getting everybody high is confirmed by the previous line: get em going with your stereo equipment and you're hooking up the laser show [RfLB] His "stereo equipment" is Juanita, the "little sister with your stereo sound" [TGatSD] (see STEREO SOUND above). ***The connections between this scene and the THS Crucifixion are not only explicit, they provide a thoroughly grounded account of what was otherwise one of the hardest-to-accept conclusions of the Here Goes thread: namely, the non-violent but otherwise insane special-effects plot hatched by Gideon involving the Pepper's Ghost trick ( heregoes). Like the LP Narrator's plan, Gideon's is built on "visuals" and "laser shows": Strung out on residuals and visuals and laser shows [SPayne] And like the LP gangsters, the Skins are susceptible to his scheme because of their drug-addled state: Where townies would gather and drink until blackout Smoke cigs 'till they're sick, pack bowls and then pass out [OftC] This last line is attention-grabbing; what it describes is precisely the meaning of the verb "blaze" ( gdict; urbandictionary), down to the very terms used in the urbandictionary definition: The act of packing a bowl of marijuana and setting fire to it with the intent of inhaling the resulting smoke The ONDCP document too corroborates this with its definition of "blazing" ( ondcp): Blazing − Smoking marijuana In short, when the Eyepatch Guy says he wants "the Nice Nice up in blazes" [TFatBR], what he means is that he's going to get everybody high out of their minds and hallucinating. The insanity of THS "laser show" turns out to be just a creative elaboration of the LP original. [*1] The description of the Eyepatch Guy "with a big straw hat" is a reference to the drug dealer in the Velvet Underground's song I'm Waiting For The Man; he's got "a big straw hat," and "you always gotta wait" for him to arrive; but it's OK, because "he's got the works, he gives you sweet taste" ( link). [*2] These "laser show" hallucinations are also what's referred to by "lite brite" [RfLB] in the song title; Lite Brite was a toy that could be used for creating visuals in a literal sense, "making things with light" ( wikipedia). [*3] Recall that the alpha girl "like(s) lightin fires" [CaAoC] specifically in the sense of "lov[ing] the way these little flames/ make everything all black and grey" [Epaulets], and thinking that "the blue looks beautiful toppin' off the torch" [SSC]; the fires she lights are the flames of lighting up, and the role itself is one for which she needs no coaching.
|
|
|
Post by muzzleofbees on Jul 15, 2021 23:55:13 GMT -5
LASER SHOW(...) That her role as the Narrator's agent in the "laser show" [RfLB] consists in getting everybody high is confirmed by the previous line: get em going with your stereo equipment and you're hooking up the laser show [RfLB] His "stereo equipment" is Juanita, the "little sister with your stereo sound" [TGatSD] (see STEREO SOUND above). ...which make me really curious about the very last line for Rock For Lite Brite. Really fascinating these last posts. I'm reading them on my phone on my way through Norway.
|
|
|
Post by skepticatfirst on Jul 16, 2021 5:59:44 GMT -5
...which make me really curious about the very last line for Rock For Lite Brite. Yes! what you're seeing is real ... that's coming up. :-)
|
|
|
Post by skepticatfirst on Jul 16, 2021 6:26:51 GMT -5
SHERMAN CITYThe other half of the Eyepatch Guy's unfolded plan applies specifically to Night Club Dwight: i want night club dwight dead in his grave [TFatBR] Like "i want the nice nice up in blazes" [TFatBR], this has a double meaning. On the one hand, he's indulging a "violent red vision" of homicidal vengeance which may or may not actually be in play; on the other, he's talking about a practical milestone in their immediate goal of escape. At this point it's established that being "dead" in Lifter Puller means being *half* dead: either still alive on the inside but killed in body, like the kids after the gangrape, or alive in body but dead on the inside, like the kids addicted to meth (see HALF DEAD above). It's the latter death that the Narrator has in mind for Night Club Dwight. He can't think of attempting this before getting Juanita and himself out of the hands of the gang; but in fact his first step toward revenge and his first step toward escape are one and the same. Just as Dwight set the Narrator up before he killed him ("Set up for the slaughter and shot in the shoulder" [TS&tT]), the Narrator now sets Dwight up by hitting *him* with "roofies": one night dwight he got a little bit toothy now they all call him the good doctor tooth one night dwight got all goofy on the roofies now they all call him the fiddler on the roof [NN] The "toothy" part --- the vampire-fangs murder by meth injection --- will happen a little later. But the administration of the "roofies" is happening now; the same dose that Juanita is distributing to the rest of the partygoers (see LASER SHOW above) is the one that will make Dwight a tool in the Narrator's hands. In fact, the sight of the Eyepatch Guy "tak[ing] the pulpit" of the party and sending Juanita around with the goods: hadn't seen the eyepatch guy since the LBI [Manpark] is the last thing Dwight remembers before waking up at 15th and Franklin: woke up up on 15th and franklin [Manpark] ***We now know definitively which drug it was that the Eyepatch Guy brought to the party, and Juanita distributed to the crowd. The various descriptions of the "laser show" make clear that the drug is a hallucinogen (see LASER SHOW above). The repeated references to "lasers" and "liberties" suggest psychoactive mushrooms. The reference to a "vision quest" and "buttons" [MoC] after the THS Crucifixion suggest peyote, another psychoactive substance. And the references to "blazes" [TBatFR] and "lightin fires" [CaAoC] suggest marijuana. But from the Nice Nice lines above, it's clear that Dwight was hit with something analogous to roofies. How can this be squared with the rest of the data points above? The answer is that everyone, Dwight, gangsters, everybody, were given joints spiked with something that has hallucinogenic properties *and also* functions as a date rape drug. *The Narrator's handing out the same thing that he himself was hit with during Party Zero*: here's everything i remember last dance and somebody must've slipped me a sherman [HDaD] To recap what we've laid out upthread (see LACED SUBSTANCES and LISTED above): a sherman is a joint laced with PCP, which, like fellow ester and date-rape drug Ketamine, of which it is the forerunner ( wikipedia), is a dissociative hallucinogen ( wikipedia). The Narrator both hooks up the "laser show" *and* "roofies" Dwight by giving Juanita a bag of shermans to hand out. All of the partygoers get one; they kindle the "nightclub fires" when they blaze up. [*1] We get confirmation of this (along with another textbook example of Craig being evasive in interviews) from the 2009 Vulture interview, in which Craig talks about Sherman City ( link): We've long since established that The City refers to the St. Paul brewery bar area, including Swede Hollow where the Final Party takes place; the Final Party is precisely "Sherman City, a place where every joint was a sherm." [*2]***The term "sherman" is documented in the ONDCP list, and in fact is pretty well known, thanks to Frampton's "Do You Feel Like We Do" (see "frampton" [LPvtEotE] and ORIGINS OF SIGNATURES above). But the more common term (see the DEA list and Green's) is "sherm," and we note that in the Vulture interview Craig too calls it a "sherm." If he's familiar with the more common term, why go with "sherman" in the LP lyrics, and in the title of Sherman City specifically? There are a few reasons for this. For one, we've already proposed that "Sherman City" replaces an original "Vatican City" as the title of the song (see CHARLEMAGNE above); this is borne out by the Final Party "takes the pulpit" [LQ] moment (see LASER SHOW above), which completes the identification of the Narrator with Charlemagne taking the platform of St. Peter's Basilica to have himself crowned Emperor (again, see CHARLEMAGNE above). [*3]But the congruence of "Sherm-an City" with "Vatic-an City" isn't the only reason for preferring "sherman" to "sherm." The lines from Sherman City that pertain to the Final Party itself (see LASER SHOW above) suggest another reason. and hey jones beach don't you freak when you see me mc sweet lemme free your party [SCity] Like the Charlemagne-in-the-Vatican metaphor, which locates the triumphant Narrator back at the scene of his original defeat, the reference to East Coast "jones beach" is further confirmation that the Final Party park is located near the brewery in East St. Paul (see AIRPORT & LBI and EAST VS MIDWEST, and compare WE ALL WENT DOWN above). But the really interesting bit is in the second line: "lemme free your party." There's a lot of language in the LP and THS lyrics that characterizes the kids' drug addiction as slavery, including with respect to Holly's internment on the "west coast": the clubs are just like caves, these club kids are just slaves and these afterbars are just like their graves [NN] cause the turntables have enslaved us [LQ] the schoolbuses are slave trains [LQ] And it's not like she's enslaved, it's more like she's enthralled [CiS] St. Louis had enslaved me [HaRRF] the clanking of the shackles [UBreakfast] There are of course also a lot of references to the Narrator's undertaking as a "war," both a Charlemagne-style "holy war" [Emperor, TMS] and "war" as sustained hostilities [4Dix, PJ, GLS, etc.]. Against this background, "lemme free your party" [Scity] has a wider resonance (compare also "Teenage Liberation" [TL]): the Narrator's Final Party campaign is framed as the decisive battle in a war to free the enslaved, namely, the American Civil War; and the Narrator himself takes on the mantle of William Tecumseh Sherman, the Union general ( wikipedia). There are three major pieces of evidence supporting this reading: - You Did Good Kid frames Party Zero as "the slaughter at Shiloh" [YDGK] in allusion to the first major slaughter of the American Civil War (wikipedia; see COMMEMORATIVE PLATES above), and the beginning of the Union's successful "war of attrition" [OwtB, TSTux] strategy (wikipedia).
- The title of the song Viceburgh is an allusion to the city of Vicksburgh on the Mississippi River (see CONVENTIONS above); the Siege of Vicksburgh was the first major victory of the Union Army under the leadership of Grant and Sherman (wikipedia), and the point from which the Union's "war of attrition" [OwtB, TSTux] strategy made Confederate defeat inevitable (wikipedia).
- Craig of course has an entire solo album named after a different narrator's identification with a Union Army general: "I'm Grant at Galena/ I need a new war" [GaG]. (We now know that the "new war" he had in mind is the First Opium War of 1839-1842, fought between China and Great Britain over drugrunning via "clipper ship" [Feelers], and out of whose treaties the original Open Door Policy was forged: link.)
***The identification of the Narrator with Grant and Sherman parallels his identification with a third general as well; we know that Grant and Sherman came out on top at Vicksburgh, so we don't spoil anything in pointing out that the commander who saved the alpha girl from slavery is mentioned by name: St. Louis had enslaved me I guess Santa Ana saved me [HaRRF] Santa Anna ( wikipedia) was the general who defeated the Texans at the Alamo; when the Narrator says of Juanita she can't remember where she slept last night but she won't forget the alamo [SSC] he's talking about the Final Party. ***Taking all this into account, we have three further details confirming that the Narrator spiked the Final Party with shermans, in Girls Like Status, Math Is Money, and Killer Parties. ***1) Girls Like StatusIn the Here Goes thread I noted that I couldn't disentangle Gideon from Charlemagne in GLS; with the benefit of hindsight, it seems clear that that's because GLS is ultimately looking through them to the LP Narrator (see THS CHARACTERS below). What we learn here is that the Narrator comes for the liberation of the alpha girl armed with "vegetation": He was dreadlocked in the dorms in the Colorado corn He says he's got your vegetation She was sitting on the edge of the bed smoking trying to reach emancipation [GLS] - He's "dreadlocked" in the sense that he's the Rastafari Guy, having joined the crust punk gang on the "west coast" (see RASTAFARI GUY above).
- The "dorms in the Colorado corn" refers to the Summer House (dorms because both Juanita and the Narrator are living/crashing there, see RASTAFARI GUY, SHEPARD'S MANSION, and ROUGH RIDERS above; Colorado because they're high).
- The "vegetation" is the marijuana of the Narrator's shermans.
- She's "sitting on the edge of the bed smoking" in her room in the basement of the Summer House (see CANDY'S ROOM above).
- The "emancipation" she's trying to reach is a deliberate echo of the Emancipation Proclamation (wikipedia) following the American Civil War theme of liberation of the enslaved.
***2) Math Is MoneyIn Math Is Money, we're told that the Narrator came out to the place he got double-teamed with the Peter Pan bus line (headquartered in Springfield, Mass: wikipedia): peter panned out here from springfield, mass [MiM] Lonely in a Limousine corroborates this, adding that the destination of the bus was the brewery bar (see THE CITY above), from which we understand that the "bus" is another framing of Dwight's "taxi" (see THE RIDE above): peter panned into NYC took the non-stop night into gay paris [LiaL] Math Is Money goes on to suggest that the bus, that is, Dwight's "taxi," was the means by which the Narrator returned home, which is correct as far as it goes (see 15TH AND FRANKLIN below): peter panned back into springfield, mass [MiM] But in all of these lines, the *other* meaning of "Peter Pan" as slang for PCP (see LISTED above) is operative as well. It was by the agency of a sherman down in The City that the Narrator got in trouble in the first place, and by the agency of shermans, again down in The City, that he gets himself out of trouble at the end. [*4]***3) Killer PartiesThe two key parties of the story --- Party Zero and the Final Party of LP, which become the metal bar party and the crucifixion party of THS --- are the two parties whose turning point is marked by the deployment of shermans: they are, literally, the killer parties, "killer" being understood in the slang sense of marijuana laced with PCP, i.e. a sherman (see LISTED above). [*5] [*1] The Narrator's against-the-odds bid for rescue and revenge that began with his capture at the Mission Party two weeks earlier gets a mention in the opening lines of Denver Haircut (see CARGO VAN above): He shaved his head at the airport In a bar at the end of the concourse. He said you're kind of catching me at a transitional time. I'm a bright light burning into a dark horse [DH] He's becoming a "dark horse" both in that he's turning toward the darkness of vengeance, and in the usual sense of being a competitor facing long odds ( wikipedia); it's not a coincidence that the other horse of that description is named "Chips Ahoy!," where "chips"=shermans (see LISTED above). [*2] Sherman City is a city full of shermans, and Riptown, apparently, is also one. From the ONDCP document ( ondcp): Rip -- Marijuana See Craig's comment from Tim's Twitter Listening Party ODP runthrough (text, in case the tweet rots: 'CF: A friend used to talk about “setting up a rip zone” which means a party. So I guess a Riptown would be a whole town that’s a rip zone.'): [*3] The fact that it's Sherman City that characterizes the clubs as "domes" now appears with a double significance: "domes" is not only a reference to the Pantheon and St. Peter's Basilica (see ROME and CHARLEMAGNE above), but also to "domes"=LSD, which like PCP is a hallucinogen (see LISTED above). [*4] Compare the "movie" account of the THS Crucifixion party in Almost Everything: Went to some movie. It was loud dumb and bloody. The third act took place in a wormhole [AE] Here too, "worm"=PCP (see the DEA and ONDCP documents linked at LISTED above: ondcp). [*5] This Party Zero/Final Party symmetry is observed in the static loop at the end of Fiestas & Fiascos, too; it's clear from the last lines of TFatBR that this is the sound of the Final Party nightclub fires blazing, but it also mirrors the clicks-and-hisses interval between the sides of the endlessly looping mixtape from Party Zero (see ON THE FLOOR: VISIONS above).
|
|
|
Post by skepticatfirst on Jul 19, 2021 5:26:59 GMT -5
SECOND BUSTSo the Eyepatch Guy takes over and roofies the party, including Dwight, with shermans. Then the cops show up. ***Once more, it's useful to recall Craig's description of the scene in the real-world Party Pit (including Swede Hollow and the brewery; see THE EAST and FIRST BUST above), now clearly established as the location of the Final Party ( link): "Parties," plural, would get shut down early, and the LP "busts" [TMS] too are plural. The first bust was when the cops broke up The LBI, in the brewery bar (see FIRST BUST above). The second happens now, during the Final Party, in Swede Hollow. ***Evidence that the bust happens now is found in several places. First, the description of the partygoers indulging in "liberties" (see LASER SHOW above) is linked directly to the appearance of the cops, not only in Touch My Stuff: [*1] and the right brigade, that's the funny thing it ain't just a money thing it's a question of community the liberty, the ecstasy, the love, the drugs, the unity and the busts they look just like the hey kool-aid commercial breakin down the walls and they're tippin over tables and it tastes great [TMS] but also in La Quereria: the pigs came in so forcibly almost didn't bother me the kids are living liberally loving all their liberties [LQ] ***A more explicit connection between the bust and the Final Party is found in Manpark, which concludes with a description of the appearance of the cops in the park: katrina this is serious, juanita eat the evidence the manhunts always start down in the manpark the manhunts always start out in the manpark it starts with the sharks [Manpark] The instruction to Juanita to "eat the evidence" only makes sense if the cops are involved: there are other menacing figures present (the gangsters, even the Eyepatch Guy himself) who could be imagined to be behind a "serious" situation, but it's only the cops who care about evidence, or drugs. [*2] More on the police "manhunts" originating from this moment shortly. ***The reflection of the LP Final Party in the THS Crucifixion party extends to the bust as well. There's the evidence in Both Crosses that the cops arrive on the scene and carry Charlemagne's body away from the park: She saw him gushing blood right before he got cut She saw them put a body in a bag in the trunk [BCrosses] as well as the suggestion of One For The Cutters that their appearance leads to a roundup of the partygoers: Now the cops want to question everyone present They parade every townie in town through the station But no one says nothing and they can't find the weapon [OftC] ***We're now finally in a position to revisit the account of Charlemagne's death, cooked up by the kids in preparation for the Crucifixion party, that's related in Killer Parties (see LP SHADOWS above; heregoes): If they ask about Charlemagne Be polite and say something vague Like another lover lost to the restaurant raids [KP] The "restaurant raids" shadowing this fiction are the busts of the gangster parties at The LBI and the Final Party, respectively. The appearance of the cops at the Final Party marks the last time that Dwight, of whom Charlemagne is the THS projection, is seen alive in public. [*1] "tippin over tables" [TMS] in the TMS account of the bust is not literal; the gangsters are selling their drugs out of their cars (see WE ALL WENT DOWN above), not at tables set up in the park. Rather, it's a metaphoric allusion to Jesus driving the merchants from the Temple: This same Biblical episode is mentioned by Gideon in anticipation of the THS Crucifixion party, of which the LP Final Party is the original: He likes the part where the traders get chased out from the temple [CatCT] as well as alluded to in the title of Confusion In The Marketplace (also linked to the Narrator's Final Party revenge, see CHARLEMAGNE above): We can take advantage of confusion in the marketplace. I don't wanna dick around. I just wanna devastate [CitM] [*2] "Juanita eat the evidence" [Manpark] is again consistent with our understanding (a) that the Narrator entrusted a supply of drugs to Juanita for distribution, and (b) that this is a bag of laced joints, rather than speed, mushrooms, peyote, LSD, or any of the other substances in the story that take effect via ingestion (see LASER SHOW and SHERMAN CITY above, respectively).
|
|
|
Post by skepticatfirst on Jul 20, 2021 7:00:58 GMT -5
15TH AND FRANKLINSo the cops burst in, and a scene that was already spinning out of control under the command of the Eyepatch Guy becomes even more chaotic. There's exactly one line of firsthand reporting from this moment: katrina this is serious, juanita eat the evidence [Manpark] We've already considered the question of the "evidence" (see SECOND BUST above), but there's another question we haven't answered: why is Juanita addressed twice, once as Katrina, once as Juanita? Both of these appeals are *heard* by Dwight, from whose perspective Manpark is reported (see DEPENDS ON WHO'S ASKIN above); but only the first, the warning to Katrina, comes from his own mouth. Dwight's the one for whom Juanita is essentially Katrina, his drug-dependent "girl" [SH1999; compare KatKH]. The one for whom she's essentially Juanita --- the one who has the presence of mind not to panic, but instead tells her to "eat the evidence" --- isn't Dwight; it's the Eyepatch Guy, i.e. the Narrator. [*1]***In short, the first reaction of both Dwight and the Narrator is to reach for Juanita; then, as indicated by the manhunts always start out in the manpark [Manpark] they flee --- or more specifically, as indicated by the manhunts always start *down* in the manpark [Manpark] they flee *west* (see WE ALL WENT DOWN above). The out-of-order presentation of events distracts from, but doesn't hide, the fact that their destination is the same post-party stop from earlier in the summer (see FRONTAGE ROAD above): woke up up on 15th and franklin [Manpark] ***In planning for the Final Party, the Narrator can't have anticipated that the cops would show up; his preparation of the "laser show" indicates that he meant to engineer an escape independent of their interference (see LASER SHOW above). But while their appearance forces his hand with respect to timing, everything else is going exactly according to plan. Dwight has a car, provides "big and strong" [CRoom] protection against stray gangsters they might meet, and is compliant under the effects of the sherman (see SHERMAN CITY above). So the Narrator seizes his opportunity and, still in the guise of the Eyepatch Guy, flees with both Juanita and Dwight toward the Kittson Street lot, where they leap into Dwight's car and drive off. While it's clear from Dwight's sudden reaction: woke up up on 15th and franklin [Manpark] that he doesn't remember the trip west, that doesn't mean he wasn't the one behind the wheel. Dissociatives like PCP impose a state of suggestibility, not catatonia; Dwight is perfectly capable of navigating a route that he knows well (and that he's driven stoned before: see "he pulled out a pipe in the taxi" [ILtL]) under the Eyepatch Guy's direction. This fraught scenario is, for the rest, the true referent of the seemingly anodyne detail from You Can Make Him Like You: You don't have to know how to get home Let your boyfriend tell the driver the best way to go [YCMHLY] ***So the Eyepatch Guy directs Dwight to take them to 15th and Franklin, where he wakes up. What happens then? woke up up on 15th and franklin with a straight looking chick and the prick that she picked up at the nankin [Manpark] The "straight looking chick" is Juanita, "straight looking" both because she's coming down from her "hurt and high in exaltation" [Manpark] state back in the park, and because she's responding to the presence of the Eyepatch Guy; the "prick that she picked up at the nankin" is the Eyepatch Guy himself. We recall that the "Nankin"/"city center" [4Dix] is a handle for The City in East St. Paul (see THE CITY above); besides being, in point of fact, the place where Juanita joined up with the Eyepatch Guy, it's the place, in Craig's loaded words, where "you would get a fruity drink" (see ROOFIES above), and where "a huge drug bust" took place ( link; see FIRST BUST and SECOND BUST above). ***The Eyepatch Guy tells Dwight that they've come to 15th and Franklin in order to engage in their usual transaction, and suggests that he use his credentials to score them some meth. Here again Dwight "the chainsmoker" (see LASER SHOW above) complies: well the chainsmoker he called the stockbroker he said hell i hate to sell we've been doin really well but i need a little liquidity you know i think they might be onto me [TFatBR] Note that Juanita is personally present for this interaction, consistent with the fact that TFatBR is told from her perspective. Beyond that, there are several things to unpack in these lines: - The "stockbroker" is the drug wholesaler (in the dealer's sense of "stock") at 15th and Franklin.
- Dwight's fear that "they might be onto me" is ambiguous, born of a combination of the sherman and the bust; the implication is that he both thinks the cops are after him ("manhunts" [Manpark]) and feels the menace of the Eyepatch Guy closing in ("1999's comin up on a cool corvette" [Manpark]; see EYEPATCH GUY above).
- Dwight's "hell i hate to sell we've been doin really well" suggests that he's scared enough to want to lay low for a while; whether that's his intention or not, this is in fact the last time he'll be coming to 15th and Franklin looking for "stock" to deal to others.
- The "liquidity" he's looking for, like "liquid soap" [JBS] and "liquid tan" [MTape, TMS, LDoL, TFatBR], is injectable drugs (see LISTED above); from what follows, and from the role played by 15th and Franklin as Dwight's source of merchandise (see SHOT IN THE SHOULDER and FRONTAGE ROAD above), we know that it's injectable meth, specifically.
***To recap, then: Dwight and the kids drive to 15th and Franklin; Dwight does his "handshake ... with the doorman" [TSTux] to gain admittance; [*2] they go in to the counter, where he acquires the meth they came for; then the three of them duck into the bathroom to complete their usual transaction. There, in the "bathroom stall," is where Dwight "got the margin call" [CRoom], with everything coming together at once under the Narrator's direction: 1) The Eyepatch Guy/Narrator, "perched" [compare Juanita in TCMamG] on the toilet while Dwight stands in front, goes down on him. he popped me in his mouth just like a cigarette [Manpark] 2) The Narrator takes a dose of meth in payment. Then he leads Dwight, who's now well and truly knocked out, to sit on the toilet, where Juanita raises a vein in his neck: she put her fingers on my neck just like a tourniquet [Manpark] 3) The Narrator repays Dwight for the original "shot in the shoulder" (see SHOT IN THE SHOULDER above; for the meth implications of "my little bit" see A LITTLE BIT above) by injecting the dose in his neck, while Juanita looks on: did my little bit in the bathroom [Manpark] she said didn't know you did it too i knew you did a little distribution [LDoL] 4) As Dwight shoots off into outer space, Juanita picks his pocket, taking his drugs, keys, and wallet: she's small and sweet but she's a straight up thief she puts the lipstick in her pocket [CRoom] and then you reached into his pocket, grabbed onto his wallet and his car keys, yeah we're home free [MTape] 5) Juanita gives Dwight, who's no longer really present to hear it, a flirty excuse for her departure: you told your boyfriend that you had some midterms [Rental] 6) Juanita and the Narrator exit the stall (she "leaves" [CRoom]; he "split" [Manpark]), leaving Dwight "halfway gone" [CRoom], in other words "half dead" [HDaD], in other words "dead in his grave" [TFatBR] Lifter-Puller-style: [*3] livin large and feelin small (livin large, livin large) gettin nice with night club dwight in the bathroom stall, he got the margin call now let's get a little marginal she's small and sweet but she's a straight up thief she puts the lipstick in her pocket and then she casually leaves he's big and strong but he's halfway gone he puts the pipe up to his mouth then he casually breathes [CRoom] and then he split [Manpark] 7) Outside the stall, Juanita and the Narrator use the rest of what she took from Dwight (the "lipstick" [CRoom]) to shoot up; Juanita, who's seeing the Eyepatch Guy do meth for the first time (in their only other meeting, he'd spent the whole night trying to keep hard drugs out of the picture, see RIPPLE AND THE CHAMPAGNE above), thinks she suddenly understands why he blew Dwight earlier: i shoulda known that no one clean would ever lie down quite that easy [TFatBR] The real reasons behind the Narrator's actions are of course more complex: - with regard to the blowjob: when they entered the stall, "big and strong" Dwight was still awake ("woke up up on 15th and Franklin") --- awake enough for the Narrator to still be afraid of his reaction to a needle he wasn't expecting. Going through with the charade of the transaction avoids tipping Dwight off to the fact that something is wrong, while the bj itself serves up the final knockout. Notable in all this is that the Narrator doesn't let Juanita perform the service (it is for the rest likely that the reprise of the kitchen corner incident is a deliberate part of his vengeance[*4]).
- with regard to the drugs: Juanita, the "straight looking chick" [Manpark], has been coming down for a while now; this time (unlike during the Jeep Encounter, see REAR VIEW MIRROR above) the Narrator has no intention of losing her over a fit of jonesing. As for himself, he's been speeding and sleepless for two weeks straight; it's likely enough that he needs a little more fuel for the final stretch. We'll see more confirmation of #7 as we work through the end of the story.
And that's what happened up on 15th and Franklin. ***Note that we have confirmation of #4 from an unexpected corner: Denver Haircut twice describes what are evidently the same events, only with Charlemagne rather than Dwight at the center of the action: Found a man with a handful huddled over some car keys [DH] While he was floating in space that chick took his wallet. Wasn't really a date. Wasn't sure what to call it [DH] Blackout Sam too (again substituting Charlemagne [*5] for Dwight) mentions his authorization ("credentials"/"laminate" [BSam]) to buy drugs at 15th and Franklin, and provides detailed confirmation of #3 ("neck"), #4 ("keys") and #6 ("waking up in parking ramps") as well: Blackout Sam has got credentials. He keeps flashing them his laminate. He keeps scratching at his neck [BSam] Blackout Sam doesn't have the answer. He keeps waking up in parking ramps. He can never find his keys [BSam] All of this is consistent with the principal THS question, here posed side-by-side with the LP original: what happened on 15th and franklin [4Dix] what happened to Charlemagne [DLME] and the answer: Charlemagne got caught up in some complicated things [DLME] ***At any rate, the kids have escaped from the gangsters, paid back Dwight, and scored some strong stuff; now, with the keys to Dwight's car in hand, they're "home free" [MTape]. [*6] So they jump in the car and blast off, leaving Dwight to eventually wake up and face the hell of his new life as a meth addict. [*7] [*1] It's tempting to understand the moment described by this line to be the one referred to in Spices as well: We're in the woods with the difficult decision The majorettes not paying much attention [Spices] The kids are in the "woods" [OftC] of Swede Hollow; Katrina/Juanita are the "majorettes" (compare "majorettes" [OWL] for Mary), whom Dwight and the Narrator are emphatically trying to get to pay attention. But "difficult decision" is itself difficult; unless the Narrator is seriously thinking of letting himself and Juanita be arrested --- which would be an effective way to escape the gang, but is also one that he's deliberately avoided until now (see DETECTIVE above) --- the decision to run seems straightforward. (Compare "big decision" [BBlues], referring to the THS Narrator's decision to walk away, or to throw in with Mary again and sign up for a major helping of trouble). [*2] The entire opening verse of T-Shirt Tux: There's that girl from your work and she's here with some guy. He's got a t-shirt tux and a piano key tie. The rest of us were rolling our eyes. At the handshake he did with the doorman. But thats how he gets the stuff that makes him feel so important [TSTux] isn't just a more literal and more detailed account of the "secret knock"/"mail slot" negotiation described in the song Nice Nice; it's also a reflection of this exact scene at 15th and Franklin: - "the girl from your work" is Juanita; the scene is set after they've been working together for two weeks at/out of the Summer House.
- "some guy" is Dwight, who drove them there.
- the fact that the purpose of the handshake is to get "the stuff that makes him feel so important" makes clear that he's not getting them admitted to a club; they're there, in a group, for the purpose of acquiring drugs.
Most of T-Shirt Tux, as it turns out, is about what happened up at 15th and Franklin. [*3] The "1999" that Dwight foresaw coming up has caught up with him; Prince's "judgment day" ( link) is here with a vengeance. [*4] This attention to charged symmetries across the beginning and the end of plot arcs is typical of Craig's writing in general: the Narrator going down on Dwight at Party Zero and again at 15th and Franklin (the first time as victim, the second time as agent of vengeance) joins a list that includes the "basements" of the brewery bar and Juanita's room in the Summer House (the first a thrilling portal, the second a desperate dead end), the "spotlights" of Charlemagne's streetlamps and the film projector (the first a petty preoccupation, the second a transforming epiphany), the "killer parties" (the first a crime scene, the second a scene of liberation gone wrong), and the visits to 15th and Franklin themselves (the first as hapless bystander, the last as ruthless mastermind; for earlier discussion of these symmetries see CANDY'S ROOM and SHERMAN CITY above). [*5] The use of the name "Sam" for Charlemagne dates to Records And Tapes, in which the Skins at the THS Crucifixion party are described as falling on the ground in terror like Saul, "spooked by the spirit of Samuel" [R&T], i.e. Charlemagne's ghost. [*6] For the sake of non-native English speakers: "home free" is an expression from children's games; it means that the in-game obstacles that prevent a player from getting back to home base have been lifted ( wiktionary). [*7] The song Nice Nice documents Dwight's "toothy" [NN] new obsession in the wake of this episode with the "roofies" [NN]: he's talkin 'bout the diamonds and where we can find them and who we can sell em to and stuff like that [NN] Final "stuff like that" tells the whole story; Dwight's ambitions as a street hustler ("fiddler": gdict; gdict) aren't going to be able to stand up to his addiction (to say nothing of the fact that he no longer has a car; from now on he'll be taking "a taxi back to 15th and franklin" [Manpark] to satisfy his new "tooth" [NN]).
|
|
|
Post by skepticatfirst on Jul 21, 2021 5:33:25 GMT -5
STAR WARS HIPSBefore following the kids into Dwight's car, we have to stop for a quick look at Star Wars Hips. ***The expression 'star wars hips' is a joke, riffing on 'snake hips' ( urbandictionary; I myself recall the expression being used in this sense in the 90's): The joke is made in allusion to Juanita, who, unlike the gangsters' "chesterfield chicks" [LiaL], was slim to begin with: you're flat-chested and you're angry about it [TPatP] and the false starts make me jumpy and those chicks were just so dumpy [TFatBR] and, like Mary, has only gotten slimmer since her discovery of speed: now you're tanner you're thinner you drink right through dinner [LPvtEotE] famine is so glamorous removed your ribs before cosmetic work was even scandalous [4Dix] It'll probably get druggy and the kids'll seem too skinny [SPositive] i kinda like the high but i really love the weight loss [SBackwards alternate lyrics] The principal point of the joke is just that a girl with 'star wars hips' sounds cooler and more badass than a girl with 'snake hips'; but the point of the song title goes further than the joke. ***As an allusion to the Star Wars movies extant in the early 90's, it's clear that "star wars hips" must be used in reference to Princess Leia: not only is she the only *character* to whom the phrase can possibly refer, there's exactly one *scene* that makes the point of comparison obvious, and that's the famous one at the beginning of The Return Of The Jedi in which, as Jabba the Hutt's captive, she appears dressed, hips on view, in a bronze bikini. What happens in that scene? To summarize at a high level (on the assumption that everyone's seen the movie): - A "princess" [Viceburgh, C&N, A&H, ASD, CitM] with braids and slim hips (Princess Leia) is trapped in a gang's "fortified fortress" [TS&tT, FFarm].
- A hooded guy (Luke Skywalker) comes in to "break [her] out of there" [Emperor].
- The hooded guy rescues her with the help of "the laser show" [RfLB, SPayne, NS, JaJ], i.e. blasters and light saber.
- The girl killed her captor Jabba by "put[ting] her fingers on [his] neck just like a tourniquet" [Manpark].
- They light the place on fire on their way out and send it "up in blazes" [TFatBR].
- They steal the gangster's vehicle and are "home free" [MTape].
Sounds familiar! Only, for the Lifter Puller kids, getting from "home free" to home isn't just an offscreen afterthought ...
|
|
|
Post by muzzleofbees on Jul 21, 2021 15:11:22 GMT -5
What happens in that scene? To summarize at a high level (on the assumption that everyone's seen the movie): - A "princess" [Viceburgh, C&N, A&H, ASD, CitM] with braids and slim hips (Princess Leia) is trapped in a gang's "fortified fortress" [TS&tT, FFarm].
- A hooded guy (Luke Skywalker) comes in to "break [her] out of there" [Emperor].
- The hooded guy rescues her with the help of "the laser show" [RfLB, SPayne, NS, JaJ], i.e. blasters and light saber.
- The girl killed her captor Jabba by "put[ting] her fingers on [his] neck just like a tourniquet" [Manpark].
- They light the place on fire on their way out and send it "up in blazes" [TFatBR].
- They steal the gangster's vehicle and are "home free" [MTape].
Sounds familiar! Only, for the Lifter Puller kids, getting from "home free" to home isn't just an offscreen afterthought ... Haha, this is a nice one. Maybe I should watch those Star Wars movies after all.
|
|
|
Post by skepticatfirst on Jul 22, 2021 5:47:57 GMT -5
Haha, this is a nice one. Maybe I should watch those Star Wars movies after all. That's funny! When I was writing this up I thought "home free" might need a definition and a citation, but I figured everybody must have seen the original Star Wars trilogy. I don't know that you're missing that much; on the other hand, if you have literally one minute, this is worth your time: www.youtube.com/watch?v=eWkHjJJDVuo&ab_channel=SteveBarone
|
|
|
Post by skepticatfirst on Jul 22, 2021 6:06:47 GMT -5
RENTALSo the kids stole Dwight's car fast [*1] --- leaving behind the first of what will be a multitude of casualties --- and they drove it fast too. Like other events in the story, we want a name for this trip: let's call it the Getaway. But where did they drive exactly? If they're "home free" [MTape], where's "home"? ***Again, "home" for the Narrator is the "here in the same house" [SH] residence mentioned in Summer House (the song); while we don't know exactly where that's located, we have every reason to believe that it's near the "tennis court" [SH] of Walnut Ridge Park in Edina (see TENNIS COURT above). Over to Google Maps. What's the best way to drive from 15th and Franklin to Walnut Ridge Park in Edina? At the time I'm writing this, the 31st Street onramp onto 35W southbound is closed for construction (see the red circle with a white bar on the map), which means that I can't actually draw a path through it; but even with a huge detour around the closure and other delays, the 35W route is still faster than the alternatives, and it's clear that this is the one someone in the Narrator's position would take (it's also the route from Electric Fetus back to Edina, meaning that a kid from the suburbs who's into the Minneapolis music scene is likely to be able to drive it with his eyes closed). The construction-free version of this trip takes the following trajectory: 1) West on Franklin past Electric Fetus, then south to 31st Street 2) 31st Street onramp to 35W southbound 3) 35W south to the Crosstown Commons interchange with Highway 62 (Hwy 62="the crosstown" [SBackwards alternative lyrics]) 4) Highway 62 west to US-169 5) US-169 north to the Londonderry Rd/Bren Rd exit in Edina ***Information about the Getaway is scattered all over the place, but basically we get two takes on it: the "gentle" [Rental] version, and the "ripping high" [CiS] version. Let's start with the gentle one; this has the advantage of being encapsulated in a single song that we can work through line by line. *** tinted windows, no one can see you [Rental] They're in a drug dealer's car; the windows are tinted. The Narrator's driving, looking over at Juanita, thinking that she's finally hidden away from the eyes of all the people that want to exploit her. *** no one can get to us, there's gonna be justice [Rental] They've gotten away from the gangsters, many of whom have been busted. The Narrator's had his revenge; now Dwight's going to find himself enslaved to the same "tooth" he put on them. *** i'm not even nervous [Rental] Being nervous is a symptom of jonesing ("i was nervous i was nauseous i was dripping wet with heat rash" [TFatBR], "She's got some pills some in her purse/ One to wake you up/ One if you're nervous" [BCig], etc.). He's not nervous because he's still high from shooting up in the bathroom. As we'll see, this isn't an incidental comment; the bubble of tranquillity in which they find themselves just now is in pointed contrast to what's coming when the hit wears off. *** you told your boyfriend that you had some midterms [Rental] Juanita said something when she left the stall that was calculated to make Dwight jealous (see 15TH AND FRANKLIN above). The Narrator doesn't care that Dwight was too high to hear it; what bothers him is that she said it. *** we're up in new hampshire drivin' around in a rental [Rental] As noted upthread (see GEOGRAPHY: FIRST FIVE TRACKS above), you wouldn't hear Dinosaur Jr's "In A Jar" on the radio driving around New Hampshire; but you would hear it on Radio K in the Twin Cities. As usual, we're in metaphor country. (See comments on the lines about "In A Jar," and about Massachusetts and New York, below.) This "new hampshire" is, along with "new rochelle" [TCMamG] and "new bedford" [MiM], one of three "new" suburban/exurban places identified as the destination of a vehicular escape in Lifter Puller; the Narrator's taking them out to his smalltown world (see THE CITY and FEELIN SMALL above) to start over. [*2] In the 2009 Vulture interview, Craig explicitly identifies "new bedford" as a "small town" ( link): (Compare, too, the urbanized THS version of the car episode, where the kids' stolen "new Mustang" [SiM] is the first leg of a journey that leads them into "bright new Minneapolis" [PP].) *** make me feel special like i'm essential like we've got potential [Rental] He's still in love; he wants her to feel the same way, but he knows that's not really where she's at. *** pulled over when it looked a little residential [Rental] Again, they're heading out to the suburbs (see the residential streets around Walnut Ridge Park in Edina). We'll pick up the "pulled over" part when we come to the "ripping high" version of the Getaway. *** made me feel special, remember our rental [Rental] Their "rental," like Mary's Mustang ("I guess it might be a rental" [SiM]), is actually stolen. But besides softening the tone, "rental" sets up the main conceit of the song: the Narrator sees that he's a "rental" boyfriend, that Juanita is happy to use the Eyepatch Guy as a prop to make Dwight jealous. *** make me feel gentle, make me feel central makin me crystal clear, makin me see thru [Rental] The allusion to "crystal" confirms that he's high on meth (see LISTED above), in a bubble of lucid calm. *** and i can see through this you're makin him jealous and i don't deserve this i deserve justice cause i'm cooler than he is cooler than he is cooler than he is cooler than he is [Rental] See the notes above about the Eyepatch Guy being out for vengeance, and about Juanita making Dwight jealous. Like Charlemagne, Dwight is a Trevor, a doofus (see STRANDED above); the Narrator knows he's cooler than him. *** a fake name, an airplane, a credit card, a rental car [Rental] The "fake name" comes with the Narrator still appearing as the Eyepatch Guy. "Airplane" and "credit card" are both drug terms; "airplane" is used of the "little bit" Juanita stole from Dwight in the Party Zero bathroom (see STUMBLING & RESURRECTION and LISTED above); "credit card"='crack stem', i.e. the crack pipe Dwight keeps in his car (see LASER SHOW and LISTED above). The implicit allusion to the fact that you need a credit card in order to buy a plane ticket and rent a car suggests that this is an extension of the "rental car" tongue-in-cheek; they've stolen Dwight's car and his "wallet" [MTape], and they're about to steal his "taxi" stash too (see APPREHENSION below). *** sang along with the radio playin "in a jar" [Rental] Juanita's tuned the radio to Radio K, and when In A Jar by Dinosaur Jr comes on, she starts singing along (her favorite song is another Dinosaur Jr track, Forget The Swan [TPatP]). The title "in a jar" reflects their situation in the moment, under (tinted) glass and sealed off from the world. In the THS analogue to the Getaway, Mary's Mustang also has "satellite radio" [SiM]. [*3] *** Massachusetts valleys and the new york city east side 20's are not what i remember that whole september seems so blurry [Rental] Looking back on this September, what the Narrator remembers is not the weeks spent in the US-169 "valley" (see THE WEST above), nor again the two-20's-for-a-breakdown in The City on the east side of St. Paul (for the "20's" see TWO TWENTIES above; for the "city east side" see THE CITY and THE EAST above). Put another way, it's not The West nor The East of the Twin Cities that's memorable to him, but their time in the car escaping to the smalltown "midwest" together (see the comment on New Hampshire above). ***The final remark about the whole of September seeming so blurry is a fantastic bit of typical Craig indirection. It sounds like he's saying that he doesn't remember The Valley or The City because it's all a blur; but in fact what he's saying is that the parts that he *does* remember best, the Jeep Encounter from the beginning of September and the Getaway from its end, were the two times he was in the car with Juanita in the guise of the Eyepatch Guy, **without his glasses.** This reference to "september" is, for the rest, the last piece we need to sew up the open calendar questions; we'll come to that shortly (see CALENDAR: THIRD PASS below). [*1] Confusion In The Marketplace has a nod to the theft, too: I'll distract the manager and you obscure the license plates [CitM] [*2] The Narrator's intent to start over with their relationship is cued by the full phrase: new rochelle is for the new romantics [TCMaMG] [*3] The "cool car" that the THS kids stole in MoC is the same as the "cool car crankin Krokus" of GLS; like the SiM "rental" with "satellite radio," their ride is epitomized by this moment with the music.
|
|
|
Post by skepticatfirst on Jul 23, 2021 3:34:22 GMT -5
WRONG WAYUnlike the one-song "gentle" [Rental] version, the "ripping high" [CiS] version of the Getaway is told in scattered pieces. We know from Secret Santa Cruz and from Rental that the kids make it something like halfway home without incident --- high as fuck, but managing to keep it together long enough to (a) agree on an alibi for the laser show "blazes" [TBatFR] if the busted gangsters finger them (compare "arson" [SSC]): her name was sally but they all called her sal mineo she was lit up like an arson but she burned out like arsenio her name was sandy but they all called her san antonio she can't remember where she slept last night but she won't forget the alamo sandy, don't forget our alibi [SSC] as well as (b) tune the radio and sing along with In A Jar [Rental]. That's enough time to get them, say, most of the way down 35W (for map of their route see RENTAL above). But there's a problem. We already have a lot of data points [*1] establishing that, at this stage of the kids' addiction to speed, their high wears off after a few minutes. We saw that Juanita repeatedly gets high at The LBI, but is already coming down by the time she and the Narrator reach the other end of the park (see BORED and TWO AT A TIME above); in the same way, she's high when they leave the Final Party, and "straight" again by the time they get to 15th and Franklin (see 15TH AND FRANKLIN above). What this means is that they're not going to make it all the way back to Edina without coming down; which is to say, they're in for a rough ride. ***Under the shadow of the LP background, Charlemagne In Sweatpants --- a major source of information about the Getaway, both with respect to being "ripping high" [CiS] and in general --- describes the situation exactly: speed shooters drivin around, comin down, tryin to hook up with an entrance ramp [CiS] (More about that entrance ramp in a minute.) Comparing the travel times for their current route (see RENTAL above) and the one between the Party Pit and 15th and Franklin, it's a fair guess that they make it as far as the Crosstown Commons junction (from 35W onto the Crosstown, i.e. Hwy 62, westbound) in OK shape. But at some point on the Crosstown, they really start to feel the jones. What do they do then? ***The good news --- news that will have occurred to them right about now --- is that they're in a drug dealer's car. Juanita, sitting in the passenger seat, begins to search for merchandise, starting with the glove compartment. As it happens, she doesn't find any speed, but she does find something else that goes hand-in-hand with the dealing and the tinted windows: jenny's pretty jumpy, pulls a gun out of the glove compartment [TCMamG] This (compare "riding around with Walter" [CF], as in Walther PPK, in Criminal Fingers) is another point of agreement with the CiS "ripping high" account: We had a gun in the glove box [CiS] More importantly, it describes the moment in the LP story at which things start to go sideways: and she shoots it off to try to impress you [TCMamMG] ***We don't know *exactly* what happens here, in the sense that we don't know which way the gun was pointed, or whether Juanita opened a window first, or how much (if any) warning the Narrator had that she was going to shoot. We do know that, for a driver running on two weeks of no sleep, jonesing in earnest, hurtling up the Crosstown at highway speed in an unfamiliar car with tinted windows, and not wearing his glasses, a shot fired in the passenger seat is likely to have been very impressive indeed. Maybe he pulled away to the left, away from the shot, by instinct. Maybe he briefly lost control of the car. Maybe he was just distracted for a few seconds. Whatever the exact mechanics of that moment --- whether there was a near-miss with the bullet, a near-collision with another car, or a close call with a highway divider --- we do know with certainty that it had two outcomes: 1) The Narrator, in his own estimation, almost died. 2) The car blew past the split between US-212 and Hwy 62 on the left side of the divide between them, when, in order to get to Edina, they needed to be on the right. ***Let's take a minute to examine the lay of the land. Here are two pictures of the split taken from Google Street View, obviously in the present day: Recall their trajectory back to Edina (see RENTAL above): they need to stay on the Crosstown (Highway 62) on the *right* in order to "hook up with [the] entrance ramp" onto US-169. But the split between US-212 and Hwy 62 comes up a full half mile ahead of the junction with US-169, and in the chaos of the moment, it catches our hero by surprise. Back to Google Maps, where we can see just how far east of the junction the split is located, and something else as well: Look closely at the landscape to the south of the Crosstown; that's not a coincidence. Juanita's gunshot, happening at some point in the 30 seconds before the split, is the incident referred to in the Hornets Hornets line: Almost died up by Edina High [HH] ***For us, another major problem is cleared up; the Narrator, on the other hand, is still fucked. He's now westbound on US-212, rather than Hwy 62. The median between the two highways is very low, and he might have had a second to hop it right at the beginning, but after just 50 feet, intermittent barriers (you can see them already in the second picture of the split above) begin: These are not barriers that will necessarily kill someone in an accident, but they are definitely enough to keep a tardy driver from trying to switch highways on purpose. Note, in the second of the last pair of pictures, that the barriers extend just past the "entrance ramp" to US-169 --- in other words, they have been deliberately placed in order to prevent people who missed the early split, like the Narrator, from jumping the median in time to catch the junction. These barriers look pretty ad hoc, and we can't be certain that whatever existed in their place back in 1994 looked *exactly* like these. But we do know that there were barriers back then too, because The Pirate And The Penpal makes explicit mention of them in its account of the Getaway, calling them "highway barricades": we made it to the getaway but there were highway barricades ... and there were gunshots [TPatP] ***The situation is dire, but our Narrator is holding pretty fucking steady right now; he's a smalltown boy on his home turf, and he's got one more trick up his sleeve. Again, the barricades are set up to prevent people from making a dangerous maneuver to catch the onramp to US-169; once the onramp is past, they serve no further purpose, and in fact we see that they end immediately after access to the ramp is no longer possible: That ending leaves a short space of about 500 feet between the last of the barriers and the US-169 underpass, a space in which it is again possible for a motivated road warrior to hop the division between the highways and get back on Hwy 62. Why is that of interest? Why would the Narrator do that now, when the ramp to US-169 northbound is already firmly in the rear view mirror? Because the junction with US-169 is a cloverleaf junction, meaning that *there's still a way for someone with presence of mind to get there by taking the next exit to US-169 southbound*: From which we get the second half of the solution to the Hornets Hornets mystery, in close conjunction with the first: [*2] Drove the wrong way down 169 [HH] ***Careening through three wild circles at highway speed, our hero pulls out into the northbound lanes and, in triumph, approaches the Londonderry Rd/Bren Rd exit, where things get "a little residential" [Rental] at last. But in the meantime something else has gone off the rails. Juanita is unstable as fuck, and jonesing now for real. The exhilaration of the gunshot, the near crash, the missed exit, and the 810-degree slingshot turn have wound her right up into a manic state. Nothing else matters any more; she wants drugs, now, and reflexively does what she always does when she's desperate for drugs (see JUST STARTED TALKING above) --- she tries to go down on him: [*3] first she gets off then she tries to undress you [TCMamMG] Not for nothing is our Narrator the steady type. Fighting off her attempts to make him "feel gentle" [Rental], he has a last idea: the glove box was the obvious place to look for drugs, but she never checked the tape deck. [*4] He puts out a hand --- hey, there's something in there --- ***Reproducing the entirety of the TCMamG description of the Getaway, just to cement the sequence of events: jenny's pretty jumpy, pulls a gun out of the glove compartment and she shoots it off to try to impress you first she gets off then she tries to undress you and you wake up and you don't know how your hand got in the tapedeck a skimpy outfit for a lousy paycheck and new rochelle is full of bloody car wrecks [TCMamG] Unfortunately for the Narrator, checking the tape deck was his last idea in a strictly literal sense. Distracted by Juanita and by the discovery, against hope, that there's actually something hidden in the dashboard, he lost control of the car and "pulled over" [Rental]; which is to say, they crashed. [*1] Lyrics that refer to a hit lasting just a brief time include: "that didn't seem like fifteen beers" [Hardware]; "the h and the k, the way we get with every guy that we meet" [LDoL]; "she said i just got back and i'm already bored" [JBS]; "a straight looking chick" [Manpark] (after having been "high in exaltation" [Manpark] shortly before); "i'm so strapped for cash it goes through me so fast" [TCMaMG]. For a more detailed description, we have the solo song Three Drinks: It takes 1 2 3 drinks And now she’s not so frightened It takes 4 and 5 and 6 And then she’s sick But in the hour in between She feels holy and redeemed Blessed and blissful. Painless and serene [Three Drinks] where "drinks," like "water" and "beers," refer to drugs (see LISTED above). In the best case, with heavy dosing on the way up, she gets to enjoy an "hour" of calm; but once she's past that peak, the downturn comes on quickly. [*2] After first noticing the Osseo/US-169 connection, I spent a while street-viewing my way through all the T-junction exit ramps from US-169, looking for a place where someone could conceivably get on the highway and end up headed south on the northbound side; but having studied them closely (there are not many to review), I'm certain that any reading of the line that understands "wrong way" in the sense of "against traffic" is impossible. Anyone trying to do this would be very unlikely to make it as far as the highway, and if they somehow did make it, they'd die. While on the subject, it's worth noting explicitly that "up" by Edina High makes no sense as an index of latitude on US-169, from which it's quite far away; but it makes perfect sense as an index of longitude on the Crosstown, to which it's immediately adjacent. Understood in the familiar up : down :: Uptown : Lowertown :: west : east frame of reference (compare "cruising down the crosstown" [SBackwards alt lyrics]), this line confirms that the near-fatality happens when the kids are westbound on Hwy 62. [*3] The THS kids' ride in the stolen car after the Crucifixion (the THS Crucifixion Cruise) is a reflection of the original LP Getaway, and is similarly marked by the desperate attempt of Holly (in Mary's body) to go down on Charlemagne (in Gideon's body) in order to get drugs. But the Crucifixion Cruise in its totality is remixed from several LP events, including the Jeep Encounter, the Getaway, and the Frontage Road; so while we made love to the interstates [PJ] in a THS context is certainly connected to the Crucifixion Cruise, it's hard to say whether this particular line is meant to reflect all three of these original LP episodes, or just the Frontage Road (see FRONTAGE ROAD above). There's an argument to be made for all three, insofar as all three involve "trying to hook up" [CiS], and all three are connected to the highway system; note that Kittson Street (site of the Jeep Encounter) is itself an exit ramp of US Hwy 52, providing a different pretext for the *liner notes* version of the Charlemagne In Sweatpants line: trying to hook up with an *exit* ramp [CiS] [*4] Compare the Eureka account of Holly in the car of the drug dealer "kid from California"; she went with him for the sake of the drugs, and the drugs come from the dashboard: The dashboard almost swallowed them whole [Eureka]
|
|
|
Post by skepticatfirst on Jul 26, 2021 6:28:04 GMT -5
BLOODY CAR WRECKSAgain, Rental tells us that the crash happens somewhere along the transition between the highway (at/past the Londonderry Rd/Bren Rd exit) and residential Edina: pulled over when it looked a little residential [Rental] There, after briefly losing consciousness: slept beneath a race car [DStraps] the Narrator wakes up to discover that his hand's in the tape deck and that he's wrecked the car: and you wake up and you don't know how your hand got in the tapedeck ... and new rochelle is full of bloody car wrecks [TCMamG] ***The lyrics' persistent linkage of car wreck, blood, and tape deck, culminating in the Rock For Lite Brite line which draws Juanita into the picture, confirms that casualties have now reached multitude levels: i was jammin to my tape deck, lookin for my paycheck lookin for some car sex, checkin every car wreck with bated breath [SBackwards] laughing at the car wreck. bleeding on the tape deck [SBackwards alt lyrics] Kids with broken hearts, kids with broken bones Kids with kidney stones giving birth to bloody stereos [BBlues] your girlfriend's dead and you've got blood on your stereo system [RfLB] The literal reading of all this is straightforward: the Narrator comes to in the wrecked car to find his hand stuck in the tape deck, blood on the dashboard, and Juanita apparently dead. But there are still a couple of subtleties in these lines: - "paycheck" [SBackwards] is the drugs concealed in the dashboard; compare "a skimpy outfit for a lousy paycheck" [TCMamG] (sex for drugs), "I spent half the time trying to get paid from our savior" [Swish], "trying to get paid/ From some guy she originally thought to be her savior" [HaRRF]. Similarly, "hearts"=amphetamines, "bones"=crack, and "stones"=crack (see DRUG SLANG and LISTED above).
- "stereo equpiment" [RfLB] is twice used earlier in RfLB in reference to Juanita herself as the "little sister with your stereo sound" [TGatSD] and "boom box" [SGS] of the story (see STEREO SOUND above). There's a double meaning here: the tape deck in the car dashboard is bloody, and Juanita's bloody too.
***The Narrator is exhausted, running out on residue, and in physical shock from the collision; thinking that he's just killed Juanita, he panics. Still clutching the bag of powder he found in the tape deck as he withdraws his hand, he crawls out of the car (compare "shady shady strangers comin crawlin from the wreckage" [Brokerdealer INFHP]), shoves the bag in a pocket, and flees on foot. The wreck is no more than a half mile from the proxy destination of Walnut Ridge Park, from which we can infer that he's close to home; but he never makes it. Like Charlemagne running from the THS car crash, [*1] the Narrator gets stopped by the cops, who find the tape deck drugs on his person ( heregoes): [*2] cops got him with a pocketful of powder [SWH] Compare the descriptions of Charlemagne in the "ripping high" version of the THS Getaway in CiS, and in YLHF: we had some sweet stuff stuffed into our socks [CiS] I got stopped by the cops and they found it in my socks [YLHF] ***Further confirmation of this account is found in Lonely In A Limousine, which covers the full arc of Final Party events from the cops' raid on the Party Pit through their eventual arrest of the kids: yeah we're drippin wet with pigs and it's high time we got off of the cape i think we best get outta this game ... and you're drinkin and you're drivin and your friends are calling you and me the chappaquiddick kids and the police have just released an announcement calling for the immediate apprehension of the issues and the action [LiaL] There are several things of note here: - "pigs" on "the cape" clearly refers to the cops' raid on the Party Pit (gdict; see SECOND BUST above). In keeping with the East Coast beach party metaphor for east St. Paul referenced in "the LBI" [Manpark], "Coney Island" [Sublet], "Jones Beach" [Sherman City], and "Jersey Shore" [LSifL], "the cape" must refer to Cape May in New Jersey (see AIRPORT & LBI and THE EAST above).
- "i think we best get outta this game" looks forward to the Getaway; it also recalls Juanita's "don't it all feel like one big game with the lights and the dust and the security" [Bloomington], where "lights"='meth' and "dust"='laced joint' (see LISTED above), and "security" refers both to the gangsters preventing their escape, and to the raiding cops.
- "you're drinkin and you're drivin" brings us to the Getaway itself, with the kids driving high (for "drinks"=hits, see WRONG WAY above).
- "and your friends are calling you and me the chappaquiddick kids": this, a reference to the 1969 Chappaquiddick incident (wikipedia), is the primary confirmation of the Narrator's actions after the crash: it refers to the notorious incident in which Ted Kennedy, having wrecked his car with Mary Jo Kopechne in the passenger seat, abandoned the vehicle, leaving Kopechne to die.[*3]
- "the immediate apprehension/ of the issues and the action": the police have issued an all-points bulletin for the Narrator and Juanita, who are themselves correlated with the "issues" (drugs, see LISTED above) and "action" (sex) earlier in the song: "she's got the action, you've got the issues ... you've got the action, she's got the issues" [LiaL].
***Fortunately, Juanita is not dead, only bloodied; the cops find the wreck, and, like the Narrator, she too is taken into custody. We can now account for the remainder of the description of the Getaway in TPatP, since the crash itself accounts for the "glass and explosions", and their arrest for the "police and the prisons": we made it to the getaway but there were highway barricades and there was glass and explosions and there were gunshots and sirens and the police and the prisons and she prays for probation [TPatP] [*1] The fact that Charlemagne got picked up by the cops was always a little odd; it's hard to see how being out on foot on a major St. Paul thoroughfare on a Sunday morning ( heregoes) should constitute grounds for being stopped, especially since his documented use of the ride for detox purposes means that he shouldn't have been behaving erratically. But the LP Narrator's case is very different: he's on foot in a well-to-do suburban residential neighborhood --- where no one really walks to get anywhere --- in the middle of the night, and out of his mind; the fact that he got picked up is more or less inevitable. Once again, we see the rough edges of the THS story accounted for by the fact that it's a remix of elements of the LP story. Compare the "who's driving?" problem in the THS Crucifixion Cruise: we're told that Mary steals the car at the beginning [MoC] of the drive and crashes it at the end [PP], yet somewhere in the middle we find her in the backseat with Charlemagne. This patched-together quality is explained by the fact that the episode is a recombination of the theft and crash from the Getaway, the backseat of the Frontage Road, and the failed intimacy of the Jeep Encounter, all from the LP story. [*2] Just as "airplane" in LiaL refers to the "little bit" Juanita stole from Dwight in the bathroom at Party Zero, so "an airplane" [Rental] refers to this residual stash taken from Dwight's car (see RENTAL above). [*3] Curiously, this allusion to Ted Kennedy makes him the third Kennedy brother to appear in the LP/THS lyrics, along with John [PJ, DLME] and Robert [PJ, Ambassador]. It's not strictly necessary to read "your friends" as referring to the gangsters (compare 11AF, HDaD, KP, CC, CitM), but this seems like the likely sense.
|
|
|
Post by muzzleofbees on Jul 26, 2021 15:56:39 GMT -5
This is really satisfying, in a weird way. The entire car scene in the THS universe always seemed messy to me. There were a couple of loose ends, and some of the events seemed a bit scattered together (especially the crash). But it makes a ton of sense, in light of Lifter Puller. A couple of quick thoughts: - It's easy to think of Preludes, reading this. Not just the song itself, but what Craig said of it in interviews around its release - I've always liked Lonley In A Limousine, but just this post made me appreciate it a LOT more. I've never really paid attention to the issues/action thing running through it, and even though I've sort of caught the Ted Kennedy reference, I now realize I haven't taken it fully in - before now.
|
|
|
Post by skepticatfirst on Jul 27, 2021 6:36:22 GMT -5
This is really satisfying, in a weird way. The entire car scene in the THS universe always seemed messy to me. There were a couple of loose ends, and some of the events seemed a bit scattered together (especially the crash). But it makes a ton of sense, in light of Lifter Puller. A couple of quick thoughts: - It's easy to think of Preludes, reading this. Not just the song itself, but what Craig said of it in interviews around its release - I've always liked Lonley In A Limousine, but just this post made me appreciate it a LOT more. I've never really paid attention to the issues/action thing running through it, and even though I've sort of caught the Ted Kennedy reference, I now realize I haven't taken it fully in - before now. Yes, I had the exact same feeling about the car scene in THS --- I was pretty certain that there wasn't another way to account for the evidence, but it was such a fragmentary story with so many dangling or loosely motivated bits that I found it pretty frustrating. The LP version is not only much more of an organic whole in its own right, it makes it much easier to see how the THS version was put together. This is true to some degree of most THS episodes, but the car flight is a standout. Preludes is pretty rich, but I'll leave that as an exercise for the reader. Lonely In A Limousine is like some of the other F&F tracks that don't have a strong narrative core for the listener to latch onto --- the first impression is mainly one of chaos, but with a clear idea of the story in hand you can reread them and get a strong picture of what's being described.
|
|
|
Post by skepticatfirst on Jul 27, 2021 7:01:25 GMT -5
APPREHENSIONThe Narrator gets hauled down to the station; separately, and without the Narrator's knowledge, Juanita is found and taken to the hospital. It may be presumed that the suspicious circumstances of the wreck --- the gun, the vanished driver, signs of drug addiction in her physical person --- mean that Juanita is in police custody as well ("she left the ATM and she headed straight into the DEA" [LiaL], i.e. the Drug Enforcement Administration [ wikipedia]); but even if she isn't already a person of interest to law enforcement, she will be soon, thanks to the Narrator. ***Like the THS Narrator, the LP Narrator is subjected to an "interview" [SiM], i.e. an interrogation "session" [HSL], about his activities. After two weeks of not sleeping and a night of sheer insanity, he's exhausted; he tries to resist, but soon breaks down to reveal a version of what happened: ... i told them 'spose you heard about the nightclub fires i've got two big scoops: it wasn't just an accident, this is not coincidence i got tired i got tired i got tired [SWH] The "accident" is the car crash about which he is being interrogated. What he reveals is that it "wasn't *just* an accident" with no relation to a bigger picture; on the contrary, it's "not coincidence" that it happened on the same night as the "nightclub fires" of the Final Party --- an event of which the Edina cops may be presumed to be aware ("'spose you heard") due to the St. Paul cops' massive bust earlier in the night (see SECOND BUST above). [*1] ***The "two big scoops" framing is an allusion with several layers: - There's the obvious meaning of "scoop" as "exclusive news" (gdict) --- he's revealing something that his interrogators didn't know. In this principal sense of the word, the count of "two" is gratuitous: he's really only revealing one thing, the fact that their car wreck is linked to the gang bust at the Final Party.
- The count of "two" is clearly specified for the sake of the phrase "two scoops," which is an allusion to the famous "two scoops of raisins in every box" slogan of Kellogg's Raisin Bran cereal, used from the 1960's through at least the 80's (link). It was the cereal slogan that inspired Common's 1992 "Two Scoops of Raisins" (link), in which "two scoops," in the sense of 'ass', is used to refer to sex (urbandictionary). Recall that Craig references Common's early work as far back as Emperor (see REAR VIEW MIRROR above), and it seems likely that this specific meaning is what's being alluded to here as well.
- Finally, "scoop" is slang for date-rape drug GHB (see LISTED above).
The suggestion of the last two meanings is that the Narrator confesses everything about his involvement with the gang and their parties to the police, beginning with the Party Zero roofies and gangrape. By the light of this information, we understand the opening lines of the song to be the opening lines of his confession (as if in double quotes): here's what happened at the back of the restaurant couple debutants, hundred bottles of wine i walked into the walk-in cooler [SWH] The "restaurant" is the brewery bar (see THE KITCHEN, PERFUME COUNTER GIRL, and SECOND BUST above), the "couple debutants" are Juanita and himself at Party Zero, and the "hundred bottles of wine" are, per slang expression "bottle"=penis (with homosexual overtones: gdict), the rapist gangsters. [*1] It's when the cops realize that the gang member in their custody has a tony Edina address, that they say nice place for a guy who changes filters [RfLB] which exactly recapitulates an already-familiar statement: what's a rich kid doing that far up on jefferson [MiM] In other words, the MiM line is quoting/paraphrasing the cops (for further MiM description of the interrogation scene, see WIRED below). In showing that the "jefferson" address is applicable to the time of the Narrator's gang membership, it provides the best and final proof that the Summer House is indeed the building located at 8532 Jefferson Hwy, Osseo, MN (see OSSEO above). There's barely 1000 feet of highway up there on which to locate the house in question, and no other structure remotely fitting the profile; as the alpha girl puts it, "this must be the place" [FFarm].
|
|