SOUNDTRACK: THE MIGHTY MIGHTY BOSSTONES-Don’t Know How to Party (1993).
I’ve always had a thing for ska (although even I got sick of it when No Doubt took over the airwaves, thanks Gwen). When ska gets added to blistering metal, well, it’s hard to resist. And so we get Boston’s own Mighty Mighty Bosstones.
This was the first Bosstones’ record I’d heard and I fell for it immediately. I also really appreciated the aggressively green plaid that the band sported at the time (although they have since denounced the look).
A horn section can be a tricky thing in a rock band, with many using it to very poor effect. But the Bosstones used it wonderfully, complementing the heaviness and adding a cool skanking sound to the metal chops. And the songs are fantastic and fun. “Someday I Suppose” is just one of the great rocking anthems from the 90s. “Illegal Left” is wonderfully catchy and funny. And “Issachar” is just blistering punk. These three songs show the rocking and skanking range on the disc. All of this is wrapped around Dicky Barrett’s rough, growling, heavily-smoker-sounding voice.
The Bosstones would go on to write some hugely popular tunes after this disc (with each disc getting progressively more recognition and sales) but for me, this is what ska is all about.
[READ: Week of September 7, 2009] Infinite Jest (to page 876)
Infinite Tasks drew my attention to a new comment regarding the Joelle timeline that we’ve been concerned about. Greg Carlisle responded to it at Infinite Summer. And so Infinite Tasks updated an older post here. I’m willing to accept Carlisle’s word as he did write Elegant Complexity after all.
And yet there’s another interesting time line issue that I bring up below about a chapter heading and an electronic calendar that Hal looks at.
I’ve also decided that, since the story is steamrolling to an end, and since so many of the end days are coming along, I’m going to update my own calendar (but just the November info). I’m putting it at the end of the post to include this week’s information.
In general, I’m a little bummed to see so many people have completed the book early, tempting as it is to do so (although obviously that’s better than not finishing at all, right?). I’m nevertheless enjoying my routine and I think I’ll actually miss it when it’s over.
This week’s reading is almost entirely focused on Gately in St Elizabeth’s Trauma Wing. He is stuck staring at the ceiling which is breathing at him. It reminds him of a holiday in Beverly, Ma in which the beach house that they rented had a hole in the roof. The hole was covered by a plastic sheet which flapped and pulsed with the wind. His crib was placed under the hole and it freaked him out (although what is a 4 year old doing in a crib? Well, Gately’s mom is clearly not the best parent.)
During his bouts of consciousness, he is aware of visitors (although he’s not entirely sure who is actually there). There’s also someone in the bed next to him who is wearing a box on his head, which I had to wonder if it was Otis P. Lord and his laptop monitor?
Some of his visitors include:
Tiny Ewell who seems to be taking this opportunity to unload a whole bunch of deep personal shit about his Past. The gist of his unloading concerns his involvement with and eventual leadership of the Money-Stealers’ Club, a group of Watertown Irish Catholics who pretended to be a youth hockey league and scammed locals out of their cash. Since Tiny was the smart one, he quickly figured out how to embezzle the funds and buy Pez & Mad Magazine and Creeple Peeple. When Christmas came and the Irish lads wanted their funds, Ewell had to hide out till he hatched an even more devious plan (stealing money from his dad’s union funds). He gave the lads some money but still got a wedgie for his trouble and has been left with a grave concern about how much he liked stealing and how good he was at it.
Gately tries to commiserate but realizes that he can’t actually speak (or do much of anything).
Gately’s dream/memory returns him to Beverly where the plastic sheet bursts open and he realizes a storm is coming. He bursts through the bars of his crib and runs out to the water where he watches a tornado crash into his house and take his mother up in its spout.
Joelle shows up (he thinks) and mops his brow (or is that a nurse?).
Then Pat Montesian comes in and tells him not to worry about anything. That the community sticks together. And it wasn’t a relapse on his part to get into the fighting and brouhaha, it was just the circumstances and he had to react, what with nothing else that he could do. And she says that if he needed a painkiller it wouldn’t be a relapse either, unless in his heart of hearts he was doing it for the relapse.
And the pain is pretty intense. And right now he’s only Toradol which the endnote describes as “little more than Motrin with ambition” (hee!) But good for Gately for resisting the Demarol (for however much control he’s had over saying no, anyhow).
Then he almost certainly dreamed that Mrs Lopate the objay dart from the Shed (you know the catatonic one in a wheelchair) was wheeled in to stare at the IV above his head.
And now this time he’s sure that Joelle is there, staring an worrying about him. She must be very concerned for him because of his Noxzema (He had overheard the doctors say that the bullet may have had a foreign substance on it because Gately has toxemia). And in another Fun-With-Words line, Gately realizes that when he pees, it goes into a bedpan, so he must have been castrated.
Then Ennet House alum and senior counselor Calvin Thrust comes in and recaps that evening’s (post battle) events for Gately. It’s a fairly hallucinatory story what with either Thrust words or Gately’s understanding of Thrust’s words leading to some pretty funny mispronunciation (turnipcut, prosfeces). Basically, Lenz, Green and Alfonos Parias-Carbo (who I feel we have not heard of at all, yet) dragged Gately inside and, upon his request, didn’t call the ambulance until Pat showed up.
Meanwhile, when Lenz freaked out that he was the one who going to get blamed for all of this, Green grabbed him and slammed him against the lockers. But aside from that outburst, Green is not eating cheese about anything that he knows vis a vis Lenz. Pat was trying desperately to keep both the security guards and the Boston police at bay. Then, Gately was lifted (and just how much does he weigh, man) into Thrust’s Corvette and was sped off to the hospital. And Thrust wants him to know, although really don’t worry about it, that he bled all over everything: people’s coats, Pat’s couch, the floor, even Thrusts’ beloved ‘Vette interior.
Thrust also booted Lenz out of the house (Lenz was clearly high). And separately, Gately, Joelle and Pat all slapped their foreheads (and wanted to slap his) over it. But Thrust says otherwise he would have killed Lenz on the spot. They slapped their foreheads because obviously Lenz would be very useful when the cops come sniffing around. And that AM, Amy J. (remember her? she got booted that night for not coming back for curfew?) said she saw Lenz’ Duster get towed, so no one knows where he could be.
Gately tries with his best blinking signals and run-over-kitten vocal sounds to find out if he’s in trouble with the cops, but Thrust can’t interpret anything.
Thrust continues with more tales from the house. Hester Thrale hasn’t returned since that night (Gately recalls her taking off down the street) so her stuff is on the porch (and Emil Minty was caught stealing a pair of her panties from the bag). Ruth van Cleve returned after her mugging but Kate Gompert hasn’t (and Pat has called out a special suicide watch call for her). Clennette came down to the house with a whole bunch of tapes from E.T.A. and the residents are all pissy because Staff have to preview them before the residents can watch them. And if residents have to watch Nightmare on Elm Street XXII: The Senescence (which, hilariously, means aging, if you didn’t bother to look it up) one more time, they’ll brody off the roof. Emil also put a bent arrow on one of the objay who sits around all day (presumably Mrs Lopate) which has now earned him 2 strikes. And there’s a new resident, Dave K., who got super drunk at a company party and was involved in a horrific limbo incident so he walks around like a crab (Marathe witnessed him on his arrival at Ennet House).
And just as Gately has had enough of Thrust and his endless chatter, Thrust leans in and tells Gately some really useful things. Like how the BPD and the feds have been around, because there may be an international incident what with the Nucks and all (and at the international part Gately freaks). And but it seems pretty much like Gately is all set for a clear case of self-defense or at least Lenz-defense, excepting for the minor fact that the gun which blew a massive chunk out of Gatley’s shoulder and is an unparalleled ballistic machine is, well, missing. And boy that would be a big help for Gately’s case if it would, you know, turn up.
And one of the Nucks from the incident is dead, with a high heeled shoe in his eye. And Yolanda W. just left her shoe there, in his eye. And it would really help her case too if the gun were found.
Oh, and he had brought cream cheese brownies in with him but the damned nurses confiscated them. And the whole time he’s been waving around an unlit smoke, even tapping it as if it were lit, and when he tucks it behind his ear, Gately is 90% certain that his hair gel will render it unlightable. And then Thrust goes off on his way (he’s actually late for a funeral of a 4 years sober fellow who got drunk and literally took a long walk off a short pier).
When Gately next rouses himself, Geoffrey Day is sitting in what Gately is beginning to think of as the confessional seat. Day is eating a brownie which he says the nurses were giving out (ha!). Day reveals that he used to be abusive to his super-phobic, mentally disabled little brother (who was afraid of leaves).
Gately thinks “It seems like Don G’s gotten way more popular as somebody to talk to since he’s become effectively paralyzed and mute” (828).
Gately also reveals a recurring dream he’s had since he’s been sober: an Oriental lady (the kind that walks through Chinatown laden with bags) staring down at him. She is impassive but is definitely above him, either because he is lying down helpless or he is very tiny. She doesn’t do or say anything but it totally freaks him out.
And finally, Gately has been noticing this figure peripherally, a sort of ghostly figure, way tall, with glasses and a sweatshirt and, actually far too much detail for a dream ghost. The ghost also has floods, and Gately thinks that maybe he’s the grown up ghost of one of the violin-playing-flood-wearing kids he used to torment in school, but the ghost said that
it was just a plain old wraith, one without any sort of grudge or agenda, just a generic garden-variety wraith. Gately sarcastically in the dream thought that Oh well, if it was just a garden-variety wraith, is all, geez what a fucking relief. (829).
The wraith flits around the room (like a scene from Bewitched) but then finally settles down in the and actually starts talking to him (and since Gately can’t actually talk, this thinking-talking is kind of comforting). Gately tries to imagine all the possibilities of who this ghost might be (a Higher Power or the Disease), but the wraith basically just starts unburdening himself on Gately.
Gately was thinking for fucks sake what was this, now even in unpleasant fever dreams now somebody else is going to tell him their troubles now that Gately can’t get away or dialogue back with anything about his own experience. (831).
The wraith talks and talks to Gately and tells him how hard it is to just sit still and talk (that it’s the equivalent of like three weeks for him to sit here and talk for a couple of minutes). And soon he reappears with a Coke with Oriental writing on it.
The wraith jumps on the ceiling and begins doing ballet moves. And suddenly the word PIROUETTE appears in Gately’s head in all caps very loudly. And Gately’s never heard the word before and it feels like an assault. This is then followed by an eclectic list of words.
[This is the first time I was a little spoiled by another post. I read the first line at Infinite Tasks that mentioned James visiting Gately in a dream. And, usually when I read Infinite Tasks I am caught up to the spoiler line, but I was under the weather over the weekend and hadn’t actually gotten to their yet ( I was three pages behind!) so I spoiled myself that James was the ghost. I mention this because I’m not sure when the average reader realizes that the wraith is James. The clothes give a clue, as does some of the language. But I think for me the clue would have come right in here with the list of words because they include:]
LATRODECTUS MACTANS, ANNULATE, EXTRUDING, SINISTRAL, POOR YORICK, NEO-REAL CRANE DOLLY and CIRCUMAMBIENTFOUNDDRAMALEVIRATEMARRIAGE
But the wraith soon gets to the meat of the issue: extras on TV sitcoms sit around moving their mouths without actually saying anything. (And of course, being a junkie, Gately is well familiar with TV shows like Seinfeld and Ren and Stimpy and Cheers! and M*A*S*H and ‘Oo is ‘E When ‘E’s at ‘Ome [What Britcom might that be?] and Exposed Northerners). These actors whose mouths move but are forever silent are called Figurants, a word from ballet.
Then James starts talking about his own filmic career and how he likes to let everyone on screen actually speak, which critics dislike and film criticism blah blah blah which Gately tunes out of and thinks back to his mom. This means we have to revisit the abuse she suffered at the hands of the former M.P. Actually, Gately wishes Ferocious Francis G would hobble in, and the wraith disappears for a second and comes back to say that FFG is getting dressed and appears to be on his way here. But back to James.
And this is fascinating because in typical DFW fashion, we get the most honest appraisal of James thus far. And yet it comes at how many layers removed: A dead James appears as a ghost in a dream to a recovering addict whom he never met. And yet, given the varying level of truth that DFW has set forth thus far, this just might be the real thing.
James says that he sees Hal as most like himself. That he is talented and exceptional and before James died he watched his son slowly slip away and turn into a figurant himself. He became more and more hidden. And when James would tell the family about this, they believed that he, James, was the unstable one, or that he has been drinking (which tat this point he hadn’t been). They simply wouldn’t listen to him. And he also believed that Hal is taking Substances.
And so James’ last attempt to just try to converse with Hal was to make something that would engage him, that could snap him out of his anhedonic stupor. Something that he couldn’t just master and move on.
Something that would make the boy love enough to induce him to open his mouth and come out–even if it was only to ask for more. Games hadn’t done it, professionals hadn’t done it, impersonations of professionals hadn’t done it. His last resort: entertainment. Make something so bloody compelling it would reverse thrust on a young self’s fall into the womb of solipsism, anhedonia, death in life…. A way to say I AM SO VERY SORRY and have it heard. (839)
Which Gately writes off as self pity. And when Gately thinks about his own father and how forgetting everything about him would be the preferable option, James gets right in his face and says no,
Any conversation or interchange is better than none at all…the worst kind of gut wrenching intergenerational interface is better than withdrawal or hiddenness on either side. (839)
Which makes Gately flash back to the M.P. again. And we get a little more detail about how Gately was often home while the M.P. beat his mother daily. Initially, Gately ran from the room, but eventually he just sort of stopped caring. He would often just turn up the TV. He wonders why he never stepped in, even when he grew bigger than the M.P. But he never did, it seemed none of his business. We knew the M.P. used to keep a tally of the Heinekens he drank, but he also kept a tally of the weightlifting he did: weight and reps jotted down after each set:
He was the sort of person who equated incredibly careful record-keeping with control. In other words he was by nature a turd-counter. Gately has realized this at a very young age, and it was bullshit and maybe crazy. (841)
Oh, and he always licked the pencil tip before tallying things (which Gately still finds repulsive).
He also used to pull the wings and legs off flies, which he claimed was better than killing them because other flies would hear their screams and stay away. And young Gately would lean in real close to hear the flies’ screams (but doesn’t ever remember putting them out of their misery), and as with his mom he wonders why he never stepped in to help.
Yet even when the M.P. wasn’t around, he and his mother never talked about him or anything that he did, it as like he disappeared.
When Gately wakes again, Francis G and some other crocodiles are there. And they all have unlit cigars and are telling al-anon jokes. Gately tries to speak but the only phoneme he makes is ü. So, he tries to appease them by shaking his thorax, even though laughing sends rockets of pain through him. But they do reveal some pretty important info: the man outside, who appears to be parked there for the duration (lots of newspapers and take out food) matches the description of the A.D.A. whom Gately has been so fearful of.
Uh oh.
We move away from Gately briefly to
November 19th: Marathe did not reveal Joelle’s whereabouts to the AFR, so they are going to find relatives of the filmmaker and take them instead. They won’t be going to E.T.A. because the only thing the AFR fear is giant hills. So instead, they are going to hijack the Canadian tennis team that is on its way down to play E.T.A. They’re going to use the old mirror on I-91 trick and if the bus survives they’ll take it, if not, Bôh!
Oh, and they also added two new test subjects to their tally: a strangely dressed homeless man carrying two bags of Chinese laundry and frying pans (adios, Lenz) and a man in a wig and horrifying clothes (goodbye, Poor Tony). But Lenz is still messing things up in that he is cutting off Poor Tony’s fingers rather than his own.
Then we’re back to Gately again. Gately is having a wonderfully naughty dream about Joelle van Dine doing a meaningful striptease with him. But when she drops the veil her face is Winston Churchill’s.
When Gately was a kid, his next door neighbor Mrs Waite was the crazy lady that everyone avoided. Kids drove on her lawn, even left flaming dog poop on her porch. But she never got mad, and that seemed to make it worse. She was a witch, at best. But one day, when Gately was avoiding the M.P.’s beatings, he ran into her. She invited him in and Gately eventually would stop in to her kitchen once in a while.
One day when the neighborhood was celebrating birthdays (Gately and a bunch of the kids had birthdays around the same day and he was invited along as sort of a pity guest). Mrs Waite brought a homemade cake to the party. She had clearly saved up a lot of smokes to spend the money to make the cake (and this scene rather broke my heart too). She trundled back home, everybody gasping, until finally the mother eventually threw it out untouched.
Gately’s next JvD dream involved her, JvD, in Mrs Waite’s kitchen, every detail exact. JvD is naked again but not sexually. She is Mrs Waite and JvD and Death. And in the dream, Gately learns that Death is the woman who kills you who will be your mother in your next life (hm, that sounds familiar!).
November 20th (Gaudeamus Igitur) dawns. (This section is in First person).
A.P. exams are three weeks away. Pemulis had been helping Hal like a trooper, almost 24/7, but once the John Wayne incident happened, he has been missing quite a lot.
Hal wakes very early. It is snowing. He actually hopes for a cancellation in the match today. He has never hoped for a cancellation before. But, at the very least, he has a feeling!
Between I.D. and the WhataBurger, there is an annual bash. This is a day of rest where parents and other V.I.P.s come and the kids are all semi formal. They always play an international team, (although last years’ 70-2 route of Ethiopia got racially ugly). This year is against the Quebec teams (whom the AFR are planning to intercept). The team is supposed to be flying in but Logan is likely closed, so maybe they will end up at Montreal International Airport D’Orval, Cartiervile Airport. Struck and Freer are pretty excited at the thought of getting X’d by what are clearly sequestered and desperate Quebecker girls.
I can’t decide of this means the AFR are incorrect about how the team is getting to ETA or if they knew they would be detoured to D’Orval airport.
When Gately startles awake after those creepy dreams, he is more freaked to see that JvD herself is there. She brought him one of the brownies from downstairs (but then sees he can’t eat it–he has a tube in his mouth–which is why he can’t talk). She smells great, but the huipil she’s wearing is perfumed from the last time she wore it, not for him. And he notices that her nails are bitten to the quick, like his.
JvD is telling the story of the recent meeting at St. Columbkille’s. The highlight being that a young man from Kentucky (her home state) who was 19 but looked 40 had the longest blackout that anyone can remember. When the boy was young, his drunken father hit him in the face with a hatchet, which had more or less healed itself (yet left an astonishing scar). Said father died when the boy was 9. So the boy wrapped him in a sack and stored him under the barn. He then charged 5 dollars a pop for the kids to view a “real dead body.” He took his proceeds, went downtown to where his dad got his hooch from and woke up ten years later in Boston.
St Columbkille’s does a round-robin-type meeting (and Gately is desperately trying to figure out what day those meetings are so he can figure out what day it is). And the Kentuckian selected JvD to speak next. And as she was speaking she realized that she no longer thought of the cliches as cliches. She’s actually starting to believe them. And that if she thinks of things one day at a time, not consecutive days, she could pull through it. In the past, she had thought about sobriety like Evel Kenevil, that each day was another bus to jump over. Gately has a picture of Evel Keneveil that he imagines taking down and framing for her.
As Gately listens to her talk, working things out for herself, he realizes that anything can be endured. That any problem, A.A, or this hospital pain, or even thinking about the guy in the hat who is waiting to bust him, can be endured if you break it down into small enough segments.
Then JvD pulls out her photo album and shows Gately her dad as well as many of the animals from her farm growing up (and her voice gets tines of Kenucky in it). And Gately imagines himself with JvD long term, with little Gatelys, even though he knows that falling for a newbie is the 13th step and is only done by bottom feeders.
Then back to Hal.
(Strangely, the clock in the bathroom says it is 11/18 even though the headline for the section is 11/20…what’s that all about?).
Hal is wandering around, and he hates being up before dawn (and who doesn’t?). As he finishes his ablutions, he sees Ortho Stice with his head against a window. Hal says hello, and Stice asks if he has been crying. Hal says nope, it’s just morning. Then he and good old Stice chat amiably. But Hal has to ask why he is sitting here like this. And Stice says his forehead has been frozen to the window for like four hours.
Stice asks Hal if he believes in the paranormal. Hal says Mario does, and he doesn’t lie. But he’s not willing to comment. Stice says he’s going to show him some mind bending shit once Hal pulls him free. (Oh man I want to see that!)
Hal tries to pull him off which only leads to screams. Troeltsch shows up (oh, crap) with “microphone in hand” (double crap) and starts asking interviewing everyone about what’s going on. And yet, wait, did he come out of Axford’s room? It’s a total no-no to even be in someone else’s room after curfew, so staying the night is like, beyond the pale. And wait was Axford in there with him? Let’s not even think about that.
When Hal says he’s going to get help he asks Troeltsch to keep an eye on his toothbrush ever since the incident from 9 months ago when all of the toothbrushes were covered with betel nut.
Downstairs, the janitors Kenkle and Brandt are mopping the floor. Of course, at almost 900 pages into a book it is absurd to add 2 new characters, with fairly detailed backstory, but so be it. Brandt’s IQ is listed as submoronic to moronic. But he enjoys Kenkle, and so they live together in Roxbury Crossing. Kenkle not only has a PhD in low temperature physics, he once worked for the U.S. Navy. He was discharged, although he changes the details whenever anyone asks. He basically just dropped out and returned to Roxbury Crossing. Kenkle is a talky, talky, talky man. And Brandt barely talks at all. So they’re a perfect match.
Brandt and Kenkle had been riding the T at night for fun (which is what they did) where they ran into James on the Orange line trying to get home. (You can’t get there from there). They helped him off the line and walked him up the hill. When they arrived at E.T.A., James invited them in to continue their conversation. James employed them both in Zero Gravity Tea Ceremony and were offered janitorial jobs at Jim’s insistance.
Hal interrupts Kenkle discussing the bad mojo involved in doggy style sex to tell him that Stice is stuck and needs serious help. Kenkle says, if it’s s serous, why are you laughing. Hal says he’s not laughing. Kenkle says he’s practically knee slappingly cracking up facially. Hal tries to stabilize as best he can but Kenkle says he still looks mirthful.
And we leave Hal trying to figure out what the hell is going on.
Really, we have to end now??
Revised timeline, please correct any mistakes! Items in bold are new.
November 1 Orin in Denver flying into stadium
Nov 3 Troltsch ill/Hal floor nightmare/post-practice shower/talks with Little Brothers/Orin & Hal longer phone call (learns about Himself’s death)
Nov 4 Pemulis buys DMZ/Transcripts from Ennet House
Nov 5 Hal & Orin discuss separatism & toenails
Nov 6 Weight room (Pemulis mocks the grunters)/P.W.T.A. match/Gately meets Geoffrey Day
(Sat) Nov 7 Saturday classes/Troeltsch announces the results from P.W.T.A./Joelle tries to kill herself
Nov 8 Interdependence Day/Escahton/White Flag Meeting/Mario’s ONANtiad film
Nov 9 A.M. drills/Gately cooks/Antitois killed/NA meeting Erdedy hugs/Pemulis walks in on Avril & John Wayne
Nov 10 Pemulis, Hal et al await their fate in CT’s office.
Nov 11 Joelle & Gately have their first real chat/Lenz & Green walk: Lenz kils Nuck’s dog/John Wayne blabs on the radio/Orin meets Swiss hand model/Steeply leaves AZ for E.T.A./Discussion of powdered milk/Stice almost beats Hal/Tunnel Club finds a fridge/Hal watches films/Mario asks how to know if osmeone is sad
Nov 12 Gately’s Nuck fight/WYYY’s engineer is kidnapped
Nov 13 Geoffrey Day reveals his nightmare
Nov 14 Poor Tony has a stroke on the train/Matty Pemulis sees Poor Tony/Poor Tony grabs Kate & Ruth’s bags/Lenz steals Chinese ladies bags/ AFR find the Entertainment/Marathe shows up at Ennet House/Marathe & Kate drink in Ryles
(Tues) Nov 17 Hal gets AA brochure from Ennet House/Pemulis gets “thrown out”/Molly Notkin “confesses”/Hal goes to Infant Meeting
Nov 19 Marathe returns to the AFR with “no news” of Joelle/They set out to capture the Quebec tennis team
Nov 20 Whataburger Tournament
Nov 25 Mario’ 19th birthday
Note: Gately’s dream sequences are a bit unclear timeline wise.
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