I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: THE TRAGICALLY HIP-We Are the Same (2009).

I first heard of The Hip when I saw their video for “Nautical Disaster.” This is back in the day when I first got Canada’s MuchMusic on my Brighton, MA cable system, and when I actually watched Music channels. Anyhow, the song was intense and very cool and it built to a great climax, and I was totally hooked.

I got their back catalog and continued to get their new releases.  Since then they’ve released some really good songs, and some pretty good discs.  It almost feels like since their live disc they decided to switch from intense songwriting to more simple, straightforward rock. This is a little disappointing to fans of their intense stuff, and yet if you accept the change in style, the music is quite solid.

So this disc seems to be shooting for an even broader, more commercial appeal.  And, in the first half, at least, they emphasize a more folksy/country feel.  All of this should make me flee from the disc, and I think longtime fans are pretty disappointed by it.  And yet, I can’t get over how much I like it. There’s something slightly off about the Tragically Hip that keeps them from being overtly commercial.  So that even when they release a disc like this, which is quite mellow in places, it still sounds alternative.  Maybe it’s Gord Downie’s voice, maybe it’s something in the melodies; whatever it is, it keeps this disc from being blah.

The final track, Country Day” seems to sum up the overall feel of the disc: meandering country roads.  And “Queen of the Furrows” is about farming.  The opening few songs have a Neil Young folkish feel, since “Morning Moon” and “Honey Please” have big catchy choruses with folky verses

“Coffee Girl” actually reminds me of a serious Barenaked Ladies type song, which is disconcerting coming from the Hip, but could possibly become a hit (it’s probably their most overtly commercial song I can think of since “My Music at Work”).  Actually, I take that back, one of the final tracks on the disc, “Love is  a Curse” sounds like it’s their last ditch attempt to have a big hit in the States.  And if they were a more well known (or on a bigger label) it would be a huge hit.  It rocks pretty hard and screams radio friendly.

The Hip of old do surface on two songs though: “Now the Struggle Has a Name” is one of those great sounding Hip songs:  as you’re singing along to the swelling chorus you wonder why they aren’t huge down here, and then you realize the song is 6 minutes long and will never get on the radio.   There’s also a 9 minute song, and the good news is that it doesn’t get boring (no mean feat).

The second half of the disc has more loud guitars.  The cool riff of “The Exact Feeling” is pretty great.  While “Frozen in My Tracks” is probably the weirdest track on the disc, with a very cool, off-sounding chorus.

So yeah, the disc has horns and strings and is maybe a little too polished and produced.  But the songwriting is still stellar.  I’m sure that if I had heard these songs now without knowing the Hip, I wouldn’t be all that impressed.  Maybe as I get older I’m less critical, or maybe I’m just happy to mellow out a bit more.

[READ: Week of July 20] Infinite Jest (to page 367)

Even though last week I said I would keep to the Spoiler Line Page, I am breaking the promise already.  I just couldn’t stand the thought of leaving a passage unfinished, so I just continued to the section break of Gately’s A.A. meeting.

When I first read IJ way back in 1996 I, like most Americans, didn’t really think too much about Canada.  I liked a lot of Canadian music and The Kids in the Hall were awesome, but beyond that I was pretty oblivious to our neighbors to the north.  Since then, I have become something of a Canuckophile.  I did Curling for two years and have visited up North a number of times.  We even had a Canadian satellite dish where we watched most of our TV (like Corner Gas and The Rick Mercer Report) until that moderately legal company was sued out of business.  Now I subscribe to The Walrus which keeps me well informed. Anyhow, this is all to say that I have a greater understanding of Quebec separatists and the state of US border relations.  This makes this whole Marathe-Steeply section more interesting to me this time around.  I sort of went from Hal (apolitical) to a quarter of the way to Avril in my understanding.

But before we get to that, lets get into the book and learn about Orin.

The first section of the week’s reading is devoted to Orin (and Uncle Charles).  Orin was a decent tennis player at E.T.A., but he peaked around age 13.  From there he sort of drifted off the rankings (which, we are told is quite relative) and despite being in the mid #70s ranking-wise (and therefore not making the Top 64 of most tournaments) was still heavily courted by colleges (ranking being relative and all).

He decided to go to college rather than going pro (and we get a lengthy look at Avril’s aggressive campaign to have absolutely no impact on Orin’s decision, going so far as to leave a room when he enters it).   Orin ultimately settled on Boston University for its feeling of being away from home without actually being very far from home (and for the free ride, room and board and living expenses he received.)

Uncle Charles was somewhat instrumental in arranging this windfall.  But, as he himself magnanimously puts it (on every occasion he gets to speak in public) he didn’t come down here from Canada for Thank Yous.  He came down to E.T.A. from New Brunswick and the tiny Throppinghamshire Provincial College to be there for his family, to fill in where he was needed, for how could Avril possibly take over as headmaster (and be called a what? a (gasp)  headmistress) when she has to think about academics and about keeping her house clean and blah blah blah. It’s quite a funny speech (given in the middle of the open tennis courts where he is often drowned out by fans and flying garbage).

When we return to Orin’s story we learn that he decided freshman year to give up tennis and switch to football.  And the reason was two-fold.  He had literally burned out on tennis.  But he had also fallen head over heels for a baton-twirling, pep squad cheerleader.  Not a single college male, senior footballers included, had the courage to speak to this young woman, so gorgeous was she.  Some might say she was the Prettiest Girl of All Time.  For yes, it was Joelle van Dyne who won Orin’s heart and made him want to switch sports (to one where they actually had baton-twirling, pep squad cheerleaders).

But it turned out he was not suited for football (since he had a natural aversion to getting hit).  That is, until the accidental maiming of the team’s current punter gave Orin a chance to kick a football back to the coach (something he had never done before).  And he was magnificent.  We had learned earlier that Orin’s tennis game was almost exclusively based on a killer lob.  And what is a punt but a killer lob.  Once he learned to place his 60-70 yard punts (he was able to hit his staggering tennis lobs onto a coin at the opposing baseline 3 out of 4 times) at the “coffin corner,” he was a local sensation.

DFW details his football passage with as much loving attention as he gives to the tennis section.  He also has some nice references to how the U.S. has been divvied up, with several of the upstate New York schools no longer in existence (and more references to New New York).

It was actually the P.G.O.A.T. who approached him first.  For an autograph for her own Personal Daddy [and, no I have not figured out what this phrase means yet.  In the earlier movie theater section where her own Personal Daddy is mentioned, I found the hands in laps bit to be a little uncomfortable.  Am I the only one who thought that?].  Orin and Joelle hit it off immediately, meeting each others’ parents and generally falling in capital L love.

When Joelle decided to switch majors to Film-Cartridge Theory, Orin tried to introduce her to indie films rather than the films that she liked which were ones where they “blow shit up.”  This inevitably led to a meeting with Himself.  James found her intriguing, and asked her to be in his films.  And soon she was spending the bulk of her time with Jim.  It was only that Orin believed she was not interested in acting that he didn’t flee this awkward relationship.

During this time, Joelle was also learning the fine art of filming.  She was using better quality cameras, moving from b&w to color and even to sound.  Her main subject was Orin, while he was punting.  As their relationship grew strained, Orin would watch footage of himself, by himself, over and over, delighting in everything that he could see.

[This leads to the second thing that I remember so distinctly about the book.  The first reference to the Storrow 500 (albeit it is only one line so far)].

We move, briefly, to a very disturbing passage about Poor Tony Krause.  After stealing a woman’s heart (nice callback!), he can no longer dress Fine.  And he is wearing cast offs and other disgusting clothes.  He is also wanted by Emil Minty (of the Ennet House section and, woah, see a few paragraphs down).  All of his connections have abandoned him (or he’s afraid of them)–even Bridget Tenderhole has been shipped away by her pimp.  We go step by step through Poor Tony’s Withdrawal from heroin: his life in a dumpster (literally) and then living in a stall at the Watertown Library (although I must disagree here–certainly they have a cleaning staff in the bathrooms every, or every other, morning?).

There’s a lot of Zuckung (twitch) in this section.  Finally, Poor Tony, planning to go to the same Nucks who sold Pemulis the DMZ (the Antitois) has a seizure on the Gray Line and, I believe, dies.

At this point, I decided to go back and re-read the Clenette and yrstruly sections.  And they made more sense.  So, for my own peace of mind:

Clenette is the half sister of Wardene.  Wardene is dating Reginald.  Wardene’s mom (who is crazy) thinks that she is seducing her stepfather/mother’s boyfriend Roy Tony and so beats her with a wire hanger.  Roy Tony is Wardene’s real father’s brother.  Reginald promises Wardene that he will beat up Roy Tony, but Roy Tony has already killed a man, so he’s pretty badass.  He killed Columbus Epps over Clenette’s mom in an act of passion.  Clenette herself is friends with Dolores Epps (Columbus’ daughter), and they play together in front of their apartments.

Meanwhile, in the yrstruly section: yrstruly, Poor Tony and C (who we learn in the later section is actually Bobby C (I don’t THINK we have a full story about him yet).  We are also introduced to Susan T. Cheese and Lolasister (who later cannot be trusted). And we learn that Stokely Darkstar has AIDS (and dies soon thereafter).  Bobby C dies from laced heroin [I mentioned the rest of that section in the previous week’s write up].

But the important thing about going back is that this later Poor Tony section reveals that Emil Minty is yrstruly who has left the street and has been unseen for months (because he is is Ennet House).

This sad sequence is followed by one of great humor back at E.T.A.  We learn a few things about some of the prorectors and the Saturday classes that they are forced to teach.  Most of the classes are a joke, although some students develop  a fondness for the insanity.  Schacht takes every crazy class offered by Mary Ellen Thode who once tried to form a tennis organization that would be organized, run, played and ultimately watched only by members of the Female Objectification Prevention and Protection Phalanx.  I adored the title of her class: “Toothless Predators: Breast Feeding as a Sexual Assault.”  As well as her request that you “Keep Your Answers Brief and Gender Neutral”

During a quiz that Schacht is taking, Troeltsch [and yes, I have a hard time keeping some of these kids straight with all the “ch’s” in their names] is announcing the results of the PWTA debacle over the schools PA system.  This section gets increasingly funny as Troeltsch becomes more and more graphic with his synonyms for “beat” and “was beaten by.”  This clearly goes on for a long time (in E.T.A time) as there are so many players.   And just when you think he’s done with all of the players and the crazy flourishes, another paragraph-full comes along.  Troeltsch gets to do the sports announcing because he practically begged to be able to do it (visions of Troeltsch trying on his blue blazers and practicing into his hand crop up a lot).

Another prorector is (saluki-faced) Thierry Poutrincourt.   Hal is taking her [isn’t Thierry a boy’s name?] “Separatism and Return: Quebecois History from Frontenac through the Time of Interdependence.”  (Interdependence Day being November 8th).  Hal is basically apolitical and doesn’t care much about Quebec Separatism either way.  However, having some background in French speaking (and a Quebecker mom) Hal has become rather intrigued by this class, and actually finds it a challenge (although that is mostly because of the guttural Quebecker French Poutrincourt speaks).

This section about Poutrincourt contains the infamous Endnote 110, which is 14 pages long. The first part is a letter from Avril to Orin (care of the New Orleans Saints) which is very funny in what she says, and in the footnotes attached to the Endnotes.  I was particularly amused that her Greeting to Orin is “Dear Filbert”, which gets an a footnote. You then flip through several pages looking for the end of Endnote 110 to finally find the small a and the footnote says “Don’t ask.”

We also get a nice look at Avril’s grammarian side as she is trying to get all of the supermarket chains to change their Express Line signs from 10 Items or Less to the grammatically correct 10 Items or Fewer. [I can remember reading this back in 1996 and then noticing that in Bread & Circus (bought by Whole Foods in 1992), the express lines did, in fact, say Fewer.  And I wondered if maybe DFW changed the world a little.  I have not consciously noted whether other stores have changed.]

Avril gets a form letter (and a photo of Orin) as a reply.  (Which the later conversation between Hal and Orin reveals is actually sent by Orin himself, and not Jethro Bodine, as the note is signed).

The Endnote also contains another hilarious phone exchange between Orin and Hal.  In his first answering machine message to Hal, Orin notes that all Emily Dickinson poems can be sung to the “Yellow Rose of Texas” (which is not true….  I assume that DFW didn’t come up with this connection first, but I can’t find an origin for it).  When Hal calls back, Orin gives him Speedy Seduction Strategy #7 for picking up women (wear a wedding band).

The phone call eventually gets around to what is really bothering Orin, which is a question regarding Quebec separatists and their sudden change of protocol.  Historically, Quebec separatists protest against Ottawa, yet now they are attacking O.N.A.N. instead.  If they want independence from Canada, why should they care about the state of O.N.A.N.?  And but really, all of the Quebec attacks on O.N.A.N. have been quite minor up until now.  There’s the mirrors on I-87 in New New York which make motorists think that a car is coming towards them so they veer off a cliff.  But that’s minor terrorism, along the lines of draping fleur de lis on statues.

Couldn’t, Orin asks, Quebec offer to annex the Concavity (or Convexity depending on which country you are in) and say, we’ll take this burden from you if you let us be independent?  There is a whole lot more to this endnote, but that’s the nutshell.

And so why does Orin suddenly care about all this?  Well, his interviewer Helen Steeply is positing these ideas, possibly in relation to Jim– (just as we get to the really crucial part of the phone call, Pemulis hangs up the phone so they can go smoke a DuBois in the parking lot).

Orin also asks for a definition of samizdat, which Hal supplies as a form of Soviet underground propaganda.  This word pops up conveniently enough in the forthcoming Marathe/Steeply section as well.

After this section we get a touching (and a little disgusting) look at just what Mario Incandenza looks like (poor guy).  Suffice it to say that he is physically a wreck in every conceivable and many inconceivable ways, and yet mentally, he is not that bad.  Just a little slow on the uptake.  And, despite occasional taunting, he is generally quite well regarded at E.T.A. and beyond.  He brings his specially outfitted camera with him on his many walks and has even had some of his photos placed in local shops.

And although Hal feels that Moms has more love/respect for Mario than him (which is untrue), Hal clearly loves his brother, feeling that he, Mario, is truly brave and amazing for everything that he has been through.  And, Hal also once told the guy from the U.H.I.D. (who was trying to recruit Mario) to get lost.

The endnotes in this Mario section were fascinating for saying things like: “overshot the place to mention…” as if he (who?) were writing too quickly to include the note.  Man these endnotes are great!

And speaking of Avril.  We get an occasional glimpse into her behavior with her sons.  She seems to love them without question and tries very hard not to let her personal beliefs or opinions influence them in any decision they make.  She tries to leave Mario alone, so as not to  seem like an overly concerned mother, and we already saw how she acted with Orin.  This all comes across as slightly flaky, and probably a but too hands-off in terms of parenting.  But it seems like her heart is in the right place.

And from the Mario section, when he is helping out Jim with the films, we learned that Joelle had a veil on back then as well, so the veil has nothing to do with Jim’s death or IJ (V) evidently.

On to Marathe and Steeply (its been a while!).  They are still on the mountainside, discussing the virtues/vices of freedom in the U.S.A.  And their argument boils down to yes, even though the Entertainment is American made, it was disseminated by the Wheelchair Assassins as an attempt to show how complacent and childish Americans are.  The plot thickens.

And then, we finally learn about Eschaton (coming from Eschatology, the study of the end of the world).  Eschaton is a tennis based game in which 8-12 players take up various spots (coinciding with countries on the map) across 4 tennis courts.  Each of 400 balls is considered a bomb.  Players make up different countries, with articles of clothing representing tactical locations.

In this explanation of the game, we get the notorious Endnote 123.  This Endnote is probably the first thing in the book that I did not fully comprehend and will not investigate further as it is a Pemulis’ high tech math formula for calculating Mean Value w/r/t Eschaton.  And yet, don’t skip the footnote because despite the math, it is very funny.  It is “dictated” by Pemulis to Hal and is consequently written in Pemulis-speak, with digressions and (sic)s included.  It also has the funny note that graph b is called HALSADICK.  But, more important than that, this Endnote seems to give light to my enduring question of who is writing this book.  Pemulis laughs that Hal is trying to write the endnote in third person.  And since most of the notes are in third person, is it safe to assume that Hal is the one writing them?  Is Hal the author of the entire piece?  This would also explain the highfalutin language since Hal is an OED guru….  And yet….

The full Eschaton game passage is very lengthy and very convoluted so I’m not even going to attempt to summarize it.   Suffice it to say that the game is meant to simulate real-world end-of-the-world situations as best as possible and that there are rules that must govern play.  Prior to each game, the circumstances of the end of the word scenario are broached and sides are drawn up.  I will mention a few key players in today’s match, though: Ann Kittenplan (another great name) who is a beefy young girl with a mustache better than Hal’s; Todd “Postal Weight” Possalthwait; and the ever-hated Ingersoll are awaiting a decision from Otis P. Lord (who is playing the role of God).

The beginning of this passage is dull and very technically detailed (as is the game itself). As the game degenerates, the pacing gets faster but the details never subside.  And things gets funnier as they get more manic.  [And anyone who enjoyed the “seeing everything at once” writing style of this section should totally read DFW’s story “Mr. Squishy”].  For instance, we learn that Pemulis hates the Penn family (J.J. Penn is also on the court) because his older brother called him “penisless” and convinced him that if he pushed on his belly button his ass would fall off.

As snow falls (and as Hal, Pemulis, Trolescth, Schatch and Axford (who we learn is missing one and a half fingers, as of exactly 3 years ago this Interdependence Day (do we assume it is firework related?)), watch (with a  DuBois in hand), Ingersoll decides to throw the rulebook out the window and hits a ball right at Kittenplan’s head.  Pemulis goes berserk because this will undermine the entire concept of the game (people are not valid targets).  Lord switches from a white beanie to a red beanie (which means Utter Global Crisis).  While words are exchanged, and tempers flare, Kittenplan escapes her holders and fires (what the narrator humorously notes is) an already spent warhead at Ingersoll. This encourages others to do the same and mayhem ensures.  The final insult of the mayhem is that two kids crash into the serving cart which houses the computer that Lord uses to calculate the day’s game.  As Lord tries to catch the flying PC, he trips over Lamont Chu and crashes headfirst into the laptop’s monitor.

There are bound to be serious repercussions for this amount of carnage.

Oh, and the whole time there was a green Ford with advertising for Nunhagen Aspirin idling behind the courts (only Troeltsch noticed it).

Incidentally, all of this Eschaton takes place on Interdependence Day (the only time when the kids have required R&R).  The Interdependence Day chapter headings are subtitled Gaudeamus Igitur.  [According to this site:  James J. Fuld notes: “Gaudeamus Igitur” is regarded as the oldest student song and as the embodiment of the free and easy student life.  There’s an audio file of the song here.]

The final section (and the one that drifts into possible spoiler-type areas) is an in-depth look at a Boston A.A. meeting.  This section is (surprise) impossibly detailed.  And it begins with a simultaneous Talk by John L. about his experiences and a third person explanation of the trials of an addict and how low he has to get before he can Come In to A.A.  And, of course, a very funny talk from an Irishman about having his first solid turd in years.

As the meeting progresses we get more and more details about Don Gately.  And he gets more and more likable as he Relates to the new people.  We meet his sponsor Ferocious Francis G, a crocodile that Gately had the nerve to talk to.  We also hear of the first time he spoke at an A.A. meeting where he told everyone there that they were fake and the whole thing was bullshit (and how everyone nodded, and appreciated that he had the guts to be so honest).

And, in a Very Special Endnote, we learn that Joelle was not successful in killing herself and that she has been practically Fed Exed to Ennet House under close supervision of Pat.  And as the section continues (and we are definitely in spoiler area for this week here), we get to see all of the folks from Ennet House accompanying Gately to this White Flag meeting:

Ken Erdedy (he’s back!) is there, (he’s a yuppie and is in rehab for pot).
Kate Gompert (she’s back!) is there (she admits that she is in for pot, too) and is still on suicide watch.
Tiny Ewell, Nell Gunther, Wade McDade, Chandler Foss, Jennifer Belbin, Emil Minty, Geoffrey Day and Bruce Green are all there.
And (fanfare) Clenette (who gets a last name) Henderson is now in Ennet House too.  It’s like something of a touching reunion at this point.

And then we get a crack in Gately’s armor, and this is how I know I like him.  When Joelle criticizes the Program’s cliche of “There but for the Grace of God” as subjunctive and meaningless (which on a linguistic scale I totally agree with), the fact that he has to look at her veil and not her face, and the fact that he completely shuts down and actually fears that his silence means that he will definitely get high again was really wrenching for me.  For how do you know what to say to someone when you can’t see their expression?  It’s worse than email because the person is right there and can see you!  I can feel the bottom drop out from under him.

And it’s scary.

And I think that this A.A. section could be used as the best argument to anyone to stay straight, because the A.A. meetings sound like the worst possible kind of hell that you could end up in.  And like Joelle, I would be very sad if my life took me to a place like that (even if the program did work, I would still be pretty bummed about my life).

But, the fact the Erdedy thinks Joelle is hot because he can’t see her face was pretty fun.

Observations:

I’ve noticed that I hadn’t been paying very close attention to the dates assigned to each section.  This is a bad habit picked up from not knowing the chronology at all.  It hasn’t had too much of an impact, although I can see that a few things would be good to keep straight time-line-wise.  So, I may have to go back and do a little recon work on that.  I noted that the Marathe-Steeply section takes place in April, while the Eschaton is in November.

I also have this weird overarching feeling like no more great revelations will be coming–as if we have settled down from the manic intensity of the first 100 or so pages and now the book is just going to fill in the gaps.  The Eschaton and AA sections, while detailed, were so leisurely paced, that they seemed to calm the whole book down.  Of course, then I realize that we’re less than half way through the book and that there’s a LOT more to come.

And I’m pretty excited about that.