I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: SONIC YOUTH-Sonic Nurse (2004).

After the glorious Murray Street, SY return with an even better disc: Sonic Nurse.  This is probably their most overtly catchy (and therefore in my opinion wonderful) record since the Goo/Dirty period of 1991.  (Can it really be 13 years between these discs?).

This disc features Jim O’Rourke as well.  I’m led to believe that he has been playing bass with the band in order to free Kim up to do other things.  Although what she is doing I can’t really imagine.

“Pattern Recognition” opens with the most catchy guitar line in Sonic Youth memory.  Such a great and easy guitar riff.  Kim’s voice is sultry and wondrous.  And Steve Shelly really gets a chance to shine with some fun drum parts.  And, as is typical lately, the catchy songs get some lengthy end treatments, so this song ends with a 2-minute noise fest.  But it’s a good one.  “Unmade Bed” is one of Thurston’s special mellow-singing songs but the guitar solo is weird and wonderful.

“Kim Gordon and the Arthur Doyle Hand Cream” was originally called “Mariah Carey and the…” (and I have no idea if the original was different).  Is one of those noisy Kim-sung jams that SY are known for. But it also features a “Hey hey baby” sing along chorus too.

“Stones” continues this midtempo catchiness with another amazing guitar riff that runs throughout the song.  While “Dude Ranch Nurse” is another mellow Kim piece that has a great riff and wonderfully noisy bridges.  And of course, Lee is awesome on “Paper Cup Exit,” yet another fatastic song.  The cool breakdown in the song is a nice unexpected twist.

“I Love You Golden Blue” may be the most beautiful song the band has ever done.  Kim’s voice is delicate and delightful as she whisper/sings over a gorgeous guitar line.  The final song is another of Thurston’s beauties: “Peace Attack” a slow builder, complete with verse ending guitar solos.

Sonic Nurse is a beuaty.

[READ: Week of September 14, 2009] Infinite Jest (to page 949)

Flying in the face of potential spoilers, I was looking for any evidence of there ever being a “unedited Director’s Cut” version of Infinite Jest.  There is, supposedly, one copy of the full text floating around, and I’m actually quite surprised no one has tried to capitalize on DFW’s death by releasing it (I’d rather see that than another “This is Water” type publication).

But while looking around, I got this pleasant surprise from the Howling Fantods–these are comments on a first draft of IJ (without too much unpublished work shown).  But there’s also this disturbing (to me) item:

(N.B.: Wallace made numerous corrections for the paperback edition of 1997, so that edition is the one scholars should use. Put a Mylar cover on the pretty hardback and leave it on the shelf.)

Great. So I read the wrong copy?  Twice??

I haven’t said very much in any of these posts regarding DFW himself.  I don’t feel it is my place to comment on the man or his situation.   However, through a nice shout out to me, I found this really cool site: The Joy of Sox.  It’s primarily about the Red Sox but it has a delightful side venue in DFW information.  There’s not a ton, and he quotes extensively from others who have done more research than he–he’s a fan of DFW, but this is a sports blog after all.  But it is a delightful collection of miscellanea.  And he pointed me to this article, “Democracy and Commerce at the U.S. Open“, which I had never read (so thank you!).   So, do check out the site, he’s not doing Infinite Summer, but he’s likely going to read IJ again in the fall.

As this almost-final week opens, the book is flying downhill like an AFR wheelchair, paralleling Gately’s literal inability to talk with Hal’s metaphorical? literal? we’ll see? one.  But it really is the Gately show.  We learn more and more about him, and his back story makes him more and more likable.  Who ever would have guessed?

This week’s reading opens with a transcript of a meeting with Rodney Tine Sr (and Jr, who is driving his dad crazy tapping a ruler against the table), Mr Veals (formerly of Viney and Veals), “Buster” Yee, the epileptic director of marketing from Glad, and Maureen Hooley, V-P  for Children’s Programming, InterLace.  The meeting concerns the upcoming anti-Entertainment PSAs.  After dumping Frankie the No-Thankee Hankie as a spokesperson, they settled on Fully Functional Phil, the prancing ass, who offers a sage word of advice for kids not to watch unknown TP cartridges.  And if they find their parents slumped over and unresponsive don’t look at the TP player, No-ho-ho-ho way!  An enjoyable comic interlude during all of this heaviness.

Because then we’re back to Gately.

Gately dreams that a nurse gives him a pen and steno pad (JvD understood what he was motioning!).  Dream-Ferocious-Francis and the Crocodiles are there, and they know a surprising amount of detail about the Nuck fight and Lenz’s responsibility there (of course it is a dream).  And, as the dream continues, a Pakistani doctor is trying to convince him that he should just take the Class II or Class III painkillers.  Gately tries to his hardest to argue with the steno pad and his weird left handed hieroglyphics, but the doctor persists.  And yes, Gately is sorely tempted to take the drugs because the dream doctor tells him the pain is just going go get so much worse.  Francis G doesn’t help him out during this except to tell him “You might want to Ask For Some Help, deciding” (889).

The ghost doctor is lucky that Gately’s testicular grab is all a dream as well.  (Good for you, Don).

We also get a look back via Gately about when he was an addict.  He was always quite considerate (for an addict) but when he got high, he got really self-involved.  One of his mates said it was like he shot cement rather than drugs.

Later McDade & Diehl come in from visiting Doony Glynn is the gastrointestinal ward.  Glynn is on a drip of something pretty nice, and even though his problem is virtually inoperable, he, Glynn, is pretty happy right now.  Oh, and Unit #3 on the Ennet House grounds is going to open up as an agoraphobic’s residence which should bring about some pretty intense cabin fever come wintertime, no? Heh Heh.

As for the bad news, McDade & Diehl say they probably won’t testify on Gately’s behalf as it would be suicide for them to step anywhere close to a DAs office.  And, even worse, that gun is totally M.I.A.  They think maybe Lenz took off with it.  But he was seen in an alley that night, so it might still be recoverable (that also gives us an estimated time for Gately, which no one has bothered to tell him yet). And hey, damnit why has no one brought him a pen or anything?  McDade & Diehl slink off when the nurse brings in a box printed with Fleet on it.

Hal meanwhile, is still unsure of what’s going on.  He is having…feelings.  Genuine panic and exhilaration for the first time since he can remember.  He deals with them by lying down in VR5 and just reflecting on/ignoring everything.  Hal muses about people being so devoted to one thing for their whole life.  Now that he’s actually thinking about it he finds it admirable but also rather pathetic (and clearly that’s why they start the tennis kids so young).

Kent Blott had spread a rumor that Pemulis would be doing a mini Escahton today.  But Pemulis has been avoiding him since he got back from Natick, as if Pemulis knew he went there.   Hal also thinks back to how Uncle Charles is not blood related to Avril (and we see a lot of the miserable family that sprung up in Quebec back then).  We also learn that Orin was 7 when Mario was born (so that should put to rest the suggestion that Orin is his dad, right?)

Hal also thinks about Stice’s comment that Hamlet questions so much in life but he never actually questions the existence of the ghost, which seems like an obvious thing to question.  (I almost feel like that was for you, Avery). This parallel to Gately’s ghost-vision of James is, of course, not a coincidence.

And then back to Gately when he was a happy kid.  Gately devoted his whole life to football. It was his one ticket to success.  He was very good at it and had a real future because he was huge but he was also fast.  It was inevitable that Gately would get involved with the party crowds, but he still kept football as his number one priority, and he only took Substances when he was done with football.

And then he meets Trent Kite, a geeky science kids who cooks up his own drugs.  Kite’s homemade drug of choice was a Quaalude-like object that he called “Quo Vadis.”  Gately thinks of this period with Kite as the Attack of the Killer Sidewalks, when the drink and drugs would combine to aggravate sidewalks all over town and cause them to jump up and hit them in the face.  Despite the heavier drugs that he got involved in, he never let it get in the way of his football.

It was only English class that kept Gately down.  He had always been told he was ADD, even though he could focus plenty on football and the like.  He was also told he was stupid, especially at English.  And then he was assigned Ethan From (sic) and it was that damn boring book that kicked his ass.  Coaches had found ways to get him through every other subject, but the English dept wouldn’t budge.  And soon Gately was suspended from playing ball.  [I have never been one to think it a good idea to pass kids who were good at sports, and yet in this case, it seems an exception would have made a very big difference in one man’s life.]

Without the structure of ball, he did tons of drugs, grew very fat and basically lost his prime spot to the next new kid.  And that was that for Gately and school.

Meanwhile, Pemulis comes into find Hal on the floor. He asks for a personal meeting one on one, which Hal declines, as he is too inert. Pemulis explains that it’s about the DMZ, which Hal tries to talk him out of. They are interrupted with news that half of Stice’s face is left on the window upstairs.

Hal, ignoring Pemulis’ requests, asks him to put in the film Good-Looking Men in Small Clever Rooms That Utilize Every Centimeter of Available Space with Mind-Boggling Efficiency (another film not in the videography) and they watch the final scene with Paul Heaven giving a monologue.

Gately is reminded again about his old pal Eugene “Fax” Fackelman.  He and Fax used to work for the bookie Whitey Sorkin.  They were more or less his muscle, and he treated them quiet well (for a bookie).  In fact, he treated almost all of his clients quite well, rarely resorting to violence.  But when things got too overdue, it was Fackelman who Sorkin resorted to for the initial stages of violence on non-payers.  (Gately actually tended to get too aggressive and couldn’t control himself).  And over the years Gately grew a strong distaste for violence).

Pemulis sneaks out to find the drop ceiling panels removed.  He gets out his stool and starts  looking for his sneaker stash.

During this time a super-hot R.N. comes in with a dweeby M.D. (and Gately realizes for like the first time that the kids with violin cases seem to have become the doctors later in life).  And he is mortified that the super hot R.N. has recently given him a Fleet enema.

Gatlely reminisces about his “girlfriend” Pamela Hoffman-Jeep (his first hyphen!).  She was a binge drinker who would pass out nightly. Any man who would take her home without Taking Advantage of her she would call chivalrous and would immediately fall for him. Gately was a pretty nice guy and never took advantage of her (despite Fax and Vine’s warnings that she was way too clingy for her own good and if would just X her he wouldn’t have to deal with her anymore).  And they stayed together for quite a while.

She also gave him the straight dope about why Fax was sitting slumped over in the living room with a huge bag full of Dilaudid.

Turns out that in one of Fax’s stupidest (and final) moves, he tried to scam two close friends.  Fax took a bet from 80s Bob who was a die-hard Yalie.  But on this one bet (having air-tight insider scoop), 80s Bob bet against them.  When Fax called it in, the secretray who always knows that 80s Bob bets for Yale, entered it wrong.  The game turns into a fiasco (through the involvement of radical feminists on motorcycles) and Yale winds up winning big.  80s Bob doesn’t know he won, so he pays off Fax.  Sorkin doesn’t know he lost so he gives 80s Bob’s winning to Fax to deliver.  Fax now has $250,000 and goes straight to Mr Wu (they always show up aagain!) where he buys thousands of dollars worth of his drug of choice.

He runs home to Kite and says they should take off and start somewhere fresh with this amazing stash.

Kite says, hey, 80s Bob is the son of 60’s Bob, the craniofacial doctor that Sorkin goes to every day.  They’re going to figure it out.  Not to mention that C (the junkie from earlier in the book who also makes a return) also shops at Dr Wu and will certainly hear that Fax made a huge purchase of his favorite drug.  Kite tells Fax he’s dead.  Fax knows he’s dead, so he takes it like a junkie and shoots up and puts his chin on his chest.

60s Bob, by the way, has multiple ties to Gately and Kite.  And we also learn that he fleeces items to small dealers to buy 60s artifacts (like the guy who sold TP cartridges to the Antitois in exchange for a lava lamp)….  So 60s Bob is (pretty obviously) how the Antitois got The Master (but, of course, how did the AFR know that?).

Gately was watching good old BU on the telly and he watched as an amazing punter making his debut on the field was blowing everyone away. The announcer talks about this young punter and how he played his cards right and that he is set for a lifetime of success in football.   And as Gately watches this, he realizes that he was crying.

Back at E.’s Gately rouses himself and realizes that the wraith is back but this time there’s a yoga guy in faggy gym shorts licking his forehead (everyone repeat after me: Hi Lyle!).  He goes to hit the man but the pain is too great.

He then dreams that he is with a sad kid digging up the kids’ father’s head, although he has no idea who the guy is or why they’d be doing it.

Oh, and an absurdly large woman (with stubble on her legs–Steeply is that you?) grabs JvD as she is leaving Gately’s room and tells her that she is in grave danger.  Which JvD says, Duh.

Gately then recalls knowing he should help Fax in some way, but instead just goes over and starts shooting up Mt. Dilaudid with Fax.  They do it all day until they have peed their pants and other disquieting ideas.  Fax has been watching his favorite film (which Gately doesn’t like) which turns out to be JOI’s Various Small Flames.  When they run out of distilled water, Fax “That’s a Goddamned lie” decides he’s going to shoot up with the puddled urine (shudder).  Even Gately is freaked out by that idea.  And somehow he gets the phrase “more tattoos than teeth” to pop in his head.  Phone calls and buzzers at their apartment are ignored, but when he hears Pamela’s voice through the intercom, he tries to make his way to the door but collapses, sending everything, including the flat screen TP player crashing to the floor.

Oh and Kite, nobody’s fool, has long since taken off with everything he could carry, under the guise of leaving the state for a “conference.”

JvD is talking, presumably to Steeply, about the Entertainment. She describes her scenes in the movie.  There were only two: in one she is walking in a revolving door where she sees someone she recognizes.  Later she is talking down to a camera in a baby carriage.  She is apologizing over and over.  The lens itself was special, kind of wobbly with the view of an infant.

She has never seen the finished Entertainment and believes the Master was buried with Himself.   Oh, and when Jim said that he was making something so good that people would die from seeing it–literally terminally compelling–he was kidding.  Really.  He had a dark sense of humor.  And that the final joke is that he himself is buried in the Concavity so they’ll never be able to retrieve it.

Hal returns to his room to find Mario and Kyle Dempsey Coyle watching James’ film Accomplice!  This disturbing film features an old man (J.O.I. regular Cosgrove Watt, the only “professional” actor (as in, did a few local ads) he’d ever employed) purchasing a beautiful male prostitute (Stokely ‘Dark Star’ McNair, the videography informs us) who Hal never saw in any of James’ other films.  The old man is so offended when the prostitute asks him to use a condom that–while he does use one–he also employs a straight razor to slice the condom up during the act (which also, of course, slices himself up.  OUCH and Ew!)

It is then that the old man realizes it was the prostitute himself that was Infected, and so now the prostitute is a murderer (which the last 1/3 of the film shows them repeating the word “murderer” over and over.)  Mario loves this film but Hal thinks it’s a but much.

When the film ends, the room watches weather reports from all over the Metro area (and we get to laugh at stupid weather and news people).

But oh hey, the reason that Kyle Cole is in here is because in his room (which is also Stice’s room), Stice is in there covered with toilet paper and bloody as all hell (and really who thought that toilet paper would help with great hunks of flesh ripped off your face?).  But that’s not the weird part.

Stice’s bed is, like, affixed to the ceiling somehow.  Troeltsch had requested a room switch some time ago (which is why he was in Axford’s room–and Hal is a little freaked out that he didn’t hear about that sooner) because he couldn’t handle Stice’s bed things going mysteriously all over the room.

Stice has locked himself in the room, mumified in toilet paper sitting on a bed that is somehow affixed to the ceiling.  And he thinks (hopes) this is all in aid of him becoming a better player (somehow).  Kyle has had enough of all of that, frankly.

And Otis P Lord had his monitor removed on Thursday (does this savvy up with when Gately saw the man with the square head next to him in the hospital?)

Hal thinks back to when Himself got involved with films.  Everyone thought that it would be a passing phase.  In the past, he would get obsessed with something until he grew successful at it.  Once he mastered it, he would move on (James, that sounds familiar, like something your wraith told Gately about Hal).  Hal thinks this means he was never successful as a filmmaker but Mario disagrees.

This lengthy Hal section continues for several more pages, but in honor of my final Spoiler Line, I will end here.  Oh, and since we’re supposed to be finishing the book on Monday, I hope to have my final week’s post up then too!

It is also dawning on me that with 30 pages left in the book, many many things are going to be left wide open!