this section in 10 parts
p 380-386
YDAU [2009] Nov. 8
place ETA
narrated in third person
synopsis:
Mario's first 'halfway-coherent' film cartridge is a filmed puppet show explicating the formation of ONAN and the rise of President Gentle to power. It is shown every year at the Interdependence Day dinner, at which students and faculty are encouraged to wear hats and/or face-masks in honor of the president. Also the ETA dietician, a former dessert chef, gets to go nuts and the students are allowed to indulge. Mario's film, which is a remake of his father's 4-hour epic, is strangely more popular with the adults and young adults than the kids. The film opens on an image of Johnny Gentle the one time lounge singer turned B-movie actor, who is Howard-Hughes paranoid in his fear of 'free-floating contamination' [hence the surgical masks.] Gentle eventually becomes standard bearer for a fringe political party called Clean US Party [CUSP] whose motto is ''Let's shoot our wastes into space.' He becomes president on the platform of cleaning the country up very literally-- he delivers his inaugural speech in a microfiltration mask. He promises to find someone to blame. He appoints the president of Mexico and prime minister of Canada to his cabinet. All but the Canadian students are charged up on sugar and having a grand time watching Mario's cartridge. A recreated meeting between Gentle and Canada's P.M. ends in a Motown version of 'It's a small world after all' with 'continent' squeezed in for 'world'
p 386-394
YDAU [2009] Nov. 8
place ETA
narrated in third person
synopsis:
Lyle is in the weight room on 11/8 recalling a boy named Marlon from a few years back, who sweated so profusely that he was constantly wet, and hence a favorite of Lyle's; 'he told this boy everything he had to tell.' Those who wonder what Lyle does alone in the weight room every night obviously don't know that he's rarely alone. The boys often lurk around the weight room door after taking a sauna, to exchange their sweat for some advice from the 'guru' Lyle. He coaches LaMont Chu on his crippling obsession with fame and specifically getting his picture in the tennis magazines. Lyle tries to clue him in to the fact that 'fame is not the exit from any cage.' Kent Blott age 10, comes to Lyle worried about what kind of porn he'll watch when he begins to masturbate. Anton Doucette expresses debilitating anxiety about the mole beneath his nose. Meanwhile Mario's film shows a mixture of real and fake news headlines-- these go from bad to worse as NATO is abolished ONAN formed, Burger King Pilsbury granted the rights to the first year of subsidized time, doctors remove a railroad spike from Canadian PM's eye, barges loaded with waste collide near Gloucester causing toxic spill, and possible 'reconfigurative options.'
p 394-395
YDAU [2009] Nov. 8
place ETA
narrated in third person
synopsis:
Lyle tells Ortho [the Darkness] Stice not to underestimate objects. Stice is worried that his somnambulism may hurt his chances for the Show-- he has been waking up with his bed moved to different parts of the room. Lyle's response is to tell a story of a man who would hustle bets by way of his ability to levitate the chair he was standing on.
p 395-398
YDAU [2009] Nov. 8
place ETA
narrated in third person
synopsis:
Hal has a nicotine addiction which he satisfies by chewing tobacco. He also has a sugar problem [related to his pot problem] but ordinarily can't handle the emotional states that it produces in him on court. As he watches Mario's cartridge with a mouthful of baklava, he muses on how Mario adopted his father's penchant for puppets/theater. He thinks back to Himself's 'The Medusa v The Odalisque' which is a plotless battle between the Medusa who's so hideous that she turns to stone those who gaze upon her, and the Quebecois Odalisque who's so inhumanly gorgeous to the same end. For obvious reasons the audience never gets to see the faces of the characters, and thus the film was ill-received. But perhaps the most hated film of Himself's oeuvre was 'The Joke' which played only in Cambridge and Berkeley and which intellectuals would pay to see even in spite of a sign warning them not to pay money to see this film. The film consisted of nothing more than a projection from a camera trained on the audience, and ended as soon as the last person had left the theater. This was an obvious precursor for the 'Found Dramas' that followed.
p 398-410
YDAU [2009] Nov. 8
place ETA
narrated in third person
synopsis:
More headlines from Mario's film describe the toxic dumpsites in New England. This segues into a recreation of the 'Concavity Cabinet' meeting wherein Rodney Tine, Chief of Unspecified Services explains to the cabinet [including the leaders of Canada and Mexico] Gentle's idea to 'give away' the befouled territory. Various members of the cabinet raise questions and objections; the Mexican president asks how Gentle expects to convince Canada's PM to 'accept vast arenas of egregiously poisoned terrain on behalf of his peoples.' Tine gives the answer: 'statesmanship.gamesmanship...brinksmanship.' More headlines explain that Canada refused the 'offer' and Gentle handcuffed himself to the 'Black Box of US nuclear codes' and threatens to bomb his own nation and toxify his neighbors unless they concede. This is Mario's nod to the legend of Eric Clipperton, tennis player from the last BS years, who played with a 'Glock 17 semiautomatic sidearm' pointed at his temple and threatened to commit suicide if he ever lost. Hence no one is willing to beat him and risk having the suicide on their conscience. Mario is one of the only people that ever actually befriended him, which occurred during filming of Himself's documentary. Mario also has some of the only footage of Clipperton.
p 410-418
YDAU [2009] Nov. 8
place ETA
narrated in third person
synopsis:
Hal is feeling the effects of 4 pot-smoking excursions and 4 chocolate cannolis and is finding Mario's film depressing, in part because it reminds him of Himself. The film is showing the early stages of the Reconfiguration, the ATHSCME fans, the EWD displacement installations, and Tine's disastrous love interest with the 'Quebecois fatale known publicly only as Luria P____'. The concept of Subsidized time was supposedly sketched on the back of a placemat by Tine. This part Hal knows well on account of the paper he wrote in 7th grade, on the fate of broadcast television and the American ad industry in the period concurrent with Mario's film. The Big Four networks' arch foe was the American Council of Disseminators of Cable [ACDC] which was challenging the viewer's 'Freedom to Choose and the Right to Be Entertained.' Viney and Veals, a Boston ad agency delivered an unintentional coup de grace to the Networks with a campaign that began with ads for Nunhagen aspirin that featured paintings depicting cranio-facial pain. Viewers found the ads too excruciating to watch, and so even though sales for the aspirin went through the roof, the ratings actually declined. Ditto with it's subsequent ads for LipoVac, a chain of walk-in liposuction clinics, and finally the ads for NoCoat tongue scrapers. The result was that 3 of the 4 Networks went under, and ABC began showing nothing but 'Happy Days' marathons. The ironic consequence of this was that the ad agencies themselves also went down. Then what happened was Noreen Lace-Forche, a video rental mogulette, convinced the remains of the combined Big 4 to consolidate, formed InterLace TelEntertainment, and hired Veals for her campaign, which was basically that the 'cable kabal's' promise of 'empowerment' was nothing more than a choice of one of the 504 choices they'd already made for you. What if the view could '100% choose what was on at any given time?' Everything in the vaults of the big 4 would be made available on 'pal-sized 4.8-mb PC-diskettes Interlace was marketing as "cartridges."' Viewable on computer or TV, and eventually via InterLaces optical pulses on 'Teleputers.' But the point of Hal's paper is that there could be no ads included on InterLace cartridges, and the advertising agency was doomed. Things were so bad that Veals took a job managing PR for an unlikely fringe candidate and former crooner.
p 418-430
YDAU [2009] Apr 30/May 1
place Tucson
narrated in third person
synopsis:
Steeply and Marathe are still out on the shelf in the desert, hours have passed and neither has slept. Steeply refuses to sit down, for fear his concealed weapon will be exposed beneath his skirt. They are both reluctant to broach the subject of how they will get down. Marathe recognizes that Steeply has a special gift for enduring the humiliating field-personae he's been required to assume. Steeply confesses that his organization cannot comprehend the AFR in the same way as other terrorist cells, because its actions seem random, without any clear objective. Marathe asks what that might be for Americans, and Steeply answers 'standard old American dreams and ideals. Freedom from tyranny, from excessive want, fear, censorship of speech and thought.' Marathe retorts with 'high quality entertainment...maximize pleasure, minimize displeasure.' Steeply says that what 'gives us the fantods about the AFR' is that they apparently derive pleasure from someone else's pain. Marathe poses the hypothetical situation of a single serving can of soup that they both want, and asks how they decide who should eat it. Steeply tries out all manner of answers which Marathe rejects-- bidding on the soup, bonking each other on the head. Marathe daydreams of his time in Boston during the summer, and of his two brothers who met their deaths head on with a train. The ponderous rectangles of light are the 'Barges of Land' gathering trash for eventual displacement launch northward. Marathe loathes the way Steeply anticipates his responses. Marathe asks why and how although two USA citizens desire the soup now, they will delay the gratification. Steeply calls it 'enlightened self-interest' and says that it can't be hammered into you, it has to be chosen. As Steeply digs for a cigarette, Marathe recalls that when his wife was born without a skull, it had been suggested that the parents' smoking had been the cause. He asks which type more resembles Americans- the one who bonks the other on the head and eats the soup, or the mature who one sees down the road. He asks how the AFR could hurt all of the USA by 'making available something as momentary and free as the choice to view only this one Entertainment.' He asks why make it samizdat if Americans can really make enlightened choices. Steeply says 'get real' explaining that this 'insidious enslaving process' can't be compared to cans of soup. Marathe concedes that this is true after the first viewing, but points out that the first viewing is still a choice.
p 430-434
2001[last pre-Subsidized year]-Year of the Whopper [2002]
place ETA
narrated in third person
synopsis:
After each of his 'victories' Eric Clipperton would accept his trophies and disappear to wherever he lived and trained. He was regarded by the USTA as having no official ranking. When USTA became ONANTA however, a new systems analyst, knowing nothing of the illegitimacy of Clipperton's victories, and subsequently ranks him as #1. Bets are taken by Pemulis as to whether he'll just retire now. But then one day he shows up at ETA, with no racquet and not even his Glock 17's custom case, and asks for entry and counsel. James Incandenza is sent for, and they agree to an interview as long as they can film it [to protect themselves under ONANTA regulations]. So as Mario films, He pulls out the magazine announcing his #1 ranking and the concealed Glock 17 and puts the gun to his temple and fires. Himself brings Mario to the funeral in Indiana, where Clipperton was living with his parents, who had no idea of his tennis career. Mario insists on being the one to clean the room. Afterwards it is locked up and designated as the Clipperton Suite, which Schtitt invites junior players to go visit when they get too whiny.
p 434-436
YDAU [2009]
place Ennet House & environs
narrated in third person
synopsis:
Five days a week, whether he's getting off all-night staff duty or not, Gately catches a 4:30am train to his janitorial job at Shattuck Center for Homeless Males in Jamaica Plain. from 5-8am he hoses excrement off the floor of the shower, etc. His boss is Stavros Lobokulas, who bills the state for an 8 hour job and pays Gately for 3. Gately often runs into guys he knew from his days of B&E. Stavros's dream is to save up enough to open a women's shoe store.
p 436-442
YDAU [2009] Nov. 8
place ETA
narrated in third person
synopsis:
Next to Clipperton the most ghastly buckling-under-the-pressure-of-competive-tennis story is that of a kid from Fresno who drank a glass of Quik laced with cyanide and dropped dead. His whole family then follows suit, attempting to give him [and then one another] mouth to mouth-- they had all recently completed a CPR course. For this reason all tennis academies are required to have PhD-level counselor. The ETA counselor is Dr. Dolores Rusk, who is regarded by the students as 'slightly worse than useless.' She simply repeats the last dependent clause of what she's told back to the student as a question. Around the time of the Clipperton/Gentle parallel, many of the kids are losing interest in Mario's film, as they begin to crash from the sugar. There's another scene of a meeting between Gentle and his secretaries, at which Gentle just back from a football game is going on about the punter who must be Orin [which the narration points out is not chronologically feasible]. They are discussing how to pay for the Reconfiguration. The advertising man, Veals and Tine's mistress Luria P__ are in attendance. Tine says that cutting programs or raising taxes will make the public 'whinge' and introduces the placemats on which the idea of Subsidized Time has been sketched. Gentle tells them the name of the football game from which he has just come: the 'Ken-L-Ration-Magnavox-Kemper-Insurance-Forsythia Bowl.'
notes
This section is filled with parodies of various themes in the book. There's the Gentle/Clipperton theme. The TV ads that are so compellingly unwatchable makes a parallel to the Entertainment, and Madame Psychosis also comes to mind. Madame P comes to mind in the synopsis of the 'The Medusa v The Odalisque' as well.
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