They won’t call him Shirley again

The great Leslie Nielsen has departed this realm at the age of 84, and we shan’t see his like again, surely. He will mostly be remembered for the world-class deadpan he showed off in Airplane and the Naked Gun movies, but he had a long career before that….

The Infinite Jest Deathmarch, Stage 9

The Advanced Basics chairperson looks like a perfect cross between pictures of Dick Cavett and Truman Capote.

Begin: Page 352 (“Gately’s biggest asset as an Ennet House live-in staffer…”)
End: Page 398 (“…which audiences never even got to hate, for a-priori reasons.”)

Start Date: 11/26/10
Finish Date: 12/2/10

Note Profile: 18 notes, including one two-and-a-half pager

We’ve got some momentum now. Can you feel it? I’m feeling it.

Dr. John’s tangerines

Want a tangerine?

According to my records, the great Mac Rebennack – better known to the world as Dr. John the Night Tripper – turns 70 today. I actually got to meet the Dr. a few years back when he and his band (including the wonderfully named Renard Poché) stayed at the hotel where I was posing as a desk clerk. He was very gracious and his people gave me free tickets to the shows; it was a real bright spot in an otherwise less than stellar period of my life.

In his honor, here’s an excerpt from his autobiography Under a Hoodoo Moon where he describes how he finally kicked heroin after many, many, many years. There’s something striking and poetic about it, if’n you ask me:

…that happened again and again during my halfhearted rehab attempts: I straightened up for a while , but sooner or later I ran into some Chang Moi rocks and it was off to the races, another four years of getting strung out like a fucking guinea pig.
(more…)

The Infinite Jest Deathmarch, Stage 8

His father knelt beside him on the ceiling in a well-rended sleeveless tee-, extolling the Red Sox of Rice and Lynn.

Begin: Page 312 (“The first birth of the Incandenzas’ second son was a surprise.”)
End: Page 352 (“A certain Message had been Carried.”)

Start Date: 11/19/10
Finish Date: 11/25/10

Note Profile: 18 notes, all short except for a two-pager that looks to be involved but not especially crucial.

Keeping the page count slightly on the shorter side this week; hope that suits everyone’s sense of momentum. I’ve read ahead just a little and it looks like Wallace is starting to Get to the Point.

Question: Do they have Thanksgiving in O.N.A.N.?

The Infinite Jest Deathmarch, Stage 7

"See, Spiro Agnew here has two little arms: they point, they suggest."

Begin: Page 298 (“Poor Tony Krause had a seizure on the T.”)
End: Page 312 (“…the first tangible evidence of an anti-O.N.A.N. ill will way worse than anything aroused by plain old historical Separatism, up in Québec.”)

Start Date: 11/12/10
Finish Date: 11/18/10

Endnote Profile: 9 notes, including #110, a 16-pager with its own notes

This week I particularly envy those of you with iPads and such, as I am not relishing the prospect of 16 pages of tiny type. An audio version would be nice, but none seems to exist; how would that work, anyway, with the notes? Never mind, I’ll get through somehow. See you on the other side.