The David Foster Wallace Reader
Page 47
—pages 809–827
Notes and Errata
1. Methamphetamine hydrochloride, a.k.a. crystal meth.
3. E.T.A. is laid out as a cardioid, with the four main inward-facing bldgs. convexly rounded at the back and sides to yield a cardioid’s curve, with the tennis courts and pavilions at the center and the staff and students’ parking lots in back of Comm.-Ad. forming the little bashed-in dent that from the air gives the whole facility the Valentine-heart aspect that still wouldn’t have been truly cardioid if the buildings themselves didn’t have their convex bulges all derived from arcs of the same r, a staggering feat given the uneven ground and wildly different electrical-and-plumbing-conduit wallspace required by dormitories, administrative offices, and polyresinous Lung, pull-offable probably by on the whole East Coast one guy, E.T.A.’s original architect, Avril’s old and very dear friend, the topology world’s closed-curve-mapping-Übermensch A.Y. (‘Vector-Field’) Rickey of Brandeis U., now deceased, who used to wow Hal and Mario in Weston by taking off his vest without removing his suit jacket, which M. Pemulis years later exposed as a cheap parlor-trick-exploitation of certain basic features of continuous functions, which revelation Hal mourned in a Santa’s-not-real type of secret way, and which Mario simply ignored, preferring to see the vest thing as plain magic.
4. Those younger staffers who double as academic and athletic instructors are, by convention at North American tennis academies, known as ‘prorectors.’
5. Known usually as ’drines—i.e. lightweight speed: Cylert, Tenuate,a Fastin, Preludin, even sometimes Ritalin. It’s worth an N.B. that, unlike Jim Troeltsch or the Preludin-happy Bridget Boone, Michael Pemulis (out of maybe some queer sort of blue-collar street-type honor) rarely ingests any ’drines before a match, reserving them for recreation—some people are wired to find heart-pounding eye-wobbling ’drine-stimulation recreational.
a. Tenuate’s the trade name of diethylpropion hydrochloride, Marion Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, technically a prescription antiobesity agent, favored by some athletes for its mildly euphoric and resources-rallying properties w/o the tooth-grinding and hideous post-blood-spike crash that the hairier-chested ’drines like Fastin and Cylert inflict, though with a discomfitting tendency to cause post-spike ocular nystagmus. Nystagmus or no nystagmus, Tenuate’s a particular favorite of Michael Pemulis, who hoards for personal ingestion every 75-mg. white Tenuate capsule he can lay hands on, and does not sell or trade them, except sometimes to roommate Jim Troeltsch, who nags Pemulis for them and also goes into Pemulis’s special entrepôt-yachting-cap and promotes still more of them on the sly, a couple at a time, feeling that they help his sports-color-commentary loquacity, which secret promotions Pemulis knows about all too well, and is biding his time to retaliate, never you fear.
6. Lightweight tranqs: Valium-III and Valrelease, good old dependable Xanax, Dalmane, Buspar, Serax, even Halcion (legally available in Canada, unbelievably, still); with those kids inclined toward a heavier slide—reds, Meprospan, ‘Happy Patch’ transdermals, Miltown, Stelazine, the odd injury-’scrip Darvon) never lasting for more than a couple seasons for the obvious reason that serious tranqs can make even breathing seem like too much trouble to go to, the cause of a meaty percentage of tranq-related deaths being attributed off the record by Emergency Room personnel to ‘P.S.’ or ‘Pulmonary Sloth.’
7. Top jr. players are for the most part pretty cautious with alcohol, mostly because the physical consequences of heavy intake—like nausea and dehydration and poor hand-eye interface—make high-level performance almost impossible. Very few other standard substances have prohibitive short-term hangovers, actually, though an evening of even synthetic cocaine will make the next day’s Dawn Drills very unpleasant indeed, which is why so few of E.T.A.’s hard core do cocaine, though there’s also the issue of expense: though many E.T.A.s are the children of upscale parents, the children themselves are rarely flush with $ from home, since the gratification of pretty much every physical need is either taken care of or prohibited by E.T.A. itself. It’s maybe worth noting that the same people hardwired to enjoy recreational ’drines also tend to gravitate toward cocaine and methedrine and other engine-revvers, while another broad class of more naturally higher-strung types tend more toward the edge-bevelling substances: tranqs, cannabis, barbiturates, and—yes—alcohol.
8. I.e.: psylocibin; Happy Patchesa; MDMA/Xstasy (bad news, though, X); various low-tech manipulations of the benzene-ring in methoxy-class psychedelics, usually homemakable; synthetic dickies like MMDA, DMA, DMMM, 2CB, para-DOT I-VI, etc.—though note this class doesn’t and shouldn’t include CNS-rattlers like STP, DOM, the long-infamous West-U.S.-Coast ‘Grievous Bodily Harm’ (gamma hydroxybutyric acid), LSD-25 or -32, or DMZ/M.P. Enthusiasm for this stuff seems independent of neurologic type.
a. Homemade transdermals, usually MDMA or Muscimole, with DDMS or the over-counter-available DMSO as the transdermal carrier.
9. A.k.a. LSD-25, often with a slight ’drine kicker added, called ‘Black Star’ because in metro Boston the available acid usually comes on chip-sized squares of thin cardboard with a black stencilled star on them, all from a certain shadowy node of supply down in New Bedford. All acid and Grievous Bodily Harm, like cocaine and heroin, come into Boston mostly from New Bedford MA, which in turn gets most of its supply from Bridgeport CT, which is the true lower intestine of North America, Bridgeport, be advised, if you’ve never been through there.
10. Like most sports academies, E.T.A. maintains the gentle fiction that 100% of its students are enrolled at their own ambitious volition and not that of, say for instance, their parents, some of whom (tennis-parents, like the stage-mothers of Hollywood legend) are bad news indeed.
11. An involved Arab women’s game involving little shells and a quilted gameboard—rather like mah jongg without rules, by the diplomatic and medical husbands’ estimate.
12. Meperedine hydrochloride and pentazocine hydrochloride, Schedule C-II and C-IVa narcotic analgesics, respectively, both from the good folks over at Sanofi Winthrop Pharm-Labs, Inc.
a. Following the Continental Controlled Substance Act of Y.T.M.P., O.N.A.N.D.E.A.’s hierarchy of analgesics/antipyretics/anxiolytics establishes drug-classes of Category-II through Category-VI, with C-II’s (e.g. Dilaudid, Demerol) being judged the heaviest w/r/t dependence and possible abuse, down to C-VI’s that are about as potent as a kiss on the forehead from Mom.
13. Though masked in the evidentiary photo and never once given up or named by Gately to anyone, this can be presumed to have been one Trent (‘Quo Vadis’) Kite, Gately’s old and once-gifted friend from his Beverly MA childhood.
14. This A.D.A.’s little personal trademark was that he always wore an anachronistic but quality Stetson-brand businessman’s hat with a decorative feather in the band, and frequently touched or played with the hat in tense situations.
15. The Bureau of Alcohol/Tobacco/Firearms, at that time under the temporary aegis of the United States Office of Unspecified Services.
16. Extremely unpleasant Québecois-insurgents-and-cartridge-related subsequent developments make it clear that this was (again) Trent (‘Quo Vadis’) Kite.
17. The codeineless kind, though—almost the first physical datum Gately took in in the nasty flashbulb-flash shock of the occupied bedroom’s light coming on, to give you an idea of an oral-narcotics man’s depth of psychic investment.
18. On top of the seascape safe’s more negotiable contents, themselves on top of an unplugged and head-parked and absolutely top-hole genuine InterLace state-of-the-art TP/viewer ensemble in a multishelved hardwood rollable like entertainment-system-console thing, with a cartridge-dock and double-head drive in a compartment underneath with doors with classy little brass maple-leaf knob things and several shelves crammed tight with upscale arty-looking film cartridges, which latter Don Gately’s colleague just about drooled all over the parquet flooring at the potential discriminating-type-fence-value of, potentially, if they wer
e rare or celluloid-transferred or not available on the InterLace Dissemination Grid.
19. ‘Une Personne de l’Importance Terrible,’ presumably.
20. Fluorescence has been banned in Québec, as have computerized telephone solicitations, the little ad-cards that fall out of magazines and have to be looked at to be picked up and thrown in the trash, and the mention of any religious holiday whatsoever to sell any sort of product or service, is just one reason why his volunteering to come live down here was selfless.
23. Office of Naval Research, U.S.D.D.
24.
JAMES O. INCANDENZA: A FILMOGRAPHYa
The following listing is as complete as we are able to make it. Because the twelve years of Incandenza’s directorial activity also coincided with large shifts in film venue—from public art cinemas, to VCR-capable magnetic recordings, to InterLace TelEntertainment laser dissemination and reviewable storage disk laser cartridges—and because Incandenza’s output itself comprises industrial, documentary, conceptual, advertorial, technical, parodic, dramatic noncommercial, nondramatic (‘anticonfluential’) noncommercial, nondramatic commercial, and dramatic commercial works, this filmmaker’s career presents substantive archival challenges. These challenges are also compounded by the facts that, first, for conceptual reasons, Incandenza eschewed both L. of C. registration and formal dating until the advent of Subsidized Time, secondly, that his output increased steadily until during the last years of his life Incandenza often had several works in production at the same time, thirdly, that his production company was privately owned and underwent at least four different changes of corporate name, and lastly that certain of his high-conceptual projects’ agendas required that they be titled and subjected to critique but never filmed, making their status as film subject to controversy.
Accordingly, though the works are here listed in what is considered by archivists to be their probable order of completion, we wish to say that the list’s order and completeness are, at this point in time, not definitive.
Each work’s title is followed: by either its year of completion, or by ‘B.S.,’ designating undated completion before Subsidization; by the production company; by the major players, if credited; by the storage medium’s (‘film’ ’s) gauge or gauges; by the length of the work to the nearest minute; by an indication of whether the work is in black and white or color or both; by an indication of whether the film is silent or in sound or both; by (if possible) a brief synopsis or critical overview; and by an indication of whether the work is mediated by celluloid film, magnetic video, InterLace Spontaneous Dissemination, TP-compatible InterLace cartridge, or privately distributed by Incandenza’s own company(ies). The designation UNRELEASED is used for those works which never saw distribution and are now publicly unavailable or lost.
Cage.b Dated only ‘Before Subsidization.’ Meniscus Films, Ltd. Uncredited cast; 16 mm.; .5 minutes; black and white; sound. Soliloquized parody of a broadcast-television advertisement for shampoo, utilizing four convex mirrors, two planar mirrors, and one actress. UNRELEASED
Kinds of Light. B.S. Meniscus Films, Ltd. No cast; 16 mm.; 3 minutes; color; silent. 4,444 individual frames, each of which photo depicts lights of different source, wavelength, and candle power, each reflected off the same unpolished tin plate and rendered disorienting at normal projection speeds by the hyperretinal speed at which they pass. CELLULOID, LIMITED METROPOLITAN BOSTON RELEASE, REQUIRES PROJECTION AT .25 NORMAL SPROCKET DRIVE
Dark Logics. B.S. Meniscus Films, Ltd. Players uncredited; 35 mm.; 21 minutes; color; silent w/ deafening Wagner/Sousa soundtrack. Griffith tribute, Iimura parody. Child-sized but severely palsied hand turns pages of incunabular manuscripts in mathematics, alchemy, religion, and bogus political autobiography, each page comprising some articulation or defense of intolerance and hatred. Film’s dedication to D. W. Griffith and Taka Iimura. UNRELEASED
Tennis, Everyone? B.S. Heliotrope Films, Ltd./U.S.T.A. Films. Documentary cast w/ narrator Judith Fukuoka-Hearn; 35 mm.; 26 minutes; color; sound. Public relations/advertorial production for United States Tennis Association in conjunction with Wilson Sporting Goods, Inc. MAGNETIC VIDEO
‘There Are No Losers Here.’ B.S. Heliotrope Films, Ltd./U.S.T.A. Films. Documentary cast w/ narrator P. A. Heaven; 35 mm.; color; sound. Documentary on B.S. 1997 U.S.T.A. National Junior Tennis Championships, Kalamazoo MI and Miami FL, in conjunction with United States Tennis Association and Wilson Sporting Goods. MAGNETIC VIDEO
Flux in a Box. B.S. Heliotrope Films, Ltd./Wilson Inc. Documentary cast w/ narrator Judith Fukuoka-Hearn; 35 mm.; 52 minutes; black and white/color; sound. Documentary history of box, platform, lawn, and court tennis from the 17th-century Court of the Dauphin to the present. MAGNETIC VIDEO
Infinite Jest (I). B.S. Meniscus Films, Ltd. Judith Fukuoka-Hearn; 16/35 mm.; 90(?) minutes; black and white; silent. Incandenza’s unfinished and unseen first attempt at commercial entertainment. UNRELEASED
Annular Fusion Is Our Friend. B.S. Heliotrope Films, Ltd./Sunstrand Power & Light Co. Documentary cast w/ narrator C. N. Reilly; Sign-Interpreted for the Deaf; 78 mm.; 45 minutes; color; sound. Public relations/advertorial production for New England’s Sunstrand Power and Light utility, a nontechnical explanation of the processes of DT-cycle lithiumized annular fusion and its applications in domestic energy production. CELLULOID, MAGNETIC VIDEO
Annular Amplified Light: Some Reflections. B.S. Heliotrope Films/Sunstrand Power & Light
Co. Documentary cast w/ narrator C. N. Reilly; Sign-Interpreted for the Deaf; 78 mm.; 45 minutes; color; sound. Second infomercial for Sunstrand Co., a nontechnical explanation of the applications of cooled-photon lasers in DT-cycle lithiumized annular fusion. CELLULOID, MAGNETIC VIDEO
Union of Nurses in Berkeley. B.S. Meniscus Films, Ltd. Documentary cast; 35 mm.; 26 minutes; color; silent. Documentary and closed-caption interviews with hearing-impaired RNs and LPNs during Bay Area health care reform riots of 1996. MAGNETIC VIDEO, PRIVATELY RELEASED BY MENISCUS FILMS, LTD.
Union of Theoretical Grammarians in Cambridge. B.S. Meniscus Films, Ltd. Documentary cast; 35 mm.; 26 minutes; color; silent w/ heavy use of computerized distortion in facial close-ups. Documentary and closed-caption interviews with participants in the public Steven Pinker–Avril M. Incandenza debate on the political implications of prescriptive grammar during the infamous Militant Grammarians of Massachusetts convention credited with helping incite the M.I.T. language riots of B.S. 1997. UNRELEASED DUE TO LITIGATION
Widower. B.S. Latrodectus Mactans Productions. Cosgrove Watt, Ross Reat; 35 mm.; 34 minutes; black and white; sound. Shot on location in Tucson AZ, parody of broadcast television domestic comedies, a cocaine-addicted father (Watt) leads his son (Reat) around their desert property immolating poisonous spiders. CELLULOID; INTERLACE TELENT CARTRIDGE RERELEASE #357–75–00 (Y.P.W.)