"Cop killer, better you than me

Cop killer, fuck police brutality

Cop killer, I know your family's grievin'

(Fuck 'em)

Cop killer, but tonight we get even." Once rapped Law & Order: SVU's Ice-T.



Inherent Vice is the thing inside of you that you can't avoid, your inability to resist your own self destruction. I'm gonna consider it a self medication of the void with the therapy resembling (they could be sisters) chemo that kills you as it takes care of you because while I wasn't ever a moth in the flam

"Cop killer, better you than me

Cop killer, fuck police brutality

Cop killer, I know your family's grievin'

(Fuck 'em)

Cop killer, but tonight we get even." Once rapped Law & Order: SVU's Ice-T.



Inherent Vice is the thing inside of you that you can't avoid, your inability to resist your own self destruction. I'm gonna consider it a self medication of the void with the therapy resembling (they could be sisters) chemo that kills you as it takes care of you because while I wasn't ever a moth in the flame of drugs or drink, I have lost my life, skidded my own heels, to my own voice of escapism. I've lost time to self induced unreality, if reality is getting out of bed every day and not sleeping in your clothes. How does that story go... It probably isn't good that there's a check list of rock bottom that I could nod my head to of giving myself over to longed for unlasting highs. I could stand in the path of impending doom and not move. Inherent Vice is stepping outside of your own hell trip to watch yourself not move. You could avoid it, if you didn't kiss the boo boo away with a face altering punch. There's no some kind of poetic justice, no keeping score or even. It's turns. One character utters something similar to the "Choose life" speech from Trainspotting. Get a day job, hit the time card. Talk, talk talk (too fast) about how we all share this life. They don't share it. Look away, it's not you, this time. Look at your neighbors in the eyes. Charlie Manson and his girls have switched the lights on the calendar (probably a Far Side calendar with bits to stick on your fridge when you go in to mindlessly eat). The first time it works, the second time less, the third the ghosts are eaten by Pac-men. The days step backwards into when it worked and it is dark side on the future. Your neighbors aren't meeting your eye. Come home from the war and "the freaks" are on the streets with their grand monologues. Everyone is a haircut. Change your hair, change your life they say. No soap boxes or a bath, please. Don't meet each other's eyes. Who has time for junkies? I have a feeling that I have written about mirrors and eye-meeting in my reviews fairly often. It speaks to my loneliness in the dreams. That's the feeling I had about all of these counter cultures. When do they all touch? All of these inherent vices running around in all of these people who are running around trying not to think about what it is they are trying to cover up. No one has time for anyone else. It is after Charles Manson getting down on his knees to look you straight in the eye because you are on your knees (where your vice will inevitably tell you to go) but did anyone really have time for anyone else? Hope you still have days when it still works.



Private Investigator stories have historically been my least favorite kind of story. I shouldn't say "favorite" at all because that implies any kind of preference. I actually have always really hated them. It's the posturing, the easy slide in of a rigid persona. A man's manly man. A "Hey, why not?" like if you spoke in the ill at ease slang of a few years past. Grooving in the broken record in the far out time. Hey, it's the 1960s, man. It's a Hey, why not? existence like a pick up line of they were there and that was that. I once had this boss that dropped in "Hey now, you're an all-star" pop lyrics (another time it was "Whoomp! There it is!"). The only response possible was "Please, don't". It wasn't him and it wasn't anyone. I couldn't put that period of time on any post card and wish anyone was there. I don't know this 1960s of lost hippie dream. I just thought that they weren't tied to the tracks of the war on drugs just yet. I know that Doc wanted to save Coy from the fate he won't step out of the way of for himself. Someone else tells him this. Of course someone else had to tell him this. The point isn't any of the people he meets in his career as a P.I. It isn't that Big Foot tells him he can tell the difference between being childish and child-like. It's that he can see himself not moving, that's all. The persona is kind of the point. A persona I'd do anything to avoid. Hey, why not? I hate the constant day dreaming. I wish the inherent vice wasn't there to medicate.



Hey, it's the 1960s. I wonder what it would have been like to have been welcomed open arms into long hair, free love, drug trips, banana leaves. Hey, I like the Bonzo Dog Band too. Could it have really been like that? I doubt it. The girls with their asses welcomingly pointed outwards, their tiny t-shirts. One of my recent reads was William Gaddis' J R. There's a scene in Inherent Vice of discussing the finger points of a set of nudie photographs. Dream girls who feel heat. I liked the J R scene better. It felt like the difference between watching strangers and making up what you think they might be saying. It at least comes out of you, it's really your own conversation. Turn the sound down and dream. The nude girls in Inherent Vice reminded me of watching porn and feeling ridiculous over the facial expressions the tanned guy with the lily white ass makes as he pounds away into the loudly exalting girl (with a tan to match). Someone else made up the conversation for you and it wasn't a good one. Have you seen a super hot girl who goes into jail for prostitution to get drug money? She does not stay a hot girl. I kind of felt like I was in a Murakami nightmare of what a great fantasy it is to be a prostitute. I could see the Chinese pimps acupuncturing Shasta like a pin cushion. Not pretty. No one gets murdered. They don't lose their teeth or arms. I guess that's the point of look away and hope it lasts longer for your own turn before it's their turn for the high to work and YOUR turn to die or end up in prison.





Oh yeah, I always hated the statuesque blonde shit in those hard-boiled noirs. Pin-ups against doorways. Smoke rings and lip stick calling cards. Cinderella's shoe could fit on any foot for how interchangeable they are to me. I liked that this P.I. Doc falls in love with everyone he meets. That would be a neat trick to manage. I'm terrified of heart break. I don't fall in love and don't linger in the pleasant feelings of crushes in case they'll lead to those hunger pains. I was envious of Doc who could be mildly lovelorn over one girl pining away for her homosexual ex con to fuck her up the ass. If only they loved me... Doc himself feels a directionless pang in his rectum for... something. It's his talent to be all possibilities and Hey, why not? to anyone that comes his way. That's the best when you can be vaguely lurid without anyone in particular in mind. No possibility of rejection. That's what I hated about these noirs of the stud that always gets the girl, though. It ruins it to get off. The ache of loneliness is no stronger than hunger before fast food. Prosecutors are all too willing to give Doc a blow job and a fuck (or two, or three). So he can affect about this girl of his dreams always wanting some other dude. His ex runs out on him on another guy. It's all spank me and sex fantasies and everyone pretending that everyone is someone else. But when everyone IS everyone else, always putting on a role?



I liked Inherent Vice enough. Basically, it was okay. When I finished it I had the feeling that if I had never read it I wouldn't have missed anything. It's entertaining... It's actually pretty lonely feeling to wise crack and cover up feelings. I'm going to need a cure. I guess I didn't say anything about the humor until now. Have you seen the first episode in the third season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer? The one Buffy runs away to Los Angeles and the parts with Buffy are same old brilliant Buffy and the parts of her friends back in Sunnydale trying to carry on without her is a weight on your escapism cure. It's a story without its protagonist, without a driving force. Willow and Xander the sidekicks try to pun their way into vampire slayage. The punchline sound in the forest doesn't happen with the one undead and the wannabes to hear it. Inherent Vice is a lot of lives without their protagonists. The punch lines don't really make me laugh but more nod along "that's cute" like when Xander and Willow try to be smart asses. My inherent vice is sick of trying to entertain itself. Hey, what's the difference between being childish and child-like? So this guy Doc lives in this world when no one knows anyone and they all hope it's not their turn. He has this motif of that thing if you save someone's life you are responsible for it? People keep telling him that he saved their lives. No one saves Doc. What you're left with in the inherent vice. I kinda wish I could have pushed past the ironical cutesy stuff some and not wait to fall in love with the NEXT person who came along. And the next one. I know what their world looks like now. I don't mean to hate on what wasn't a bad book... but the P.I. moving throughout these groups of people... And this time and place... Well, it all happened and it was a whole lot of people happening at the same time. It hasn't changed. The feeling that I really had more than anything else was when Shasta doesn't even want to think about Coy. He's a junkie and she's trying to live the passed glory. She's trying to be a pin-up on a door that's shutting. Doc does to avoid thinking about himself. If that is what all of these people are doing... Well, it kind of annoys me to be all far out and groovy and hey, why not P.I. posturing and everyone is doing it counter culture. What is the inherent vice covering up? There's a hive mind in here some where and what happens when one of them gets sick? I had the feeling out of this entertaining book about something sick, about time past and getting even and the past and Charles Manson and the war on drugs and cops and pigs and hippies and freaks and for me it is going to be fun while it lasts. Please, no more.

