Difference between revisions of "Chapter 4"

Revision as of 10:17, 23 September 2013

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Leuzinger High School
Leuzinger High School is a public high school (9th through 12th grades) in Lawndale, California. It opened on January 27, 1931, with an enrollment of 268. It was named after Adolph Leuzinger in recognition of his 25 years of service on the Board of Trustees of the Inglewood Union High School District. The school is in the Centinela Valley Union High School District. As Leuzinger's first senior class graduated while the 1932 Summer Olympics were hosted in and around nearby Los Angeles, the school's mascot became the "Olympians". From WIKI

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statues of the Buddha
The Buddhas of Bamiwam were two 6th century statues of standing buddha carved into the side of a cliff that were destroyed in 2001. Wikipedia

if the Buddha's in your way . . . it's OK to kill him?
A famous koan attributed to Zen Master Linji: "If you meet the Buddha, kill him."

"If You Meet the Buddha on the Road, Kill Him!"
is also the title of a popular psychology book from the early 1970s, written by a man with the Pynchonesque sounding name of Sheldon P. Kopp.

Wahhabists
Wahhabism is an ultra-conservative branch of Sunni Islam (though some people dispute that a Wahhabi is a Sunni). It is a religious movement among fundamentalist Islamic believers, with an aspiration to return to the earliest fundamental Islamic sources of the Quran and Hadith, with inspiration from the teachings of Medieval theologian Ibn Taymiyyah and early jurist Ahmad ibn Hanbal. From WIKI.

The Brady Bunch
When someone once asked Pynchon's sister, "What's your brother likely to be doing right now?", she reportedly said "Watching The Brady Bunch." Source The episode where Jan gets a wig is titled "The New Jan Brady." It's also discussed on Inherent Vice Wiki (page 310):

"What kind of wig?"

"Brunette, I think. She gets tired of being a blonde?"

"Tell me about that. Still not the same as changing your politics, I guess."

Here's the clip...

krav maga
Krav Maga is a tactical martial system developed in Israel that consists of a wide combination of techniques sourced from boxing, Muay Thai, Wing Chun, Judo, jiu-jitsu, wrestling, and grappling, along with realistic fight training. Krav Maga is known for its focus on real-world situations and extremely efficient and brutal counter-attacks. It was derived from street-fighting skills developed by Slovakian-Israeli martial artist Imi Lichtenfeld, who made use of his training as a boxer and wrestler, as a means of defending the Jewish quarter against fascist groups in Bratislava in the mid-to-late 1930s. In the late 1940s, following his immigration to Israel, he began to provide lessons on combat training to what was to become the IDF, who went on to develop the system that became known as Krav Maga. It has since been refined for civilian, police and military applications. From WIKI.

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Disrespect and The Contaminator
Other superheroes invented by Pynchon include Fatal Four in Gravity's Rainbow... any others?

krav maga... kidon
a martial art developed in Israel. Kidon is the name of an alleged secret department within Israel's Mossad. Wikipedia

Emma Levin, who's rumored to be ex-Mossad.
Surely an allusion to the NCIS character Ziva David, an ex-Mossad, deadly, female agent.

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Shabtai Shavit
Shabtai Shavit was director general of the Mossad from 1989 to 1996. Shavit first joined the Israel Defense Forces, where he served in the Sayeret Matkal. From 1958 to 1959, he was military governor of the Southern Command. In 1964, he joined the Mossad, where he worked his way up to director general. From WIKI.

A store something like Fairway...
Fairway Market is an American grocery chain. Founded in the 1930s, it is one of the United States' highest grossing food retailers per square foot with 14 million customers per year. Fairway has had significant store expansion in the New York area, with 13 locations in the tri-state area including 13 food markets and 3 wine and spirit shops. The flagship store still occupies the original Broadway location at West 74th Street on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, with larger locations in Harlem; the Red Hook neighborhood of Brooklyn; Paramus, New Jersey; Plainview, Long Island; Pelham Manor, New York; Stamford, Connecticut; and Woodland Park, New Jersey. From WIKI.

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what Bob Barker might call 'right'
Bob Barker used to host a TV game show called The Price is Right.

VC
Venture Capitalist. Someone who has money to support new companies or projects.

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Beneish model
A math model that identifies whether a company has manipulated its earnings using said company's financial statements.