Chapter 34

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"Series'll be on tonight, El Duque's starting, maybe against Curt Schilling
El Duque is the nickname of NY Yankees pitcher Orlando Hernandez. In this game, he pitched 6 1⁄3 solid innings, but gave up a game-tying upper deck home run to Mark Grace of the Arizona Diamondbacks in the fourth inning. Curt Schilling of the Diamondbacks pitched on only three days rest.

NAND gate ("I say yes to everything")
In digital electronics, a NAND gate (Negated AND or NOT AND) is a logic gate which produces an output that is false only if all its inputs are true. A LOW (0) output results only if both the inputs to the gate are HIGH (1); if one or both inputs are LOW (0), a HIGH (1) output results. It is made using transistors. Wikipedia

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...in time to witness Derek Jeter's clutch tenth-inning homer and another trademark Yankee win
This extra innings game carried on past midnight, making it the first World Series game played in November(largely due to the rearranged schedules and postseason as a result of 11 September). When the scoreboard clock in Yankee Stadium passed midnight, the message on the scoreboard read, "Welcome to November Baseball". Derek Jeter shortly afterwards hit an opposite field walk-off home run on a 3–2 pitch count from Byung-Hyun Kim. This walk-off home run gave the Yankees a 4–3 victory and tied the Series at two games apiece, making Jeter the first player to hit a November homerun and earning him the tongue-in-cheek nickname of "Mr. November"(itself a play on former Yankee Reggie Jackson's World Series nickname "Mr. October).

Keanu Reeves
Another Keanu reference. Something to this?

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shoat but sweet, as they say around the pigpen
A shoat is a young pig. Get it?

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Steely Dan's "Ain't Never Gonna Do It without the Fez On"
Title of that song: "Royal Scam"

The song is more simply titled "The Fez," from the 1976 album Royal Scam. Likewise, on page 158 Pynchon elongated the title of "Dr. Wu" into "Are You with Me Dr Wu."

Also, the word "ain't" is not in the song. Lyrics are here and they go: No I'm never gonna do it without the fez on.

this overdue-for-exorcism building
The Dakota, a possible model for the Deseret, is famously known for, besides the abode of and murder site of John Lennon, was a principle location used in the film "Rosemary's Baby" (1968).

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"Lester was fellow podonok,"
Podonok is a Russian term meaning riff-raff, scoundrel, or scum. lowest of the low.

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You want secular cause and effect...
Echoes the same, almost identical, line from Gravity's Rainbow, page 663 (Viking Ed.): "You will want cause and effect. All right."

Day of the NYC Marathon
Sunday, November 4

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Yes, I remember
From page 258.

eppes-essen
Eppes Essen, besides being a Jewish Deli in New Jersey, is Yiddish for "I will give you something to eat"

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She should have tumbled ... to the peculiar lightlessness in his eyes...
The Oxford English Dictionary provides one definition of "to tumble": "(tumble to) (informal) understand the meaning or hidden implication of (a situation)"

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what Bobby Darin calls 'beyond the sea'
Bobby Darin performs Beyond the Sea on YouTube. To be a song about longing for a lost, perhaps dead, love, that sure is a happy sounding tune.