Annotations - Absolute Beginners Part 3 : Let's Go

No major references for the most part. Let's Go is a translation of the Indian word "Hokahe" which crops up later.
I don't know how well it comes over, but I wanted to evoke a changed reality for most of this piece, hence the change in prose style and tense, from past (he did) to present (he does). I also loosened the mind a little bit and threw in some stream of consciousness business which I then tried to make sense of in the following paragraphs. It's meant to suggest a concertina effect to time - The fight takes place over eight hours, but all takes place in the time it takes Blue to fall down and stand up again.
Eyes as dead as John Wayne's... Just goes nicely with the later cancer cowboy. The original line was Eyes as dead as John Waye's left lung, but I've just checked and it was stomach cancer that got the Duke, so that's changed.
Believe it or not, Zzyzx is NOT another sigil word - It's a real place in the Mojave desert, keeping us in the same place as the Manson/Bradys reference in part 2. There was a natural mineral spring spa at Zzyzx (pronounced zeye-zacs) which the owner never had permission for as it's all federal property. He was eventually arrested for using the land and also for allegedly breaking drug and food laws (whatever they might be) and the land was confiscated in that foul year of our lord 1974. I think that might be where the training camp from part 1 now stands...
"If he moves, kill him" obviously, paraphrasing the great line from William Holden's Pike Bishop in The Wild Bunch (Which I think I even mentioned at one point as a subtitle for part 3?). A Pike-monster now appears to take down the Nagual in standard action movie style, smothering him inside and out with tumours birthed from Blue's throat (and yet everyone in this episode seems to be smoking constantly - Will they never learn?).
Before we reach the end and our big guest appearance, there's one more thing to point out, another interloper who has snuck in from someplace very different:
"Bishop..."
Pike smiled.
Read together, that's Bishop Pike smiled. No big deal, but I like it as Bishop James Pike was a good friend of PKD and the basis for Timothy Archer in The Transmigration Of... Transmigration, of course, is the idea of the soul or psyche's movement from one body to another, whether through reincarnation or possession of a pre-existing body. Could that also appear here at some point? Hmmm...
And finally, ladies and gentlemen, a drum roll please for our latest star: Midge! If Fliss is Felicity and Ari is Arihaily, could Midge really be anything other than our old friend Imogen Dangerfield?

Annotations - Absolute Beginners Part 2 : A Night On The Town

Named, of course, for the Gene Kelly musical about sailors in New York. Or maybe not - I just like having that as a title, then skipping the whole Night On The Town bit to join our heroes on their way home...
Fewer references this time -
"This same lonely desert..." paraphrases HST in Fear & Loathing, talking about the Manson Family. That pretty much fixes us in the Mojave Desert, demonises those little blonde fuckers the Bradys and allows us an opening for the Pope himself at some later point...
Pretty much reference free then, until we hit the endless guitar solo of Freebird by Lynrd Skynrd. I like the fact that it's on for over an hour, as it's famous for being one of the most overblown, cliched 70's rock stormers. It ties in once again with Monk's preference for that era's music, I also include it just because I like it, and have recently been battering their albums whilst writing.