Chapter 10

Please keep these annotations SPOILER-FREE by not revealing information from later pages in the novel.

Page numbers refer to editions with 369 pages, where the story begins on page 1. Not sure if there are other editions with variant pagination. Please let us know otherwise.

Page 155

"Soul Gidget"
These lyrics have some similarities with "Shaft" by Isaac Hayes:

Who's the black private dick

That's a sex machine to all the chicks?

Shaft!

Who is the man

That would risk his neck for his brother man?

Shaft!

signifyin on your mama
"Signifyin" is a verbal strategy employed in the African-American culture. The idea was developed most fully in Henry Louis Gates, Jr.'s book The Signifying Monkey. Signifyin indicates a kind of play or trickster technique. "Yo mama" jokes also appear in Mason & Dixon (pg. 445) and Against the Day (pg. 12).

Pink's
Pink's bills itself as "Hot Dogs to the Stars." It's been in the Hollywood area since 1939.

Page 157

Jason Velveeta
Velveeta, a notoriously plastic "processed cheese product" is probably fueling a roundabout slang joke on "cheddar," used recently to mean money, specifically a pimp or dealer's money. Hence, Jason Velveeta is not really a very good pimp.

As cheeses go, Velveeta is fake, soft and easily melted. "Jason" is a quintessentially middle-class white first name. Velveeta is also associated with middle-class white culture in its most unhip and soul-free form. See, for example, this recent spoof news story.

Page 160

"Desafinado"
A bossa nova-style song written by Jobim. Stan Getz's version was a hit in 1962. The title translates as "off key" or "out of tune."

Little Black Dress
Simply cut, often short, cocktail dress [1]. It's worth noting that the dress our singer is wearing is described as being from the 1950s, since the most famous, perhaps, little black dress of them all was worn by Audrey Hepburn in the later 1961 film Breakfast at Tiffany's.

I can sure relate to that lyric, man
And here are the lyrics to "It Never Entered My Mind":

I don't care if there's powder on my nose.

I don't care if my hairdo is in place.

I've lost the very meaning of repose.

I never put a mudpack on my face.

Oh, who'd have thought

that I'd walk in the daze now?

I never go to shows at night,

but just to matinees now.

I see the show

and home I go.

Once I laughed when I heard you saying

that I'd be playing solitaire,

uneasy in my easy chair.

It never entered my mind.

Once you told me I was mistaken,

that I'd awaken with the sun

and order orange juice for one.

It never entered my mind.

You have what I lack myself

and now I even have to scratch my back myself.

Once you warned me that if you scorned me

I'd sing the maiden's prayer again

and wish that you where there again

to get into my hair again.

It never entered my mind.

Introduced in the show Higher and Higher in 1940. Famous renditions of the song in the '50s and '60s that may have inspired our singer in the Little Black Dress were done by Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, Miles Davis (as a jazz instrumental), and Leontyne Price (!).

Listen and let Peggy Lee break your heart, too.

Dietz & Schwartz's 'Alone Together'
These lyrics are also relevant to the scene, and to Inherent Vice as a whole:

Alone together, beyond the crowd,

Above the world, we're not too proud

To cling together, We're strong

As long as we're together.

Alone together, the blinding rain

The starless night, were not in vain;

For we're together, and what is there

To fear together.

Our love is as deep as the sea,

Our love is as great as a love can be,

And we can weather the great unknown,

If we're alone together.

Introduced in the revue Flying Colors (1932), the song has had famous interpreters, including Ella Fitzgerald and Ray Charles. There's another important D&S allusion in an upcoming chapter, folks. TP a connoisseur too of Broadway show tunes--who knew?

Page 162

Samba do Avião
Song by Tom Jobim. Lyrics, in English translation, are a tribute to Rio de Janeiro, and can be easily connected to the way Los Angeles is presented in Inherent Vice.

then sat through the dawn
Morning, the thirteenth day of the narrative, Sunday, April 5, 1970.