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Buckaroo Banzai
Against the World Crime League Et Al.
Novel
Written by the Reno Kid w/ E.M. Rauch
Cover by Julian Totino Tedesco
Page numbers refer to the hardcover edition, first
printing,
October 2021 |
Still mourning the loss of his beloved
Penny Priddy and his surrogate father Professor Hikita, Buckaroo
Banzai must contend with threats to Earth from his immortal
nemesis Hanoi Xan and from Empress John Emdall of Planet 10 who
demands the return of the criminal Lord John Whorfin.
Didja Know?
The full title of this novel is
Buckaroo Banzai Against the World Crime League Et Al.: A
Compendium of Evils. It is creator Earl Mac Rauch's
long-awaited story of Buckaroo Banzai's conflict with the World
Crime League (sort of) after the events of the movie
Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension,
originally planned as a follow-up film, but the first movie in
1984 was not successful enough to warrant a sequel, so we now
get it as a lengthy novel 23 years later.
The book is written entirely in-universe
(including the title page reflecting that it was published by
the Banzai Institute Press!)attributed to the Reno Kid as told
to official Banzai chronicler
Earl Mac Rauch. It is interesting to note that
Pinky Carruther's Unknown Facts subtitle track on the
Across the 8th Dimension DVD
suggests that that film's novelization was ghostwritten by Reno for
his friend, Earl Mac Rauch, as a favor to appease a legal
dispute. So who's the actual professional writer here??
Throughout the
book, the expletive "fuck" is replaced with the more playful
spelling of "phawk". Similarly, the expletive "shit" mostly,
though not always, uses the UK/Irish spelling of "shite".
As in the novelization of
Across the 8th Dimension,
references to the OSCILLATION OVERTHRUSTER are always
entirely capitalized in this book.
Lord John Whorfin and his host body, Dr.
Emilio Lizardo, are resurrected in this novel, seemingly a
couple of years or so after their deaths in
Across the 8th Dimension.
But the pair were also resurrected in the 3-part comic book
story from Moonstone Publications titled
"Return of the Screw".
No explanation for the different stories is given. None of the
other comic book stories are directly mentioned either. It seems that
Rauch has essentially ignored the Moonstone output in the
writing of this novel, even though Rauch himself was the story
provider on those comics. Possibly, Dark Horse Books as this
novel's publisher, did not want references to a competing
company's output included.
The character of Mona Peeptoe may be named
for the women's Mona peep toe pump style shoe.
Throughout the novel, the Banzai Institute
invention of the Go-Phone (first seen in
Across the 8th Dimension)
seems to have surmounted that of the cellular phones known in
the real world. In the Buckaruniverse, most people seem to have
Go-Phones.
Though Penny Priddy appears in the novel,
Buckaroo's first wife, the seeming twin of Penny, Peggy Priddy,
is not mentioned at all. In fact, the concept of Buckaroo having
had a wife before Penny (who was also killed by Xan earlier) is
not even hinted at. The closest to acknowledging Peggy the book
comes is on page 81, where the amnesiac Penny wonders who she is
"the whole history of who she was, and a sister..."
Characters appearing or mentioned in
this novel
Reno Kid
E.M. Rauch
Buckaroo Banzai
Lord John Whorfin
Hanoi Xan
Dr. Emilio Lizardo
(mentioned only, deceased)
Van Pfeffersack (mentioned only, possible alias of Xan)
Henry Shannon
(mentioned only, possible alias of Xan)
Anne d'Aquavita (mentioned only)
Viktor Anthropos
(mentioned only, possible alias of Xan)
Macaulay (mentioned only)
Blue Blaze Irregulars
Professor Hikita
(mentioned and in spirit form only, deceased)
Penny Priddy
Chittagonian reporter
Perfect Tommy
Pecos
Desdemona Pepitone (aka Mona Peeptoe)
President James Monroe II
Jean Lafitte
Mottled Adders
Darklings
Red Lectroids
Empress John Emdall
Cubists (followers of a new Black Lectroid
"religion")
Lectroid high priests
John Red and Raw
John
Singsong-of-the-Narrows-of-No-Return-Not-Him-But-the-Other-One
Satrap
Captain Moonbeam
(mentioned only)
Mr. (Antoine) French
Lord John Shark Crab (mentioned only)
Mr. Contreras
(mentioned only, deceased)
Selector
Erlik the Mongolian
(mentioned only)
Paraguayan delegate (dies in this novel)
USAF force protectors
Abbot Costello
Captain Bowers
Wing Commander General "Wild Bill"
Wagoneer
Cardinal Wildthing
Dorothea
"Dottie/Big Red"
Wagoneer (mentioned only)
"Bulldog" Wagoneer (General Wagoneer's father, mentioned only,
deceased)
Palomina
(mentioned only)
Rawhide
(mentioned only, deceased)
Buckaroo Banzai's parents
(mentioned only, deceased)
Hoppalong Krivlolvsky
Li'l Daughter of the Rhine
Colorado Belle
Pinky Carruthers
Lonely Ranger
Papa Bear
Señor Dentista
Pilgrim Woman
Lucky Masahiro
Honest Dan Cartwright
Cottonmouth
El Cuchillo
Lakota Sue
Leo the LEO
Talla 12 de Pantalon
Red Jordan
Missing Person Slim Greenberg
Buffalo Gal
Jolly Rancher
Webmaster Jhonny Appleseed (dies in this
novel)
Dr. John Jane Doe
Muscatine "Magnum" Wu
Mrs. Johnson
Jill of All Trades
Jack Tarantulus
Big Norse
(mentioned only)
Ladybug
(mentioned only)
Postmaster General Holly Mantooth, a.k.a. Rainbow
Trout
Captain Jackson
Pope Innocent
Nova Police
Secretariat of
Nova Police
New Jersey
Ira (New Jersey's uncle, mentioned only)
High Sierra
(mentioned only)
Cardinal Zoran Caiaphas Baltazar (aka
Schwantz)
Valdez
(mentioned only)
Il Pugilato
Hippolyte the Chaldean
Chico Wagoneer
(General Wagoneer's unborn son, mentioned only, deceased)
Oñate (presumed dead after events in this
novel)
Javelina
Manny Magdalene
Dr. Paraquat
Fariq "Rick" Bulbus
Wadsworth Longfellow
Archangel Brother Deacon Jarvis
Marchioness (Lady Asquith-Gillette)
Darinka Water Moccasin
Zoyenka Racehorse
Mayor Agostinelli
(mentioned only)
Tall Crow
(mentioned only)
Yolanda (Tall Crow's daughter)
Lulu (Pinky's hound dog, mentioned only,
deceased)
The Last Mapuche
Brooklyn 2000
Sir Roger P─
triple amputee (unnamed)
Ranger Nick
Black Cloud
Giuseppe (waiter)
Rooster
Abysmo
Sokol the Joykiller (aka
Admiral)
Pay Piggie
Able Moammar (aka Able Omar the Berber)
Sister Mary Comfort (aka Twisted Sister)
Sonya (Caesonia)
Mr. Noone
Metropolitan Spiro (mentioned only)
Archimandrite Zalman
(mentioned only)
General Warts
Leftenant Major John Dogg (dies in this
novel)
Libby (mentioned only, Jhonny's cat, willed
to Pecos)
Vice Commander John Parker
Most High Priest, Sacred John Tail Crab
(dies in this novel)
Fleet Marshal John Double Bottom
Didja Notice?
The title page gives Rauch the
appellation of "Professor of Oratory and Belles-Lettres".
"Oratory" is fairly self-explanatory. Belles-Lettres
is a French phrase for "fine writing" (literally, "beautiful
letters") and is often used modernly to describe literature
that does not fall into the common categories of drama,
fiction, poetry, etc. Belles-Lettres might
well-describe a work that is a fictionalized version of
actual events as told to the author verbally by a trusted
source.
Publication of the book is attributed to
Banzai Institute Press (as well as
Dark Horse Books). The only previous mention of Banzai
Institute Press I have found is in a Banzai Institute
archival copy of "REMARKS (NOT FOR ATTRIBUTION) ATTRIBUTED
TO THE RENO KID, AKA RENO OF MEMPHIS, IN A PRIVATE BRIEFING
AT THE RECENT WORLD ECONOMIC FORUM AT DAVOS, SWITZERLAND"
which mentions it as part of the remark, "Bemused readers
will recall the naked traveler 'Bacons', so-nicknamed for
his unforgettable words upon nearly crashing down upon our
heads from another realm (see the Journal for Empirical
Research into the Paranormal, October, 1991, Banzai
Institute Press.)" These archived remarks were published in
the
June 2010 issue of the World Watch One newsletter.
The title page indicates the book had previously been
published in Great Britain in 2016. As far as I know, that
is another "in-universe" reference and not true in our
reality. The book was first published anywhere in
October 2021.
The book is dedicated "to my devoted fellow Hong Kong
Cavaliers". Presumably, this dedication is from Reno.
The dedication page also has two quotes on it, "All the
beans and bullets you can eat," which is a line that occurs
in the novel, and "What is precious, is never to forget..."
attributed to Stephen Spender. Spender (1909-1995) was an
British writer; the line is from his 1928 poem "The Truly
Great".
AUTHOR'S PREFACE
The Author's Preface (pages 7-23) in the book also seems to
be by Reno, as he remarks on being a witness to events in
Dr. Banzai's life, most notably the events around
Across the 8th Dimension.
Page 7: The author argues that while Buckaroo Banzai is
not the Superman of comics, he may well be the superman of
Nietzsche, "that perfect balance of East and West, Apollonian
rationality and Dionysian appetite..." Friedrich Nietzsche
(1844-1900) was a German philosopher who introduced the
concept of the superman (ubermensch) in his work of
philosophical fiction, Thus Spake Zarathustra,
published in parts from 1883-1892.
Page 8: Reno remarks on Hanoi Xan's earlier attempt to
ally with Dr. Lizardo. This may refer to a phone call by Xan to
Lizardo after Buckaroo's successful attempt to travel
through solid matter as related in the novelization of
Across the 8th Dimension.
Page 8:
Xan is known by another name as a trusted intimate of Queen
Victoria and a banker to many of the royal houses of Europe,
including the Hohenzollern and the last three czars. Queen
Victoria was the ruler of the United Kingdom from 1837-1901.
The House of
Hohenzollern has been a German royal dynasty since before
1061. The last three czars spoken of here probably refers to
the Russian czars, Feodor III, Ivan V, and Peter I who
served consecutively from 1676-1721.
Page 8:
Xan is said to be in possession of no fewer than 20 princely
domains in Xinjiang Province. This is a province of China
now known as the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region.
Page 9: Reno refers to Xan as Hanoi Xan Anthropos.
Anthropos is Greek for "human". On pages 17-20, the
publisher allows Xan his own forward to the book within
Reno's forward, and Xan signs it at the end as Hanoi Xan
Anthropos Pentachrist Invictus. "Pentachrist" seems to be
formed from the Greek penta, meaning "five" and
christ, from the Greek christos, meaning
"messiah", so "fifth messiah". Invictus is Latin
for "invincible". So the full name may be "Hanoi Xan, the
fifth invincible human messiah".
Page 9: Xan's network of dezinformatsiya in
mentioned.
Dezinformatsiya is Russian for
"disinformation".
Page 9: Xan has claimed to have been born a snake hatched
from the egg of a black swan.
Page 9: Reno states that "no less a figure than Macaulay has
called [Xan] '...the perpetual enemy of peace and virtue, a
bold bad man whose hands were alternately polluted with gold
and blood.'" I'm unsure who Reno is referring to in
"Macaulay". The quote made here is attributable to Edward
Gibbon (1737-1794), an English historian and writer known for
his 6-volume work, The History of the Decline and Fall
of the Roman Empire. On page 19, in Xan's forward, he
mentions both Macaulay and Gibbon.
Page 9: Reno compares Xan to the Creator in terms of what he
is not, using Maimonides' description of "not
anthropomorphic, not mortal, not corporeal, not bound by
physical laws." Maimonides (Moses ben Maimon, 1138-1204) was
a Jewish philosopher. He did, in fact make such statements
about God.
Page 9: Reno remarks on a book recently discovered in the
British Museum, The Khan of Kathmandu, saying
experts at the Banzai Institute believe it to be written in
Xan's own hand in the Fifteenth Century, said to be the account
of Sir Edmund Shaa's travels in the Himalayan kingdoms and
his encounter with a Mongol prince with supernatural powers.
This is, of course, a fictitious book, though Sir Edmund
Shaa is an actual historical figure. He was a member of
England's Privy Council (an advising body to the king or
queen) as stated here. If the Banzai Institute is correct,
Shaa was an identity of Hanoi Xan.
Page 10: Who/what is Old Larry?
It seems to be an epithet for the devil here and on page 12, as well
as page 478 (where Penny mispronounces it as "O'Leary").
Page 10: Legend says that Xan is ancient, said to have
arisen in the Euphrates Valley or on the lost continent of Mu around
the time of the great comet swarm of 11,000 BCE. Xan's face is said
to have been the model for the Easter Island statues. The Euphrates
Valley is a region of the Middle East that is believed to be one of
the emergence points of the beginnings of human civilization (around
10,200 BCE). Some researchers suggest that a comet swarm struck
Earth in the ancient past at about the time suggested here.
The statues of the Pacific island called Easter Island,
moai, are said to be representative of deified ancestors of the
Polynesian colonizers of the island from about 1250-1500 CE.
Page 10: The first known
written account of Xan in historical times is on a Babylonian clay
tablet fragment stating he is a demon feathered snake who affrights
and affronts the great people of Ninevah.
Ninevah was an ancient Assyrian city in modern day Iraq, believed to
have been founded as early as 6000 BC.
Reno points out that a feathered serpent called Quetzalcoatl
or Kukulkan is legend in Mesoamerica. Mesoamerica
is an historical region of North and Central America starting in
about 10,000 BCE. Quetzalcoatl was the Aztec god of life, light, and
wisdom; Kukulkan was the Mayan equivalent.
Page 11: Mongol legend says that Xan was not Hulagu Khan (though
Lytton Strachey purportedly referred to Shannon as Hulagu Khan in
one of his writings; see notes for page 14 below).
Hulagu Khan was a Mongol ruler of the 13th Century, the brother of
Kublai Khan, who is said here to have once captured Xan. Kublai
Khan's shaman is said here to be a direct antecedent of Buckaroo
Banzai.
Page 11: The Mongolian version of the devil is said be called
Talker. I've been unable to confirm this.
Page 11: Kublai Khan's shaman is said to have seen in a teardrop of
Xan's, the Mongol fleet destroyed by a typhoon in the Sea of Japan.
The destruction of the Mongol fleets is historically accurate.
Pages 11-12: Elizabethan spirtist Dr. John Dee is said to have given
an account of the angelic apparition Uriel. Uriel is an archangel in
rabbinic and Christian tradition. John Dee (1527-1609) was a
scientist and occultist who was an advisor to Queen Elisabeth I of
Great Britain.
Page 12: Xan's alter ego, the Dutch trader van Pfeffersack, is said
to have been the infamous broad-hatted man whom Vermeer removed from
his painting View of Delft. As far as I can tell, van
Pfeffersack is a fictitious individual. View of Delft is a
ca. 1659-1661 painting by Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer
(1632-1675). As far as I can determine, Vermeer is not thought to have
removed a figure from View of Delft, but is said to have
done so in his 1657 painting A Maid Asleep.
Delft is a city
in the Netherlands.
Page 12: Van Pfeffersack is said to have made a financial killing in
the tulip panic of 1636-37. The tulip panic of the Dutch Republic
was a time when the extreme popularity of various varieties of tulip
bulbs drove the bulbs to outrageous prices until the market
collapsed in February 1637. It is considered the first speculative
bubble in history.
Page 12: Reno relates that Berenson speculated that Vermeer and
Pfeffersack may have been the same man. This probably refers to
American art historian Bernard Berenson (1865-1959), though since
Pfeffersack seems to be fictitious, the comparison can't be made in reality.
Page 12: The Sphinx of Delft is a nickname given to Vermeer by art
historians due to his reclusiveness and obscured life.
Page 12: Reno refers to a thinly-disguised account of
Xan/Pfeffersack by Bunyan in the birth legend of Mr. Badman. This
refers to Puritan preacher John Bunyan (1628-1688) and his 1680 book
The Life and Death of Mr Badman.
Page 13: P. Brydone's A Tour through Sicily and Malta tells of the
author's meeting with the Englishman Henry Shannon, recognizing him
as the Frenchman Charles-Henri Sanson, the royal executioner to the
court of Versailles. This refers to Scottish traveller Patrick
Brydone (1736-1818) and his 1773 book A Tour through Sicily and
Malta, in a Series of Letters to William Beckford, Esq., of Somerly
in Suffolk.
Henry Shannon appears to be fictitious, though Charles-Henri Sanson
(1739-1806) was an historical figure. Versailles refers to the
Palace of
Versailles, the former royal residence of the sovereign of
France in parts of the 17th and 18th Centuries. Brydone's
description of Shannon was also remarked upon in the aforementioned
"REMARKS (NOT FOR ATTRIBUTION) ATTRIBUTED TO THE RENO KID, AKA RENO
OF MEMPHIS, IN A PRIVATE BRIEFING AT THE RECENT WORLD ECONOMIC FORUM
AT DAVOS, SWITZERLAND" in the
June 2010 issue of the World Watch One newsletter.
Sanson's son, Henri Sanson (1769–1840) assumed the
executioner roll after him, and guillotined Marie Antoinette, as
stated here.
Marie Antoinette (1755-1793) was the last queen of France, executed
during the French Revolution. Here, Sanson is said to have been
called a "blood drunk" by the Marquis de Sade. The Marquis de Sade
(1740-1814) was a French nobleman known for his libertine views on
sexuality and his pornographic writings; as far as I can find, he
did not comment on Sanson.
Page 13: "Carlyle" may refer to Scottish essayist Thomas Carlyle
(1795-1881).
Page 13: Reno speculates that Xan and Cagliostro may have been the
same man. "Count Alessandro di Cagliostro" was the alias of Italian
occultist Giuseppe Balsamo (1743-1795).
Pages 13-14: Reno writes that in Oriental Memoirs, Forbes
describes meeting a mysterious khan from parts unknown and including
a sketch of the man that resembles Charlie Chaplin, "down to his
mustache, baggy trousers, and little frock coat." Oriental
Memoirs was a four-volume work by British artist and writer
James Forbes (1749–1819). The description of the mysterious khan
appears to be fictitious (also mentioned in the
June 2010 issue of the World Watch One newsletter).
Charlie Chaplin (1889-1977) was an English comic actor and filmmaker
extremely popular around the world.
Page 14: Reno states the great heresiarch Jung speaks of Xan as the
Spirit Mercurius, embodying all opposites. Carl Jung (1875-1961) was
a Swiss psychoanalyst. The Spirit Mercurius relates to Jung's
concept of Mercury (the Roman god of commerce, communication,
travel, and luck) to the prima materia (starting material)
of alchemy and psychological growth.
Page 14: In
London, Jung was introduced to Shannon through Constance Long.
Long was an M.D. and follower of Jung who edited and translated a
number of Jung's papers.
Page 14: Lytton Strachey wrote a biographical treatment of someone
resembling Shannon, but it went unpublished when Shannon himself
got a hold of it. This probably refers to the 1918 book Eminent
Victorians by Strachey, which featured, among others,
biographies of Florence Nightingale and General Gordon as stated
here. Nightingale (1820-1910) was a British social reformer and the
founder of modern nursing. Major-General Charles George Gordon CB
(1833–1885) was a British Army officer infamous for losing the city
of Khartoum, Sudan to the Mahdi Muhammad Ahmad in the Siege of
Khartoum of 1884-85.
Page 14: Shannon is said to be an intimate of Queen Victoria and George
V. Queen Victoria was the ruler of the United Kingdom from
1837-1901. George V was a grandson of Victoria and he was king of
the UK from 1910-1936.
Page 14: Strachey later conversed with a publisher, not Chatto and
Windus, after Shannon's death about his Shannon treatment. Chatto
and Windus was the publisher of Eminent Victorians.
Page 14: Strachey is said to refer to Shannon as Hanoi Xan, Hong
X'an, and Hulagu Khan, who was a 6,000 year old demigod.
Page 14: Mentioned are Belgravia, Whitehall, and the
Royal Geographical
Society. Belgravia is an affluent district of Central London.
Whitehall is a district of London, where the governmental offices
and many minsters' residences are located.
Page 15: Shannon is referred to as Sir
Henry Shannon, which means he's been knighted by a sovereign
(presumably of the UK).
Page 15: Xan is said to have been
connected to the Spanish Inquisition. No one expected this.
Page 15: Xan is said to have a connection
to the mysterious death of Christopher Marlowe. Marlowe (1564-1593)
was an English playwright and contemporary of William Shakespeare.
There have been differing accounts of Marlowe's death, though all
seem to be the result of some kind of altercation.
Page 15: Xan partook of a banquet of sex
in the boudoirs of Lady Penelope Rich, Catherine de' Medici, and
Anne d'Aquavita. Lady Penelope Rich and Catherine de' Medici were
noblewomen of the late 16th and early 17th centuries. Anne
d'Aquavita, as far as I can tell, is fictitious.
Page 15: Xan is said to have had
misadventures with the murderous Jacobins. This probably refers to
the Society of the Jacobins, a political club during the French
Revolution.
Page 15: Xan had associations with the
Indian stranglers, the Chinese tong, and the Camorra. "Indian
stranglers" probably refers to the Thugs, a professional fraternity
of robbers and murderers of India ranging over centuries until about
the 1870s. Tong are Chinese secret societies, sometimes benevolent,
sometimes questionable, with connections to crime. The Camorra is an
Italian crime organization that spread worldwide, similar to the
Mafia.
Page 15: Xan may have also been Hong
Xiuquan, leader of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom. Xiuquan (1814-1864)
was a Chinese revolutionary who led the Taiping Rebellion against
the Qing dynasty from 1850-1864. After having visions in 1837,
Xiuquan claimed to be a son of God and younger brother of Jesus
Christ. Taiping Heavenly Kingdom was a self-declared rebel state
against China during the rebellion.
Page 15: Strachey was friends with Clive
Bell. Bell (1881-1964) was an English art critic.
Page 16: Shannon was known to wear odd
costumes, including more than once being dressed as the Easter
bunny. The Easter Bunny is the folkloric figure who brings to
children gifts of colored eggs and candy on the eve before Easter
Sunday.
Page 16: Shannon was a friend of Cecil
Rhodes. Rhodes (1853-1902) was a British businessman and politician.
Page 16: Wagner, Goethe, Fichte, Hegel,
and Herder are said to have been Shannon's ideological soulmates.
These were all historic German thinkers and philosophers.
Page 16: Shannon is said to hold a belief
in the spiritism of Allan Kardec and once discussed it with Herman
Melville on the South Sea island of Nuku Hiva. "Allan Kardec" was
the pen name of French author Hippolyte Léon Denizard Rivail
(1804–1869), the founder of Spiritism, which he referred to as a
joining of science, philosophy, and religion. Herman Melville
(1819-1891) was an American writer, best known for his classic novel
Moby Dick and he is known to have been on Nuku Hiva in
1842, as stated here; his book Typee is based on his
experiences there.
Pages 16-17: Xan is supposedly the model
for the villain Moravagine in the French novel of the same name and
Lermontov's Pechorin. Moravagine is a 1926 novel by Blaise
Cendrars. Pechorin was the antihero in Mikhail Lermontov's 1840
novel A Hero of Our Time. Reno is reminded of the villains
in the works of Conrad, Philip José Farmer, and Harry Ashton-Wolfe.
Conrad refers to Polish-British writer Joseph Conrad and the passage
listed is from his novella, Heart of Darkness. Philip Jose
Farmer was an American science-fiction and fantasy author known for
his Wold Newton family of books that established a conceit that many
of the world's famed fictional characters shared a narrow familial
ancestry. Harry Ashton-Wolfe was a writer of alleged "true crime"
stories in which he participated, including stories of the
blackguard Hanoi Shan! In Philip José Farmer’s Doc Savage:
His Apocalyptic Life, Farmer speculates that the
(mis)adventures of Sax Rohmer’s Fu Manchu were based on the "real
life" exploits of Ashton-Wolfe’s Hanoi Shan.
Page 18 (Xan's forward): The Latin phrase
mundus vult decipi means "The world wants to be deceived."
Page 18 (Xan's forward): Hermes, Helen,
and Abraham are mentioned as part of examples of deceit. Hermes was
the Olympian of cunning. Helen was said to be the most beautiful
woman in the world in Greek mythology, kidnapped by the Trojans,
causing war that ended with the deceit of the Trojan Horse. Abraham
is the patriarch of the denominated Abrahamic religions; he is said
to have deceived the Pharaoh by telling him that his wife, Sarah,
was his sister (she was both Abraham's half-sister and wife).
Page 18 (Xan's forward): Maldoror, Mister
Morningstar, and Prince of Light are all references to the Biblical
Lucifer.
Page 18 (Xan's forward): Pythagoras was a
Greek philosopher in the 5th Century BC.
Page 19 (Xan's forward): Xan mentions Sima
Qian and Herodotus. These were both historians in ancient times
(BCE) in China and Greece, respectively.
Page 19 (Xan's forward): Xan quotes Miss
Rand. Although I've been unable to find the exact quote, its
contents suggest he is speaking of Ayn Rand (1905-1982), an American
writer known for her philosophical system of Objectivism.
Pages 19-20 (Xan's forward): Xan gives a
litany of many of his supposed aliases. I won't list them all here,
but some interesting notes about them are: Waxaklahun Ubah Kan is
the Mayan name for the previously mentioned Kukulkan; the Great Khan
of the Golden Horde was Batu Khan Bádūhán (1205–1255) a conqueror of
much of Eurasia; Prince of the Air is another name for the devil;
Max Thrax may refer to Maximinius Thrax, Roman emperor from 235 to
238 AD; he was also referred to as the Scourge of Burma in his
personal profile on the DVD of
Across the 8th Dimension;
summum malun is Latin for "greatest evil"; l'homme
invisible is Latin for "invisible man"; "the New Weishaupt"
probably refers to the "old" Adam Weishaupt, founder of the
Illuminati in Bavaria in 1776; Lord of Genius was one of the
epithets for Kukulkan; Earl of Rochester probably refers to Henry
Wilmot (1612-1658), a notorious libertine; Rider of the Clouds is an
epithet for the devil in Christian and Muslim theology; Equal of
Heaven is the Monkey King in Chinese mythology: Doctor of the Church
is a title given to some saints in the Catholic Church; Pivot of
Mystery is a title used for Xan by Penny Priddy in the original
script of
Across the 8th Dimension;
et tutti quanti is Italian for "and all the rest".
Page 20
(Xan's forward): de sua
pecunia is Latin for "about their money".
Page 20
(Xan's forward): Xan considers Reno
a hack of a writer, saying he is unworthy even to lick the master
Henty's boots. This probably refers to G. A. Henty (1832-1902), an
English novelist and war correspondent.
Page 20
(Xan's forward): pro domo
is Latin for "for the home".
Page 20
(Xan's forward): mehr licht
is German for "more light".
Page 20
(Xan's forward): Xan quotes
Baudelaire to say of Reno's current book, "the lethal fumes of this
book shall dissolve your soul as water does sugar!" Charles
Baudelaire (1821-1867) was a French poet, essayist, and critic. Some
sources seem to attribute this quote to Baudelaire's fellow French
poet, the Comte de Lautréamont (1846-1870).
Page 20
(Xan's forward): Xan recalls
Oscar's panegyric: "You will always be fond of me. I represent to
you all the sins you never had the courage to commit." This is a
quote from Oscar Wilde's 1891 book The Picture of Dorian Gray.
Page 20
(Xan's forward): QED is short for
the Latin phrase quod erat demonstrandum, meaning "which
was to be demonstrated".
Page 21: Reno writes that Xan is like Satan in the mythoi of the
Mosaic religions, he is the Destroyer archetype, of whom it is said
in, the Egyptian Book of the Dead, "Behold I am Set, the
creator of confusion and king of lies." The
Egyptian Book of the Dead is made up of
varying scrolls of funerary rites which they referred to as the Book
of Coming Forth by Day;
these books are meant to tell the soul of the deceased the proper
procedures and incantations for proceeding to the afterlife. Set is
known to be one of the gods of ancient Egypt; in later Egyptian
writings, due to political and religious changes, Set was demonized,
but was originally considered a major god to the people of Egypt and
known as the god of the desert.
Page 21: Another of Xan's epithet's is "the Light Beyond Sight".
Page 21: Reno states that the Cavaliers have gone through
expeditions in the Himalayas (Asian mountain range), Alaska
(American state partly within the Arctic Circle), the Andes (South
American mountain range), Queen Maud Land (region of Antarctica),
Aksai Chin (a region of disputed ownership between India and China),
the Eigerjoch (an Alpine pass in Switzerland), and the Schreckhorn
(a mountain of the Burmese Alps).
Page 21: Buckaroo's parents taught him how to live off the land.
Page 22: A tabloid profile of Buckaroo once described "his
kokutai uncorrupted by greed." Kokutai is a Japanese
term for "essence and character."
Page 22: Reno makes various quotes from, or allusions to, John
Stuart Mill, William Pitt the Younger, David Hume, William James,
and Cincinnatus. These are all historical figures known for their
philosophical sayings.
Page 22: Reno states that when he writes about Buckaroo, he is not
talking about a Hollywood or Whig notion of history. "Hollywood" is
a pretty well-acknowledged notion among most people. The Whig Party
was the conservative political party of the early United States.
Page 22: Reno alludes to shōnen series. Shōnen are
Japanese comic books written for teen boys.
Page 23: Reno quotes a poet as having said, "paint the cot, as Truth
will paint it, and as bards will not." This is from George Crabbe's
1783 poem "The Village".
Page 23: Reno quips that what he writes may be closer to Homeric
legend than history. Homer was an ancient Greek epic poet who wrote of
the legends and mythology of his civilization's past. This may
explain some of the contradictions between this novel and previous
BB adventures.
Page 23: Reno signs the preface off with non sibi sed toti.
This is Latin for "not for himself but for the whole".
Page 23: Reno's sign-off indicates it was written in
Almaty,
Kazakhstan, 2021.
Chapter I: THE IMMORTAL CHEVALIER
Page 25: "Chevalier" is another term for "knight".
Page 25: The quote from Sophocles' Oedipus the King
that opens the chapter is accurate except for a line omitted
in the middle.
Page 25: Buckaroo is referred to as Sir Buckaroo Banzai, MD,
GBE. The "Sir" title indicates he's been knighted and the
GBE that he is a member of the Order of the British Empire,
a chivalric order that rewards significant contributions to
the UK. MD, of course, stands for Doctor of Medicine.
Page 25: Buckaroo is said to be among the top ten minds of
all time.
Page 25: Buckaroo is attending a dinner in his honor at the
Institut de France.
Page 25: Buckaroo is a Chevalier de la Legion d'honneur.
The
Legion d'honneur is the highest French award of
merit.
Page 25: Buckaroo has received the Grande Médaille from the
French Academy of Sciences. The names listed as fellow
past recipients of the award (Pasteur, Lavoisier,
Mandelbrot), though all great scientists, did not receive
this particular award (it was only established in 1997).
Page 25: Palmarès is French for "prize list".
Page 25: Other prizes won by Buckaroo listed here are the
Rock and Roll
Hall of Fame, the
Franklin
Medal, and the
Gruber Prize.
Page 26: Penny was supposedly killed in a Jet Car crash in
Bhutan shortly after she and Buckaroo were married. However, her body
disappeared from the remote mountain range while Buckaroo
lay in a coma for days. Later in the book, it seems that
Penny was somehow retrieved and resuscitated, minus her
memory, by Xan. Page 140 states this occurred 18 months ago.
In the audio commentary track on the
Across the 8th Dimension
DVD by W.D. Richter and Reno, Reno says that Xan murdered
Penny personally
with her own hair at the Church of the Dead in
Czechoslovakia. Possibly, both of these statements are true.
Page 26: Professor Hikita is also deceased under mysterious
circumstances. On page 31, Mona remarks that he supposedly
committed ritual suicide (hara-kiri) in a
wheelchair, wearing
Birkenstocks. Hara-kiri (or seppuku)
is a Japanese ritual suicide by disembowelment with sword.
The French Academy gave Buckaroo a
Festschrift in memory of Hikita. A Festschrift
is a book honoring a specific person in academia.
Page 27:
Dr. Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) was a world-renowned Austrian
psychoanalyst in the early decades of the 20th century. The
quote from Freud that Buckaroo makes here is one that is
attributed to him.
Page 27: A reporter tells Reno he
loved the surprise show the Cavaliers gave the previous
night at the
Olympia (in
Paris).
He asks if they will be in
Chittagong
on the next leg of the tour.
Page 27: The Cavaliers have a new
single titled "Time Bomb Ticking".
Page 28: Buckaroo quotes Vladimir
Lenin on living with hearts on fire and brains on ice. This
is from an actual quote by Lenin, the founding head of
government of the Soviet Union from 1917-1924.
Page 29: One of the Cavaliers
best-loved ballads is "I Need an Answer".
Page 29: A rumor has spread that
Penny may have been a spy for Xan all along.
Page 30: Reno tells Mona about a
bolo tie he bought in the Bois. Bois is a French term for
"woodland", so I assume that's what he's referring to, even
though it's capitalized here. There are some villages and
neighborhoods called Bois, but it doesn't make much sense
for Reno to have been there if he was pigeon hunting as he
says at the time.
Page 30: Buckaroo has been to the
Eighth and Fifth dimensions, plus a couple others. He
did seemingly pay a very brief visit to the Seventh
dimension in "Of
Hunan Bondage" Part 2.
Page 30: Reno claims that Buckaroo
has some screws in his skull and has had a fractured pelvis
and six broken ribs.
Page 30: Mona claims she's heard
that Buckaroo has possible cosmic-ray damage to his brain.
Page 31: Mona refers to Buckaroo
as the genius domus. This is Latin for "genius of
the house".
Page 31: Mona says that Buckaroo
was supposedly born in a manger on the Fourth of July and
rewrote Newton's second law. This is likely an "urban
legend/joke" based on Bucakroo's heroic deeds and iconic stature. The personal profiles
feature on the DVD
of
Across the 8th Dimension states that
he was born in London while his parent were visiting England
(of course, that doesn't mean it wasn't in a manger on the
Fourth of July). The Fourth of July is a colloquial name for
the Independence Day holiday of the United States. Newton's
second law of motion is "a body acted upon by a force moves
in such a manner that the time rate of change of momentum
equals the force."
Page 31: Buckaroo is scheduled to
conduct the
Orchestre de Paris the following night.
Page 31: The current U.S.
president is President James Monroe II. In
Across the 8th Dimension, it
was President Widmark. It's not clear how much time has
passed since the events of that movie.
Page 31: Mona tells Reno that
scuttlebutt is saying that President Monroe intends to
appoint Buckaroo the American ambassador to the Court of
Saint James's. On page 162, the president does, in fact, ask
him to become that ambassador. The Court of St James's is the royal court
for the Sovereign of the United Kingdom.
Page 32: Reno has a vision of himself and Mona kissing in
view of Haussmann's façades. This is a reference to the
renovation of Paris under Prefect of Seine Georges-Eugène
Haussmann 1853-1870 (with works continuing until 1927).
Page 32: Mona suggests to Reno that he take her to the
Jockey Club for martinis or at least a macaron from
Carette
in the place du Trocadéro. The Jockey-Club de Paris is one
of the most prestigious gentlemen's clubs in Europe.
Page 32: Reno tells Mona he has to leave for
Fukushima that night on a special mission.
Page 32: Zut alors is French for "damn so".
Page 32: Reno claims that Buckaroo has a birthmark in the
shape of a guitar.
Page 32: Reno mentions a supposed dance move called a "suicide
death drop". ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. (Update 4/4/22: Thanks to Steve
Mattson, staff member of the Team Banzai newsletter,
World Watch One, who informs us: "The Death Drop is a
dance move where someone mimes shooting the dancer and they fall to
the floor in a specific way. Perhaps in Reno’s version, he mimes
shooting himself.")
Page 33: Mona remarks to Reno that Buckaroo must still be
dying inside even after two years since Penny's
death/disappearance. Yet, page 29 states that it has been
just 18 months. It's possible Mona is simply rounding up.
Page 33: Reno tells Mona the Cavaliers cut a track for the
new album with the Swedish Radio Orchestra. This is a real
world orchestra working for
Sveriges Radio (Sweden's Radio).
Page 33: Belgian experimental physicist Jean Lafitte puts in
an appearance. As far as I can tell, this person is
fictitious. His exclamation of "Pour Shang-Ti et la
martyre! Naitre, mourir, renaitre encore...!" is French for
"For Shang-Ti and martyrdom! To be born, to die, to be reborn
again...!" Shang-Ti is the Chinese term for "Supreme
Deity". Later in the book, some of Xan's followers call him Shang-Ti
(or the alternative Huang-di).
Page 33: After disarming Lafitte and handing him over to a security
official, Perfect Tommy shouts, "Lafayette, we are here!" The Marquis
de Lafayette of France was a key ally of the American Continental
Army during the Revolutionary War for freedom from Britain. This
phrase was originally made at the tomb of Lafayette by U.S. Colonel
Charles Stanton on a Parisian celebration of the American
Independence Day in 1917, in honor and recognition of Lafayette's
vital assistance in the nation's history.
Page 34: When Mona complains that Reno didn't tell her Tommy was
along with he and Buckaroo, Reno explains, "Jamais deux sans
trois, tout de phwawking suite." This is French for "Never two
without three, right phawking now."
Page 34: Tommy drinks a
Coke.
Page 34: Tommy relates "No matter where you go, there's
always a nut on the loose." Tommy's idiom is a play on
Buckaroo's saying, "No matter where you go, there you are,"
heard in
Across the 8th Dimension.
Page 34: Xan once had a blackmail scheme to turn the Earth
into a blue snow cone by sabotaging the hadron collider at
CERN to
cause a mini black hole that would release giant clouds of
cold atom matter. The plot was foiled by Buckaroo.
Page 34: The last-known price placed on Buckaroo's head by
the World Crime League was ten million dollars.
Page 34: Mona tells Reno, "Je t'embrasse," as she takes her
leave. This is French for "I kiss you."
Page 34: C'est comme ca is French for "It's like
that."
Page 35: In his speech to the Academie, Buckaroo says that
pursuit of the unknown is his "...beruf, as Max
Weber would say." Weber (1864-1920) was a German sociologist
who wrote the essay "Politik als Beruf" ("Politics
as a Vocation").
Page 35: Buckaroo says that he is often painted as a
lurid
combination of Prometheus and Pandora for having broken the
Standard Model of Physics.
"Prometheus"
is a reference to the Greek mythological figure of
Prometheus, one of the Titans, who betrayed his fellow gods
and gave fire to humanity. "Pandora" refers to the Greek
myth of Pandora, the first woman on Earth, given a box (or
jar) by the Olympian gods and told never to open it. Her
curiosity got the better of her and she opened it anyway,
releasing all the evils of the world (similar to the Bible's
story of Eve and the forbidden fruit). The Standard Model of
Physics describes the four known fundamental forces of the
universe: electromagnetism, the weak nuclear force, the
strong nuclear force, and gravity.
Page 35: The Banzai Institute does not rely on government
funding or Wall Street investors. Wall Street is a road in
the financial district of Manhattan and which has become a
metonym for the financial markets of the United States as a
whole.
Page 35:
The Banzai Institute has at least two other musical bands
associated with it besides the Hong Kong Cavaliers: the
Bunkhouse Jazz Cats and the Banzai Brass Band.
Page 36: Buckaroo remarks, "As Beethoven said, ideas of a
divine nature come into being through the electric language
of music." Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827) was a German
composer, known for many great works of classical music.
I've been unable to confirm
Beethoven
saying anything as specific as this, but it seems to be
somewhat of an amalgam of things he said.
Page 36: Buckaroo says he modeled the Banzai Institute after
Yaddo,
in this case a kind of artists-colony-cum-think tank.
Page 36: Buckaroo believes in Bacon's Novum organum,
the Enlightenment project, and the Rousseauian argument that
human beings have traded their best and true nature for the
comforts of civilization.
Francis Bacon (1561-1626) was a renowned philosopher and
author. His
Novum organum
(full title, Novum Organum, sive Indicia Vera de
Interpretatione Naturae--New organon, or true
directions concerning the interpretation of nature) is a
treatise written in Latin that was published in 1620. The
"Enlightenment project," generally, simply refers to the
overall improvement of understanding of humanity through the
sciences in the Western world, originating in the 18th
Century. The
Rousseauian argument (from the political philosophy of
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, 1712-1778) regards the place of the
individual in society.
Page 36: Buckaroo says he believes
in something like the Buddhist notion of a living, vibrating
universe that permits absurdities and even contradictions.
Page 36: Merci beaucoup is French for "Thank you
very much."
Page 36: After Buckaroo's speech at the Academie, he is
asked what he found at the center of the Earth on his last
trip and the response is he found a stone left by the
Vikings. The attendees are wondering if he was kidding or
not. It was probably a joke on Buckaroo's part about how
Western historical research has found evidence that ancient
Viking explorations were wide-ranging indeed.
Page 37: Analysis of data from
NASA's Cassini probe and the Banzai Institute's own
Large-Array Observatory shows a radioactive planetoid of
unknown origin parked in one of Saturn's rings, since
confirmed by the
GRAPES-3 muon telescope in Ooty, India. This turns out,
later in the novel, to be the siege vessel Imperatrix
of the Black Lectroids.
Page 37: A number of French exclamations pepper this page.
"Vive la France et vive la vie, mes amis!" = "Long
live France and here's to life, my friends!" "Vive
Buckaroo Banzai!" = "Long live Buckaroo Banzai!"
"Vive les Hong Kong Cavaliers!" = "Long live the Hong
Kong Cavaliers!" "Garde le foi!" = "Keep the
faith!" "Vive la vie and vive la me,"
= "Here's to life and long life to me."
Page 38: Académiciensis French for "Academicians".
Chapter II: INTO EXILE
Page 39: The quote from Emperor Vespasian at the beginning
of this chapter is accurate. He was Roman emperor from 69-79
BCE.
Page 39: Reno describes the Imperatrix's hull as
being constructed partially of two elements unknown on Earth
which he calls adamantium and terrylium. "Adamantium" is a
fictitious metal alloy in Marvel Universe stories by Marvel
Comics. "Terrylium" is also the name of a copper-containing
alloy patented by the sports equipment manufacturer Scotty
Cameron.
Page 40: The empress' expeditionary force of elite fighters
aboard the Imperatrix are known as the Empress's
Own Household Stain Removers and Bug Exterminators."
Page 40: Non gratae is Latin for "not acceptable".
Page 40: Black Lectroids are made up of the Mottled Adders
and the Darklings.
Page 41: In telling the story of the Black Lectroids, Reno
mentions the mystical Photon Belt around the Pleiades. This
seems to be a reference to a pseudo-scientific or
eschatological theory that was spread around the apocalyptic
predictions of disaster in the year 2012. The Pleiades is a
star cluster about 400 light years away from Earth.
Page 41: The Black Lectroids conquered a noxious planet
called Re55a populated with "stick people" on the order of
praying mantises.
Page 43: The Virgin Empress of the Black Lectroids, John
Emdall, is also called the Divine Thunderpump and the True
Light of Heaven. John Whorfin has the title Red Hammer.
Page 43: Emdall allegedly has the theurgical power to
animate the inanimate, such as statues, rocks, and Mount
Wah-Wah the "talking mountain".
Page 46: Hymns sung by the Cubists include "At Home in the
Mountains of Ouibos" and "Saved by the Cube".
Page 46: Earth is one of the planets constituting the "green
belt" of the Milky Way galaxy. The term as used here may be
a play on the "green belt" designation of undeveloped wild
or agricultural land near urban areas for
preservation/conservation value.
Page 47: Lectroids are color blind.
Page 47: The Cubists aboard the
Imperatrix
are fans of Buckaroo's works and also fans of Bulldog Drummund
and Joe Friday.
Bulldog Drummund is a fictitious gentleman adventurer who
has appeared in printed media, stage, screen, and
television. Joe Friday is a fictitious detective of the Los
Angeles Police Department appearing in the radio and
television shows called Dragnet.
Page 48: Reno compares the resurrected John Whorfin among
the Red Lectroids as to Earth's own ancient gods Osiris,
Yeshua, and Raktabija. These are all beings from Earth
religions known for having been resurrected or duplicated.
Page 49: Empress John Emdall falls in love with Buckaroo and
is enraged at seeing video footage of him in the company of
Miss Universe (who was actually Tommy's love interest at the
time).
Miss
Universe is an international Earth beauty pageant hosted
annually, with the winner being crowned with the title of
Miss Universe for the next year.
Chapter III: LORD JOHN WHORFIN CALLING
Page 51: The quote from Francois Rabelais is from his
The Third Book of the Heroick Deeds and Sayings of the Good
Pantagruel, published in 1546. Rabelais was a French
writer, physician, and monk.
Page 51: Xan sends embossed invitations to a Yuletide and
Henry Shannon's birthday party rolled into one, to be held
at the Temple de la Gloire, the palace of Diana Mitford
Mosley in
Orsay. The magi Allan Kardec and the Mancunian
Manny Magdalene to be in attendance. The
Temple de la Gloire is an historic house near Paris built in
1800 for a war hero and later owned by the
fascist-sympathizing Mosley family during WWII. Manny
Magdalene is a fictitious figure as far as I can tell, said
here to be next in line to the WCL throne.
Page 51: Reno's explanation of the name "Xan" being a
variant of xian, meaning "enlightened immortal", is
essentially correct in Chinese.
Page 51: Reno confirms that Dr. Lizardo had been held at the
Home for the Criminally Insane in
Trenton, New
Jersey. This was also said in
Across the 8th Dimension
film and comic book adaptation, while the
Pinky Carruther's Unknown Facts subtitle track on the DVD,
called it the New Brunswick Home
for the Criminally Insane.
Page 52: Prima facie is
Latin for "at first sight".
Page 52:
Xan facilitated Lizardo's escape from the psychiatric
facility during the events of
Across the 8th Dimension.
Page 52: Grazie is Italian for "thank you".
Page 53: Xan receives a phone call that has been masked and
rerouted through British GCHQ and the French DGSE.
GCHQ is the
Government Communications Headquarters, an intelligence
and security organization of the United Kingdom.
DGSE is the
Directorate-General for External Security, France's
foreign intelligence agency.
Page 53: Xan's batman, Satrap, is a neutered former captain
of the shah's Persian Guard. A "batman" is a soldier who
acts as the personal valet to an officer. The "shah" refers
to the ruler of Iran. The last shah of Iran (at least in our
world) was Mohammad Reza Pahlavi before he was ousted in
1979 during the Iranian revolution. The shah's Persian Guard
was more commonly known as the Imperial Guard.
Page 54: The word "Styrofoam" is capitalized because it is
actually a brand name, even though the word has taken on a
genericized air in the public mind.
Page 54: Xan loathes digital devices, preferring rotary
phones and Swiss clocks.
Page 55: Xan suspects his caller might be on the terrorist
S-list. By "S-list", I think he is referring to "shit list".
Page 55: Xan sarcastically refers to the Lizardo/Whorfin
clone who calls him as Inspector Clouseau.
Inspector Clouseau is the fictional, bumbling French police
inspector in the Pink Panther franchise of films,
cartoons, and comic books.
Page 55: Xan wears a
Richard Mille wristwatch. This is a Swiss luxury brand
of watches.
Page 55: Xan mentions the Hayekian school's founding
principles of free markets and sound money. This refers to
the treatises of Austrian economist Friedrich Hayek
(1899-1992).
Page 56: The U.S. government has spread the story that
Lizardo's aircraft was shot down by the Air Force, not by
Buckaroo Banzai (in
Across the 8th Dimension).
Page 56: "Bon giorno, principessa," is Italian for
"Good morning, Princess."
Page 57: "Giusto, Mama," is Italian for "Right,
Mama."
Page 57: Whorfin refers to himself by the title "Emperor God
Lord John Whorfin, Trumpet of Heaven and Son of Soldier King
Lord John Shark Crab".
Page 57: Whorfin has been carrying the zygote union of
himself and Empress John Emdall in his body for about thirty
thousand years.
Page 57: Hearing that Whorfin is preggers, Xan remarks the
Lectroid must be on cloud nine. The term "cloud nine" is an
American idiom for being in a state of euphoria.
Page 58: Xan asks if Whorfin is having trouble with the CIA
or Uncle Sam. The CIA is the
Central
Intelligence Agency, one of the major intelligence
agencies of the United States government. Uncle Sam is a
common personification of the United States government.
Page 59: Xan asks if Whorfin is calling from Langley and the
George Bush Center for Intelligence. The
George Bush Center for Intelligence is the headquarters of
the CIA in Langley, Virginia. The headquarters did not get
the "George Bush" name until 1999, so that may help to date
the time of the novel, i.e. post-1999.
Page 59: Whorfin tells Xan that he misses his old boys John
Bigbooté, John Gomez, John O'Connor, John Cleanup, and John
Small Berries. All except John Cleanup were seen or
mentioned in
Across the 8th Dimension.
Page 60: Whorfin claims to have eight million Red Lectroid
commandos waiting on "Number 6 Moon" as well as Winged Lectroids
stuck in the 7th Dimension.
Page 60: Whorfin tells Xan he needs to get his red ass out
of Dodge. The phrase "get out of Dodge" is generally
attributed to the long-running (1955-1975) TV series
Gunsmoke, a Western set in Dodge City, Kansas.
Page 60: Whorfin complains that he's got no way out from
where's he's being held, like Napoleon on Elba. Napoleon
Bonaparte was the high general, First Consul, and Emperor of
France from 1799-1814. After he was overthrown by a
coalition of European countries, he was exiled to the
Mediterranean island of Elba, though he actually escaped it
after 11 months.
Page 60: Whorfin dreams of returning to Planet 10, roaming
with divine nymphs of Zalvoz up the slopes of Mount
Paradise.
Page 61: Beginning to get fed up with Whorfin's prattling on
the phone, Xan retorts, "Good grief, Charlie Brown, stick to
the outskirts of Funkytown."
"Good grief, Charlie Brown" refers to the Peanuts comic
strip by Charles M. Schulz which starred the character of
the boy named Charlie Brown who had "Good grief!" as his
catchphrase. "Funkytown" is the name of a chart-topping
disco song by Lipps Inc. in 1980.
Page 61: "Figlio di puttana!" is Italian for "Son
of a bitch!"
Page 62: "Buon appetito," is Italian for "Enjoy
your meal." "Per favore, holy Saint Jude,
apostolo e martire, grant my petizione..!" is
Italian for "Please, holy Saint Jude, apostle and martyr,
grant my petition..!"
Page 62: Xan tells Whorfin that on Earth people are judged
by their appearance and their smell, so his host, Lizardo,
should get a shave and haircut, be well attired, and wear
Florsheim wingtips.
Page 64: Xan tells Whorfin to fly like Superman or do the
old Tennessee long jump.
Superman, of course, is a flying superhero character
appearing in titles published by DC Comics. As far as I
know,
"Tennessee long jump" has no particular meaning as a phrase;
perhaps it's meant to be a metaphor for something like "jump
off a building."
Chapter IV: THE MYSTERIOUS "MR. FRENCH"
The chapter's opening quote, "Think and grow rich," by
Napoleon Hill is from his 1937 self-help book by that name.
Page 67: Mr. French has sent Xan a
Dr.
Grabow smoking pipe, favored by Xan.
Page 67: Xan remarks to Mr. French, "River deep, mountain
high." This a line from the chorus of the 1966 song of the
same name by Ike & Tina Turner.
Page 68: Mr. French alludes to spy drones, saying, "...our
secret Lawn Boy rover."
Lawn Boy
is an American manufacturer of lawn mowers.
Page 69: Xan has a tattoo on his left palm of a triangle
circumscribed inside a circle of esoteric symbols. I don't
know what this symbolizes, but a standard graphic of a
triangle circumscribed inside a circle represents serenity
and is often used in addiction recovery programs.
Page 69: When Xan's tattoo begins to glow and itch, he licks
it with his slithery, elongated tongue. He is also known to
use his tongue to moisten his eyes in the absence of tear
ducts.
Page 69: Joie de vivre is French for "joy of
living."
Page 69: Mr. French remarks to Xan, "I know you own all the
opium and emerald mines in Afghanistan and all the
Frankenstein corn in Nebraska." Afghanistan is the world's
largest producer of opium poppies and has a large number of
emerald mines. Frankenstein corn is genetically-modified
corn (usually to resist certain insect pests); Nebraska is a
major producer of corn.
Page 69: Xan invested $11,000 in Yoyodyne back in the day to
help Whorfin build his homecoming ship.
Page 69: Tiring of Mr. French, Xan remarks, "Into the valley
of death rode the six hundred...down the bunny trail." The
first part of his statement is from the 1854 narrative poem
"The Charge of the Light Brigade" by Alfred, Lord Tennyson.
The second part is a line from the 1949 children's Easter
song "Here Comes Peter Cottontail" by Steve Nelson and Jack
Rollins.
Page 70: When Xan's American caller gives the false name of
Antoine French, he claims to be the Marquis of Lincoln. This
is a false title, possibly a joking reference to the Mercury
Marquis automobile which was made with many of the same
parts used in the Lincoln Continental, both vehicles
manufactured by Ford Motor Company.
Page 70: When Xan calls out the caller on his false name,
the caller suggests calling him Amerigo Vespucci, the Duke
of Earl instead.
Amerigo Vespucci (1451-1512) was an Italian merchant and
explorer for whom the American continent was named. Vespucci
was not a duke of Earl, "Duke of Earl" being simply the
title of a 1961 song by Gene Chandler.
Page 71: Xan remarks that it sounds like Whorfin has more
lives than Felix the Cat.
Felix the Cat is a children's comedic cartoon character
created in 1919 for silent films, since going on to sound
films, television, books, and comics. A common myth about
cats is that they have nine lives.
Page 71: Mr. French tells Xan that Lizardo is dying of
advanced adenocarcinoma and gestational diabetes. Adenocarcinoma
is a type of cancerous tumor. Gestational diabetes is a sort
of pseudo-diabetes in which a woman develops high blood
sugar levels during pregnancy; this suggests that Lizardo's
body is suffering from the pregnancy of Whorfin. Possibly
the "cancerous tumor" is actually the egg/embryo of the
Lectroid baby.
Speaking of Whorfin's pregnancy, the comic book
story
"Tears of a Clone" Part
2 introduces Whorfin's already-existing son, Colonel
John Babyjesus!
Page 71: Xan makes a famous "Hole in Your Stomach" salsa.
Page 72: Mr. French's reference to a "directed ZQ photon
energy beam" in regards to the OSCILLATION OVERTHRUSTER may
be to the ZQ molecular Hamiltonian charge of the nucleus of
an atom, expressed as the equation: atomic number Z times q
(electrons' negative elementary charge).
Page 72: The Planck temperature of 1.41679 x 1032
Kelvin (otherwise known as Tp) is the temperature
at which the wavelength of light emitted by thermal
radiation reaches the Planck length.
Page 72: Mr. French claims to know something about Xan's
ancient feud with Buckaroo Banzai, having to do with the
Pythagorean theorem and the value of the hypotenuse. The
Pythagorean theorem states that in a right triangle, the
square of the area of the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of
squares of the area of the other two sides, a2 +
b2 = c2. It's hard to see how this
proven theorem commonly known in high school math could be
the cause of the friction between the two great men and/or
their families.
Page 73: Mr. French remarks that he could spend the rest of
his life in the Iron Bar Hotel just for speaking to Xan. "Iron
Bar Hotel" is a slang expression for "prison".
Page 74: A Lasiq is an Ismaili term for adherent who swears
a special oath to their leader. The Secret Order of
Assassins is one of the titles sometimes used for Nizari
Ismailism, extant during the Medieval era in Persia and
Syria.
Xan's Lasiq, Contreras, is said to have taken a swan
dive into the
Panama Canal and failed to come back up.
Page 74: The more formal name for the World Crime League
within the organization is the Transnational Interlocking
Directorate.
Page 74: A favorite poet of both Buckaroo and Xan is Du Fu.
Du Fu (712-770) was a Chinese poet of the Tang dynasty. The
alleged Du Fu quote used here is fictitious as far as I can
tell.
Page 75: The Furies are deities in ancient Greek mythology
who take vengeance on mortals. The Fates were part of many
European pantheistic religions, usually depicted as a trio
of women, who would take a hand in the destiny of all
humans.
Page 75: Xan keeps an apartment in the
Shepheard Hotel in
Cairo,
and an underground mansion in
Petra.
Page 75: Ma'rib is a small ancient city of Yemen.
Page 75: The "salt trek" across the Himalayas refers to the
former route for salt and silk along the Himalayan Mountains
through Bhutan and Nepal.
Page 75:
Marseille is a large city in France.
Page 76: Xan receives a package containing a crude clay
model of an
OSCILLATION OVERTHRUSTER and numerous pages of invention
designs, including a Nitro-fueled
La-Z-Boy
recliner. The box also includes some gift baskets buried
under crumpled pages of the
Las
Vegas Review-Journal.
Page 76: Xan says, "Tant pis" upon examining the
contents of the box.
Tant pis is
French for "so much the worse". The term is used again by
Xan on page 90.
Page 77: Xan believes there are
aliens of various denominations living among humans on
Earth. He also believes he may be an alien himself.
Page 77:
Benzedrine is a brand name of amphetamine, a central nervous
system stimulant.
Pages 77-78: Xan is dressed by his attendants in
Charlemagne's seamless robe of Christ and he carries a
gnarled walking stick said to be carved from the true cross
passed down from Constantine and his mother, Saint Helena.
The stick is also adorned with Xan's own addition of a
desiccated stingray tail said to possess magical
properties. Charlemagne was emperor of the Carolingian
Empire from 800-814 AD. Charlemagne received the supposed
robe of Christ from the Empress Irene of the Eastern Roman
Empire around the year 800 (the robe, now in pieces, is
currently kept at the Benedictine church in the commune of
Argenteuil in Paris). The True Cross is the Roman cross on
which Jesus was crucified; many wooden relics that are
claimed to be made of part of the True Cross are known
throughout Europe and the Middle East, but none are a walking
stick as far as I am aware. The tail of a live stingray can
deliver venom to an assailant; in some magical traditions, a
stingray tail is a deterrent against ghosts, witches, and
other supernatural entities.
Page 78: The caroling Death Dwarves here are eunuchs and are
tattooed chin to wrist. Is this true of all of Xan's Death
Dwarves?
Page 78: As Xan enters the ballroom and tosses handfuls of
hundred-dollar bills to the throng, the people chant, "It's
a holly jolly Christmas!" This line is a slightly altered
version of the main lyric of the 1964 Johnny Marks song "A
Holly Jolly Christmas".
Chapter V: A COURT MASQUE
The quote from Robert Lowell at the beginning of the chapter
is from his 1973 poem "Death of Alexander" about Alexander
the Great.
Page 79: Astor Place is a street and neighborhood in
Manhattan.
Page 80: A via ferrata is a protected climbing
route.
Page 80: Penny sees an inflatable Père Noël in the
underground chamber of Xan's hideout. Père Noël is French
for "Father Christmas".
Page 81: The crowd in Xan's underground chamber were mostly
men, "...but no small number were women and others of
indeterminate biology and even the odd android."
Page 82: According to Xan, he and Penny had both been gods
and lovers in previous lives.
Page 82: Xan calls Penny names other than Penny, such as
Alisa, Pallas, Pulcherie, Mother Mara the Temptress, Little
Pousie, and Bon-Bon. Many of these are names related to
goddesses, nobility, or beauty. "Little Pousie" and
"Bon-Bon" may just be pet names.
Page 83: Xan tells Penny he's loved her since a winter in
Mongolia when he took her by his right of de jambage.
De jambage is a French term for
"right of the lord", the right of a feudal lord to have a
night with any woman of his choice.
Page 83: Xan claims to Penny that he has been a son of Zeus,
an incarnation of Vishnu, the First Adam, and a pre-Adamic
man and that he had sacrificed his divinity to become flesh.
Zeus was the king of the Greek gods, who had many sons and
daughters.
Vishnu is one of the three supreme gods of Hinduism. Adam
was the first human, whose mate was the first woman, Eve, according to the Book of Genesis.
Page 83: Xan is described as having paranormal talents, like
the snake in the Garden. This refers to the snake (devil) in
the Garden of Eden in the Bible.
Page 83: Xan opens the Saturnalia festivities with "Friends,
Romans, countrymen..." This is from a speech by Marc Antony
in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar.
Saturnalia was an ancient Roman holiday and festival in
honor of the god Saturn (Saturnus)featuring the exchange of
gifts.
Page 85: Xan's reference to
"Erlik the Mongolian" may be to Erlik, the Mongolian
(Turkic) god of death.
Page 87: Assez is French for "enough".
Page 87: Xan's followers refer to him as Dionysus, Rider of
the Clouds and Spigot of Honey. Dionysus was one of the
Greek gods who also had these two epithets sometimes applied
to him.
Page 87: Xan refers to his followers as guizu and
jiangjun as he orders them to flog themselves.
These two words are Chinese for "noble" and "general",
respectively.
Page 88: Sanctus is Latin for "holy".
Page 88: Delegato is Spanish for "delegate".
Pages 88-89: Xan points out to Penny representatives from
many organizations all over the world present at his
Saturnalia. They are all real world groups in one form or
another.
Page 89: à
mort is French for "to death".
Page 89: Dynamis is Latin for "dynamics".
Page 89: Pourquoi is French for "why".
Page 90: Mes enfants is French for "my children".
Page 90: Pai pai shou is Chinese for "clap hands".
Page 91: Secretum is Latin for "privacy".
Page 91: Xan says to Penny, "Vive l'amour! Sanctus,
santus, sanctus..." This is a mix of French and Latin
for "Long live love! Holy, holy, holy..."
Chapter VI: AN UNCLEAN SPIRIT
The quote opening this chapter is from the Book of Mark in
the Bible.
This chapter describes a bizarre incident taking place at
Nellis
Air Force Base in Nevada. This base lies near the
infamous Area 51 within the Nevada Test and Training Range,
a highly-restricted U.S. Air Force testing facility
suspected by some of harboring the remains of crashed UFOs.
Page 93: Abbot Costello rides a vintage Stingray bicycle.
The String Ray is a model of bicycle offered by Schwinn
Bicycle Company.
Page 94: Abbot Costello describes himself as a Paraclete.
This is a term meaning "advocate". In the case of a
Franciscan abbot, this would mean an advocate for God.
Page 94: NCO stands for "non-commissioned officer".
Page 94: Abbot Costello tells the Air Force officers he came
from Route 66 and one of the officers asks, "The devil's
highway?" Route 66 is one of the first highways established
in the U.S. highway system and runs from Chicago, Illinois
to Los Angeles, California. The officer's question about the
"devil's highway" is a reference to Route 666, which ran
through Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, and Utah and attained
the nickname "the devil's highway" due to its "666" number
that is said to be the Number of the Beast in the Christian
Bible. However, the highway was renamed to Route
491 in 2003, mostly due to the costly theft of "Route 666"
road signs!
Page 94: DOD stands for "Department of Defense", as in the
United
States Department of Defense.
Page 94: The staff car driven by Captain Bowers is a Ford
Crown Victoria Police Interceptor. This is a model of the
Ford Crown Victoria specially designed for law enforcement,
manufactured from 1992-2013.
Page 95: In the staff car, Abbot Costello is driven past
distant burn pits within Area 51. The burn pits exist there
in the real world as well, as places to destroy
non-functional or obsolete secret technology, even becoming
the target of an environmental lawsuit in 1994.
Wing Commander Wagoneer remarks that the pits are
like something out of Dante's Inferno. This
is a reference to a portion of the classic 14th century epic
poem The
Divine Comedy by
Dante Alighieri.
Page 96: Wagoneer has a pet
Chihuahua whom he believes is able to make predictions of
events before they happen. The dog is named Nostradamus.
Nostradamus was the name of French astrologer and seer who
published a book of prophecies written in poetic quatrains
in 1555, which many people since believe have come true.
Page 96: Wagoneer has heard that Abbot Costello is able to
cast out demons in nomine Dei.
In nomine Dei
is Latin for "In the name of God."
Page 96: Non e vero is Latin for "is it not true".
Page 96: Wagoneer lights a hand-rolled cigarette and squints
through mejideh tobacco smoke. I have been unable
to determine what
mejideh means.
Page 96: Wagoneer says he attended the
University of
Oklahoma and
Oral Roberts
University.
Page 97: Wagoneer says he knows his way around the language
of Cicero.
Cicero (106-43 BCE) was a Roman statesman and philosopher
known for his writings and oratory skills.
Page 97: Wagoneer tells Abbot Costello, "...life's a bitch
and then marry one, hermano."
Hermano
is Spanish for "brother".
Page 97: Clearly not in his right mind, Wagoneer states to
Abbot Costello he heard, "...you exorcised the whole
Carpathian Forest, including vampires..." The
Carpathian Forest is the forest on the slopes of the
Carpathian Mountains, which run in sort of a backwards
C-shape from the eastern Czech Republic to Serbia.
Page 97: Abbot Costello asks Wagoneer, "You are sick man?
Pazzo?"
Pazzo
is Italian for "crazy".
Page 97: Wagoneer makes a passing reference to King Kong.
King Kong, of course, is the gigantic ape who's appeared in
a number of films and other media since his debut in the
classic 1933 film King Kong.
Page 98: Wagoneer asks Abbot Costello about his
accommodations at the Ramadan Inn. He means to say the
Ramada Inn, a chain of American hotels. "Ramadan" is the
ninth month of the Islamic calendar, a time of fasting,
prayer, and reflection in the Muslim community.
Page 98: Abbot Costello seems to cherish a
Jack in
the Box antenna ball he keeps within his vestments.
Page 98: Molto bene is Italian for "very nice".
Page 99: Dr. Lizardo's code name as an internee at Area 51
is Desert Lizard.
Page 99: Wagoneer tells Abbot Costello to focus on what he's
about to tell him, "For Jesus and Garibaldi."
Garibaldi likely refers to Giuseppe Garibaldi (1807-1882),
an Italian general considered one of the fathers of the
fatherland.
Page 100: Wagoneer refers to Desert Lizard as a cold-blooded
Cinderella.
In many versions of the classic folk tale of Cinderella,
the young woman by that name must be home by midnight when
the magically created ballroom gown she wears for the
evening will turn back into her native rags.
Page 101: Wagoneer remarks that
Desert Lizard "...lost his map to the Lost Dutchman's mine,
and he's been sitting on his pity potty ever since..." The
Lost Dutchman's mine is a legend of a lost gold mine in the
Arizona desert. "Pity potty" is a slang phrase for someone
who is feeling sorry for themselves and also maybe trying
to engender a feeling of pity among others to do things for
them.
Page 102: Dr. Emilio Lizardo's middle name is Lazaro.
Page 102: Abbot Costello recalls that when he was in grade
school, the name "Lizardo" came to mean someone who belonged
in a nut house.
Page 102: Specchietto is Italian for "mirror" and
carbone is Italian for "coal".
Page 102: Abbot Costello tells Wagoneer he needs a stick of
goat butter or
Crisco.
Page 103: "Come ti chiami?" is Italian for "What is
your name?"
Page 103: "Per Dio, italiano?! Sono Emilio, paesano..."
is Italian for "By God, Italian?! I'm Emilio, a villager..."
Page 103: Zitto and delegato are Italian
for "shut up" and "delegate", respectively.
Page 103: Abbot Costello uses the phrase "lie down in grassy
pastures." This is a line from Psalm 23:2 in the Bible.
Page 105: Diaboli is Latin for "devil".
Page 105: "Vergogna! Porca Madonna!" is Italian for
"Shame! Holy shit!"
Page 105: "...stupido!...Insubordinato carogna...alto le
mani!" is Italian for "... stupid! ... Insubordinate
carrion ... hands up!"
Page 106: As Abbot Costello attempts to exorcise Whorfin
from Lizardo's body, he thinks he has not felt the presence
of such a powerful demon since casting out the spirit of
Herod Antipas from a Norwegian boy several months ago.
Herod Antipas was the ruler of Galilee and Pereus 4 BCE - 39
AD. He is known for his role in the deaths of John the
Baptist and Jesus.
Page 106: As the pain of the exorcism continues, Lizardo
calls Abbot Costello, "Motherphawkin' son of Rome!"
Rome
is the home of the independent nation of
Vatican City, the headquarters of the Catholic Church.
Page 107: Poverino and famiglia are
Italian for "poor thing" and "family", respectively.
Page 107: "In nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti..."
is Latin for "In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and
of the Holy Spirit..."
Page 107: "Carogna! Figlio di puttana...!" is
Italian for "You bastard! Son of a bitch ...!"
Page 108: Dominus vobiscum and Cazzo are
Latin and Italian for "the Lord be with you" and "fuck",
respectively.
Page 108: "Basta, diavolo!" is Italian for "Enough,
devil!"
Page 108: Wagoneer sees the Lectroid face of Whorfin during
the exorcism and thinks he discerns the Hindu god Shiva.
Like Vishnu, Shiva
is one of the three supreme gods of Hinduism.
Page 108: As Whorfin begins to emerge from Lizardo, Wagoneer
exclaims, "Looks like Popeye ate his spinach!" This refers
to Popeye, a comic strip and cartoon character known to eat
spinach to dramatically increase his strength at opportune
moments.
Wagoneer continues on to say, "Now I am become
death, the destroyer of worlds..." This is a quote by Vishnu
in the Bhagavad Gita, a lengthy verse of Hindu
scripture from the 1st millennium BCE.
Page 109: Santo Dio is Italian for "Holy God".
Page 109: As Whorfin emerges, a suppressed heresy Abbot
Costello once read pushes into his thoughts, "'Jesus,
have we no Father?' And Jesus answered him in tears, saying,
'We are orphans all. We have no Father.'" This is from
the German novel Siebenkas by Jean Paul, published
in three volumes in 1796-97, and a section of it titled
"Speech of the Dead Christ from the Universe that There Is
No God".
Page 109: Wagoneer reasons that the Joint Chiefs will be
alerted to what has happened with Desert Lizard. The Joint
Chiefs are senior members of the U.S. Department of Defense
who advise the President and Secretary of Defense.
Page 109: Wagoneer worries that he will be demoted with no
pension and no
Winnebago
to tour the country.
Page 110: Wagoneer hears the voice of Lizardo gurgling in
the distance, "Pezzo di merda! Arrivederci, Roma!"
This is Italian for "Piece of shit! Goodbye, Rome!"
Chapter VII: PHYSCIAN, HEAL THYSELF
The title of this chapter is an ancient proverb from the
Bible, Luke 4:23.
The quote that opens the chapter is from Pen-chi's
Questions and Answers. Pen-chi was one of the two
founders of the Ts'ao-tung school Chinese Ch'an (Zen)
Buddhism.
Page 111: Reno implies that a Buckaroo Banzai series of
books has been published by
Penguin
Books. In the real world, there has been only the
novelization of
Across the 8th Dimension,
published in two editions by Pocket Books, and this novel,
published by Dark Horse.
Page 111: Buckaroo has occasionally altered his famous
assertion, "The only reason for time is so everything
doesn't happen all at once," to
"The only reason for the illusory concept of time is so
everything doesn't seem to happen all at once."
Page 113: The Banzai Institute is near Fort Defiance. Fort
Defiance lies in the Navajo Nation in Arizona.
Page 113: The Jet Car II is a twin-burner 1977
Dodge
Power Wagon.
Page 114: It is stated that Rawhide has
been "dead these many years but hardly forgotten." Rawhide
was "killed" by a Lectroid barb in
Across the 8th Dimension,
suggesting this story takes place "many years" after the
events of that film. However, the Pinky Carruther's Unknown
Facts subtitle track on the film's DVD states:
|
Contrary to popular belief, Rawhide is not dead. While he is
not 'with us' in the sense of daily camaraderie, neither is
he a lost cause. Following his descent into coma, he was
placed in medical stasis, his metabolic rate slowed to a
nearly imperceptible level (also known as being put 'on
ice.') An entire wing of the Institute was dedicated to
finding a cure for the deadly Lectroid barb, the best men in
their fields working around the clock. Only now we do we
feel confident to announce that an antidote is indeed nearly
at hand, and we expect our fallen comrade to rejoin our
ranks shortly (his modified Trans-Am is still in his parking
space and his favorite book, The
Compleat Angler,
is still on his dresser where he left it). |
Did Rawhide die in the meantime, awaiting the cure?
Page 114: Two singing cowboys of the silver screen, Gene
Autry and Pedro Infante appear in Buckaroo's dream. Autry
(1907-1998) was an American actor, singer, and songwriter.
Infante (1917-1957) was a Mexican ranchera singer and actor.
Page 116: In his dream, Buckaroo thinks about checking the
Jake brake on the Jet Car. A Jake brake is a special engine
braking mechanism on some diesel motors.
Page 118: In Buckaroo's dream, the Jet Car's dashboard
lights flash and the EPIRB goes haywire.
EPIRB stands for "emergency position-indicating radio
beacon".
|
Page 118: The five-speed shifter lever in the Jet Car has a
caduceus snake emblem on it. The caduceus was the rod
carried by the god Hermes in Greek mythology and is often
used as an emblem in commerce and negotiation, with the two
snakes on the pole representing balance. Occasionally, it is
also used by medical organizations, though the traditional
emblem for medicine is the similar Rod of Asclepius, with
just one snake. It would seem like the medical usage was
most likely Buckaroo's intention. |
 |
 |
| Caduceus |
Rod of Asclepius |
Page 118: In his Jet Car dream, Buckaroo worries about the Nitto
Grapplers and Mopar microchannel plate detector and bell
housings.
Nitto Grapplers are a brand and model of tires made by
Toyo Tires.
Mopar is the parts, service, and customer care division of
Fiat Chrysler Automobiles, including the Dodge brand.
Page 119: Buckaroo thinks of the
8th Dimension as "the dark realm of nigredo, phobias,
hopelessness, and horrors beyond words, where there is no
before or after."
"Nigredo" is an alchemical term for putrefaction or
decomposition. It has also become a psychoanalytical
metaphor for "the dark knight of the soul" or facing the
shadow within. Buckaroo may be using the term in both senses
here.
Page 119: Q-beams are bright LED spotlights.
Steve Mattson points out: "Buckaroo’s dream is similar
to the one portrayed in
"Return of the Screw"
including; driving the Jet Car to the hospital to operate on
Penny, Xan’s red eyes, and the caduceus on the gear shift
knob."
Page 120: The song being sung by Team Banzai is the 1942
song "Jingle Jangle Jingle" written by Joseph J. Lilley and
Frank Loesser. The aforementioned Gene Autry did a popular
version of it.
Page 120: Team Banzai approaches Cochise Draw near the
Superstition Mountains. The Superstition Mountains lie east
of Phoenix, AZ. Reno's description of it as "where many a
miner has struck near pay dirt" is accurate, as these
mountains are where the previously mentioned Lost Dutchman's
gold mine was said to be located.
The story seems to imply that the Superstition
Mountains are within close horseriding distance of the
Navaho Nation, but the two are separated by over 100 miles.
Page 120: Team Banzai jokes that the desert where they were
riding was "hotter than the midday Venusian sun." The planet
Venus has the hottest surface of any planet in the solar
system, with a mean temperature of 867 °F.
Page 120: Pecos rides a Spanish barb horse. A Spanish barb
is a horse that is a direct descendant of the original
horses brought to the American continents from Spain.
Page 121: The new Institute resident called Li'l Daughter of
the Rhine is a Fellow of the
Max Planck
Institute in
Düsseldorf. Since Reno says that her institute is in
Düsseldorf, she is probably from the
Max Planck
Institute for Iron Research, which is located there.
Page 121: The delirious Buckaroo seems to mumble "Save the
desert salamander." The desert slender salamander is an
actual endangered species. It's possible that Buckaroo's
delusion is precognition of his saving of the Lectroid
embryo near the end of the novel.
Page 121: Mein gott is German for "my god".
Page 122: Buckaroo is riding his piebald horse, Buttermilk.
But it says the horse used to be Penny's. He had a horse by
this name in
"Christmas Corral" and
also as a boy in "A
Tomb With a View".
Page 122: On the desert ride,
Buckaroo picked some ch'oxo plant and stashed it in
his boot. I have not been able to find a plant by that name.
Page 123:
The Jet Car accident that resulted in the death of Penny is
said to have occurred over the foothills of the Himalayas.
Page 123: Buckaroo asks for some
Alka-Seltzer and Tommy provides him two from a vintage
Pez
dispenser. It seems to me your typical Pez dispenser would
not hold a full size Alka-Seltzer tablet.
Page 124: The Banzai Institute sits on
27,000 acres.
Page 124: A number of previously
unseen members of Team Banzai are present during the desert
campout. Some of the names are plays on words or other
names.
- Colorado Belle may be named
for the famous "riverboat" casino by that name in
Laughlin, Nevada.
- Lonely Ranger's name comes
from the western radio and television character, the
Lone Ranger.
- Papa Bear's name comes from
the Papa Bear character in the children's fairy tale
"Goldilocks and the Three Bears".
- Señor Dentista's name is
Spanish for "Mister Dentist".
- Pilgrim Woman may have
obtained her name from the 1579 Italian play The
Pilgrim Woman by Girolamo Bargagli.
- Lakota Sue is a play on the
name of the Lakota Sioux tribe of Native Americans.
- "Talla 12 de Pantalon" is
Spanish for "size 12 pants".
- Buffalo Gal may be named for
the 1844 traditional American song "Buffalo Gals" by
John Hodges.
- Jolly Rancher is named for the
brand of fruit flavored candies.
- Webmaster Jhonny Appleseed's
name is based on the nickname of Johnny Appleseed
attained by American nurseryman John Chapman, who
planted apple trees throughout wide areas of
Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois and Ontario, as
well as the northern counties of present-day West
Virginia.
|
Page 125: Buckaroo heads to the remuda
to massage down Buttermilk. A remuda is a herd of horses
from which ranch hands pick their horses.
Page 126: Reno remarks that, like many
towering intellects such as Einstein, Buckaroo is remarkable
for his simplicity and trustfulness. Einstein, of course, is
a reference to Albert Einstein (1879-1955), the renowned
theoretical physicist who developed the theory of relativity
in physics. Einstein is depicted as a colleague of
Buckaroo's father in
"A Tomb With a View".
Page 127:
Buckaroo tells his team he doesn't think he's had a good
night's sleep since he left the ICU in Bhutan and Li'l
Daughter remarks that that was months ago. Presumably, this
refers to the Jet Car crash in Bhutan that took Penny's life
and put him in the hospital, implying it's been less than a
year since his marriage to Penny and her subsequent death,
but page 29 states it has been 18 months.
ICU is short for "intensive care unit".
Chapter VIII: WHEN DUTY SUMMONS
The opening quote of this chapter is an actual one by
Nietzsche from his 1873 essay "On Truth and Lies in a
Nonmoral Sense."
Page 129: Buckaroo describes his dream (possibly a repressed
memory of an accidental foray into the 7th Dimension), in
which he found himself at
Columbia-Presbyterian Hospital.
Page 130: In his dream, Buckaroo saw the leg of a Raggedy
Ann doll protruding from a large bowl of chopped lettuce.
Raggedy Ann and Andy were ragdolls and characters in a
series of children's books created by American writer Johnny
Gruelle beginning in 1915.
Page 130: In his dream, someone hands Buckaroo a
Garden Weasel.
Page 130: Buckaroo refers to Professor Hikita as
"Hikita-sama". Sama is a Japanese honorific,
generally used for someone who is of a higher rank than the
speaker or for someone the speaker greatly admires.
Page 131: Lonely Ranger made a fortune on Wall Street before
joining the Institute.
Page 132: Buckaroo paraphrases Feynman as saying, "if you
think you understand the quantum, you don't understand it,
in the same way that 'the Tao that can be spoken is not the
real Tao...'" Buckaroo is speaking of American theoretical
physicist Richard Feynman (1918-1988), who once said, “I
think I can safely say that nobody understands quantum
mechanics." The quote about Tao is from Lao Tzu, the founder
of philosophical Taoism in the 5th Century BCE.
Page 132: Reno points out the laws of noncontradiction, the
excluded middle, and identity. These are laws of logic
pondered by the Ancient Greek philosophers, particularly
Plato.
Page 132: Reno vaguely recalls something about famous last
words and wallpaper. Oscar Wilde's last words before he died
in 1900 are alleged to be "This wallpaper and I are fighting
a duel to the death. Either it goes or I do."
Page 133: Li'l Daughter remarks that we live in the Fourth
Dimension, the Welterfahrendesleben.
Welterfahrendesleben is a term for "life experiencing
the world" coined by German philosopher and mathematician
Edmund Husserl.
Page 133: Li'l Daughter asks how many dimensions are in the
universe and Buckaroo answers, "Eleven, as far as I know..."
Physicists say that superstring theory posits ten definite
dimensions of the universe, plus a possible eleventh.
Page 134: Jhonny talks about a pessimistic recurring dream
he's been having about his own death, prefacing it with,
"Not to be Chicken Little..." Chicken Little is a character
in a European folk tale about a chicken who believes the
world is coming to an end when an acorn falls on his head,
causing him to think the sky is falling.
Page 134: In the dream Buckaroo talks about, he walks out
onto a stage in the
Roman Coliseum.
Page 135: According to Reno, former Banzai Institute
resident
Muscatine "Magnum" Wu may be the best bluegrass lutist and
banjo player who ever lived.
Page 135: Colorado Belle is a "tatted beauty".
Page 136: The Hong Kong Cavaliers may give another command
performance at Buckingham Palace during their upcoming
European tour.
Buckingham Palace is the official residence of the
British king/queen.
Page 136: The current postmaster general is
Postmaster General Mantooth, a.k.a. Rainbow Trout. Mantooth
is a fictitious holder of this post.
Page 136: Buckaroo and President
Monroe recently had a falling-out over the something to do
with the
World Health Organization.
Page 136-137: Red Jordan carries a
Smith &
Wesson 500 to investigate a disturbance near the camp
site. Pecos carries a
Heckler & Koch machine pistol.
Page 137: As a black helicopter with
dimmed running lights approaches the camp site, Tommy
conjectures whether it might be the
Drug
Enforcement Administration or
U.S.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Page 137: Captain Jackson is a member
of the
160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment, nicknamed
the Night Stalkers. They are based in Kentucky as implied on
page 138.
Page 138: C-in-C is short for
"Commander-in-Chief."
Page 139: Pecos is alleged to have
been raised by wild hyenas on a diet of raw meat and roots.
Page 139: Reno carries a
Winchester rapid-action pump.
Page 139: Captain Jackson tosses Reno
a ration of peanuts and a Go Fast energy drink, bearing a
likeness of Pope Innocent the Mercator under the legend
BOTTLED AT THE RIVER JORDAN, CARBONATED.
Go Fast is
a real world brand of energy drink produced in several
varieties, but they do not have one endorsed by the pope or
bottled at the River Jordan. The River Jordan is a river in
the Middle East holding a prominent place in the religious
history of Judaism and Christianity, bordered on the east by
Jordan and Golan Heights and on the west by the West Bank
and Israel. Pope Innocent the Mercator is a fictitious pope.
Page 139: Buckaroo and the Cavaliers
are being taken to
Washington D.C. to meet with the president.
Page 140: Reno says, "To sleep,
perchance to dream..."
This is a quote from William Shakespeare's Hamlet.
Chapter IX: A THREAT FROM THE DEEP SKY
The opening quote of this chapter is an actual one by
American cultural anthropologist Margaret Mead (1901-1978).
Page 143:
Samsonite is an American luggage manufacturer.
Page 144: The black helicopter lands at Andrews Base, then
Buckaroo and crew are driven to the rendezvous with the
president. Andrews Base refers to
Joint Base
Andrews near Washington D.C.
Page 145: ATF is short for
Bureau of
Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.
Page 145: The Banzai Institute has learned that the Pentagon
tried to hack into its networks and was sneaking spies in to
steal the plans for the Jet Car and the OSCILLATION
OVERTHRUSTER. The Pentagon is the headquarters of the U.S.
Department of Defense.
Page 145: A knockoff OSCILLATION OVERTHRUSTER was found for
sale in a Spanish bazaar a while back.
Page 147: During the drive to White House, Buckaroo watches
a Japanese baseball game between the Giants and Hiroshima on
his mobile. The players Naruta and Otagiri are mentioned.
The teams would be the
Yomiuri
Giants and
Hiroshima
Toyo Carp of the Nippon Professional Baseball league. As
far as I can tell, Naruta and Otagiri are fictitious
players. The
White
House is the official home of the U.S. president.
Page 609 reveals that Buckaroo's family had a summer
home in
Hiroshima when he was a child.
Page 147: Buckaroo receives a message from the Secretariat
of Nova Police. According to the novelization of
Across the 8th Dimension,
the Nova Police
are essentially the
Interpol of Planet 10.
Page 148: The Secretariat informs
Buckaroo that a war party of several million mottled
ringneck strike-master Lectroids are on the way to Earth to
arrest Whorfin.
Page 150: Buckaroo speculates that
Empress John Emdall has fallen into a Thucydides trap and
envisioning Whorfin as Hitler, Jesus Christ, and Harry
Houdini all rolled into one. A Thucydides trap is a tendency
towards war when an emerging power threatens an existing
great power. Adolf Hitler, of course, was the evil
Chancellor of Germany 1934-1945, during WWII.
Jesus Christ was a first-century Jewish preacher who became
the central figure of Christianity, whom later Christians
believe was the son of God. Harry Houdini was a renowned
Hungarian-American escape artist and stunt performer in the
early 20th Century.
Page 151: Li'l Daughter's remark
that 51.5 is the incline angle of the Great Pyramid at Giza
is correct.
Page 152: When Buckaroo reminds
everyone that New Jersey's uncle Ira managed to retrieve a
piece of Lectroid tissue that landed on his patio when
Whorfin's ship was destroyed by Buckaroo (in
Across the 8th Dimension),
Li'l Daughter exclaims, "How in the Sam Hill..?" "Sam Hill"
is an euphemism for "the devil" or "Hell".
Page 153: After finding the alien
tissue, Uncle Ira (a medical professional like New Jersey)
notified the
U.S. Health Department. After this, Ira found himself
being tailed and wiretapped, so he finally decided to accept an
invitation from the
Vienna Boys'
Choir to become its musical director.
Page 153 puts a new spin on the
Orson Welles radio broadcast of War of the Worlds
on Halloween 1938. In
Across the 8th Dimension,
it was explained that the dramatic broadcast,
which frightened some listeners into believing an actual
Martian invasion was taking place, was actually an aborted
Lectroid invasion. Now, Pecos explains to Li'l Daughter that
Welles was a traitor to our planet, for he created the radio
show in order to cover over the smuggling of Red Lectroids
from the 8th Dimension as part of a deal he'd made with
Hanoi Xan for funding of his first movie Citizen Kane.
Citizen Kane (1941) is considered by many critics
to be the best film ever made. (At the end of the
Across the 8th Dimension
novelization is printed a letter from the agent of Orson
Welles, in which the famous actor/director denies any
collusion with aliens to hide their arrival in Grover's
Mills.)
Page 155: Reno writes that
"Progress Over Protocol" was the Cavaliers' mantra. It was
also the title of one the band's albums according to the
special features on the
Across the 8th Dimension
DVD.
Page 155-156: Buckaroo and team
make plans to send out a photo of Lizardo for all Blue
Blazes to be on the lookout for him and to scour every
police blotter "from here to Timbuktu." Timbuktu is a city
in Mali. The name of the city has long been used as a
metaphor for "the middle of nowhere."
Page 156: Lizardo likes expensive
clothes from the 1930s.
Chapter X: A SECRET PRISONER
The opening quote of this chapter is a real world one, but
the man's name is Lavrentiy Beria, not "Beri". Beria
(1899-1953) was a Soviet politician.
Page 157: The Smithsonian Castle is the nickname of the
administrative offices and information center of the
Smithsonian
Institution. St. Anthony Hall is a fraternity with
chapters in eleven eastern universities. As far as I can
find, there is no secret room in the Smithsonian Castle for
members of the fraternity; I walked around all day looking
for it.
Page 157: "Pinkerton men" are security forces hired out by
the
Pinkerton agency.
Page 159: The Defense Department and FBI originally secured
the crash site of Whorfin's ship after it crashed in New
Jersey at the end of
Across the 8th Dimension.
The FBI is the United States
Federal Bureau of
Investigation.
Page 162: General Wagoneer's cafeteria dinner plate holds a
wilted piece of lettuce in a soupy brew of gravy and crimson
Jell-O.
Page 162: When Buckaroo enters Wagoneer's holding cell with
some chicken tenders, Wagoneer perks up and asks, "Chicken?
Is that the Colonel I smell?" "The Colonel" is a reference
to Colonel Sanders, the brand ambassador character for the
fast food chain
Kentucky
Fried Chicken.
Page 163: Buckaroo tells Wagoneer he's there simply as a
physician, at the request of psych services and Wagoneer's
primary care provider, Dr. J—." The first letter followed by
a long dash is a long-time style choice in printed
literature when concealing the name of a "real" person for
privacy reasons.
Page 163: Buckaroo suggests to Wagoneer that maybe he's
really there to do a prison album like Johnny Cash. Johnny
Cash (1932-2003) was an American singer/songwriter. He
performed a number of concerts at prisons, some of which
were recorded and released as live albums.
Page 164: Wagoneer apologizes to Buckaroo for the dirty
state of his cell, saying he won't be getting any
Mr.
Clean awards.
Page 164: Wagoneer asks about his Chihuahua, Nostradamus,
saying the dog saw what would happen to Wagoneer, as also
foretold in the Book of Famous Amos. Wagoneer seems to be
referring to the Book of Amos, a part of the Old Testament
that tells of prophecies by Amos, one of the Twelve Minor
Prophets. "Famous
Amos" is a brand of cookies founded by Wally Amos in
1975.
Page 165: Wagoneer claims that half his ancestors were sent
to the Tower of London.
The Tower
of London is a castle on the bank of the
River Thames in London that served as a prison from
1100-1952.
Page 165:
Wagoneer claims to have seen Professor Hikita in his cell
just yesterday. Buckaroo is skeptical considering Hikita is
dead. But Buckaroo will see what seems to the spirit of the
professor later in the novel.
Page 165: Wagoneer says he has
PTSD. PTSD is short for post-traumatic stress disorder.
Page 166: Wagoneer complains the Bill of Rights is as
"useless as tits on a bull."
The U.S. Bill of Rights is the collective term for the first
10 amendments to the Constitution.
Page 166: Buckaroo's Go-Phone has
an app on it called Doc-in-a-Box featuring a slew of
functions such as x-ray, sonography, CT scan, etc. On page
438, it's revealed that his Go-Phone also has a
defibrillator mode!
Page 167: Wagoneer asks Buckaroo
if he can ask the DOs to let him have a hammock. I'm not
sure what means by "DOs" unless it's maybe "director(s) of
operations".
Page 167: Wagoneer has an
Episcopal prayer book in his cell. The Episcopal Church is a
U.S.-based church of the worldwide Anglican Communion
(founded in London in 1867), the third largest Christian
communion after the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox
churches.
Page 167: Wagoneer complains that
he spent his career working for the good of the USA, he
"...sipped the Kool-Aid...faced down Russian Bear bombers
over Alaska and made thunder rumble in the 'Stan" only to be
thrown away. "Russian Bear bombers" refers to Russian Tu-95
Bear bombers that have made occasional incursions or
near-incursions into the airspace of the state of Alaska.
"The 'Stan" is a reference to the U.S. war against the
Taliban in Afghanistan.
Page 168: Buckaroo diagnoses
Wagoneer as suffering from a large number of maladies,
including steatopygia (substantial levels of tissue on the
buttocks and thighs) and bilateral gynecomastia (enlargement
of the breasts in males).
Page 168:
Band-Aid is
a brand name of adhesive bandages.
Page 168: When Wagoneer brings
up the
name of Abbot Costello, Buckaroo mishears it as "Abbott and
Costello." Bud Abbott and Lou Costello were an American
comedy duo popular in the 1940s-50s. Xan is said later in
the novel to have known the duo in their Hollywood heyday.
Wagoneer explains to
Buckaroo that Abbot Costello is the chief exorcist of
Perugia.
Perugia is a city in central Italy.
Page 169: Buckaroo recalls that he
had heard of Abbot Costello recently, having received a
report from High Sierra in World Watch One that the Abbot
had managed a feat no one had been able to in one thousand
years: manually removing San Galgano's sword from its stone
at Montesiepi Chapel in Tuscany. San Galgano (1148-1181) was
a Catholic saint who legend says plunged his sword into a
stone when a voice told him to renounce all material things
and he set up hermitage at the location of the stone. There
is an actual sword embedded in a stone at Montesiepi Chapel
that is said to be that of San Galgano. Tests of the metal
show that it was forged in the correct time period. Whatever
the truth, as Buckaroo muses, Abbot Costello was not a name
to be taken lightly.
Page 169: Wagoneer tells Buckaroo
that Lizardo and Whorfin somehow survived the shootout over
the Garden State. "Garden State" is the official nickname of
the state of New Jersey.
Page 169: Despite the seeming
survival, Wagoneer says he buried Lizardo's body not six
months ago in the ground at S4, behind the TR-3B and
antigravity disk hanger, lying right next to Elvis Presley.
S-4 is said by many sources to be Sector 4 of Area 51. TR-3B
is said by some to be the model number of the flying
triangles seen in some UFO reports. "Antigravity disk
hangar" is probably a reference to the alleged
extraterrestrial disks that physicist Bob Lazar has claimed
to have worked on at Area 51. "Elvis Presley" refers to the
famous rock 'n' roller, who has several far-out conspiracy
theories attached to his legend, including that he faked his
1977 death and that somebody else is buried in his grave at
his former home of Graceland.
Page 170: Wagoneer claims that
autopsies showed that both Lizardo and Elvis died of a
broken heart and a megabowel. "Megabowel" is more commonly
called "megacolon" and is an abnormal enlargement of the
colon.
Page 170: Wagoneer explains he
doesn't know why they were keeping Elvis at Area 51, but he
heard that his frozen body had been stored at Langley for
years, then moved to the secret
Coca-Cola vault in Atlanta before shipping him to Area
51 in a special refrigerator car. He recommends that
Buckaroo ask the CIA, NSA, and DIA why they had Elvis in the
first place and why they moved him. Buckaroo speculates they
needed to make room for the
Diet
Coke formula. NSA is the
National
Security Agency and DIA is the
Defense
Intelligence Agency.
Page 170: Wagoneer says he's heard
one of the security agencies also has the bones of the
Biblical Goliath. Goliath was the Philistine giant who was
defeated by the young David in the Book of Samuel.
Page 170: As Buckaroo continues to
perform a physical examination of Wagoneer, Wagoneer begins
to sing, "Shinbone connected to the knee bone..." He is
paraphrasing lyrics from the old spiritual song "Dem Bones."
Page 171: Wagoneer tells Buckaroo
that the R&D guys used Frankensteinian methods to grow more
Lectroids from the pieces they collected from the Jersey crash
site. R&D is short for "research and development."
"Frankensteinian" refers to the process of bringing a dead
body back to life in the classic 1818 Mary Shelley novel
Frankenstein.
Page 171: Wagoneer adds that when
a Lectroid is pregnant, they carry the little larvae in the
throat.
Page 173: Wagoneer asks Buckaroo
if he's ever heard of the Fabian Society. The
Fabian
Society is a British socialist organization that
promotes democratic socialism.
Page 173: Wagoneer tells Buckaroo
that Contreras fed him four bars of Xanax and some weed at a
titty bar and then put him in bed with a hooker to get him
busted.
Xanax is the trade name for the drug alprazolam, used for
treating anxiety disorders.
Page 174: Buckaroo says that
Contreras may have been the nephew of Carlos the Jackal.
Carlos the Jackal (real name Ilich Ramírez Sánchez) is a
Venezuelan convicted terrorist serving a life sentence in
France. Buckaroo believes it was MI6 who drowned Contreras
in the Panama Canal.
MI-6 is the foreign intelligence service of the United
Kingdom.
Page 174: Wagoneer swears by all
buried dead at Arlington that the powers of the U.S.
president have been usurped by the CIA's MK-ULTRA and a
giant red brain called the Nexus that looks like a
candy-coated Sacred Heart of Jesus with one big eye,
floating in an aquarium of liquid nitrogen. "Arlington" is
Arlington National Cemetery, probably the most
well-known U.S. military cemetery.
Project MK-Ultra
was a CIA program to develop ways to gain mind control over
a given subject from about 1953-1973. The Sacred Heart of
Jesus is a Catholic devotion in which the heart of Jesus is
a symbol of "God's boundless and passionate love for
mankind"; the heart is depicted in art in various ways.
Page 174:
Wagoneer tells Buckaroo that Lectroids love sweets,
electricity, and yellow cake uranium. Also, peanuts are like
crystal meth to them and they are violently intolerant of
hydro corn syrup.
Page 175: Wagoneer says he
questions the Geneva Convention.
The Geneva
Convention is a set of protocols signed by members of the
United Nations establishing the rules of war and treatment
of prisoners taken in battle.
Page 175:
Wagoneer claims that if you kill a Lectroid and then
sprinkle them with catnip they pop right back up. They are
also able to inseminate their own feces to make new
Lectroids. Catnip is a plant, Nepeta cataria, whose
oil, nepetalactone, has a mildly "recreational effect" on
some felines.
Page 175: Wagoneer's telling of the fast "evolution" of
Lectroids from parent to child to grandchild suggests
epigenetic inheritance to Buckaroo. "Epigenetic inheritance"
is the transmission of traits from parent to child without
altering the primary structure of DNA.
Page 175: Lectroids have the power of suggestion upon
others.
Page 176: Wagoneer says that he doesn't remember much after
the explosion during the exorcism of Whorfin from Lizardo.
He just remembers the voice of the Lord speaking to him,
"You shall slay them with the jawbone of an ass, like the
Biblical Samsonite." Wagoneer is referring to Samson, the
Biblical figure who is said to have slain 1,000 Philistines
in battle with the jawbone of an ass.
Chapter XI: DOCTOR'S ORDERS
The opening quote of the chapter is an actual one by Seneca
the Younger (4 BCE - 65 CE), a Roman philosopher, dramatist,
and statesman.
Page 178: President Monroe is the secret love child of John
F. Kennedy and Marilyn Monroe. John F. Kennedy (1917-1963)
was the 35th president of the United States. Marilyn Monroe
(1926-1962) was an American actress and model. They were
known for having had a sexual affair.
Page 179: Puss in Boots is an Italian fairy tale from the
16th Century.
Page 179: President Monroe says he has the marksmanship and
cross-country navigation certificates he earned at a
survival outing at the Banzai Institute hanging in the Oval
Office. The Oval Office is located in the West Wing of the
White House and is the official office of the President.
Page 180: President Monroe speaks of how his funeral will be
carried out, with his casket riding on the same gun carriage
as his father's down Pennsylvania Avenue. Pennsylvania
Avenue is the street on which the White House is located.
Page 180: The president remarks to Reno that he wishes he
had his BMI. BMI is short for "body mass index" (of weight
in relation to height).
Page 182: General Wagoneer's father held the American record in the
Romanian deadlift and was the heavyweight boxing champ of
the armed forces. He was also an 11B grunt and Green Beret.
11B (Eleven-Bravo) is U.S. Army Military Occupational
Specialty code for an enlisted infantry soldier.
The Green
Berets are U.S. Army Special Forces personnel who conduct
missions of unconventional warfare, foreign internal
defense, special reconnaissance, direct action, and
counter-terrorism.
Page 182:
General Wagoneer was All-American at the University of
Oklahoma. "All-American" is a term used for the recognized
most outstanding student players in a sport at American
universities.
Page 183: Buckaroo says his father died when he was just a
boy and that he tried to climb into his father's casket
during the funeral.
Page 183:
General Wagoneer claims he saw the secret file on Oswald at
Area 51 which stated that the big boy behind the
assassination of JFK was Aristotle Onassis so he could get
his paws on Jackie. He says the head fake was Sam Flood, but
the secret wiretaps from the Armory Lounge in 1959 revealed
Xan brokered the deal with the Chicago Outfit for $10
million. Jack Ruby and Jimmy the Greek were on the grassy
knoll watching the hit go down. Okay, so here we go:
- Lee Harvey Oswald (1939-1963)
is the man who is most widely believed to have fired the
shots that killed JFK.
-
Aristotle Onassis
(1906-1975) was a Greek shipping magnate who was the
richest man in the world for a time in the late 1960s.
He married JFK's widow, Jackie, about 5 years after her
husband's death.
- A
"head fake" is a sports term for a feint to trick the
opponent into thinking the next move is coming from a
certain direction.
- San Flood was an alias used by
Chicago Mafia crime figure Sam Giancana (1908-1975).
Some conspiracy theories implicate Giancana in the JFK
assassination plot.
- The
Armory Lounge was a restaurant
in Chicago that was a gangster hangout and headquarters
of Giancana.
- The
Chicago Outfit was a Mafia
crime syndicate in Chicago to which Giancana belonged
and of which he eventually became boss.
-
Jack Ruby (1911-1967) was convicted of assassinating
Oswald before the man could be tried for the
assassination of Kennedy.
-
Jimmy the Greek (real name
Jimmy Snyder, 1919-1976) was a sportscaster. As far as I
know, he had nothing to do with the JFK plot, even
within the conspiracy theory world. This is likely
another one of Wagoneer's mad bumbles, possibly meant to
be a reference to Onassis.
|
Pages 183-184: Buckaroo remarks that JFK was a little before
his time, but he gives some credence to what Wagoneer
claims. Buckaroo says there is a photograph of Oswald with a
man who appears to be Sir Henry Shannon. In the "original
chronology" of Buckaroo Banzai stories, Buckaroo
was born pre-1950, so JFK would not have been considered
"before his time." It seems that this novel presents a "soft
reboot" of Buckaroo Banzai, such that Buckaroo is
again around 35-40 years old now, i.e.
approximately 2021, as he was in
Across the 8th Dimension,
released in 1984.
Page 184: Wagoneer goes on a tangent
about Lucifer in the British House of Lords.
"Lucifer", of course, is considered by most modern Christian
denominations to be the proper name of Satan before his fall
from grace. The
House of Lords is the upper house of the Parliament of
the United Kingdom.
Page 184:
Buckaroo thinks that Wagoneer suffers from BPD. This is
short for borderline personality disorder.
Page 185: ROE is short for "rules
of engagement."
Page 185: Wagoneer claims he
practically rewrote the whole AFSC playbook. I presume he is
speaking of the Air Force Specialty Code, a list of
alphanumeric codes identifying specific jobs and their
responsibilities.
Page 185: Article 15 is a
non-judicial punishment as authorized by the United States
Uniform Code of Military Justice.
Page 185: Wagoneer worries he'll
wind up a vagrant, eating out of a can with his SRK. I
presume SRK is referring to "survival rescue knife."
Page 186: HIPAA is short for the
Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996.
Page 187: The Diagnostic and
Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders that Buckaroo
mentions is an actual publication of the American
Psychiatric Association, periodically updated.
Page 187: Sua sponte is
Latin for "of his, her, its or their own accord".
Page 187: The EPI in the "EPI
test" Buckaroo intends to order for Wagoneer stands for
"exocrine pancreatic insufficiency", an inability to digest
food properly due to a lack of digestive enzymes from the
pancreas.
Page 187: Mogadon is a brand name
for nitrazepam, a hypnotic drug used for anxiety and
insomnia. Naproxen is a pain relief drug sold under the
brand name Aleve.
Page 188: COPD is short for
chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.
Page 188: Wagoneer suggests
Buckaroo give him some Percs to keep his head from
exploding. "Percs" is short for Percocet, the brand name of
the drug oxycodone/paracetamol used for treating moderate to
severe pain.
Page 188: I don't know what a
PosTEP regime is. MRI is short for "magnetic resonance
imaging." HSV-2 is short for "herpes simplex virus 2".
Pages 188-189: President Monroe
sings the lyrics, "Ting-a-ling, goddamn, find a woman if you
can. If you can't find a woman find a clean old man..."
These are lyrics from the adult novelty song "Do Your Balls
Hang Low?" from about the year 1900 and known to have been sung by
British troops during WWI.
Page 189: Buckaroo asks the
president to release Wagoneer into the custody of the Banzai
Institute, where he will receive the best of Western and
holistic treatment.
Page 189:
Champion is a brand of juicer.
Page 189: The Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory is
a real world psychometric test of adult personality and
psychopathology. The Iowa Test of Basic Skills (now called
the Iowa Assessments) is a standardized test for school
grades 3-12 provided by the College of Education of the
University of Iowa.
Page 190: Buckaroo jokes that if Wagoneer proves
uncooperative at the Institute, he'll send him back to his
cell in D.C. or maybe Guantanamo. "Guantanamo" is a
reference to Guantanamo Bay detention camp, a U.S. military
prison located within Guantanamo Bay Naval Base on the coast
of Cuba.
Page 191: President Monroe remarks, "...in the immortal
words of JFK, it's not because it's easy, but because it's
hard." In his September 1962 Moon speech, JFK said, "We
choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other
things, not because they are easy, but because they are
hard..."
Chapter XII: IN THE GARDEN OF EVIL
The opening quote of this chapter are lines from a verse by
Sir Richard Fanshawe (1608-1666).
Page 194: In an attempt to contact Xan for help in defending
Earth from the approaching Lectroid warship, Buckaroo sends
letters handwritten in invisible soybean ink in Old Enochian
and Linear B out to numerous establishments known to be WCL
holdings. Soybean extract can be used for making invisible
ink. Enochian is an occult language (named for Enoch the
great-grandfather of the Biblical Noah) recorded in the journals
of John Dee and Edward Kelley in the late 16th Century and
used in Enochian ceremonial magic. Linear B is a syllabic
script that was used for writing the earliest form of Greek.
Except for Wild Casino Land in Laughlin, Nevada, all the
establishments mentioned are
actual businesses/locations!
Page 194: Xan is said to have a hideout in a cave on
Mount
Rushmore.
Page 195: Gabinetto is Italian for "toilet".
Page 196: Xan fears his body has been invaded by the Death
Wyrm. Possibly, this is a reference to the mythical
Mongolian death worm.
Page 196: Xan has a trio of doctors caring for him from the
Institut
Pasteur.
Page 197: The Tree of Life is an archetype in many religions
of the world tree or cosmic tree.
Page 197: Xan uses the phrase "richer than Croesus." The
phrase is used in the English-speaking world to indicate
extreme wealth. Croesus was the king of Lydia in the 6th
Century BCE and was renowned for his wealth.
Page 199: Xan refers to Goethe. Presumably, he means Johann
Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832), a German writer, theater
director, critic, and statesman.
Page 199: Xan wears a little bell which he says is a leper's
bell. In olden times, people with leprosy were made to wear
a bell they had to ring to warn others of their approach.
Page 200: When Penny kills a centipede crawling on the wall
that Xan told her not to kill, he reproaches her with, "You
Judas." This is a reference to the betrayal of Jesus by
Judas Iscariot for 30 pieces of silver in the New Testament
of the Bible.
Page 200: Eau de Lily is French for lily water.
Page 200: A favored author of Xan's from his boyhood is
Horatio Alger. Alger (1832-1899) was an author of novels for
boys.
Page 201: Xan enjoys
Nutella chocolate pudding and bottles of Sancerre and
Jerez. Sancerre is a French wine produced in the Sancerre
area of the Loire valley. Jerez is the Spanish term for
sherry.
Page 201: Xan is fond of playing an online video game called
World Domination. He has even had Penny play with
him, wearing a mask so as not be recognized on streaming
video. Xan's screen name in the game was Vastatio, Latin for
"scorched earth" (or "devastation").
Page 201: Luftwaffe sturmgruppen is German for "air
force storm groups." Kamaraden is German for
"comrades".
Page 201: Xan claims to be ambidextrous and dyslexic like
the great Leonardo. This refers to Leonardo da Vinci
(1452-1519), one of the most noted polymaths of the
Renaissance period, who was ambidextrous and dyslexic.
Page 201: Xan claims to have worked on the Egyptian pyramids
and Hadrian's wall. Hadrian's wall was a Roman defensive
fortification in England begun during the reign of the
emperor Hadrian (76-138 CE). Portions of the wall still
stand.
Page 203: Reno writes Xan's shadow no longer seems to follow
him, doing as it pleases, following his movements only
occasionally. Xan also allegedly has a vestigial scorpion
tail, bristly neck mane like a horse, and scaly skin that he
seemed to shed like a snake. Possibly, he was not really
human.
Page 203: Satrap barbecues on a sacrificial grill modeled
after the great altar of Pergamon. The original altar was a
monumental construction built in the 2nd Century BC by the
Ancient Greek king Eumenes II of Pergamon.
Page 203: As she and Xan spend some time outdoors, Penny totes a Louis Philippe vase
to serve as Xan's urinal. Louis Philippe I was the last king
of France, serving in the role from 1830-1848 until his
exile. A style of furniture popular in France at the time of
his rule has taken on his name. Possibly, Rauch got the
urinal idea from the "piss boy" who
carried a bucket for the king to urinate in as he walked
through his huge garden seen in the 1981 comedy film,
History of the World, Part I.
Page 204:
Bengay is a topical ointment for muscle and joint pain.
Page 204: Xan points to a Ba Gua mirror in his room. Ba Gua
is a diagram of symbols of Taoist cosmology meant to
represent fundamental principles of reality.
Page 204: At times, Xan has visions when in a state between
sleep and wakefulness. One of these visions is of himself
riding the Death Wyrm toward his old tomb on Arslycus. The
only Arslycus I can find reference to is the name of a space
city in the mythology of the cult/religious movement of
Scientology.
Page 205: Du bist nur ein truber Gast auf der dunklen
Erde is German for "You're just a troubled Guest on the
dark Earth." This is a line from the 1814 poem "The Holy
Longing" by Goethe.
Page 206: Je suis is French for "I am."
Page 206: Xan has allegedly made a gift of several
properties around the world to Penny, including a castle in
Uruk. Uruk was an ancient city of Sumer and is now an
archaeological excavation.
Page 206: Satrap is a eunuch.
Chapter XIII: NOSING AROUND AREA 51
The opening quote of this chapter is an actual one
attributed to Martin Luther (1483-1546), a German priest,
theologian, and author for whom the Protestant religion of
Lutheranism was named.
This chapter opens some time after the previous chapters,
likely several weeks or months.
Page 209: Wagoneer claims that the Lectroids' favorite movie
is Scarface. There have been at least two movies by
that title. The one referred to here is probably the 1983
film directed by Oliver Stone and starring Al Pacino as a
Cuban refugee in Miami, FL who becomes a powerful drug
lord.
Page 209-210: Reno explains that normal
operations continued at the Banzai Institute during the time
between chapters, including the weekly radio program.
"Return of the Screw"
Part 2 names the program as
Buckaroo Banzai's Radio Ranch,
live on TV and the worldwide web (is it even on actual
radio?).
The Hong Kong
Cavaliers also recorded
several tracks with the Budapest String Quartet, who arrived
at the Institute as artists in residence. Budapest String
Quartet existed from 1917-1967. I guess in the
Buckaruniverse, they are still going strong.
The Institute has an amateur theatrical and
improvisational troupe called the Falstaff Players and
Acrobats. Most likely the "Falstaff" part of the troupe's
name is derived from the character of Falstaff who appears
or is mentioned in four of William Shakespeare's plays.
Institute clubs include Anime Collectors, Anxiety
and Meditation Workshop, Birdwatchers Anonymous, Rock Stars
(rock and fossil collectors), and the Philosophical Society.
Also continuing at the Institute were nightly
clothing-optional Tang Soo sparring sessions, open-mike
comedy shows, Lonely Hearts Club, Taco Tuesdays, and
Wednesday movie night.
The institute has sponsored teams who travel for
football, table soccer, pickleball, jet dragster racing,
skeet shooting, bass fishing, orienteering, and yumi
archery.
The annual Colorado River float through the
Grand
Canyon took place.
Buckaroo made regular trips to the
CERN accelerator and numerous speaking engagements around
the world.
Buckaroo also keeps his normal volunteer hours at
the Apache reservation health clinic, coaches an Apache
youth soccer team, and works on several scientific papers.
Page 210: Buckaroo suggests to his
team to have a chavrusa, as he's been reading
Velikovsky's lost manuscript. A chavrusa is a
Talmudic term for a small group of people to discuss a
shared text. Immanuel Velikovsky (1895-1979) was an American
(born in Russia) scholar and author. He became known for his
controversial views of Earth's history that he claimed
showed Earth having cataclysmic close contacts with other
worlds in the solar system, wreaking havoc on our planet on
several different occasions, including destroying past
unknown civilizations. By "lost manuscript", I assume
Buckaroo is referring to several unpublished manuscripts of
Velikovsky's that his children have shared online (see the
The Immanuel Velikovsky
Archive).
Page 210: Buckaroo says
Velikovsky's suppositions are in accordance with quite a few
other legends, including that in the Voynich manuscript. The
Voynich manuscript is an illustrated, hand-written codex in
an unknown writing system, dating from the 15th-16th
centuries. The author is unknown and many of its
illustrations are of seemingly fictitious plants. Buckaroo
goes on to say he has been "working on" the Voynich
manuscript like a crossword puzzle with missing pieces (kind
of a mixed metaphor!), but he's found that it seems to be an
arcane gynecological treatise.
Page 211: Buckaroo remarks that he's been talking to the
Bogdanoff brothers and Val Valerian. And then also mentions
Vorilhon. The Bogdanoff brothers were French twins who
hosted TV shows about popular science and science-fiction
topics; both died after contracting COVID-19. Val (Valdamar)
Valerian is an author of books about New
Age/pseudoscientific topics. Claude Vorilhon, now going by
the single name Raël, is the leader of the international
UFO-based religion called the Raëlian Movement.
Page 211: Bien-pensants is French for "do-gooders."
Page 211: The imminent Lectroid intervention towards Earth
puts Buckaroo in mind of the Kali Yuga, the last Hindu eon.
In the Hindu religion, the Kali Yuga (an age of conflict and
sin) began in 3102 BCE and will last 432,000 Earth years,
ending in 428,899 CE.
Page 211: I have been unable to determine the meaning of the
phrase Buckaroo uses, jo-ju-e-ku, other than that
Reno seems to interpret it as "cycle of life". (Buckaroo:
"And we have no choice but to trust nature, by which I mean
the direction of our growth, the ladder of souls as governed
by jo-ju-e-ku.")
Page 212: Einstein's "spooky action at a distance" is the
concept that an object can be moved, changed, or otherwise
affected without physical contact by another object.
Page 215: General Wagoneer remarks, "Now I couldn't get laid
if I was a Fabergé egg." A Fabergé egg is a jeweled
egg-shaped ornament made by the
House of
Fabergé jewelry company.
Page 216: General Wagoneer tells Buckaroo that Whorfin once
told him about how he (Whorfin) and Emdall had a secret
rendezvous in the dark vortex of Neptune, having to sneak
around like Romeo and Juliet, where their still unborn child
was conceived. The "dark vortex" is probably a reference to
the Great Dark Spot, which is actually a series of different
dark spots (storms) that occur on the surface of the planet
Neptune at random intervals. Romeo and Juliet, of course,
are characters in Shakespeare's romantic tragedy Romeo and
Juliet, about two young lovers from feuding families.
Page 216: Whorfin's Lectroid embryo is to be named Crown
Jewel Ban-Lon.
Page 216: Tommy mentions Santa Claus. Santa, of course, is
the folkloric figure who brings gifts to children around the
world on Christmas Eve.
Page 217: Miracula is Latin for "miracles".
Page 217: Reno and a project manager at Area 51 talk about
Gamma Quadrant and Salusa Secundus. The Gamma Quadrant is
one of the four quadrants of the galaxy according to the
United Federation of Planets in
Star Trek,
particularly seen in episodes of Star Trek: Deep Space
Nine. Salusa Secundus is the homeworld of House Corrino
in the Dune novels.
Page 218: At Area 51, Buckaroo and his team discover an
advanced "flying saucer" spy plane; lab animals with various
designer sexual diseases, such as memory-erasing viruses;
bionic spy geese and salamanders; and a crude OSCILLATION
OVERTHRUSTER tachyon-generator prototype.
Page 219: General Wagoneer tells Buckaroo that he buried
Lizardo's body in a Hobbit hole. This is a reference to the
hobbit race of small humanoids who lived in holes as written
in novels by J.R.R. Tolkien.
Page 220: Buckaroo remarks that even with his predilection
for Mussolini, Lizardo's intellect had to be respected.
Benito Mussolini (1883-1945) was the fascist dictator of
Italy 1925-1945.
Page 220: Buckaroo is wearing a
Stetson
hat while at Area 51.
Page 220: Tommy remarks, "As we continue to probe the
eternal mysteries, following the example of Jesus and
Erasmus..." Erasmus (Desiderius Erasmus Roterodamus,
1466-1536) was a Catholic theologian who is considered one
of the greatest scholars of the Renaissance.
Page 221: General Wagoneer hums taps as Buckaroo's team says
a few words over the shallow grave of Lizardo. "Taps" is a
musical piece that is often played at funerals.
Page 222: Two creatures that Wagoneer
collectively calls the Roswell Boys, Oñate and Javelina, are
kept at Area 51. "Roswell" is a reference to
the infamous Roswell UFO crash of July 1947. Oñate and
Javelina are said on page 224 to be the offspring of two
aliens who escaped into the countryside after the Roswell
crash and had sexual relations with various wildlife before
they were captured.
The looks of the two
creatures put Reno in mind of Odysseus' crew whom the
goddess Circe turned into swine.
Odysseus is the legendary Greek king and warrior whose tale
is told in Homer's The
Odyssey.
In that story, the Greek goddess Circe turns half of
Odysseus' crew into swine with drugged wine and cheese.
Page 223: Sayonara is
Japanese for "goodbye."
Page 225: Tommy's hat is lined
with aluminum foil to keep out outside emanations.
Chapter XIV: PIPE DREAMS
The opening quote of the chapter
by Louis de Saint-Just is accurate. Louis Antoine de
Saint-Just (1767-1794) was a political philosopher and major
figure of the French Revolution who had a totalitarian frame
of mind.
Page 227: Xan quotes from the
Ramayana. The Ramayana is one of the important
texts of Hinduism. As far as I can identify, the quote Xan
makes is not found in the Ramayana.
Page 227: Xan reminisces that
he'd spoken with Proust and Garibaldi about how the savor of
a particular food or fragrance cannot be erased from our
recollections. Garibaldi has been previously mentioned in
this study. Marcel Proust (1871-1922) was a French writer,
considered to be one of the most influential of the 20th
Century.
Page 228: Hippolyte seems to
intimate that Penny is the reincarnation of both Marie
Antoinette and Ayn Rand. Marie Antoinette (1755-1793) was
the beautiful last queen of France until she was executed by
the revolutionaries via guillotine. Ayn Rand has been
previously mentioned in this study.
Page 228: Strannik is
Russian for "wanderer."
Page 229: Hippolyte
tells Penny a story of Xan in a campaign against the Ming
when he stole her (in a past life) from her father, unable
to resist her beauty. "Ming" likely refers to the Ming
dynasty, the ruling dynasty of China from 1368 to 1644.
Xan was Timur the Great in
this past life. Timur (1336-1405) was the founder of the
Timurid Empire around the area of modern day Afghanistan,
Iran, and Central Asia.
Page 230: Hortus conclusus is Latin for "enclosed
garden."
Page 230: Xan recalls meeting Penny at the MGM cafeteria
where he sat (as Viktor Anthropos) with Louis Mayer and
Walter Pidgeon. MGM stands for the
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer film studio. Louis Mayer (1884-1957)
was one of the founders of the studio. Walter Pidgeon
(1897-1984) was a Canadian-American actor.
Page 230: Anthropos may have worked for Stalin's NKVD.
Josef Stalin was the leader of the Soviet Union from the
mid-1920s through 1952. The NKVD (People's Commissariat for
Internal Affairs) was the Soviet Union's internal law
enforcement division from 1934-1946.
Page 231: Xan mentions staying at
the
Chateau Marmont with Penny during his time in Hollywood,
where they discussed other realms and the music of
Stravinsky. Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971) was a Russian
composer.
Page 232: Xan is counseled by the
Tetrarchy, four of his senior councilors.
Page 232: Xan's chief scientist is Dr. Paraquat. A mad
scientist by the same name appears as a villain in
Destroyer Duck comic books.
Page 232: Xan and his councilors are pleased at the good
news of record profits for Transglobal Insurance, IG Farben,
Sequoia Petroleum, and World Capital Lending. IG Farben was
a German chemical and pharmaceutical conglomerate that was
essentially taken over by the Nazis during their reign in
Germany until the Allies seized it and broke it up into its
constituent companies after WWII. I think the others are
fictitious, though the names Transglobal Insurance and
Sequoia Petroleum have been used by small operations in the
past. World Capital Lending is a play on "World Crime League"
(WCL).
Page 232: Zaibatsu is a Japanese term for
vertically integrated business conglomerates.
Page 232: The WCL's main research laboratory is in Borneo.
Page 233: Xan and the Tetrarchy speak briefly of the secret
pyramids of Bosnia outside
Sarajevo,
the Pyramid of the Sun, Pyramid of the Moon, and Pyramid of
the Dragon. These alleged pyramids are promoted by
Bosnian-American businessman Semir Osmanagić as a New Age
pilgrimage site, but reputable scientists have studied the
sites and declared the "pyramids" to be natural flatiron
landforms.
Chapter XV: MORE QUESTIONS THAN ANSWERS
The opening quote of the chapter is one that was allegedly
said by German theoretical physicist Werner Heisenberg
(1901-1976), but I have been unable to convincingly confirm
it.
Page 237: The Banzai Institute's emissaries to Xan asking
for help to defend the Earth from the approaching Lectroid
warship
were returned chopped up into two sloshing five-gallon
buckets, Krugerrands stuffed into their mouths. Krugerrands
are gold or silver coins from the country of South Africa.
Page 238: Mrs. Johnson says she learned Old Enochian--or was
it Old Etruscan--at school as transmitted by the angels to
the Archons' Assembly of Divines and Eternal Elders.
Etruscan was the language of the Etruscan civilization in
ancient Italy, pre-Latin and from about 900 BCE. The
Archons' Assembly of Divines and Eternal Elders appears to
be fictitious.
Page 238: Part of Xan's message to
Buckaroo, referring to Penny, reads, "When you have drunk
all the water in the Yangtze River, I will tell you where
she is." The Yangtze River is the third longest river in the
world, flowing from the Tibet Autonomous Region east through
China into the East China Sea.
Xan's message goes on to say that Penny has crossed
the Rainbow Bridge, but has now been resurrected. The
"Rainbow Bridge" is a term generally used in modern times to
describe the death of a pet and that they are waiting to be
reunited with their owners on the other side. If that's the
meaning here, Xan seems to be saying that she is his pet and
he owns her.
Then the message indicates if Buckaroo doesn't
believe that, Penny's working as a courtesan in Yoshiwara or
starring in the Takarazuka. The Yoshiwara is a yūkaku
(red-light district) in
Tokyo, Japan. The
Takarazuka is a Japanese all-female musical theater
troupe based in
Takarazuka, Japan.
Page 238: Team Banzai all want revenge against Xan and Tommy
remarks, "I spit Beech-Nut in his snake eyes." Beech-Nut is
a brand of chewing tobacco.
Page 239: The poetry lines Buckaroo quotes are from Samuel
Taylor Coleridge's 1798 poem "The Raven".
Page 239: The novel has a rather meandering way of telling
its story. Author Rauch seems to acknowledge this by having Reno
write "...the thoughtful reader will recognize the theory of
precession at work, by which I mean subplots at right
angles to the main action, such that the reader who might
expect a pulse-pounding chapter--or, at a minimum, the
development of a clear plan of action--encounters
instead a certain sense of drift and a bare patchwork of
narrative threads..."
Page 241: The
Archangel Brother Deacon Jarvis is said to be dressed like
the Quaker on a certain oatmeal container. This refers to
Quaker
Oats, whose mascot is dressed in the garb of the Quaker
theology, a Protestant Christian denomination.
Page 242: Brother Jarvis suggests that
Earthers toss Whorfin into the fiery pit of the Book of
Revelation.
The Book
of Revelation in
the Christian Bible foretells
the coming of an apocalypse,
which it describes as the complete and final destruction of
the world.
Page 242:
Brother Jarvis ends his televised sermon with "...remember
you won't get a lemon from Toyota of Orange! Tell 'em the
old travelling preacher Brother Jarvis from the Love
Connection sent you!"
Toyota of Orange is a dealer of
Toyota
automobiles in the city of
Orange, California; the dealership ran incessant TV
commercials with the slogan "You won't get a lemon from
Toyota of Orange" on local Los Angeles-area stations in the
1970s-90s. Love Connection was a syndicated
American dating game TV show from 1983-1994; the aforementioned
Toyota of Orange commercials ran often during the show's
breaks.
Page 243: The
Brother Jarvis broadcasts are
attributed to various sources, including a Mexican border
transmitter. A similar gag was used in the novelization of
Across the 8th Dimension,
with a statement that
in optimal conditions, certain powerful Mexican radio
stations can be received on Planet 10. This is a humorous
reference to the fact that the radio stations in Mexico are
well-known for their powerful and often overwhelming signals
that allow them to reach large distances out of the country
and even overwhelm local radio stations due to the relative
lack of regulation of broadcast wattage in Mexico.
Page 243: Buckaroo reminds his team of how the WCL, working
with the KGB, almost succeeded in electronically programming
an entire generation of American kids through antennas
disguised as mouse ears and raccoon-tail caps, but somebody
at Disney blabbed to J. Edgar Hoover during sex and blew the
plot open. "Mouse ears" is a reference to the Mickey
Mouse-eared hats sold at Disneyland. Raccoon-tail (aka
"coonskin") caps were popular with American boys in the
1950-60s due to their adornment on the lead characters of
the Davy Crockett and Daniel Boone TV
shows.
J. Edgar Hoover was the director of the FBI from 1935-1972.
Reno goes on to say that
America's own government has gone on to engage in nefarious
thought-control experiments, like kids' braces and tattoo
ink, all capable of subliminal radio reception. Buckaroo
responds with his concern over the increasing number of
crypto-blipverts on virtually every television channel and
streaming service. "Blipverts" is a term for a very brief
television advertisement, usually one second long. The term
was coined in the Max Headroom film and TV series
of 1985 and 1987.
Buckaroo's mention of streaming services suggests
these events taking place in the 2000s.
Page 244: Buckaroo wants Reno to put together a weaponized
aerosol of corn syrup and insecticide, perhaps using a
Graco
paint sprayer or a kid's hydrosoaker, to use against
Lectroids.
Page 246: Buckaroo has a new, improved SQUID. SQUID stands
for "superconducting quantum interference device", used to
measure very subtle magnetic fields.
Page 246: Pilgrim is the Institute's reigning champion of
Guitar Hero. Guitar Hero is a series of
music rhythm video games played with guitar-shaped
controllers.
Page 247: Mrs. Johnson's first name is Eunice.
Page 247: Buckaroo mentions a Bose-Einstein macrowave.
Bose-Einstein refers to measurements and correlations of
bosons.
Page 247: Mrs. Johnson has a husky smoker's voice. This was
not the case in the
Across the 8th Dimension
movie.
Page 247: The character of the Marchioness is
Lady Asquith-Gillette, who speaks with an upper-crust
Oxbridge accent. "Marchioness" is the female form of the
title "marquis." A character called Lady Gillette (or Lady
G) appears in several of the Moonstone BB comics as a tough,
down-on-her-luck young woman who makes the mistake of
falling in with a WCL operation that transforms her into a
cat woman ("Hardest
of the Hard" Part 1), but the Banzai Institute takes her
in and eventually restores her to human form. She did not
seem to be an "upper-crust Oxford" woman in any account. Is
this the same woman...or not?
Page 248:
The Fifth Dimension is explained as being like a scrapbook
of your life, the Sixth like your rusty altered memory, the
Seventh like your ideal fantasy, and the Eighth like the
highest rung of heaven or the bottom run of hell.
Page 248: Buckaroo's remark about
the 8th Dimension, "The only thing we have to fear is fear
itself," is from the first inaugural address of Franklin D.
Roosevelt in 1933.
Page 248: Buckaroo's experimental
Bubble Gun runs on a
Ryobi power pack. Buckaroo explains that the Bubble Gun
produces a sonoluminescent beam, light from microbubbles of
sound. In fact, sonoluminescence is the production of a flash
of light from imploding bubbles in a liquid when excited by
sound.
Page 249: Seiza is the
formal, traditional way of sitting in Japan, on the floor
with one's legs folded under the thighs and resting the
buttocks on the heels.
Page 250: Buckaroo cares for two
cats, Penny's calico Gertrude Stein, and his own
black-and-white Tux. Gertrude Stein (1874–1946) was the name
of an American novelist, poet, and playwright.
Page 250: Kutani
porcelain is a style of Japanese porcelain from Kutani, now
part of the city of
Kaga.
Page 250: A floor-to-ceiling
bookcase in Buckaroo's quarters is filled with vintage
pistols, his mother's Arriflex 35 mm camera, and an eclectic
collection of books such as: The Prince; the Encyclopédie;
The Art of War; essayist collections of Bacon,
Mandeville, Marcus Aurelius, and Li Zongwu; collections of
Chinese and Japanese poetry from Du Fu, Li Bai, Basho;
leather-bound first editions of Dumas (père),
Walter Scott, Lavosier's Elementary Treatise,
Newton's Principia Mathematica; works by Buckaroo's
friends and lovers, including Kristeva and Nussbaum; and
Galileo's "Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina." The
writings and authors are all real people. The père
after Dumas' name is French for "father", indicating the
writer Alexandre Dumas père, as opposed to his son,
also a writer, Alexandre Dumas fils (son). The
Arriflex 35 mm camera was the first reflex 35mm production
motion picture camera.
Page 250: On his
walls, Buckaroo has an honorary Hiroshima Carp baseball
jersey, Currier & Ives frontier prints, a Virgin of
Guadalupe, a Grandma Moses, and an old lithograph of the outlaw
John Wesley Hardin. Currier & Ives was an American
printmaking firm from 1835-1907, specializing in prints of
paintings by fine artists. Virgin of Guadalupe is a Catholic
title for Mary, the mother of Jesus, in association with a
series of visions of her in the Villa de Guadalupe, Mexico;
a statue of the Virgin Mary is common in Catholic Latin
American households. Grandma Moses (Anna Mary Robertson
Moses, 1860–1961) was an American folk artist. John Wesley
Hardin (1853–1895) was an American Old West outlaw and
gunfighter.
Also on his walls were a
triad of nobori streamers with kanji letters. Kanji
are logographs from Chinese script which are part of
Japanese writing.
Page 251: The Institute is sent
photocopies of receipts for "35 Lectroids...assorted partial
Lectroids and Lectroid products" to the
Equestrian
Order of the Holy Sepulchre of Jerusalem. Tommy jokes,
"Why not the
Knights of Columbus, while they're at it..?" Both are
Catholic organizations.
Buckaroo recalls hearing about one of the Bulgarian
Army's old ZSU 23-4 Shilkas stolen by a similar chivalric
order as that of the Holy Sepulchre of Jerusalem and a
similar story of a surface-to-air-missile system stolen off
a freight train in Belgium not long ago. ZSU stands for
Zenitnaya Samokhodnaya Ustanovka, "anti-aircraft
self-propelled system." Reno's description of the Shilka is
accurate. Reno goes on to say the Shilka is an oldie but
still lethal enough "even without being converted to a TEL
for a SAM pod." TEL is short for "transporter erector
launcher" and SAM is "surface-to-air missile."
Page 251: Buckaroo keeps a number of Japanese hunting
crickets as pets. As far as I can tell, there are no such
thing as "hunting crickets", Japanese or otherwise, but some
Asian countries, including Japan, do have a history of
keeping crickets as pets. Less so, western countries, but
it's not unknown.
Page 252: Buckaroo's desk has sitting on it a disassembled
Walther pistol and a short stack of books, including a
musty old volume of Virgil in Latin and a fine leather
edition of Thackeray's Vanity Fair he'd purchased from a
bookseller along the Seine in Paris. Virgil (70-19 BCE) was
a Roman poet best known for the epic poem Aeneid.
Vanity Fair is an 1848 novel, about two women
living during and after the Napoleonic Wars, by William
Makepeace Thackeray. The novel is subtitled A Novel
without a Hero, which may be an allusion by Rauch to
this very novel we are discussing; there are scenes, or at
least moments, here where the Cavaliers and other members of
Team Banzai appear quite flawed, as if Rauch is deliberately
trying to downplay the heroic aspects of these characters he
created (or newer ones who have been born out of) the BB
screenplay he wrote around 40 years ago. Even Buckaroo here
shows his flaws (like an occasional burst of fiery temper,
as Reno himself points out) and is not exceptionally heroic
in action in this story. As for the Seine, the edge of the
River Seine in Paris is known for the small bookstalls
selling all kinds of books.
Chapter XVI: A GAME TWO CAN PLAY
The opening quote of this chapter by Otto von Bismarck, "One
day the great European War will come out of some damned
foolish thing in the Balkans," was said by him and turned
out to be accurate, as the assassination of Archduke Franz
Ferdinand of Austria in the Balkan nation of Bosnia and
Herzegovina touched off WWI in 1914.
Otto von Bismarck
was Chancellor of the German Empire 1871-1890.
Page 255:
Morse code is a method of communicating via a series of
on-off signals such as flashes, tones, or clicks, invented
by Samuel Morse (1791-1872).
Page 255: Many Sarajevans voice
the opinion that Cardinal Baltazar is on his way to high
place, perhaps even the throne of Saint Peter. Saint Peter
was one of the Twelve Apostles of Jesus Christ, and one of
the first leaders of the early Christian Church, often
considered the first pope.
Page 256: Manny Magdalene uncovers two photos of Cardinal
Baltazar at the Church of the Domition of the Theotokos on
Mount Athos in Greece. This is a real world Orthodox
Christian church.
Page 256: Manny is driving a Trabant 601. This was an
automobile model manufactured by VEB Sachsenring (now
HQM
Sachsenring GmbH) from 1964-1990.
Page 256: At Baltazar's rustic mountain retreat, Manny finds
on a large crate marked CLAYMORE MINES, toy army
men are girded for war on a biblical map of the Plain of
Megiddo. Claymore mines are rigged to fire metal balls in a
blast in a certain direction. According to the Hebrew Bible,
the Plain of Megiddo was the scene of a victory by the
Israelites against the Midianites, the Amalekites, and "the
children of the East", and later where the Israelites were
defeated by the Philistines. It is also where the Christian
New Testament says the penultimate battle against evil will
someday take place.
Page 256: Manny is a Sandhurst graduate. This refers to
Royal Military Academy Sandhurst in the UK.
Page 256: Manny sees graffiti scrawled in Old Church
Slavonic in a barracks outside Baltazar's retreat. Old
Church Slavonic was the first Slavic literary language,
dating to the 9th Century BCE.
Page 256: Manny finds a pair of
Lamborghini sports cars in a detached garage at the
retreat.
Page 258: Manny wears a World Crime League
Rolex watch.
Page 259: Buckaroo is fond of a certain quote by Gandhi,
"Whatever you do will be insignificant, but it is very
important that you do it."
Mahatma Gandhi
(1869-1948) was an Indian activist who led a passive
resistance movement in India against the British overlords
of the country during the first half of the 20th century.
Page 259: Having assumed control
of General Wagoneer's "Antoine French" email account,
Buckaroo corresponds with Contreras (or, actually, Dr.
Paraquat acting as him), who asks about the Meissner effect
in relation to Heisenberg's early oscillator and the Lance
of Destiny. The Meissner effect, discovered by German
physicists Walther Meissner and Robert Ochsenfeld, is the
exclusion of magnetic fields around a superconductor when it
is below its critical temperature. Werner Heisenberg
developed a model of an oscillator that explained the
polarization of fluorescent radiation. The Lance of Destiny
(or Spear of Destiny) is the lance that is said to have
pierced the side of Jesus to prove his death as his body
hung on the cross; several relics held in sanctuaries around
Europe are claimed to be the holy lance or part of it.
Page 259: The von Braun referred
to in Dr. Paraquat's email is Wernher von Braun (1912-1977)
who invented the Saturn V rocket that first sent men to the
Moon for the United States. Von Braun was brought over to the
U.S. as part of Operation Paperclip, the U.S.'s plan to
bring key Nazi scientists to America after WWII.
Page 259: The "Meissner's folly" of working on a
superconducting, dimensional-shifting balloon that expands
until it warps time is fictitious.
Page 260: Reno comments on the heartache of the Banzai
Institute's Blue Star families. A Blue Star Family is the
immediate family of a service member during a time of
conflict. In this case, it probably refers to the families
of those Banzai representatives Xan killed when Buckaroo
sent people to petition the WCL for Xan's help in repelling
the upcoming Lectroid intervention from space.
Page 261: Baltazar left his seminarian training in
Djakovo
for several years to become a third-rate professional
wrestler and a joke of a matador in
Andalusia. After returning to the seminary, he later
became a bishop to
Schleswig-Holstein.
Page 262: Xan maintains a base of operations in the
Malaysian state of
Penang.
Page 263: Reno mentions
The Psychoanalytic Quarterly and Buckaroo's
favorite
Stella
guitar.
Page 263: Buckaroo remarks that the Lectroid pupae samples
are able to regenerate and grow with the help of
Miracle-Gro and an electrical current.
Page 264: Reno has green belts in a dozen styles of martial
arts, including underwater kajukenbo. Kajukenbo is a hybrid
martial art derived from karate, judo and jujitsu, kenpo,
and boxing. There is no "underwater kajukenbo" in the real
world as far as I can find!
Page 264: Issues of the Moonstone comic books hinted at a
romantic relationship between Reno and Pecos until the time
of "Wild Asses of the
Kush", where Pecos intimates to High Sierra that she is
in a relationship with Perfect Tommy. Here in our current
novel, Buckaroo remarks that Reno seems to be known as a
heartbreaker, to which Pecos agrees. This may suggest that
past relationship between them, ended by Reno.
Page 264: Buckaroo asks Reno if he's heard anything from
Mona since the famous Aqua Velva business and remarks it
sounds like a new drink or a new song possibility. There is
a blue-colored cocktail called an Aqua Velva (named for the
Ice Blue Aqua Velva brand aftershave) and a pop band in the
UK named the Aqua Velvas.
Page 266: Buckaroo uses Masaru Emoto's hypothesis to see how
Lectroid samples would effect the formation of crystals in
water when frozen, finding that close proximity of the
Lectroid samples effected the crystal formation.
Masaru Emoto (1943-2014) was a Japanese pseudoscientist
and author who claimed that prayer and positive thoughts
could affect water, even purifying polluted water.
Page 266: Pecos compares the brain-fogging effect of the
Lectroid samples to the legendary basilisk. The basilisk is
a mythical reptile in European lore whose glance could cause
death.
Chapter XVII: BRAIN WAVES
The opening quote of this chapter is an actual one by Nikola
Tesla. Tesla (1856-1943) was a Serbian-American
electrical engineer and physicist.
Pages 267-268: Buckaroo says that the Lectroids are able to
emit a strange psychosexual energy he calls orgonic,
alluding to the work of Wilhelm Reich. Wilhelm Reich
(1897-1957) was an Austrian MD and psychoanalyst who came to
argue that "orgastic potency" and "orgone energy" was the
key to emotional and physical health.
Page 268: Tommy makes a joking reference to his penis as
"Old Oscar Wiggly." Possibly, he's based the name on that of
the Swiss sculptor and composer Oscar Wiggli (1927-2016).
Page 268: Under the brain-fog of the Lectroid samples, Tommy
refers to himself rising like Augustine the Hippo. He means
Augustine of Hippo (354-430), a theologian and philosopher.
Page 269: Buckaroo remarks that the Lectroids are able to
sense our fear and reflect it back in spades.
Page 270: Buckaroo remarks that they don't know the
Malthusian math of Planet 10. Malthusism postulates that
population growth can theoretically grow exponentially, but
food production and other resources are only linear,
eventually leading to reduction of living standards and then
population die off. The theory is not completely accepted by
researchers.
Page 271: Pecos leafs through the latest issue of
Philological Quarterly.
Page 271: Buckaroo mentions a kind of weasel who kills much
bigger prey by dancing for them, dancing so well the prey
becomes too mesmerized to notice the weasel is moving
closer. I don't know about "much bigger prey", but stoats (a
member of the weasel family) have been known to mesmerize
prey such as rabbits with a "weasel war dance."
Page 271: Reno mentions oxytocin in relation to "This thing
called love." Oxytocin is a hormone that plays a role in
social bonding and is released into the bloodstream during
sexual activity.
Page 271: Buckaroo relates that in the Fifth Dimension, he
saw himself and Tommy walking in the Serengeti. The
Serengeti is a geological region and ecosystem in northern
Tanzania, Africa.
Page 273: Buckaroo presents Reno, Tommy, and Pecos with a
list of songs for the next leg of the Cavaliers' tour. He
tells them to feel free to tinker with it, but keep it all
in the key of G-sharp. When Pecos asks why G-sharp, Tommy
theorizes it's because G-sharp vibrates at approximately a
frequency of 51.5 Hertz, the same as the incline angle of
the Great Pyramid mentioned earlier. G-sharp resonates at a
frequency of about 51.9 Hertz, the closest of the musical
notes to 51.5.
Page 273: Hoppalong recently bought a new
Fender Jazz Bass.
Page 273: Buckaroo says that Mayor Agostinelli of Rome is a
big fan of the Hong Kong Cavaliers. This is a fictitious
mayor of this city.
Page 273: Buckaroo remarks that the
band will appear at the Coliseum in Rome on the same day as
an international DeMolay pep rally at which the pope plans
to reveal the fourth and final secret of Our Lady of Fátima.
DeMolay is undoubtedly a reference to
Jacques de Molay (c. 1250-1314), the
last grand master of the Templars. Our Lady of Fátima is
another Catholic title for Mary, mother of Jesus, inspired
by the alleged 1917 apparitions of her to three shepherd
children at
Fátima, Portugal. The children were said to have
been given three secrets by the apparition, two of which
were revealed in the 1930s (a vision of hell and the
second a foretelling of WWII) and the third was to be
released by the Vatican after 1960, which finally took place
in 2000 (about the death of a pope and other religious
figures). There is no fourth secret according to the
children or the Vatican, though some have speculated that
the third secret as revealed in 2000 was not the full text
of it. On page 366, the pope tells Buckaroo that the fourth
secret is the unrevealed last portion of the third, and
considered a fourth secret.
Page 275: Buckaroo dons
Dansko
surgical clogs.
Page 276: Cardinal Baltazar is part of
a small clique in the church who believe the forbidden fruit
in the Garden of Eden was not the apple, but the papaya,
whose seeds are thought to contain individual demons
released as phlogiston.
There is no such clique in the church in the real world. The
phlogiston theory was postulated by Johann Joachim Becher in
1667 and stated that a fire-like element called phlogiston
existed inside combustible substances and was released upon
combustion. Since the Biblical Garden of Eden, if it
existed, is almost universally accepted as having been
located in the Middle East, it would be unlikely the
forbidden fruit would be papaya because that fruit
originated an ocean away in the Americas.
Page 276:
General Wagoneer is being kept in a combination Faraday
cage/orgone accumulator. He is also being given regular
enemas of buffelgrass, stinging nettle, and juniper-ash, and
injections of rooster comb, plus
Watkins liniment foot rubs.
A Faraday cage is made of conducting material which prevents
the transmission of electrical fields to objects within, or
transmission out. An orgone accumulator is a box developed by
Wilhelm Reich in which a subject sits and accumulates orgone
energy, an anti-entropic energy or "life force" Reich
believed permeated the universe. Healthful enemas can be
made from the natural ingredients listed here.
Page 276: General Wagoneer is
caught mixing contraband Ativan with his daily prescribed
glass of
Ovaltine.
Ativan is the brand name of the real world drug lorazepam,
used to treat seizures and anxiety disorders.
Page
276: General Wagoneer is forced to live apart from others,
even livestock, while he is undergoing skunk oil treatments,
and he suffers from loneliness as a result. Skunk oil is
obtained from glands that run the length of a skunk's back.
It is known as a natural healing balm and liniment. Skunk
oil has minimal odor, so it does not seem likely the
Institute would need to keep him separated from other people
during the treatments.
Page 276: "Lazaretto" is an
Italian term for a quarantine station.
Page 277: Promethrin is a medicine
for treating lice.
Page 277: Part of Wagoneer's
regimen is to be tossed high into the air with the aim of
flipping his liver. Their is an old wives tale that says
that tossing a baby in the air or turning them upside-down
can flip their liver, and is generally considered a bad
thing. Whether there is any truth to it, I don't know, as I
do not have a baby handy to toss. I also have not been able
to find anything suggesting flipping a liver is ever a good
thing to do, as implied here.
Page 277: Wagoneer refers to the
Intelligence Integration Center and how it interfaces with
the Global Information Infrastructure to coordinate UCAV
strikes and directed-energy weapons. He is likely referring
to the Cyber Threat Intelligence Integration Center, a US
government agency created in 2015 to serve as a
go-between for the private sector and other government
agencies regarding cyber threats. The "global information
infrastructure" is another term for the internet. UCAV is
short for "unmanned combat aerial vehicle."
Page 277: Wagoneer is being
treated with ibogain, loco weed, and oleander. Ibogain is a
psychoactive substance derived from plants. Some herbal
healers believe it helps to fight drug addiction. Loco weed
and oleander are considered poisonous plants, but can also
be used medically if properly administered.
Page 279: Seeking redemption,
Wagoneer remarks he'd even ride a bicycle with the Mormons.
Mormons are members of the Church of Jesus Christ of
Latter-day Saints. Mormon missionaries are known to ride
bicycles as an easy and inexpensive method of transportation
as they canvas neighborhoods.
Chapter XVIII: OUR REGIMENTAL DINNER
The opening quote of this chapter is an actual one by Thomas
Carlyle, from his 1836 novel Sartor Resartus.
Page 283: CCTV stands for "closed-circuit television".
Page 283: The population of the Banzai Institute hovers
around four dozen, including visiting scholars and
preceptors.
Page 283: A handcrafted whiskey bottle chandelier made by
Mrs. Johnson hangs in the Institute's Gathering Hall (also
known as the Hall of Heroes or the Hall of Ambassadors).
Page 284: IRS
form 990 is a tax form of organizations that are exempt from
income tax. Rule 506(c) is a U.S. government rule that
allows qualified organizations to advertise and sell
securities to accredited investors.
Page 284: The Institute's Thursday Table meetings proceed
according to Robert's Rules. This is a U.S. manual of
parliamentary procedure, first published in 1876 and updated
regularly.
Page 284: The Institute has a 4-H Club. The 4-H
Club is a
youth organization administered by the National Institute of
Food and Agriculture of the United States Department of
Agriculture. The group was originally focused on teaching
American kids about civic values through agricultural
endeavors, but currently has a more broad-based mandate of
developing citizenship, leadership, responsibility, and life
skills.
Page 284:
The Institute has an E-2 Hawkeye. This refers to the
Northrop Grumman E-2 Hawkeye tactical airborne early
warning aircraft.
Page 286:
Army
Corps of Engineers and
Bureau of
Land Management imposters keep trying to gain access to
Institute land.
Page 287: Honest Dan Cartwright is
the quartermaster of the Banzai Institute. Perfect Tommy
accuses him of not being quite so honest with the
Institute's funds and no one believes him, but he turns out
to be correct later in the novel.
Page 287: Honest Dan goes over a
report on the Institute's supplies, including
Folgers coffee and MREs. MRE stands for "Meal, Ready to
Eat", issued to U.S. military service members since 1981.
Page 288: Before the gang begins
their Thursday Table meal, Buckaroo provides an
itadakimasu prayer and Red Jordan says Christian grace.
Itadakimasu is a Japanese term for "I humbly
receive". Christian grace is a short prayer said before
eating.
Page 288: Jack Tarantulus is the
Banzai Institute's agent for commercial endorsements, etc.
Page 288: Jack thought he had Old
Spice nailed down for one of his athlete clients, but the
WCL created a viral campaign claiming Old Spice is "of the
devil." Old
Spice is an American brand of men's grooming products.
Possibly, the WCL's viral campaign is a take-off on the "Old
Nick" nickname for the devil in Christian tradition.
Page 288: Jack also thought he had
a deal for Perfect Tommy as the face of Aqua Velva, but then
Pope Innocent got the nod instead.
Page 289: Mona has a TV show
called Come Clean. This is, of course, a fictitious
show.
Page 289: "Velcro" is capitalized,
as it is a brand name, though the term has become
genericized in the public mind.
Page 289: Jhonny is said to have
tried to disguise himself with Groucho eyebrows. Groucho
Marx (1890-1977) was an American comedian and entertainer
known for his exaggerated greasepaint eyebrows and mustache.
A common novelty disguise is known as Groucho glasses, a
one-piece plastic mask consisting of horn-rimmed glasses, a
large nose, bushy eyebrows and mustache.
Page 289: Pecos refers to Jhonny
as a jackanapes. This is a term for an impertinent person.
Page 290: Jhonny reminds Pecos of
how they settled Catan together on his custom gaming
machine.
Catan is a family of board, card, and video games
in which the players take the role of settlers on the
wilderness island of Catan.
Page 290: Jhonny remarks to Pecos
that she is "...so much awesomeness packed into your flannel
Pendleton work shirt."
Page 291: Jhonny says the year
after he arrived at the Institute, he won the international
programming Olympiad. He is referring to the
International Olympiad in Informatics, one of the most
prestigious computer science competitions in the world.
Page 291: Jhonny admits he thinks
about undoing Pecos' "Annie Oakley braids." Oakley
(1860-1926) was an American sharpshooter. By "Annie Oakley
braids," Jhonny is largely referring to the portrayal of the
woman by actress Gail Davis on the 1959-1960 and 1964-1965
TV series Annie Oakley.
Page 292: Tommy feints an
aggressive move towards Jhonny with his
Martin guitar.
Page 294: Jhonny asks Pecos to
forgive him for thinking she could be his Honey Bunches of
Oats.
Honey
Bunches of Oats is a brand of lightly-sweetened
breakfast cereal.
Page 295: Jack has his
Cessna
jet parked on the Institute's strip.
Page 295: Lipozene is a brand name
of glucomannan, a dietary fiber.
Page 296: One of the Banzai
Institute members tells of the time his food truck burned
down, but they recovered with a small business loan from the
Blue Blaze Opportunity Fund.
Page 296: Li'l Daughter of the
Rhine relates how Buckaroo was ausserordentlicher
Professor (Professor extraordinarius) at
Heidelberg (University) and later
Max-Planck-Gesellschaft in Berlin, where he saw her in a
small role at the
Staatsoper Unter den Linden, (the State Opera) and
encouraged her to come to American and set up an opera
company at the Banzai Institute.
Page 297: Honest Dan claims to
have a PhD from Caltech. PhD is Doctor of Philosophy.
"Caltech" is the nickname given to the
California
Institute of Technology.
Page 297: Hoppalong is a Black
Russian or Afro-Russian. He claims that after the American
Civil War, a bunch of former slaves, including his
ancestors, volunteered to go to the free republic of
Liberia, but ended up in Siberia through a clerical error.
Liberia is a country on the west coast of the African
continent.
Siberia covers most of northern Asia and has a largely
subarctic climate, covering a large part of Russia.
Page 297: Hoppalong says he grew
up Russian, learning to ride and rope with Cossacks like
Buckaroo himself. Cossacks are members of various ethnic
groups living in the Great Eurasian Steppe, mostly within
the regions of modern day southern Russia and the Ukraine.
Page 297: Podruga and
nichevo are Russian for "girlfriend" and "nothing",
respectively.
Page 297: Hoppalong says he was
blue and broke at university in
Vladivostok
when he applied to the Banzai Institute.
Page 297: Hoppalong makes several
remarks about Russia that are reminiscent of the jokes
Ukranian-American comedian Yakov Smirnoff often makes about
his life growing up behind the Iron Curtain. Hoppalong says,
"Most exciting thing in Vladivostok is smoking cigarette,"
and "Is kind of town full of money grubbers and bad food,
but at least the portions are small."
Page 297: Red Jordan says he
earned his Special Forces badge--SF A-team, combat engineer
MOS, mainly EOD--and went to war. "A-team" in U.S. Army
Special Forces is shorthand for Operational Detachments-A,
specializing in an infiltration skill or mission-set. MOS is
short for "military occupation specialty code" and EOD short
for "explosive ordnance disposal."
Page 298: Talla 12 de Pantalon is the Institute's
new shooting instructor. She was formerly in the
United
States Marine Corps. She made "gunny sarge" (gunnery
sergeant) and wore the blood stripe proudly; the blood
stripe is the vertical scarlet stripe on the leggings of
Marine dress uniforms. She served in A-stan (Afghanistan),
PMI with BUD/S training in Coronado, attached to MARSOC,
special operations. PMI is "primary marksmanship
instructor". BUD/S is short for "Basic Underwater
Demolition/SEAL." Coronado refers to
Naval Amphibious Base Coronado.
Semper fi (Semper fidelis) is the Marino
Corps motto, Latin for "Always faithful."
Page 298: "De las chicas en
apuros" is Spanish for "(one) of the girls in
distress."
Page 299: The Marchioness says she was
Catherine of Aragon by way of Luxembourg, married to the
great industrialist Wadsworth Longfellow and doyenne of
London high society. Historically, Catherine of Aragon was
the first wife of King Henry VIII of England in the 16th
Century; possibly, the Marchioness is comparing herself to
the former queen in terms of being born into high society of
England. Wadsworth Longfellow is a fictitious industrialist
as far as I can tell...though we saw on page 232 that
Longfellow was a member of Xan's Quorom of Four within the
World Crime League! Is the Marchioness a mole within the
Banzai Institute?
Page 299: The Marchioness relates that
she was never looking for Prince Charming. "Prince Charming"
is a term used to suggest the idealized man a woman is
looking for; it is borrowed from the concept of a charming
prince as often found in fairy tales.
Page 299: Someone at the Institute
membership gathering tells the Marchioness, after hearing her
tale of wanting to shuck high society and get her hands
dirty, "Bully for you, Miss Silverspoon. Let them eat cakes.
What's really tiring is being dirt poor, ramen-noodle poor,
and therefore treated like dirt." The phrase "let them eat
cake" is an alleged quote from Marie Antoinette when told
that the peasants had no bread; it is largely considered
apocryphal by modern scholars. "Ramen-noodle poor" is
sometimes used to describe near-destitution due to the low
cost of dried ramen noodles at the grocery store, allowing
one with meager funds to have a meal that is relatively
cheap and filling.
Page 300: Slim Greenberg picked up the
sobriquet "Missing Person" because he once let rage take him
over and get him into trouble where he had to go into
hiding.
Page 300: Papa Bear admits he was
hospitalized twice for psychiatric issues and did 14 years
in
San Quentin State Prison, where he taught himself
trivium and quadrivium and discovered a love of Euclid. He
also got 5 years tacked onto his term for shivving his
prison wife when he wouldn't wash his underwear. Trivium is
the curriculum of grammar, logic, and rhetoric in the seven
liberal arts. The quadrivium is arithmetic, geometry, music,
and astronomy of same. It's hard to say from what he says
here whether, by "Euclid", his is referring to the ancient
Greek mathematician or the ancient Greek philosopher.
Page 301: Honest Dan claims to have
been on the design team of the F-35. The F-35 is the
Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II stealth combat aircraft.
The F-35 began production in 2006, perhaps narrowing the
window of when this novel takes place.
Page 301: A relative newcomer to the group is called the
Last Mapuche. The Mapuche are a group of indigenous
inhabitants of the Patagonia region of South America.
Page 301: Another Institute member
tells of being within seconds of jumping off the Verrazano
Bridge before a Blue Blaze called Brooklyn 2000 lured him
away from the edge. The
Verrazano Bridge is a bridge connecting the Staten
Island and Brooklyn boroughs of New York City.
Page 301: Colorado Belle was part of a Brechtian interactive
theater troupe. Brechtian theater (or "epic theater")
emphasizes the audience's perspective and reaction.
Page 302: Colorado Belle says she slept in squats in the
Castro for a time when she was a junky and later got busted
for banging an Elk in front of a
Lions
Club in Boise. Presumably, the "Castro" is the
neighborhood by that name in
San Francisco.
"Elk" refers to any member of the American fraternal order
the
Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks. "Boise"
presumably refers to the city of
Boise, Idaho.
Page 302: De nada is Spanish for "it's nothing."
Page 303: High Sierra is a Reiki teacher. Reiki is a
Japanese pseudoscientific alternative healing method using
hands-on contact to transfer universal life energy to the
patient, said to help both physical and mental ailments.
Page 303: The Last Mapuche is a Rousseauian and
anarcho-primitivist Neopagan. Rousseauian philosophy is one
that suggests that social and cultural "progress" tends to
increase human moral degradation. Anarcho-primitivism is an
ideology advocating for a return to non-civilized ways.
Neopaganism refers to modern attempts to return to a
religion based on pagan beliefs.
Page 303: AA stands for
Alcoholics
Anonymous.
Page 303: Colorado Belle is in charge of the Banzai basic
clothing line and celebrity-endorsed items, with worldwide
sales in the eight figures the previous year.
Page 304: Sir Roger P─ is a top international scientist who
wishes to remain anonymous. Well, I just may be outing the
Institute's mysterious Distinguished Visiting Fellow by
possibly identifying him as Nobel Laureate, Sir Roger
Penrose (1931-), a British mathematical physicist. Another
clue that Roger P─ may be Roger Penrose is his age; from
what can be gathered of the time frame of this novel,
Penrose would be 70 years old, give or take, and a
vindictive Mrs. Johnson, on page 305, suggests Roger P─
might be better off in a nursing home!
Page 304: Mrs. Johnson calls Sir Roger
P─ an anarcho-Bolshevik when he criticizes her cooking and
his errant menu order. An anarcho-Bolshevik is an anarchist
with some Bolshevik characteristics (radical, far left
leanings).
Page 305: Mrs. Johnson tells Sir
Roger, "If you want your pudding, you've gotta eat your
meat!" This is a play on the lyrics of the 1979 Pink Floyd
song "Another Brick in the Wall" Part 2:
If you don't eat yer meat, you
can't have any pudding
How can you have any pudding if you don't eat yer meat?
Page 305: Sir Roger asks for another
splash of Pichon-Longueville Baron. Château Pichon
Longueville Baron is a winery in the Bordeaux region of
France.
Page 306: "Que viva!" is
Spanish for "Long live!"
Page 307: An unnamed Institute member
got a grant from the
National
Science Foundation for her revolutionary gene
transference technique. Another unnamed Institute member won
the
National Spelling Bee and thus a scholarship for the
Banzai Institute Semester at Sea program. A third honed
their craft at the Institute's music academy and then spent
three years with the
Philadelphia Orchestra. Still another was an Eagle Scout
and an Olympic gold medalist in shooting; Eagle Scout is
the highest attainable rank in Boy Scouts.
Page 307: Honest Dan
remarks, "...better a restless Socrates than a happy pig in
slop..."
Socrates (469-399 BC) was a Greek philosopher.
Dan says that one day he
saw Buckaroo on TV talking about Buckminster Fuller's theory
of precession. Buckminster Fuller (1895-1983) was an
American inventor, futurist, and author. Fuller defined
precession as the effect of bodies in motion on other bodies
in motion.
Dan claims that Buckaroo's message of positive
motivation leading to positive effects got him back to his
research on superfield vacuum theory and oscillatory
dynamics, leading
Peking
University to call him. He claims also to have spent
time working in Las Vegas and the Princeton Engineering
Anomalies Research Lab. The Princeton Engineering Anomalies
Research Lab was a parapsychology research program at
Princeton University started in 1979 (now part of the
International
Consciousness Research Laboratories).
Page 308: STD stands for "sexually
transmitted disease."
Page 308: Scheiss is
German for "shit".
Page 308: An unnamed triple
amputee member tells how they joined the army and passed the
SFQC, did a stint in the
French Foreign Legion in the Sudan, then hit the beaches
of Italian Somaliland as a counterterrorism specialist. SFQC
is short for "Special Forces Qualification Course." Italian
Somaliland was an African protectorate of Italy from
1889-1960.
Chapter XIX: THE CAVALIERS LET THEIR HAIR
DOWN
The opening quote of this chapter is from Edgar A. Guest's
1942 poem "Equipment".
Page 311: Li'l Daughter asks Reno if he's from "the Biggest
Little City in the World." This is the slogan of
Reno, Nevada.
In the novelization of
Across the Eighth Dimension, it is said that Reno's
last name is Nevada, but no mention of that is made here.
Page 311: Reno explains that he spent some time in the ring,
where his trainer gave him the name Kid Reno, but they soon
found out there was another boxer using that name, so our
Reno became the Reno Kid (even though somebody already had
that name, too!).
Page 311: Reno previously worked at NASA. Hearing this,
Pecos jokes, "Never a straight answer at NASA." Many
conspiracy theorists who believe that NASA is covering up
knowledge of UFOs, alien sites on Mars and the Moon, etc.
like to say that the acronym stands for Never A Straight
Answer.
Page 311: After NASA, Reno spent time at the
Indian
Institute of Science, then his own startup and think
tank in
Bangalore.
Page 312: USFPS stands for
United States Federal Protective Service.
Page 312: Papa Bear worked for the
Cavendish Lab at Cambridge, where he also joined the
Cambridge Footlights.
Page 312: Mrs. Johnson reveals she just signed seven-figure
deals with
CorningWare and
Banquet
TV dinners.
Page 313: Li'l Daughter says she once spent a month alone in
the Black Forest trying to lose herself. The Black Forest is
a large, forested mountain range in Germany.
Page 313: Pecos remarks that Buckaroo has been spending
maybe too many days cooped up in his study doing nothing but
reciting Kūkai's Ākāśagarbha sutra and blowing his
shakuhachi along with Beethoven's Third Symphony or the
Mormon Tabernacle Choir. Kūkai (774-835) was the founder
of Shingon Buddhism. Ākāśagarbha is a bodhisattva (a person
on the path) in
Chinese, Japanese, and Korean Buddhism. Kūkai is said to
have met a famous monk who taught him the Ākāśagarbha sutra.
The mantra is said to give rise to wisdom and creativity,
and dispel ignorance. A shakuhachi is a
longitudinal flute made of bamboo.
Page 313: Buckaroo recalls at time spent in the caves of
Muroto. This presumably refers to caves near the Japanese
city of
Muroto.
Page 313: Pecos laments that she fears Buckaroo might be
slipping into hikikomori. Hikikomori is a
Japanese term for acute social withdrawal.
Page 313: Agreeing with Pecos' concerns, Tommy tells
Buckaroo to "Raise Cain..." The
phrase "raise Cain" in Western cultures is a reference to
the Biblical Cain, one of the sons of Adam and Eve, who
committed the first murder, the killing of his brother Abel.
Page 314: Buckaroo says he muses
on Ryōkan's lines, "ten days of rice in my bag and, by the
hearth, a bundle of firewood." This is one of the Zen quotes
of Ryōkan (1758-1831), a monk who spent much of his life as
a hermit.
Page 314: Pecos tells Buckaroo to
remember Krishnamurti's words: "I don't mind what happens."
Jiddu Krishnamurti (1895-1986) was a philosopher, speaker,
and writer. He did say these words.
Page 314: Buckaroo remarks on his
reasons for listening to the Eroica. This is
another name for Beethoven's Third Symphony.
Page 315: Buckaroo once worked as
a garbage helper and recyclables gleaner at
Columbia College of Physicians & Surgeons. It was
revealed in "Of Hunan
Bondage" Part 1 that he attended this college.
Page 315: "Ride or Die" is a
neologism of biker culture.
Page 315: An unnamed Institute
member tells how she rode her Harley with Screamin' Eagle
pipes to the Institute (the Last Chance Saloon) for a
gastric bypass to lose weight. "Screamin' Eagle" is a
version of motorcycle manufacturer
Harley-Davidson's Revolution engine, known for its
distinctively-shaped exhaust pipes. "Last Chance Saloon" has
become a metaphor for something beyond which hope becomes
diminished.
Page 316: Tommy refers to the
Screamin' Eagle Harley as a
Tonka toy, adding, "...why not just ride a Sportster
with racing stripes...or at least a Shovelhead..." Sportster
is a line of motorcycles made by Harley. Shovelhead was an
engine made by Harley from 1966 to 1984.
Page 316: Reno refers to Tommy as
a perpetual enfant terrible. This is French for
"terrifying child."
Page 316: Tommy asks Pecos what
made her put her John Henry on the dotted line. Tommy is
confusing the name "John Henry" with "John Hancock". "John
Hancock" has become a synonym for "signature" in the U.S. due
to the large, flamboyant signature of American Founding
Father John Hancock. John Henry, in contrast, was a steel
driving man.
Page 317: Pecos tells the
assemblage that her parents were missionaries and when she was a
child her father and two brothers were kidnapped off the
coast of Zanzibar and her mother drowned in the Zambezi
River, where Pecos herself was miraculously rescued by a
crocodile and then adopted by a mama hyena. After Mama Hyena
was killed, she eventually went to live with her missionary
aunt and learned a dozen languages and became a translator
for
Wycliffe Bible Society at the age of 14. She now has a
doctorate in nuclear spin tomography. Zanzibar is an
autonomous region of Tanzania. The Zambezi River is the
fourth-longest river in Africa. There are a number of
semi-confirmed cases of children that were separated from
civilization and raised by animals such as wolves, dogs,
monkeys, and others, but no cases of hyenas.
Page 317: Tommy tells that when he
was a child in Mizzou, he was diagnosed as an Indigo Child
with superpowers ("a power child and an empath, among other
things"). "Mizzou" is a nickname for the U.S. state of
Missouri. Indigo children are a New Age concept of children
who have special, often supernatural, traits; empathy is
often one of the described traits.
Page 318: Tommy says he was sent to
Father
Flanagan's Boys Town where he developed into a
superhuman athlete and established the worldwide Ritalin abuse campaign
that won him the MacArthur Wile E. Coyote genius grant and
finished his education at the Wanton School of Business.
Ritalin is a brand name for methylphenidate, a stimulant
drug used to treat ADHD, and many legal actions have been
taken by defendants who contend the drug has been
overprescribed and has some negative side effects. The
MacArthur Fellows Program (unofficially, the "Genius
Grant") is a large cash prize for American residents in any
field who have shown "extraordinary originality and
dedication in their creative pursuits and a marked capacity
for self-direction."
Wile E. Coyote is a Warner Bros. character appearing in Looney
Toons and Merrie
Melodies cartoons
known for failed attempts to use ingenious gadgets or traps.
The Wanton School of Business is not real; possibly, as Jack
suggests, Tommy is referring to the Wharton School of
Finance and Economy (now known as
Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania).
After business school,
Tommy claims to have gone to
Balliol College, Oxford.
Page 318: Not believing Tommy's far-fetched story, Jack
cries bullshit and says, "Tallyho, old chap! I'm looking
that up." The phrase "tally-ho" is a British one used during
a fox hunt to announce sighting of the prey.
Page 318: Tommy mentions having a
big-bore Henry, a stack of otaku fanzines, and a
Game Box. He is referring to a Henry rifle,
otaku
(geek/nerd) magazines, and "Game Box" may be a portmanteau
of such video game systems as "Game Boy" and "Xbox".
Page 318: Tommy drove a Boss 429
Mustang. This was a high performance mod of the 1969 and 1970
Ford Mustang
automobile.
Page 318: The Ozarks is a
geographic region in southern Missouri and northern
Arkansas.
Page 318: Tommy says he hoped to
become a Starfleet officer or a shinobi in the
desert or kill a man for every year of his life like Billy
the Kid. Starfleet is a reference to the
Star Trek
science-fiction franchise. Shinobi is essentially
another term for "ninja". Billy the Kid (1859-1881) was an
outlaw and gunfighter of the American Old West who claimed
at the age of 21 that he killed a man for every year of his life,
but historians say the real total is more like nine.
Page 319: Mirable dictu
is Latin for "spoken miracles."
Page 320: The Institute leaves open chairs at the dinner
table for the late Rawhide, occupied only by Rawhide's
ragged Stetson hat, Penny's sombrero, and Professor Hikita's
blood-smeared spectacles.
Page 321: Li'l Daughter recites Antony's soliloquy over
Caesar's body in German. This is from Shakespeare's
Julius Caesar.
Page 322: Tommy mentions Plutarch and Pluto. Plutarch
(46-119) was a Greek philosopher, historian, and priest.
Pluto was the Greek god of the underworld.
Page 322: Buckaroo gives a brief commentary on the Buddha's
Turning of the Wheel of the Law sermon. The Turning of the
Wheel of the Law are the rules of Buddhism.
Page 322: Kaizen is the Japanese word for
"improvement" and is a term used for the continuous
improvement in business, involving all employees of the
business from top to bottom.
Page 322: Baijiu is a type of Chinese liquor. On
page 382, Jhonny has been drinking Hong Kong brand
baijiu.
Page 323: A chashitsu is a traditional Japanese tea
room.
Page 323: When Buckaroo sees the shade of Professor Hikita
sitting in the tea room, he refers to the man first as
Hikita-sama and then as Chichi. "Sama" is an honorific like
"san", added to the end of a name in Japanese tradition, but
"sama" is generally used towards an individual of higher
rank or for one whom the speaker greatly admires. "Chichi"
means "father" (oddly, it also means "breasts"...I'm pretty
sure Buckaroo is using the "father" meaning here).
Page 323: The shade of Hikita says he is in 1958 and saw
Buckaroo's father only yesterday. Presumably, he means he
saw him in the afterlife since Dr. Masado Banzai died in a
jet car accident in 1950, or 1953, or 1954, or 1955. Take
your pick. (See mentions of Masado's death in the studies of
"A Tomb With A View"
and
Across the 8th Dimension.)
Page 323: The shade of Hikita reveals that Manny Magdalene
is the one who killed him.
Page 324: Comandante is Spanish for "commander."
Page 324: The Institute detects a convoy of Pinkertons
coming towards it up Paint Creek Road. As
far as I can
find, this is a fictitious road in Arizona.
Page 324: Buckaroo speculates that the convoy could be the
new Joint Special Operations Task Force from DARPA. While
there have been all sorts of "Joint Special Operations Task
Forces" within the U.S. military/intelligence complex, I
don't DARPA has had one itself. DARPA is the
Defense
Advanced Research Projects Agency, formed as ARPA in
1958, which develops new technology for the U.S. military.
Page 324: Buckaroo tells Reno and Tommy to take the quad racers
with General Wagoneer and split up, then "meet up at the
haunted mine...north adit." "Adit" is a horizontal entrance
to an underground mine.
Chapter XX: INTO THE LAP OF THE APACHES
The opening quote of this chapter, "The soldiers never
explained to the government when an Indian was wronged," is
an actual one said by Geronimo, but the missing second half
of the quote is "...but reported the misdeeds of the
Indians." Geronimo (1829-1909) was a leader and medicine man
of the Bedonkohe band of the Apache people and was involved
in numerous raids of European settlements in the American
southwest and northern Mexico and battles against U.S. and
Mexican military forces.
Page 327: Reno, the general, and his dog, race a
Honda
Rubicon 550 towards the San Francisco Mountains. The San
Francisco Mountains are a volcanic mountain range in
northcentral Arizona.
Page 327: Reno pulls his Vepr 12 from its scabbard. The
Vepr-12 is a semi-automatic shotgun with a body design based
on the original Kalashnikov rifle. It is made by the Russian
company
Molot-Oruzhie Ltd.
Page 327: Riding through the Arizona desert, General
Wagoneer remarks to Reno, "Devoid of the human condition! Of
course the Sonoran Desert's nothing. Ever been to Ma'rib?
The vast Saudi Arabian Empty Quarter?" The Sonoran Desert
covers the southwest quadrant of Arizona (plus parts of
southeast California, Baja California, and northwest
Mexico). Ma'rib is a city on the edge of the Empty Quarter
in Yemen. The Empty Quarter (Rub' al Khali) is a large sand
desert covering most of the southern third of the Arabian
peninsula.
Page 328: Tommy rides a
Yamaha quad.
Page 328: General Wagoneer wears a U.S. Cavalry hat. The
U.S. Cavalry was the mounted force of the U.S. Army from
1861-1950.
Page 329: The Apache elder Black Cloud sees General
Wagoneer's cavalry hat with the crossed sabers pin and
remarks, "One of the Long Knives." Some American Indian
tribes used the term "long knives" in reference to U.S.
soldiers who carried a saber in a scabbard.
Page 329: General Wagoneer claims to
Black Cloud that he is known by the red man as Pontiac, son
of Oklahoma, sent by the Great White Father. Possibly,
Wagoneer has borrowed the name "Pontiac" from history, it
being the name of an Odawa war chief who fought a war
against British policies in the Great Lakes region of North
America from 1763-1766. "Oklahoma" besides being the name of
a state, is a combination of the Choctaw words okla
and humma, meaning "people" and "red",
respectively, so by calling himself a son of Oklahoma, he
may be saying that he is a son of the red man. "Great White
Father" is an alternate form of "Great Father", which is a
term that was used with the Americas' indigenous inhabitants
to describe the U.S. president or kings of Great Britain,
France, and Spain.
Wagoneer also claims that he and his "adjutant and
mystical sage," Mustang Sally Nostradamus (his Chihuahua) are
one-quarter Ojibwe. "Mustang Sally" was probably borrowed
from the 1965 song of the same name written and first
recorded by Mack Rice. The Ojibwe are a Native American
people of modern day Canada and the U.S.
Page 330: The
Bureau of Indian Affairs is a U.S. government agency
under the Department of the Interior.
Page 330: General Wagoneer refers to Black Cloud as "Billy
Jack". Billy Jack is a mixed-race American Navajo character
in a series of four movies made from 1967-1977, the most
well-known of which was 1971's Billy Jack.
Page 330: Tommy mentions "lyin' promises" made to the red
man by Dale Carnegie and the robber barons. He actually
means to name Andrew Carnegie (1835-1919), a
Scottish-American industrialist. Dale Carnegie (1922-1955)
was an American writer and speaker on topics of
self-improvement. "Robber baron" is a critical term for
wealthy and powerful 19th Century American
businessmen/industrialists who were said to use exploitative
practices to achieve their goals.
Page 330: Black Cloud reminds the others about Hill's rail
and Jackson's Indian Removal Act and the long hunger
marches, commenting, "...our D-day was in 1492." Hill's rail
refers to James J. Hill (1838-1916), a railroad tycoon who
built railroad lines across the upper Midwest, the Great
Plains, and the Pacific Northwest. The Indian Removal Act
was called for by President Andrew Jackson in 1829, received
from Congress, and signed by him in 1830; it allowed either
the negotiated or forceful removal of southern Native
American tribes to new land west of the Mississippi River on
long marches that led to the death of many individuals due
to hunger, disease, exhaustion, and exposure to the
elements.
Page 330: Tommy mentions having seen the picture of a white
hunter standing atop a mountain of buffalo skulls. He is
likely referring to the 1892 photograph below.
Page 331: The Five Nations refers to the Iroquois or
Haudenosaunee (Native name) confederacy of five indigenous
peoples in northeast North America that existed when French
and English settlers arrived on the continent. In 1722, a
sixth people joined.
Page 331: Black Cloud remarks that he spoke to the Dalai
Lama at an environmental symposium Buckaroo held. The Dalai
Lama is the head monk of the Gelug school of Tibetan
Buddhism, and nominally the leader of Tibet.
Page 331: The Animas River is a river that runs through
Colorado and New Mexico. It is also known as the River of
Souls.
Page 331: A nagual is a human who has the ability
to shapeshift into a jaguar in the lore of Mesoamerica.
Page 331: Black Cloud's mention of his people having seen a
flaming quetzal in the sky many times is presumably a
reference to the Aztec feathered serpent god, Quetzalcoatl.
Page 331: The Iipay are a tribe of Kumeyaay Indians, also
known as Mission Indians. Their reservation is located in
San Diego County, CA.
Page 331: The "strange blue star" Black Cloud claims to have
seen may be a reference to the Blue Star Kachina, allegedly
part of Hopi mythology. But the mythological reference is
known only from the writings of Frank Waters (1902-1995),
which may have been made up by him.
Page 332: Black Cloud says that his great-grandfather knew
the great Paiute Wovovka. Wovovka was a religious leader of
the Paiute indigenous people of the Great Basin region of
North America.
Page 332: In the post-Civil War era, the Chisholm Trail was
a trail used for driving cattle from Texas to Kansas
ranches.
Page 333: The four colors of the medicine wheel spoken of by
Black Cloud are usually yellow, red, black, and white.
Page 335: The Sahel mentioned by Tommy is the transition
realm between the Sahara Desert of northern Africa and the
Sudanian savanna to the south.
Page 335: In the burning of parts of the Banzai Institute
after the Pinkerton raid, Tommy says it look like the
relativistic heavy ion collider and the proton lab are up in
smoke.
Page 336: Zersetzung is German for "decomposition."
Page 336: Trying to lift their spirits after the raid at the
Institute, Tommy says to Reno, "I'm not broken. Instead I'm
reminded of Beowulf's victory over Grendel, or that lone
sentry dude at Pompeii--the one who never left his post
despite the wave of red-hot lava rolling his way, until his
head exploded." Beowulf is the hero who fights the monster
Grendel in the Old English epic poem Beowulf.
Tommy's comment about the Pompeian sentry regards a scene
in the 1834 Edward Bulwer-Lytton novel The Last Days of
Pompeii.
Page 336: Reno notes that the facts on the raid on the
Institute by rogue government elements have been placed
under seal by the
Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, though a
version may be found in foreign sources, particularly
Theories du complot, realites du complot (Conspiracy
theories, conspiracy realities) by Phillippe Sollers.
Phillippe Sollers is a real world French novelist and
critic, though I do not see that he wrote anything called
Theories du complot, realites du complot.
Page 336: The quote Tommy makes by Chairman Mao is accurate.
"Chairman Mao" was Mao Zedong, chairman of the Chinese
Communist Party and ruler of China from 1949 until his death
in 1976.
Page 337: Tommy remarks to Reno that when he can't stand on
his own two feet, bury him Apache-style in a hollow tree
trunk. There are some peoples in the world who bury their
dead in this manner, but I have not been able to confirm
that the Apache have ever done so.
As Jhonny lies dying late in the novel, he also
requests this type of burial.
Page 337: Tommy is ambidextrous and is equally proficient in
playing either a left- or right-hand-strung guitar.
Page 337: Telos is a Greek term used by Aristotle
to refer to the inherent purpose of a person or object.
Chapter XXI: XAN'S FUNK
The opening quote of this chapter is an actual one by Lao
Tzu from his book Tao Te Ching, c. 400 BCE.
Page 340: Manny was interrogated by MI6 at Blenheim Palace.
Blenheim Palace is the seat of the Dukes of Marlborough
in Oxfordshire, England.
Page 341: Xan has a dream of Baltazar under the name of the
corsair Barbarossa. This may be a reference to Hayreddin
Barbarossa, a 15-16th Century Ottoman naval officer and
corsair.
Page 341: Xan says his dream took place at Bayreuth in 1876.
Bayreuth
is a town in northern Bavaria, Germany. It's famed festival
hall, the Festspielhaus, opened in 1876.
Page 341: In the dream, Xan told Barbarossa he (Xan) rode
against the against the forces of Napoleon with von Blucher
and died on the field at Waterloo. The Old Guard was the
most prestigious of formations of the Grande Armée
of Napoleon. Gebhard Leberecht von Blücher (1742-1819) was a
Prussian general who played a key role in the defeat of
Napoleon at
Waterloo.
Napoleon met his defeat at the hand of the forces of the
Seventh Coalition at the 1815 Battle of Waterloo.
Page 341: Jedem das seine, herr is German for "to
each his own, sir."
Pages 341-342: Xan tells Barbarossa he has been in past
lives, Timur the Terrible; Ivan the Terrible; Edwardus
Primus, Hammer of the Scots; Hassan bin Sabbah; and Xan von
Franzosisch-Indochina. "Xan von Franzosisch-Indochina" means
"Xan from French Indochina" in German. The other names are
all actual historical rulers and conquerors.
Page 342: Das Rheingold is the first of Wagner's
four-part Der Ring des Nibelungen opera.
Page 342: Barbarossa tells Xan he never met the Little
Corporal and had served only in the Seven Years' War, but
was now in service to Otto von Bismarck. "Little Corporal"
was an affectionate nickname afforded to Napoleon by his
guards. The Seven Years' War (1756-1763) was a conflict
between the British and French empires, considered the first
"global war". Otto von Bismarck was Chancellor of the German
Empire 1871-1890.
Page 342: Lycurgus the Spartan (Lycurgus of Sparta) was a
lawgiver who established a military-style reformation of the
society of the Greek city-state of Sparta in the 9th Century
BCE. "Arsch Lecken" is German for "ass licker."
Page 342: Sexus servus is Latin for "sex slave."
Page 342: Xan tells Manny he (Xan) is Tiberius Gracchus and
that Manny was like something sticking to his boot like the
rest of Carthage. Tiberius Gracchus (163-133 BCE) was a
populist politician of Rome. As a young man, he'd been one
of the Roman soldiers to scale the wall of Carthage during
the Roman siege of 146 BC. Carthage is an historical city on
the Gulf of Tunis in Tunisia. The city was destroyed by the
Romans in the Third Punic War in 146 BC (though it was
rebuilt and destroyed and rebuilt again in the centuries
following; the city still exists today).
Page 342: Manny reminds Xan that he saved Xan's life at
Agincourt and took care of him when he was Alexander of
Macedonia. "Agincourt" probably refers to the Battle of
Agincourt in 1415 during the Hundred Years' War (another
lengthy war between England and France). Alexander of
Macedonia is another nomme de guerre of the
previously-mentioned Alexander the Great.
Page 342: Diogenes the Cynic was a Greek philosopher of the
4th Century BCE.
Page 343: Besides "Sexus Servus", Xan refers to Manny as
Polonius, Culus Paterculus, and Ajax. Polonius is the name
of the character of villain Claudius' chief counselor in
Shakespeare's Hamlet. "Culus Paterculus" means
"Paterculus' anus" in Latin; presumably, "Paterculus" refers
to Velleius Paterculus (19-31 BCE), a minor historian of the
Roman Empire. Ajax may refer to either Ajax the Great or
Ajax the Lesser, both Ancient Greek mythological heroes.
Page 343: Xan recalls hearing a rumor weeks ago about a mad
friar visiting the Bocca della Verità and sticking
his hand in the mouth of the mask.
Bocca della Verità is Italian for "Mouth of Truth"
and the mask by that name is a medieval marble sculpture
with an open mouth that mythology says will bite the hand
off anyone who lies while having their hand in the mouth.
Page 343: Xan refers to the mad friar Abbot Costello as a
"rambling Rasputin." Grigori Rasputin (1869-1916) was a
Russian mystic who had the confidence of Tsar Nicholas II
for about ten years before Rasputin was assassinated.
Page 344: Manny reports to Xan that Abbot Costello was
arrested on Fremont Street in
Henderson, Nevada after fleeing a
Red
Lobster on a bicycle. There is no Fremont Street in
Henderson, though there is one in nearby Las Vegas.
Page 345: Pro se, in forma pauperis is Latin for
"for oneself, in the form of the poor."
Page 345: Manny reports that at his court appearance, Abbot
Costello gave his name and two addresses, one a doss house
in Rome and the other the WCL affiliate in
Bullhead City. "Doss house" is a British term for
"flophouse."
Page 345: Xan rages that he'll have Baltazar's head on a
plate like the Baptist. This refers to the Biblical John the
Baptist, who is said to have been beheaded by King Herod for
his criticism of the king's marriage to his brother's
ex-wife, Herodias, and Herod having John's head delivered to
Herodias on a plate.
Page 345: Trahison des clercs is French for
"betrayal of clerics."
Page 346: Xan rages that he'll sack the Vatican as he sacked
Baghdad in 1258. The Siege of Baghdad, led by Hulagu
Khan in 1258, left the city largely destroyed for several
decades.
Page 346: Xan signs his name with a
Montblanc Meisterstück.
Page 346: Manny has just come from a long day at the House
of Commons in London. This is the lower house of the
Parliament of the United Kingdom. The upper is the House of
Lords.
Chapter XXII: THE ITALIAN CAMPAIGN
The opening quote of this chapter is from the actual oath of
Robert the Pious, King of the Franks from 996 to 1031. His
oath here became a model for the chivalric oaths of the
societies of knights in Europe during the Middle Ages.
Page 349: The Cavaliers bivouac at the
University of
Pisa, alma mater of Galileo and Fermi. Galileo and Fermi
are both renowned scientists in history.
Page 349: The Cavaliers visit sick children in the
Careggi hospital on the grounds of
Cosimo de' Medici's ancient villa near
Florence.
Page 349: The Cavaliers visit San Galgano Abbey. This is an
abbey that was built around the former hermitage site of San
Galgano himself in the 13th Century. Currently, only the
walls of the abbey remain standing.
Page 350: Bestie and nei boschi are
Italian for "beasts" and "in the woods."
Page 352: Pazzo is Italian for "lunatic".
Page 352: The young shepherd who gives the Cavaliers
a tour of the abbey and the site of the (former) sword in
the stone remarks that, "...without the sword hanging over
us, and all the religious pilgrims who came to see it, the
village seems a happier place." His "sword hanging over us"
comment is likely a reference to the
Sword of Damocles, a Greek legend that tells of the man
Damocles who exclaims that the emperor Dionysius is truly
fortunate for all his power and fortune. Dionysius offers to
let Damocles exchange lives for a day so he may feel what
it's like and the man eagerly agrees. Damocles is then
treated like a king and enjoys a sumptuous meal in the
court. Only after he finishes eating does he notice a sword
dangling precariously above, held by a thread, whereupon
Damocles asks the emperor's leave, saying he no longer wants
to be so fortunate.
Page 354: The Cavaliers fly by
helicopter over the Apennines. This is a mountain range
extending the length of the central and western portions of
the Italian peninsula.
Page 354: The carabinieri are the
domestic police of Italy.
Page 354: "Buckaroo Banzai e
suoi favolosi Hong Kong Cavaliers in concerto, nel
colosseo!!" is Italian for "Buckaroo Banzai and his
fabulous Hong Kong Cavaliers in concert, in the Colosseum!!"
Page 355: Reno describes the
Cavaliers' reception by fans and media as sometimes (rarely)
encompassing "juvenile all-night romps worthy of Nero..."
Nero (37-68 AD) was a Roman emperor known for his partying
and debauchery. On page 395, Reno writes that even the
Cavaliers could be accused of fiddling while Rome burned.
This refers to the proverbial "Nero fiddled while Rome
burned" (the Great Fire of Rome in 64 C.E.). Reno's
comparison is that the Cavaliers are playing a show at the
Coliseum while the Lectroid warship hangs overhead,
threatening the entire Earth.
Page 355: Reno addresses the
book's readers as "followers of this series", implying a line of
books about Team Banzai's adventures existing in the
Buckaruniverse.
Page 355: The Apostolic Palace is
the official residence of the pope in Vatican City.
Page 356: The pope visited the
Vatican Observatory in Arizona the previous year. This is
the
Vatican Advanced Technology Telescope on Mount Graham
near Safford, Arizona.
Page 356: The pope's reference to
kicking Pluto out of the solar system is to the downgrading
of the solar system object called Pluto, discovered in 1930,
from the status of "planet" to "dwarf planet" in 2006.
Page 357: At the Apostolic Palace,
Tommy eats a piece of chocolate that Cardinal Baltazar then
chastises him with the story that the chocolate was a gift
from the conquistador Pizarro to the Spanish King Charles I,
who shared it with Pope Clemens Septimus, and that the
chocolate was made up of tablets upon which was engraved the
history of a long-extinct Indian tribe. Francisco Pizarro
(1478-1541) was a Spanish conquistador who conquered the
region of Peru in South America for King Charles I
(1500-1558). Pope Clemens Septimus (1478-1534) is more
commonly known as Pope Clement VII. The story of the
chocolate tablets is fictitious, especially as the South
American tribes used the bitter cocoa beans for making the
tejate drink and some other foodstuffs, but not for
chocolate, per se. Hernando Cortes first sent cocoa
beans to Europe and it was there that cocoa was first mixed
with sugar and milk to create chocolate.
Page 358: When the cardinal sees
Tommy and Reno's horrified reactions to the chocolate relic
they're eating, his face is said to take the look of
Torquemada himself. Tomás de Torquemada (1420-1498) was the
first Grand Inquisitor of the Spanish Inquisition, known for
his cruelty, use of torture, and advocacy of burning at the
stake for those found guilty of heresy.
Page 358: The cardinal distributes
small gift bags to the Cavaliers which include Ace pocket
combs and Pope Innocent comic books, including one on the
Baltimore Catechism. Ace is a brand of plastic or
hard rubber hair combs established in 1924. The
Baltimore Catechism was the standard Catholic school
textbook in the United States from 1885 to the 1960s.
Page 359: The pope's traditional
white cassock now sports a hodgepodge of corporate logo
patches such as Aqua Velva, Ace combs, Buster Brown shoes,
Champion lip balm, Knights of Malta lube job, and Go Fast
sports drink.
Page 359: Pope Innocent wears a
plastic Buckaroo Banzai flashlight ring on his right pinkie
finger.
Page 360: Reno mentions the
Pontifical Swiss Guards. These are honor guards for the
pope and his palace within Vatican City.
Page 362: Reno refers to Pope
Innocent as a simple carbonaio from the Bergamo
Alps. Carbonaio is an Italian term for a charcoal
maker. The Bergamo Alps is a mountain range in the Italian
Alps.
Chapter XXIII: ALSO SPRACH
BALTAZAR
The title of this chapter is inspired by the 1896 tone poem
by Richard Strauss, itself inspired by Friedrich Nietzsche's
philosophical novel Thus Spoke Zarathustra.
The opening quote of this chapter is an actual one by
Alexander Pope (1688-1744), an English satirist and poet.
Page 363: Buckaroo sees a painting in the
Apostolic Palace he doesn't
recognize, but sees that it is signed by Arnold Böcklin.
Böcklin (1827-1901) was a Swiss symbolist painter.
Page 364: Another painting in the
palace features a classical Greek Adonis reclining on a
cloud a la Titian's Venus. Adonis was the mortal lover of
Aphrodite (Venus) in Greek mythology. Titian (1488-1576) was
a Venetian painter; one of his painting series was of Venus.
Page 364: Gott mit uns is
German for "God with us."
Page 364: Cardinal Baltazar says
he has been appointed Cardinal Secretary of State,
pontifex maximus of the Priory of Sion, and commandant of
the Praetorian Papal Knights and Penitent Boys of Rome.
While the Cardinal Secretary of State is a an actual,
important position in the Vatican, the Priory of Sion was a
hoax fraternal organization concocted by the Frenchman
Pierre Plantard in 1956, and the Praetorian Papal Knights
and Penitent Boys of Rome appears to be entirely fictitious.
Page 364: Cardinal Baltazar also
claims he has been tasked with rewriting the Catholic Bible.
Page 365: Tommy refers to the
donkey that "Napoleon" is riding in the "Böcklin" painting
as "Bocephus". The cardinal corrects him that he doubtlessly
meant "Bucephalus". The name probably refers to the horse of
Alexander the Great. Napoleon's horse was named Marengo. The
cardinal also suggests that maybe Tommy meant "the white
Coco." I don't know what this refers to...but PopApostle
reader Steve Mattson possibly does, telling us the
19th Century writer Guy de Maupassant wrote a short story
about an aged white horse named Coco ("Coco", 1884).
Page 365: Tommy recognizes the
wrestler in the Adonis painting as the same as the Satan
depicted by Guido as looking like the Cardinal Pamphili.
Guido Reni (1575-1642) was an Italian painter, who painted
St. Michael Archangel, with St. Michael holding
Satan's head down to the ground with a foot and Satan's face
being that of Cardinal Giovanni Battista Pamphili
(1574-1655), who went on to become Pope Innocent X. The real
world painting still hangs in the Our Lady of the Conception
church in Rome, not destroyed by fungus in our world as it
is said to have been here.
Page 366: Auto-da-fé is
Portuguese for "act of faith."
Page 366: After declaring Tommy
"infamous and anathema," Cardinal Baltazar pretends to wash
his hands like Pontius Pilate. Pontius Pilate was the
governor of Roman Judaea who presided over the trial of
Jesus and ordered his execution. According to the Bible,
Pilate attempted to wash his guilt over Jesus' death from
his hands.
Page 367: The Saint Thomas
referred to by Buckaroo is Saint Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274),
an Italian friar and philosopher. His saying about knowledge
that Buckaroo here refers to is from his Summa
Theologica (1485), "As the good is in relation to
things, so is the true in relation to knowledge. Now in
things it is impossible to find one that is wholly devoid of
good. Wherefore it is also impossible for any knowledge to
be wholly false, without some mixture of truth."
Page 368: Gehenna, or the Valley
of Hinnom, is a valley surrounding ancient Jerusalem.
Page 368: Baltazar's reference to
the Corsican is to Napoleon, who was born and spent his
early life on the French island of Corsica.
Page 368: Und mit der sieg
heil is German for "and with the victory hail."
Page 368: Baltazar's reference to
the Second Consulate is presumably to the Second Consul that
ruled France from 1799 until 1804, when Napoleon declared
the French Empire, modeled after the Roman Empire.
Page 369: Buckaroo asks Baltazar
who the figure in the wrestling tights is in the painting.
Baltazar responds it is the Holy Justicer and Buckaroo
points out it looks like the bust of Caligula in the
Louvre. "Holy Justicer" appears to be a fictitious term.
Caligula (12-41 AD) was a 1st Century Roman emperor whose
wanton and depraved Bacchanalias were legendary.
Page 370: Buckaroo remarks that he
is to deliver a lecture at the
Italian
Astronomical Society.
Page 371: Buckaroo also has a
meet-and-greet at the Enrico Fermi Astrophysical Society. As
far as I can tell, this is a fictitious organization.
Page 371: Sindaco di Roma
is Italian for "mayor of Rome."
Page 371: Jack Tarantulus boasts that he knows the president
of the
American Bar Association.
Page 372: Reno tries to cover up some
of Team Banzai's secrets from Mona by saying to her, "You mean
our next movie?" This implies there have been multiple BB
movies in the Buckaruniverse. Mona retorts that she has
sources saying the movie is to be titled Project Doom
and has Buckaroo taking over the president's job and issues
a top-level directive from NORAD for placing US forces on
worldwide alert. Tommy chimes in, "DEFCON 2..."
NORAD is
the North American Aerospace Defense Command, a joint
operation of the U.S. and Canada to provide early warning
and defense against air and space offenses against the two
nations.
DEFCON (short for Defense Condition) is the military state
of readiness for immediate combat within the country itself.
U.S. DEFCON has 5 levels, with 1 being the highest (war is
imminent).
Page 374:
Abott Costello says, "Per Dio!" and "Porca
Madonna, kill the demon and his lineage!" Per Dio
is Italian for "for God" and porca Madonna is
an Italian epithet used in anger or shock, essentially the
same as "holy shit" or similar in English (literally, it is
"slut Madonna").
Chapter XXIV: OUR LAST SUPPER?
The title of this chapter is a play on the name of the mural
The Last Supper painted by Leonardo da Vinci in the
refectory of the Convent of Santa Maria delle Grazie in
Milan, Italy.
The opening quote of this chapter is an actual one by
Aeschylus about the brutality of war.
Page 376: Mona comments that Team Banzai is in Hulk mode.
The Hulk is a Marvel Comics character, a mild-mannered
scientist who transforms into a huge, green, monstrous man
when overcome with anger, outrage, or fear.
Page 376: Tommy says, "Semper paratus, meaning
'always horny.'" Actually, it is Latin for "always ready"
and is the motto of the U.S. Coast Guard.
Page 377: Paraphrasing a philosopher, Tommy remarks, "I
prefer liberty with danger to peace with slavery." This is
from a translation of the Latin phrase "Malo
periculosam, libertatem quam quietam servitutem," "I
prefer dangerous freedom over peaceful slavery," used by
Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826), third president of the United
States.
Page 377: Jhonny caustically remarks that Tommy has trouble
talking to girls who are not Neanderthals.
The Neanderthal, of course, is an extinct species (or
possibly subspecies) of humans which is popularly thought to
have been brutal and of low intelligence, though
anthropological studies have increasingly shown they were
intelligent and reasonably civilized.
Page 378: Jhonny jokes that Tommy
has Dumbo ears. Dumbo is a cartoon elephant character of the
Disney company who has large ears that enable him to fly.
Page 378: Mona jokes that Jhonny has Chiclet dentures.
Chiclets is a brand of candy-coated chewing gum made in
white (and other colors), rounded-rectangular shape. Because of the gum's
slight resemblance to a human tooth, the slang term "Chiclet
dentures" has come into use for false teeth.
Page 379: Jhonny asks for a light for his Camel. This refers
to Camel brand cigarettes.
Page 380: Boasting of his prowess with women, Jhonny
remarks, "They do not call me Casanova for nothing." Giacomo
Girolamo Casanova (1725–1798) was an Italian adventurer and
notorious womanizer.
Page 382: Jhonny says he has drunk two Jägermeister bombs
and two Honey Jack mind probes. A Jägermeister bomb is a
shot of
Jägermeister dropped into a glass of Red Bull energy
drink. Honey Jack is likely a reference to
Jack
Daniel's Tennessee Honey whiskey. There are a number of
cocktails with "mind probe" as part of the name.
Page 384: Tommy refers to Rome as the Eternal City of Love.
This is an occasional nickname of the city.
Page 385: Reno and Pecos remind Jack of a couple violent
incidents he had at a fado bar in Lisbon and a pub in
Valletta. A fado bar is a bar that plays music of the fado
genre, originated in
Lisbon,
Portugal.
Valletta is the capital city of Malta.
Page 385: Tommy tries to order a
Fanta and a
bag of
Fritos from the waiter, telling the man to put it on the
consigliere's tab. "Consigliere" is a leadership position in
the Sicilian Mafia.
Page 386: Team Banzai watches live combat footage from
Gaza
on a bar television when the Lectroid man-of-war arrives at
Earth. From World Watch One, they receive word the Lectroid
ship dropped some hardware over Manitoba. Manitoba is a
province of Canada.
Page 386: Buckaroo mentions Strategic Air Command. SAC is
now known as
Air Force
Global Strike Command (AFGSC) and is a U.S. command
force responsible for nuclear deterrence and global strike
operations.
Page 387: Postmaster General Mantooth has intercepted
documents in the mail pointing to the existence of a
Quisling Society and Project CURE (Certified Underwriters
Research Engine). The name of the Quisling Society must be
based on that of Vidkun Quisling (1887-1945), the Norwegian
head of government during that nation's occupation by the
Nazis in WWII; his last name has since become a byword for
"traitor". The Project CURE mentioned here is fictitious; in
the real world, Project CURE stands for Commission on Urgent
Relief and Equipment, a trademark of the American non-profit
Benevolent Healthcare Foundation.
Chapter XXV: THE GREAT UNVEILING
The opening quote of this chapter is a Japanese proverb from
the collection of Chinese fables by Zhuangzi.
Page 389: A phenakistiscope is an optical device that
presents an illusion of animated movement to the viewer,
invented in 1833.
Page 389: The first two languages the Lectroid ship displays
on its projection surface to say "YOUR REAL DADDY" are Italian
and French.
Page 389: Brother Deacon Jarvis refers to the inhabitants of
Earth as Pithecanthropus erectus. This is a disused
species name for an early human fossil found in 1891-92
called Java Man on the Indonesian island of Java, estimated
to be up to one million years old. The current species name
applied to it is Homo erectus erectus.
Page 390: Jarvis spews out a series of product slogans.
These are all variations of actual product slogans.
Page 391: Tommy suggests that the Lectroid warship blotting
out the sky may be fake, "...a whadda you call
it...Potemkin..."
The Potemkin reference may be to "Potemkin Villages", an
idiom based on the myth of Russian minister Grigory
Potyomkin's alleged attempts to impress Empress Catherine II
on the occasion of her tour through Crimea in 1787 by having
the local peasants build fake villages along the banks of
Dnieper River. Tommy also made a Potemkin reference in
"Of Hunan Bondage" Part
2.
Page 392: Buckaroo uses his
Go-Phone's full-spectrum
interferometer/doimeter/spectrometer to measure the Lectroid
ship's chemical traces, finding traces of barium and
aluminum oxide, which leads Reno to compare it to
chemtrails. Chemtrails are part of a conspiracy theory that
the contrail exhaust of jet airplanes has undergone a
chemical change since around 1995, as part of a government
program of weather modification, psychological manipulation,
or human population control. Evidence is that contrails seem
to last longer in the sky since about that year and
detection of alleged higher amounts of aluminum and barium.
Page 394: Since his last trip into other dimensions,
Buckaroo has found himself levitating when he turns a
certain way into a powerful electron field such as a
lightning storm.
Page 394: Buckaroo worries that using the Jelly Beam on the
Lectroid warship could cause it to explode like a giant
Hindenburg, with enough force to kill two-thirds of
Europe. The Hindenburg was a German zeppelin that caught
fire and burned to the ground within minutes during a visit
to Manchester Township, New Jersey in May 1937.
Page 395: Landscape with the Fall of Icarus is a
16th Century painting by Pieter Bruegel the Elder and is as
described by Reno here. The Auden writing that Reno mentions
is the 1938 poem "Musée des Beaux Arts", which mentions the
painting, by W.H. Auden.
Chapter XXVI: THE BIG SHOW
The opening quote of this chapter is usually attributed to
Ralph Waldo Emerson, as it is here. But the quote "nothing
great was ever achieved without enthusiasm" is actually from
The Statesman’s Manual (1816) by Samuel Taylor
Coleridge. Emerson repeated the quote without attribution in
his essay "Circles" in 1841.
Page 397: The Cavaliers' opening band at the Coliseum show
is Rooster and the Sidesaddle Boys. This appears to be a
fictitious band.
Page 397: The
Ludus Magnus was the largest gladiatorial school in
Rome, built in the late 1st Century C.E. It's ruins lay in a
valley east of the Coliseum.
Page 398: The Hospitallers of Saint John is a Catholic
military order, active in various forms since 1099 C.E.
Page 398: Rooster plays a vintage
Les Paul guitar on stage.
Page 399: Tommy brags about his virtuosity on his Schecter
Hellraiser. Hellraiser is a line of guitar models made by
Schecter Guitar Research.
Page 399: Reno refers to Perfect Tommy as "our own
d'Artagnan." d'Artagnan, while based on a real person
(Charles de Batz de Castelmore d'Artagnan), is
the swashbuckling protagonist of the d'Artagnan Romances, a
trilogy of novels by Alexandre Dumas, most popularly,
The Three Musketeers.
Page 401: Muscatine's robot Abysmo
has a
Browning .30 caliber machine gun built into his left
arm.
Page 401: Muscatine remarks that
Abysmo carried her up Mont Blanc. Mont Blanc is the highest
mountain in the Alps, at 15,774 ft.
Page 402: King Solomon was the
wise monarch of the Kingdom of Israel according to the
Hebrew Bible.
Page 402: "Solomon's nut" is an
old name for the coconut.
Page 402: Buckaroo's quote of an
old Japanese saying, "Water in a sleeping ear," is an actual
Japanese idiom which means to be surprised at learning
something from an unexpected source.
Page 402: Talking scientific
principles with Muscatine, Buckaroo mentions the unipolar
paradox. The unipolar paradox relates to the Faraday paradox
and his law of electromagnetic induction.
Page 403: Muscatine says that
after she left the Cavaliers, she worked with Yngwie
Malmsteen for a while. Yngwie Malmsteen is a Swedish
guitarist and bandleader.
Page 405: The Cavaliers have a
preconcert ritual of clasping hands and saying, "Kaizen!
Banzai! Fight the good fight!" Kaizen is
Japanese for "improvement". Banzai is a Japanese
exclamation for "ten thousand years of long life."
Page 406: Buckaroo and Tommy ride
a police Moto Guzzi onto the stage.
Moto
Guzzi is an Italian motorcycle manufacturer. They have a
made a number of special models for military and police use.
Page 406: "Signore e signori,
Buckaroo Banzai!" is Italian for "Ladies and gentleman,
Buckaroo Banzai!"
Page 406: "Ave, Roma, amici!
Pubblico romano!" is Italian for "Hail, Rome, friends!
Roman audience!"
Page 406: For the concert, the
Cavaliers wear new Digitizer-Transcender earpieces.
Page 410 explains the devices a bit further by calling one
worn by Mrs. Johnson back at the ranch a Thought
Digitizer-Transcender.
Page 407: The Cavaliers' concert
at the Coliseum was produced and sold as a video titled
Alive in the Roman Coliseum.
Page 407: "Blood rain" is an
actual weather phenomenon caused by a mixing of dust and
other matter blowing in the wind and mixing with atmospheric
humidity to yield red-tinted rain (without the linguini
effect depicted here, however!).
Page 408: Del diavalo is
Italian for "by the devil". "Pazienza, amici...con
calma, con calma..!" is Italian for "Patience, friends
... calmly, calmly ..!"
Page 408: Tommy later writes an
article about the concert aftermath for the
New Yorker.
Page 408: Sir Ivanhoe is the
protagonist of the 1819 novel Ivanhoe: A Romance by
Walter Scott. In Arthurian legend, the Knights of the Round
Table were responsible for the protection of the kingdom of
Camelot, no connection to Ivanhoe, despite Tommy's
assertion.
Page 409: Deputy Dawg is the
protagonist of the eponymous animated TV show that aired
1960-1964.
Page 410: SOS is the international
Morse code distress signal; it is not an actual abbreviation
for anything.
Page 410: "C'est la vie,
m'sieur president," is French for "That's life, Mister
President."
Page 412: The Cavaliers perform "Hang On, Sloopy". This is a
1964 song originally recorded by the Vibrations.
Chapter XXVII: A CALL TO ARMS
Page 413: "Viva il papa! Viva Innocente!" is
Italian for ""Long live the Pope! Long live Innocent!"
"Bravissimo!" is an Italian expression for high praise.
"Vostro autografo! Per fovore!" is Italian for
"Your autograph! Please!"
Page 413: Mona has a hidden camera in one of her
Louboutin high heels.
Page 414: Pope Innocent is wearing
Justin
roper boots, a gift from Buckaroo.
Page 415: The pope tells Mona he hears Zion's trumpet. This
is from a passage in the Bible that tells of
blowing a trumpet from Mt. Zion (in Jerusalem) to signal a
gathering of the people.
Pages 415-416: When Mona asks the deranged pope what it's
like in Heaven, he tells her that in Heaven, "everyone is a
thirty-third degree Mason and thirty-three years old--like
Jesus." The 33rd degree of Scottish Rite Freemasonry is
essentially an honorary degree conferred on members who have
demonstrated outstanding service to Masonry or society in
general. However, some conspiracy theorists believe that
Masons of the 33rd degree are granted knowledge and power of
who really controls the world and membership in the
Illuminati. Jesus is estimated by theologians to have been
about 33 years old when he was crucified and some conspiracy
theorists believe the 33rd degree of Freemasonry gets its
number from his age.
Page 417: Mona remarks that Cardinal Baltazar has "drunk the
Kool-Aid the deepest." "Drinking the Kool-Aid" is an
expression used for someone who has accepted a doomed or
risky idea that is false. It originated from the coverage of
the Peoples Temple cult in Jonestown, Guyana who committed
suicide by drinking poisoned "Kool-Aid" (actually
Flavor-Aid) at the direction of the cult's leader, Jim
Jones.
Page 419: Cardinal Baltazar holds a
Beretta
pistol to Tommy's forehead.
Page 419: Baltazar tells Tommy to "Git along, move along,
little doggie..." This is a paraphrasing of lyrics from an
old cowboy ballad, "Git Along, Little Dogies" (or "Whoopie
Ti Yi Yo").
Page 420: The "Dwarf Church" recently found below
St. Peter's Basilica is fictitious. St. Peter's Basilica
was built by the Roman emperor Constantine, as stated here.
Page 420: Pius XII was the pope of the Catholic Church from
1939-1958.
Page 420: Reno brings up a quote from Hermetic scripture,
"As above, so below." This is a paraphrasing of scripture
that appears in the Emerald Tablet, a text alleged to have
been written by a figure of Hellenistic legend, Hermes
Trismegistus, a syncretic combination of the Egyptian
god Thoth and the Greek god Hermes.
Page 422: Baltazar's torturer, Pay Piggie, whom the cardinal
sets upon Tommy is described as a pear-shaped Vulcan with a
Cro-Magnon head. Vulcan is the god of fire in Roman
mythology. Cro-Magnons were the first modern-type early
humans to settle in Europe; they generally had broader
faces, more prominent brow ridges, and bigger teeth than
typical humans today.
Page 422: Tommy nervously eyes a
Craftsman toolbox in the torturer's workroom.
Page 424: "Impossibile! Figlio di merda!" is
Italian for "Impossible! Son of shit!"
Page 424: Buckaroo leaves the concert stage to head to
Tommy's rescue in the middle of "Prettiest Eyes This Side of
Heaven." Reno reveals this is a song written as a tribute to
Penny.
Page 426: "Attente...suoi revoltelle!" is Italian for
"Beware...his revolvers!"
Page 426: A bullet meant for Buckaroo ricochets off
Bernini's equestrian statue of Constantine. The sculpture is
The Vision of Constantine by Italian sculptor Gian Lorenzo
Bernini (1598-1680), located in the Scala Regia. Buckaroo
drives up the Scala Regia on the M0to Guzzi motorcycle
seconds later, turning on the Scala Regia. The Scala Regia
(Royal Staircase) is a flight of steps in Vatican City
designed by Bernini, part of the formal entrance of the
Vatican. The Sala Regia is a hallway leading to the Sistine
and Pauline Chapels.
Page 426: "Buckaroo Banzaie è un pollo..!" is
Italian for "Buckaroo Banzai is a chicken..!"
Chapter XXVIII: AN UNNATURAL BIRTH
The opening quote of this chapter, "Caligula is each one of
you," by Albert Camus is presumably from Camus' 1944 play
Caligula, but I've been unable to confirm.
Page 429: The study Networking the Land: Conflicting
Imperatives of the New Urban Settler Movement by Berlin
and Offenback published by the Banzai Institute is, of
course, fictitious.
Page 429: Questura is Italian for "precinct."
Page 430: Ragazzi is Italian for "lads."
Page 430: The Levant is the geographical area covering the
historical region of Syria (modern day Syria, Lebanon,
Jordan, Israel, Palestine, and most of Turkey).
Page 431: "Che sogno! Vergine santa!" and Dio
are Italian for "What a dream! Holy Virgin!" and "God."
Page 431: Sister Mary rubs oil from the Mount of Olives on
Buckaroo's head. The Mount of Olives is a mountain ridge in
Jerusalem's Old City where olive groves once grew.
Page 432: Sister Mary is using
Pampers
diapers on the abott as he goes through his
possession/pregnancy torment.
Page 432: Per favore, orrible,
pericolo, and merda are Italian for "please,"
"horrible," "danger," and "shit."
Page 433: Sister Mary tells Buckaroo that she and Abott
Costello once took a picnic to
Villa d'Este in
Tivoli.
Page 434: "Si, mi fido di te..! Per favore...ayy, il
dolore..!" is Italian for "Yes, I trust you ..! Please
... ayy, the pain ..!"
Page 435: "Per l'amor di Dio..." is Italian for
"For the love of God..."
Page 436: The Hippocratic Oath is the oath taken by western
doctors to obey a certain code of ethics.
Page 436: "Nome di Gesu..." and "Zitto! Santa
Madonna!" are Italian for "Name of Jesus ..." and "Shut
up! Holy Madonna!"
Page 437: "Porco cane..." is Italian for "pig
dog..."
Page 438: "Laus Deo!" is Latin for "Praise God!"
"Il potere e la gloria" and "Basta, cazzo!"
are Italian for "The power and the glory" and "Enough the
fuck!"
Page 439: The water in the birthing tub is said to part like
the Red Sea to reveal the alien baby bezoar.
This, of course, is a reference to the flight of the
Israelites from Egypt across the Red Sea in the Biblical Book
of Exodus.
Page 440: "Thanatos" is the name
of the personification of death in Greek mythology.
Page 440: The telepathic
emanations of the baby lead Buckaroo's mind to "a wild
weird clime that lieth sublime..." This is a line from the
1844 poem "Dream-Land" by Edgar Allan Poe.
Page 440: Cogito is Latin
for "think."
Page 441: Reno relates that while
Buckaroo is not a follower of any organized religion, he is
the eponym of Banzai-ism, a mix of Buddhist stoicism and
American can-do spirit.
Page 442: Reno paraphrases some
cryptic words that Buckaroo stated in "another episode", "I
believe only God can save the world but I am not a
believer."
Page 442: Buckaroo says, "By the universal law of Myoho, I
now put my intention in motion." "Myoho" refers to the
Buddhist principle of Nam-myoho-renge-kyo, stating
we have at all times the ability to overcome any problem or
difficulty in life and a capacity to transform any suffering
because we are inseparable from the fundamental law that
underlies the workings of all life and the universe.
Page 443: Sister Mary sees Whorfin as a giant, hovering
cockroach. Rauch's original idea for the cover of the novel
was an image of a cockroach about to get stepped on by the
booted foot of B. Banzai, as discussed in the
January 2022 issue of World Watch One (pg. 45).
Page 443: Merda and "Santa Madonna...andiamo!"
are Italian for "shit" and "Holy Madonna...let's go!"
Page 444: Able Omar sees the blob of Whorfin on the ceiling
of the bathroom and shakenly asks Buckaroo if it's a fat
djinni. A djinni (dijinn) is a supernatural being of Arab
folklore, also known as a genie.
Page 445: Geist is a German term for "ghost."
Chapter XXIX: DR. BANZAI DRAWS
BLOOD
The opening quote of this chapter, "Beware the fury of a
patient man," is from the 1681 satirical poem "Absalom and
Achitophel" by the English poet John Dryden.
As the chapter begins, Reno addresses the reader directly,
saying, "Reader, if I have failed to serve your purpose or
you are under the impression that I have teased or led you
astray in any way with authorial ruses, please accept my
sincere regrets and merely afford me your further indulgence
for a few pages more." This might be interpreted as author Rauch
himself confessing that this novel may not be what BB fans
were expecting. I confess myself that it's not.
Page 448: Reno writes that Buckaroo's
guns of choice are
Colt
six-shooters, of which he owns about a dozen. His favorite
is a pair of ivory-handled Colt model 1873 single-action
revolvers. In the novelization of
Across the Eighth Dimension,
Buckaroo's guns are Navy Colts manufactured in 1851,
ordinarily used only when he's in search of Hanoi Xan (the
novel reveals they had originally belonged to Buckaroo's
father).
Buckaroo also carries a
three-barreled derringer in his boot.
Page 448: Buckaroo carries a
Sebenza switchblade scalpel in his boot. Sebenza is a style
of knife made by
Chris
Reeve Knives.
Page 448: Lettre de cachet
(literally "letter of the signet") is a French term for
a letter signed by the king of France and countersigned by
one of his ministers that contained orders from the king
that could not be appealed to any court or other body of the
nation.
Page 449: Baltazar refers to Buckaroo as a John Wayne proud
guy with his cowboy hat and pointy boots and good American
shite talk.
John Wayne (1907-1979) was an iconic American actor,
especially known for his roles as tough American cowboys and
soldiers.
Page 450:
Baltazar boasts that his army is "the prophesied one hundred
forty-four thousand elect who will defeat Gog and Magog on
the Plain of Megiddo." He is referring to the Bible's Book
of Revelation, according to which 144,000 people will go to
Heaven to rule with Jesus in God's kingdom after the defeat
of God's enemies, Gog and Magog, by the Messiah. In
Christianity, "Gog and Magog" is usually interpreted as two
nations.
Page 450: Baltazar claims that his
Templars and Knights of Saint John will be supported by a
secret uprising of the Salvation Army. The
Salvation Army is a worldwide Christian charitable
organization.
Page 450: Baltazar says his forces are currently raiding the
cache of biological weapons stored at Fort Detrick,
Maryland. Fort Detrick is a U.S. Army installation in
Frederick, Maryland that hosts most of the country's
biological defense program and formerly the home of the
United States Army Biological Warfare Laboratories.
Page 451: Baltazar says that he and his followers will be safe on
the isle of Patmos. The isle of Patmos is a Greek island
where John of Patmos received the visions he recorded in the
Book of Revelation.
Page 451: Baltazar tells Buckaroo that the archangel Raphael
and the
Archangel Brother Deacon Jarvis on the Lectroid ship are the
same. Raphael is one of the archangels (high angels) in the
Abrahamic religions.
Page 452: The Whorfin geist
claims to Baltazar that he is Moses in an attempt to get
him to open the bathroom door behind which he is locked.
Moses, of course, is one of the major figures of the
Abrahamic religions.
Page 455: Sokol fires 7.62 x 51 mm NATO rounds at Buckaroo
as he dives for an escape. The 7.62 x 51 mm NATO is a rifle
cartridge made for use in a number of weapons used largely
in NATO countries.
NATO is the North
Atlantic Treaty Organization,
a military alliance of most of the western world's
democratic nations.
Page 456: While being tortured by
Pay Piggie, Tommy warbles a number of recognizable song
lyrics, "Yippie yi ooh, yippie yi yay,
ghost riders in the sky," and "Trouble ahead, lady in red,
take my advice, you'd be better off dead." These are lyrics from the 1948
country-western song "(Ghost) Riders in the Sky: A Cowboy
Legend," and "Casey Jones" by the Grateful Dead (Pay Piggie
also sings some lyrics from this song).
Page 456: Pay Piggie tells Tommy,
"I'll make your shite flow like the Rio Bravo, cowboy!" Rio
Bravo is the name given to the river in Mexico that begins
in the United States as the Rio Grande.
Page 456: Reno writes that Tommy
continued to sing like a bluesy Scheherazade. I guess he's
referring to the Turkish singer/celebrity Şehrazat Kemali
Söylemezoğlu who sometimes has gone by the stage name Scheherazade. The
lyrics Tommy sings about old El Paso appear to be original,
possibly from a Cavaliers' song.
El
Paso is a city in Texas. (Update, 4/4/22: Steve Mattson
points out that "Scheherazade" is the name of the
female storyteller of the Middle Eastern folk tale
compilation One Thousand and One Nights, who had to
tell stories to stay alive.)
Page 456: "Deadhead" is the term for a Grateful Dead fan.
Page 456: "Death By a Thousand Cuts" presumably refers to
the 2019 song by Taylor Swift.
Page 456: "Shoveling Shit's Hard on My Back" is a fictitious
song as far as I can tell.
Page 457: Zitto is Italian for "shut up."
Page 457: Pay Piggie uses Brazilian bullet ants on Tommy,
calling them "the most painful bite on earth." These are
actual insects in Central and South America, with some
researchers saying they have the most painful insect sting.
Page 457: "Bridge Over Troubled Water" is a 1970 song by
Simon & Garfunkel.
Page 458: The singing voice of Johnny Cash booms down from
the Lectroid warship. Johnny Cash (1932-2003) was an
American singer-songwriter. The lyrics he sings here are
from his 1963 song "Ring of Fire".
Page 460: "Viva Roma! Viva Romani! Viva la dolce vita!"
is Italian for "Long live Rome! Long live Romans! Long live
the sweet life!"
Page 460: The sound of thundering hoofbeats and an image of
the Cavaliers as the Four Horseman of the Apocalypse emits
from the Lectroid warship. The Four Horseman are figures
from the Christian Bible, said to foretell the
Apocalypse. Buckaroo rides a white stallion (the first
Horseman on a white horse, Pestilence), Tommy on a black
horse (the third Horseman, Famine), Pecos on a bright-red
chestnut (the second Horseman, War), and Reno on a pale
horse (the fourth Horseman, Death).
Page 461: Via Gregorio VII is an actual road in Rome, named
for Pope Gregory VII (1015-1085).
Page 461: The Shilka anti-aircraft system has 23 mm
autocannons, a triad of Buk missiles, two Japanese Type II
Nambu machine guns, a 29 mm spigot mortar, and an improvised
Roman-style trebuchet. These are all real world historical
weapons used in war.
Page 462: Tommy sings lyrics from "Oh! Susanna," "America
the Beautiful," and "Jimmy Crack Corn". In response, Pay
Piggie sings lines from "Never Gonna Let You Go."
Page 462: Red Devil is an actual brand of lye.
Page 462: Tommy recites Rimbaud to Jesus. This refers to
Arthur Rimbaud (1854-1891), a French poet. "Tu viendras,
tu viendras, je t'aime!" is from his poem "Les
Reparties De Nina" ("You will come, you will come, I love
you so!" from "Nina's Reply").
Page 463: "Impossibile...per i santi, e lui! Buckaroo
Banzai! Canzone...a song!" is Italian for
"Impossible...by the saints, it's him! Buckaroo Banzai!
Song...a song!"
Page 463: After being rescued from torture by Buckaroo,
Tommy smashes open a vending machine and extracts
M&Ms and
Payday bars.
Page 464: Sister Mary remarks that Tommy used to turn her
knees to jelly on the Grand Ole Opry. The
Grand Ole Opry
is a weekly country music stage concert occasionally
broadcast on television from studios in Nashville,
Tennessee.
Chapter XXX: THE END OF DAYS
The opening quote of this chapter is an actual one from the Book
of Exodus in the Bible.
Page 466: As the Lectroid crisis continues in Rome, Reno
hears people say, "It's just like the last days of Pompeii
and Herculaneum!" The two ancient cities were buried under
feet of volcanic ash and debris from the eruption of the
volcano Mt. Vesuvius in 79 AD.
Page 469: Abysmo mentions the Tyrrhenian Ocean (sic)
and the Sea of Troubles. The Tyrrhenian Sea is the part of
the Mediterranean Sea between the west coast of Italy and
the islands of Sardinia and Corsica. "Sea of troubles" is a
reference to a line from the "to be or not to be" soliloquy
given by Prince Hamlet in William Shakespeare's play
Hamlet.
Page 469: Campo santo is Latin for "holy field."
Page 469: Seeing the craziness around her as she reports the
news at the scene in St. Peter's Square, Mona jokes that she
must have made a wrong turn in Tijuana. Saint Peter's Square
is a plaza in front of St. Peter's Basilica.
Tijuana is
just over the U.S.-Mexican border from San Diego and is the
largest city in the Mexican state of Baja California.
Page 470: Jane's Defense Review refers to
Jane's
International Defense Review magazine, which
reports on military news technology.
Page 470: Reno states that Mona's reporting during the
crisis would win her the prestigious
Peabody Award.
Page 471: Mona reports that a visiting dionesian priest from
New Jersey told her he believes the fourth secret of Fátima
is that everyone who is not "rhapsodied" will receive
demonic DNA in the form of a microchip, signaling the Mark
of the Beast and the beginning of the Great Tribulation. The
"priest" actually means "raptured", not "rhapsody"; the
rapture is a belief among some Christians that the "saved"
will be taken up into Heaven around the time of the Second
Coming of Jesus. The Mark of the Beast is a belief among
some Christians that when the Beast comes into power on Earth
temporarily, people will be expected to take his "mark" in
order to continue making financial transactions in our
society. The Great Tribulation is a time that Jesus said
would be a sign of the end times.
Page 471: The "True Light" spoken of in Mona's report of
Deacon Jarvis' monologues is said to be Jesus in the Bible.
Page 472: Mona is asked by an
Associated
Press reporter how to spell "apocalypse."
Page 473: Carogna is Italian for "carrion."
Page 473: Sokol chants, "Sevastopol! Constantinople!
Schleswig-Holstein! Our faith is our shield! On to
Jerusalem!"
Sevastopol is the largest city in Crimea and a port on
the Black Sea. Constantinople was the former name of
Istanbul, Turkey. Schleswig-Holstein and Jerusalem were
mentioned previously in this study.
Page 473: Deus vult is Latin for "God wills."
Page 473:
The word "Frisbee" is capitalized because it is actually a
brand name, even though the word has taken on a genericized
air in the public mind.
Page 473: Mona begins to think that
all the events she is witnessing in Rome are like a Passion
play. A Passion play is a dramatic presentation depicting
the Passion of Jesus Christ: his trial, suffering, and
death.
Page 474: The Dating Game is an American TV game
show in which contestants try to win a date with another
contestant by asking and answering personal questions.
Page 474: Roma delenda est is Latin for "Rome must
be destroyed."
Page 475: The account of emperor
Justinian by Procopius is from the Anecdota.
Procopius (c. 500-565 CE) was a Greek scholar. Justinian
(482-565) was a Byzantine emperor.
Page 475: Reno states that Carlyle identified
Justinian as "the dark lord Xan," while A.H.M. Jones
disputed it. Presumably, "Carlyle" is meant to be Thomas
Carlyle again (mentioned earlier in this study). A.H.M.
Jones (1904-1970) was a British historian of the later Roman
Empire.
Page 476: Xan has a copy of the Malleus Maleficarum.
This is a real world compendium of witchcraft and demonology
from the 15th Century. The title translates roughly to
Hammer of Witches.
Page 476: Léonide Moguy (1899-1976) was a Ukrainian, French,
and Italian film director, film editor and screenwriter. Ava
Gardner (1922-1990) was an American actress. In the dream
described by Xan to Penny, he says he was watching a movie he'd
produced with Moguy and Gardner involved. He may be
referring to the 1946 film Whistle Stop, directed
by Moguy and starring Gardner.
Page 477: Xan and Satrap discuss a horsehair sectional set
Xan has owned for a hundred years, one he says was given to
him by the Kaiser. "Kaiser" is the German word for
"emperor". The title was used by the rulers of the Austrian
Empire from 1804-1918. Xan must be referring to Wilhelm II,
who was German kaiser from 1888-1918.
Page 479: Xan tells Penny his collection of ancient books
are all that remain from the House of Wisdom in ancient
Baghdad. The House of Wisdom was a private library belonging
to the Abbasid Caliphs during the Islamic Golden Age of
the 8th-14th Centuries that was destroyed in the Siege of
Baghdad in 1258.
Page 479: Under Drake's Flag (1883) and With
Kitchener in the Soudan, A Story of Atbara and Omdurman
(1903) were books by the previously-mentioned G.A. Henty.
Page 479: Og Mandino (1923-1996) was an American writer on
numerous topics, particularly salesmanship and success,
including The Greatest Secret in the World (1972),
mentioned by Xan here.
Page 480: Xan claims that Penny wrote Atlas Shrugged
and The Fountainhead. These are both novels by Ayn
Rand, whom Xan earlier claimed was a previous life of
Penny's.
Page 481: Xan claims that Penny's husband is a cowboy named
Frank.
Page 482: Henry Shannon was known in the British press as
the "Coal King of Cornwall."
Page 482: Sonya relates that she was like Penny once, before
she spiraled into a dark place of Ho Hos and Ding Dongs.
These are both small chocolate and cream snack cakes made by
Hostess.
Page 482: Sonya/Caesonia tells Penny she was named Caesonia
by Shannon and his cronies after the beautiful bride of
Caligula. Milonia Caesonia was the fourth and final wife of
the emperor Caligula until both were assassinated in 41 CE.
Page 485: Penny realizes that the name Xan has been using
for her, Alisa, is an anagram of "alias."
Chapter XXXI: THE DIE IS CAST
The opening quote of this chapter is an actual quote by
Pindar (522-438 BCE), a Greek lyrical poet.
Page 488: Buckaroo uses the EMF detector on his Go-Phone.
EMF is short for "electromagnetic frequency."
Page 490: Baltazar carries a
Gucci
briefcase.
Page 490: A hieromonk is a monk who is also a priest in Eastern Catholicism and the Eastern Orthodox Church.
Page 490:
Pskov
is a city in northwestern Russia.
Page 491: The Chair of Peter is a relic housed in the
Vatican that is claimed to have been one used by Saint
Peter, who is considered the first pope of the Catholic
Church. Modern studies of the chair, however, concluded that
no part of it dates back to older than the 6th Century.
Page 491: Baltazar pours himself a glass of the pope's
Hennessey. Presumably, this refers to
Hennessy,
a French cognac brand.
Page 491: Baltazar judges the Lectroid Brother Deacon Jarvis
to be the prophet Elijah. Elijah was a prophet in the
Torah's Book of Kings who was said to have been
picked up in a chariot of fire. Perhaps Baltazar considers
the Lectroid ship Jarvis broadcasts from to be the chariot.
Page 491: "Merkabah" refers to Merkabah mysticism of the
early Jewish religion, concerning the stories of ascents to
heaven in chariots and by other mystical means.
Page 492: Baltazar compares his current predicament as
worthy of the Mad Hatter's tea party. The Mad Hatter is a
character in Lewis Carroll's Wonderland books, Alice's
Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and Through the
Looking-Glass (1871), who holds a bizarre tea party with
his friends which is crashed by Alice.
Page 492: The Gabriel thought of by Baltazar is another one
of the archangels of the Bible.
Page 492: Job is a Biblical figure who is tested by God by
losing all he holds dear.
Page 492: Ornan (or Araunah) was the owner of a grain
threshing floor in Jerusalem that was purchased by King
David to be the site of an altar to God. The "sons of Ornan"
mentioned in this novel may be to four hidden Christian
churches of early Christianity according to some historical
theologians.
Page 492: Baltazar thinks the Lord may be testing him, as
Jehovah did with Abraham and when Satan tempted Jesus. "Jehovah"
is one of the names of God, a Latinization of the Hebrew
"Yaweh". In the Bible, God tests Abraham by asking him to
sacrifice his own son. Satan tempted Jesus while Jesus was
in the desert fasting after his baptism.
Page 492: The "hospitality" quote from the Book of Hebrews
is accurate. The Book of Hebrews is one of the books of the
Bible.
Page 492: The College of Cardinals is the body of all the
cardinals in the Catholic Church.
Page 493: Mit dem Mut der Verzweiflung is German
for "With the courage of despair."
Page 493:
Lloyd's of London is an insurance market headquartered
in London.
Page 493: "The Final Countdown" is an actual 1986 song by
the band Europe.
Page 495: The Loggia of Blessings is an actual balcony on
St. Peter's Basilica from which the pope often addresses his
world audience.
Page 495: Cri de coeur is French for "cry of the
heart."
Page 496: Ex cathedra and pontifex inquisitor
maximus are Latin for "from the throne" and "high
priest", respectively.
Page 498: The word "Breathalyzer" is capitalized
because it is actually a brand name, even though the word
has taken on a genericized air in the public mind.
Page 500: The Kalashnikov is a popular
line of Russian automatic rifles designed by Mikhail
Kalashnikov, the most commonly known of which is the AK-47.
Page 503: Looking for the pope in the
basilica, Buckaroo and his coterie follow the faint
fragrance of Heaven Scent by Aqua Velva mixed with Camel
Blacks. As far as I can tell, Heaven Scent by Aqua Velva is
a fictitious fragrance. Camel Blacks are a variety of Camel
brand cigarettes.
Chapter XXXII: THE MOTHER OF ALL
BATTLES
The title of this chapter was likely inspired by the use of
the phrase "the mother of all battles" by Iraqi president
Saddam Hussein in a warning to the U.S. coalition against
attempting to liberate the nation of Kuwait from Iraqi
occupation in 1990-91.
The opening quote of this chapter is an actual one spoken by
U.S. Army general Jacob H. Smith (1840-1918) when he led a
response on the island of Samar to the Balangiga massacre
during the Philippine-American War. His order included
killing anyone over 10 years old, resulting in the deaths of
2000-2500 civilians. He was court-martialed for his action,
but only punished with forced retirement.
Page 505: The image of John Emdall's head is ringed by a
halo of Medusa-like water tendrils. In Greek mythology,
Medusa was a Gorgon, a hideous woman with snakes for hair
whose gaze would turn anyone who looked upon her face into
stone.
Page 505: Empress John Emdall introduces herself to Earth as
the Virgin Queen of Heaven and Empress of India. I'm not
sure why she would refer to herself as Empress of India,
unless it's meant to suggest that she was one of the Hindu
gods of ancient Indian mythology.
Page 506: "The man from Galilee" mentioned here refers to
Jesus, born in the town of Nazareth in Galilee, according to
the Biblical gospels.
Page 506: Mona mentions her Twitter feed.
Twitter
is a social networking service.
Page 507: The
Travel Channel is an American cable television channel
specializing in reality-based programming of supernatural
topics. Don't ask.
Page 507: Mona is reporting live for 9 on Your Side.
There is an actual
newscast by this name on WNCT-TV in Greenville, NC.
Page 508: Reno had a mustache for a time when New Jersey
knew him. He does not have one now (and did not during the
events of
Across the Eighth Dimension).
Page 509: Muscatine packs a pair of
Glock 10
pistols and passes one to Jack. Reno carries his 1911 Colt
.45 and Vepr 12 scattergun and the Jelly Beam. Pecos carries
a diamond-studded pistol-grip Moss 8 (probably referring to
a
Mossberg Maverick 88 shotgun that can be fitted with a
pistol grip). Jhonny is armed with an H&K
.45 and a three-barreled pistola con caricato.
Hoppalong hefts an M60 machine gun while wearing an oven
mitt.
The M60 is a real world family of American machine guns in
production since 1957 and currently manufactured by General
Dynamics; this gun generates a lot of heat while firing,
hence Hoppalong's oven mitt!
Page 510: The Holy Office of the Directorium mentioned by
Baltazar appears to be fictitious. That said, a
"directorium" is a guide to official Catholic liturgy.
Page 510: Condottieri were Italian captains of mercenary
army companies during the Middle Ages.
Page 510: Episkopos is Latin for "bishop."
Page 510: Baltazar directs his message to the episkopos
and "the worldwide apostolic family and peoples beyond the
Po..." "Po" presumably refers to the Po river in northern
Italy.
Page 510: The Grenadieri of the Holy Basilica mentioned by
Baltazar appears to be fictitious, but the grenadieri were
specialized soldiers who threw hand grenades beginning in
the 17th Century.
Page 510: The
Sovereign Order of Malta is a real world Catholic
chivalric order.
Page 510: Vicarius filii dei is Latin for "God's
vicar."
Page 510: "It's a Long Way to Tipperary" is a 1912 British
music hall song by Jack Judge and Harry Williams. Baltazar
combines elements of this song with an altered version of
"The Happy Wanderer", a popular song by Friedrich-Wilhelm
Möller after WWII. The lyric line Baltazar sings "my nutsack
on my back" is actually "my rucksack on my back."
Page 512: "Sanctus Satanas Diabolus, domine noster, quam
admirabile est nomen tuum in universa terra...exurgat..!"
is Latin for "Holy Satan the devil, our lord, how wonderful
is your name in the whole earth...rise up!"
Page 512: "Ein Volk, ein Reich!" is German for "One
People, one Empire!"
Page 512: Ave Satanas is Latin for "Hail Satan."
Page 513: Baltazar announces, "Hail his lordship John
Whorfin! Together, we have crossed the Rubicon and are en
route to Olympus!" "Crossing the Rubicon" has become an
idiom standing for "point of no return", in reference to the
crossing of the Rubicon River in Italy by Julius Caesar's
army in 49 B.C., launching the Great Roman Civil War of
49-45 B.C. "Olympus"
is a reference to the Greek mountain called Olympus,
believed by the ancient Greeks to be the home of the
Olympians, the twelve gods.
Page 514: Baltazar refers to
General Warts as "Santiago, son of Zebedee." In the Bible,
Zebedee was the father of the disciples James and John.
"Santiago" is the Spanish name for James the disciple.
Page 516: A goat with its fur
ablaze runs into the plaza and the New Jersey priest shouts
that it's Baphomet, the black goat.
Baphomet is an imagined pagan deity that is largely the
creation of Christian folklore regarding paganism; since
1855, Baphomet has been associated with the Sabbatic Goat
image drawn by French artist and occultist Eliphas Levi
(1810-1875). In
"Return of the Screw"
Part 1, another nickname of Hanoi Xan was revealed to
be the Black-Goat Son of Baphomet.
Page
516: A Good Samaritan runs after the blazing goat with a
bottle of water to try to put the fire out. A Good Samaritan
is an individual who helps a stranger; the term is derived
from the parable of the Good Samaritan as told by Jesus in
the Gospel of Luke of a member of the Samaritans who helps
an injured Jew, despite the two populations being
antagonists.
Page 517: Hoplites are
citizen-soldiers.
Page 518: Cri de guerre
is French for "war cry."
Page 521: Jack mentions
Guinness lager.
Page 522: Reno focuses on his
pranayma breathing during the battle against the Lectroids.
Pranayama is the yogic practice of focusing on breath.
Page 522: A mortar shell lands on
a fire truck, exploding it like a jumbo bag of
Skittles.
Chapter XXXIII: ON THE KNIFE'S
EDGE
The opening quote of this chapter is an actual one made by
Japanese emperor Hirohito (1901-1989) in his speech
announcing to the Japanese public his decision to surrender
to the Allies at the end of WWII.
Page 525: The dying Jhonny tells Pecos, "...I see Lonesome
Town..." This is likely a reference to the Ricky Nelson hit
cover of the song "Lonesome Town" of 1958.
Page 525: Jhonny wills his Dingo and
Beatle boots to Tommy.
Dingo is
a boot manufacturer.
Beatle boots are a boot style made for the members of the
rock band the Beatles, a variant on the Chelsea boot.
He wills his
Stevens
.22 and
Mauser 98 to Reno and his
Magic
cards and cat, Libby, to Pecos.
Page 526: Ave atque vale
is Latin for "Hail and farewell."
Page 526: The Cavaliers had a
platinum-selling single called "Blue Bottle Fly."
Page 526: In pace requiescat
is Latin for "Rest in peace."
Page 527: Mona mentions having
scalped her Super Bowl tickets. The Super Bowl is the annual
playoff championship game of the American National Football
League.
Page 528: The crowd of civilian
onlookers in the plaza mistakenly refer to Perfect Tommy as
Special Tommy.
Page 528: Whorfin's voice
announces that Judgment Day is upon us. Judgment Day is a
reference to the foretold judgment of God upon the people of
the Earth believed in by the Abrahamic religions (also
referred to as the Last Judgment, Final Judgment, Day of
Judgment, etc.).
Page 532: Xan arrives on a
mobility scooter with a tug of horse tails dangling
from a high pole mounted on it. A tug such as this
was a symbol of power in old Mongol and Turkish states.
Page 534: Xan extends his walking
stick, made from the true cross, towards the Loggia of the
Blessings. Reno compares the sight to Michelangelo's
outstretched Creator God inside that very palace. This
refers to Michelangelo's Creation of Adam painting
on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel depicting God's right
arm outstretched to deliver the spark of life to Adam.
Page 534: Reno describes the
kenka (the feud between Buckaroo and Xan) as one that
predated Edo and the Mongol khanate, "harking back to the
dawn of time" over a mathematical formula and a spilled cup
of tea at a banquet no one could remember.
Page 72 had Mr. French claiming the
pair's ancient feud had to do with the Pythagorean theorem
and the value of the hypotenuse.
Page 536: As they face off, Xan
says to the vengeful Buckaroo, "I feel thy warm feelings for
an uncle!" and later calling him nephew, suggesting they may
be related.
Page 536: Reno states that the
language used by Xan here was Old Enochian, the tongue of
the angels and the learned Nephilim. The Nephilim were a
mysterious people of extraordinary size and strength as
described in the Hebrew Bible from times before the Flood.
Page 538: Xan tells Buckaroo he
has taught Penny the Kama Sutra. The Kama Sutra is
a world renown Hindu book on human sexual behavior composed
in India between 400 BC and 200 AD.
Page 547: Banditi is
Italian for "bandits."
Page 547: "Da! Da! Ya tozhe!"
is Russian for "Yes! Yes! Me too!"
Page 551: Reno's reference to
Coltrane is to John Coltrane (1926-1967), an American jazz
saxophonist.
Page 552: "Ego sum vermis non
homo..!" and in herba are Latin for "I am a
worm not a man..!" and "in the grass."
Page 553: "...miserere mei et
salva me..!" and "consummatum est" are Latin for "...have
mercy on me and save me..!" and "it is finished."
Chapter XXXIV: IN NO MAN'S LAND
The opening quote of this chapter is from the Epic of
Gilgamesh, as stated, c. 2100-1200 BCE.
Page 555: "Ferris wheel" begins
with a capital "F" as it is named for its inventor, George
Washington Gale Ferris Jr.
Page 555: Noesis and
noema are philosophical terms for "the exercise of
reason" and "the meaning of an act".
Page 555: Sensum is Latin
for "sense" and jouissance French for "enjoyment."
Page 556: The Pillars of Hercules
are the two stony promontories flanking the Strait of
Gibraltar.
Page 556: Buckaroo meets a number
of history's greatest figures on his interdemensional
journey to Planet 10. They
are all actual historical figures. One of them is Albert Einstein,
whom he met at least once before when he was a boy in
"A Tomb With A View"
(at least in the original BB chronology).
Page 557: Buckaroo hears Jimi Hendrix in his head. Hendrix
(1942-1970) was an American musician, singer, and
songwriter. The words Buckaroo muses on here are lyrics from
Hendrix's 1967 song "Purple Haze".
Page 561: Emdall refers to Buckaroo as semi-immortal. When
Buckaroo questions her on it, "Semi-immortal..?" he does not
get a response to the question. On page 570, she refers to
him as "a multidimensional man who admits no limitations, a
man beloved by the gods and perhaps a god himself."
Page 561: Buckaroo reveals that he has an OVERTHRUSTER app
on his Go-Phone and it may be what helped him survive his
journey to Planet 10.
Page 561: It is here that the reader first learns the Lectroid war vessel is named the
Imperatrix.
Page 562: Buckaroo feels a foreign presence emanating from
his fourth chakra. Chakras are seven wheels of energy in the
human body used in Tantric meditation. The fourth chakra is
located at the heart. Presumably the foreign presence is
Whorfin's baby, which was unknowingly transferred to him
earlier and which he will transfer to Emdall during her rape
of him shortly.
Page 563: The Lectroid medical examiners find Buckaroo's
body to be a "complex but serviceable structure...much like
the brain of a Voltymion ooze slug..." This is the first
mention of such a creature in the Buckaruniverse.
Page 565: As the group of Lectroid priests examines Buckaroo
and the possibly divine being he incubates near his heart,
one of the priests says, "Remember the parable of the monkey
paw that fell from the sky!" Though there is a human horror
story about a monkey's paw that grants three wishes to its
possessor, it does not involve falling from the sky.
Possibly, this is a Lectroid variant of a similar parable.
Page 566: "Araby" is an archaic name for Arabia.
Page 569: Buckaroo compliments Emdall by calling her a
Faustian Lectroid. "Faustian" is an adjective for someone
with a strong hunger for knowledge. It derives from the
German legend of Faust, a man who makes a pact with the
Devil for unlimited knowledge.
Page 569: The sun of Planet 10 is dying, so the Lectroids
have sent ships across the galaxy in search of a new home
world.
Page 571: Empress Emdall was a high-price pleasure slave as
a youth. Hearing this, Buckaroo compares it to an oiran, a
high-ranking courtesan in Japanese history. Through the
Lectroids she met, including marriage to Whorfin, she had
been able to manipulate circumstances, leading a revolution
of the Darklings against the Reds and a decisive battle on
the Plain of Odors, to become empress. Upon victory, she
chose not to kill Whorfin because he carried her larva, so
she had him and his top officers decerebrated and teleported
into the 8th Dimension, where he was eventually found by Dr.
Lizardo during his experiment into the dimensional realm.
Page 574: Planet 10 has a large volcano called Mount
Wah-Wah.
Page 574: Emdall is attracted to Buckaroo and plans to mate
with him, telling him "the roots of our passion lie in
prophecy and the Akashic compendium." In the Earth-based
religion of theosophy, the Akashic records are a compendium
of everything that has ever happened, is happening, or will
happen, to everything in the universe, living or dead.
Page 576: Buckaroo thinks of Emdall as a Circe who has
claimed him as her own and brought him to the threshold of
death. Circe was a minor goddess and enchantress of men in
Greek mythology. She came to be seen as an emasculating
temptress.
Page 577: The evolutionary process that Buckaroo runs
through in his mind is a Banzai-modified version of a tract
written by atheist and white supremacist Charles Smith in
1928. The full Smith tract is "In the beginning was matter,
which begat the amoeba, which begat the worm, which begat
the fish, which begat the amphibian, which begat the
reptile, which begat the lower mammal, which begat the
lemur, which begat the monkey, which begat man, who imagined
God. This is the genealogy of man."
Page 580: Emdall remarks that Buckaroo once nearly had Xan
dead to rights in the Valley of Mystery in a big federal
range. This must be a reference to an as yet unrecorded
adventure.
Page 580: Desperate to stop Emdall from blowing up Earth,
Buckaroo tells her he can capture both Xan and Whorfin in
three days if she sets him free, adding, "If I fail, you can
always destroy Earth later," and after the capture, "I'll
buy you a margarita at Ramon's." Emdall recognizes the name
"Ramon's" as the place where Buckaroo and Tommy eat nachos and drink
margaritas...though she then recalls that Tommy only drinks
Nehi grape soda.
Nehi was a U.S. soft drink company known for its
fruit-flavored sodas from 1924-1955. In 1955, the company
changed its name to Royal Crown Company. Nehi is now a brand
of the Dr. Pepper Snapple Group.
Page 580: Emdall remarks that
Buckaroo is "getting up in years."
Page 585: Reno writes that the
Lectroid high priest known as John Red and Raw figures
prominently in the next volume of the book series.
Page 585: Reno's statement, "A tale this lurid and
fantastical could only be told by an idiot..." may be a
reference to the famed quote spoken by Macbeth in William
Shakespeare's Macbeth. "It is a tale told by an
idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."
Page 586: The song Buckaroo sings
as he dances about to distract the Lectroids is "War" (1969)
by Norman Whitfield and Barrett Strong, made popular by
vocalist Edwin Starr.
Page 587: During his performance,
Buckaroo gyrates like Elvis Presley or James Brown. Elvis
was previously mentioned in this study. James Brown
(1933-2006) was an American singer who is considered to be
the creator of funk music.
Page 589: Buckaroo and the
Cavaliers have a weekly television series which often uses
the well-known line, "Just the way my mama and daddy raised
me."
Page 590: Emdall suggests to
Buckaroo that they could live on Earth in "the big canyon,
the grand one," and he responds, "Indeed, Arizona is nice
this time of year..." They are speaking of the
Grand
Canyon.
Page 591: "Land of Enchantment" is
the official nickname of the U.S. state of New Mexico.
Page 591: Buckaroo remarks that
his parents had lived on the Apache reservation in New
Mexico and worked on the Manhattan Project. The
Manhattan Project was the U.S. research program during WWII
that produced the world's first atomic bomb.
Page 594: Buckaroo becomes married
to Empress Emdall, seemingly making him a co-regent of both
Planet 10 and Earth.
Page 596: Empress Emdall says to
her followers, "We are all Lectroids, who once walked Planet
1 together in peace and mutual trust! Only our markings and
odors are different!" Presumably, Planet 1 was the Lectroids
original homeworld.
Page 598: The Moon of the
Misbegotten is apparently a prison planet of the Lectroids.
This is likely named by the author for the 1943 broadway
play A Moon for the Misbegotten by Eugene O'Neill.
Page 599: One of the beings held
prisoner in the same cell as Tommy on Planet 10 is described
as a Mr. Peanut with one bird leg. Mr. Peanut is the
advertising mascot of Planters nuts.
Page 604: Pursued by a pack of Lectroids in his and
Buckaroo's escape, Tommy refers to the aliens as cockroaches
and says, "Where's my Raid?"
Raid
is a family of insecticide products for use in and around
the home.
Page 607: A monochord is a music and laboratory instrument
with one string. The device is used to demonstrate the
mathematical relationships of the frequencies.
Chapter XXXV: DEUS EX MACHINA
The title of this chapter is
Latin for "God in the machine", a term used in writing to
describe a sudden and unexpected plot device to conveniently
solve a problem in the story.
The opening quote of this chapter is from the epilogue of
Arundhati Roy's 2014 book Capitalism: A Ghost Story.
Page 609: When Buckaroo was a child, a friend of the family
was Nakajima Haruo, who played the role of Godzilla in
films.
Godzilla is
a Japanese film franchise about a gigantic
reptilian/dinosaur-like creature. Nakajima Haruo
(1929-2017) played the monster (called Gojira in
Japanese) in 12 movies from 1954-1972.
Page 617: The Imperatrix returns Buckaroo and Tommy
to Earth an instant after they'd left it, to the
accompaniment of three rainbows and the blaring of
Beethoven's Emperor Concerto. The concerto was
Beethoven's last piano concerto, which premiered in 1811.
The music is appropriate, as Buckaroo is now Emperor of
Earth.
The book ends with:
TO BE CONTINUED IN
BUCKAROO BANZAI, EMPEROR OF EARTH
NEXT VOLUME IN THE THRILLING SERIES
Back to Buckaroo Banzai
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