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"I♥U2"

In the preantepenultimate chapter, things look rough for our trio but Leila is apparently looking fine as Our Author goes into rapturous overdrive describing the state of her body in 2002 and puts himself into line for a Literary Review award.

Everyone else is in New York for the coming Grid-A-Thon. Josh is there with Victoria, although it's not clear whether it's the real Victoria or Leila's cybernetic imposter.

Gabriel, meanwhile, has taken his neo-Psychoderelict lifestyle to New York's Ritz Carlton where he has hooked up with a hooker with a more than passing resemblance to Leila. He is now hearing voices, specifically the screaming children image out of The Iron Man. He opens a window for more air and hears the tragedies of New York (Lennon's shooting, 9/11) echoing through the streets before his reverie is cut short when he suddenly gets a mouthful of pigeon.

Update: Pete says the girl with Gabriel is NOT a prostitute although she does seem like one. I thought she was. Must have been a Trick of the Light.

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"Men Called Uncle"

...And if you're thinking more Uncle Ernie than Napoleon Solo, you'd be right. It's 2002 and Gabriel is an aging reclusive drunk living in Ray's old house living Ray's old lifestyle. Josh shows up on his doorstep with the present of a massive guilt trip. He's run out of money (cough, cough...John Entwistle...cough, cough), so he needs Gabriel to release the rights to their joint music so he can hack Lelia's computer and stage the Gridlife concert. He also tells Gabriel that the "Victoria" he has been communicating with on the Internet is an artificial person created by Leila.

With enough of that plot, we soar into the ether with Ray High as he recalls being abused as a child in some way (Our Author cut back exactly what happened. Probably best). It involves a woman holding his head underwater in a bathtup and a man dressed a bit like...Cousin Kevin?

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"Birthday Treat"

Ray is a little more lucid on his 90th birthday in 2035 and, while wandering around the old neighborhood in his pajamas, sets himself to the task of tying up loose ends.

Turns out Leila's remark about the efficacy of Gabriel's sperm referred to her finding out about his love child with Angie. Leila leaves Gabriel and turns to Josh, getting into S&M games with him in a parallel with Rastus and Ruth Streeting's similar activities in Psychoderelict. And, as if to make this even more of a repeat of the earlier work, Gabriel becomes involved with the Glass fan Victoria who sends him a naughty e-mail and seeks his help in becoming a star. Gabriel ends up, not in a scandal, but having a solo hit with "Only One Hymie," a song about his son who died in a car accident along with Angie who was doing cocaine Gabriel had given her at the time. Gabriel's grief is used as the public reason why Gabriel refuses to participate in the big Glass reunion concert in New York. Privately, Gabriel has put the kibosh on the concert by denying Leila and John access to the songs he co-wrote.

Meanwhile in 2035, Ray says he is a purely voluntary resident in the asylum and that he and Damoo built the first Vox-Box at the studio and it was hooked up to the early Internet.

Keith Moon died of heroin overdose?

In the cover story of the Feb. 2006 issue of Mojo, Pete Townshend says this:

...I'm not sure it was the heroin overdose that killed him or the steak he ate first thing in the morning. (p.73)

Now, as you fellow Whostorians know, the medical examiner stated the cause of Keith's death was from an overdose of Hemineverin tablets, 26 undissolved ones in his stomach out of 32 and a test of his bloodstream showed a "minimal" amount of alcohol present.

So I would be inclined to think that Pete or the interviewer made a mistake except that I was talking to a Who insider just two days before who also insisted he was told several years ago that Keith was known to have been on heroin the last six months of his life.

Why would this have only come out now? Why would the test of his bloodstream not shown the presence of opiates (tell me a rock star dies young and the medical examiner doesn't test for opiates). Could the official result been suppressed but why? And, if Pete knew about this, why would he sit on the information throughout his anti-heroin campaign of the mid-1980's?

I've got feelers out to those in the know to see if they've heard anything but this makes no sense to me at all.

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"An Answer to Job"

The chapter begins with our trio again watching the footage of the tragedy that occurred at a long-ago Ray High concert. Ray's comments are seemingly exact copies of what Pete did after the similar tragedy at a Who concert in Cincinnati in 1979.

Photo: Jack Klumphe






Leila begins to use the images of the tragedy to make the face of Ray's teacher Silverman. Over at Television Without Pity they would start talking about anvils dropping at this point.

Ray then discusses the book of Job and seems to confuse it with Genesis, the Bible chapter, not the prog-rock band.

Leila, while reveling in her successful technological baby of the realized Grid, drops a heavy hint that she may or may have been pregnant. But who is it? Is it donor number one, donor number two or donor number three?

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"Alcohol and Pregnancy"

The first difficult chapter in a while but with some action and more than a little punning.

Josh and Leila begin the theme of pessimism vs. optimism with a debate about children she could bear with either Josh or Gabriel. Gabriel describes her as "broody" in the first of the puns. The theme, of course, is also echoed in the latest Message From Our Author.

Then we jump to Leila getting all drunk in Brixton, getting wrapped in plastic and later found in the skip, not dead like Laura Palmer
but raped. Hmm, put a speedball injection in place of Saran Wrap and heart stoppage in place of rape and the whole scene seems rather familiar.

Meanwhile Gabriel does his least to satisfy a girl he thinks he is love with (leading to his introductory remark while driving, "Too fast for you?" Tut-tut, P.T.). Meanwhile Glass' success has led to the inevitable backlash in the British press, thanks to a well-timed radio message.

However, a good half of the chapter is taken up with a heady confrontation between Ray and his art school professor who belittles his pessimistic view of "The Grid" and says he has abandoned his "art" by becoming a rock star. Most of it sounds like the most sobbish professor-speak you can imagine. I wonder whether Our Author is being satirical or means us to swallow the professor's swill? Guess it depends on whether you take his remarks as half-full or half-empty.