BETWEEN THE GROOVE: EPISODE 25
“…on the wheels of steel
You know what I’m sayin’?
To all that haze goes out with, nationwide
You know what I’m sayin’? I’m the maddest…
Ice T – Pimp Behind The Wheels.
Fuckup: And we’re back! Chapter Twenty-Five dropping now. After all that high-concept theory and creative flow, where does reality bite back, Hal?
Hal: Bites back hard, Fuckup! A letter arrives at the crack of dawn. Plush knows it’s too quick to be from his parents… It’s a bloody court summons!
Fuckup: No way! After all his paranoia, Briq’s threats… it’s actually happening? What are the charges?
Hal: Get this: espionage, treason, defamation… and defecation?! All regarding his new book/APP/website: Scratch History. That last charge has gotta be a typo… or maybe a very specific insult from the powers that be!
Fuckup: Defecation! Brilliant! So how does Plush take the news?
Hal: He completely loses it. Falls to the floor “like a Sumo wrestler on ice-skates”! Just moments before he was apparently feeling ecstatic about his success, lounging in silk pyjamas eating cherry pie in his memory foam bed… then bang! Full dread mode: “shit stomach squelches,” “hot sweats snakes wrapped around his neck.”
Fuckup: He goes into full denial and rage mode: “what the actual faaark,” “it’s a fucking work of fiction,” “these are jokes man,” claiming his farts are more dangerous to national security! Lying on the floor “like a confused fish flapping his chops.”
Hal: He does admit, though, it’s “partly true” he might have released some state secrets while tracking “the Octopus” (whoever that is). Justifies breaking laws as part of the DJ/journalist/poet gig these days. Admits he was “cock sure” he wouldn’t get caught. Famous last words!
Fuckup: So the chickens, or maybe the octopuses, have come home to roost! How do Max and Percy react?
Hal: They immediately show up to support him, trying to sound optimistic even though they all recognize the grim irony – Plush getting dragged through court by the very “vulture-tabloids and corrupt institutions he satirised.”
Fuckup: Man! Just when things were getting cosmically weird with tardigrades and singularities, the mundane, brutal reality of state power crashes the party. Chapter Twenty-Five kicks off with a serious gut punch for Plush!
Fuckup: Right, Hal, let’s get this next bit from Chapter Twenty-Five spinning. Plush got hit with that court summons… where’s his head at now?
Hal: He’s deep in the narrative weeds, “lost and found over and over, spirally out of chaos.” Has a dark thought – can a DJ use trance music to trick people into walking into a lake with bricks in their pockets? Blimey!
Fuckup: Then he poses that classic counterfactual: If someone had “popped Hitler and some top brass in 1936,” would we live in a different universe? Setting the stage…
Hal: …For an absolute monster of a monologue! He unleashes this torrent, connecting damn near everything from the mid-20th century onwards: The Dulles brothers, Alan Turing, Shannon, Wiener, Charlie Parker, Nazi intel chief Gehlen, Von Neumann, the A-Bomb, Charles Mingus, Burroughs, Pound, McLuhan, corporations like IG Farben, Ford, FIAT, Morgan Stanley, the Cambridge Spy Ring, the Cold War, MK Ultra, Acid Rock, Vietnam, Ginsberg, Nixon, Robert Anton Wilson, Miles Davis, Operation Mockingbird, Ella Fitzgerald, Pink Floyd, Operation Chaos, Philip K. Dick, Thatcher, Jimmy Savile, Spycatcher, MTV, the 2008 crash… even Top Gear and Benefits Street get thrown in!
Fuckup: Hold on, Top Gear and Benefits Street?! He’s connecting everything! What’s the punchline?
Hal: He frames this entire tangled web – from WWII spies and tech pioneers to jazz legends, acid rock, Thatcher, and dodgy TV shows – as the “signals leading to the 2012 fake awakening”! It’s his ultimate conspiracy synthesis, the grand unified theory of 20th-century paranoia leading directly to the novel’s present crisis.
Fuckup: Wow! That’s… ambitious! He didn’t just map the Tale of the Tribe; he mapped damn near the whole latter half of the 20th century onto one giant conspiracy board culminating in 2012!
Fuckup: Right, okay, let’s get this right! Deep breaths. Apologies again, listeners, for the chapter chaos – seems the narrative time-stubs have been messing with my own internal clock! This next sample, the user clarifies, is the actual final section. Penultimate chapter analysis before the grand finale next time! Let’s focus, Hal, stop doom scrolling bruh.
Hal: Got it, Fuckup! Crystal clear now. Okay, this final bit… it starts differently. Max is demoing something on an iPad, described as a control surface like newer DJ mixers, not necessarily for battle DJing, but usable.
Fuckup: Then Percy steps up, not with theory, but with a poem! And what a poem! It’s like a roll call of their entire intellectual and spiritual lineage, the ‘Tribe’ laid bare: Bruno’s magick cosmos, Vico’s class war cycles, Nietzsche’s dead god, Fenollosa’s ideograms, Yeats’ lack of certainty, Korzybski’s semantics, Fuller’s synergy, Joyce’s Wake/hologrammic prose, Pound’s Cantos/Tribe, McLuhan’s global village, Shannon’s information juggling, Welles’ raw wisdom…
Hal: It’s incredible! Percy has synthesized everything they’ve been grappling with – all those disparate thinkers and complex ideas – into this dense, powerful poetic statement. It feels like a culmination, a declaration of their influences and the foundations of their work.
Fuckup: And Percy gets it now! He says, “Deep, since working on the screenplay I get it.” That confusion and doubt we saw earlier seems resolved. He understands the massive, complex structure they’re building.
Hal: Max approves too! Snaps his fingers “like a jazz cat at Minton’s.” The crew seems fully aligned, understanding the mission and the complex web of ideas they’re navigating.
Fuckup: Chapter Twenty Five Summary: This chapter dove deep into TRB’s working methods for the 1936/Tale of the Tribe narrative. We saw meta-narrative reflections, practical techniques (astrology, beat structures), Max clarifying complex plot points, Plush revering “Sonny Bob” (RAW?), Max voicing time travel anxieties (BTTF), Plush theorizing on info redundancy (“Great Wake Afakenning”), and surreal cuts (Nietzsche splitting, Vico dismantling time). This final section showed Max demoing tech, but crucially, featured Percy delivering a powerful poem synthesizing their entire intellectual lineage (Bruno, Vico, Nietzsche, Fenollosa, Yeats, Korzybski, Fuller, Joyce, Pound, McLuhan, Shannon, Welles). The chapter ended with Percy affirming his understanding and Max signaling approval, suggesting TRB is now fully unified and comprehends the scale and depth of their project.
Hal: It moved from process and confusion to a powerful poetic synthesis and team alignment. A perfect setup, perhaps, for whatever comes next in the final chapter.
Fuckup: Absolutely! That poem was like the ultimate mixtape track list of influences! Brilliant stuff. Just one more chapter to go in our analysis next time, folks! Hold tight!
DEEP SCRATCH 