Steptoe Series 03

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bb:

As usual, Hucka D., I’m rushed for time, even though I should have a bunch of time.

Hucka D.:

Too many projects. Too many project reviews. That’s good!

bb:

So I’m enlisting your help again.

Hucka D.:

No. You can do it.

—–

This is Collage 4 of the Steptoe collage series, which is in four parts of an animation. We’ll call these 04a, 04b, 04c, 04d. The above is 04a. Hucka D. wants me to do this alone. We have Jack’s VW bug, but reversed in color from yellow to blue, and heading the opposite way from the previous collage (Collage 03) already reviewed. Jack’s son Danny from The Shining also re-emerges here, or at least his head and arm. He’s already appeared the Steptoe series in Collage 02, also an animation, and taking place in the midst of a small Washington state cemetery named Stipe (variant name: McConnell). Collage 03 also takes place in the same general vicinity, or at the entrance to the same cemetery. In Collage 04, we also haven’t moved far away, staying in the area to visit Steptoe Butte about 10 miles to the nw of the cemetery. The butte is a very prominent landmark, rising about 1000 feet from the surrounding, flatter terrain. It can probably be spied from the cemetery itself. So what is happening in the 4 part Collage 04 animation? The figure of 04a has Danny’s head, true, but a different body. It’s that of REM lead singer Michael Stipe, culled from an earlier Jan. blog post. Danny, with his own hand, is playing a game of darts not with a dartboard but Steptoe Butte itself, with the traditional board’s bullseye being replaced by an ear. Eye for an ear. It is then a bull’s ear. So what does *this* mean? Hucka D. is still not going to help me. The ear is that of Michael Stipe again, severed from the head and placed near the top of the butte. As Stipe is a musician, we might assume this has to do with hearing or listening to his music. And I think the particular song inferred here is “Shiny Happy People”, as will become evident during the animation’s progression. So here we have ear substituted for eye; Michael Stipe’s body substituted for Danny’s; and Jack’s VW car and car shadow reversed. Keep in mind as well that Steptoe Butte has become a variant name of Michael Stipe himself — Michael and this standalone mtn. have become one and the same in the collage series. As Stipe/Steptoe Butte have been assoc. with the color blue through the cube topped Story Room figure, it seems that the change in Jack’s VW color signifies that we have moved into REM territory and away from Tom Petty’s yellow.

Tom Petty’s signature song of Carrcass-10 is “Running Down a Dream”, dubbing the very first part of the movie where we have the golden bug navigating through huge Montana Colorado mountains. If we run with the current theory, then the REMs’ primary or significant song is “Shiny Happy People”, although their later hit “Stand” is also included in Carrcass-10 (as Petty’s “Don’t Come Around Here No More” represents his own second and last entry in C-10). The reason I believe this is that pictorial elements dubbed by this song in The Shining begin to appear in Collage 04b, which would be the Jack-Lloyd scenes at the bar of the hotel’s Gold Room.

The dart and the ear are still there, true, but behind them is now the head of Jack and Lloyd respectively. Also significant is that the lighted bar glass appears in the road below them, a seeming continuation of the white trailing VW from 04a. The original photo I took all 3 of these Gold Room elements from is this one.

In Collage 04c, the held dart and target ear have vanished altogether, leaving us with a plain view of Jack and Lloyd the bartenders’ heads. The inverted blue VW has reappeared, but further away and on Steptoe Butte itself now, forming a tight pyramid-type triangle with the 2 aforementioned heads.

This is a continuation of the animation of 04a (car with light shadow) and 04b (lighted bar top), and now it can be inferred that the bar itself is one with this inverted VW and its shadow. The road leading to Steptoe Butte gives the appearance of a runway (related to Petty’s “Runaway”??), and I think back to the Barry-Shin(i)n(g) 03 post and the close proximity of Barry, Minnesota with a Stanley Field airstrip.

Danny’s dart also seems to have transformed into a cigarette, losing its red tail in the process. A wiff of smoke emerging from the point opposite Jack gives the illusion that he’s smoking this “cig”. I believe this particular drug vice is substituting for the Jack Daniels drink that Jack actually partakes of at this bar, as poured by Lloyd the bartenter. Smoking a cigarette equates with drinking the Jack Daniels in a glass.

*But*, in reference to the next and last part of the 4 part Collage 04, the cigarette also infers a lighted fuse that, when burned down, will *explode* Jack and also his bartender, his inverted VW heading right for him, and even Danny’s arm holding the cigarette/fuse.

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