“So here we are again, Wheeler. Took us a while.”
“The tic tac toe board.” She looks over at it, notices her missing X now. The game remains unfinished.
“Let’s talk about what’s happened so far. Kind of ironic that way back in photo-novel 03 you chose to discuss ‘Billfork’ over ‘Pumpkintwisters’ at the second Table meeting. Now the latter becomes the key to (understanding) the duck. This is the first 2-n-1 — I’m saying this for the reader or readers more than you, of course — but the movie ‘Wavetwisters’ has a weak point in the middle *perfectly* filled in by the ‘200 Motels’ animation sequence called ‘Dental Hygiene’, featuring, in part, a duck. *The* duck.”
“I agree. I wish I could go back in time to change things.”
“Mabel really enjoyed (the second Table meeting),” countered Newt, formerly Axis-Windmill. “This is obviously the same duck or same kind of duck in ‘The Point (of the Wall).'”
“Agreed.”
“And then in ‘Down and Dirty Duck.’ All three are made by the same animation company. Let’s see (checks): Murakami-Wolf. We don’t need to go into details. The reader or readers can double-check all this for himself or herself or themselves.
“Then we have something else enter the picture. ‘Duckman’, an ahead-of-its-time animation series from the mid 1990s. The three we mentioned before are from the early to mid 1970s. What has changed? Zappa was in his prime in 1971 when (his movie) ‘200 Motels’ was released, when ‘The Point’ was shown on TV to a rather massive audience, thanks in part to participant Ringo Starr, who also, ahem, starred in ‘200 Motels’ koinkidinkally enough. ‘Down and Dirty Duck’ features a comedy musical duo named Flo and Eddie who played for Zappa during “200 Motels” (and also acted in the movie), and were most famous for being a part of rock group The Turtles before this, ‘Happy Together’ as their signature song. Anyway, Flo was the duck, the Dirty Duck of the title, who remained unnamed otherwise. Flo is Mark Volman and Eddie is Howard Kaylan. A huge Zappa head rises over the horizon behind the duck at one point in the movie.”
“Drugs,” added Wheeler. “All 3 ducks — who are the same duck, agreed — are reached through drugs. And now (our) Paul Duck: the same.”
“Correct. And ‘Duckman’ *has* to figure in here. Erik Duckman is a private dick who is basically incapable of solving cases without the help of his Joe Friday-like assistant Cornfed, a pig. And here we go: Zappa was quite involved, musically and maybe conceptually, in season one but died of cancer before the series’ first episode aired, which was dedicated to him. Zappa’s son Dweezil is the voice of one of the sons of Duckman. We must extend Dirty Duck now into this new duck through Zappa. This is his *wish*; how he can survive death itself. Incarnate into the duck.”
“Don’t forget Paul Drake, the private dick detective of ‘Perry Mason’. Most direct line to at least the name Paul Duck.”
“Raymond Burr, the actor who famously played Perry Mason, ‘wakes up’ as another character (murderer Lars Thorwald) in ‘Waits for No One,’ I mean in the movie ‘Rear Window’. He looks directly at the camera which is the same as Jimmy Stewart across the courtyard. ‘The sleeper has awoken’ — another Paul. (Frank) Herbert’s Paul (from ‘Dune’).”
“The first episode of ‘Duckman’ is key,” says Wheeler. “Can I place my X back in the corner?”
“Not until we talk to Mabel.”
Sunklands 