quote:

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Originally posted by Herr Kuchen:
I believe WG commented on this in his blog. I can't remember exactly what he said though.

Which makes this post useless.

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Applicable quotes (I also remembered a quote saying it was deliberate, but I could not find it):

quote:

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Someone expresses horror at the cost of the "Pattern Recognition" Rickson's. I think the novel remarks that the Rickson's is by far the most expensive garment Cayce owns. They're definitely pricey, and pricier still on this American niche-marketer's website, but that's the way with otaku tackle. (You should check out the prices on "garage" model-building kits. Amazing. Or those limited-edition non-action figures in GIANT ROBOT.)

How Cayce got her Rickson's: I have a Korean friend in Seoul who has serious otaku tendencies of his own. He got the Rickson's repro of the WWII U.S. Navy deck jacket and showed me a picture. (He has a friend, an office-mate, who collects only the zippers from WWII military outerwear. These were mostly by a firm called Conmar, and are huge, pure bronze, sort of the Jungian archetype of a zipper, and the idea of someone passionately assembling a collection of them still amazes me. Salvaging them from utterly wrecked examples of garments, I guess. So that, in a briefcase, you'd have a sort of symbolic ghost-wardrobe of American military wear. Or...something. )

It surprises me that these "PR" MA-1's are being made available at all (albeit in tiny quantities, which I trust is appropriate for potential demand). One reason I gave Cayce the jacket was my having heard that Rickson's were virtually impossible to get, even in Japan, the purchase of one requiring placing your order at least a year in advance. When Cayce asks Blue Ant Tokyo to find her one, I was assuming that she knows she's making an impossible request, but that she also knows that Blue Ant may well be able to meet it, and they do.

On the other hand, micro-niche-webmarketing is in my opinion a fine thing. Previously, the experience of ultra-narrow-bandwidth retail esoterica was something limited to a very few very large cities, or specialist catalogs.

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And

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I HAD NOTHING WHATEVER TO DO WITH THIS

Except the obvious, I guess.

http://www.historypreservation.com/BuzzRickson.html

Seriously weird: a case of product placement in reverse, sort of.

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Finally

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Full disclosure, though: I'm wearing a pair of Buzz Rickson's WWII Waist Overalls bluejeans, and *I didn't pay for them*. But these were part of a corporate care-package sent after the fact of the once-imaginary black BR MA-1 having appeared in PR. And they're making me a black MA-1 of my own...EXTRA LONG.

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He does not say it clearly, but I would deduce he deliberately used a non-existant jacket, that then became into existance.

You could ask for an extra-long version, just like Gibson. If you just take a bigger size, any parallels with a skinhead would diminish (besides the obvious hair, footgear, etc.). And the otaku factor increases exponentially.

Cool. Thanks for posting those quotes.

We still don't know if the black MA-1 was a mistake or a fiendish plan to bring one into being.

------------------------------------------

Hit the road to nowhere:

http://home.earthlink.net/~navigare/

I get the total authentic thing,
but in Auz for A$32+pp$9 (about US$30)
I got this black nylon bomber
from www.bigsafety.com.au
<img alt="ProChoice" border="0" src="http://img33.photobucket.com/albums/v98/gbruno/ProChoice.jpg">
the label sys "ProChoice" which I rather like.
cheers
gbruno.tblog.com

ps any bets on WG's favourite EVA pilot?

When I was in highschool in the 80s, I knew pilots. They all (obviously) wore flight jackets (as a brand!).

The armed forces in the USA have never issued black anything, as far as I know.

I wonder if Cayce's burned jacket was OD, and her request for black was just seeing how far she could go?

Bob

quote:

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Originally posted by Psychophant:

(I also remembered a quote saying it was deliberate, but I could not find it):

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quote:

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He does not say it clearly, but I would deduce he deliberately used a non-existant jacket, that then became into existance.

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Hang on. Am I the only one that read this :

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Full disclosure, though: I'm wearing a pair of Buzz Rickson's WWII Waist Overalls bluejeans, and *I didn't pay for them*. But these were part of a corporate care-package sent after the fact of the once-imaginary black BR MA-1 having appeared in PR. And they're making me a black MA-1 of my own...EXTRA LONG.

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He said it was "once-imaginary" - therefore, he made it up. End of story.

It's great though, that WG wields that much social prestige and cool that he can create a product, and make it a reality just by writing about it.

Not the only one to read it, no, but you might be reading too much into it. When he says "once imaginary" that might mean he made it up deliberately, but it might also mean he made it up by mistake (just imagining things, as it were). When he wrote the blog, though, he knew that the black BR MA-1 had not existed when he wrote the book. So: "once-imaginary".

The question is not whether he made it up. That is well established. The question is whether he meant to make it up, or just made a mistake.

Now if Psychophant could just find that quote...

Maybe it's the caffeine-comedown speaking, but who gives a crap?

I mean, I do give a crap about random meaningful links between book content and the outside world, but I don't give that much of a crap about Gibson-trivia in a personal sense. As in, I care to know about whether or not the black MA-1 is real or Gibson made it up, but if he made it up, why he did so is not really much of my business and hardly alters the experience of reading the book. It's one of the fanboy traits I don't seem to have, I really don't feel the need to know my author's motives beyond furthering the plot.

Maybe he wanted a black MA-1 and deliberately created it in the book in hopes that Rickson would make one and send him his own free extra-long. Maybe he made a mistake, and truly thought there were black MA-1s, and deliberately chose to make hers black. Maybe he created it deliberately, but for no reason in particular, maybe he noted that there didn't seem to be black MA-1's on the market, but he thought it'd be cooler, match better with the rest of Cayce's wardrobe, if her MA-1 was black. Because, you know, it's fiction, and he can do that.

I can see obsessing about why Cayce picked a black jacket.

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I wonder if Cayce's burned jacket was OD, and her request for black was just seeing how far she could go?

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is kind of a cute idea. But as to why Gibson picked the black jacket, bloody hell, man I don't know.

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But Gibson made a mistake... This is cool on one level -- not so cool on another. Gibson's failure to remember the color of the jacket was a betrayal of the obsessiveness he so admires in Rickson's reproductions.

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No, no he didn't. Gibson is writing fiction. And in his fictitious world [though it more closely resembles ours than his other worlds] Rickson's makes black MA-1's. In fact, maybe in Gibson's fictitious world MA-1's were originally black.

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If it were anything but a Rickson's, it would just be an oversight -- but what Gibson loves about a Rickson's is its makers's obsession with detail, that's what it symbolizes in the book

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You've got some kind of a point there. But a detail is a detail, sweetheart. And in Gibson's book, they're all his details. The fact that the MA-1 was black is a detail whether or not it's a factual detail in the real world.

As it were,

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We still don't know if the black MA-1 was a mistake or a fiendish plan to bring one into being.

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No. No we don't. And yet we continue to live.

SHAZAM!!!

Go ahead, tell me you don't want Coupland's DNA on your coffee table.

uh huh.

quote:

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Originally posted by hurtstotouchfire:
Go ahead, tell me you don't want Coupland's DNA on your coffee table.

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I certinly do not want it. I may see Canada House, and September 10th, 2001. I may buy Eleanor Rigby in UK to have it earlier, but a few meters away, at least, is where I want his DNA.

Considering how Cayce dresses (white-grey-black), she could have only a black jacket. Why it was a BR MA-1 and not a Schott Perfecto probably says more about Gibson, but as that reading deoends also on the reader, each of us can have a different one.

I have to confess that I do not mind if he just picked black knowing or not knowing that they existed. But I like the hunt, and the search, and the research.

I don't care that much about the answer to the question, really. I'm just a nitpicky bastard who wanted to point out that the answer had not, in fact, been found.

As Psychophant points out, there is a very simple explanation for why the jacket is black: Cayce only wears things which are black, white or grey. The Ricksons could not be a CPU unless it was black. So, if WG was aware that there were no black MA-1's he would have had to invent one, I agree.

Besides, I can't think of a better color than black.

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Besides, I can't think of a better color than black.

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i think it depends on how it's used.

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Originally posted by charmakarmacat:

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Besides, I can't think of a better color than black.

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i think it depends on how it's used.

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A pink Rickson's MA-1 would be so cool. We must beg Billy to give us one!

------------------------------------------

Nowhere T-shirts have arrived!

Check it out here:

http://fabulousnowhere.com

Cayce owns two of these in the novel. The first one gets damaged and she demands a replacement. The second is completely destroyed in her escape and she doesn't seem to mind. Significant?

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Originally posted by agent2508:
Significant?

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Yes. The Cayce of the end of the novel is a very different person from the one who began it.

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Originally posted by gbruno.tblog.com:
Oddly the Actual MA-1 jacket is still made in USA,
sold for U$78, so its hard to see why anyone would pay $425 for a replica

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Well I can explain.....

I have a Buzz Rickson's MA-1 and I also have several newer issue MA-1's. The Buzz Rickson's is better made on the order of several magnitudes. The Buzz Rickson's MA-1 is closer to the jackets as they were issued in the late 50's and 60's when craftsmanship actually meant something. The sewing, the materials, the lining, everything is top notch. Today's MA-1s are low bid and even though they are technically the same spec, they've cheapened the materials and worksmanship. My dad was issued flight jackets as a combat pilot in Vietnam, and his stuff is closer to the current Buzz Rickson's jackets. The stuff being made today is just cheap; who cares that they are made in the USA (if they are). There was a flap about Army berets being made in China, so I am not even sure MA-1s are in fact made in the US anymore.

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No, no he didn't. Gibson is writing fiction. And in his fictitious world [though it more closely resembles ours than his other worlds] Rickson's makes black MA-1's. In fact, maybe in Gibson's fictitious world MA-1's were originally black.

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Perhaps this hints that this is an alternate worlds, as in The Difference Engine

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I have to confess that I do not mind if he just picked black knowing or not knowing that they existed. But I like the hunt, and the search, and the research.

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I agree. The jacket had to be black. I want one. In black.

I think that, more importantly, the really cool thing about the whole idea of the obsessively accurate replica jacket (costing more than the original) is that no one knows about it except the wearer and a tiny percentage of the population that obsesses about these things. To everyone else, it's a non-descript black jacket.

A more "mainstream" version of this obsession exists with respect to shoes or watches - only a small percentage of people know and appreciate what the "obsessed" is wearing. And it's questionable whether the "obsessed" is wearing it for him/herself, or to belong to this club.

Since I'm not a flight jacket otaku, I never thought about this connection before.

I was wondering if Gibson was somehow inspired to call Cayce's wardrobe entities CPU's by the Flight Jacket Type CWU. It wouldn't surprise me.