Subject: Re: The Twin Peaks chess game
From: sam@sonia.math.ucla.edu (Sam Needham)
Date: 1991-04-08, 21:30
Newsgroups: alt.tv.twin-peaks
Reply-to: sam@math.ucla.edu (Sam Needham)

In article <1991Apr9.032616.19466@world.std.com> ekw@world.std.com (Elliott C Winslow) writes:
> >The previous reference thought he had seen this story line before.
> >Indeed, more than once.  The main reference has to be Kurt Vonnegut,
> >and I think it's in _Welcome to the Monkey House_, but I'm not sure.

I was going to avoid mentioning the Monkey House story on this group because
some misguided peakie was going to go out and read it.
I remember reading it very clearly. It had the same plot feature of each
of the protagonist's pieces being a person he was responsible to care for,
and the queen was his wife. But KV, who only described a few early moves
before cutting to the chase, happened to come up with the fastest possible
sequence of moves exposing the hero's queen to capture. The hero's opponent
could have exchanged queens at move 4 - but he didn't, even though his 
motive appeared to be to kill as many people/pieces as possible, rather 
than to win the chess game. The author just hadn't set the pieces up and 
thought it through - and to someone who can follow a chess game in my
head ( at least for four or five moves, which is about my limit) the story
was COMPLETELY anticlimactic and annoying. 
Ob.peaks: it seems like I can replace my previous heartless comment to 
hangover victims with TP quotes. It used to be "How about a nice cup of... fat?"


Sam




On Feb 28, 1894, Edgar McNabb of the Baltimore Orioles checked into the Eiffel
Hotel on Smithfield Street in Philadelphia, closed the door to his room and shot
himself dead. He remains the only *left handed* pitcher in major league baseball
history to commit suicide. -LA Times, April 7, 91, my emphasis.