The deLint/Schtitt coaching read: the coachable patriot, and Stice the uncanny mimic

texture · YDAU standing

• When: YDAU, standing
• What: Stice is the model coachable player, "well known for asking How High Sir when Schtitt says Jump"; in his own Big Buddy sessions he ventriloquizes Schtitt's creed of sacrifice, patriotism, and self-transcendence to his little charges ("mein kinder"), climaxing in "I'd chew fiberglass for that old man." His signature party-trick is mimicry: his Charles Tavis impression is so eerie that the 18's have prohibited him from doing it in front of the younger players (for fear they'll be unable to take the real Tavis seriously); he can convulse the older boys merely by shading his eyes and doing Tavis's "horizon-scan" whenever the receding Headmaster heaves into view, and his 80-second C.T.-impression once served as Hal and Mario's answering-machine message. He and Wayne share the top player's trick of "shutting the whole neural net down for brief periods," hooded and removed. The Hal relation underneath the rivalry is stated outright: Stice can withdraw from a Hal conversation without even saying goodbye because "They were at complete ease with one another." (scene 102, p. 0521). Even the signature trick is outclassable: Pemulis judges that the Tenuate-dosed Wayne's on-air Tavis impression "had made Stice look like a rank amateur" (n332; cf. event 14).