April 2007 Archives

The downright deviant number of flip-flops
we have in my house. We have, like,
fourteen pairs of flip-flops in my house.

And I don't wear flip-flops. They flip too much.

So that leaves three people in my house with fourteen pairs of flip-flops.

Why? Why? Why?!
You can't wear more than one pair at a time.

Deviant.

Photo credit: Brian Butler.

DyAnne DiSalvo has written seven children's books and illustrated over forty, and has worked with numerous authors including Beverly Clearly, Mary Pope Osborne, Jean Fritz, Jane O'Connor, Patricia Reilly Giff, Jean Marzollo, and Amy Hest.

Her trademark theme of helping neighborhoods has been featured on "Reading Rainbow" (Uncle Willie and the Soup Kitchen) and in theater productions (City Green). She received a Congressional Commendation from the State of New Jersey for her book Grandpa's Corner Store. Awards for her illustrated work include the Society of Illustrators' "best of children's books" for 1986, 1987, 1991, and 2000. She's currently working on The Tree Wars, a novel based on the heroic preservation of a historic site of trees in Haddon Township, New Jersey.

In 1995, DiSalvo was chosen as one of thirty international artists to study in Barga, Italy, at the "Mostra di Incisioni." She also plays rhythm guitar for the power-pop rock band, Smash Palace, which tours internationally and has had songs featured in movies including Who's Kyle, starring Gary Oldman, and the independent film The Meeting.

We spoke by phone in February 2007, with snow still on the ground.

DyAnne DiSalvo on the Web: dyannedisalvo.com, smashpalacemusic.com

CV: Your creative output is pretty striking, with dozens of children's books to your name. Is there anything that you attribute your productivity to?

DD: Well, I try not to judge myself. I try to be "my own best friend." [laughter] Which is a lie. But I try not to get too wrapped up in the difficulty of the moment because I'll just wallow in that for as long as I like, feeling bad for myself. So what I do is, I read. I play music. I have conversations with my friends about poetry or writing or whatever they're working on. I walk my friend's dog. I travel a lot. Whatever fills up that time. And I'm always thinking about my story, whatever I'm doing, as I'm doing it. And I think that's incredibly helpful. I just allow myself to never lose sight of my art-piece and to live life.

CV: Do you ever worry about burning out?

13 weeks in now, fellow lit folks dropping all around us. Good folks. Strong folks. We march on.

Like I think pretty much everyone, the Quaternions wore my marching toes down to a nub, but I liked Bradh's take on it in the comments: "I read the maths like a foreign language: just to enjoy the rhythms of the words."

Things started to get a little zippy with Kit and Günther’s duel ("how lucky to have provoked your quarrel here, in the dueling capital of Germany"), the return of Lew, Lew's encounter with the hanging man, gas traffic, and then Kit, Foley, and the mickfest. By the time we met the "jelly doughnut" man, it was like being handed a new pair of sugar powdered socks.

If you get a chance, take an amble back in time to one of the early posts. I wandered through Week 2 this morning, tipping my invisible hat brim to lost companions -- calliscrapy, buffo, Ms. Maggo, AnemicPrince.... We're down to around 14 hardy souls now. We few, we proud, we folks who get to enjoy lines like "a dog was howling at a moon no one could see, perhaps imagining that, summoned repeatedly enough, it would appear with food of some kind" and names like "Gus Swallowfield" and "Willi Dingkopf."

Tuesday 5/1: Part Four's within reach, so let's lunge for the bottom of page 693, where I for one plan to howl hungrily "at the unexplained and unresponsive moon."

(which is to say.... please use this thread to comment on anything up to page 693. Aim to finish reading that part of the book and to comment on it here by end o' day next Monday)

Pugnax!
-Cecil

Photo credit: Emily Rawlings.

Jonathan Coulton sings songs about workplace zombies, ennui-afflicted clowns, self-loathing giant squids, and devotees of a certain Swedish prefab furniture store. In 2005-2006 he recorded and published a new song every week as a free podcast called "Thing a Week." A few of these songs have become full-fledged internet smashes, including his folky cover of Sir Mix-a-Lot's "Baby Got Back," a visual ode to Creative Commons called "Flickr," and "Code Monkey," the anthem of software designers everywhere.

Coulton releases all his music under a Creative Commons license that allows for file sharing and copying, as well as non-commercial derivative works. And his community of fans has rallied around him to generate airplay on hundreds of podcasts, create a library of music videos, and even set up gigs through Eventful.com.

In addition to his singer/songwriter work, Coulton produces a weekly interview podcast for Popular Science Magazine as their Contributing Troubadour.

Jonathan Coulton on the Web: JonathanCoulton.com, Thing a Week Podcast, PopSci Podcast

Cecil Vortex: In the course of the year you spent working on Thing a Week, did you develop any techniques that seemed to help you tap your creative side?

Jonathan Coulton: I wish I could say that I developed a sure-fire strategy for writing a song. That's one of the things I was hoping would come out of Thing a Week -- that I could somehow discover a process that worked every time. But it was always different.

I spent a lot of time walking and riding my bike, mumbling under my breath, making up lines about things I saw or thought of. Ideally, one of those lines would be interesting enough to stick with me and grow into something. Sometimes I would get inspired early in the week and the song would sort of write itself. Other times I would think and think all week, and Friday would find me with no good ideas.

The one thing I did learn was that even the good songs have a point when they feel awful -- for me there's always this deep valley of self-doubt when it seems like I should stop writing and abandon the idea. But sometimes even the songs that started with bad ideas would have a very strong finish, and I would find that I'd pulled something really great out of nowhere. Not always -- there were certainly some songs that never really got good. And I think that's an important part of the process too -- you're going to write some clunkers for sure, but you'll never really know unless you write them. Starting a song is easy; finishing it is a lot harder.

CV: How did you stay focused and productive, particularly on those days when you were feeling a little less inspired?

Finally caught back up, even if I had to delay posting this week to make it across the line. I was particularly hung up on the Quaternion section from the end of last week -- underlining more than usual, understanding less. One thing's for sure, as Pynchon sez, "all mathematics leads...sooner or later, to some kind of human suffering."

But before long we were into the mayonnaise museum, Pugnax's disturbing taste for human blood, Ryder Thorn, Umeki, and the most powerful weapon in the world. It all seemed a little extra vague and hazy, like Venetian fog, I suppose, but well worth 'marching through.

I wondered at points what must it be like to read this book as a scientist. To me, there are definitely sections that sound like so much arfing from a hyper-intelligent blood-hungry guard dog. Does the scientist reader laugh along with all that arfing? Or do they just say "come on now -- ridiculous!" Any scientists among us? Who will speak for the scientific community?

Tuesday 4/23: While I'm asking questions, what I really want to know is: Can I stay caught up for a whole week? The answer lies on the bottom of page 636, but unfortunately, "you know who I am."

(which is to say.... please use this thread to comment on anything up to page 636. Aim to finish reading that part of the book and to comment on it here by end o' day next Monday)

Pugnax!
-Cecil

Anne Frank was resting.
The day before she had bested the Werewolf.
The day before that, an alien robot had burst
into the attic.

But there's no rest for Anne Frank.

Through a small window ringed with
pencil-drawn tulips, you can see
Godzilla's head. At first, it's the
size of a thimble or a small eraser. Then it makes
that noise, that horrible Godzilla noise.

The ground thumps with Godzilla's
horrible slapping feet.

The head grows.
And Anne Frank knows she's got
another monster to deal with.

"Kitty," she asks, "if I destroy this one, will they
let me walk the streets?"

"Will they declare me a hero? Will they free
my people? Will they free the others?

If I destroy Godzilla?"

Harmonize those ages into a blur from
5-year-olds to 17-year-old
giants

with smooth tones
taller than people
louder than people
vibrating

and our little folks singing
next to them

us all shaking
in our seats.

In seventh grade I read Cat's Cradle, my first Vonnegut book. I remember standing in front of the class and giving a book report. I played a newsreporter delivering the play-by-play from the book's closing scene ("a tragedy today, here in the beautiful island of San Lorenzo..."). There was an ad in the back of all those Vonnegut paperbacks that said, essentially, bet you can't eat just one, and they were right.

No books, aside from Steve Martin's Cruel Shoes, had a bigger impact on my brain in middle school and high school. I'd sometimes hear folks disparage Vonnegut's novels as lightweight, comparing them unfavorably to, say, Catch-22. That always seemed off-point to me. These weren't book you were supposed to roll around in for a month. They were a different kind of beast. Thin, portable devices that delivered high voltage electric telegrams direct to the nervous system. And if you read them in a certain frame of mind (and most especially at a certain age), they really did change the way you saw the world.

If you're planning on reading a Vonnegut book today, may I recommend Sirens of Titan? Or perhaps God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater? Or mebbe Slapstick? Or what about Bluebeard? Oh, who are we kidding? The book to read today is Mother Night.

Mother Night, a book so gigantically good that when I finished it back in freshman year of college, I hopped up, flung it down the hallway, and scrambled out to the street to recover with some New York City air. And see, if it had been Catch-22, I might have really hurt somebody.

Kurt Vonnegut 1922-2007

I will accept no questions this week about exactly where I am in the reading. Suffice it to say, matters were not helped by an especially raucus Dyngus Day celebration! And then I got all angry about some marketing copy I found. And then someone told me I smelled like Indian food. Really, it's been a rough week.

Still, here we are eleven (11!) weeks in, with double-digit comments and the very real prospect that significant bucks will be spent on mugs before this thing is through. Thanks all for hanging in there. And once again, extra special thanks to the redoubtable Steve "Heurtebise" Evans for cooking up some nigh-edible summarizing notes.

Tuesday 4/17: It's a shorter than usual romp -- let's call it a catch-up week for folks like me who could use one, without actually taking a full week off. I'll see ya at the bottom of page 587 where word is someone "had better kiss her, and soon."

(which is to say.... please use this thread to comment on anything up to page 587. Aim to finish reading that part of the book and to comment on it here by end o' day next Monday)

Pugnax!
-Cecil

Dyngus Day is finally here! And you know what that means -- beware kids sporting pussywillows and water guns. Especially if you live in Buffalo or South Bend.

In an almost entirely unrelated development, So-Called Bill was angered by advertising over the weekend, which reminded me of this marketing copy I found on the box for Rob Reiner's Rumor Has It, starring Kevin Costner, Shirley Maclaine, and Jennifer Anniston:

At last there's a movie for everyone who's ever looked at the eccentrics and oddballs in his or her family and wondered who are these people?

Like until now, we were left to ask, "Doesn't anyone else have a crazy uncle who thinks the Theodore Roosevelt part of Mount Rushmore is making googly eyes at his wife? Am I the only person in this whole country with a quirky family? And if I'm not alone, why doesn't anyone make a movie that finds comedy in those sorts of situations?"

And then -- at last! -- along comes this groundbreaking film. And now you're not alone anymore. At last! At last! Grrrr.

Speaking of bad things, here's what may be the worst pick-up line ever: "Either this place smells like really good Indian food, or you smell like really good Indian food."

Photo credit: Stephanie Mathews.

Natalie Marrone received her Master of Fine Arts degree in choreography from Ohio State University in 1998. That same year she founded The Dance Cure, a contemporary, all-female dance company based in Columbus, Ohio, and began her field research on southern Italian folk dance. Her work has been recognized by the Congress on Research in Dance, the National Dance Educators Organization, the Greater Columbus Arts Council, the Italian Folk Art Federation, the World Dance Alliance, the American Italian Historical Association, and OhioDance.

Ms. Marrone has served on faculty for ten years in higher-education dance programs and as a guest choreographer and master teacher for universities, public schools, national commercials, live television, and professional academies. In addition to her work with The Dance Cure, she's currently the jazz dance director of New Albany Ballet Company and recently developed Dance Decisions Inc., a new business that coaches young dancers through the process of choosing a university dance program.

Natalie Marrone on the Web: The Dance Cure, Dance Decisions

Cecil Vortex: Where do you find the inspiration for your choreography?

Natalie Marrone: Eighty percent of the time, the music is what feeds me information. It may not be the music I wind up using, but for me, any kind of inspiration starts with a visceral response to sound and wanting to move to that sound. And the sound isn't always a beat, although I love rhythm and using polyrhythm. When a soundscape comes on that's speaking to me, it's almost like I have a socket and it plugs in and I know that I need to go from there.…

One of the things that always inspires me is a person's story as it's written on their body -- especially as it's written on their face. I might not have a job soon if this Botox thing continues. [laughter] I look at people. I look at their physical shape and I look at the way they move. And just for an instant I can almost be inside their being. It's always something about the story in the lines, the wrinkles -- the story of their life is written there. I need to sit at the local coffee shop and just look at people and watch them walk. And feel their walk.… The other thing I really need is in-nature time. I get a lot of sensibility about movement just from the wind sometimes or from sensing the path of wet leaves underneath my feet.

CV: Are there any other day-to-day activities that you've found helpful?

Fourth grade was peculiar.
I'm not sure this really happened.
And maybe it was just because I was

living in Holland at the time and it
was some kind of a Dutch thing. But anyways,
in gym class that year

instead of having
a regular teacher like
I had in third grade

I had a large, floating gym teacher head whose
body was
on fire.

When he blew his whistle
the room would fill
with sparking downy flotsam.

****

Legends from My Childhood, #5, card art by eb.

Still behind, but to quote Parliament's immortal "Chocolate City," I'm gainin' on ya. Just one chapter shy of the mark now....

From the comments, it looks like a number of us have renewed energy for this adventure. Whether it's the sweetness between Frank and Mayva, Zoltan flying off his barstool, the increasingly crude Suckling (who I keep waiting to learn is part werewolf), a side trip inside the Hotel Noctambulo, Roswell's enthusiasm, the Thorvaldic Telegraph, my absolutely favoritist name yet in "Stilton Gaspereaux," or the entire spectacular adventure under (or inside rather?) the sand, this felt all around like one of those "that's why we read TP" sorta weeks.

As a few have pointed out, there's also the sense that threads are coming together -- that a few patterns that were once (dare I say) invisible, are now becoming visible. Thanks to all that lovely light, I guess.

Once again, the mighty Steve "Heurtebise" Evans has come through with a batch of madeleines -- be sure to drop by for a well-earned snack.

Tuesday 4/10: Let's make camp at the bottom of page 547, where we'll do our best to avoid "death by mayonnaise."

(which is to say.... please use this thread to comment on anything up to page 547. Aim to finish reading that part of the book and to comment on it here by end o' day next Monday)

Pugnax!
-Cecil

I will eat pizza and oversized subs and drink soda.
We'll tear stretch rubber masks off 
cranky senior delinquents.

    They have their complaints. 
    I have complaints too.
    You don't see me acting out.

Snoopy and Scoob will tug and growl
over a torn blanket.

The girls will help me fold my 
zig-zag t-shirt at night. 
Read me stories as I 
lay my large round head 
down to rest.

Release me from this dustbowl, Fred. From this house.
This baseball field. These shrill harpies.

Let me ride along 
in your stinky van.