May 2007 Archives

Still reading, still consistently posting late, still about 100 pages behind. But still enjoying the book too, and that's something. A big something. And now suddenly thinking that yes, in fact, I too may someday sip from a dishwasher-safe "I Survived the Against the Day Deathmarch" mug.

I'm really enjoying reading all your comments as I catch up to the appropriate section. You guys are good company, even when you're frozen in time.

By the way, speaking of ice and things that thaw, has anyone else noticed that we're on track to finish just past the summer solistice? That'll be around five months from the kick-off. And we all say: yoinks!

Tuesday 6/5 There's a long chapter coming that doesn't stop on a convenient 50 page line, plus or minus. So we're going to try something a little different. The literary deathmarch equivalent of a triple lutz. We're going to stop mid-chapter. How precise are our boots? Let's find out on page 956. It helps that someone's left out a cheery sign: "Welcome home."

(which is to say.... please use this thread to comment on anything up to page 956. Aim to finish reading that part of the book and to comment on it here by end o' day next Monday)

Pugnax!
-Cecil

Not-so-astonishing fact #1: Actor Creed Bratton, who plays the character "Creed Bratton" on the hit NBC TV show "The Office," is actually named "Creed Bratton."

Really-quite-astonishing fact #2: Back in the '60s, this selfsame so-called "Creed Bratton" was a member of the band "The Grass Roots," best known for their hit "Let's Live for Today." Creed in turn was best known as "bandmember most likely to streak."

Breathe. Just breathe.

It's going to be OK.

I just learned that CNR passed away late last week. It's been my long-held belief that if the aliens learn everything they know about humanity by watching Charles Nelson Reilly performances, they'll treat us with great loving kindness.

Whatever did we see in Tekton?

There was a time -- back in the early-to-mid '90s -- when we loved that font with a love that was shameless. We were puppies, licking the face of Tekton. Or perhaps Tekton was a puppy. And we let it lick our face for twenty, thirty, forty-minute stretches. And we didn't even care that she had funky breath.

We put Tekton in our fliers. In our magazines. In our computer books.

Tekton for A-heads and running heads! Tekton for body text!

I remember going to parties where we all dressed up as Tekton letters. Everyone wanted to be the lower-case "t." There were lower-case "t"s running around all over the place, getting drunk on "gin and tektonics," taking whippets. It was crazy.

Now you look at '70s fonts, for example, and no matter how dated they are, you can still understand their appeal -- not just the nostalgic, looking-back appeal they have today, but the magic they must have had in the moment. You can picture someone in some 1976 font-mine wiping the ink from their hands, tilting their lantern toward the day's work, and their buddy says: "that's fat and freaky." These were fonts with flair.

With Tekton, I don't know. I mean, I remember that we felt that way. I was there. I have photographs. But I find myself incapable of recreating a mental space in which our response to Tekton seems plausible.

Did we burn out on Tekton -- is that all this is? The way you can kill a favorite tune by overplaying it?

Does our perceptual shift reflect an innocence lost in this post-9/11 world -- the ability to dip and swoon before a font that looks kind of like handwriting, but not really?

Or was it just that we were out of our minds?

Taking Place on the Windshield of a Moving Car, goes to this feller.

I finally got my head back into the book and read 50 pages today, which means I'm only -- yikes! -- 100 pages behind. I did dig the hottentot attempt (remember that?). And you guys are all inspiring me with tales of great things coming down the path.

My new plan is to read an hour a day. What's an hour a day? Nothing, right? I spend 45 minutes a day working on my Mandy Patinkin imitation, so if I just put that on hold for a week or two, I'm 45/60ths of the way there.

Tuesday 5/29 Dang if I'm not gonna aim to meet you at or near the bottom of page 907, where someone's "Constantinople" inclined.

(which is to say.... please use this thread to comment on anything up to page 907. Aim to finish reading that part of the book and to comment on it here by end o' day next Monday)

Pugnax!
-Cecil

A site called idealog had a link to a beautiful collection of post-it doodles -- the artist (Scott E. Franson) did one a day for a hundred days. Time well spent, sez I.

Now more than ever we could all really use 
a yearbook photographer.

Whispering 'round the quad.
Snapping photos of us
and our respective pals
through the zoom lens of 
a swank 35mm Canon (Christmas gift)
as we participate in various
activities.
  Child-rearing, for example. Sock-matching.
  These things that we do.

Afterhours they're hanging with the Editor.
Sipping diet soda, talking Duran Duran.
Nominating classmates for various awards. 
Maybe you, even?
  Best eyes?

If I end up founding my own university ("Cecil Vortex University" -- or perhaps "the University of Cecil Vortex") the CVU/UCV hymnal will include the following words:

• "roar"
• "kindled"
• "e'er"
• "hail"
• "gibbous"

Photo credit: Terry Lorant Photography.

Throughout the 1970s, Jon Carroll worked at magazines and papers that ranged from Rolling Stone and the Village Voice to Oui and WomenSports. Since 1982, he's written a regular column for the San Francisco Chronicle that you can find on the back page of the "Datebook" section -- more than 250 columns a year at 900 or so words a column for a total of 5+ million words and counting.

Jon Carroll on the Web: SF Gate, Subscribe via RSS

Cecil Vortex: Over the past twenty-five years, you've written well over six thousand columns. Were you always this creatively productive?

Jon Carroll: There are a lot of writers in a collateral branch of my family -- John Gregory Dunne is a cousin of mine, and his brother Dominick Dunne. And my father was Irish, and of course there's a tradition there. And I put out a neighborhood newspaper when I was nine. In high school I worked for the literary magazine and the annual and the newspaper, writing for all of them. And I was sort of the all-purpose go-to guy for captions and intros and all of that stuff that needs doing and nobody else wanted to do. And I loved doing it. I still love doing it.

Here's a story: When I got to the Chronicle, I was nineteen and I was working on a section that no longer exists called "This World," which was sort of a news round-up section…. The first day I was there, I was given assignments, and the idea was, you'd turn it in and they'd give you another. And I did six stories. And an old hand came over and told me to slow down, that I was making the rest of them look bad, and that I should know that my quota was around three. So I took it to heart. I didn't want to piss anybody off. So I did the three.

CV: When you moved into column writing, was that a relatively easy transition?

I'm so far behind, I think the Gravity's Rainbow Deathmarch just passed me on the trail. Hey guys!

As with all things of late, I blame the Golden State Warriors. See, as a Warriors fan, I've been conditioned to expect to have substantially more free time in May, not substantially less. Still more proof of the end times, and all that.

One thing I've noticed -- the more I fall behind, the more comments we get on the thread. So really, I'm just taking one for the team here. At least, that's my story this week. As for next week...

Tuesday 5/22 It's entirely possible that I'll meet you at the bottom of page 848, where "it surprised him, and did not surprise him." He's complex that way.

(which is to say.... please use this thread to comment on anything up to page 848. Aim to finish reading that part of the book and to comment on it here by end o' day next Monday)

(Here) Pugnax! (Here) Pugnax! (Good) Pugnax!
-Cecil

Over the last few weeks I've begun tripping and cursing and toe-stubbing my way around the magical world of midi recording. The neatest thing so far has been seeing how easy it is go from playing a piece to printing out the score of what you just played. Crazy neat, in fact.

Much less neat has been the crackling I keep hearing coming from my headphones when I try to load more than one instrument in my brand new "Plug Sound Pro" soft synth. Or perhaps it's not the soft synth that's crackling and it's just that my head's on fire?

Anyways, here's the first result of all that toe-stubbing and crackling -- a Plug Sound Pro-free orchestral number that's the first instrumental on the old Virtual LP since Double Agent of Love, hit the charts in mainland China back in the summer of '04. This one's called (Gibbous Moon) because I like song titles with parentheticals. And I like the word "gibbous."

Keep on rocking (in the gibbous world),
-Cecil

time: 1:02 seconds; specs: (Less than) 1 mb
Press Play to play.

"I'm not laughing at you.
I'm laughing with me."

I'm chasing a tangled ball of yarn, I am -- still a little bit behind, not quite a week's worth. Seems like most folks who were likewise lagging have now caught up, which is kind of exciting. Infuriating, too. But mainly exciting.

I count 13 of us still in this thing. 13! Could 13 of us really finish? That's an awful lotta mugs. Exciting! Infuriating! (But mainly exciting.) By contrast, I think 8 of us finished the Gravity's Rainbow Deathmarch and 7 folks wrapped up Don Quixote. So 13 would be a mighty crowd at the finish line.

Let's hang tight shall we? And more to the point....

Tuesday 5/15: ...let's meet up at the bottom of page 792, where there's some danger that our yarn may blow away, "as if taken by the wind."

(which is to say.... please use this thread to comment on anything up to page 792. Aim to finish reading that part of the book and to comment on it here by end o' day next Monday)

(I miss) Pugnax!
-Cecil

Photo credit: Rocky Schenk.

For over four decades, Van Dyke Parks has worked as singer, lyricist, composer, arranger, producer, and sessions player on an astonishing assortment of projects, collaborating with everyone from Randy Newman, Ry Cooder, Bonnie Raitt, and Bruce Springsteen to U2, Laurie Anderson, Frank Black, and Joanna Newsom. His own albums, starting with Song Cycle (1968) up through Moonlighting: Live at the Ash Grove (1998) have cemented his reputation as an eclectic, inventive songwriter and performer. Parks is perhaps best known for his work as lyricist on Brian Wilson's legendary SMiLE, which was begun in 1966 as the follow up to the Beach Boys' Pet Sounds and released nearly four decades later in 2004.

In addition to all this, Parks has been composer and arranger for numerous movie and TV scores, and has written three adaptations of the stories of Brer Rabbit, published by Harcourt Brace -- Jump!, Jump on Over!, and Jump Again!

Van Dyke Parks on the Web: vandykeparks.com, Old Koton Industries

Cecil Vortex: Is there anything you've found that helps get you into a more creative mode?

Van Dyke Parks: Yes -- smoking is good. Smoking is very helpful. But it's deadly, so today is my second day without smoking. I stopped smoking on Sunday, having smoked for years.

I think that smoking is a very good thing to do -- it's got the association with the Indians; it's a peaceable thing. But like much else that the Indians gave us, we abused the privilege. And so, in my case I must simply stop. I'm too old to smoke. But I do believe that nicotine provides a great creative thrust….

In all the work I do, throughout my life, I've emphasized how fortunate I am to have people around me, and I kind of confirm what my father once said to the school at Andover when they asked if I showed any signs of creativity. My father wrote a letter to them as they were considering me for admission to that school; he said, no, my son has no creativity, but he has reactive abilities that are phenomenal and very useful. I resented that, perhaps -- that my father said that. But I have found basically that it could be true, that I have a reactive ability.

I've always characterized myself in press and so forth as the "beta participant." But in fact, now that we're alone, I can say without fear or bravado, that I feel humbled and validated that you would ask me about the creative process. It's almost as if I am a creative person. And I think all of that is just due to the fact that I have a great work ethic. I hammer at it. I sweat bullets. I pursue it. Wanting real talent, I compensate for it with something far more precious -- sheer will.

I remember when I was a child in New York, I went to see a play by William Saroyan. I happen to know his wife through a live television show I acted on as an obedient boy. At any rate, I met Saroyan. And I asked him about the creative process. I wanted to know because I was so stunned by his work -- he presented a vision of California that helped lure me to California in my later adolescence. And he talked to me about "getting the cat up the tree" -- getting something to happen and resolving it, and so forth. And I asked him about how inspired he must be, and he said no, no, it's all due diligence. Everything is just absolutely irrational tenacity.

CV: In terms of that tenacity, are there any mental tricks that you rely on to get the work done?

After two whole weeks of being on target, I've fallen a bit behind. My hopes to stall some more and catch up before going live this week were dashed when two DMers showed up in an innocent little sidepost about deviant flip-flop habits and jumped me with an (admittedly well-deserved) "where's this week's deathmarch post!"

So here's the post, you goons! You thugs! You people who are not behind this week!

Tuesday 5/8: Let's make tracks for the bottom of page 747, which "would never be here, never exactly here, again."

(which is to say.... please use this thread to comment on anything up to page 747. Aim to finish reading that part of the book and to comment on it here by end o' day next Monday)

Pugnax!
-Cecil