My Blog

Author: admin

  • Great expectations

    I was just getting quizzed by my kids about the tooth fairy, and her castle, and the fact that it’s 100 feet tall and 5 feet wide and only has two rooms — the main room and a bathroom. And my third-grade daughter asks, mouth full of toothbrush and toothpaste:
    “Is it as I expected? Is her whole house made out of teeth?”

  • The Against the Day Deathmarch, Week 18

    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

  • Two Astonishing Facts about Creed Bratton

    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.

  • R.I.P. Charles Nelson Reilly (1948-2007)

    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.

  • In which Tekton mania, its root causes and implications, are briefly considered

    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?

  • …and the Academy Award for Best Bee in a Motion Picture

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

  • The Against the Day Deathmarch, Week 17

    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

  • This is lovely

    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 (age 39)

    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?

  • Our hymnal

    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”