My Blog

Author: admin

  • I defy you

    to name me
    that movie one better be wouldn’t
    male lead
    with neil patrick harris.
    with neil patrick harris.
    with patrick neil harris.

  • Stalin’s Sexy Man-Apes: Sergei!

    Yesterday we announced our multi-part world-exclusive inside look at “Stalin’s Sexy Man-Apes” — the quartet of part man, part ape creatures that everyone’s been talking about. CIA officials advised me to start by sitting down with Sergei — the oldest and most even-tempered of the four man-apes. With his extensive debriefing complete, Sergei recently relocated to downtown Denver, where he set up house in a stylish duplex with his handler, Nikolai Novikov. I met with Sergei and Nikolai last Monday, over a brunch of waffles, berries, and some kind of small, hard nut.
    Sergei: The Oldest and Most Even-Tempered Man-Ape
    sergei_m.jpg
    CV: Sergei — thanks so much for taking the time to talk with me.
    Sergei: Is great pleasure, Cecil.
    CV: You know, this is CecilVortex.com’s first ever world-exclusive.
    Sergei: Da.
    CV: I’m very excited about it.
    Sergei: Da. Da.
    Nikolai: Cecil, are you OK?
    CV: Oh yeah — I’m fine. Just excited.
    Nikolai: You are sweating so much — like Albert Brooks in that movie.
    Sergei: Broadcast News.
    CV: I’m OK. It’s just a little warm in here. If we could open a window?
    Sergei: Here you go.
    CV: Thanks Sergei. So, can I ask — how do you feel about the label you and your fellow man-apes were given — “Stalin’s Sexy Man Apes”? Is it hard to live up to that billing?
    Sergei: No, is easy. I am sexy all the time.
    CV: You know, when I told people I was doing this interview, they all wanted me to ask the same question — whether the ape part of you is a “lesser ape,” from the Hylobatidae family, or a “greater ape” from the Hominidae family.
    Nikolai: Cecil, I’m not sure if —
    Sergei: [unintelligible grunting noise]
    CV: Well, it’s just that, from what I understand, the “lesser apes” —
    Sergei: [louder unintelligible grunting noise]
    Nikolai: You really should change the subject.
    CV: OK. Um…
    Nikolai: Ask him about TV. He loves to watch TV.
    CV: Sergei, have you been watching much TV?
    Sergei: [quieter unintelligible grunting noise] Da.
    Cecil: Anything in particular?
    Sergei: Well, Sergei love “Project Runway.” The sexy fashion.
    Cecil: Oh yeah, me too.
    Sergei: Sergei like to see them make dresses out of garbage!
    CV: Do you have a favorite contestant?
    Nikolai: I like Uli.
    Sergei: Sergei just happy Vincent gone. Vincent make Sergei uncomfortable.
    CV: Well, I think it just goes to show you.
    Nikolai: What?
    CV: Whether you’re a man-ape from the former Soviet Union, or a homo sapien from the USA, pretty much everybody thinks Vincent is creepy.
    Sergei: Da.
    Nikolai: Da.
    Cecil: Thanks very much for your time, both of you.
    Sergei: Do svidaniya, Cecil.
    Cecil: Do svidaniya.
    Tuesday: Ivan!

  • Stalin’s Sexy Man-Apes

    In the mid-1920s a team of Soviet scientists led by a soft-spoken man named Ilya Ivanov began work on a secret project aimed at developing an army of ape-human hybrids. Picture a squad of these creatures attacking Berlin. Joseph Stalin did. “I want a new invincible human being,” Stalin was reported to have instructed the young Ivanov. “Insensitive to pain. Resistant and indifferent about the quality of food they eat. Hairy, with sort of a monkey-type look.”
    Under rising budget pressures, the Reds finally abandoned their efforts in the 1980s. But not before producing a tribe of eleven so-called “man-apes,” kept under close guard in a secure prison at the base of the Ural Mountains.
    Last December the story made international headlines when of these four man-apes stunned the world — executing a daring escape and destroying their guards, the labs, and the rest of the man-ape tribe in the process! The cunning quartet made their way across the Urals to Western Europe where they requested and received political asylum from the U.S. embassy in Frankfurt.
    Little else was known regarding the details of their escape, although one tantalizing rumor did surface — that these were four unusually attractive man-apes, and that they’d used their good looks to somehow distract their captors. Predictably, the British tabloids leapt on this choice tidbit, dubbing them “Stalin’s Sexy Man Apes.” And the label stuck.
    Until today, that was all we knew. “Stalin’s Sexy and Enigmatic Man-Apes,” you might say. But that changes this week, as cecilvortex.com proudly unveils an exclusive intimate peek inside the hearts and minds of Sergei, Ivan, Dmitri, and “little Ivan.”
    You can call them man-apes. You can call them sexy. We call them fascinating.
    Tomorrow: Sergei!

  • Bean song

    Counting beans, one for every
    word you said today.
    A waterfall of frozen
    lima bean conversation.
    Bright bean rage.
    Soft, velvety heirloom beans.
    Bean opera. Beans buzzing
    in a thick glass jar.
    Where do all these beans come from? —
    these beans, with no apologies.
    And why is it that you find yourself
    at this late stage
    so full of frigging
    beans?

  • The Greatest Almost Entirely True Work Story Ever Told

    It was another busy day at Amalgamated Skills — “Where we bring you the skills that you use to do things better than you would do otherwise, if you didn’t have the skills that we bring you.” Rhett Kronkhead, the ever-flustered Production Manager, was in a blood purple rage.
    “Confound it!” he hollered, shaking a phone bill in one purple fist and storming out of his office. “Would you look at these confounded phone calls? It’s ridiculous!”
    “Simmer down Rhett,” said Vilma, A.S.’s ever-wry Art Director. “And pull up your pants.” Rhett had a lot of enthusiasm, some great acid-tinged stories from the sixties, and a good heart. But he had no ass.
    “How can I simmer down?!” said Rhett. “Would you look at this bill?! Who is this clown?! He’s making 30 calls a day!!”
    By this point, a small crowd had gathered around, murmuring like nervous spoonbills. “I’m going to make an example of this clown!!” Rhett stormed back into his office, flopped himself down behind the desk, and reached for the phone. “I’m gonna call him right now!!” he shouted.
    “I’m calling!!”
    There was a moment of silence and then — a ferocious slam, as the phone came crashing back down. “Busy!! Typicall!!” Rhett sputtered. “Who is this clown?!”
    “Let me see that,” said Vilma, reaching over for the bill. She gave it a quick scan. “Rhett,” she said. “Rhett, this is your phone number.”
    “My wha –?” said Rhett, his waking mind drifting off into a babbling dream space as he slipped down off the chair like a spilled Slurpie. “I don’t … I mean … my wha –?” he said again, his whole body now somehow sliding through a thin crack in the baseboard, deep down into the darkness below.
    And only his pants remained.

  • Looking back

    He described his life as a series of tasks
    filled with the description of those tasks
    how he’d cut the boards
    what he did in the cotton gin
    how he’d made the metal bracings for the chair in the front of his house
    that you saw him in most days.
    It was like asking a chef for her life story
    and she says
    well,
    I made my first cake when I was 12.
    We started with 2 cups of flour, a cup of milk, and a pinch of salt.

  • Are You Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

    Over the last year or two, a loose cabal of aliased co-conspirators has been using this site to tackle challenging books en masse — everything from the dread pirate Gravity’s Rainbow to the surprisingly Spanish Don Quixote. We call these experiences “Deathmarches,” despite the increasingly rabid protestation of my erstwhile nemesis, Itto Ottagami.
    The fifth in this series — “The To the Lighthouse Deathmarch” — is comin’ ’round the bend, and I thought I’d take this moment to extend an open invitation.
    How It Works
    As you may have guessed, this time out we’re reading Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse. (More specifically, I’ll be reading the HBJ hardcover edition, available on Amazon.)
    We do this in small bites — 40-60 pages a week. Every Wednesday starting 10/18, I’ll post an entry up here on ye olde cecilvortex.com letting folks know how far we’re aiming to read that week. In the days that follow, folks comment on the thread. These comments range from “I like donuts” to “[insert sophisticated literary analysis here].” And are all comments are viewed as equal in the eyes of el cabal.
    Up to 30 Deathmarchers who make it to the end of the book and post a comment every week get prizes — in this case, prizes that tap the awesome power of magnetic energy. I can’t tell you more than that because it’s a really big surprise. OK. I give. They’re magnets.
    So, all that said, if reading a book by Virginia Woolf and quite possibly gaining partial control over one of the most powerful forces in nature has any appeal to you, you’ve almost certainly come to the right place. Any questions, just drop me a line at deathmarch@cecilvortex.com.
    Hope to see you out on the trail,
    -Cecil

  • A whole new TV genre (don’t you dare close your eyes)

    As some of you already know, I’m taking a hiatus from the 9-5 life so I can spend more time walking my kids to school and working on my writing. Whenever this has come up in conversation, the question back has been: “Hunh. OK. So what are you going to write?” And it’s been a real point of shame for me that I haven’t had much of an answer. Until now. Now, I have very much of an answer. And the answer is that I intend to use this time to create an entirely new TV genre, one I’ve dubbed: the “situation tragedy” or “trag-e-sit.” I’m still working out the details, but here’s a rough sketch….
    Trag-e-sits offer a half hour of episodic entertainment starring 4-6 whacky neighbors and/or family members and/or co-workers who move the plot forward through a series of short, tragic, situational interactions. The whole thing is punctuated by a “cry track” — the sound of a studio audience weeping, designed to induce a similar reaction in the home viewer. Some of the literally several trag-e-sit treatments I’m currently developing include:

    • A family-oriented trag-e-sit in which two single parents, with six kids between them, move in together. They know that they must somehow form a family. But instead, bit by bit they break each others’ hearts.
    • A workplace trag-e-sit where a new TV program director joins a second-tier station and proceeds to turn everyone on the staff against their feeble-minded but well-meaning anchorman.
    • A Boulder-based trag-e-sit, in which an alien (I call him “Gork”) comes down from the planet “Bork” and ruins the life a young woman named “Cindy.” He completely misunderstands the way humans are supposed to behave and the consequences are, well, awful.

    Wish me luck!
    update: so-called “t. philter” writes: “I wish you’d been more specific about the awful consequences of Gork’s confusion.” Well, I don’t want to give away the store, but I will tell you that he puts his fingers in other people’s sodas. Also, he keeps trying to hump grandma.

  • Crow Daddy

    It’s long past time
    we end this charade.
    This intricate dance
    designed to mask
    your competence
    at faxing.
    As if it’s something to be
    ashamed of
    when we both know it’s a
    source of strength.
    We should celebrate it.
    Our dance should celebrate it.
    Instead we dance this
    shabby lie.

  • Those five sensations

    I can
    taste it.
    Well, almost.
    I can sort of taste the taste of it.
    The soft peg-like extensions. The way
    they protect me from poison
    help me sort out
    those five sensations.
    It tastes good.
    So far. That
    safe taste of a taste.
    We’ll see how much I like
    the real thing.