My Blog

Blog

  • Zombie adventures, please

    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.

  • An Interview with Ze Frank

    Welcome!: This interview is part of an ongoing series of chats with artists about their creative process. You can find the full set of interviews, including musicians Van Dyke Parks and Jonathan Coulton, and SF Chron columnist Jon Carroll, all at www.about-creativity.com. You can also subscribe to future interviews here. Thanks a lot for dropping by, -Cecil
    an interview about the creative process with designer, humorist, and teacher ze frank
    Photo credit: Scott Beale / laughingsquid.com.
    In 2001, Ze Frank achieved net notoriety when a birthday party invitation entitled “How to Dance Properly” became an early viral video. This spark led to zefrank.com, home of a host of projects, including interactive flash toys, animations, essays, videos, and a wide variety of collaborative ventures. Over fifty million people have visited zefrank.com to date. From March 17, 2006 to March 17, 2007, he wrote, produced, and starred in The Show with zefrank, a wildly creative online daily video program.
    Frank’s an adjunct professor at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, Parsons School of Design, and SUNY Purchase. As a speaker at events like the TED conference, PopTech, and Flash Forward, he covers topics ranging from the new creativity to contagious media to airplane-cabin safety cards.
    We spoke in February 2007 as his year-long run on The Show neared its conclusion.
    Ze Frank on the Web: zefrank.com, The Show with zefrank
    Cecil Vortex: Are there any techniques that you use in your creative process that help you generate new ideas?
    Ze Frank: Self-awareness is one of the big keys. If you read a lot of the psychology literature on creativity, one of the only real, solid correlations with being able to shift your creative output is the belief that you can change it. So for me — I think I picked this up in a Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi book — I’ve spent a long time just trying to figure out the kind of cycles that I go through, trying to pay attention to the different kinds of states that I find myself in.
    There are times when I feel like I’m craving what I call unsolvable problems, and I have the kind of energy you need to move forward into uncharted territory and brave that side of things. And then there are other times when that seems like the most difficult chore in the world. So I’ve also gotten pretty comfortable knowing when I need to pick up solvable problems. Programming definitely fills that void for me. Also illustrating, doing little illustrations, things like that. This is a long-winded way of saying that I think I’ve got a range of techniques that feed into how I’m feeling at that particular moment.
    CV: Do you have any day-to-day habits you rely on?

    (more…)

  • Prelude

    The coffeeshop is fluttering today.
    Six or seven denim-coated guy-legs
    shock the tiled floor.
    Silent soft bouncing.
    They shake the air. Crinkle your vision.
    There’s a lot of energy under these tables.

  • The Against the Day Deathmarch, Week 9

    Well, my head is spinning. I woke up this morning 100 pages shy of the target. That’s no good. And I can’t say I caught all the way up either. But here we are, 11:30 PST, and I’m on page 396, so that’s something. About 30-40 pages short. But back in the game, I tell ya.
    And I was having good fun too, right up until page 394, when I ran into this: “You are a good man, but kind of disgusting, with all that hair growing out of your face, and you always smell like coffee.”
    What the hell is that? I mean, how can I not take that personally? He might as well have added “and your name is Cecil Vortex.” It was all I could do to not light the book on fire. But I resisted because I’m strong like that.
    In cheerier news, happy to see the Chums are right around the corner (in the rear view mirror for those of you on track). I think you probably know by now how much I enjoy the Chums. Should make for good reading tomorrow morning over…coffee. Damn you Pynchon!
    Happy also to see new ‘marchers on the trail. Welcome! And delighted to see that Steve Evans has baked up another batch of piping hot madeleines.
    Tuesday 4/3: I’m hoping to meetcha at the bottom of page 488 where, ominously enough, nobody’s talking “to anybody for a while unless they [have] to.”
    (which is to say…. please use this thread to comment on anything up to page 488. Aim to finish reading that part of the book and to comment on it here by end o’ day next Monday)
    Pugnax!
    -Cecil

  • Legends from My Childhood, #4

    “They used to call me ‘Gentile Joe’” he said.
    ‘Cuz my name is ‘Joe Gentle.’ I loved the Jews. Oh sure.
    I loved the Jews and the Jews loved me.”
    Pulling out tinted photos of foxy showgirls from the ’30s.
    “The ladies, the ladies. Oh sure.”
    Stacked instruments
    music stands and guitar picks
    dirty music sheets for sale
    dog at his feet and
    three 17 year-olds he was
    charming us now.
    We loitered and listened to old stories
    put across with a lewd twinkle just right.
    “Here, have a patch cord,” he said when we moved to leave.
    “Have a drum stick.” I still have that drum stick.
    ****
    Legend Number 4
    Legends from My Childhood, #4, card art by eb.

  • The Wilmot’s Mic-Less Open Mic III Huzzzah

    Thanks to everyone who came out — we had a great crowd, with 50+ folks packing the house and 21 readers. Great words. Great food. Great Blacksmith Cellars grape. And swell hosting by Tim and Mary from Wilmot’s Books. Thanks to all and hope to see ya in June at the next event……
    -Cecil

  • Wilmot’s Open Mic, tomorrow at 7

    Hi all,
    Just a quick reminder for Bay Area folks that tomorrow night is the big open mic, aka Wilmot’s Mic-less Open Mic III, featuring original work by local writers. Fabulous wine provided by our excellent and award-winning friends over at Blacksmith Cellars.
    Wilmots%20Open%20Mic%20Dec%202006.jpg
    Wilmot’s Mic-Less Open Mic II, December 2006
    Hope to see you there tomorow. You can find all the details (plus a picture of infamous world-eater Galactus with his snugglies) right here.

  • Espresso Poems

    I write espresso poems now
    the way I used to write about cigarettes.
    My old fumbled word love to white ash
    the hard-dented tan filter.
    The clouds! Oh those sainted particles!
    The courage of my glass ashtray!
    All swapped for
    a slight-stained saucer
    a cup
    a cat-like crema.
    How long till they turn you against me?
    What will I smoke when you’re gone?

  • Styrofoam

    It’s been about three months since I posted a new song to the ole Virtual LP — the last number being Welcome to Your (Doom of Clowns).
    Happily, I found a little time this past weekend to record a tune I’d written a year or three back. The song’s called Styrofoam and it features lead vocals by the notorious Xian who did, I think, a rockin’ job.
    Thanks for listening and hope ya enjoy the results.
    -Cecil
    time: 2:09 seconds; specs: 2 mb (yes, incredibly — another 2+ minute long song!)
    Press Play to play.

  • The Against the Day Deathmarch, Week 8

    Almost 2 months in (!) and on the one hand, bodies are droppin’. On the other hand, we have something like 17 or 18 folks still with us, which is certainly a record for this deep into the journey.
    I think RaptorMage is right when he says its the nature of these DMs to feel impossible. We’re looking for books that aren’t page turners and then we’re reading those books slow. It’s a challenge for sure. The one book in the series that really flipped itself for me was Pale Fire, and that one almost felt like we were cheating.
    I remember in Book I of Don Quixote feeling like it was just going on and on and slipping away from me. But Book II picked up and good Lord the ending of DQ was beautiful and worth the trip.
    With Gravity’s Rainbow, there were points when I was downright angry with Pynchon. And the last 20 pages still sounds like dogs barking to my brain. But there are so many parts of that GR that I’m glad I experienced. With AtD, I’m still enjoying the individidual segments. I’m still not pulled to pick the book up from the shelf. I’m still, unfortunately, about 40 pages behind. (Ack!) But I’m still hanging in there, watching as old pals (Merle, Dally, Kit, Vibe) come back into play, as a few characters start to become borderline real. Maybe at the end it’ll add up to less than the sum of its parts. Maybe it’ll rise to some shockingly coherent crescendo. I’m game to find out.
    Doubt ye not the Week-8-summarizing skills of so-called “Steve Evans,” whose madelienes await ye here.
    Tuesday 3/27: Let’s hop, and/or skip, and/or jump on over to page 428, where someone with a silly name is leaving “the Mysteries of Time” to others.
    (in other words: please use this thread to comment on anything up to page 428. Try to finish reading that part of the book and to comment on it here by end o’ day next Monday)
    (I miss) Pugnax!
    -Cecil