He acts like a man with a mistress

Cell phone calls in
public toilets.

Smelling funny.

Mysteries.

"What? What?"

But there's no mistress.
No jealous second life.

Just
nervous habits.

The Best Things in Life Are Free

Here's another one of them there standards, with keys and vocals and antique steamer howl and yes, perhaps, yes indeed: the sound of time itself. It's a confusing, some might say outrageous sentiment for this holiday week: The Best Things in Life Are Free, written by B.G. DeSylva, Lew Brown, and Ray Henderson back in 1927.

time: 2:08 seconds; specs: 1.9 MB
Press Play to play.

The Gravity's Rainbow Pause That Refreshes

We're right around 30 people strong and launch is next week. If you haven't yet purchased a copy of Gravity's Rainbow, and you intend to deathmarch, now's a great time to pick one up. One thing you don't want to do is show up for a Gravity's Rainbow Deathmarch without Gravity's Rainbow.

See you back here next week for the starting line....
-Cecil

Progress

In the future
all our children
will be born
with carpal tunnel.

Office Life

It’s not natural —
how still we sit

hands hooked
over keys,

fingers curled in
arthritic crunch,

Blinking at
black and white characters.

Blink tap.
Blink tap.

You take an ape.
You want it to sit that still, that long.

You basically have to kill it.

The Gravity's Rainbow Deathmarch Prizes Revealed!

You may be wondering: How will you, as an active participant in the GRDM, be rewarded for your considerable pain and suffering? It's a question as old as The Book of Job. And once again, as with Job, the answer involves Pat Benatar.

To incent group participation (in the form of weekly posting to the GRDM thread), we've developed devised a cunningly complex 3-tier program. Here's how it works:

GRDMer the Third Level (aka Poobah): Post all but four weeks and you'll receive a copy of Pat Benatar's 11th studio release: Gravity's Rainbow.

GRDMer the Second Level (aka Big Poobah): Post all but two weeks and you'll earn a copy of Richard Brautigan's underappreciated, and extremely easy to read The Tokyo-Montana Express. (Think of it as a cool down after GR.) As an added bonus, Big Poobahs will also *not* receive a copy of Pat Benatar's 11th studio release: Gravity's Rainbow.

GRDMer the First Level (aka Grand Poobah): Post to the GRDM thread each and every week, starting on Jan 11, and you'll be rewarded with a copy of the Tokyo-Montana Express. plus -- and here's where it gets exciting -- a genuine Monkey Vortex brand "I survived the Gravity's Rainbow Deathmarch" mug. GP's will also not receive a copy of Pat Benatar's Gravity's Rainbow. Unless they really want to. In which case, oh, sure, what the hell.

Quasi-legaleso: Needless to say, prizes will be limited to folks what finish the book in the course of the Deathmarch. All books and CDs will probably be secondhand, though serviceable. And I'll set an arbitrary max of 30 winners. Because, much as in real life, there can only be 30 winners. (On the off-chance we break 30, I'll pull names from a beret or somesuch. At this point, we have around 28 people signed on, so...) Also, what is a qualifying post? Glad you asked. A qualifying post can be as simple as: "still here, still suffering" or: "owie" or even just: "ow." Really, any old post will do. The goal is just to keep us all engaged and pushing each other along.

That's it. I hope you're enjoying the holidays. Now's a great time to watch a lot of TV. Go outside. Look at some puppies. For soon your eyes will be filled with rainbow.
-Cecil

And the monkey and the good friend and the wine tasting of it all

More Monkey Vortex madness. From the folks what brought you Clowney, it's: The Good Friend, written by eb, with keys and voice by, er, well...me. Enjoy! -CV

x-post: and the lumpy and the wampum and the monkey of it all

Since last I hyped, two new episodes of Monkey Vortex have gone live. Now ready for your listening pleasure: Eerie Wampum, a colloborative poem/guitararchestra experience, brought to you by Rodney K. and Yaniv Soha. Plus, the third episode of Lucky Liver Lumps Minute Murder Mysteries, written and produced by Tony Jonick. Enjoy! -CV

9:05 a.m.

There's a campfire
in Carol's coffee cup.

Smoke signals.
S.O.S.

"Get me.
Out of.

Here."

Bean Thread Noodles

Here's an all-new micro-tune featuring the legendary Jake Vortex on tenor sax. We call this one Bean Thread Noodles, because much like traditional bean thread noodles, it's made from ground mung beans. Oh yeah!

Seriously though, I have no idea what that means. Mung beans? That can't be right can it? Is that a typo? If you have any better explanation, please don't be shy. We're at least as confused about this whole bean thread noodle thing as you are.

time: 22 seconds; specs: 300K
Press Play to play.

The Gravity's Rainbow Deathmarch Gameplan

27 people have now signed up for the Deathmarch. And I think it's safe to say that this little idea has now morphed from an amusing notion into a full-fledged movement -- a movement that may well change the way people think about reading books and talking about them on blogs forever.

Here's the rough plan: Tuesday will be GRDM day here on cecilvortex.com. For the next couple of weeks, that will mean short updates as folks holidize, stretch their legs, wash their socks, that sort of thing. But starting on the morning of Jan. 4, we'll have a post indicating how far we aim to travel on the first week. Each week's journey will be roughly 50 pages. Since editions may vary and numbers can't be trusted, the marker will be "read up to X" rather than "read to page Y."

Starting on the 11th I'll post short entries here every Tuesday morning that will be meant as open threads -- a spot to drop comments. I'm encouraging everyone to chime in, if only with "oh my lord, this is awful, what have I done?" More than anything, this is a GR support group.

Although a paragraph or three of pithy analysis will always be welcome, I'm going to discourage folks from giving in to old habits and churning out a 6-page paper each week. (If 27 people wrote 6 pages each week of the GRDM we'd end up with 2,430 pages of critical analysis. And that, I'm pretty sure, would make my head blow up.)

Prizes? Oh yes, there will be prizes. More on that next week....

It's not to late to sign yourself (or several loved ones) up for the march. All are welcome. Just add a comment to this link, or drop me an email.

Merry Tuesday and watch the skies, -Cecil

Strategy

She liked to
look the
other way

when she opened
bathroom doors

because

you never know.

Soul

Soul is not space,
not molecules.

You can fit all the world's souls
in the crack
of your ass.

However,

just because you can
doesn't mean you should.

Long gone

Today my son
is the Black Fox

in a one-kid revival
of the '50s classic, The Court Jester
as he stands around the kitchen shouting:

"Hawkins, get out of my clothes."
"Hawkins, get out of my clothes!"

He wants to play with Danny Kaye
but Danny Kaye is long gone.

The Gravity's Rainbow Deathmarch

So I was talking to one of my brothers last night, and we agreed that this Pynchon book has bedeviled us long enough. Me, I've started Gravity's Rainbow at least 3 times. And let's just say I'm very familiar with the first 30 pages. OK, sentences. OK, consonants. Hell, I've never even finished The Crying of Lot 49 and that's a damn pamphlet.

So we made a pact. We made a death pact. You know, minus the death. 50 pages a week, starting the first week in January. No stopping till we reach the other side. Then we thought: hey! There must be other folks out there who've been similarly confounded. Let's see if we can gather together a tribe of like-minded long-suffers and tackle this beast en masse. Thus was born The Gravity's Rainbow Deathmarch.

We'd like to use this site as a forum, post an open thread once a week for shared thoughts, comfort. Mebbe I'll even spring for some exciting incredibly cheap end-of-journey prizes for them what make it all the way through, and manage to check in each week, all depending on how many people are interested.

So that's the shpiel. All are welcome -- friends, foes, strangers, passersby. If you're reading this, and if you're interested in joining, drop a comment here, or send me an email. We'll work out the details in the next couple of weeks.

I hear the clamor of boots, the clatter of coffee cups, the straightening of glasses. Today we order paperbacks and shuffle through dusty shelves for old unread college copies. For tomorrow we ride!

-Cecil
update: if you're buying a copy, I'm told one handsome option is this swank Penguin edition. That's the one I'll be picking up, fwiw.