Do me a favor

Go out into the world today.
Go out and find the knowledge.
Bring it home.

The Gravity's Rainbow Deathmarch, Week 12

It's Week 12 and I can literally feel the back of the book in my hands when I'm reading. That's how close to the end we are. By my admittedly rough and unreliable calculations, just 4 weeks remain. Der Jinkeys!

Enough of us marchers have fallen a little bit behind that I think this would be a good time for a demi-catch-up week. Instead of tackling the usual 50, let's target around 36 pages, which will take us all the way to the end of the Zone and the start of Part 4.

Next week: See you at page 616 (p/v), which rumor has it "is done on paper...."

Project "Fun-Time Challenge Project" Presents: Straight Up: Cauliflower

About a week and a half ago I posted a short piano number and asked folks to mess around with it. Here's a brief recap of the excellent and harmonically vivid versions we've gotten back so far:

• Cauliflower Melon (the original piano piece)
• Cauliflowermelonslide (Bob Myren's remix with slide guitar)
• Melancholy Flower (eb's version with vocals)
• Tower of Cauliflower Power (Yaniv Soha's remix with beats and bass)

Today we post our first third-generation remix, in which Panamanian strongman Jake Vortex weighs in with Straight Up: Cauliflower, which starts with eb's vocal mix and then lays down a smokin' sax intro and outro. Dig.

If you're taking the challenge, feel free to start with any of these versions, then email whatcha got to: vortex@mediajunkie.com.

Thanks for listening, a tip of the reed to Jake for this latest rev, and please, watch the skies, -CV

Jake Vortex's Remix - Straight Up: Cauliflower
time: 1:12; specs: 1.1MB
Press Play to play.

Sleeping in

Lying in bed
scooping a little more sleep

into my bowl, like soup
until the soup goes cold

and starts to overflow
onto the table.

There's the metal
of the ladel and it clinks

as a thin carrot wedge
rotates past

following the current
toward the table edge.

Project "Fun-Time Challenge Project" Presents: Tower of Cauliflower

To briefly recap, a week ago I posted a short piano piece and asked folks to mess around with it. Bob and eb tossed down swank slide and vocal interps respectively. Now the Dread Pirate Yaniv Soha joins the fray.

For handy compare and contrast, here's the original piano piece, Bob's slide, and eb's piano/vocal spectacular.

Yaniv's take gets funky with it, adding beats and bass and slicing things around. The result is a subtle hypnogroove guaranteed to help you stop smoking.

Hope you're enjoying the sequence. I'm really enjoying how different these three versions have ended up. There's still time to join the adventure and live the dream. And really, Yaniv's version is just begging for some latter-day Biz Markie to mix in a little poetry.

On that note...if you're taking the challenge, feel free to start with any of these versions, then email whatcha got to: vortex@mediajunkie.com.

Thanks. And watch the skies, -CV

Yaniv Soha's Remix: Tower of Cauliflower
time: 57 seconds; specs: 900K
Press Play to play.

(For more Yaniv Soha-infused musical experiences, be sure to drop by Yaniv Soha Central.)

Project "Fun-Time Challenge Project" Presents: Melancholy Flower

Last week I posted a wee chordy piano piece and asked folks to mess around with it and send me the results. First in was a sweet slice o' slide from Bob Myren. If yer just joining the fun, here's the original piano piece -- Cauliflower Melon -- and here's Bob's remix -- Cauliflowermelonslide.

Today we've got eb's take, with words, melody, and fairly spectacular vocals. You really have to hear this. She took my lil' piano piece and made art.

I'm just enjoying the hell out of this whole thing so far. Hope you're enjoying it too. Speaking of which, if you're out there and planning on taking the challenge, feel free to funk around with any of these three, then send the results to vortex@mediajunkie.com) and posted shall they be.

Thanks!

eb's Remix: Melancholy Flower
time: 47 seconds; specs: 700K
Press Play to play.

What is wrong with me?

That place in my heart
where I should want a tattoo --

that place where my tattoo desire
is supposed to brood --

it's a dead place.

No. Worse.
I don't even have that place.

The Gravity's Rainbow Deathmarch, Week 11

Week 11. I mean, are you kidding me? Seriously. 11? This is ridiculous!

I my own self have fallen back behind. Caught a wee spot of the old TB this last week. But I'm bouncin' back (coughhack!) bouncin' back I tell ya!

On to next week: Let's make camp at page 580 (p/v) where "Jamf was doing it in the least obvious there was."

Project "Fun-Time Challenge Project" Presents: Cauliflowermelonslide

Yesterday I exhorted folks to take this wee chordy piano piece I'd recorded (aka Cauliflower Melon) and mess around with it -- add guitar, verb, drums, guitar, slice it up, and what have you.

Lo and behold, this morning -- the very next damn day! -- my old and excellent pal Bob Myren came through with the first remix. It's a slice of slide guitar that, quite frankly, I ultra-dig. It's amazing to me the difference in mood and atmosphere that slide guitar can make. All I'm saying is, when I die, I hope I come back as a sustained note played on a slide guitar. That's all I'm saying.

If you're taking the challenge, please feel free to screw around with this one, with the original, or with both. Then send whatcha got to vortex@mediajunkie.com). I'll keep posting them as they arrive.

Thanks! And enjoy...

Bob's Remix: Cauliflowermelonslide
time: 48 seconds; specs: 1.1 MB
Press Play to play.

x-post: Reactionary Dander

All this prurient Pynchon appears to have nudged me into a reactionary dander. Read the results ("The Mainstreaming of Vice") over on the mighty, the mighty, the mighty Edgewise. Unless you're intimidated by my clear-thinking, straight-shooting, uninhibited sense of moral superiority. In which case, you know. It's cool.

Cauliflower Melon: A Collaborative Fun-Time Challenge Project!

Tune-making and MVRT have both been considerably waylaid of late by hard disk problems and assorted other distractions. But last night I got Pro Tools working (yay!) and recorded this wee, chordy piano piece.

And with this piece comes the following open invitation to a collaborative fun-time challenge project: if you like to screw around with sound, please -- screw around with this sound!

Then send me the results and pretty much anything non-obscene, I'll post here. Add guitar, voice, drums. More piano. Verb it up. Slice it up. Whatever. And then send to Vortex (that is: vortex@mediajunkie.com).

Thanks! And enjoy...

time: 51 seconds; specs: 800K
Press Play to play.

Morning Sounds

Twee birds, rumbling boat horns,
rough timber movement

rolled up for the night
into a living room carpet spiral
with socks and cat toys,
spoons, string, lost chopsticks.

Leaned sideways through the timeline,
bending toward a corner wall.

And then shook out at new light.
Dropping like 6 am jacks
onto the hardwood floor.

The Gravity's Rainbow Deathmarch, Week 10

10 weeks -- 10! And now we're roughly two-thirds of the way through. What's left? Just a pamphlet really. A hop, a skip, and an analepsis.

Last week was challenging for different folks in different ways. Some of us battled with the lengthy Pokler section, which I loved, perhaps because I read most of it on a flight back from Vegas, the way it was meant to be read.

Me, I was displeased with the Bianca/Slothrop section, which left at least some others unphased.

What will this week bring? More Zone? Oh yes. Count on it.

Next week: Page 532 (v/p) aka 620 in (b), and all those "good-bys in his pockets warming his empty hands...."

Pears

Jane won't eat pears. No matter the context.

Stranded on Pear Planet.
Attacked by toothy pears.
Armed with only a pear fork.
Peckish.

Oh, she'll kill 'em. Oh sure.
She can be savage.

But she won't eat the flesh or drink the juice.
And she doesn't want to talk about it.

The Gravity's Rainbow Deathmarch, Week 9

Week 9 and and we're hard-charging through the Zone... Despite the relative quiet on the blog this last week, I count around 14-15 people out on the trail. Not bad at all....

Speaking of quiet, we're suddenly down to only around five or six folks qualified for Grand Poobah mug status. And here I am, still flush with the irresistible urge to fling GRDM mugs across the country when this is all over. And so I've arbitrarily decided to modify the rules of this experiment thusly: Both Grand Poobahs and Big Poobahs will qualify for mugness. In other words, it's a a thin slice of general amnesty -- them what may have missed commenting a week or two, there's still a way for us to get you into that mug. (So what's the difference now, you may ask, between Grand and Big Poobah status? Well, for one, Grand Poobahs will find it surprisingly easy to get restaurant reservations at hot spots all around town.)

I'm trailing our target by around 20 or 30 pages -- got to page 404 (v) last night. Still swooning from the opening Rocket Man/Potsdam sequences. And now remaining pages are starting to get thinner than pages read. And I'm starting to think about how I'll miss you, you old sonuvabitch.

Next week: Meetcha at page 482 (v), you know -- over by the "glowing black mudslide of nausea..." -CV

The Gravity's Rainbow Deathmarch, Week 8

Hey all,
Well congrats! This week we hit the halfway mark! All that, and we still have something like 13-15 people on the march, on and off the blog, which is pretty impressive. Like a 40% survival rate to-date. And I'd have to guess that most of the folks who made it this far will see the inside back of the cover.

From this point on, let's revert to the Unified Thread approach. And let the donuts fall where they may. So long as they don't fall into my Georgian fruit soup. You see? You see how I did that?! An obscure reference! The power! The power! And again: "No one here seems quite right in the head." It's so true....

Next week: Let's make camp at page 433 (v), where we'll find "...a blanket, or a night indoors, or a ride home...." -CV