Rick Keir

officialgaiman @ 6:54am: Last post for a bit

http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2008/07/last-post-for-bit.html

I'm at Clarion. Which is in San Diego, about ten miles from where Comic-con will be. I don't have any plans to be at Comic-con, my plate is pretty full here. I also won't be blogging -- I want to give teaching my full attention. I haven't done this before.

But Charles Brownstein from the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund asked me to get the word out on a couple of things:

1) Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab have done a limited edition of their amazing "Snow, Glass, Apples" scent. It smells like green apples and like sex and vampires, all at the same time. It's coming out with a limited edition illustrated chapbook of the story, with art by Julie Dillon. There are going to be a few signed ones, and some unsigned. The donation for the unsigned ones will be $50. As they say:

The long-awaited Snow, Glass, Apples perfume will be making its debut at San Diego Comic Con! The SGA package includes Neil Gaiman’s short story in chapbook format, beautifully illustrated by Julie Dillon, and a 5ml bottle of perfume inspired by the tale. This set is a limited run of 1000. 250 will be sold by CBLDF at Comic Con 2008, and the remainder will go on sale July 30, 2008 on the Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab web site and will be available as long as supplies last. All proceeds from this project go to the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund!

(I just want to say that Beth at Black Phoenix has proved herself an amazingly staunch supporter of the CBLDF, and has been a complete joy to deal with in all this.)

2) You remember I signed a hundred tee shirts for the fund? (I signed them in thick fabric paint.) They will have some of them for sale at San Diego. Probably $50 each, with a few of the rarer tee shirts going for more.

3) and then there's the auction on Saturday night. As Charles said in his letter,

In our Saturday night auction, we have a number of tremendous items. The coolest is Ryan Graff's Endless Reflections, offered here to commemorate Sandman's 20th. Serious bidders should come by the CBLDF booth (1831) to learn more about this book, which is probably the rarest of all Sandman items. We also have some other cool items including:

1) Dave Sim, Neil Gaiman, "Lithograph 1: Neil Gaiman," signed by Sim, collage retouch by Gaiman (prints/original art)
2) Neil Gaiman, The Dangerous Alphabet #260/400 (prints)
3) Neil Gaiman, Murder Mysteries HC, #122/250 (book arts)
4) Neil Gaiman, The Sky At Night broadsheet #1/5 (prints)
5) Neil Gaiman, Stardust Movie Premiere ticket, signed (ephemera)
6) Cerebus #147, featuring Neil Gaiman's 24 Hour Comic, signed with sketch by Sim (comics)
The full list is terrific, and has some other great pieces, including work by Jack Kirby, Jeff Smith, Matt Wagner, and many more. Full list is here: http://www.cbldf.org/pr/archives/000365.shtml

The auction is Saturday at 7:00 in Room 2 of the convention center

The Lithograph #1, is the third of these, and the second to go on sale. (The second one we did was lost by the post office between my house and the CBLDF, and despite being insured for $1000, the Post Office declined to pay. Sigh.

Anyway, I took Dave's original multiple portrait of me, and then painted it, attacked it with a knife, and collaged strange machines onto it. It's one of a kind...

Hi Neil!

I greatly enjoyed the story and photos of all the signed black t-shirts, and of your first black t-shirt. But something's been bothering me ever since, and I only just managed to put it into words.

My brain can't quite cope with the thought of you having a *first* black t-shirt, in much the same it struggles to cope with the Big Bang. What came before?

Mili

Grey. But it didn't work, because, I discovered, there are brown greys and blue greys and greenish greys and they don't really match, and if you want to dress in grey you have to work at it. Black is so much easier...

Who do I have to approach to get you for a UK bookshop event? How small a shop are you willing to do?

You talk to the publisher. In the case of The Graveyard Book, you'd talk to Bloomsbury. And I go where I'm sent, but try and do shops that are big enough that the people who've come for a reading or a signing fit inside the shop and don't have to stand outside in the rain.

intelligentrix @ 9:47pm: Book Log
83: I Know This Much is True by Wally Lamb.

This is an Oprah Book Club selection, which almost kept me from reading it. Because I'm anti-trendy like that. But beaten_grace lent it to me and I needed something to read at the video store yesterday. So. What to say. It's a big book, with a lot going on. There's family history, immigrant history, issues of child abuse, mental illness, twins, male-pattern anger, etc. As I said, a lot going on. I find it interesting to read a book that has a protagonist depicted in a brutally honest way--a flawed and damaged and damaging person--but depicted so well that you find yourself empathizing with him even as you are telling yourself that he's not a nice person and why are you feeling for him? But as the book goes along, a lot of the obstacles in the character's life get worked on, and it's a satisfying process in the end. There are parts that are quite unpleasant, but I think it's worth making it through to the end.

cynthia1960 @ 1:44pm: Mamma Mia! squee
Went to see it last night with whumpdotcom and my best friend Bob WINOLJ; I got my fangrrl's daily allowance of arm candy and cheesy fun. Meryl Streep really can sing; however the still droolworthy Pierce Brosnan unfortunately falls short when it comes to tunefulness. Happily, The Divine Mister Firth also can sing and provides a required dose of Dripping Wet Colin Hotness. I never really heard of the Swedish actor who played Bill, but he was also easy on the eyes. There was also large quantities of very cute twenty-somethings and lovely scenery in the Greek Isles. We had a chorus of Abba fen behind us singing, but they didn't jump up and dance at the end like I remember the audience doing when I saw it on the stage.

redbird @ 2:01pm: Bills. Feh.
The stack of bills for this week includes two related to the gall bladder surgery. One is for $8000.00 from the surgeon, with a note saying "if you have insurance we will help you file" and a space on the back for giving them my insurance information. They should already have it, but I have filled it in again and sent the paper back, trying not to fret. The other is for $322.00 for something to do with the ER, and labeled "previous balance". I thought I remembered writing a check for that already. A quick look online showed that they cashed the check on July 3. This bill is dated July 10. That one is going back with a polite note saying that it was paid with check thus-and-such, from account whosis, cashed July 3, and not adding "so stop wasting my time and stamps."

elisem @ 12:01pm: coming home and catching up, and an apology, and a note about Worldcon
Yep, I've been on a mostly-stealth visit to NYC lately, spending a lot of time in Manhattan and in Fair Brooklyn, as the Sondheim tune has it.  I apologize to anybody who feels shorted, but I really did need to buy some beads and then hole up and get a bunch of work done here.  I've been at least partly successful in that, although the bead wholesalers I most wanted to see seem to have closed up shop, leaving a wan promise of possible reincarnation after some construction is finished. (But the shop looks pretty bleak and torn-apart, and there's been no activity in over a week, so I do not hold out much hope just now.)

When I get home on Monday, I will sift through everything and clear up the outstanding orders, of which there are a good handful. We did indeed lose a lot of email during the time the server fell over and the domain was not working right, so I've got a bunch to clean up, with the help of my trusty assistant, who has been doing his best while I've been at my remote hideout here.

Also, we can ship the rest of the chapbooks when I get home. Yay!

I'm very sorry for the delays due to (or exacerbated by) the email problems and my management thereof.  Thank you for putting up with me, and I hope to have all your shinies to you very soon.

In other news, I'll be putting up a preparing-for-Worldcon post very soon.  I hope to see a lot of you there, and I'm hoping it's big fun.  I'm also hoping to arrange some table-sitting and Lioness-checking-on with a bunch of you, because Katie will not be accompanying me this time.  (Work, time, money.  She has this Real Job, and all that, you know.) So you'll see a Team Lioness post soon.  For now, though, it's hella hot in Brooklyn, and I am going to go drink more fruit juice and then make something shiny.  Talk to you all soon!

troublebrewing @ 8:35am: Kitten!
So last night we drove to Portage (!) to pick out a kitten from a litter which originally numbered 6, but was down to 5 when we met them. He is adorable (natch), 9 1/2 weeks old, and seemingly fearless, colored a blondish orange, with striped tail and some stripes on his body and paws.

I am soliciting good name suggestions as we are at an impasse. We like 2 syllables, preferably ending in a vowel. Some of us favored Mango, but that may have been shot down because it is the name of a cat in a book. Other names batted around include Curry, Nacho, Mica, Cheez-It and Rusty. But no name wins overwhelmingly. Anyone have any ideas?

vampry @ 9:15am: New egg
Yeah, yeah, I know.

I'm so busy with Dragoncon schedule stuff that I don't know what to do...so in my off time I spam places with dragon eggs.

( wasn't going to take another one )

aka_vista, posting in abandonedplaces @ 2:43pm: Unfinished hospital


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heresluck @ 11:12pm: happy birthday to renenet!
Yeah, I called you and we had one of our rambling pointless conversations in which you talk about SGA and I mock you, because seriously, how would you know it's your life if we didn't do shit like that? And now I'm posting to LJ anyway, because I want my birthday salutations on record.

I almost got you a leash for your snorkelator mask, and then I almost got you a bunch of cleaning supplies and an air mattress, and then I almost got you a blowtorch, because seriously it sounds like a controlled prairie burn might be the best way to get your apartment under control, not that I would know, thank god, because we've been meeting at my house or on neutral con territory for the past couple of years and I think that's just as well — your apartment might depress me without the futon that we made each other crazy attempting to assemble (incompatible spatial perception modes FTW!) and that I later turned into a giant green calzone. (I've found that it's never safe to be nostalgic about something until one can be absolutely certain there's no chance of it ever coming back.)

I can't get you media, because you'd probably already have it. (And even if you didn't you'd put it down and never find it again or else forget to watch it.) I can't write you porn, because hi, have you met me? (Plus I don't know anything about John and Rodney fucking except that apparently they do it all the time.) I can't get you time off from your job to go to cons or even just take a week off to read fic and eat whatever bizarre food-like object you're into these days. (I'm relieved that that thing with the cottage cheese seems to be over, though, because ew.) And that pretty much exhausted my non-hateful gift ideas.

And then I thought about how you went and got the snorkelator so I could get some sleep when we're at VividCon, and how you open your house to people who might need it because that's the kind of person you are (even if they really shouldn't take you up on it unless they bring a life raft), and how yelling at each other about futon assembly generally ends with hysterical laughter and possibly with MST3King Anaconda, although that might possibly have been a different visit, and how you let me turn your futon into a giant green calzone so I could catch an early flight to go get interviewed for the job that turned out to be my dream job and led me to my little life on the prairie, and how we talk on the phone all the fucking time so that you can tell me about libraries and hockey and why your boys are made for each other (and sometimes the latter two at the same time) and I can tell you about students and vegetables and cats, and how sometimes you visit and sometimes I even remember to get the case of Diet Coke and then we go eat hashbrowns, and how you still get excited about Your Vids That I Made For You That Are Yours and will watch them many times in a row, which makes me happy even or maybe especially when I am rolling my eyes at you.

So I have no present for you except this reminder that I love you. And someday we will manage another TV-marathoning visit, or at least watch "Triangle" and then sit around saying "Can it be babies?" and cracking ourselves up with our total dorkitude, because you are my favorite person in all the world to be dorktastic with, which is pretty much the logical corollary of being my favorite, period.

Happy day after your birthday! Happy weekend!

::throws confetti::

tandw @ 9:41pm: It's Too Late for Me! Save Yourselves!
Daughter J has her driver's license.

Be afraid.

(She got it Wednesday afternoon, has driven to and from school yesterday & today, and took her boyfriend out to a movie this afternoon. Oy.)

billzilla @ 8:12pm: Birthday Greetings!
Happy birthday to frostfox!
Many happy returns. Hope you were able to enjoy it.

B.

lcohen @ 4:18pm: is this a good thing or a bad thing
[moderate]

i just caught something i had forgotten to do at what is basically the eleventh hour, here. which is good, right? i mean, i caught it. but it makes me wonder: what am i forgetting that i won't remember until hour number thirteen.....

melancharisbron @ 8:55pm: More Photos

http://melancharisbron.insanejournal.com/23771.html

Oh dear, I'm really in danger of becoming a spammy nuisance, aren't I?

But I've rediscovered my photo-hosting and, well, yeah, a bit of a backlog of pictures I'd love to share. It's not quite up to yonmei's "artistic challenge, but it's some kind of visual connection...

(For someone who sneered at the concept, lo all these many years ago, of putting phones on those new-fangled mobile phones, I sure do take a lot of pictures... and I'm pretty floored by the quality of the snaps my current phone can take - I don't actually post the full sized file, I only post a smaller version.)



I cropped this one after retrieving it off my phone: it didn't quite turn out as I intended when I took the shot, but I think if I delayed anymore, trying to move myself into place, I would have lost the wonderful light off of the top of the convention center as the storm was rolling in. I'm a sucker for those weather moments, where the boiling black cloud contrasts with the some item that the sunshine has managed to spotlight in the field of vision. The building is in Antwerp, the Bolivaarplein.



In the middle of the spring, I had made a quick dash through one of the buildings I attend classes in. (Experienced attender of classes, hitting the restrooms for a final bottoming out of the bladder before getting stuck in a class.) But I passed a door that wasn't usually open... and this was what I found. I stood, gape-jawed, for about 15 seconds before I remembered that I actually had a camera with me - in the (then very! new) phone.

replyhazy @ 12:52pm: Motivational poster
Does the world need an easy way to make motivational posters? Probably about as much as it needs an easy way to caption lolcats...

torturedmute, posting in abandonedplaces @ 11:15am: St. James Christ Church; Toronto, ON.

cynthia1960 @ 9:25am: Birthday wishes head across a continent and the pond
for frostfox!

mordolff, posting in abandonedplaces @ 7:10pm: Antonio Joli — Italian painter of veduta.

zeaner, posting in abandonedplaces @ 3:42pm: novorossiysk abandoned tower


( Картинка 365.88 КБ )

deviant_man, posting in abandonedplaces @ 2:30pm: Military department



Moscow, 2008.

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melancharisbron @ 9:13am: Unicorn Chasers

http://melancharisbron.insanejournal.com/23256.html

I've been talking about the beadery - here's some images (scaled to hopefully not break anyone's page):

These are the necklace/earring sets I finished yesterday. The last one started to feel like real work, so I'm guessing that the beadery urge has been sated.



These next items are a progression, of sorts: to the upper right is my first one, which is now hanging off of my own mobile phone. The one beneath that was the first experiment with the color scheme - the original instructions were all for one color bead, with the little ones in between as color accents. I found that was a bit too much of a color monotony, so... first just the "tips" of the star rays in a different color, plus working with the notion that there were beads on the interior that were very difficult to see; so, I was free to use beads of little consequence. Why tuck away a pretty sparkly like a Swarovski crystal? Anyway, the final one, in the upper right, I've called "Heart of Fire" because the interior beads are now a bright red ("light Siam" on the color chart), and the beads to the front chosen for their semi-transparent quality.

I made that last one and gave it to a local friend, M, who cares for our cats when we are away, and from whom I also received, just recently, her old hakama, a very nice if somewhat agéd White Tiger hakama. It needed a wash to get the dust out, and a date with an iron afterward, while still wet, to begin the process of re-setting the pleats. It looks nearly new, if you don't look around the edges where the fabric takes a little more punishment. I was very pleased, and also, then, happy to be able to create a small token of gratitude for M.



So, let's see if this picture thing works now - it's been over a year since I last visited the photo-hosting site!

homopragmaticus, posting in abandonedplaces @ 9:25am: Abandoned hospital (Moscow)



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xkcd_rss @ 4:00am: Impostor

http://xkcd.com/451/

officialgaiman @ 7:10pm: public service announcements

http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2008/07/public-service-announcements.html

Dave McKean, for too many years now a man without a website, wants me to tell you that things are finally stirring at the unusually-named http://davemckean.com/ (and that Allen Spiegel will be selling original art from The Graveyard Book at Comic-Con.)

Ah, the city with the most observant Jews (New York) gets you on Rosh Hashana. Alas.

Maybe next time. These events you just listed, including the Sep 30 event, aren't the official Graveyard Book Tour, right? Ordinarily I'd assume the Book Tour wouldn't be until the book has come out, but I know that this tour will be more of a reading/Q&A tour rather than a signing tour, and if it's not a signing, then the tour can start before the book is available.

It would be awesome if all publicity/scheduling people had a big calendar with every religion's holidays, along with demographic maps showing which places have a lot of which religion.

A few years ago Daniel Handler (Lemony Snicket's ammanuensis) and I were grumbling together about the way that, probably thousands of years ago, it was decided that the Jewish High Holidays would fall in High Publishing Season, and how unfair this was to Jewish authors and their readers and, nu, what were you going to do about it?

To answer your question, No, the events I listed will be the US Graveyard Book Tour events. The US publication date is September the 30th. (The UK pub date is Hallowe'en, and I'll be signing and/or reading in Dublin and Scotland and elsewhere in the UK and London.)

But there is an event to make up for my being in New York on Rosh Hashana: On November the 9th, which is a Sunday, I'll be In Conversation With the amazing Chipp Kidd, at the 92nd St Y, talking about 20 years of Sandman. And I'll be signing stuff afterwards, if the last events I did at the Y are anything to go by.

...

I ran into this quote in the New Yorker, about reviewer Katherine White. The first paragraph is from the article, the second is a quote from White:



The full article -- the birth of Stuart Little compared and contrasted with the rise and fall of the first influential children's librarian -- is wonderful. It starts at http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/07/21/080721fa_fact_lepore?currentPage=1

I was interviewed in Locus this month (the one with Garth Nix on the cover), and tried to say something very much the same about Young Adult fiction: that young adults (and older kids) should be reading everything, relentlessly. They should be reading outside their comfort zones, because the training wheels have come off, and that's the only way they'll find out where their comfort zones are, reading everything.

(Also learned from that Locus that Michael De Larrabeiti was dead. I interviewed him once, as a journalist, and loved his three Borrible books -- they were (especially the first two) hugely influential on Neverwhere.)

...

There's an article about the revised and retooled theatre production of Mister Punch in LA today at http://www.latimes.com/theguide/performing-arts/la-gd-perf17-2008jul17,0,4577290.story -- with a marvellous photo, which looks strangely McKeanish (see below). It's an interview done with me last week when I'd just got back from Brazil and was slightly under the weather, but the reporter has made it sound like I was still making sense.




WHERE: Bootleg Theater, 2220 Beverly Blvd., L.A.

WHEN: 8 p.m. Fri., 4 and 8 p.m. Sat., 4 p.m. Sun.; ends Aug. 31. (no perf Aug 8-10).

PRICE: $25 ($50 opening night gala)

INFO: (800) 838-3006; www.rogueartists.org

...

And, because all questions posed on this blog are eventually answered:

ZZ9 Plural Z Alpha did a run of 50 black on black Disaster Area t-shirts in the late 1980s. There were also yellow on black and white on black versions but the last was sold around 2001, and they have not done a reprint since then.

Someone asked what sizes the various tee shirts are. They range from xxl down to the ones where I'm not sure how I used to get them on and am certain either the shirts have shrunk or I used to be a lot smaller. So from Too Huge For Me To Wear down to Really Bloody Small.

...

My friend Kelli Bickman has a mother named Connie. Last time I saw Connie she came over and gathered up all the accumulated bags I'd got from planes over the years, the ones with the mini toothbrush and the eye-shade in, that had built up into a small mound at the back of a cupboard, and she took them away to do something good and worthwhile with them for kids. Kelli wrote the other day to say,

My Mom is the volunteer creative director for Children's Culture Connection (CCC), a non-profit organization working with 12 international charities to help children in America, Haiti, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, Guatemala, India, Peru, Kenya, Nigeria, China, Bulgaria and Russia. CCC has raised thousands of dollars to help empower and connect the children of the world, built houses in Vietnam, installed water pipelines in Sri Lanka to bring clean water to orphanages, sent kids to school, helped with medical supplies in the Amazon jungles, organized art projects with children in seven countries. and more...it is really amazing.

Feeling very inspired by the lessons learned from my mother and her spirit of giving, I am working to help Children's Culture Connection raise awareness, as well as send art supplies to the children of the world. I've just re-developed my website (www.kellibickman.net) and will donate 20% of the sale of any works of art to buy art supplies for these children and help them to expand their imaginations and their world.

Can you put this link on your blog? It would be greatly appreciated...I am eager to spread the good news. Of course, if anyone is interested in getting involved or donating directly to the CCC, that is most welcome. www.childrenscultureconnection.org

...

And everything in this whole post pales into insignificance when placed beside...

Mr Toast as Sandman.

jrittenhouse @ 11:02pm: I think I’ve figured out part of the problem:

If this comes through fine, then the problem is that if I write something at 6:30 am and set it up to actually post in the Wordpress end at noon, what happens is that it ginks into that mess of One Link Going Nowhere that you saw.  If I save it again (not changing a thing at the Wordpress end) it transfers to LJ just fine.

I would guess it’s a missetting between the new version of Wordpress, the transfer-to-LJ plugin and the timer stuff inside of Wordpress not playing well together.

jrittenhouse @ 10:51pm: $%!(@!!!!!
That link problem that you're seeing is somehow being caused by the system I use to post on LJ suddenly going South and Dippy.  If you look at the original posts at http://journal.memnison.com, they're fine.  But the plugin must not like the fact that I'm now working with Wordpress 2.6 or something.  In any case, I'm trying to find out what to kill and kill it.