Enthusiasm Day
July 4
Good morning! Those of you in the US, happy Independence Day! There are few things so sweet as a day off in the midst of the week. There's a Beatles marathon on the radio. Life is good.
Tuesday night I went to Neil Gaiman's Coraline reading. I didn't have to stand in line, being as I'm with the press (I even got a little Coraline badge to wear that said "press"). So the publicist (the lovely Amy Burton) let me come in early and mill around with the crew and meet Neil, who chatted as he signed book after book after book. He wasn't inscribing books for people, there was no signing line, but all the books for sale were signed beforehand, and he drew a rat in every single copy of Coraline, some simple, some sweet, some sinister, some quite complicated. I bought a copy for Heather and I, of course, with a somewhat sinister rat drawn in. If I had a flatbed scanner, I'd scan it in, and let y'all see the rat, but, alas, I don't.
I sat near enough to the front to get decent photographs, in the fourth pew back (the first was reserved for VIPs, and the next two reserved for people with children, which was nice; though there were a lot of groups with one child and, say, twelve adults). The theater was packed, so figure about 800 people there. Mostly very nice, very enthusiastic, very polite folks -- only one disheveled fangirl glaring around at people close to the front and complaining to the usher that people were saving seats, which she seemed to find a grave injustice (I was saving a seat for Heather, since she couldn't get off work early, but the girl seemed particularly angered by the people behind me, some of whom had the audacity to secure their seats, put down pillows and coats, and then go to the bathroom. The bastards!).
Neil started a bit late, on purpose, because he wanted to give out-of-towners time to deal with the trials of Berkeley parking. Then he gave a couple of brief announcements (so that when our friends who couldn't come to the reading asked us if we found out anything cool, we wouldn't have to say "No, he just read the book and then went away."). He's doing some Endless stories, for the first time in six years, to be published in a book called (I think) Endless Nights, which will be released as part of Vertigo's 10-year-anniversary next year. He introduced Henry Selick, sitting in the front row, who directed The Nightmare Before Christmas, and who's writing and directing the Coraline movie -- and announced that Michele Pfeiffer is going to play Mrs. Jones/The Other Mother! Predicting that people in the audience with mobile internet connections would have that info spread throughout the internet by the time the reading was over. He told us that the new Tori Amos album is wonderful, but that he would say nothing more.
(Oh, his daughter Maddie was running about -- cute kid!)
Heather, who is a better photographer than I, took most of the pictures, and got snaps of him standing, sitting, and etc. The stage was nicely set, with a large button-eyed doll sitting on a footstool beside Neil's armchair. There were marbles set about the stage, and a folding screen behind the chair featuring blow-ups of one of the Dave McKean illustrations from the book.
The reading was marvelous. Though I love the book, I expected to be bored a little -- I mean, 3 hours, listening to a guy read! (and it actually took 3.5 hours of reading time, because the audience laughed and gasped and so forth.) But I wasn't bored a bit, because Neil is a marvelous performer. I'd recommend buying the US version of the Coraline audio CD, just to hear him do the voices. During the intermission (interval!), the rat song from the audio CD played on the PA, and it's lovely; perhaps not as purely enjoyable as hearing Neil himself sing it, but much creepier. There's not much more to say about the actual reading, I guess. I'm glad I went. It was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, and something I'll remember always. Perhaps the best evening of entertainment I've had all year.
At the end, we gave him a standing ovation, and he was gracious briefly, then pointed at his watch and waved his arms about and otherwise indicated that he wanted to go away. Someone in the audience yelled "Read it again!" and Neil yelled "No!" -- and I see in Neil's journal that the yelling someone was Daniel Handler, whom I didn't even realize was there. So much talent in one enormous church!
Mmm. Heather and I went home, and hung out a bit, and then crashed.
Yesterday I work work worked until my wrists felt like spaghetti (cooked spaghetti, that is), and even so I have a lot of fine-tuning and cleaning-up still to do on Friday. Bleah. I came home and found nice things, though -- checks from Strange Horizons for my Coraline review and two poems! Into the Worldcon fund it goes.
I went to meet Heather at the gym, but the gym was closing at 7:00, so after Heather and I found each other we just came home, and watched Goodfellas and ate pizza... I paid bills... it's all very glamorous...
There's more stuff I'd like to talk about -- literary horror, for one -- but I've had enough journalling for now. More later, perhaps.
Words written since February 1, 2002: 100,580
Words written since last entry: 300
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