Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    
>>Jade -- give Harlan my very best. Please tell him that his
Leprechaun
Nun joke -- which he told me, and I told to
Gwenda-who-works-for-the-governor-of-Kentucky -- is now the Governor of
Kentucky's favourite joke.>>

Neil -- I just got back from a thrilling night at I-CON. I gave Harlan
your message and he offered one in reply.

Harlan: "Tell Neil that may be true, but he should have the governor
of Kentucky call me collect. I really tell it so much better than he
ever could." :-)
  

    
Neil-- Hmn... if, by chance, John Cale and Tappan King called at the
same time, you could set up a conference call, call me, and I could
talk their ears off about both Paris 1919 and Down Town at my leisure.
I've always wanted to tell John Cale that his cover of Leonard Cohen's
_Hallelujah_ might be the most sublime piece of pop music created in
the last 30 years, but I think he might already suspect that.

I don't _own_ the Ashman/Mencken boxed set, but they had it at school
(you get access to the neatest stuff when you go to musical theatre
writing grad school), and I taped a lot of it-- especially the demos
and the cut songs (I'm particularly fond of "Proud of Your Boy"--
that's Ashman's, isn't it?  Ashman's death was a tremendous loss.. he
was a first class lyricist, both incredibly witty and with enough heart
to make it meaningful.  (Do you know about Ashman and Mencken's _God
Bless You Mr. Rosewater?_)

And isn't Tim Rice such a terrible disappointment?  He seems not only
to have not grown as an artist, but to actually have gotten worse.  I
_LOVE_ JCS and Joseph... I even kinda like _Blondel_.  But I find his
work for the last 10 years to be embarassing-- smarmy and creepy and
cheap.

And while I'm geeking out on musical theatre, have you got your
tickets to Follies yet?

(hmn.. methinks I might be wasting my money on rogaine... maybe I can
get a hypnotist to convince me that all tap water is rogaine.)
  

    
<sigh> Looks like I'll be at string quartet camp for the signings,
then. June 24-July 3.

Oh well.

-shira
  

    
I love JCS, but the rest of Tim Rice's stuff...ewww. 

Neil- You probably didn't see my question many posts ago: How's
'Death' going? and are you still going to direct it?
  

    
Jade -- that's our Harlan.

Len -- I agree on Tim Rice. I even like the words for Chess. I guess
he's just one of those people, like Orson Welles or Mel Brooks who have
back-to-front careers. We simply have to think of him, while writing
Aida lyrics for Elton, aspiring toward the kind of greatness that would
eventually bring him to JCS and Joseph.

I saw Follies in London with Diana Rigg and Julia MacKenzie, many
years ago. Would see it again, but mostly want to see the Sondheim
season in 2002.

Shira -- if it wasn't for the whole sell-by date thing, we could kick
off the tour at Dreamhaven on the 18th. But it has a strict on-sale
date and so the signing in New York at Borders on the 19th is the very
first date it'll be available.

But I'm sure we can figure something out.

Erynn -- sorry, the signal-to-noise level got too loud, and I didn't
have the time to re-read for missed questions (note to everyone. If I
didn;t answer a specific Question, just repost it.)

Death's going fine -- I'm sitting in a Las Vegas hotel room right now
working on it. And, we'll see. I certainly have a contract to, but
given the fact we're now entering strike-world what's going to happen
to anything in the movies is anybody's guess.
  

    
Dan - Metaphorically (but I saw it coming, and I'm dealing), um... you
missed Rosin Coven at Assimilate last week. I have pictures of them at
the Edward Gorey Ball somewhere on my website... and yes, it does
suck, if for no other reason than all of my tax return will now be
paying for shrinks and Prozac instead of music and stuffed animals.
What a rip-off!

squeaks, who may have convinced a bunch of gamer geeks to attend the
Keplers signing.
  

    
Neil-- funny way to see Tim Rice... like Merlin in Once and Future
King.

Congrats, btw, on the SF Book Club and the Book of the Month Club---
coool.

Been reading lots of lit theory lately, and it occurred to me that,
what with all your struggles with Blogger, your "This is what you get
to read instead of what I actually wrote because my machine crashed/-my
laptop screwed up/-my connectivity was unstable" posts may constitute
a whole new literary genre.  Something about texts referring to texts
that were never actually printed before they disappeared... somewhere
between Calvino and the Word for Dummies book.
Anyway it's a thought.  And you are one of the top 10 postmodernists
writing in America, right?
  

    
Am Neil-tired but for very non-Neil reasons: cramming late night and getting
up early morning for rotisserie baseball draft.  The only thing at all it
has in common with Neil is how tired.
  

    
Len -- my favourite bit about the top ten post-modernists bit was that
s/he listed 11 of us. But at least three are now dead.

Michelle -- hugs

martha -- I like the way that sentence just stopped.

...

I've put my day up on the www.americangods.com journal site, so I
won't repeat it here. 
  

    
Having said that, I can't bring up the american gods journal tonight.
I mean I posted the thing, but the journal page seems to be broken.
  

    
Nope, it's up -- I think it's just Explorer that's gone weird.

Bed now.
  

    
Neil - Thank you.

Didn't that same "the package was signed for, so it must be here...
but we can't find it" thing happen at ConCat a couple of years ago with
all the stuff that was supposed to go for auction?

btw, secondary congrats on the SFBC and BotMC deals.

squeaks, who rather prefers the plushy variety of snake to the kind
that eats mousies
  

    
martha - there are worse things to lose sleep over than that.  hope
you have as much luck with your draft as i did . . . .

  --  s
  

    
I was once up all night because of a rotisserie chicken, but that's
another story.
  

    
Just read last blogger journal entry... yikes!  Have they been found
yet?  It must be said that you handled the situation with aplomb, and
that Jonathan Carroll is a cool dude.  I guess that in Vegas
_everything_ is uncertain.

[And just to plug my own theory about your newly created literary
genre, here's another example of your talking about a
text-one-might-have-read-if things-had-gone-differently.  It's scary
'cause it's true.  Maybe these collected stories could fill an annex
branch of Lucien's library.]

btw, your tone in regard to Ouchie the Clown seems kind of ambivalent.
 Who is this guy and should we head to the next rave at which he's
playing?
  

    
::gives Michelle some extra special, one-of-a-kind, strawberry
flavored glue for her heart::

Happy April Fools day everyone.  May you see through every prank
thrown at you.

Jen, all grumbly about daylight savings time.
  

    
Jen--speaking of daylight savings time....grrr!  I worked last night
from 5pm to 3:30am.  So, you would think that at 2, we would skip
forward an hour and work an hour less.  But no, according to Skyline
time, we don't move forward until after close.  So, like everyone else
already asleep in their little beds I lost an hour of sleep instead an
hour of work.  sigh.

Angelina.
  

    
Neil--AH about the books!  You seem to have handled it well.  A Neil
tote bag sounds rather interesting...
  

    
Len -- if the event had just been Ouchy --
http://www.ouchytheclown.com/
I might have been more into it; but it was a large, loud rave thing as
well, which seemed to hover, in the Las Vegas way, perilously close to
self-parody. And, having flown in from Minneapolis, after a couple of
weeks in Florida, their midnight out here felt a lot like my 3 in the
morning.

Angelina -- actually the tote bags and the fuzzy snakes were
promotional things from something else, or a number of something elses.
But, lacking books, I signed them anyway.
  

    
And, since we were talking about Harlan, Andy Duncan has much too much
fun at Locus today --
http://www.locusmag.com/2001/News/News04b.html
  

    
Len -- and it occurs to me that I should point out that Ouchy was
DJ-ing, not beating people with cattle prods, and the 'being more into
it' above referred to the fact that I quite liked the music coming from
Ouchy's dj corner, but it was kind of drowned out by the very loud
music from the main hall.
  

    
Seth, I'm amazed there's another roto player in Neil's topic.  I of course
can't tell if my team's any good yet, but I think it's not too bad.
  

    
Adult Clown Services?  That is the most entertaining thing I have seen
in quite some time.  Thanks for the link, Neil.  I'd like to see him
DJ sometime.  However, I'm not jumping up and down about the cattle
prod...

Angelina (who doesn't mind fans of pain, and thinks that they should
be able to take hers at their lesuire.)
  

    
All this clown business is reminding me of a New Orleans band I
haven't seen in ages - Bozo Porno Circus. Not a bad industrial band,
but they are really much more worth being into for the show they put on
(and their cover of "Hot Stuff"...)

re: Harlan... somehow it doesn't surprise me at all...

squeaks, who was busy playing pool while the band beat crowd members
(and vice versa) with giant nerf-like dildos.
  

    
Cool Ouchy site; the straight razor shave pics are a little unnerving,
though, for any Sweeny Todd fan.  I think I should cross-stitch a
"Making you laugh as I hurt you" sampler and put it over my desk at
school.

I've never been to Las Vegas and frankly I'm scared of it... I don't
know if I'd hate it, and I'm worried that I'll love it.  If I do,
hopefully I'll be able to couch it in an ironic, hipster kind of way.

Borders had 25% off everything in the store for teachers today; I went
nuts.  Finally got 69 Love Songs, vol.1, which I'm listening to now. 
Also some Nick Drake, two cookbooks (Mark Bittman and Claudia Roden,) a
book about Pontius Pilate, some movie musical dvds, and a much needed
CD of the Firesign Theatre's _How Can You Be In Two Places At Once..._