Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    
Michelle - whenever you can make it, it will be a treat. I hope that
things get better for you. *sending positive energy your way*

Mary - How do I do it? I'm certifiably insane....

Len - Once you hear Tori, you will become a fan... and you will have a
driving need to buy all of her other stuff, and you will be astonished
and amazed at the work she's done in the past...

Adriana - My lead showed up and is fully aware that I'm ready to step
in at a moment's notice... I'm somewhat unsettled by his comment that
he'd actually like to see me in the role (not what I wanted to hear).
So, if I ever *do* go on... it will be with no rehearsal whatsoever.
(Fortunately, I know the blocking better than the cast does)

Dan 
(who wants nothing more than to spend a day in bed with a good book)
  

    
Guy (do you prefer to pronounce it G-long I or Hard G-eee?)  Welcome!
  

    
And as Guy notes, there's a review of the Death script on AICN.  Neil,
 have you/will you read it?  Will it play any role in your revision
process?
  

    
Guy--Hi there!  Don't worry about sounding academic-y.  It was fun to
read.  Too bad you can't make it to any signings, but congrats on
little 'Neil'.   hehe.
  

    
Dan Guy, don't cringe.  I'm the one who _wrote_ that Big Brother stuff.
Largely because I was terribly annoyed at how the people were being treated
in the popular press, which was happy to assume that CBS was giving them
representative samples.

I'd been writing snippets here and there on the Well in the tv conference,
and eventually Jon Carroll, the fine San Francisco Chronicle columnist whose
work everyone should check out at sfgate.com, insisted I pitch something to
Salon and set up an introduction to the arts editor there, and that's the
story.  Fell into writing about that stint because I was interested, and
really can't say whether or not I'll be interested in the next go-round
until I've taken a look at it.
  

    
Adriana -- I aim to please.

Len -- The only time previous that I've gone by "Guy" was in my
highschool French class when (as is the case here) there was another
gentleman named "Dan" who got to it first.  In that case the French
pronounciation (hard G-eee) was used (as would be expected).  I think I
rather prefer G-long i, though.  Thank you for asking.

Angelina -- Thanks for the congrats. I'm rather excited about
impending fatherhood.  I completed remodeling the nursery soon after we
moved in (we bought a nice, jarringly suburban house last December)and
since then I've been working on assembling a library of childrens
books, collecting all of my favourites from my parents attic and
grandparents houses, as well as hitting all of the used book stores in
the area.

Martha -- I cringe at the memories that comes with bringing it up, not
with the bringing it up itself.  I resent the show for its blandness,
for its failed potential, and for intruding on my life to the degree
that it did -- of course, who am I to complain when you actually had to
write about it.  As for this next season, I can only hope that the
rule changes will make it more entertaining, should my wife become so
enamoured again.
  

    
DanGuy/Len -- no plans to read the AICN thing, no. (Why would I want
to read -- or take seriously -- the opinion of someone who'd broadcast
their review of something in such an early state out to the world?) 

Just grateful that nobody ever got to post their opinions of the first
draft of American Gods. (Normally the first draft is the one which, by
the end of it, I've figured out roughly what I'm trying to do.) 

And I suppose I'll try and work harder on getting the various
production entities to maintain the privacy of stuff that really isn't
ready to go out and meet the public in future.

Vicky -- I don't think so. Although that's a cover I'm very fond of.

Mary and Len -- the Dawn Dream was very fine, but saw no other shows.
(Given how tired and jetlagged I was it was a miracle I kept my eyes
open through that one.)
  

    
Dan Guy, I didn't have to write about it.  I was writing about it anyway,
lord help me, and for Salon all I had to do was clean up and way pare down
the millions of words (that's an overstatement) from the Well.
  

    
(I seem to have been dubbed "Dan Guy"/"DanGuy" by the assembled
masses; so be it.)

Martha -- I know that "had" was a poor choice of words as soon as I'd
clicked 'post'.  In the race between my indecision over whether or not
to scribble it and try again and your speed of reply, the latter won
out.  Clearly no one was forcing you to write about it; I meant "had"
only in the sense that, once Salon had begun posting your pieces, the
expectation of the readership at large was that you would continue to
write them.  Had you stopped, I'm sure many would have missed your
coverage; I know I would have.  My apologies.


DanGuy, who's off to find these alleged "millions of words" so he can
experience uncut Martha.
  

    

Thanks for the pseud, DanGuy.
  

    
Neil- I am glad to hear that Cardiff might be on a list. If not it
won't be a problem getting to Bristol. The dates have me worried. I'll
be off on a "writer's retreat" -haha like I'll get much writing done-
in Tuscany from the 2nd to the 9th of July. Let's see...Tuscany, Neil,
Tuscany, Neil...sorry Neil. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that I'll be
in the country, because I badly want to attend one of the tour dates.
But I won't feel too bad while basking in the sun. As for being tired-I
hear ya! I hate transatlantic flights. My husband is English and I'm
American. We had to travel back and forth to see each other for about 2
years. I always ended up sitting next to the window while a very large
person fell asleep in the aisle seat. I can never get the urge to wake
them up and my bladder suffers for six hours.  


Dan Guy- what a fantastic introduction! That puts mine to shame. By
the way I do like the nickname "Dan Guy" it has a nice ring to it. The
masses have spoken.

Mary- I'm in the same boat. Our landlord wrote to us in an email and
said we were the "fussiest tenants she ever had" and various other
insulting comments. She took a month to sort out our washing machine
and we had a small fungi village growing on our windowsill. I am also
driving my husband mad with the amount of shoes I tend to collect and
the living room/high-fi/study/play-station gaming area is a bit too
small for the both of us. We bought a sofa at Ikea only to find out it
was too big to fit through the door. You would think that at some point
in time sofa builders and door frame builders would get together and
have a chat about the size of sofas and the size of door frames.
I hate my job and I miss my dog. Sometimes, I miss America. I ate two
entire Easter bunnies to cope with my inner sadness. Biting off their
chocolate heads was very satisfying. That is really scary that someone
stole your tax forms while viewing your apartment. I'm going to make
sure that I'm always here when the letting agency shows anyone around.
-Carole (the one who talks too much)
  

    
Actually, since all the other Big Brother writing was being done in-house at
Salon, I pretty much had to pitch everything I wrote for them.  Which I'm
terrible at by the way.
  

    
Guy - Hi and welcome.  :-)  That sounds like a very interesting dream
that you had that I would like to steal.

And speaking of people popping up in dreams... does anybody else here
have Neil show up in the dreams that they remember a disconcerting
amount, or am I just an oddball?

And thanks again everybody for all the birthday wishes.  I got a few
more presents today including a drawing of Neil here typing away
sitting in a nutshell.  I'm going to try and scan it tomorrow.

Jen.
  

    
Jen b - Well, there was a dance event at ConCat that I didn't go to
(long day, needed sleep - which was good because someone came
a-knockin' on the door rather early next morning), and I recall that a
couple of months later I had a dream of what it might have been like
had I gone. Lots of thingies, and Neil was there in the background
somewhere, along with Charles Vess and Lisa Snellings. Don't remember
anything else except some groovy boogying of many thingie-moneymakers.
:P
  

    
Madman -- You're very welcome.  You will have to do your best to
return the favour one day.

Carole -- That's terrible about the landlord.  I had a crazy one once
who was always convinced that my TV was too loud.  He'd come over on
Saturday afternoons and demand that I turn it down.  I tried turning it
down until I had to sit much to close just to hear it, unplugging the
subwoofer, and in the end I simply turned on closed-captioning and
watched everything with the sound completely off, but still he would
show up once a week to complain of the noise.  As for the sofa, you'd
think, even independently of each other, door-makers would consider the
average dimensions of furniture when designing doors, and sofa-makers
would consider the regular size of doors.  Perhaps they all have
friends and family in the drywall and lumber industries and so
purposefully make their products incompatible so that people will be
forced to remove and/or wide door frames in order to get their
furniture indoors.

Martha -- I'm apalled that you had to pitch every piece.  As wonderful
as your first was, I'd have thought they would have given you a weekly
review on the spot.  Bah.

Jenn -- My dreams rarely include anyone I know to be real.  That was a
particularly comic dream because all of the skyscrapers surrounding
the castle moved kind of like Elmer Fudd does when he tries to sneak up
on Bugs Bunny, only with more of an intermittent quick shuffle than
regular long strides; like Fudd, the skyscrapers suffered from the
misconception that they were being sneaky and moving unnoticed.


I was given the day off work because I worked 13 hours straight last
Sunday (thereby saving the jobs of three incompetent gentlemen at the
National Human Genome Research Institute -- I had to have their website
ready to present to Francis "Mr. Genome Man" Collins last night), so
I'm finally going to tackle some long-overdue yard work and finish
installing the webcam in the nursery (which is just for the house
network, and not to be streamed to the web at large, of course).  Fun
fun fun.
     And tomorrow night I've been roped into working a blackjack table
from 11pm-4am for the city's after-prom party (trying to keep teens
off the streets and out of the bottle), which I'm rather looking
forward to.
  

    
This is kind of an odd question, but does anyone know anything about
the history of song parody:

Be kind to your web-footed friends
For a duck may be somebody's mother...

?
  

    
I left out a crucial "the," as in "the history of the song parody:"; 
I don't need to know about the history of song parody in general, just
about that one particular lyric.
  

    
re: dreams-- I had a fever dream once, in black and white, in which
Cole Porter and the Gershwin brothers tied me to a table and made me
write songs.  They stood very close to me and their hair was
Brilliantined.  Gross.
  

    
re: dreams. I can only remember one dream that Neil made an appearance
at. We were having our bi-annual convocation and I had somehow
convinced my organization to bring Neil in as a guest speaker. I was
excited, because I thought that introducing him to a bunch of school
administrators would be exciting and cool. To my horror, however, all
of our administrators refused to show up and the auditorium was filled
with ...well..."fanboys" who had nothing to do with the convocation.
I was mortified because this whole thing had been my idea, but then
decided to make the most of it and get my copies of Sandman out of my
car. I went out to my car and Neil (who had actually been in the
auditorium getting mobbed by the fans) walked by me, dressed as
Morpheus and stopped just long enough to give me some sort of
meaningful look and then went into the auditorium. i didn't know what
the look meant, but I was vaguely discomfited by it.

There was probably more to it, but that's all I remember.

On a totally different note.. my actor... my lead... quit yesterday.
So I had my one rehearsal with the cast last night and we open tonight
with me in the role. I went through a few hours of white-hot-terror
yesterday, but am feeling much more centered and ready to deal with the
situation today.

Neil - hope you're able to get some rest after your trip (and before
the signing tour)

Dan
  

    
Dan Guy, you have to remember that places like Salon are on a budget (and
indeed they cut pay for both employees and freelancers some time after the
stuff I did for them).  The editor was very nice about the pieces I did and
always wanted to gossip about the show with me on the phone--even though, or
maybe because, he had a more cynical attitude toward the participants and I
had a more empathic one.

But for the coming season, with Salon's more restricted budget--even if I'm
interested, I dunno.

I got all sorts of very nice mail along the lines of your posts from people
who were relieved to read a sympathetic voice from someone paying (too
close!) attention.

Go to the tv conf and you can still find a zillion posts by me, and by
others, on the day-to-day doings last year.
  

    
Dan -- Good luck and best wishes.

Martha -- Excellent point.  I found your zillion posts after leaving
the last reply and went into instant brain freeze at the thought of
reading through them all, so I skipped around randomly a bit and
smiled.

I finished a good deal of yard work today and find myself very tired
and sore, but in a sort of satisfied way.  I've never owned a home
before (I'm only 23) and have been constantly surprised at just how
much fun and satisfaction I find in doing these things that my father
once forced me to do as a teen, like mowing the lawn and pulling weeds.
 I didn't get anywhere near the working on the baby's cam, so that'll
have to wait until tomorrow.
     Night all.
  

    
Carole -- I think that the west will probably end the tour, as it
usually does. So you may be back from tuscany.

...

I tend to pop up in my own dreams, but only in a first personsingular 
sort of way.

...

NO rest yet -- in LA right now for Nebulas. I am toastmaster (I am
also toast) and am holed up in room trying to finish movie thing before
strike: just me, a video of a japanese movie, a vcr, and a strange
script...

Rest after strike, I guess.
  

    
Good luck, Neil:)
  

    
Good luck seconded, Neil!

Break a leg, Dan!

I'm always myself in dreams I remember (except for the one where I
don't remember anything other than my being Titania), and I'm always in
them. Actually, my dreams are usually just plain confusing, because
they are VERY realistic. So much so that I'll be convinced they
actually happened, wonder why no one else remembers things that way,
and then I'll realize that no, Johnny Rotten was not shopping in the
used cds that day... oh, it was a dream.

squeaks, who knows Trevor will know this:
"...and someone came out of the dream, and it was me. I *knew* I was
he because I had been told so by others both in the dream and outside
of it." 
  

    
If you see my friend Pat York at the Nebs (it's her first nomination), tell
her hey from me and I wish I could have been there!