Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    
One *does* tend to forget that the world had colour back then
sometimes. Particularly after one has taken a week studying the power
of black & white in a visual communications class. That class was 9
years ago and it still sticks with me. Those photos are incredible! I
think more people today should have big fluffy moustaches like that :)
Where do you find these websites?

mmmm... morels... I once made an interesting pasta primavera type dish
with morels and chantrelles (however they're spelled). damn, now I'm
hungry.

squeaks, who must prepare for Muppet insanity this weekend
  

    
Those pictures hurt my brain.  In a good way.

Michelle, what kind of Muppet madness are we talking here?  I gotta
know.
  

    
I first saw those images sometime last week, when somebody on an
animation list I'm on raved about them and the process used.  It's
amazing how few color "fringes" there are to give the trick away.  This
is most apparent in the water, and that group shot with all the
children.  Most of the others are almost perfect, a testament not only
to the photographer, but his subjects as well.

I have to say, the Emir wouldn't be nearly so impressive in
black-and-white.
  

    
Those are awesome pictures. Thanks for pointing those out, Neil. 

Muppets!!!!!
  

    
Dan -- Morels are a mushroom. They look like brains and taste like
heaven. They don't cultivate.

Len -- I went to a Morel Feast at a friend's: everyone brought morels
and morel dishes: they were sauteed, in a sauce, in an eggplant roast,
on cod (for me), a number of other ways I skipped since I stopped
eating meat, in a major morel soup, and luckily people were talked out
of caramelising morels and putting them on icecream.
  

    
Mushrooms.  Ew.
  

    
Very cool pictures.  They remind me of a history class in high school
where we saw color footage of World War II.  I remember thinking "Wow,
it was really real.  Not that I didn't think it didn't happen, but...
wow."

marthat - ditto.

Jen.

Who should be doing homework, not webpage updates.
  

    
martha of course, not marthat.  and I typed marthat again when I tried
to type "martha of course".  I think the bottle of absinthe a drank in
my dreams the other night is messing with my brain.

Jen.
  

    
marthat is probably the pharmaceutical essence of Martha.
  

    
So would an enzyme of Martha be marthase?
Also: totally with you on the mushroom front.
  

    
Well, Morels look, taste and feel nothing like any other mushroom.
There are reasons why morel hunters head out at dawn, and why
restaurants will pay $20 a pound to people who turn up at their back
doors with fresh morels...
  

    
For me the big turnoff with mushrooms is their texture, so if these do
feel differently, perhaps I shall overcome my loathing long enough to
try one at some point.

::finishes homework::  I hope my english teacher accepts what I did. 
We are supposed to be handing in rough drafts of our reading journals,
but when I sat down I couldn't type up my notes because all of my
thoughts on what we had read was so much crap compared to what I
could've been writing about what I've read of Douglas Adams.  So I
wrote six pages about that instead.

Jen, who needs someone to take the Milk Duds and Whoppers away before
she trembles to bits.
  

    
People are always telling me that about beer, too.  "Well _this_ one tastes
different."  Sure.
  

    
Neil - Thanks for the link to those lovely pictures, quite moving.
Went by The Bottom Line this evening to get tickets for your NYC
appearance with Magnetic Fields. You recommended 69 Love Songs to me
way back at ConCat, but I wasn't convinced until I heard them blasting
away in my comic book shop and found myself intrigued enough to
inquire..who the hell is that?  Anyway, the folks at the box office
told me the tix were going at a fast clip.  

Our Lady Miss Tree should be in NYC by then, so Tree? If you're
lurking here you've got ticket baby! 
  

    
Adriana - I'm having friends over this weekend (mostly band friends)
to unwind with some episodes and movies. The non-music friends were a
little confused when I titled the invite "Mafioso Muppet Madness", but
by the end of the weekend, they'll know better. 

Neil - Much as I love morels, the thought of them in ice cream (even
carmelized) just sounds... well... overly reminiscent of things that
shouldn't be made with garlic, but which are during the Gilroy
festival. 

Martha - re: beer - agreed. And even for those that do taste a little
different, I still don't like any of them. ho hum.

ROCKY!!! - Um, jealous! And suddenly feeling like I need to have
bigger and more interesting plans for Tree on her visit.

squeaks, who forgot what interesting thing she was going to say here.
  

    
Michelle -- I'm with you on the morel ice cream (and the garlic ice
cream) front. And on the black pepper ice cream front.

Rocky! -- oh good. You looked so doubtful when I told you about 69
Love Songs.  And Tree's coming to New York? That'll be nice. Last time
I saw her... well, I'm pretty sure there was a large signed plastic
gnome in there somewhere.
  

    
I'm very surprised so many people here don't like mushrooms.  I thought
everyone else did.
  

    

I can't even be in the same room as people cooking mushrooms. Yuck.

Don't like beer, either.
  

    
Is there a palate link between mushrooms and beer?  It never occurred to me
there might be.  I can't eat so many things.  (Not one person here is a
worse eater than I am.)
  

    

I wouldn't put money down on that. (Your parenthetical, that is. I have no
idea about mushrooms and beer.)
  

    
I bet a nickel.
  

    
Well, I don't really dislike mushrooms that much, though I've never
been thrilled with them, either.  And now, it seems they don't like
*ME*.

Beer, on the other hand, is a totally incomprehensible thing to me. 
Back in my bar-going days, friends would give me sips of their beer,
just to see the horrible face I'd make (not as bad as that "bitter beer
face" in the commercials, but close).  Of course, I'm not into alcohol
at all, but most drinks invoke more of a "not horrible, but I'd never
seek it out - can I have some water?" response.

I have *very* sweet-biased taste buds (and probably a borderline sugar
addiction), so the inherent bitterness of beer disagrees with me in a
big way.
  

    
Email from Matej Novak:

For the past month or so I have felt vaguely voyeuristic, reading the
posts here and the ones on the American Gods journal, without actually
participating in the conversation. I guess I have just been waiting for
the right time to raise my hand and be recognized. And then it happened:
American Gods was sold to the Czech Republic (though no longer
Czechoslovakia, just for the sake of precision).

(*Raising hand, waiting to be recognized*)

Hello all,

I won't spend too much time talking about myself. Suffice it to say that I
was born in the Czech Republic (then still Czechoslovakia), grew up in
Canada, and now live back in Prague where I work as a journalist. I would
like to call myself a writer, but I'm holding on to that title until I
actually get writing something that is not for the paper (any suggestions
on how to start a writing career, ie. where to send short story
submissions and it all seems so intimidating). I just wanted to let you
all know that reading this is constantly interesting and insightful and I
feel like I am among friends. And just to jump into the conversation
headlong, I love both mushrooms (though I had never heard of morels) and
beer (and for anyone who does not, I recommend Czech beer). I agree there
may be a taste corelation between the two and submit that olives might be
in the same category.

I guess I don't really have a question at this point. I just wanted to say
and let you all know I am out here. I imagine I will chime in from time to
time.

And for Neil, thanks so much for all your posts here and on the AG
journal. They are a great way to fill the void before the book comes out
and just the thing to whet the appetite (not to mention whetting my
appetite for Tori's I'm very excited). It's comforting to know that at
least some of the people we admire, that otherwise seem so distant, are
regular people too, and they remember that the same is true about their
fans.

Cheers!

Matej Novak

PS: I now have new hope that I will get American Gods about the same time
as the rest of you, although I fear it might be in Czech translation. Mail
order is my friend. Neil, hope to see out this way some time in the
future. Sadly I can't make it back for your Toronto appearance. :-(
  

    
Email from Margret:

Martha- I am afraid I have to throw a wrench into your mushroom/beer
theory.  I have always loved mushrooms, but can't stand beer.  I think it
comes from spending my early drinking days in Iceland where beer was
illegal at the time, so I never aquired a taste for it.

Neil- Will you be doing a reading at Stars Our Destination in Chicago? I
know you don't have as much time there because of the B&N signing in the
evening.  If you will be reading at both, will you be reading different
selections?  I am thinking of attending both.  I figure if I am flying all
the way to Chicago for this I may as well get my money's worth.

Margret
  

    
Neil -- I have a question about short stories and copyrights.  I
re-read _Smoke and Mirrors_ this morning and noticed on the last page
that the copyrights to all of the stories belong to you.  Now perhaps
this is just a generation thing, but flipping through the anthology
(from my gram's scifi collection) that I'm currently on it appears that
all of the stories within are copyrighted by a publishing house or by
the individual who edited the anthology in which the story originally
appeared.  All save for Harlan Ellison's story, which is copyright
Harlan Ellison.  I don't have any other books here at work with which
to compare.  Do authors generally retain the copyrights to their own
stories these days when selling them to magazine and anthologies, or is
that not the norm?  I seem to recall Ellison mentioning once about
buying back all of the copyrights on his stuff "from the early days".