Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    
I successfully tracked down a copy of PLANET and should have it in my
greedy little hands by tomorrow afternoon! ^_^

In other news, I now have Sweeny Todd tunes stuck in my head (thanks
Mary) and the wife and I procured decent seats for the local Tori
concert after all.
  

    
It's contagious - now we're all telling the tale of Sweeney Todd
in the soundtracks in our heads!

Hmm, that might be a fun thing to do with the new DVD player and
flat-tube TV (our compromise to avoid having TV be the focus of our
living room when the old crappy one died was to buy the nicest *small*
TV we could buy.. well, aside from the hideously expensive
thin flat-panel ones, anyway).  I wonder if there's a production of
Sweeney  that's been recorded on DVD.

I also procured quite nice seats for the local Tori concert (2nd
row of the orchestra at the Wang Center, which isn't quite 2nd
 row because there's a small pit section in front of that.  But
still the best seats I've ever gotten!)  I'm quite looking forward
to it.

And some very deserving people who did a lot more work than I did
on the Boston RAINN fundraiser will be getting backstage passes
to see Tori that night, hooray! 

Elise's birthday experience sounds lovely.  Especially the part
about her birthday friends just happening to be some of my other
favorite authors... *dreamy sigh*  But also the part about Cirque.
When we were in Vegas for a night on our way out to Bryce Canyon and
Zion for some hiking we thought about seeing them, but O was closed
that night and Mystere seemed awfully expensive to order tickets for
ahead of time. (then we instead ate a dinner that was easily more
expensive than two two tickets to Mystere.. on the other hand, 
it was about as intense a food experience as Cirque is a visual one.
Just saw Dralion in  Boston and I am once again in awe of Cirque,
though - will have to go back and see the Vegas shows.  (Conveniently,
we also feel we'll have to go back and hike the Zion Canyon narrows
when they aren't gushing with spring runoff... hmm.)
  

    
Rowan Story:

Sometimes Cam & I have to have an adult type conference, and they
usually take place in the bathroom, where we can actually be alone to
talk...
So I was there in the bath when Cam came home, and obviously needed to
talk, so he came in after hugging the kids. 
Rowan was NOT happy with this; Cam is his property. So to amuse Ro
while we talked, Cam wiggled his toes under the door for Ro to catch.
Then Ro would stick his back for Cam to get. Pretty soon Ro got bored
and wandered off, coming back with some play-do, which he made into 10
extremely well proportioned toes just like his, and slid those under
the door, and started giggling, "Can't catch MY piggies!".

With that kind of ingenuity, you just have to give up. :D
  

    
Abbe... yes, the bit about Elise having a birthday with many of my
favourite authors was thrilling and envying (wow, what improper usage
of a word) at the same time...

I've seen Cirque twice now; Quidam and Saltimbanco. Beautiful,
inspiring... and I just recently found out that a new friend worked for
Cirque when he lived up north. The biggest perks? Watching rehersal,
and two free tickets to any show, for life. *sigh* The people I know. 
:-)

I need to get down to Vegas... solely to see O and Mystere. But first,
I need to head back to Northern Nevada...

Burning Man, ready or (definately) not, here I come! (See you all in
two weeks...)
-Kelly
  

    
Neil-- and all egg sufferers-- I feel for you. I had a bad case of
food poisoning this year and I wanted to die.  I still can't pass by
the restaurant where I contracted the poisoning without feeling
nauseous.

On a linked note-- and to prevent such a thing from happening again--
here's an excerpt from Anthony Bourdain's _Kitchen Confidential_,
printed in the Guardian:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/weekend/story/0,3605,353201,00.html

Re: revealing oneself in this forum-- I didn't mention one important
thing that happened to me this summer-- on July 24, I turned 30.  I
guess I worried that mentioning it would be percieved as a play for
attention, but everybody else mentions their b'days, so why not?

I had a lot of difficulty adjusting to 30... especially since I was
away from my wife and family, working on a writing project.  Still, if
I had to turn 30 (and the alternative was less than desirable,) I was
glad to do it while writing.

Mary-- I am, of course, terribly jealous.  You see the coolest stuff. 
Last night, however, I saw _Bat Boy: The Musical,_ which, if it isn't
Sweeny Todd, is surprisingly spiffy.

Re: Sir Andrew's Amazon reviews-- too funny!  I love the one for the
book on knife fighting.

Maybe this belongs on the now-frozen American Gods discussion group,
but it occurred to me recently that my summer reading has been
basically comprised of: American Gods, McCullough's John Adams bio
(AMAZINGAMAZINGAMAZING!) and the Autobiography [sort of] of Malcolm X. 
I'm going to be teaching American Lit for the first time this year...
I feel as if I've treated myself to a very interesting literary on-ramp
this summer.

One more link-- LeonardCohen.com is streaming the single from the Zen
Bard's newest album-- the first real collection of new stuff since The
Future!!!.  Here's the link: http://www1.sympatico.ca/hispeed/cohen

Must go... making hazelnut gelato and it needs love and attention.

 
  

    

Happy belated 30th, Len.
  

    
who never thereafter were heard of again...

lalala i think i've already mentioned this, but i played Johanna a few
years ago in Sweeney.  it was one of the greatest experiences of my
life.  i can't wait until i'm old enough to play Mrs. Lovett. 
whoppeeee!

i wish like hell it could have been with George Hearn, though.  dang. 


-adriana
  

    
Can someone please tell me what the Lloyd Webber reviews were on
Amazon?  It looks like they've taken them down...

thanks, adriana
  

    
Help, writers!  (Or anyone else more fluent in English than me.  Than
I?  Is the [who is] implied for the "anyone", and does that make it an
"I" [insert unknown grammatical term here] rather than a "me"
preposition?  You see my problem.*  Please feel free to educate me on
the applicable precepts of grammar.)

Question: what is a word meaning profoundly unnecessary, in the sense
of being superflous?

(My brain is playing the five-year old guessing game where it knows
the word it wants, but won't tell me what it is until I figure it out,
first.

-Guess what I have?
-What?
-Noooooo!  You have to *guess*.)

 *NOTE ON GRAMMAR: My high school grammar teacher was an intelligent,
artistic alcoholic who was hung over every morning.  So he never taught
grammar during our 9:00 English class, but he read great books as an
example to us all, and would make amusing, sardonic comments like:
"We'll be collecting navel lint in class today, so please deposit yours
in this [empty coffee mug] on your way out."  We did our nails and
flirted during class, all of which bored me out of my mind after about
four days.  So I read.  Which was a good thing, because I learned most
of what I know about grammar by osmosis, rather than in high school
grammar classes.  (I don't think they teach grammar in college
anymore.)  

Oddly enough, I remember this teacher with affection, because he was
also my piano teacher for three years until I was 15 and in his English
class.  Since he was able to teach piano in the evenings, while
drinking, and because he loved music, he was very good at teaching me
piano.  The first time I played for him, at 12, he told me that I
played like a girl.  For which I hated him.  Then he told me I had
great hands and taught me what to do with them on a piano.  For which I
loved him.

(How'm I doin', <lioness>?)
  

    
   Pamela -- my first response to the tossup would be "egregious."
   I suppose my second response would be identical without the quotes.
   I've started, so I'll finish: The third response would be something
like, "hyperelastically overdetermined," but I guess that already
makes me the weakest link.
   
  

    
>in the sense of being superflous?

Ahem.  That should, of course, be "superfl_u_ous."

An egregious error, indeed.
  

    
Happy 30th with appropriate backdating and time-traveling cake, Len!
Pamela and Dan, thanks for the good words, and I'm glad to have written
posts that make you happy. I get a lot of inspiration from the folks here,
and it's nice to add my own bits to the stone soup.

Pamela, my guesses would be extraneous, redundant, needless, fruitless
bootless witless and ... oops, sorry.
Something like that, anyhow.

I had meant to say "fake hair, brightly colored, sounds very cool! your post
has reawakened a desire in me to go get blue hair. and maybe green, too,"
and to blather about pants and Ilkley Moor "without yer trousers on," and
Les Barker besides, but I cannot scroll back far enough to remember who gets
which quote. Um, Tara on the hair and Jen on the pants, I think, but I don't
trust my memory.
  

    
gratuitous?
  

    
Huh. I was right. Cool.

Also, happy birthday backatcha to Rebecca.
And I love the phrase "head radio," JaNell.

All this talk of Sweeney Todd is making me want to read the script and see
the show. (Mr. Ford, are you making a note of this? <wicked flirtatious
grin>) In fact, I'm thinking of going through this topic and a few others
bit by bit, listing all recommendations and then using it as a partial
reading/viewing list for this year. Reading plays is a great pleasure to me;
I just got a whole pile of Stoppard stuff from the NT bookshop in London,
plus three different Timberlake Wertenbaker things, which is one of my
current discovery/obsession art-thangs. Do you know any of Wertenbaker's
work, Neil? It pleases the same places in me that Christopher Fry and Tom
Stoppard reach, sort of. I was hepped to TW by my Fairy Godmother in
Toronto, who is a cornucopia of coolness; she and one of her partners and I
read "Our Country's Good" out loud one night, and I was intrigued. Then I
found "The Grace of Mary Traverse" at a bookstall under the bridge by the
NT, and I was hooked utterly. Am hoping to read "Darwin" soon, but I must
send the duplicate copy to B.C., my Fairy Godmother, so we can read it
simultaneously, albeit internationally.
  

    
Julia slipt with a really good word.
,
  

    

Speaking of Stoppard, while on my vacation I saw some friends do a
performance of "Hapgood." Man, that was confusing. I really need to read it.

Essentially, it is the story of an intelligence agency that comes to realize
that there is a double agent somewhere on the Inside. As such, each scene is
either a plan to ferret out the agent, OR a pack of lies because someone
thinks the agent is on stage. Since the reader/viewer doesn't get to find
out who the double agent is until the end, they spend the entire play unsure
of whether or not the preceding scene was real plans or for someone else's
benefit.

It was a lot of fun.
  

    
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0451152107 is an example of a
"lloyd-webber" review. So is
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0945802161
 

The effect was cumulative...

SOmetimes I wish when Amazon would get interesting things happening,
they'd just stick em in a rogues' gallery, rather than deleting them...

...

On the How Personal Are the Posts thing, I remember having an odd
conversation with a journalist about the blogger at neilgaiman.com

Her: How do you feel, exposing so much of yourself on the journal to
anyone reading it?

me: I don't. I'm an intensely private person.

I'm not sure she believed me. But it's true.

Erynn -- happy birthday!
Elise -- happy birthday!  And you're welcome. 

I loved O too. Wrote a circus recently and it was hard to get that O
style dream logic out of my head.  And remind me on the B name...


Tree -- the NECON book is just the first draft of the New York Genie
story from American Gods, so do not worry.  And I'm currently reading
Maddy BOTTERSNIKES AND GUMBLES and the odds are if I did recommend it
you'd be the only person who could easily find a copy...

Michaela -- PLANET is still my favourite of all the books and stories
anyone has put me in.  

...

General Sweeney comment: I think the best evening of theatre in my
life was the National Theatre (cottesloe, the tiny one) SWEENEY TODD in
around 93.

It was drama, not melodrama, played utterly straight, and we were
splashed with blood...

and the cast was (a google search reveals) 
Anthony Hope - Adrian Lester 
Sweeney Todd - Alun Armstrong 
Beggar Woman - Sheila Reid 
Mrs. Lovett - Julia McKenzie 
Judge Turpin - Denis Quilley 
The Beadle - Barry James 
Johanna - Carol Starks 
Tobias Ragg - Adrian Lewis Morgan 
Pirelli - Nick Holder
  

    
And my only Sondheim Sweeney grumble is that in England politicians do
not run. They stand. 
  

    
Pamela --
My Roget's SuperThesaurus (a wondrous beastie) gives the following:
Unnecessary: unneeded, inessential, needless, unrequired,
noncompulsory, uncalled-for, gratuitous, superfluous, extraneous,
redundant, surplus, expendable.
Superfluous: Unnecessary, extra, excess, nonessential, spare.
(duplicate entries removed).
So, that's two votes for gratuitous, though I wonder if you were
looking for extraneous. My wife believed that superfluous was probably
the best word for the concept, though.
  

    
Thanks for the pseud, billbill!

Email [about to be] sent on the B name, which I won't post as I still
remember the concerned tone of voice with which you explained very quietly
that that was a wonderful name, but it sort of had a story stuck to it or
something, and you might wind up writing it some day, depending on this,
that, or the other, so I have this odd hesitance to say it out loud in cold
print. Or warm electrons, as the case may be.

The more I play the new Flash Girls CD, by the way, the more I like it.
"Personal Thing" was stuck in my head for several days recently. You write
good songs. Currently "Race Me To The Moon" is stuck in my head, which
should please Lorraine. The photo of the mysterious young lady in shades and
big shoes is priceless, utterly priceless.
  

    
Neil- When will we get to see this circus? 

Len- Thanks for the Cohen link. I love him and have been wondering
what he's been up to lately. And Happy Belated 30th Birthday as well!
(And I don't think it's a crime to want attention now and again...)

I, myself have a link to share. I highly recommend that everyone check
it out. It may take a few minutes to load, but well worth it, believe
me. I haven't laughed this hard in weeks... 

www.orosian.demon.co.uk/weeee.swf

Weeeeeeeee!
  

    
I have no idea why the link isn't working. It works when I type it
into the browser window. I'll try it again. 
Http://www.orosian.demon.co.uk/Weeee.swf
  

    
Okay. There. Click on the second one. Hee.
  

    
Well, this is terribly frustrating.  For the last 100 posts or so, I
haven't been able to access the well.  I type it into my browser, and
nothing happens.  I tried everything I could think of.  Then today I
remembered that you can access the inkwell through the internet, went
there, and then clicked on a link here.  In other words...I've missed
you all, and wish I had been here for the 100 posts that I am now
desperately trying to catch up on.

Angelina
  

    
Erynn--I had my doubts at first about your link, but now I am laughing
rather hard with tears on my cheeks.  Thank you for sharing.