Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    
Neil (and blogger readers) --
In re: The Collected Strange Stories of Robert Aickman, a very quick
search netted one copy available at www.abebooks.com. Nobody else seems
to even acknowledge its existence.
  

    
Abbe~Not you, with the lengthy only to one person on one subject
stuff.
  

    <scribbled>
  

    
I don't often get to mention Sean, my oldest, but I thought this was
great.
At his school today in Drama, they did impromptu, and he was assigned
being a psychiatrist.
His impromptu skit:

Dr. "Oh, what interesting problem."

(Pulls out two hand puppets and puts them on.)

Dr. "Let's ask our Puppet Pals what they think."
Puppet 1 "You're nuts."
Puppet 2 "I also think that you are nuts."

(Dr. pulls off puppets.)

Dr. "We have diagnosed that you are nuts."
  

    
Okay "passionate" is a better word...and I agree with almost
everything in the interview...but it startled me none the less. 

And I wish the tickets for the show in my area would go on sale
already! The date and venue is listed on Toriamos.com but not
Ticketbastard. Argh.

JaNell- I fed them breadcrumbs.

Erynn, off to do stinking laundry
  

    

I resisted the urge to take "We have diagnosed that you are <madman>" from
the improv skit. But it was a close thing.
  

    
Whoops. Turns out the show was called "Hoaxbusters". My bad.

Give into your urges, <madman>. :)
  

    

How about "We have diagnosed that you are experiencing uncut Martha" ?

Perhaps I will wait, and bide my time...
  

    
MadMan~Resistance is futile, and all that. Sean will be immensely
flattered.

Rasputina fans~after seeing them mentioned twice recently here, I
ended by borrowing the _Transylvanian Regurgitations_ CD from Arlene
(www.pixiechild.com) after seeing it in her car tonight. We had an
adventure of myopic proportions, but maybe that should all go in the
blog. An new exclamation was discovered, however:

"Flaming Pentagrams, Batman!"
  

    
Neil~just caught the "Sorry, I'm wittering."
Hah.
I'll just look it up myself and save you the trouble of taunting me
with some dictionary definition.
  

    
Wow.. lots of thoughts on many things... but for now--

There's a new 4-part documentary on The Learning Channel about the
human face.  John Cleese hosts it (with Elizabeth Hurley!) and seems to
have had some part in conceiving it as well.

They're rebroadcasting the first 2 eps tonight at midnight, EST, I
presume.  Check it out.  JaNell-- there's a brief bit about the lack of
facial contact online, as per your comments earlier.

Anyway, here's the link:

http://tlc.discovery.com/convergence/humanface/humanface.html

It's interesting and funny, well worth watching.
  

    
Thanks, I'll go check that out, Len.
  

    
Len, re: The Human Face...
Cam & I were just discussing _A Fish Called Wanda_, specifically John
Cleese's charactor telling Jamie Lee Curtis why he preferred Americans
to other English just this evening!
  

    
heya! Got home from my ultra-long week-end and the backflip boy is now
wending his way back up north, and I am listening to some mix cds a
friend gave me at the Bristol cast party. Aside from a documentary crew
who don't have the first clue how to be subtle and non-invasive, the
season ROCKED. 

Closing week-end of the show was way nifty--I got to watch Chris who
plays Ivanovich (nifty guy who does sleight of hand for the last 20
years--his coin tricks are fab, but it's the card tricks that nail me
every time. And I'm sure our young friend Chris will be saying "I have
lemon!" in a Russian accent for years to come...) work a bit on Sunday,
and danced in the drum jam for a few minutes, because we got a
surprise visit from Robin Anders who used to work Bristol before he
went off and toured Japan and stuff... It was Of The Good. 

4:30 scene was longer than usuual, as the Pirates brought puppets on
stage, and broke Jim Owczarski, who plays Sir Edward Coke, her Maj's
Attorney General. 'Cause Jim is of the opinion that nothing in the
whole wide world is as funny as puppets hitting one another. Closing
week-end tends to involve as many puppets thwapping each other as
possible during Court of Common Pleas. But none of us expected it
during scripted scene... Took him a minute or two to remember what his
next line was.  Tho my fave bit was when Edmund Tilney got kissed full
on the mouth by Oderferious Thunderbottom, keeper of the Privies... 

I now need to catch up on laundry. And sleep. And laundry. And
correspondence. And grocery shopping. And laundry.

sleepy, sleepy me... and weirded that it's now almost Tuesday. Where
did my Monday go?
  

    
Hi everyone.

Sorry you were sick Neil.  I've been sick, myself, feeling a little
better now.

Thinking about the Tori Amos concert I went to a couple of years
ago.  I like the early albums a lot.  

(Thinking about looking for catalog to cite favorites, but I know
that's not necessary.)
 
Harper did a lovely edition of your book, at least.  I don't
understand the economics of bookselling, like you pros.
  

    
Have procured copy of Stoppard's Hapgood, primarily due to this topic. Am
currently reading The Real Thing, and working my way through the book
towards Hapgood, which is the fifth and final play included.

You guys are making me expand my library. Help, help. Oh, dear. Briar patch.
And all that.
  

    
Well, it's official; my second novel is now twice-rejected.  I'm
getting there, guys.  Slowly but surely, I'm getting there.
This weekend I went to Great Adventure, where I paid twenty dollars to
fall three hundred feet while attached to a thick cord, which was
actually a lot more fun than it sounds.  And besides, I haven't had a
flying dream in a while, so I figured I'd go with the next best thing.
I also saw *Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back*.  It's juvenile, and
immature, and pretty much obscene straight-on through, and, to be
honest, I can't remember the last time I had quite that much fun in a
theater.  You pretty much know whether it's your type of movie or not
already, I think, and if it is, you should definitely see it.
I'd bet that, after the first gig, people will be selling the Tori
tour books on eBay, which is one of the few things I think eBay is
legitimately good for.  Strange beast, this Internet is.
  

    
Will- Congrats on your latest rejection.  You will certainly get
there.

I had a friend walk out on Jay and Silent Bob.  I asked him why, and
he said it was for language.  I didn't realize that I had friends that
could get upset about language.  Live and learn, I suppose.

I really hope I get to see Tori this time around.  It feels like
Indianapolis will never go on sale...
  

    
Oh!  And I forgot!  I finally got *Howl's Moving Castle*, and, to make
it even better, *Castle in the Air*.  I grinned rather wide when I
read... well, the reason I'd bought the book in the first place.  I'm
250 pages in, and I'm hoping that the next 75 make me want to read the
sequel.

Thanks, Angelina.  I'm just hoping I get there shortly; this whole day
-job thing is gettin' old quick.  And, yeah, I could see someone
offended by language walking out of J&SB.  Course, someone offended by
language should have known.
  

    
I expect J&SB to be, well, what it is, and hope to see it soon.

Speaking of expanding libraries, I've been slogging through Norman
Mailer's _Ancient Evenings_, which manages so far to make sex seem both
boring and distasteful. Eeeeeew.
Luckily I know better. ; )
  

    
<lioness>, what an idea! Reading the script to Hapgood might actually
help me piece together what happened in it!

This topic has definitely been expanding my reading and listening
horizons.  Not to mention my knowledge of cool bookstores in
Minneapolis.  (I bought the Flash Girls CD and Martha's book from
DreamHaven, and the Flash Girls can now sit next to Steven Brust's
album "A Rose for Iconoclastes" which was ordered from Uncle Hugo's,
also in Minneapolis.)  If I ever go to Minneapolis, I'm set.
(Actually, I once *did* go to Minneapolis, and I even took my
rental car and bad map of Minneapolis and drove past Uncle Hugo's,
but it wasn't open late that evening.  And then I began to wonder
about the neighboorhood I'd gotten myself into and whether it was
a wise plan.
  

    
I dunno, Abbe, I find myself resisting a lot of Neil's recommendations
just for fear of being swallowed into Neilness...
it's almost a matter/antimatter thing.
  

    
Re: THE REAL THING.  Just this morning at Jerry's Deli saw a poster
for TRT with young Jeremy Irons and Glenn Close.  Now _that_ I might
commit salacious acts to travel back in time to see.  That is entirely
too much magnetism in one place.  <sigh>
  

    
Re Stoppard:  I saw Hapgood when it played at Lincoln Center (same
season as Arcadia!)  During the intermission, I spied Stoppard in the
lobby and I had to give my respects.  I told him it made me want to
invent board games.  He seemed kind of nonplussed. I hope he didn't
think that I meant that my mind was drifiting while watching the play. 
I just kept thinking about games that involve the idea of double
agents and uncertainty.

Elise-- if you can get through the first stage directions in Hapgood,
the rest of the play is a breeze.

But my absolute favorite Stoppard is The Real Thing... saw it in
London and again when it came to NY.  He has such amazing things to say
about the relationship between language and the heart.  I would have
liked to have seen it with Irons and Close, but I have a deep and
abiding crush on Jennifer Ehle (so does my wife, so it's ok) and I was
mesmerized by the sight of her wandering around the stage in a
bathrobe.  I'm not sure what role lust ought to play in appreciating
High Theatre, but who am I to say no?

Pamela-- my absolute fave theatre poster is the one with Raoul Julia
as Macheath in Threepennny.  Oh, to have seen that!

JaNell-- I keep a shelf in my office for Neil Recommendations (I bet a
lot of people do around here.)  It started way back in collge when I
wondered who GK Chesterton was.  I haven't been disappointed yet... I
have Neil to thank for a mess of new faves. (Though I've found _Jurgen_
to be tough going at times.)

Once you're done with Ancient Evenings, read the John Adams bio.  Even
haters of history must read the Adams bio.  It is the best biography I
have ever read.  Everyone must read it.  Everyone.

Drool.
  

    
Len, you just scared the hell outta me! I was sitting here boggling
"Since when is Steve Fassl on this board?" until I used my two
remaining braincells and checked your profile...