Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    
Dan--
See, and any mention of Manimal automatically makes me think of
Automan, which so few people remember that I'm beginning to think it
was a collective hallucination.

Neil-- The birds don't come to visit at my house, they come to stay.
We had a nesting pair of mourning doves living on the open corner of
one of our front porch columns, and a family of sparrows that has
recently relocated from atop a fluorescent shop lamp INSIDE the garage
to, of all places, the inside of an exposed cinderblock in the garage
wall. I had a bugger of a time figuring out where all that
cheep-cheep-cheeping was coming from.

Wow, I posted. Huh. ;)
  

    
Maure - strongly suspect that your nesting birds are Mourning Doves,
especially given the owl-like song.  In fact, on my "Birding by Ear" CD
(companion to the Peterson Guide to Eastern Birds), the Mourning Dove
is grouped with the owls.  Lovely birds, generally fairly calm except
for when one jumpy one can make a whole group act nervous.

Back when I was living with my first wife, we lived in an apartment
which faced a courtyard to the east, and the air conditioner for the
first floor was under the overhang for the second, and so fairly
sheltered from the weather.  Every year, we would get a pair of
Mourning Doves nesting there, and eventually, one or two
awkward-looking babies - like swans, they definitely become more
attractive as adults.

Dan Guy - Very Cool project you're currently working on.  Given your
mention of the unaired episode of "Freaks and Geeks", I'll get my vote
in early for you to bend somebody's ear to get that series put out on
DVD at some point (assuming the current project is a success).  It
would be hard to imagine a TV series more closely approximating my
adolescence, seeing as it was set in suburban Detroit in 1980, when I
was 13, and very much a geek.  I have almost all the Fox-aired episodes
on tape, but would gladly pay good money for DVD copies if they were
available.
  

    
Michelle,   I got it!! Wow, is it gorgeous! I absolutely love it --
and I have the perfect place for it, once I frame it. Your effort goes
way beyond the effort it took me to get the book, and I feel ashamed of
myself now, but I'm so glad because it's so cool. 

Rick, your suspicion is correct! I looked up mourning doves, and found
a site with pictures and .wav files. That is precisely what they are.
How cool, that you could guess what they were!

Dan,  hooray for the role that did not get away! I have a sick
fascination with Manimal -- it must have something to do with the
nostril flaring. They used to have mini-marathons of Manimal on Sci-Fi.
  

    
Maure - Oh good. Really, not much effort. Actually, it helped me
clean. The whole point of half of the cemetary photos I have is collage
work, and I have yet to do anything with most of them. Really, no
trouble. I'm just glad you like it.

DanW - Did I congratulate you yet? I'm thinking I didn't, so <insert
happy dance here>. :)

squeaks, who just realized she forgot to send off two emails... 
  

    
E-mail from Jouni:

This is PRICELESS!!!

Just HAD TO tell you this...

Got a following E-mail forwarded from Tara:

Congratulations! Content from your site has made it into this week's
Backwash Weekly Top 40 (http://adult.backwash.com/top40links.php), a chart
that tracks the week's most popular Internet content as determined by the
Internet community.

.... blahblahblah...

The content appears on the page titled: "Pandora's Toybox" and reads as
follows: 
"Baby Cakes"
"A very dark moralistic tale of human consumption.  Not for the faint
hearted."
http://ljconstantine.com/babycakes/page1.htm.
Average Rating 5.00

Backwash is a community of independent columnists who recommend the best
specific content on the net... blahblahblah...

Thanks again for providing your excellent content to the Internet community.

Sincerely,
The Backwash Team


Now I'm REALLY PROUD to be there (with you, Neil) in Top 40 (Babycakes was
#36 if I remember correctly) with such great articles/pages as...

'Bang Gang: A fascinating read about women who choose to participate in
gang-bangs...or sex with multiple males in one session. (I'm thinking I
wouldn't have that kind of energy!)'

or

'Missionary Zeal: Dare I confess this?? I, too, am a big fan of the
missionary position. It's comfy, intimate and hits the right spots. Do you
think less of me now?'

or better yet...

'Chicks with Dick-Tits: I'm speechless on this one. You gotta see for
yourself.'

BWAHHAHHHAHH!!!

I think 'Babycakes' was THE ONLY title that didn't have anything to do with
sex or porn...

I'm just wondering how did it end up in there? :-)

Jouni (still giggling and wipin' tears from his eyes)
  

    <scribbled by dfowlkes Tue 3 Jul 12 10:14>
  

    
"Neil Gaiman - Only slightly less popular then hard-core porn"

I dunno... I think it'll look nice on the paperback version of
Coraline. *grin*

The idea of Dick-Tit's is a bit Frankensteinian for my tastes, though.

Thanks again for all the support, everyone. I'm looking forward to
starting shooting tomorrow. I know a lot of things can go wrong, and
I'm not counting my chickens until they've made it all the way through
editing and post-production... but I'm really excited about this.

On Manimal: Mercy, I thought everyone had forgotten about that show
but me. Ok, how about this one.... does anyone remember the late 70's
McLean Stevenson sitcom "Hello, Larry"? It was on for a season (maybe
half a season?) and whenever I mention it people act like it's a fever
dream I had when I was a kid.

Dan Guy: Mmmmmm, Max Headroom. Go, Dan go!
  

    
Oh yeah, since I forgot in my last message - congratulations, DanW. 
Hope all goes well with the film.

Jouni - uh, congratulations!  That bit about the "Missionary Position"
seems like something from Nerve.com .  For anybody who wants to know
how dramatically my life, romantic and otherwise, has turned around
since the Relationship Hell I was in late last year (and again, thanks
to all who gave me advice and support back then - it really helped),
you can take a look at Topic 242 in the Eros conference........... 

Maure - given my experience with Mourning Dove's, it was a pretty easy
call.  One of the really fun things that came out of the regrettable
second marriage was a greater enjoyment of bird-watching.  We had a
feeder, and lived near the woods, so it was always fun to see who would
visit each day.  Things really got interesting when the hummingbirds
showed up - the closest thing to Alien Intelligence I've ever seen (and
much more aggressive than you'd think - very territorial).

I was rudely awakened by my cat using my head as a springboard on her
way to the window at 5am - have a lovely crescent-shaped wound on my
forehead, which I treated liberally with peroxide after I discovered I
was bleeding.  The upside was hearing some of the morning birds
starting to wake up - heard something that sounds like a thrush of some
kind, perhaps a wood thrush.  May get ambitious and drag myself out
some morning to see what I can see/hear.
  

    
Re: Birds - We live in a fairly suburban area of the south Bay Area,
and there are a bunch of birds at our feeders every day. There are also
about 5 or so squirrels that like to "clean up" what the birds have
dropped, their favorite spot to have lunch being directly in front of
the glass doors, where they can taunt the cats.

We've two finch families nesting in the vines outside our bedroom
windows, two dove families, as well as wrens and robins all over. I've
definitely come to appreciate birds more, as have my cats! Poor things
sometimes end up running head-first into the glass doors, they get so
excited! :)

So with that, Hallo :) I've been reading through several of these
threads, and you folks all look like a jolly bunch!
  

    
Dan - "Hello, Larry" was definitely not a fever dream of yours,
although I'd bet that Mr. Stevenson might disagree if asked directly.
Didn't he leave M*A*S*H in order to star in it? Many conragtulations on
the landing the role.:)

Dan Guy - VERY cool article, congrats to you also. I'm crossing my
fingers that these type of DVD boxed sets continue to do well. there
are so many excellent television shows out there that die young and
pretty,  and if they don't end up in syndication they're practically
impossible to find again. My personal crusade is an early 90's drama
Due South. Since TNT stopped running it I've wanted to cry...

Not to sound too morbid, but any Dr. Who fans may be interested in
several DVD collections coming out August 6th, among them: Doctor Who:
The Pirate Planet: written by Douglas Adams.

Also released is Doctor Who: The Tomb Of The Cybermen which was
apparently misplaced by the BBC archives for about 2 decades, only to
show up again in the early 90's.

I remember missing the Dukakis/Bush election results as a kid because
I was busy watching the good Dr. wage epic battle against, apparently,
a small army of garbage bags.

Meg - Hallo back to you. A pleasure. :)

Shawn - who used to wish Dr. Who and Sarah would show up to help him
battle the garbage.
  

    
Shawn -- we cut down the number of deaths by sticking the outlines of
plummetting hawks onto the tops of the windows.

Dan -- I quite enjoyed the UK version of max headroom. The US version
seemed so, well, clean.

Jouni -- well done.

Rick -- every now and again hummingbirds fly into the house, and I
have to lure them outside. They are odd.

Meg -- welcome...

.........


A favour to ask. We're updating neilgaiman.com with a redesign and a
lot of new and reorganised content.

One thing we really need is something for the comics page -- a short
essay/history/bibliography with links, covering all the important
things from Sandman to Mr Punch. Is there anyone out there who fancies
writing it? 
  

    

Hallo Meg!
  

    

Mr. Gaiman slipped in while I was waving at Meg.
  

    
neil,  what sort of links? to what?
  

    
oops, should have added that I'm not at all the person to do it. I
just wondered what kind of links you wanted included. For the
bibliography thing, doesn't Puck or GMZoe have a fairly comprehensive
biblio up somewhere?
  

    
Neil / DanGuy - what... the UK version was different? In what way?
grittier? Language? what? Oh hell... 
Does this mean that if/when our esteemed other Dan uses his powers of
persuasion to get a Max Headroom DVD that it'll have stuff that we
Yanks haven't seen yet?

Hello Meg, welcome aboard! We're all mad here, but our bark is worse
than our bite. *slather*

Shawn - Thanks, both for giving more credence to my power of memory
and for the support. 
  

    
Geezy Pete! It looks like a lot of congrats are in order! So
congratulations to just about everyone it seems....

Squeaks- AAHHH! What? When? Did you meet him yet? I want details! (you
know who I'm talking about) wow! I'm SO jealous. The concert was
great. I was front row center. He played a lot off of his new album
"Dust", which is wonderful and very, very hypnotic, and very different
from the previous albums. The other musicians were fabulous too,
especially the violinist. 

FINALLY got my books from Amazon: Harlequin Valentine, Stranger Things
Happen, and the Essential Ellison. It was funny because the UPS guy
handed me the package after I signed the computer thingy. The box was a
lot heavier than I thought it would be; it nearly landed on my toes
(and I've even been working out lately). I laughed and said, "Ha! I
forgot. Harlan Ellison is in here!" The UPS looked at me strangely and
then smiled "you mean Harlan is in *there*?"
"Well, it sure as hell feels like it."
Anyway, HV was fantastic! (I know. Everyone else read it a long time
ago. I'm late.) I love your version, Neil, and plan on buying it for
everyone I know next Valentines day. And the author biography made me
fall out of my chair. 
Stranger Things Happen amazed me. All of it. "Travels with the Snow
Queen" is my favorite. 

Danw- Oh dear god, not the sex-with-stuffed-animals thing again!
Tee-hee. I do like the rather off-beat discussions. I guess that's one
of the reasons I come here;)

Meg- Hello!

Erynn, who agrees with Jack Black. Nicotine gum does in fact taste
like Paprika. Orange Paprika. Mmmmm.....
  

    
*waves to Shawn, Neil, Linda, DanW, Erynn, and everyone else who may
be lurking out there*

Thanks for the warm welcome! :) If you're all mad here, then I shall
feel perfectly at home!


(Meg, who finds that Cats just cannot understand the idea that 
'Helping' her with her work involves sitting quietly, over ---> there.)
  

    
*waves to Shawn, Neil, Linda, DanW, Erynn, and everyone else who may
be lurking out there*

Thanks for the warm welcome! :) If you're all mad here, then I shall
feel perfectly at home!


(Meg, who finds that Cats just cannot understand the idea that 
'Helping' her with her work involves sitting quietly, over ---> there.)
  

    
Aigh. My apologies for that one, that was a browser flub. 

*finds a corner to sit in, and a nice pointy hat*
  

    <scribbled by dfowlkes Tue 3 Jul 12 10:14>
  

    
Email from Jouni:

NEED HELP

As you might know, Maure did a great poem (if you haven't read it, go to
http://www.eurydiceunderground.com/teaparty.html )

Now, In order to illustrate it right, I need pictures of victorian-styled
clothes (and decorating would be nice bonus). Does anyone know any good
websites??

Dan, Stagewalker, Rick, Neil -- Heh, thanks... I think ;-)

Jouni
  

    
Dan-guy: Waitaminute... I've seen the UK pilot then... cause I
remember it being very grimy, Big Time TV, and Bryce being an evil
little shit. Actually, I remember that movie/pilot better than the
series...

I'm getting serious "I want it" jitters from this conversation...
  

    
Jouni - Here's what I have in my bookmarks ...

http://www.victoriancostume.org.uk/gallery.htm (tons of images! lists
dates for the fashions, but doesn't have much on men's fashions.)

http://www.costumes.org/pages/victlinks.htm (this is nothing but
links, and there are a ton of them! you should be able to find
everything else from here)

Also, a quick Google search on "victorian costume" pulls these sites
up. :) Google is the best!

Good luck! Will we get to see the finished product?

(Meg)
  

    
Dan Guy -- if you want to do it, e-mail Julia Bannon at Harpercollins
(julia.bannon@harpercollins.com) and volunteer...