British God
Last night was a night that I try to keep
sacrosanct. Most nights of the week, I am either traveling or I get sucked into
working late with meetings and late-evening frantic calls from a director who
does not seem to consider my family one of my top priorities... So, on Monday
nights, I try not to be out of town and I block off several hours so that I can
leave the office at 4 and go to pick up Sören. Ms Pope works on Sunday
afternoons and Monday evenings giving chair massages at an upscale grocery
store, so I arrive (about 5 minutes later than I need to be) and get Sören
and we check out candles and soaps and beauty supplies, and then leisurely
decide where we want to eat dinner on our weekly
date.
Seems like there were times when we were always doing fun things on Mondays, also, like going to some parking lot carnival and sweet-talking the carnie ticket-takers, for whom safety is not the penultimate concern, into letting Sören ride the rides that are really reserved for children three inches taller. In the last several months, we haven't had that kind of Monday night date, however, whether it's because we are pressed for time, or maybe it's that there is a great book waiting for us at home and we both want to get back and find out whether Jim Hawkins is going to get discovered in the apple barrel by Long John Silver...
Last night, we planned on going to BookPeople after dinner at Veggie Heaven and catching Neil Gaiman. She and I have talked about the Sandman comics, and she helped me buy a book for DanE's daughter (The Day I Swapped My Dad For Two Goldfish), so she had a good idea of who he was. Sören was a trooper in agreeing, with no argument, to go last night, though, because he is really my preference. It's not like this is Keith Graves or something...
Seems like there were times when we were always doing fun things on Mondays, also, like going to some parking lot carnival and sweet-talking the carnie ticket-takers, for whom safety is not the penultimate concern, into letting Sören ride the rides that are really reserved for children three inches taller. In the last several months, we haven't had that kind of Monday night date, however, whether it's because we are pressed for time, or maybe it's that there is a great book waiting for us at home and we both want to get back and find out whether Jim Hawkins is going to get discovered in the apple barrel by Long John Silver...
Last night, we planned on going to BookPeople after dinner at Veggie Heaven and catching Neil Gaiman. She and I have talked about the Sandman comics, and she helped me buy a book for DanE's daughter (The Day I Swapped My Dad For Two Goldfish), so she had a good idea of who he was. Sören was a trooper in agreeing, with no argument, to go last night, though, because he is really my preference. It's not like this is Keith Graves or something...
We got there at about 6:30, and there were
already about 350 or 400 people there. I chastised the book clerks (hopefully in
what came across as a good-natured way) for not booking the empty Whole Foods
shell for the signing, since the building has been empty since WF moved across
the street. But I bought my copy of Anansi Boys, got a ticket to claim my place
in line (C40), and the two of us trooped upstairs. Then, the enormity of the
crowd caught my attention. There were people sitting on the floor for as far as
my eyes could see: knee-to-knee, calf-to-back... We hopped and scotched across
the rows of folks, and then found a surprise, behind one of the bookshelves was
a cluster of plush chairs, and one was beckoning to us! "Come, sit here! I'm
free!" I asked around, but nobody had claimed it. So we started to flip through
the copy of Anansi Boys. Every once in a while a storedork would go up on the
little makeshift stage/microphone setup and tell everyone what the rules were
(to get anything signed, we had to have purchased a copy of Anansi Boys here; we
could take pictures of Neil, but he would not be posing, they would call out a
run of 30 numbers at a time, and those people would get in line for signing --
the rest of us could shop or go downstairs and drink lattes and ask ourselves if
theater is really dead...). The storedork was pretty amusing -- to keep us
pliant, he would tell us repeatedly, "I love you guys. It's all going to work
out..." To which some smart-guiness replied, ""My heart's been broken
before!"
Sören started to get a little antsy, and we could not make our way to the children's section, so I helped her check out the art book section. She found a book on how to draw flowers and butterflies, borrowed a few pieces of paper and a pen from me, and went to town. Oh, I love a child who can entertain herself.
Finally, Neil came out. He kicked off with a few introductory words about Anansi Boys, including that it is not, really, a sequel to American Gods. Rather, he knew as he was writing American Gods that one character was really borrowed from a book he had not written yet. And now it is time for that book to be written (or, more accurately, published since he already wrote it). He also pointed out that American Gods was a serious book, and that Anansi Boys is intended to be funny, not so serious. He told an anecdote about the book he wrote with Terry Pratchett, that after he wrote American Gods, that a reader told him, "Now I know how you and Terry wrote it. You would write all the chapters, and they would be very dark, and Terry would stand behind you sprinkling happy fairy dust, trying to introduce some levity..." Perhaps, Anansi Boys is to show the vast audience of readers Neil has captured that he is more than witty, he can be downright funny.
And then he launched into Chapter 5. Which is funny. In a way that may not seem funny to a seven-year-old. And may not seem funny to the father of a seven-year-old, who is constantly checking his daughter's countenance to se if she gets the humor, and hoping she doesn't... But I loved it, and can barely wait to finish the interminable book, The Electric Field, so that I can start reading this myself.
Neil opened the signing up for Q&A from the audience, which met my low expectations for vapidity of expression. One dipwit asked how Neil can wear a black leather jacket on a 105-degree day. Duh! He thinks he is a rock star! And we treat him like one. Of course he is going to wear black leather. And one person who had trouble speaking since his head was up his ass asked what Neil thought of the comics industry and movies made out of comics. Neil basically said, "I guess you didn't see Catwoman, did you?"
On that note, there were also some questions about Neil's movies, including whether Sandman would ever be made into a film. Personally, I don't know why anyone, especially comic fanboys, care about movie adaptations of the comics. Name a movie that was better than the initial comic or graphic novel. We have Sandman already -- why do we need a movie of it? Who would be Sandman? Ashton Kruchter? Good Lord.
Well, as the signing started, I did the math. There were 100 people with A in their ticket number, and another 100 with B in their number. And then me. That means there are 240 people in front of me. If you figure 1 minute for each book signed, that means it would be four hours before my book got signed (assuming everyone who preceded me in line stayed for their book to be signed). Even if you cut that to 30 seconds per signing, and assume that half of the people in front of me would tire of waiting (not likely), it would still be an hour before I could get my book signed. It was 9:00, and if I waited until 10 to get Sören home, I would be dead.
Instead, we checked out books for other purposes, buying the third Nancy Drew book (The Secret of the Bung-hole, I think) for Sören and finding an activity book on Egyptology for my niece, KissMe, who just got her tonsils and adenoids out, and is, by all accounts, completely miserable.
Sören started to get a little antsy, and we could not make our way to the children's section, so I helped her check out the art book section. She found a book on how to draw flowers and butterflies, borrowed a few pieces of paper and a pen from me, and went to town. Oh, I love a child who can entertain herself.
Finally, Neil came out. He kicked off with a few introductory words about Anansi Boys, including that it is not, really, a sequel to American Gods. Rather, he knew as he was writing American Gods that one character was really borrowed from a book he had not written yet. And now it is time for that book to be written (or, more accurately, published since he already wrote it). He also pointed out that American Gods was a serious book, and that Anansi Boys is intended to be funny, not so serious. He told an anecdote about the book he wrote with Terry Pratchett, that after he wrote American Gods, that a reader told him, "Now I know how you and Terry wrote it. You would write all the chapters, and they would be very dark, and Terry would stand behind you sprinkling happy fairy dust, trying to introduce some levity..." Perhaps, Anansi Boys is to show the vast audience of readers Neil has captured that he is more than witty, he can be downright funny.
And then he launched into Chapter 5. Which is funny. In a way that may not seem funny to a seven-year-old. And may not seem funny to the father of a seven-year-old, who is constantly checking his daughter's countenance to se if she gets the humor, and hoping she doesn't... But I loved it, and can barely wait to finish the interminable book, The Electric Field, so that I can start reading this myself.
Neil opened the signing up for Q&A from the audience, which met my low expectations for vapidity of expression. One dipwit asked how Neil can wear a black leather jacket on a 105-degree day. Duh! He thinks he is a rock star! And we treat him like one. Of course he is going to wear black leather. And one person who had trouble speaking since his head was up his ass asked what Neil thought of the comics industry and movies made out of comics. Neil basically said, "I guess you didn't see Catwoman, did you?"
On that note, there were also some questions about Neil's movies, including whether Sandman would ever be made into a film. Personally, I don't know why anyone, especially comic fanboys, care about movie adaptations of the comics. Name a movie that was better than the initial comic or graphic novel. We have Sandman already -- why do we need a movie of it? Who would be Sandman? Ashton Kruchter? Good Lord.
Well, as the signing started, I did the math. There were 100 people with A in their ticket number, and another 100 with B in their number. And then me. That means there are 240 people in front of me. If you figure 1 minute for each book signed, that means it would be four hours before my book got signed (assuming everyone who preceded me in line stayed for their book to be signed). Even if you cut that to 30 seconds per signing, and assume that half of the people in front of me would tire of waiting (not likely), it would still be an hour before I could get my book signed. It was 9:00, and if I waited until 10 to get Sören home, I would be dead.
Instead, we checked out books for other purposes, buying the third Nancy Drew book (The Secret of the Bung-hole, I think) for Sören and finding an activity book on Egyptology for my niece, KissMe, who just got her tonsils and adenoids out, and is, by all accounts, completely miserable.
Posted: Tue - September 27, 2005 at 04:55 PM
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Published On: Sep 28, 2005 07:06 AM
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Published On: Sep 28, 2005 07:06 AM