Sunday, November 14, 2004
OKAY HI.
fiddler's green was so great. even though i was sick. grrrr. i will try to document this as fully and accurately as possible. if you are not a neil fan, or if you do not like the overuse of capslock and/or exclamation points and/or words that aren't really words, you might want to skip this entry.
OKAY so first my mom came and we left grinnell and drove to minneapolis and found the hotel and stuff. and then we checked in and i met anna and tim, 2 of our 5 roommates. (dude, that was an expensive hotel.) i'd technically already met anna once before, at a tori concert. so i go and put my stuff away and check into the con, getting my spiff name badge ("Renata/heyjupiter") and schedule of events and gorgeous con program book. then we go and mill around a bit and meet a few people from the world's end (the off-topic section of the neil boards, henceforth the WE, maybe. or the we. or we-ers. anyway.) and then we go and sit down for a reading from
anansi boys, which neil announces will not actually be a reading from
anansi boys but rather from a short story he's just finished. it was the one for holly's birthday he mentioned on his blog. i believe it was called "sunbird" and it was v.g.: quirky and funny and just "..." enough and, well, you know, it's by neil. without giving too much away-- it's about an epicurean society who believe they have eaten all there is to be eaten. (and it's not "babycakes".)
and then he did read a bit of
anansi boys which was delightful and i cannot wait for that book to come out. neil + funny + mythology = even-more-fangirly-renata-than-usual.
and then he talked a bit about
mirrormask and showed us a few scenes and it looks SO COOL i can't wait to see it now. he talked about he and dave mckean getting to stay in jim henson's old house for a bit to work on it, and neil found an old goat puppet in the basement and put it on his hand, and then discovered an attached bulb to make it blink, so he blinked the goat... but it was old latex and so his eyelids slowly disintegrated.
anyway, so he explained that he'd love to show us all of what there was of
mirrormask but there were 400 of us and something would end up on aint-it-cool-news and then the jim henson workshop would send out hitmen-- "i'd open the door and there would be fozzie and kermit, and headless chickens in my bed and that sort of thing."
so anyway. what we saw of
mirrormask was the very opening, where helena (the protaganist, a preteenish girl) fights with her mom-- they're a circus family, and helena wants a "normal" life, and then there's some very beautiful and cool circus scenes. and then a later scene, in helena's dreamworld, where there are these amazingly creepy big music boxes singing the carpenters' "closer to you" (you know-- "why do birds.. suddenly appear, when you are near?") very creepily (neil said he and dave both agreed it was a very creepy song, and if they could just make it a little creepier it could be in the movie. so they did. it is, apparently, the only song in the movie, except for end credits music.) they are very clearly Dave McKean Music Boxes. they turn helena into a princess.
it is creepy and Dave McKean and great.
oh, and i forgot to mention that we were sitting in the 2nd row for this, which put me directly behind caitlyn kiernan, who is very tall, and alessandra (who was next to me) directly behind jill thompson, who looks
exactly like you think she should.
and uh, yeah. and then... wossname? there was a we-er party and i went for a bit, and everyone would say "
hey renata!" and we'd giggle because, hey jupiter. and we're easily amused. but then i was like... waah i'm sick, and i did feel a little awkward since i only post on the boards sometimes and didn't know everyone as well as they knew each other mostly. but as i was leaving someone said to me "i hope i can talk to you later this weekend, you're never on the boards anymore and i just... your website really helped me become a bigger neil fan." and i felt sorta warm and fuzzy. but also feverish and sick, so i went back to the room and tried to sleep. and i was so stuffed up that i slept with my mouth open and i was snoring and i drooled allll over the place and it was way, way gross.
and um, the next morning... alessandra (one of my other roommates) and i went to get coffee and cold medicine. and then... let me go get my schedule. okay. first i went to
sandman: behind the comic which was a panel discussion with karen berger, charles vess, todd klein, jill thompson, and caitlin kiernan. i left in the middle because i wanted to make sure i could get to the dealer's room before stuff started selling out. i bought a v. cool fiddler's green t-shirt which has on the front a cartoon of neil and todd klein (i assume it's supposed to be todd klein, it looks like him and otherwise the joke doesn't make sense)-- anyway, todd is sitting on a mushroom and holding a big book and saying (in destiny's lettering) "neil, neil! what happens next!" and then neil is saying "..." and then below that it says "fiddler's green. a sandman convention."
and on the back it says some other stuff which i can't read because i'm wearing it right now, but i know it says "HOOM" in big letters.
and i bought seasonal gifts for a few of you. *SHIFTY EYES* and then i went and got my mom cuz i thought she might want to see some of the jewelry they were selling and she shiftily asked me if there was anything i might want for a seasonal gift and i shiftily said maybe the neil
live at the aladdin video and she shiftily bought it and hid it in her purse.
shiftily. and then she and i went out for a quick lunch and got vietnamese food, and i felt sorta sick and then i took some more cold medicine.
and then i went and got in line for the neil and todd signing. i was feeling dizzy and i didn't think it was just because of neil, although, neil!!!
so first i had todd sign
brief lives and the fg program book. i told him he looked like my spanish professor. i don't know why i told him this. he told me he did not speak spanish and i said that was okay i didn't speak it very well either.
and then, neil. asdk. i will try to recreate this as well i can.
i hand him my
endless nights to sign and he looks at my nametag to personalize it. he says, "oh, you're a a tori fan" and i was confused and i said "well, aren't we all" because i forgot my nametag said "heyjupiter" and didn't realize this until like an hour later but anyway! so then i said "um i'm renata, which you know because you just looked at my nametag, and um, i have a website, about um, gods, the um, gods" and he said "oh it's you! i meant to tell you--
american gods is part of the philadelphia public school curriculum now, and it also includes your website" and i said "oh! um, cool. um, can i please get my picture with you?" and he said "sure, come on to the other side of the table" and i had to walk all the way around and i thought about crawling under it but even in my cold medicine haze i decided that was a bad idea and anyway, then someone was taking it and i said to neil, "i feel um bad, the first time i met you i was like 'ee!' and now i'm like, 'i'm stoned on cold medicine' and he said something like it was okay.
because he's neil.
awww.
aaand in my books? in
endless nights he drew the coolest damn dream ever, in silver on the black front page. it's SO COOL. and then in the fg program book, after i had told him who i was, he wrote "love renata (squiggle) neil gaiman." THAT's RIGHT, NEIL LOVE SQUIGGLES ME.
and then i ran up to the room and put some books back and got some new ones and got in line for the charles vess & jill thompson signing. there's a couple behind me and they are very nice.
oh, my god, i need to go finish the fucking b&s so i can give it to brad so he can copy edit it so we can have a non-bad publication. rest assured, i will resume this narrative soon.
okay i'm back. oh, and then i went to a cool panel called "the currency of belief in sandman" and it was very cool although it wandered very heavily off topic and i was like, "but i don't knoooow anything about wonder woman" but then they talked about stuff i knew about again and that was cool.
and then i went back to the room and crashed for a bit and then tried to get some juice and realized that i had somehow lost my money so i had to pay for a little bottle of juice with my credit card and i felt dumb. but then i went back to the room and found my money and that was good.
and then i went to the end of another panel about the kindly ones which seemed cool. and the guy said he was collecting academic papers for a book called
the sandman papers and would any of us be interesting in contributing? and a few people said yes and i said yes too and then they were all like, i'm a professor/librarian/grad student and i went up and was like "um i'm just a grad student but i have this mythology thing and i'm an english major and stuff" and he said "you're probably a better writer than most grad students, so sure" and i said yay. and he said what would you want to write about and i said maybe something about "ramadan" and orientalism? and he said cool.
i paraphrase.
anyway. and then...thingie. oh, neil and the president of the comic book legal defense fund talked about the first amendment and it was SO HOTT. remember what i said about neil + mythology + funny? like, square that for neil + first amendment. jesus. and i joined the
cbldf because they were pretty persuasive. but seriously, some of these cases... so ridiculous. cops hve better to do than go into the adult sections of comic stores, buy comics marked "adult" and then press charges against the store clerks for selling obscene materials. TO ADULTS. and because it's comics it gets overlooked and because it's comics they think they can (and have been getting) get away with it.
um yes. and then i felt bad because my mom was like "do you want to go out for dinner??" and i was like "nooo i want to sleep" but i was so tired. so i did. and then i went to the cbldf benefit auction and there was some amazingly gorgeous and cool stuff and all of it it way, way, way out of my price range.
WAY.
but it was fun to watch, and neil was a very funny auctioneer. and then i went back up and changed for the masquerade ball: black dress, black fishnets, black shoes, and crazy japanese mask. except i had no peripheral vision with the mask so i had to keep taking it off or else running into corners.
and i talked to some we-ers, and they were all nice and cool and wonderful, and there were some awesome costumes. and one girl had this big, knee-high paper mache meatwad. and she stuck it in the middle of the dance floor and was talking pictures of it, and i had to go up to her and be like, "excuse me... is that meatwad?" and she was like "YES!!" and i was like "that's AWESOME! did you make it?" and she was like "yeah! it's just paper mache!" and then she showed me pictures on her digital camera of meatwad in other random places at the con and it was so great. meatwad girl, wherever you are, you are amazing.
and then some people were getting their pictures taken with neil in their costumes and i was kind of lurking around and not wanting to interrupt but then other people would go interrupt and then people would interrupt the interrupters and i was still stoned on cold medicine but i kept like, creeping closer to neil and i was like "this is getting ridiculous, i should just go ask," and hten i was like, "but that would be RUDE" and then i was like "but right now i'm just being CREEPY" and then shield, aka gmzoe, aka the neilboard moderator, aka a neil bnf, aka a very nice man came up to me and was like "are you too shy to talk to neil?" and i was like "i don't want to interrupt!" and he was like, "but you should!" and i was like "taht would be rude!" and then he PUSHED me into neil and i was like "aah!" but like, just then someone was interrupting neil from the other side so i was pushed into him as he was turning toward someone else and he didn't like.. see me? and then shield did it again and was like, "she's too shy to talk to you" and i was like "but i didn't want to interrupt!" and i was all sheepish. baaaa.
and then um i got my picture taken with neil again, once with the mask and then once without and then i was like "dammit i should have some really brilliant mythological question to ask neil that's not about the forgotten god" but i was STONED ON COLD MEDICINE AS I MIGHT HAVE MENTIONED plus i suffer from neil's-presence-retardation, but i did manage to say something like, "i realize how warped i've been by your works.. i wrote this story for my fiction class, and there's this fortune teller named cassie and no one believes her and no one in the class got it except the professor and they had never heard of cassandra and they're all english majors..." and he said, "yeah, that's like when people say to me 'oh, i'm sure
american gods could be kind of interesting, i mean if you had your masters degree in mythology or something' and they just don't know." and then i think we both might have said something else but i don't remember. anyway... he sounded kind of almost bitter? not bitter exactly but it made me think that you know, he probably appreciates having fans who actually get it, and will look stuff up if they don't.
i'm still kind of stoned on cold medicine which explains the lack of punctuation.
(seeing the copyedits for the b&s stuff i just finished will be interesting.)
but it was cool. and then there was a post-ball party in this dome sort of thing with 80s music. and jill thompson was dancing with a big blue bunny she had won at the auction. the bunny had 3 ears and 6 limbs.
it was fun and i talked to some more we-ers.
and then i was tired and went to sleep and then i woke up again.
and um.. i got coffee again. and i got 10 cents off for knowing the answer to the trivia question at caribou! it was about
grapes of wrath. who said being an english major wasn't profitable?
then i went to a panel called "evolving the establishment" about the mainstream-ification of comics. and this one very comic-book-guy-but-nicer guy was talking about "civilians" reading
sandman, and someone was like "what do you mean by civilian?" and he was like, "oh, people who were never into comics before but started reading sandman" and i was like, oh. hi. and then the guy from dream haven books talked about how he thought it was important to be able to appeal to "civilians" and geeks alike and i raised my hand and told about acme and metropolis and how they were across the street from each other and metropolis went out of business and i attributed it directly to acme being nicer to me about neil-related things than metropolis was.
because clearly. instant karma eventually caught up with metropolis comics.
aaanyway.
and then neil interviewed todd klein about lettering, and seriously, you don't think much about comic book lettering (except i do, because ihad previously read interviews about/with todd and gone "damn, you're right") but seriously, todd klein is so so good. i mean each of the endless having their own script? and it's all so perfect. aaah. anyway, that was interesting. AND NEIL SAID THAT DREAM HAD STARTED OFF WHITE BUT GRADUALLY TURNED BLACK BUT ONLY HE AND TODD HAD KNOWN THIS AND TODD HAD PROBABLY FORGOTTEN. (todd had.) he said the only time it shows up in the series is when it flashes back to dream creating the ruby but you can't tell because everything is red.
so, a tidbit.
and then neil got interviewed by the friendly-comic-book-guy guy and this other woman who i didn't really know who she was except she had written some short stories and she was there.
and then there was a panel with all the guests of honor (neil, todd klein, jill thompson, caitlin kiernan, charles vess, and karen berger) and um... let's see. jill told about working on
brief lives with neil and he suddenly said "i've got it, i know exactly when and why delight became delirium!" and she said "really?! how?!" and he said "i'm not telling." and he's not. but he said he wanted to do a 3-comic delirium story with jill sometime in the future and it might be that. he also said he might someday do a story about how the first despair died.
neil is a big tease.
a random thought while i'm thinking it: we all had our official convention nametags, and neil had one too. it said "neil gaiman" and somehow this was just funny and unassuming and wonderful.
um.. and then i said goodbye to people and left.
but i just... at the panel, all the guests kept saying how NICE neil's fans are. and it's TRUE. everyone was just SO NICE. so door-holding and pleasantry-exchanging and "why yes that is a sandman #842348, do you want to look at it?" awhile ago i was wondering if the neil fandom was especially nice or if the rent fandom was especially bitchy. and i think it's both. but i'm so in love with the whole neil fandom.
neil fans: you are great.
i think this might be the Longest Blog Entry Ever. sorry non-neil fans, i just really wanted to get all my recollections down.
posted by ~renata~ at 8:55 PM
(1) commented with care
