Just checking to see if this function is functioning again.

Well, this weekend has turned out very well, despite a change of plans. I was looking forward to hosting my friend Pat for the weekend, from Kentucky. She planned to drive up and spend the night here so we could hang out, and go to see Neil Gaiman together on Sunday. But right in the middle of putting finishing touches on my apt cleaning/furniture rearranging/massive dusting work, I got a phone call from her that she wasn't going to be able to come after all. She tried, and got halfway here, but she hadn't been able to rent a car with cruise control (really busy time in her town this weekend, nearly all the cars rented out!), and so she was having serious back problems. We both agreed that was not a good thing, and I didn't want her to be miserable while she was here and have an even more painful drive home. So, no company after all. But now I have a sparkling apt for when my sister comes to visit later this month. I may just go live in a motel for a week to make sure it stays clean. :-)

Oh--side note on all that cleaning, I had to postpone some of it because for the second time in a week, a squirrel died on our transformer and the power went out! This time we even saw the swan dive of the poor departed thing--my neighbor glanced up and saw it fall off! The electrical company worker who came out to fix it said it's quite common this time of year with young squirrels--I think they're teenage squirrels, born in the spring and out on their own now, reckless, daring, totally ignoring mama squirrel's advice to never ever run on those big gray things on poles...The power guy couldn't put up an animal guard because he couldn't get his truck in to the right spot, but we are supposed to have a crew coming soon to do that--"and I'll have them replace the whole transformer too, it's antiquated," he said. Gee! THAT inspires confidence! Maybe it wasn't entirely the rodent's fault!

So, on Sunday I went with to see Neil Gaiman. Wow. What a great guy! I'd seen him once before at San Diego Comic Con, but he was only talking about his movies at the time, Stardust and Coraline, and anyway that was with 6,000 complete strangers. Not exactly up close and personal. This time, it was a really nice event. The Cleveland Public Library brought him in as part of their Writers and Readers Series of lectures (later this year they'll have Kareem Abdul Jabbar--interesting choice of author). He gave a very nice talk, first reading aloud from his newest children's book, Odd and the Frost Giants (hilarious! he did different voices for the Norse gods trapped in animals' bodies and it was so cool), then taking questions ("And I'll be giving the answers," he said). He told us about his next project, a nonfiction book on China and The Journey West by some monk, or something like that, I'm afraid I didn't get it stuck in my head properly (but you can read all about it on Neil's blog and twitter feed and so forth, the man is all over the internet) but it sounds really neat. He's been several times to China. He also talked about how he's going to buy pie for everyone on the staff at HarperCollins because his book The Graveyard Book (have you read it yet? Very cool! You need to right now!) has been on the bestseller lists for 53 straight weeks. He got some questions from kids, which was very cute--"what's your favorite color?" and you know, he said he's never been asked that before. Sure sounded like he really meant it. He said green--and that if he's not stopped he tends to paint walls in rooms apple green, which makes him happy but makes other people wonder "are they meant to be that way?" Talked about weird things people do at signings, like asking him to sign body parts (someone here asked if he remembered signing the bottom of a girl's foot in Portland), or having him sign their arm then running out to a tattoo parlor and getting the autograph tattooed on! Authors who inspired him were C.S. Lewis, Tolkien (funny story about winning a writing prize as a kid and asking for Return of the King as his book prize--because he had read the first two over and over again but his library didn't have a copy of the third one and he was dying to find out if it ended well!), Harlan Ellison and Roger Zelazny. Talked about doing audiobooks--he is quite an acomplished narrator. He loves telling stories in all forms, and the "second best thing about parenting" has been that he got to read stories aloud to his kids every night. When the last one got too old for it, he had to turn to audiobook narrating to satifsy the urge. He said he had a bit of a cold and was a little hoarse, but he sounded great to us. He ended with a reading from The Graveyard Book and then we lined up for autographs. I hadn't even expected him to sign, since I knew there would be a lot of people in attendance, and nothing was mentioned on the library's website about signing. But I had brought my Graveyard Book just in case.

Well, library staff were totally blown away by the response; about 50 or more people were there by 11am, and he wasn't speaking until 2pm. By the midafternoon apparently over 1,000 people came, but many had to be turned away because there just wasn't room. The auditorium seats 615 people, and then they filled up an "overflow room" with another couple hundred, and had his speech piped in there. I was so glad I'd known to come early, even though we were later than I'd planned and got nearly the last seats in the main auditorium. When he first came up to the mic to talk to us he said he had just been in to see the folks in the overflow room, to show he was really there, and hoped to have their questions brought in. So about halfway through, he was notified by a staffer and he looked up to see a few people at the door. He addressed himself to the overflow folks: "I am meeting with your representatives now!" and took a few questions from them. It was funny, and reminded me of the first couple of seasons of The Ellen Show where she had the Riffraff Room full of overflow crowds.

Unfortunately this huge response meant they didn't handle the autographing part quite as well as I would have hoped. The lady in charge asked by a show of hands "who was here before 11am?" and then said that those with their hands up would get to be first in line. It was totally on the honor system--now you know that twice as many people were in that part of the line as had actually come early. Neil requested that people with kids form a separate line, and that was great, they got to meet him first too which I totally applaud. But the rest of us were told they'd call us by section; guess what? we looked around and hardly anyone had stayed in their seats! Everyone piled out to queue up in the hall. It would have been so much better if they had had numbers to hand out at the door as we arrived, to give us some kind of order for the line. So Dianah (hklbry) and I were nearly at the end of the line because we hadn't jumped into right away. Di didn't need his autograph, she already had one, but she was a saint for keeping me company. We tweeted our status and talked to total strangers, it was rather like a sci fi con by the end of the THREE AND A HALF HOURS we waited. After the first 45 minutes of no movement, with me beginning to dread ever getting back in to even take a closeup photo of him never mind the autograph, the line suddenly began moving very quickly, and we wondered what was up--well, they were having everyone come in and sit down, and handing us a numbered post-it note at the door. (Finally, some organization!). Then my friend Rollie from CPL would call out numbers in batches of ten. I was 308. Oh my. I saw a couple of friends there; Julie wore this really nifty outfit she'd made for a horror movie premiere, and I thought she fit in perfectly well to the Gaiman world. What do you think? :-)



We gradually trickled down to see him. It was cool to see the variety of folks there to see him, and from farflung places. Several from the Carolinas, Pittsburgh, one guy from Atlanta (the library director had asked where out of towners were from, and upon hearing Atlanta he called the guy down to the stage and gave him a front row chair all by himself!) One Case Western Reserve Univ. student was announced as needing a ride back to campus if anyone was willing: and he got a volunteer. There was a busload of students from Oberlin College there, and after so long their bus had to leave, but several wanted to stay to get an autograph if anyone was willing to give them a ride back. (Another announcement made, but I don't think they got any takers. They did line up for a nice group photo with Neil, and we saw him asking all of them their names. Very friendly guy.)

OK, you know I eventually got there, here's the photographic evidence above and below.



Sweet sweet guy, I am so glad I was able to be there. He's at the Toledo Library today, but not doing signings, his hand is very sore! (He'd mentioned at one point sometimes needing to grab frozen veggies to ice his hand, and sure enough, Dianah saw some under his table!) Thank you thank you Mr. Gaiman for your patience yesterday, you made a lot of people happy.

Oh how I wish I'd known about this sooner, I so would have tried to drive down there for it! But this is cool news anyway, I had no idea there was a Secretariat movie in the making. Neato!

Disney's Secretariat filmmakers offer "70's Happening" at Churchill Downs

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