1. Neil and I Exchange Views
I’ve been to three Neil Gaiman events in the last year and a half, and they just strengthened what I already knew since reading Good Omens over 10 years ago: he is a god. Yes, it's the same the same Neil I wrote about a year ago, and this event is basically the exact same thing as the others, and what more could I have to say about him, and really who cares, right? Well, fuck you, it’s my blog, and you can go read Digg or something.
Anyway, Neil did a reading for Cody’s books in Berkeley, to promote Fragile Things, which came out last October (I think I mentioned something about listening to the audio book all over Arizona).
The Shuffle Gods are playing Killing in the Name, and I really need to concentrate to type anything that's not now you’re under CONTROOOOL! This was the first Rage song I ever heard, and you never forget a first love. Hey, I was 18, I didn't know about commercialism, I just knew I loved the intro.
I got there 4 hours in advance, as I usually do, and spent most of the day waiting outside with the other two girls who got there that early. We sat there and chatted in the nice weather for about three hours before anyone else showed up, and it was actually very enjoyable - you meet interesting people while waiting in line for events like this. We were still just sitting on the sidewalk next to the theater, minding our own, talking Firefly and Galactica, when this tallish, black-leather-jacket-wearing dude, walking down the sidewalk, suddenly stops and looks down at us. I look up to him, and say "Hello", trying my best to sound like it totally ain’t no thang, "Hello", says Neil Gaiman back to me.
"Hello". Says Neil. Gaiman. Says. To me. Somewhere, Bowie's As the World Falls Down is playing, and I'm feeling very woozy.
Some other words were exchanged between Neil and the two other girls (who were still the only other people in line), but everything got sort of hazy for me at that point. I didn’t dare say another word - I knew that if I opened my mouth, I would just repeat endlessly "He stopped. He said Hello. To me. Didja see that? He. Talked. To me." Louise the Browncoat (who had an amazing Serenity bag) actually got up, shook His hand, and effortlessly said a complete sentence or two. How do people do that?
And then He apologized that He has to go, and followed His handler into the theater.
It’s odd how no music player on Earth seems to have a decently random shuffle, and each player seems to favor different artists in my collection. MusicCube just played another Rage song – Wake Up. Not just a fun song, but also the closing title theme in the first Matrix. Remember how cool that first one was? How long? Not long. 'Cause what you reap, is what you sow!
The event was a reading + Q&A, with no signing. No signing meant a very long reading, and a pretty long Q&A session. Neil Gaiman was charming, funny, and utterly captivating, and there was no way to leave that event and not be a total Gaiman fan (unless you’re, like, totally dead inside - yes, I'm talking to you).
2. Neil Day at SJSU
A mere two months after the historic reading at Berkley, my favorite SJSU student tells me that He’s coming to campus the following week. Joy!
We made a day of it, and I spent it hanging around the campus, feeling pretty depressed, because it wasn't that all those chicks (I mean, uh, young ladies building their education) were so young, it was that I was so much older. Most graduate students were 10 years younger than me! Now that I think about it, there must have been some male students there, and I bet they were a lot younger than me too. But for some reason, I just don't remember anything about them. Huh.
Neil Day was composed of two parts: a live interview early in the day, and a reading in the evening, and both were lots of fun. The interviewer asked Neil the same questions all the other interviewers ask, and Neil gave him the nice detailed-yet-concise answers that he must have composed years ago for the sake of those less-than-original interviewers. There were some new ones, though, and some fun Gaiman anecdotes. Marina was with me, and she was totally beginning to understand why I'm into Him so much. Neil is a great reader, and in the evening session He read some new stuff that He’d never read in public before, which caused the reading to run longer than planned, because he didn’t realize that the last story would take a whole hour to read. Exhausting for Him, wicked fun for us! He also read a fun story named “Orange”, which is all written as answers to some long questionnaire form, only we never get to see the questions , and we sort of had to guess them from the answers. Cool. After the reading, everyone formed a huge line to buy some Neil stuff (they don’t make you, but you really should buy stuff at a signing, because the organizers pay to have these events) and get it signed. I caved in and bought The Ultimate Sandman (which I promised myself not to buy, but it’s just too damn pretty!), and also asked him to sign a poster-ad for the event, and he wrote “me ->” so it would be clear that the girl (Death) is not, in fact, him.
The best part of a signing is the 30 seconds when you get to tell your idol how much you want to have his babies, and if it’s Neil Gaiman, there's actually a chance of something resembling a conversation (for the complete opposite experience, go to a Frank Miller signing). While He was drawing a little sketch in my book (another Neil-only feature, when there are 200 people in line), I used my time for a conversation that went exactly like this:
Fanboy: So did you end up visiting Israel in October?
Him: Yes, I was guest of honor at iCon.
Fanboy: Did you get to see any of Israel, or was it just the con?
Him: I got a morning in Jerusalem, but other than that is was iCon all the way. But it was very bizarre... I have never signed so many bosoms as in Israel.
Fanboy: Ah... I've never been so proud to be Israeli! <laughing - somebody please shut me up>
Him: It only only started getting worrying when I realized how old some of these bosoms actually were.
In my standards, that actually went pretty well. Thank you Neily! But who was that guy butting in on my Neil time? Get the fuck outta there!
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