Yesterday morning Lorraine mentioned that there was a new restaurant in town. It just opened. She ate there last week. I should check it out. Real food. Good food. In the afternoon, I went down to the gazebo at the bottom of my garden to write, where I was soon joined by Maddy, who wanted me to help her write a story. (It was easy. She'd say "I don't know what to write next." I'd say "Well, what happens next?" She'd say, "Well, then the lights go up and a lady comes out onto the stage." And I'd say "Well, then why don't you write Then the lights went up and a lady came out onto the stage?" "Oh. Okay.") Occasionally we'd hear distant sirens.
This morning, Lorraine said, "You remember that restaurant I told you about yesterday?"
"Of course."
"That was the sirens. It's not there any more."
Ah well. That was quick.
...
Police arrested six shivering protesters on Monday after they braved cool temperatures and staged a nearly naked pillow fight outside Harvard University to promote animal rights.
The five women and one man, members of the group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, were arrested on criminal misdemeanor charges, said police spokesman Frank Pasquarello.
"This is nothing compared to what the animals go through," protester Karla Waples, wearing nothing but pasties to cover her nipples and a pair of panties, shouted to reporters as she was led in handcuffs to a waiting police van.
This is the tragedy of being an animal. Most of them never get to have pillow fights. Only a select few coddled pets even have their own pillows. And, outside of the kind of websites that spam-advertise themselves as being a revealing vision of life as it is lived whenever beautiful women visit farms or zoos, I rather doubt any animals get to wear pasties.
I'm just glad our attention has been drawn to this.
...
Neil,
After seeing some of the video clips of you in the gallery section of the site, has anybody ever told you that you have a downright creepy resemblance to Alan Rickman? (Dogma, Harry Potter movies, etc.) Just something that struck me as odd.
Larry Myers
West Lafayette, IN
Well, I don't think I look like Alan Rickman. And I used to be dead puzzled when people would compare us. That kind of stopped when I was on breakfast TV in Finland, last year. I was sitting in the studio, waiting for the second half of the interview to start, facing a huge bank of TV screens, with all the various things that were on TV in Finland at that point playing on them, along with several movies and things. And on one of the screens I noticed Alan Rickman. And then I shifted in my seat, and he shifted in his seat, and I realised that it wasn't Alan Rickman at all. And, as I explained to Lotta, my editor, who had taken me, I sort of understood the comparison to Rickman at that moment. I still don't think I look like him, mind...
But then, TV screens do odd things. Dave McKean and I were standing next to Malcolm McDowell in a New York TV studio for twenty minutes, occasionally making small talk, before he was escorted over to the interview seat, and Dave saw him on the screen and said "My god, that's Malcolm McDowell."
...
In case you are interested in yet another article about the popularity of graphic novels, there was an article in Sunday's South Florida Sun-Sentinel titled, "Comics animate reading skills in school library."(http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/local/palmbeach/sfl-pcomics27feb29,0,2896576.story) The article states, among other things, that at the Boynton Beach High School library, graphic novels "account for 1 percent of the library's collection but 50 percent of the books students check out."
Sincerely,
Alice, a librarian in Chicago
That's fascinating.
Do you think there's place in the market for a series like Sandman nowadays?
I would think so. It all depends on what you mean by "like". I've seen some very bad comics that were trying to be like Sandman over the years, and some very good ones. I really hope that being "like Sandman" means respecting your audience, and not being like anything else that's out there, rather than "copying Sandman" which is just going to lead to something not as good.