Journal

Friday, December 02, 2005

Being or becoming Harpo

On Monday, January the 9th 2006 at 8:15pm, I'll be In Conversation at the 92nd ST Y in New York, as part of the WIRED Speaker series -- tickets $25, $12.50 for students. There's a green advert that Wired have done I'll link to, which makes me look astonishingly like Harpo Marx. Or perhaps I've always looked like Harpo Marx and have just never noticed it before. Or possibly all of us, as we age, drift inexorably to a state of perfect Harpo Marxness.

(Damn. Well, I could upload it and link to it if I were doing this in blogger. And I'm sure there's a way to do it from this thing. I just don't know what it is. Of course I still have to cut and paste this entry into blogger once it's done, and could do it then, but it feels like that would be cheating.)

Still, there's a website -- details -- http://www.92y.org/shop/event_detail.asp?productid=T%2DLC5WR01

(Edit in Blogger. Sod it. It's just not funny if you can't see the ticket advert. Here's the pdf file of the advert. www.neilgaiman.com/journal/14.01_wl_Gaiman_v2.pdf. Harpo all the way.)

I was just reading the details of the Mirrormask DVD at the DVD Town website you posted, and I was shocked to see that in the details section the DVD is listed as being non-anamorphic widescreen. This can't be true, right? I mean, no one in this day and age could possibly release a DVD that is not anamorphic. It's something so easily done these days on even consumer-grade DVD authoring software.

If you have time, could you find out from whoever would know whether this little detail is true or false? Whether it is anamorphic or not would greatly affect the shelf-life of this release.

Thanks!
Mike


I assume that's a goof from DVDTOWN -- everywhere else has it listed as 1.85:1 Anamorphic Widescreen -- for example http://www.moviesonline.ca/movienews_6497.html. (The Amazon listing at http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000BT97AO/qid=1133462936 doesn't say anything either way, though.)

...

There's a mysterious package downstairs from Lisa Snellings. It's about the size of a large fridge. I suppose it probably contains The Statue (the story of The Statue is in http://www.neilgaiman.com/journal/2005/02/nook.asp) now all repaired and ready for her to turn up and install it back in its nook once more.

But then, knowing Lisa, there could be anything in that box. It's huge. In the middle of the night it could open, and something -- anything -- could scurry out...

Assuming it is the statue and not a scuttling murdery thing, I'll try and put photos of it all installed up here. Given that, when properly installed, it moves, I may even put up a small moving picture of it... if I can figure out how to do that on this system.

...

My friend, artist Kelli Bickman, pointed me at her new website, www.kellibickman.net. I love her stuff, although I find myself remembering fondly the days when she was a starving young artist and you could get a painting off her for a smile and a jam sandwich. Now they cost thousands, and she's doing books and notecards and things. There are many lovely pictures on the site, and a fun quicktime -- very quicktime -- film of her painting.

...

Hi Neil,
I hope all's well with you. Anyway, I've a question which I could not find the answer to in your FAQ nor over the web.

After much searching, I recently managed to purchase a Sandman #1 for a fair sum of money but after payment, as I was heading home, I noticed that there's the words New Format printed below the issue number. So now I'm wondering if the issue I have isn't the first printing and that if there was an edition printed before this in an "old format".

Would you know what this New Format means?

Many thanks.

-Kerry


New Format means "not printed on that cheap yellow newsprint with the old dot Sparta printing process but instead printed on nice white paper with a printing technique that will itself be superseded any year now by the kind of colour printing that they have in comics today."