Journal

Showing posts with label Ig Nobels. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ig Nobels. Show all posts
Sunday, December 05, 2010

There's a Weeping Angel In My Honey and Other True Things

I went to LA to spend Thanksgiving with Amanda's family, but before Thanksgiving Amanda and I were guests on Kevin Smith's inaugural "Starf*cking" interview, at his Smodcastle, a fifty-seat theatre in Hollywood, in front of a live audience. It was a three hour show, or longer - Kevin interviewed me and Amanda, then Amanda played, then I read "Being An Experiment...", after which I inveigled Kevin and Amanda into helping me do a scene from AMERICAN GODS as a three-hander.

You can listen to it soon: http://smodcast.bandcamp.com is where it'll go live (for a 90 cent donation for all of the three chunks - or more, if you are feeling affluent, all of which goes to The Wayne Foundation) (this is The Wayne Foundation's Mission Statement).


(Photos by Allan Amato)

This is Amanda at soundcheck.

And once that was done I felt like I was off-duty and stopped taking photographs, so the adventures that followed are pretty much unrecorded, photographically. I saw lots of friends, travelled by train (Christopher Salmon's film of The Price got its kickstarter funding as I was having breakfast on the train from Los Angeles to Santa Fe. 2001 of us funded it. You are all awesome), played the melodica with Amanda's three-year old nephew Ronan, rewrote a film script, and copy-edited the American Gods Tenth Anniversary edition.
I meant to blog about NPR's Science Friday Broadcast of the 2010 Ig-Nobel Awards, (as described at http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2010/09/banned-books-and-ig-nobels.html) at http://www.npr.org/2010/11/26/131608853/silly-science-honored-with-ig-nobel-prizes (you can download the evening in podcast form here).
Then I got home, in a snowstorm, to find a Weeping Angel in a jar of honey. (A photograph and explanation of sorts can be read in http://www.birdchick.com/wp/2010/12/lets-get-weird-with-honey/).

I've spent most of the last day on deadlines. But sometimes I've walked the dogs. (I love this photo. It's so hard to get them both looking in the right place.)

Cabal is walking better each day.

The whole Snow thing is completely new to Lola, who tends to walk with her tongue out, licking as she goes.
The white dogs tend to vanish in the snow when I'm walking them, especially at dusk. Really vanish. From the front you have noses and eyes. From the rear, they're invisible...


These photos above were all taken with my Nexus 1 phone, using the Vignette camera app. (I talked about it on NPR at http://www.publicradio.org/columns/marketplace/tech-report/2010/12/neil-gaimans-favorite-photography-app-vignette-for-android.html)

The one below was taken with a real film camera - a Lomo LC-A+. The Lomo people have just done an interview with me (you can read the questions here at http://www.lomography.com/magazine/competitions/2010/12/02/lomoamigo-neil-gaiman-interview-rumble-winner-announcement) and offered any of my blog/Facebook/Twitter followers a 15% discount on anything from the Lomo shop (here's the US one) if you put in NEILHIMSELF as your checkout code.



Right. Tomorrow, more bloggage. And not just a list of stuff I meant to tell you...

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Thursday, September 30, 2010

Banned Books and Ig Nobels

It's BANNED BOOKS WEEK!

Would you like a graphic novel reading list? The Huffington Post gives you a slideshow of the ten most challenged graphic novels...


The list will probably surprise you.

...

Tonight I found myself on the stage of the Ig Nobel Awards, sitting in a row of seven seats, each of which had NOBEL LAUREATE on a piece of paper except for the one that said NEIL GAIMAN, and that made me feel both pleased and (in a very good, almost reassuring way) insignificant.




The Ig Nobels are funny and glorious and exist on the intersection of science and silliness.

I gave a speech -- a 24 second speech, followed by a seven word summary -- on Writer Identification. The theme of the evening was Bacteria. I'll post a link to the video of the evening when it goes up, and you can see what I said. (And how fast I said it.)

...

Right. Bed now. (Oh. If you're in New York on Saturday, Lemony Snicket wants to buy you a free ice cream: http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/childrens/childrens-book-news/article/44661-three-words-free-ice-cream.html)




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