http://living.scotsman.com/index.cfm?id=495422006
http://www.theherald.co.uk/features/59172.html
http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,14936-2111143,00.html
http://arts.guardian.co.uk/reviews/story/0,,1743843,00.html
Box of Delights
I'm happy. It was as good a performance as it could be at this stage of the show (which is to say, it'll keep getting better as little fixes that aren't there yet go in and the actors become more comfortable and so on, and I'm sure it'll be a better show in ten days than it is right now, but it's a stonker right now).
Nervously awaiting the reviews tomorrow, but I suspect that anyone who didn't like it wouldn't ever have liked it, if you see what I mean. Happy crowd. Happy cast and crew. Happy author. And Dave McKean was glad I'd dragged him up to Scotland to watch it.
Nervously awaiting the reviews tomorrow, but I suspect that anyone who didn't like it wouldn't ever have liked it, if you see what I mean. Happy crowd. Happy cast and crew. Happy author. And Dave McKean was glad I'd dragged him up to Scotland to watch it.
What a difference a sleep makes....
It's a couple of minutes before midnight on a Tuesday night and loud Seventies dance music is making my hotel room shake from some function immediately below, and I find myself disliking the hotel, if anything, even more than I did before, which surprises me. I think I dislike it mostly because it fancies itself a posh, upscale hotel, and it isn't, it barely scrapes by at mediocre.
On the good side, the hotel did, eventually, find my laundry. (Which came back -- clean -- five days after my first attempt to give it to them.)
Many, many letters like this one awaited me when I got on line...
Mr. Gaiman,
Were you being subtle or did you not notice that the picture of James Blunt shown at the link is actually a photo of you? Although the two of you look a bit alike, that picture is exactly the same as one of you that pops up when you refresh the page on your journal. The wisps of hair are the same, the highlights on the leather are the same, etc. I guess you realized, and I'm just stating the obvious, but I wanted to be sure.Yup. I'm pretty good at spotting pictures of me, so I knew it was me all along. I thought it was a bit funny that, somewhere out in the world, a newspaper picture editor had picked up a picture of me and put it into his newspaper as a photo of James Blunt, who isn't me. I sort of figured that I could simply put up the message I received and the link to the picture, and people would go "Ah, a James Blunt article run with a picture of Neil instead of James Blunt. How mildly amusing."
Instead, people wrote helpfully to let me know that it was a picture of me. Which means, I think, I should probably have included an explanation.
....
After a night's sleep, I feel sunny and bright and no longer desire to burn down the hotel and dance in the ashes. It's WOLVES IN THE WALLS today! And how could anyone feel grumpy on a day like that?
Here's a picture of me a couple of days ago, in front of the very small merchandise area.
Yes, I know I need a haircut.
On the good side, the hotel did, eventually, find my laundry. (Which came back -- clean -- five days after my first attempt to give it to them.)
Many, many letters like this one awaited me when I got on line...
Mr. Gaiman,
Were you being subtle or did you not notice that the picture of James Blunt shown at the link is actually a photo of you? Although the two of you look a bit alike, that picture is exactly the same as one of you that pops up when you refresh the page on your journal. The wisps of hair are the same, the highlights on the leather are the same, etc. I guess you realized, and I'm just stating the obvious, but I wanted to be sure.Yup. I'm pretty good at spotting pictures of me, so I knew it was me all along. I thought it was a bit funny that, somewhere out in the world, a newspaper picture editor had picked up a picture of me and put it into his newspaper as a photo of James Blunt, who isn't me. I sort of figured that I could simply put up the message I received and the link to the picture, and people would go "Ah, a James Blunt article run with a picture of Neil instead of James Blunt. How mildly amusing."
Instead, people wrote helpfully to let me know that it was a picture of me. Which means, I think, I should probably have included an explanation.
....
After a night's sleep, I feel sunny and bright and no longer desire to burn down the hotel and dance in the ashes. It's WOLVES IN THE WALLS today! And how could anyone feel grumpy on a day like that?
Here's a picture of me a couple of days ago, in front of the very small merchandise area.
Yes, I know I need a haircut.
The wolves are running...
Yesterday's lunchtime preview of Wolves was a bit of a shambles, albeit a fun one performed in front of 500 people. If things could go wrong they did (my favourite disaster was Cora being strangled in a telephone cord and falling over, followed by two hundred and fifty people turning to the person next to them and saying, "That was good. I wonder if she meant to do that?"). It was like an offering on the altar of Murphy's Law.
Which meant that Saturday's evening preview went perfectly. It was like a little gift from the gods. It was funny and cool and, although it has some way to go, it now feels like we're working on the real thing. I'm not worried about whether we'll be able to get it to come together by Wednesday night -- it came together, and now we just have to make it perfect.
And by "we", of course, I mean "everyone else". They don't need me any longer -- so I'm going off for a couple of days.
This is a good thing.
Hi Neil, Has anyone ever told you that you look a lot like James Blunt?http://i82.photobucket.com/albums/j279/bacchus007/NeilBlunt.jpg One of your readers from Honduras posted this picture from a Honduran entertainment magazine on the web boards, but I wasn't sure if he sent the link to you.Please related the fluffiest of thanks to your website person who made the picture change every time you refresh the page on the blog section.
Happy Spring! Michelle
I am amazed and know not what to say.
...
Here's the cover of the Harper Perennial Edition of CORALINE that will come out later this year.
Which meant that Saturday's evening preview went perfectly. It was like a little gift from the gods. It was funny and cool and, although it has some way to go, it now feels like we're working on the real thing. I'm not worried about whether we'll be able to get it to come together by Wednesday night -- it came together, and now we just have to make it perfect.
And by "we", of course, I mean "everyone else". They don't need me any longer -- so I'm going off for a couple of days.
This is a good thing.
Hi Neil, Has anyone ever told you that you look a lot like James Blunt?http://i82.photobucket.com/albums/j279/bacchus007/NeilBlunt.jpg One of your readers from Honduras posted this picture from a Honduran entertainment magazine on the web boards, but I wasn't sure if he sent the link to you.Please related the fluffiest of thanks to your website person who made the picture change every time you refresh the page on the blog section.
Happy Spring! Michelle
I am amazed and know not what to say.
...
Here's the cover of the Harper Perennial Edition of CORALINE that will come out later this year.
The Dangers of Godwin's Law
There's a nice article about me and WOLVES IN THE WALLS in The Times -- http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,22874-2096186,00.html -- don't know how much longer it'll be up though.
A few people wrote in wondering if I'd read this story and what I thought of it: http://technology.guardian.co.uk/news/story/0,,1737444,00.html -- do I think it's a Freedom of Speech issue or an Online Digital Rights issue or something. And I don't have much of an opinion on it, really. It demonstrates that the Internet is still the real world, which people tend to forget. And it's still, among other things, a publishing medium, even if it's one in which people tend to call each other Nazis in much the same way that they nod casually at each other on the street in real life.
And at least the outline of the case as presented in the Guardian makes sense. (Whether there should be UK libel laws is another question, and what will happen the first time someone from country A sues someone from country B in the UK or in France because what was written was viewable on the internet in the UK or France will be another matter altogether, and I bet it'll happen.)
(If my memory serves, Elton John was quoted as saying, after winning a major libel case against The Sun, "You can say I'm fat, bald and untalented, but you mustn't tell lies about me." )
...
Yesterday I sat drinking tea in the hotel lobby and wrote a big chunk of The Eternals, and then typed it, and then wrote an email to my editor and Mr Romita letting them know I was attaching it, and proudly got on with other things. This morning I got up to find a very friendly email pointing out that I hadn't actually attached anything to the email. Oh well.
While I was writing the Eternals, and carrying on with the FRAGILE THINGS introduction, The Wolves in the Walls team were adding the song Nick and I wrote the other night to the show, rechoreographing the wolf-party, and doing lots of lighting things. I think the show that will go on today will have about 40% of the changes and suchlike in it. It'll still keep evolving until Wednesday night, I expect.
And I had dinner last night with my cousins Sharron and Laurence, which is always a treat.
There's an article in Icelandreview on why Stardust isn't doing lots of major filming in Iceland (http://icelandreview.com/icelandreview/daily_news/?cat_id=16571&ew_0_a_id=192388) and a little one from the usually fairly savvy SFX magazine that managed to be the worst-written short article about Stardust I've read, and it's not like there haven't been a lot to choose from -- http://www.sfx.co.uk/news/stars_and_stardust. In it Jane Goldman is described as "oddly married to Jonathan Ross", leaving me to puzzle about what was so odd about their marriage - was the service performed by someone dressed as Pirate Elvis, or is it something strange about the marriage itself we ought to know? -- while the final paragraph about Stardust being a comic-book movie only, er, not actually ever a comic-book, is a little miracle of the art of filling space.
...
We're experimenting with random photos appearing on the blog page, to try and add visual variety. Only a couple right now, but there will be more -- I'll go and ransack the archives. My thanks to the unofficial neilgaiman.com web-elf for actually making it happen.
..................................
I've known David Stemple -- as my friend writer and musician Adam Stemple's father, as my friend writer Jane Yolen's husband, as a wonderful, wise, witty man in his own right -- for as long as I've lived in the US, perhaps longer.
My thoughts and love at this time to Adam and to Jane and their families. Jane tells it better than I ever could: http://www.janeyolen.com/journal.html
A few people wrote in wondering if I'd read this story and what I thought of it: http://technology.guardian.co.uk/news/story/0,,1737444,00.html -- do I think it's a Freedom of Speech issue or an Online Digital Rights issue or something. And I don't have much of an opinion on it, really. It demonstrates that the Internet is still the real world, which people tend to forget. And it's still, among other things, a publishing medium, even if it's one in which people tend to call each other Nazis in much the same way that they nod casually at each other on the street in real life.
And at least the outline of the case as presented in the Guardian makes sense. (Whether there should be UK libel laws is another question, and what will happen the first time someone from country A sues someone from country B in the UK or in France because what was written was viewable on the internet in the UK or France will be another matter altogether, and I bet it'll happen.)
(If my memory serves, Elton John was quoted as saying, after winning a major libel case against The Sun, "You can say I'm fat, bald and untalented, but you mustn't tell lies about me." )
...
Yesterday I sat drinking tea in the hotel lobby and wrote a big chunk of The Eternals, and then typed it, and then wrote an email to my editor and Mr Romita letting them know I was attaching it, and proudly got on with other things. This morning I got up to find a very friendly email pointing out that I hadn't actually attached anything to the email. Oh well.
While I was writing the Eternals, and carrying on with the FRAGILE THINGS introduction, The Wolves in the Walls team were adding the song Nick and I wrote the other night to the show, rechoreographing the wolf-party, and doing lots of lighting things. I think the show that will go on today will have about 40% of the changes and suchlike in it. It'll still keep evolving until Wednesday night, I expect.
And I had dinner last night with my cousins Sharron and Laurence, which is always a treat.
There's an article in Icelandreview on why Stardust isn't doing lots of major filming in Iceland (http://icelandreview.com/icelandreview/daily_news/?cat_id=16571&ew_0_a_id=192388) and a little one from the usually fairly savvy SFX magazine that managed to be the worst-written short article about Stardust I've read, and it's not like there haven't been a lot to choose from -- http://www.sfx.co.uk/news/stars_and_stardust. In it Jane Goldman is described as "oddly married to Jonathan Ross", leaving me to puzzle about what was so odd about their marriage - was the service performed by someone dressed as Pirate Elvis, or is it something strange about the marriage itself we ought to know? -- while the final paragraph about Stardust being a comic-book movie only, er, not actually ever a comic-book, is a little miracle of the art of filling space.
...
We're experimenting with random photos appearing on the blog page, to try and add visual variety. Only a couple right now, but there will be more -- I'll go and ransack the archives. My thanks to the unofficial neilgaiman.com web-elf for actually making it happen.
..................................
I've known David Stemple -- as my friend writer and musician Adam Stemple's father, as my friend writer Jane Yolen's husband, as a wonderful, wise, witty man in his own right -- for as long as I've lived in the US, perhaps longer.
My thoughts and love at this time to Adam and to Jane and their families. Jane tells it better than I ever could: http://www.janeyolen.com/journal.html
Mostly wolf-work...
The second ever performance of Wolves was a lot better than the first. It all sort of worked, even though none of the fixes have been done. They laughed and they screamed in all the right places. Brilliant...
There seems to be a certain amount of confusion as to which performance of Wolves on Saturday I'm doing the official Q&A-discussion after. It's actually the Saturday evening one, but because there are a lot of people who think it's the Saturday afternoon one, I'll probably do a chat after that as well. Even if it's just in the Tramway cafe.
...
"How would you describe the music of Wolves in the Walls?" I asked Nick Powell, who wrote it.
"Why?"
"Because they just interviewed me for Radio 4's Front Row and I didn't know how to describe it and neither did Vicky. We have to say something to reporters that isn't just, it's not like anything you've heard before, or it's all sorts of different stuff."
"Yeah. Don't say 'it's all different' because that makes it sound like it doesn't have an overall coherent point of view, or it's just pastiche or something."
"All right. So how could we describe it?"
Nick pondered. "Er... somewhere between Bjork and Sondheim...? I don't know. Ask Martin Lowe."
We went and asked Martin, the show's music director.
"Well, it's not like anything you've ever heard before," he said. "And eclectic makes it sound a bit dated...." then he brightened up. "It's haunting," he announced.
"Oh god," said Nick, gloomily. "Don't say it's haunting. That's what journalists always put in descriptions of my stuff when they don't know how to describe it. Haunting."
"But it is haunting," said Martin.
On the bus back from the Tramway we ran into the props person, who was off getting equipment to allow them to turn a tuba into a popcorn popper. "How would you describe the music?" I asked her.
"Er. It's sort of all really different," she said. "I mean, it's not like anything else, is it?"
Sigh. I just hope someone writes something about it we can steal, using neither haunting nor eclectic...
.....
Dear Neil,
I hope you will write a nice introduction to your new short stories collection like you did with Smoke and Mirrors. I loved how you explaned how you got the idea for each story, and whenever I finished a story, I would go back and see where it originated. I hope you include this in your new collection's introduction. Just providing a little feedback!
-Robin
You know, I got an email today from my editor at Morrow, the longsuffering Jennifer Brehl, saying much the same thing. Only she pointed out it was due on her desk in February.
Yes, there will be one. I hope to finish it tomorrow. Wish me luck.
...
Why did you not tell us about this?!
http://www.billboard.com/bbcom/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1002234221
I think I sort of did... at least, I mentioned it back here at http://www.neilgaiman.com/journal/2003/03/dont-know-how-youll-feel-about-this.asp. But I was waiting for them to announce it to mention it on the blog. And now they have. So I have...
There seems to be a certain amount of confusion as to which performance of Wolves on Saturday I'm doing the official Q&A-discussion after. It's actually the Saturday evening one, but because there are a lot of people who think it's the Saturday afternoon one, I'll probably do a chat after that as well. Even if it's just in the Tramway cafe.
...
"How would you describe the music of Wolves in the Walls?" I asked Nick Powell, who wrote it.
"Why?"
"Because they just interviewed me for Radio 4's Front Row and I didn't know how to describe it and neither did Vicky. We have to say something to reporters that isn't just, it's not like anything you've heard before, or it's all sorts of different stuff."
"Yeah. Don't say 'it's all different' because that makes it sound like it doesn't have an overall coherent point of view, or it's just pastiche or something."
"All right. So how could we describe it?"
Nick pondered. "Er... somewhere between Bjork and Sondheim...? I don't know. Ask Martin Lowe."
We went and asked Martin, the show's music director.
"Well, it's not like anything you've ever heard before," he said. "And eclectic makes it sound a bit dated...." then he brightened up. "It's haunting," he announced.
"Oh god," said Nick, gloomily. "Don't say it's haunting. That's what journalists always put in descriptions of my stuff when they don't know how to describe it. Haunting."
"But it is haunting," said Martin.
On the bus back from the Tramway we ran into the props person, who was off getting equipment to allow them to turn a tuba into a popcorn popper. "How would you describe the music?" I asked her.
"Er. It's sort of all really different," she said. "I mean, it's not like anything else, is it?"
Sigh. I just hope someone writes something about it we can steal, using neither haunting nor eclectic...
.....
Dear Neil,
I hope you will write a nice introduction to your new short stories collection like you did with Smoke and Mirrors. I loved how you explaned how you got the idea for each story, and whenever I finished a story, I would go back and see where it originated. I hope you include this in your new collection's introduction. Just providing a little feedback!
-Robin
You know, I got an email today from my editor at Morrow, the longsuffering Jennifer Brehl, saying much the same thing. Only she pointed out it was due on her desk in February.
Yes, there will be one. I hope to finish it tomorrow. Wish me luck.
...
Why did you not tell us about this?!
http://www.billboard.com/bbcom/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1002234221
I think I sort of did... at least, I mentioned it back here at http://www.neilgaiman.com/journal/2003/03/dont-know-how-youll-feel-about-this.asp. But I was waiting for them to announce it to mention it on the blog. And now they have. So I have...
First Wolf thoughts...
My plan to write a blog entry in my hotel room last night foundered when I noticed that I was actually fast asleep on the sofa in my room with a computer on my lap, and I stumbled off bedwards.
So, yesterday I saw a dress rehearsal of WOLVES IN THE WALLS, and the very first preview. It's got some amazing stuff going on -- the cast are fantastic, the musical arrangements are wonderful, the technical wizardry is wizardy. The kids laughed, held their breath, (and, in the case of one small girl in the seats behind us, announced "I'll have nightmares, I know I shall" proudly and loudly to all of her friends during a scary bit).
It's not quite there yet -- which is why shows get previewed, and worked on, and why you have to do it in front of an audience to figure it out. If this was a novel we would be in the editing period, where you chop out bits that didn't work as part of the novel (no matter how well they work on their own) and stick in bits that glue it together as a whole. I gave lots of notes to Vicky and Julian, the directors, and to most of them they replied with "Yes, we know," or "That's being built right now but it hadn't arrived yet" or "it's already being taken care of". Nick Powell and I wrote a song last night for near the end, for a place where a song had been taken out because it didn't work but nothing had been put in to replace it and that didn't work, and I think (or I hope) that the new one will do the job.
So, yesterday I saw a dress rehearsal of WOLVES IN THE WALLS, and the very first preview. It's got some amazing stuff going on -- the cast are fantastic, the musical arrangements are wonderful, the technical wizardry is wizardy. The kids laughed, held their breath, (and, in the case of one small girl in the seats behind us, announced "I'll have nightmares, I know I shall" proudly and loudly to all of her friends during a scary bit).
It's not quite there yet -- which is why shows get previewed, and worked on, and why you have to do it in front of an audience to figure it out. If this was a novel we would be in the editing period, where you chop out bits that didn't work as part of the novel (no matter how well they work on their own) and stick in bits that glue it together as a whole. I gave lots of notes to Vicky and Julian, the directors, and to most of them they replied with "Yes, we know," or "That's being built right now but it hadn't arrived yet" or "it's already being taken care of". Nick Powell and I wrote a song last night for near the end, for a place where a song had been taken out because it didn't work but nothing had been put in to replace it and that didn't work, and I think (or I hope) that the new one will do the job.
Hotel Internet.
It's not the fact that, at four pounds fifty an hour, this is the most expensive hotel internet I've ever encountered that irritates me.
It's the fact it comes in one hour lumps. And at the end of an hour I'm meant to put my credit card number etc in again. A fine way to make money, I think, and to make sure that your guests don't come back.
(Resolves to find wireless service in central Glasgow.)
Tomorrow I get to see a dress rehearsal of WOLVES. I do not know what to expect, knowing how much this show has grown in the last month or so. Truth to tell, I sort of like not knowing what to expect...
PS. I am worried about Fred the Unlucky Black Cat, back into the vet again, in my absence.
It's the fact it comes in one hour lumps. And at the end of an hour I'm meant to put my credit card number etc in again. A fine way to make money, I think, and to make sure that your guests don't come back.
(Resolves to find wireless service in central Glasgow.)
Tomorrow I get to see a dress rehearsal of WOLVES. I do not know what to expect, knowing how much this show has grown in the last month or so. Truth to tell, I sort of like not knowing what to expect...
PS. I am worried about Fred the Unlucky Black Cat, back into the vet again, in my absence.
Where's Neil When You Need Him?
The first pencilled art from John Romita Jr has started coming in on The Eternals, and it's quite marvellous. When you're writing comics, for me anyway, the best moments are all where you see the art coming in, and go "Oh, you can do that? Well, then, I can do this, and that, and that..." and that's how this feels. Sequences still to come are already getting bigger in my head, moving around, getting odder.
...
I read an article in the UK Sunday Times a few weeks ago that ended by announcing that blondes would be extinct very soon, with the final few fair-haired people dying off in Finland two hundred years from now. Which seemed a bit like utter bollocks to me, and I was amused to learn through Snopes that it was rubbish that went back a long way -- www.snopes.com/science/stats/blondes.asp
...
I need to do a WHERE'S NEIL update pretty soon. But, as a small holding measure...
On Saturday I'll be talking after WOLVES IN THE WALLS at the Tramway in Glasgow.
I'll be at the Sydney Writers Festival which starts on May 22nd 2006, leave on the 26th, and then, using the power of the International Date Line to put me back a day, I'll somehow be at Balticon on the 26-29th of May. I'm MCing the Science Fiction Museum Hall of Fame awards (http://www.sfhomeworld.org/make_contact/article.asp?articleID=239) on June 17th, inducting George Lucas, Anne McCaffrey, Frank Herbert and Frank Helly Freas into the Hall of Fame.
Then in the autumn I'm due to be a Guest at Fantasycon and iCon.
...
Diane Duane wrote to let me know that the first chapter of her online subscription novel (as detailed in http://www.neilgaiman.com/journal/2005/12/i-saw-golden-eagle-today-on-fence.asp) is now online at http://the-big-meow.com/. Check out the website and ponder whether this is may become a new viable publishing method (interstingly, of course, it's a return to a very old, subcription-based, get a chapter-when-it-comes-out publishing method).
Neil,
I love your stuff, but can you tell us dear readers what phone you are using to take pix? I have a handset that takes crap images and would love to take better images like yours in your blog. Thank you!
That's a Nokia 6230i. Very basic and useful. I hesitate to recommend it, as the last time I mentioned it I found myself deluged with "why did you buy that?" messages, like,
why on earth did you get that nokia phone when you could have the Treo 700 Verizon PDA phone? Dude! Where is your head at? Sorry Neil, I really respect you, but do you know an inkling about technology these days? Nokia is so way behind the wire...... I run my entire life on the internet (sad as that sounds, it really isn't) and by FAR the verizon TREO 700 PDA phone is the best thing I have come across - having done business across borders with it. I really hope you take the recommendation seriously, I don't usually recommend electronics ect. of any sort.
To which I'm never sure what to say. It's a tri-band phone, so I can put in a UK SIM card when I'm here for a bit. It fits in my pocket. It makes phone calls and accepts text messages. It has a memory card with too many photos, some Magnetic Fields songs as ring tones, and a couple of Jack Benny episodes. It talks to my car and my computer and it takes decent pictures. I'm not asking it to do anything else. I'm sure it's as good as some other phones, not as good as others, and not as cutting edge technologically as some, but that's always going to be the case. It's hard to watch TV on it, but I don't really want to watch TV on my phone, so having proudly put an episode of Bilko and Tony Hancock's The Blood Donor on it and established that it would play them, I then deleted them. I was given a Blackberry a couple of months ago and I took it happily out of the box, then I stared at it, realised that I really liked not having the kind of job where I had to be able to get to my email wherever I am and wherever I am, and put it back in the box. (As long as my family, and my assistant can find me, I'm good, and they have my phone number.)
I am going to apologize for the absolute stupidity of this question in advance. While others are here to ask you about your writing (which I do enjoy), I'm here to ask you about your Slingbox, of all things.
See, I work at Best Buy, where we have about 40 of the damn things in stock, but no one can sell it, since we can't get straight answers on how well it works. And, since most of us are poor, we are in no position to buy it and try it ourselves.
It doesn't help that the rep that Slingmedia sent to the store had all the charm of a paper bag, with product knowledge to match.
So, really, my question is just "How do you like it," "What's the delay in it's control of the TiVo, cable box, etc.," and "How's the quality?"
Thank you for your time.
-eD! Thomas
I like it. I watched the first ten minutes of The Daily Show on my home Tivo, last night from my hotel room before I went to sleep. The delay is there but minimal -- a couple of seconds, no more. Quality varies a bit depending on internet connection, but so far I've been really impressed. It was easy to set up and it's nice to know it's there. Also, it astonishes people when you show it off, which is sort of fun.
...
Hi Neil,
I read with interest that you are being unfairly hassled by lawyers.
I am the person they should be hassling - and will remove the link to their, if truth be known, quite uninspiring website. If they don't want the thousands of visitors I get a day to know about them - it's no skin off my nose.
But while we are on the subject of links may we have the permission (ok somewhat belatedly) to link to your remarkable demonic tomato photograph, and therefore your website from tomatoesareevil.com? Hopefully this will avoid the need for your lawyers to send me a threatening letter.
I was sent the link to your photo by one of my users and felt it too good not to show.
Anyway this whole lawyer business is quite surreal and would have been a great work of art, but to avoid being sued myself I will remove the offending link, but thank you for the publicity you have inadvertently provided – it all helps in the great fight against the evil fruit.
Best wishes and a tomato free lunch
Matt
The real owner and webmaster tomatoesareevil.com
I told him that of course he could.
Actually it appears you did link to rotten tomatoes not the movie but the web site. Please look at your April 05, 2002 journal entry.
"Rotten Tomatoes has collected some of the reviews over at The Saragossa Manuscript (1965): Zbigniew Cybulski, Iga Cembrznska, Joanna Jedryka, Wojciech Has. You can buy it at any of the Usual Suspect places. Tell people you want it for your birthday. Find out if your local library or video store is going to get it in. You need to see this film. Trust me."
They are real lawyers and you may wnat to take this a bit more seriously.
Mark Brown, Esq.
Rotten Tomatoes is a web site that rates movies. They like it if you link to them. It helps them sell more advertising.
www.Rottentomatoes.com doesn't have anything to do with the people who put up an official web site for their silly movie then threatened to sue people who linked to it, which I didn't anyway. (Branfman and Associates and Mark I. Reichenthal may be real lawyers but I fail to see why I should take nonsense like this seriously: it's stupid and it's funny, and it doesn't get any less stupid or funny because they are real lawyers. That just makes it both sadder and funnier.) (For Cory Doctorow's take on it, see http://www.boingboing.net/2006/03/19/confused_lawyers_thr.html)
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I read an article in the UK Sunday Times a few weeks ago that ended by announcing that blondes would be extinct very soon, with the final few fair-haired people dying off in Finland two hundred years from now. Which seemed a bit like utter bollocks to me, and I was amused to learn through Snopes that it was rubbish that went back a long way -- www.snopes.com/science/stats/blondes.asp
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I need to do a WHERE'S NEIL update pretty soon. But, as a small holding measure...
On Saturday I'll be talking after WOLVES IN THE WALLS at the Tramway in Glasgow.
I'll be at the Sydney Writers Festival which starts on May 22nd 2006, leave on the 26th, and then, using the power of the International Date Line to put me back a day, I'll somehow be at Balticon on the 26-29th of May. I'm MCing the Science Fiction Museum Hall of Fame awards (http://www.sfhomeworld.org/make_contact/article.asp?articleID=239) on June 17th, inducting George Lucas, Anne McCaffrey, Frank Herbert and Frank Helly Freas into the Hall of Fame.
Then in the autumn I'm due to be a Guest at Fantasycon and iCon.
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Diane Duane wrote to let me know that the first chapter of her online subscription novel (as detailed in http://www.neilgaiman.com/journal/2005/12/i-saw-golden-eagle-today-on-fence.asp) is now online at http://the-big-meow.com/. Check out the website and ponder whether this is may become a new viable publishing method (interstingly, of course, it's a return to a very old, subcription-based, get a chapter-when-it-comes-out publishing method).
Neil,
I love your stuff, but can you tell us dear readers what phone you are using to take pix? I have a handset that takes crap images and would love to take better images like yours in your blog. Thank you!
That's a Nokia 6230i. Very basic and useful. I hesitate to recommend it, as the last time I mentioned it I found myself deluged with "why did you buy that?" messages, like,
why on earth did you get that nokia phone when you could have the Treo 700 Verizon PDA phone? Dude! Where is your head at? Sorry Neil, I really respect you, but do you know an inkling about technology these days? Nokia is so way behind the wire...... I run my entire life on the internet (sad as that sounds, it really isn't) and by FAR the verizon TREO 700 PDA phone is the best thing I have come across - having done business across borders with it. I really hope you take the recommendation seriously, I don't usually recommend electronics ect. of any sort.
To which I'm never sure what to say. It's a tri-band phone, so I can put in a UK SIM card when I'm here for a bit. It fits in my pocket. It makes phone calls and accepts text messages. It has a memory card with too many photos, some Magnetic Fields songs as ring tones, and a couple of Jack Benny episodes. It talks to my car and my computer and it takes decent pictures. I'm not asking it to do anything else. I'm sure it's as good as some other phones, not as good as others, and not as cutting edge technologically as some, but that's always going to be the case. It's hard to watch TV on it, but I don't really want to watch TV on my phone, so having proudly put an episode of Bilko and Tony Hancock's The Blood Donor on it and established that it would play them, I then deleted them. I was given a Blackberry a couple of months ago and I took it happily out of the box, then I stared at it, realised that I really liked not having the kind of job where I had to be able to get to my email wherever I am and wherever I am, and put it back in the box. (As long as my family, and my assistant can find me, I'm good, and they have my phone number.)
I am going to apologize for the absolute stupidity of this question in advance. While others are here to ask you about your writing (which I do enjoy), I'm here to ask you about your Slingbox, of all things.
See, I work at Best Buy, where we have about 40 of the damn things in stock, but no one can sell it, since we can't get straight answers on how well it works. And, since most of us are poor, we are in no position to buy it and try it ourselves.
It doesn't help that the rep that Slingmedia sent to the store had all the charm of a paper bag, with product knowledge to match.
So, really, my question is just "How do you like it," "What's the delay in it's control of the TiVo, cable box, etc.," and "How's the quality?"
Thank you for your time.
-eD! Thomas
I like it. I watched the first ten minutes of The Daily Show on my home Tivo, last night from my hotel room before I went to sleep. The delay is there but minimal -- a couple of seconds, no more. Quality varies a bit depending on internet connection, but so far I've been really impressed. It was easy to set up and it's nice to know it's there. Also, it astonishes people when you show it off, which is sort of fun.
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Hi Neil,
I read with interest that you are being unfairly hassled by lawyers.
I am the person they should be hassling - and will remove the link to their, if truth be known, quite uninspiring website. If they don't want the thousands of visitors I get a day to know about them - it's no skin off my nose.
But while we are on the subject of links may we have the permission (ok somewhat belatedly) to link to your remarkable demonic tomato photograph, and therefore your website from tomatoesareevil.com? Hopefully this will avoid the need for your lawyers to send me a threatening letter.
I was sent the link to your photo by one of my users and felt it too good not to show.
Anyway this whole lawyer business is quite surreal and would have been a great work of art, but to avoid being sued myself I will remove the offending link, but thank you for the publicity you have inadvertently provided – it all helps in the great fight against the evil fruit.
Best wishes and a tomato free lunch
Matt
The real owner and webmaster tomatoesareevil.com
I told him that of course he could.
Actually it appears you did link to rotten tomatoes not the movie but the web site. Please look at your April 05, 2002 journal entry.
"Rotten Tomatoes has collected some of the reviews over at The Saragossa Manuscript (1965): Zbigniew Cybulski, Iga Cembrznska, Joanna Jedryka, Wojciech Has. You can buy it at any of the Usual Suspect places. Tell people you want it for your birthday. Find out if your local library or video store is going to get it in. You need to see this film. Trust me."
They are real lawyers and you may wnat to take this a bit more seriously.
Mark Brown, Esq.
Rotten Tomatoes is a web site that rates movies. They like it if you link to them. It helps them sell more advertising.
www.Rottentomatoes.com doesn't have anything to do with the people who put up an official web site for their silly movie then threatened to sue people who linked to it, which I didn't anyway. (Branfman and Associates and Mark I. Reichenthal may be real lawyers but I fail to see why I should take nonsense like this seriously: it's stupid and it's funny, and it doesn't get any less stupid or funny because they are real lawyers. That just makes it both sadder and funnier.) (For Cory Doctorow's take on it, see http://www.boingboing.net/2006/03/19/confused_lawyers_thr.html)
Disappointingly not Dada at all...
Emails flooding in tend to suggest that the people in the last post are real lawyers, and that they have probably decided that because the people at www.tomatoesareevil.com put my photo, holding a demonic tomato, up on their site, that I own it. What an astonishingly small amount of research they must do before firing off these bizarre letters.