Neil Gaiman's Journal: started February 2001 when nobody knew what the word Blog meant. Talking about writing, comics, books, films, bees, demonic tomatoes, cats, travel and a dog ever since.
Not a proper blog -- just a wave. The NZ arts festival was great, everyone was so nice (I saw Guillermo Del Toro and I was shown around the amazingness of WETA and they gave me a Dalek! -- it's this one -- and I spent time with Audrey Niffenegger and with Margo Lanagan and Margo's partner Stephen and did a talk with Margo during a tornado and read a new poem at the Town Hall and signed and signed and signed and signed) and now I'm taking a day off now with Amanda: Hera is looking after us. Tomorrow I head off to Manila for two days, while she plays gigs in Christchurch and Auckland and flies to Melbourne to do a TV thing. Then we meet on Friday at midnight in Poland, spend a couple of days together there while she plays a festival in Wroclaw and I sign in Warsaw, and then she flies to the US to begin Evelyn Evelyn rehearsals and I fly to Moscow. (Still waiting on the details of the Moscow signings or events. If you know them, send them in to the FAQ line.)
Right now getting together with Amanda feels less like spending time together and more like two planes matching speed for a little while. But today is a real day off. She's asleep and I'm meant to be typing introductions, and when she wakes up I'll make her some food and we'll walk on the beach.
(When she's finished with the European leg of the Evelyn Evelyn tour, in mid-May, she has about a week off. I'll be in the UK writing. If anyone has any suggestions for places we could go to take a week together, anywhere in Europe (or even North Africa I suppose) that would be quiet and warm, where she could do some yoga, I would love to hear them. Neither of us have ever really done holidays before, and we're very aware that we don't even know where to start looking.)
Right. Back to introductions.
Also, do not ever ask me to write introductions. This morning's email brought three You Said You Would Maybe Introduce This A Long Time Ago emails. The last four things I wrote were introductions. The next four things I will write will be introductions. Whatever happened to making things up?
In a hotel lobby waiting for a car to pick me up and take me to a brief meeting and then on to the airport to fly to New Zealand where I will see my fiancee whom I miss, and Margo Lanagan and Audrey Niffenegger both of whom I will be amazingly happy to see.
The LA Times took a panoramic photo which includes me on the Red Carpet staring intently at Rachel McAdams' dress. Which my red-carpet handler had just trodden on, and which I had only just avoided treading on. Was I enraptured by the beauty or wondering if we had left footprints? http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/la-et-oscar-red-carpet-mcadams-theron-pano,0,7005862.htmlstory You be the judge....
Jesus has appeared in the Marmite. The End times are nigh. Although some people are seeing Alan Moore, Lemmy From Motorhead, Frank Zappa or Predator. In which case End Times Are Probably Not Nigh. You be the judge: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/wales/8071865.stm
Okay. Car here. Zoom now. Maybe more from the airport...
A strange day. In 90 minutes the car will come to take me to the Oscars, in 30 minutes I'll get changed into Kambriel's lovely clothes. It'll be a long day. I don't think Coraline has a hope of getting an Oscar -- not in a year when UP is nominated for Best Picture. But it truly is an honour to be nominated. And it allows me to bask in Henry Selick's achievement.
I missed the CBS SUNDAY MORNING piece this morning, but got lots of emails from people who liked it (many of which said that they'd got more from it than they did from the much longer New Yorker article). Thank to to Serena and to all the CBS team.
I've had a wonderful time here in Hollywood. Last night was a marvellous Focus Films party for their Oscar nominees, A SERIOUS MAN and CORALINE, which meant that I got to make Maddy happy by sending her a photo of her father and Simon Helberg (Wolowitz on The Big Bang Theory).
(The Maddy photo.)
Afterwards I got to introduce Henry Selick and Robin Williams (which made both of them happy). (Robin's daughter Zelda rescued me from feeling out of it at a party the other night, showed me her ankh tattoo and told me that when she signed up with CAA her first request was to read the DEATH The High Cost of Living film script, as a fan. She is a treasure.)
A few hours ago Amanda played a sold-out Sydney Opera House show (which included, she tells me, a cover of John Cage's 4?33?). Really proud of her.
So this ought to be a big, happy bouncy sort of day, and it's really not: in addition to being Oscar Day, March 7th is the first anniversary of my father's (unexpected, heart attack) death, and I'm feeling really melancholy. There are days that you just want to walk the dog in the woods, write a bit, and be with your loved ones, and this, it seems, is really one of those days, and I should have been smart enough to figure that out, and I wasn't.
I'm sure I'll cheer up when I put on the posh clobber and get out onto the red carpet. (No, you probably won't see any photos of me. Yes, if Amanda was standing next to me wearing a remarkable dress you probably would see pictures of me. Yes, I would probably be listed as Amanda Palmer and guest again. No, I wouldn't mind a bit.) I don't think I will go to any of the posh parties tonight after the Governor's Ball. I may go and hang with John Hodgman, who is a good person and makes me happy, or I may just go and have a relatively early night. Or I may surprise myself and bop till I drop somewhere. (Bet I don't.)
Right. Clothes on. Wish me luck.
Here's a link to Al Davidson's illustrated dream-journal: http://id-iomatics.blogspot.com. I would have posted it even without the picture he did of me. And Amanda. And cats.
Breaking News: The CBS SUNDAY MORNING profile of me will definitely broadcast tomorrow, the 7th. The show with my segment in it starts at 9 eastern, 8 central, 7 mountain, 6 am Pacific.
Unless, of course, there is a natural disaster, a shooting, or something else of a news-altering nature.
...
I'm in Hollywood for the Oscars, to help Henry Selick celebrate Coraline, nominated for best animated picture. We will not win, which makes it somehow enormously less stressful. I'm not wondering if we'll win, or even hoping. I'm just here to enjoy the ride.
Last night I had the best dinner ever, with actor Michael Sheen. We ate at my favourite sushi restaurant in LA, The Hump at Santa Monica Airport, had an amazing meal, talked about life and art, and just as we were finishing up, the restaurant filled with uniformed officers. I assumed for a moment it was an immigration raid of some kind, but before they closed the restaurant, they identified themselves as US Fish and Wildlife officers who were going to close the restaurant to search it (for, I guess, illegal fish). It had already been a surreal evening, and that just sort of made it perfectly surreal, although it left me worried for the staff - I'll try to keep an eye on the news to see what it was about, and what happens next, and whether we were eating endangered sea-things.
...
On Monday, tickets for the Evening With Neil Gaiman I'm doing for the CBLDF in Chicago on April the 17th go on sale. (With, I hope, a special keyboard playing lady Musical Guest as an opening act. No, not Amanda Palmer, who will be touring with Jason Webley then, as themselves and as Evelyn Evelyn. No, not Tori. You'll see.)
This makes me ridiculously happy. If you're on the internet, you've probably seen it already. If you haven't, take three minutes and 53 seconds out of your life and click on it.
Voici la suite de mon oeuvre au noir. Troisième chapitre. Ce passage fait intervenir des personnages dont je ne suis pas franchement convaincu et qui discutent en plus de sujets sensibles sur un ton qui flaire bon la fiction...
Nouvelles d'ailleurs 
