The fabulous poster!
On Tuesday, October 24, 2000, I made it to see Neil Gaiman do a reading at the Aladdin Theatre in Portland! The saga:
It was AWESOME. I was trying to get up a big group from school to go, but everyone dropped out of the plans but me and my roommate, Brandon, who wanted to go visit friends. It being his car, I decided this was permissible. I drove his car to Portland. Yippee. Dropped myself off at my friend Elise's house and Brandon drove off to do his own thang. Elise got home almost two hours after I arrived; in the meantime, I had dinner and talked with her cool parents. And so Elise came home from work and changed into street clothes and off we went, getting McDonald's for her on the way. I finished her fries.
At the Aladdin Theatre, we met up with Craig Thompson, a personal friend of my friend Stu whom I met online in my early AOL days, and who is still in Milwaukee, where Craig used to live. Craig went to art school with Stu, left after a semester, got a job with Dark Horse Comics, moved to Portland three years ago, and wrote a brilliant graphic novel called "Goodbye Chunky Rice" which everyone should read. Everyone raved about it and Craig is now personal friends with big names in the comics industry, people like Jeff Smith, who writes "Bone," and some famous French comic book artist (not Mobius) under whom he is going to study in France next year. He also just happened to have designed the poster for the Gaiman show, as seen above. Basically, can we say "meteoric rise," anyone? You don't really expect a random friend of a friend to find such drastic success, particularly while still so young (mid-20s). Anyway, Craig is very cool, I liked him a lot, and having written this brilliant comic and knowing famous people hasn't fazed him at all; he's really personable and cool and whatnot. He has a tiny pixie of a girlfriend who is like five feet tall. He does his art for like 10 hours a day. I have to admit, nice as Craig is, I wouldn't be dating a man who spent 10 hours a day at work. But then, I'm needy. ;) Yeah. So that's Craig.
A note about his designing the poster: I would not have known about the reading at all had I not been reading the Mornington Crescent game BBS to which I post (not the actual game, just the fun, non-MC games). Almost everyone on there is British, but there happens to be a regular who lives in Portland. He posted to one of the games saying that Gaiman would be in Portland, and linked the JPEG I have provided. I got excited... looked at it... read the info... noticed the show date was a weekday... looked at it more closely... and noticed that, Jesus creeping God!, Craig Thompson did the artwork! It's a small world after all... So I started trying to get the Whitman group together, wrote to a bunch of my friends about how much I wanted to go, and contacted Craig. We arranged to meet up. And we did. Voilà!
In a fit of consumer feeding frenzy, I spent $112, or half of my checking account, on merchandise before the reading started. Three of the people from Whitman who were lame and couldn't go, made me promise to get stuff autographed for them. What Gaiman had done was to autograph a ton of the books they were selling beforehand, so no meet-and-greet. Very convenient but expensive for me to buy autographed books for three people. I also got the book of the "Babylon 5" script that Gaiman wrote, thinking it was autographed. It wasn't. So I'll give the autographed hardback (no softback, goddamnit - but all the money goes to the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, so it's okay) of "Season of Mists" that I intended for myself to one of the people I promised something to. I think I will send the B5 script to a friend of mine who loves B5, because I don't really want it. Maybe I'll read it first. I also got a T-shirt which, when I examined it later, turned out to be for last year's tour. It was the last shirt so I had to have it, and they gypped me! Oh well. It's still a cool shirt and an investment in my wardrobe. (Like I need any more black shirts. Note: I actually wore a white shirt to the reading, to help Craig recognize me.) Plus, I bought Craig's poster. It was unusually expensive; naively, I had expected to get one for free, like they do at the Fillmore in San Francisco. Oh no. It was like $25. I was mystified. Later, I examined the poster again, and found that there was a Gaiman signature on it! I swear it wasn't there when I bought it, but that explains the high price. At some point, Craig signed it too (now, one of the red, hellish characters has a speech bubble saying "For Riana!"). I plan to frame it.
Having blown my money, I arranged with Craig to have him sign my poster during the intermission, then went to my seat next to Elise. On each chair was a piece of paper and a pencil, so you could write down a question for Neil and turn it in to the usher. After he finished reading, Neil would answer some of these questions. This, plus the whole signatures done in advance thing, made me think the event was very efficiently organized, although at the cost of some of the intimacy between audience and speaker. The lights went down. Not one, but two people spoke before Gaiman came out. A lot of it was to do with the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, or CBLDF, which was taping the night's show for posterity and will supposedly be making a video out of it. (Gaiman would later read a bunch of short pieces, explaining that he had to give the CBLDF people something to cut out for the video.)
The CBLDF sounds like it is a very important organization; during the question session afterwards, Gaiman told the shocking story of a man, I think his name is Mike Diana, who made a comic book and was selling them in Pensacola, Florida. He sold one to an undercover cop, and suddenly he was in jail. Out on bail, he went to trial, was found guilty of obscenity, and had the appalling punishment of a suspended jail sentence of, I forget, four or six years, a hefty fine, and 1,000 hours of community service. Additionally, he was ordered never to come within 10 feet of a person under the age of 18, therefore losing him his job at his father's convenience store, and, to top it all off, ordered never to draw again. The Pensacola police were given the power to raid his house without a warrant whenever they wanted, to ensure that Diana was not drawing anything. Gaiman pointed out that had this been a novelist who had been treated this way, it would be on the front page of Time magazine; but because it was an artist who used the medium of comic books, it was unknown, except to CBLDF people "and a few First Amendment nuts." That story alone convinced me that my $112 was very, very well-spent. Gaiman stressed how wonderful it is that we in America have the First Amendment, and how important it is that it be upheld - and it applies to comic book artists as much as it does to anybody else. You can visit the CBLDF website at http://www.cbldf.org.
So that's the story behind the CBLDF. The reading itself:
Marvelous. Utterly marvelous. Gaiman is not one of those authors who should not be permitted to read their work aloud; he is a VERY effective reader, especially of dialogue. He had the audience screaming with laughter the entire night. Shaggy black hair, craggy face, black-clad from head to toe, he told us some background about each piece; whenever he finally said the title of the work he was about to read, there would be a few delighted gasps from the audience, or sometimes an expectant, reverent anti-noise. It was quieter than silence - it was less than silence - anti-noise. And then he would begin, and moments later, the silence would turn to the giggles, cackles, and shrieks of five hundred people, young and old, goths and people wearing colors, snorts of laughter emitted around septum piercings, fortysomething women kicking their sensible, low-heeled pumps in glee. The man is hilarious!
But of course, he wouldn't be Neil Gaiman if he didn't have that dark side to his writing. Some of the pieces were darkly humorous; some were disturbing; some were not sinister, but just serious. I had never heard any of them before, and no matter what the tone of a piece, it was always amazing. When my bank account is healthier, I will track down his short story collection, Smoke and Mirrors, and perhaps buy myself a copy of Neverwhere to replace the one I bought a year ago, read once, lent out, and never saw again. I could have brought my copy of Stardust to get signed (not that it would have been), but it was given me by my last, and first, lover, and already has an inscription in the front which means more to me, and brings back more important memories, than even the mark of the book's own formidable author could do.
But enough of that.
This morning, I noted down everything he read that I could remember. The perhaps-complete list:
The short stories "Chivalry," which cracked me up, and "The Price," which brought a tear to my eye;
the short-short story "Babycakes," which was macabre and moral;
"Going to America, 14,000 BC" (I think it was called), a chapter from his upcoming book, American Gods (due out next year), which may or may not make it into the final draft;
"Instructions" (on what to do if you find yourself in a fairy tale);
a piece on the effects of alcohol on a creative writer (the conceit being of an author sitting down with a typewriter, paper, several glasses, and a bottle of whiskey, as part of an experiment being conducted strictly in the impartial interest of science) - this contained a passage which, save for "The Price," was my favorite of the night: a passage involving elephant ejaculate which I cannot even hope to describe, but which had the entire audience howling in laughter, myself not least of all.
Also, there were several poems. One was for his own daughter; another was "Blueberry Girl," which he wrote for Tori Amos's new baby, Natasha, five days before her birth (September 24? I think it was), and which reminded me of Yeats' poem "A Prayer for My Daughter." It was lovely. I wonder what Natasha will be like, whether she will be so fortunate as Gaiman would have her be in the poem.
He read a poem he said was written with the doggerel of Rudyard Kipling in mind, an encomium to an author named - damn, I cannot spell her name, I have no idea how - Martha Sukup, which was used as an introduction to one of her books. This was very, very clever. The best rhyme was "puke up," in a context involving monks.
And the last thing I can remember, a couple of Christmas cards he had written. He related how he gets all these Christmas cards every year from the various comic book artists he knows, and the gorgeous art on them makes him feel very inferior. So he exacted his revenge by writing a 100-word inscription for his card, having it done in red and green calligraphy by... Dave McKean? I think it was McKean, and sending out the cards. And people, he said, "just put them on the mantelpiece or on the wall, 'oh, what nice red and green writing'... and around February, the phone starts ringing. The calls are still coming in April." And the 100 words were just wicked, all about how St. Nicholas hates Christmas. He wants to die. He listens to the elves nattering away to each other in their elf language, and, once a year, gets dragged by them, kicking and screaming, into the sleigh and tossed out into endless night. He wishes he could be Prometheus, or Sisyphus, or Judas, for his hell is far worse. And the last three words, spoken very slowly...
"Ho.
Ho.
Ho."
I'm not doing justice with any of these descriptions; you just had to be there. But maybe you, dear readers, will indeed be able to partake of this wonderful night, if that video ever comes out.
Cross your fingers.
"What a wonderful night you had, Riana!" you say. But oh no. It's not over yet.
After he had finished his reading and done his encore ("Babycakes"), Gaiman disappeared. The house lights went up. Elise and I found Craig and asked if he'd like to go to the nearby greasy spoon diner with us for some late-night, post-show victuals. He answered us far better than we could have dreamed of: would we like to go to the after-party with Neil?
Would we?!
The three of us took Elise's car to the Montage, a very nice restaurant mysteriously located under a bunch of highway underpasses in the middle of a rather seedy-looking warehouse district. The door is raised, and the step is tiled, with an inscription in Latin. Elise was a Classics major (she graduated this past spring from Whitman); she impressed everyone who had arrived so far by reading and translating the Latin. It was something like "Come to me, you who hunger, and I will feed you." At that point were there gathered Craig's publisher, his girlfriend, and a couple other comics industry people, one of whom is the author of "Too Much Coffee Man." Neat. It was about 11:30 by this time; everyone was looking tired and vowing they'd stay "just for a little while." Eventually we went in and sat down at a long table. The Montage's menu is a joy: their specialty is macaroni. You can get old-school mac and cheese, spicy mac with jalapenos and stuff, and - be still my heart - mac and Spam. Also green eggs and Spam and a Spam omelette. I went for the old-school mac and cheese, of which I ate very little and let other people pick at instead.
I sat by Craig; on my other side sat Elise. Eventually, the guest of honor arrived with several others. Where did Neil Gaiman sit? Why, where else but on Elise's other side? I was within spitting distance of Neil Gaiman! And boy, did he look knackered. Five o'clock shadow, bags under his eyes. Four stops on this tour over the course of two weeks - you wouldn't think it would stress him out as much as all that. But perhaps that's how he always looks. *shrug* I nudged Elise and indicated her neighbor. She nodded and grinned. All too soon, however, we were made to move down so a chair could be put between Elise and Gaiman so that his marketing agent woman person, or whatever her position was, could sit by him. I got in a few words to Gaiman concerning the newly-placed empty chair separating me and Elise from him: "This is the proverbial void," I said, indicating the gap and not finishing the sentence with "...between author and audience." He said something like, "Yes, very metaphysical," or something. Elise got in a few sentences herself, but he was quickly absorbed by the Industry Types surrounding him and by the marketing agent woman person who soon arrived and sat down by Elise. Oh well. So Elise and I conversed with our nearer neighbors instead: a couple of artists from Seattle, a couple more from Portland (well, not from Portland - Elise herself was the only one at that table who was actually a Portland native). I talked mainly with Craig. I was soooo wired, and I think some of it leaked into Craig, because he woke up as time passed and didn't, as he said, "feel like Neil looks." We wasted time trying to replicate a little sleight-of-hand parlor trick someone at our end of the table did with two wine corks (damn good wine. Damn good wine! And I hate wine!). Craig and I reached the conclusion that he must have been cheating. Great way to eat up time, though. The trick itself is utterly indescribable, so don't even ask.
Bread. Water. Portland punch. Damn good wine. A few bites of mac and cheese. A bite of Craig's bread pudding. One of the guys from Seattle taking pictures of Neil and of Craig with his digital camera; Elise chattering away with them both and, at the end of the night, getting their business cards. (She plans to move to Seattle because she can't find work here and she had gotten two job offers from the Seattle area just that day, so she figures it's fate. So she'll look up these guys when she gets there - built-in friends!) A waiter, taking our orders, leaned over to take the orders of Craig, me, and Elise, but, when he got to Gaiman, kneeled on the floor to take his order. Did he know who this black-clad man was... or not? Hmm.
We finally said our goodbyes around 1:45. "I'll just stay a little while" indeed. Craig got a ride home with his publisher. Elise and I exclaimed over how incredibly cool the night was the whole way back to her house. I got to bed at 2 and had to get up at 7:30, as my roommate was supposed to pick me up at 8. Portland's streets being the most mind-boggling in the world, however (M.C. Escher must have been commissioned to design the city's layout, taken a bunch of crack, looked at a Moebius strip, and thought, "Hmmm..."), Brandon arrived after 9. We have a class together at 1 on Wednesdays. I struggled not to fall asleep over the reading for it, which I did on the way home. Advice: Do not try to read Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics on five hours' sleep, particularly if you have never read Aristotle before. Elise had warned me about it and man... I dozed off over it a couple of times, but finally woke up and finished Book I just as we reached the college. Brandon, not having done the reading, figured there was no point in going, and dropped me off. In I strolled, less than ten minutes late for class and our first day of Aristotle (which, after spending all the time heretofore reading Plato, was like climbing out of a soothing, relaxing hot tub and cannonballing into the Arctic Ocean).
I have already given one of the woulda-coulda-shoulda-didn't people who ended up not going a hard time about what he missed out on. He didn't have me buy anything for him, though. Soon I will hand out the goodies to those who did, and the plan is as follows: Step 1. Hand over goodies. Step 2. Gloat about how great the reading and the after-party were. Step 3. Demand money.
Total cost for this fun-packed 24-hour period: $174.24.
I really should ask for that money soon, tacky though it may be.
And that really is that. I wish I were predisposed to lying outrageously so I could follow through with my plan to "embellish" the story of the evening: "And Neil signed my and Elise's breasts and we went to a tattoo parlor and got them tattooed in but you can't see it because that would be indecent and he got down on his knees before me and offered to leave his wife and family for me but I told him with a heavy heart that I could not allow him to throw away his life like that and he cried bitterly but told me I was a noble woman and gave me a kiss on the cheek and disappeared into the chilly night and this morning there was a bouquet of thorny roses on the porch with a little card saying 'I will always remember you, Love, Neil,' and oh, Elise stole all the money we left to pay for the food and it was like two hundred bucks and right now she is on her way to the Yukon to start a new life teaching ancient Greek to disadvantaged Inuit children. 'S true! And you weren't there!"
Okay, I confess it's not all true. The tattoo is not where I said it was, but it's in an even more indecent place than that. And boy does it itch.
Postscript: On November 21, 2001, I got the slightly-late birthday present of attending a Terry Pratchett book signing in Edinburgh, Scotland. I wore the Gaiman T-shirt. Terry noticed, and asked how I liked Neil's new book, American Gods. I hadn't actually read it yet at the time (I have now; it's great, and the passage he read aloud is in there), which was embarrassing. But I made up for it: signing my copy of Good Omens, Terry asked my name. He did a double-take when I told him: he has a daughter named Rhianna! I figure I acquitted myself much better than I did talking to Neil. ... Oh, and Elise did move to Seattle, and the video did come out. You can order it here. Look for me in the audience shots - I'm the one not wearing black.