Dog Days

I'm about to take the dog for a walk.

What's odd is that I've lived here for about 15 years, and never knew half of what was out there. Yesterday the two of us met a dozen huge wild turkeys, back by the beehives, and they ran or flew off into the trees grumbling and cackling. The day before that we encountered a mole -- "the little gentleman in the velvet jacket" as the Jacobites used to toast him -- with huge paws scrabbling velvetly through the leaf-mould, and I pulled out my phone and filmed him for a few seconds. I've seen fireflies and fireworks, discovered skeletons and mushrooms and all manner of interesting plants. I learned what walnuts smell like when they're still on the tree (a strange mixture of citrus and carpentry). I've met grouse and rabbits (Cabal chases rabbits unsuccessfully when he spots them. Sometimes he doesn't spot them. Several times I've been convinced that he had actually spotted them and was pretending not to because he wasn't sure what he'd do if ever he caught one) (He has no such compunction about chasing cats. Yesterday he shot off after poor Fred, who went straight up a tree where he relaxed and was superior). I've seen some amazing wildflowers too.

I should post some photos of him here. When we got him, he had a grey ruff around his neck, from three years of being chained up. These days he's just white all over, so much so that someone who had seen him at the beginning wanted to know if we were bleaching him. He still looks a bit like a wolf. He barks a bit, which he never used to do, to let us know that people are at the door. And he doesn't know why I'm sitting and typing when I could be off wandering the trails at the back of the house, the ones that used to be completely overgrown and forgotten. The ones I never used to walk at all.

A band of bandits

The promotional world for Stardust is starting, which has a nervous author who was convinced that no-one in the world is going to know about the movie, or that it's good, starting to breathe a sigh of relief. There are free screenings starting to get the word out, and according to Google news, if you buy stuff at French Connection you can get free tickets...
http://www.newsday.com/entertainment/ny-shoptalk0713,0,2458209.column?coll=ny-entertainment-promo


And I got a phone picture from my friend Kelli Bickman in New York letting me know that new posters have been spotted in Manhattan. They take some elements from the original poster and rearrange them...

(And Kelli says -- Neil.. S.O.S. i've recently fallen prey to a real-estate con-artist who is trying to steal my rent stabilized apartment/studio of 12 years and I don't have the resources to fight the court battle. Is there anyone out there who can help find me a pro bono real estate attorney in Manhattan (or will barter art)? or if there is anyone out there who has considered buying my work or commissioning a painting but hasn't gone the distance, now is a Very Good Time. Help me save my home and squash this con artist. A court date has been set for July 23. Thank you ten billion times for your help. kelli bickman - www.kellibickman.net I've known Kelli for about 15 years, she's a great artist and a very nice, kind person, so I'm happy to post this. Any New York lawyers who like art out there?)

Anyway, here's the International version of the original poster, which is a bit more golden than the US version.

I just realized this morning that the weekend Stardust opens is also the weekend of the Perseids meteor shower, one of the most active times for "shooting stars" of the year; so it wouldn't be unheard of at all for people to see the movie, walk out of the theater, and actually see a shooting star themselves.

Was the opening planned that way (if it was, this is an incredibly cool bit of marketing that I'm surprised I haven't seen mentioned yet), or was this just an amazing coincidence?

It's an amazing coincidence. But now I've told people, maybe it'll be a key wossname in the marketing strategy, in those parts of America where you can still see the stars.

...

It's all animal world here at the house. The last two cats came home from my assistant Lorraine's (she got a jungle kitten and decided she had too many cats in too small a house), while Fred the Unlucky Black Cat, who had vanished for several weeks, reappeared last night slightly the worse for wear -- he had an injury on his thigh that smelled like rancid cheese, which I washed with peroxide, and a new scar on his forehead, and he's now in the basement recovering and appreciating not being outside any longer. He now goes floppy whenever he gets picked up. I've gone from two and a half cats (the half being Fred outside in the garage) to six cats in a couple of weeks.

Fred's garage, which has a magnetic lock on the cat door, so only he can get in, has recently been invaded (which may be why he'd vanished, and also why he had a new leg injury). Birdseed was scattered everywhere. So the Birdchick set up a camera to find out who could be doing it, and how.

The conclusion -- not entirely unexpected -- is that a magnetically locked cat door is no obstacle to a family of determined raccoons...

(Overexposed photo tweaked by Bill Stiteler.)

like cats and dogs

I just went to the movies by myself for, I think, the first time in my life (if you don't count the years I spent in the 80s as a film critic), to see Hot Fuzz. (Nobody else wanted to go but me.) Which I loved, didn't think was too long, and wish it wasn't only showing in one small cinema in a 50 mile radius of my house. The delight in making it came through all the way.

Hi,
Earlier this year you posted link to a podcast by Penn Jillette in which he mentions you and National Gorilla Suit day. I think that the podcast is no longer accessible. If it is, can you point me to the right place? I wanted my husband to hear it.

Thanks,
Heidi

I've searched and I think I've found it at
http://www.pennfans.net/view/Audio_Archive/PennRadio/Penn.Jillette.Radio.Show.2007.01.31/

Hi Neil! As I'm more of a cat person, I 'feel' for your cats! Are they jealous of your new dog? ~ Cancan =)

Jealous? No. Princess is alternately furious with me and desperately affectionate, Coconut (Maddy's cat) is mostly blase but also a bit more affectionate, and Fred is plotting on ways to get revenge on the dog for having treed him yesterday evening. It's the kind of thing I could be really funny about, but the truth is it's rather worrying -- the dog is convinced he needs to protect us from Fred, and has only actually barked twice since we got him, each time inside the house to warn us that Fred was walking around outside and might get us if Dog didn't protect us,meanwhile Fred on seeing the Dog arches his back like a Halloween card cat, swells to twice his size and makes strangled yowling noises to indicate his extreme displeasure. As far as the two mostly-house cats go, I think we'll be fine at getting them more or less to tolerate each other. Fred, however is a law unto himself, and it's going to be interesting.

...

There was apparently a Stardust ad in the LA Times today -- details and the ad at http://www.slashfilm.com/2007/05/06/stardust-movie-posteradvertisement/

Not sure about that tagline. Hope they can come up with something sharper before August. (My own suggestion, "Stardust. It's not a sequel to anything," was appreciated but, probably wisely, rejected.)

Rupert Everett (who plays Secundus) talks about Stardust at http://www.comingsoon.net/news/movienews.php?id=20235

Somewhere I have a wonderful photo of all the ghosts sitting on a green screen mantelpiece -- I'll see if I'm allowed to post it here.

...

The bees on the apple blossom are some of them recognisably from my two hives, but there are also at least three other kinds of honeybee turning up. Which is a good reason to post a link to http://www.classicalvalues.com/archives/2007/05/where_the_bees.html...

Trousers

A deluge of messages, many hundreds of them, and all of them are dog-name suggestions. Some of them I've tried, but they don't seem right -- they sound wrong coming out of my mouth, or, mostly, they are terrific names but don't quite fit him, or, in a few cases, Maddy doesn't like them. (I wanted to go Arthurian, but the front runner, a Maddy pick, currently seems to be Thor.)

(Dog update. Vet today: Dog weighs 78lb and still needs to put on a little weight; is now microchipped; is also on antibiotics to deal with early stage Lyme Disease, and got all the various shots he needed. Also taken into the vet at the same time: Fred the Cat, who, with half of his face shaved and drooling thick slobber from being car-sick, looked like something from a horror movie, the sort of movie that makes you shake your head and wonder whatever happened to subtlety in horror.)

I've walked more in the last two days than I have in months.



I'm just going to go to close a bunch of tabs...

...

Scott McCloud has posted the first two parts of his on-line graphic novel "The Right Number" for free. Back when he originally posted the first part I signed up for the micropayment scheme, and gave them five dollars so I could pay Scott my 25 cents for the first part, and then, a year or so later, couldn't remember the email address, details or password when he posted the second part, so I'm glad they're both up for nothing now. It's a wonderful story. I can't wait for him to do the last part. http://www.scottmccloud.com/comics/trn/intro.html
is the link.

The fabulous Fabulist has a streaming radio station option up. I've been getting so much of my new music from them it's silly, and this is a great way to find out what I like before I download, put on my iPod and buy the CD. http://www.fabulist.org/archives/2007/04/streaming_fabul.html

There's a great Michael Chabon interview over at Salon: http://www.salon.com/books/int/2007/05/04/chabon/index.html

The PEN World Voices Town Hall reading is up at http://www.pen.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/1305/prmID/1376 -- you can listen to the whole thing or to individuals. For some reason, I've wound up with Nadine Gordimer's MP3 if you click on my name -- mine is actually at http://www.pen.org/audio_archive/2007_world_voices/home_away/Neil_Gaiman.mp3 but listen to the whole thing (http://www.pen.org/audio_archive/2007_world_voices/home_away/Town_Hall_Readings_HomeAway.mp3). It's worth it just for Steve Martin, or Kiran Desai or Salman Rushdie or... well, trust me and listen to it.

All of the PEN events should eventually be up in Audio. Keep an eye on this -- a link to the MOTH event -- http://www.pen.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/1340/prmID/1412. (Here's Laila Lalami's take on it: http://www.lailalalami.com/blog/archives/004691.html.) Incidentally, I got an email complaining that we had obviously all "written our stories first and then learned them". Nope. We just told them -- one rehearsal the previous afternoon, when we talked them through to the director, who gave us notes, and then on with the show.

Lucy Anne's collection of links over at http://del.icio.us/thedreaming is now so efficient I no longer feel like I have to make sure I keep the world updated with links to news articles about me and the Stardust movie and everything. I've told Lucy Anne that she can go into the old pre-labels world of this blog and tag everything from the first six years, because she has a much more sober attitude towards tagging than I do.

Hey Neil,

My wife and I had a great time at your Helena appearance and we really appreciate you coming out to Montana. So, thanks for that.

Also, I wanted to let you know that you're a special guest star on Brotherhood 2.0 today. My brother (John Green who's also with Writer's House and has a couple of YA novels out) and I have a somewhat popular video blog at Brotherhood2.com. We've stopped emailing and instant messaging and, instead, are communicating through daily video blogs for all of 2007.

Since so many of our viewers are your fans, I figured I had to include you in the project. Which, if you were wondering, is why you said "Good Morning John it's Monday May 1st" into a camera last weekend.

Sorry I didn't take the time to explain fully then, but the line was quite long and I didn't want to take too much of your (and everyone else's) time.

If you want to see the video it's up at brotherhood2.com.

Thanks,
Hank Green

And the link to the actual entry is http://www.brotherhood2.com/?p=101.

It's the kind of thing that makes me reconsider my attitudes to video blogging (mostly I don't like it, because I lose, as reader, control of the time axis of the experience. But this I liked).

Hi Neil, did you hear about this weird story?

http://www.dieselsweeties.com/blog/?p=44

http://threepanelsoul.com/view.php?date=2007-04-30

The world's becoming curiouser and curiouser by the minute.

Greetings from Fernet country,
Jan.

(Shakes head ruefully.) Then again, this in a country in which you can be sued for $65 million for losing a pair of trousers...

...


Finally, I'm enjoying John Scalzi's book tour. (I am possibly enjoying it most because I'm not on it, if you see what I mean.)

Some animal thoughts...

Fred the cat tends to get into scrapes while I'm away, and I arrived home yesterday to find him with half of his face shaved and on antibiotics, having tangled with something. Whenever he gets into fights he gets infected. Tonight he's staying with the vet as the infection got worse.

I ought to be very worried, but I'm not. I suppose by now I think he'll pull through because he always pulls through. He must be on life 15 or 16 by now: last year when I was on tour with Fragile Things, I was called about a minute before the Google Author Talk and informed that Fred had to be put down (which left me pretty shaken), but it didn't happen. He got through that, just as he gets through everything else.

Some animals are survivors.

Maddy's largest goldfish is called Moonbeam, and he's about nine years old, and has outlived every other goldfish we've ever had, and even survived an accidental case of poisoning about five years ago that killed off everyone else. He's now about a foot long. And there were five fish in that tank two weeks ago. The two smaller ones have now mysteriously gone, and Moonbeam looks astonishingly well-fed and happy, and I suspect that I need to rethink the whole Where The Goldfish Are situation.

I recorded the previously unrecorded tracks from M Is For Magic today in Minneapolis. Very different stories -- it was fun recording them though. Two from when I was very young ("How to Sell the Ponti Bridge" and "The Case of the Four And Twenty Blackbirds"), one from about Ten Years Ago ("Don't Ask Jack", which I couldn't believe I hadn't already recorded. You can see Jack here) and one story from when I was older ("The Witch's Headstone" now just out in WIZARDS:Magical Tales From the Masters of Modern Fantasy).

Like all audio recording it was fun, and then it got harder, and then I walked away quite braindead. I don't know anything else that's quite so exhausting in the same way. Still, I love doing the audiobooks. (And I just realised we need to update the information at http://www.neilgaiman.com/works/audio/)

(Teddy Kristiansen just sent me a link to his blog, where you can see the M Is For Magic cover, from roughs to finished painting: http://teddykristiansenblog.blogspot.com/2007/04/work-process.html)

On the way home from the recording, driving through the rain, just as I pulled off the freeway to head home, I saw a large, pale dog on the side of the sliproad. I went in a couple of seconds from a first glance thought of "Oh, he's just wandering around and knows exactly what he's doing," to, on a second glance, "He's absolutely terrified and if he isn't actually lost he's really scared of all the cars and in danger of bolting onto the freeway," .

I pulled over, crossed the road and hurried across to where he was. He backed away, skittish and nervous, then came over to me, shaking. No collar or information, just a choke chain. And big. And very wet and very muddy. With cars going past, I decided the wisest thing to do was to put him into my car while I figured out what to do. The car was the Mini. I opened the door and he clambered in. The dog took up most of the Mini that I wasn't in and a fair amount of the Mini that I was in. Big dog, small car.

I phoned my assistant Lorraine, and asked her to let the local Humane Society (really nice people with a no kill policy) know we'd be coming in soon with a dog, then I drove home, narrowly avoiding death on the way (it's amazing how much you can't see when a huge dog fills the car and your field of vision). I ran around the garden with Dog until he'd tired me out. (I really hope he'd just got lost, and his family are looking for him; it would be hard to imagine someone abandoning a dog that cool.) Then I put him into the back of a car much bigger than the Mini and took him to the Humane Society, where they fawned all over him. ("I think he's a husky-wolf cross," said the Humane lady who took him, and she could be right.)

I think he's probably a survivor too.

Things that Make you Blog part One: Avoidance...

Fred the Unlucky Black Cat has been doing fairly well recently. About ten minutes ago, he inspired a small poem, for a start.

Ahem.

A Cat in the Ointment

For some, life's one long fine surprise
the ointment's pure: there are no flies.

For some, life's one long disappointment
there's only flies: there is no ointment.

The rest of us live in the middle.
You own the cat -- clean up the widdle.

Although actually it's not widdle, but cat vomit in astonishing quantities. (None of the rhymes for vomit or puke seemed to fit though. No, don't take it as a challenge, please.) No cat can have eaten that much cat food, I thought, as I got out of bed and looked at the bedroom carpet. Then Fred staggered back over to it and began retching and hiccupping and gurgling again, and deposited yet more undigested catfood onto a fairly white bedroom carpet.

Excuse me. I really only came downstairs for more paper towels. I have some late night carpet cleaning I should be getting back to.