Thursday, 20th of October, 2005

A couple of weeks ago John Doyle (aka Roy Slaven, but oh so much more) delivered a wonderful Andrew Olle Media Lecture, which you can read in full here.
Here’s a tasty quote that just about says it all:

The sadness of today is that the truths are still with us, sitting side by side with uninformed nonsense. Do we need to revisit through individual work contracts the factory life of Dickens for collective bargaining to grow again? And while ever the media allows truth to be bended, more old battles are going to have to be re-won. Humans are not related to chimps. Astrology has answers. There is no connection between Iraq and the increase in terrorism. The earth is flat. The holocaust never happened. To be born in poverty is your own fault. A society is safer when human rights are compromised. There is no such thing as greenhouse gases. Certain races are not as intelligent as others.

There’s plenty more to chew on, though: well worth a read, or a listen if you’re so inclined (the transcript’s a bit lacking anyway, punctuation-wise at least…)

Sunday, 2nd of October, 2005

Just sent to Neil Gaiman at his FAQ page:
Dear Neil,
So. You’re in Brisbane, recording your band’s new album. You sadly missed Neil (er, this second person thing is getting confusing, but you press on with it) when he was in the country recently, being out of your home city of Sydney when he was there, passing through Canberra but not when he was there, and being unavoidably elsewhere during the convention in Melbourne.

So now you’re busy 12 hours out of each day and luckily find one day off when you can visit Brisbane’s lovely Pulp Fiction, and there, of course, you purchase Anansi Boys. Can’t wait to read it! You even blog about buying it at http://www.frogworth.com/blog/archives/2005/10/01/fanboyisme/ - mentioning how you saw Serenity that night and enjoyed reading a fragment of poorly-copyedited co-interview with Joss & Neil at Time magazine’s website.

Then as you’re beginning to read and remember how excellent the first bit was when Neil put it up on his site, something falls out of the book. It’s a an “Avery” note-sticker-thing, plain white, and it’s clearly signed by Neil Gaiman.
And you ask yourself, what does this mean? Does it mean I’ve won a prize? (Other, that is, than the prize of getting a sticker that you think is signed by Neil inside your copy of the book.)

Then you realise that if you were Neil, asking yourself this question might be of some use, but asking Neil would be of altogether better use, so you go and do so.
As an afterthought, you wonder what the protocol is here: do you stick the sticker into the frontispiece of the book or something, or just leave it unpeeled-off inside the front cover? It’s important.

Saturday, 1st of October, 2005

Wow! It’s Joss Whedon and Neil Gaiman, chatting together, over at Time magazine.

For those in the know who care, I’m up to Buffy Season 7 and Angel Season 4 in my DVD-watching. I bought the entire runs gradually while JB Hi-Fi had them for $21 (I’m in Austrralia) per 3-DVD set last year, after watching and getting addicted to Buffy as borrowed from Kit Brash a little while before. Actually, probably seeing an episode of Angel S5 at his place sometime before that convinced me that I’d left it way too long, and it no doubt was as good as I’d been told and as good as the small amount I’d seen in the past. And oh boy how it is!
I can’t claim Mr Brash as the progenitor of my Neil Gaiman fandom. Baseline would be being a Terry Pratchett fan ever since The Colour of Magic came out, and thus discovering Neil through Good Omens and eventually getting into Sandman and all the rest through that connection.

So… last night I saw Serenity, and it was wonderful. I do wonder whether non-Firefly-fans will get it to the extent that, erm, Browncoats do… But then Ange came along, and she’s no fan of “spaceship movies” and has never wanted to get into Buffy/Angel/Firefly, and she didn’t think it was too bad.
The only real gripe is that it really is effectively just the continuation of Firefly Season 1 with a much bigger budget. The characterisation and plotting therefore suffers, in the context of a single 2-hour movie: if you don’t know the extensive backstory of these beautifully-rendered characters, you miss an awful lot, and it looks like they’re really quite flat character-archetypes, give or take one or two. Hopefully it’s got enough glossy Matrix-like coolness to it to draw more people in, anyway - and Joss does imbue it with a philosophico-politico-religious subtext which you’re unlikely to find in most other, er, spaceship movies. I loved seeing his atheism and left-liberalism shine through, and most importantly I guess his humanism.
No spoilers here though, so the for the other joys and hearbtreaks, you’ll have to go see it.

And meanwhile, I picked up Neil’s new Anansi Boys at Pulp Fiction (no website) here in Brisvegas and can’t wait to read it. Will start tonight methinks. I’m up in Brisbane recording the new FourPlay album, which is going smashingly. Will report more on it maybe at the end of next week.