« Today and Tomorrow | Main | Some Good Ink »

February 26, 2007

New York, New York

We are back from the Big City. As usual, the highs were high and the lows were low. The drive up was easier than usual. The Holland Tunnel was not backed up, as I always fear it will be. We had a fine meal at Dani, an oustanding Italian restaurant at 333 Hudson Street, for all of you New York People. Dani is managed by Dave, son of Carla Massoni and former cast member of Robbi Behr in Kent County High's 1992 performance of You're a Good Man Charlie Brown. Dave played Snoopy to Robbi's Peppermint Patty. It is lucky for us all that the two discovered new interests later in life. Carla has a tape of the show that she promises to let me watch some day when neither Robbi nor Dave is around.

We ate with my old high school friends, Victor and Holden. It would have been nice to feature a photo of them here. Alas, the only picture we took was of me mugging in front of the awning.

Feel free to use the awning to locate Dani should you be so inclined to seek it out. Note that I am not always to be found standing in front of the restaurant and should not be used as a point of reference when trying to locate it.

After the show we went to see our friend David Turner in Gutenberg! The Musical! It is an absurdist romp. In short, the show's premise is that two friends stage a "reading" of their new musical about Johan Gutenberg. The two actors play 40 roles between them. As usual, David gave an amazing performance. It is well worth seeing if you happen to find yourself in New York.

That night we considered playing Celebrities or Aural Charades. We were too tired and dull to pull it off. Instead we slept.

The next day we went to visit Robbi's friend Peter Arkle, an accomplished illustrator whose work we very much admire. Check out his site.

Here is Peter.

Peter had a great sign on his wall. Follow this advice if you want to improve your silent reading skills.

After leaving Peter's (he indulged our many questions about his life and trade for a full two hours) we walked to Little Italy to meet old friend Brian Slattery for some very fine cappucinos. Brian (fiddle) and I (rhythm guitar) were 2/5 of old time jug band, the Motherpluckers in our college days. I haven't seen Brian since then. Since then he has become an accomplished writer who will be releasing his first novel this summer. Brian's book is so good and so interesting that his publisher, Tor (largest publisher of sci-fi books) is doing a lot of publicity on his behalf. Here is Brian in the Tor booth.

The red-covered book in front of him is the volume in question, titled Spaceman Blues: A Love Story. I have not read the entire thing yet, but I love it so far. It is perhaps the greatest compliment I can give to say that the work reminds me of my favorite parts of Thomas Pynchon. The voice is frenentic yet confident, a font of vivid imagery, wild happenings, and unapologetic narrative freedom. The book will be available in August 2007. I will remind you all then to get yourselves a copy.

The booth above was one of many at the 2007 ComicCon, an enormous gathering of those who care about all things that fall beneath the "comic and cartoon" umbrella. We went to do research. We went in hopes of finding others who are making the sort of books we are. We wandered the aisles for a long time, concluding that 1) there are a lot of people who like to collect old comic books and 2) no one else seems to be doing anything quite like what we are doing. Which is both encouraging from the standpoint of being original and discouraging from the standpoint of being difficult to market.

The ComicCon was rife with grown men and women in outlandish costume. We saw many Star Wars characters as well as many characters we could not identify. Did we take pictures of this human parade? Alas, we did not.

But we did take a picture of a bunch of people sitting at tables playing Magic, the Gathering or some other such fantasy game played with cards.

We attended a panel on which Brian was a speaker. The subject was "breaking into science fiction writing." Something we are decidedly not interested in doing. But it was great to see Brian up there fielding questions with his editor from Tor. Brian is one of the rare writers whose novel was chosen from the "slush pile", the great heap of unsolicited manuscripts that arrives at publishing houses daily. For the most part, publishers publish the work of those represented by literary agents who recommend strong projects to the publishers. But Brian's editor pulled his work out of the heap and decided to promote it. He is the statistical anomaly. Which makes sense. Because he's just that good.

After the panel, Brian was whisked away to be wined and dined by the literary importentia. We met up with college friend Rich Flynn and got some burritos at Chipotle. It would have been nice to include a photo of Rich Flynn, our excellent friend. But I did not take a photo. Alas.

The next day we were to spend hours more combing the aisles of the Comic Con, but when we arrived at the site were horrified to learn that the line to get in was more than two hours long.

We bristled and gnashed

and immediately lost all will and drove home.

Today it snowed beautifully.

I took Iggy for a run in the storm.

And Robbi got a new hairdo.

Tonight we finished the Volume 5 mailing preparation. The books and letters lie neatly in boxes, awaiting a trip to the USPS tomorrow morning. Keep an eye on your mailboxes.

Posted by bogenamp at February 26, 2007 01:35 AM