Saturday, February 13, 2010

Amanda Palmer and Neil Gaiman


Amanda Palmer and Neil Gaiman are nuts, but in very different ways. I have much respect for him for hooking up with a girl who seems to be like Courtney Love, except respected and prettier. And for her for hooking up with somebody who many rockers would surely see as very "establishment". But she was probably a fan of his writing.

Here's an article where they are being interviewed in a bubble bath and talking about her death-photo hobby.

And here's an article which includes Amanda giving an interesting speech about record labels. She mentions how, when her band Dresden Dolls signed up with a big label, there would be people in meetings who would talk about how maybe there was something about this Internet thing... and this was in 2003!




Gaiman says. “It’s the ultimate coffee table book for people who don’t have coffee table books. Or coffee tables.”


[the comic book] “Sandman,” Gaiman says, is sexually transmitted. “Guys who wanted their girlfriends to read comics would give them ‘Sandman.’ They’d break up, and the girl would take the ‘Sandman’s and infect the next guy. It grew on a vector.” According to Berger, it was the first modern comic to attract a large female readership. “Young women dressed in black and black eyeliner would walk into the comic store and pick up ‘Sandman’ and just walk out,” she said. “You look around a room where Neil is, and half of the fans are women, if not more.”

There are so many weird tidbits in the New Yorker article. (His odd gothic house... it must be exhausting.)
A few years ago, he was at a convention with Angelina Jolie, who played Grendel’s mother in the movie “Beowulf,” for which Gaiman co-wrote the screenplay. “When I try to explain that I attracted more attention than she did, people say, ‘Oh, ho, he’s being funny.’ I’m not.” [...]
Gaiman was scheduled to attend a “sushi party” one evening in the teen lounge, a duplex suite on a high floor of the convention hotel. On the door was a sign that read “Under 30, Over 12.” He climbed the stairs to a loft, where a dozen young people sat around a table beside a buffet of eel-and-avocado rolls and a thermos of miso soup. They cheered when they saw him.
“Do you lot have names?” he said brightly.
“Nooooooo!” they called, in unison.
“How many coats like that do you have?” a small girl with blue and green streaks in her hair asked.
“I’m pretty much always wearing something black or coaty or jackety,” Gaiman said. She beamed.

[...] The readings were videotaped, and Gaiman posted them to his blog. Every time the book dipped on the best-seller list, he tweeted a reminder to his followers that they could hear him read “The Graveyard Book” for free online, and, he says, sales of the print edition spiked.
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12 comments:

  1. Eolake said...
    "I have much respect for him for hooking up with a girl who seems to be like Courtney Love, except respected and prettier."

    Oooh, "classier," too! She only has TWO holes in her nets!! ;-)

    What's she doing on the top pic? Giving him an eyeful before he helps her get her coat on?! Interesting!

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  2. Yep, *way* classy. I'll bet, unlike Love, she hasn't even ever peed on an executive's table.

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  3. LOL! Oh GAWD that woman (Love) is a MESS!! :-/

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  4. Oh... Amanda and Neil. Having followed both of them separately, it's funny (and exhausting! they are both so creative!) to see them together.

    Amanda is a walking cabaret act, extremely talented and independent. A won't do what I'm told kinda girl.

    The story about the first photo is:

    "have you ever wondered how the red carpet shit works? i’d never thought about it.

    the red carpet attendees all have to arrive by limo and line up in a queue.

    you’re on camera when you get out of your car.
    i, of course, being impatient and knowing fuck-all about the protocol, didn’t realize i was supposed to wait for a valet to escort me out of the car on the side where all the cameras were, so i hopped out of my side, lugging my ukulele case with me and missing the shot to be captured by network tv for posterity, which means i can kiss my fucking acting career goodbye forever.
    ...
    when we left the NBC party, we got yelled at by some photographers who wanted to get shots of me in the naked dress.
    which was of course, stuffed into my uke case where the kambriel dress had been all night.

    “amanda palmer and neil gaiman!” they yelled.

    “hi” we said.

    “naked dress!” they yelled.

    “it’s in my ukulele case. i could change back”, i said.

    “change back!”, they yelled.

    “ok”, and change back i did."

    blog.amandapalmer.net/fame-whoring

    Changed back in front of the photographers, that is. She's not a shy girl.

    Amanda's latest project Evelyn Evelyn is so cute and funny, consisting of her and Jason Webley performing as the conjoined twins Evelyn and Evelyn.

    signed: the in-the-house rocker chick.

    p.s. they are engaged.

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  5. That's HILARIOUS, MM!! Thanks for sharing that! It did look as though she was doing some kind of change (clothes on the ground; off BOTH shoulders! lol!) but I wasn't quite sure about that...in the proximity of the backdrop!! lol! GOOD THING for the CUTE panties!! ;-)

    (quite FUNNY, also...w/her having been around [probably] GOBS of opportunities for valet parking...that she didn't know the "protocol"! Her comment about that is a SCREAM! ROFLMFAO!! :-D

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  8. Thanks, MM.

    You're right about "exhausting". I guess I once thought I wanted a career like that, but now I get exhausted just reading about it.
    Seriously, when do you have time to lean back and think? To just, develop?

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  9. I listened a bit to Amanda's music yesterday, it's not my thing. But Neil's a very good writer. American Gods for instance is a very good example of that too-rare thing, the contemporary fantasy novel.

    And of course Sandman are enjoyed by a large number of people who otherwise don't read comics.

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  10. blackcabsessions.com/amandapalmer
    I am more of an Amanda Palmer fan. I like the things Neil Gaiman does and thinks (evidence on his blog) more than his actual books.

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  11. Funny, I love his books, well, the best of them anyway. But his blog I just can't keep my attention on. I've tried many times to read it, but then forget about it.
    But to be fair, this is true about almost all blogs. The Online Photographer is one of the very few blogs which really interest me.

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  12. I'm not a huge fan of his, having only read two of his books (Death: The Time of Your Life, and Death: The High Cost of Living). Her I have never heard of. I'll have to give Sandman a try, but I have just never gotten around to it.

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