Heading back for NY today. At this point there’s only one “official” function left, the Books For Kids brunch in Toronto on Sunday…and interesting and fun as it’s probably going to be, I can’t wait to get home. All this luxury and travel is neat, yeah…but not half as neat as hugging Peter is going to be.
Later, in the Polo Lounge again: Surprising how otherwise-charged a piece of real estate, familiar to those of us who work in TV and film and from the occasional TV appearance of its own, can reveal itself to be charmingly mundane when you’ve been here for just long enough to get over the buzz of the bizz.
The Guitar Guy is reprising / covering various Chris Cross / Elton John goodies, fronting on guitar while the machinery fills in the background and his previously-laid-in vocals. The place is full of the mundane sound of people chatting. Once the rhythm was broken while some diner was sung Happy Birthday to (and if I patched in Peter’s name, over here in my quiet corner, no one noticed at all). Outside on the patio, the occasional lightning of someone’s flash photography lights up the night and freezes the palm fronds in place for tenths of a second at a time.
There’s a big old olive tree outside, with little white lights dangling all over it, an unusual crop. From the girth of the trunk, it’s at least sixty or eighty years old, a noble thing in this part of the world, where so many trees have died young — with the occasional exception: I think of the great oak which should have been chief among those that gave Encino its name (from los Encinos, the Oaks) — a huge-trunked creature that still stands a little way off Ventura Boulevard, a thousand years old and more, they say.
Whenever I see that tree, I think of Eddison’s line about trees “that had seen Vikings in Copeland in their seedling-time” — this tree would have been one of those trees’ contemporaries. It looks out at shopping centers and the never-ending rush of traffic on Ventura, and all those dangly branches sway slightly in the wind…
I love this place. All the more because it’s unstable.
A long lunch today with an old friend. Strange things are happening in her life, as in mine. By way of rounding the evening out, here I sit over in a corner of the Lounge, blogging gently, eating sweet toasted walnuts and drinking a Tokaj from the Friulan part of Italy which we visited last year, around this time. The thought makes me think of Max and Lucia, who we meant to take to dinner, and who weaseled out of it and insisted they had to pay because we hadn’t faxed them our intent to pay — the idea being that an e-mail, under Italian law, isn’t binding as a contract: binding contracts have to be on paper. We’ll get them for that yet, the wicked creatures.
Wow, they just turned the lights way down in here. “Atmosphere!” It may be a while until my eyes get used enough to the dark to blog any further.
Down in DC now, after an exciting day. Thanks to the kids at Doyle, and the group who came to see me in Haverford; you all made my day! Or possibly my year. Sometimes it’s just a whole lot of fun to be reminded of who I’m writing for. All your questions were sharp and on target: you made me think, which is the best gift anybody can give a writer.
Meanwhile, it’s very strange to get off a plane and find yourself staring at the Washington Monument. Equally strange because, the last time I was here, it was all covered in that blue-lit scaffolding. I look forward to getting better acquainted with this city, but maybe not this trip: right now this is a slightly twitchy place to be, especially since Peter is twitching much harder than I am, and I worry about his concern. I think he’d be happiest if I weren’t here, and he keeps sounding like he’d like to tell me to dig a deep hole and crawl into it. (I seem to remember Kimball Kinnison using similar language to Clarissa MacDougall. Oh well.) It’s not going to happen. I have things to do here: I’ll do them and then move on as scheduled. This is perhaps a pygmy-sized courage, but even a small act of defiance, consciously done, can become an act of heroism. Okay, still a small one. But better than nothing: better than lying down and being rolled over. If I get afraid, I’ll work to use the fear for something useful. Otherwise “they” win…whoever “they” are. And I’m stubborn enough not to want to give “them”, for any value of “them”, the satisfaction.
Right now I’m deciding how to rank this hotel (the L’enfant Plaza) in the increasingly-extensive list of Hotels I Like. This one isn’t quite as nice as the Regency in NY. But on the other hand, the Regency doesn’t put giant bins of Utz pretzel logs on the bar tables. (Maybe this is something I should discuss with them.) I do love pretzels. This is a talent that P. completely lacks. OK: More For Me. (grin)
Also, this is probably a good place to note how much I enjoyed the company of my escort, Alistair, around my various functions in Philly over the last few days. He is a poet, a gentleman and a scholar, and it was Loads-O-Fun running around with him and talking writing, these last few days.
I also much enjoyed the presence of the Kinko’s downstairs in the Philadelphia Marriott: not just because of the broadband Internet access, but because of all the huge five-foot-wide printers I really wanted to steal. There was much cool technology there. A shame I didn’t have a jacket big enough to smuggle some of it out under.
After a short hiatus, here I am in Philadelphia.
The short hiatus includes: (a) Many more hours of watching Beemer and Bubble attack each other happily. (b) Going to Dublin the night before my transatlantic
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flight and smashing my right thumb with my suitcase. Don’t ask me how I achieved this unusual exploit. I’m still astonished. (c) Flying transatlantic business class on Continental. I strongly recommend the fresh-baked chocolate chip cookies that turned up as we were flying south of Greenland. (d) Rain. Rain in NY, rain here in Philly. Ick. (e) Five boxes full of books that I have to sign tonight before I sleep. Don’t ask what my signature’s going to look like in the morning. (“Worse than it does at the moment? Impossible,” I can just hear P. saying.
He’s not here, of course: a sane choice on his part, though I miss him something awful. But tagging along on a signing tour has to be one of the least exciting things in the world. In a strange way I wish I were where he is now — home watching the kittens scrag each other. Sigh…
So after some initial growling and posturing, Beemer and Bubble have decided to be friends. They’ve spent the entire morning chasing each other around the house. Squeak has retired to a cushion on his “park bench” in front of the house. Goodman has gone off to kill things.
Why is it that now I have to go away for three weeks? (mutter, mutter, mutter)
“One thing we have that he doesn’t: three cats.”
Uh, how quickly fact overtakes report. Four cats.
She ran in the door past our ankles as we came in from the pub the other night. A fluffy little smoke, gold, and white calico kitten, maybe six weeks old. The older cats are disgusted: the place is obviously going to pot. Beemer is outraged: she thought she was unique. The new kitten (whose name is Bubble) is boinging around the place, cheerfully oblivious…and strangely steely-calm in a way which has already upset even the intense and aggressive Beemer.
We’re up to strength again: two males, two females… Owl Springs, the Soap Opera. The household is in turmoil. As it should be, I guess…
(Especially when, by accident, you anticipate it.)
In the “Is Nothing Sacred” dep’t: the gravitational constant may be a variable. (Gee, and I used that in a book not so long ago. Snicker.)
The fish seem to have handled the move just fine: they’re all moving around at their ease, as usual, except when someone comes over to the pond, at which time they hide behind one of the underwater flowerpots (and this they routinely did in the other pond, too). This pond does have a much larger surface area than their old one, though, and I’m now beginning to wonder about how to protect them, in the new pond, from the herons that routinely fish in the big natural pond out back. Our friend Charles up north has told us too many horror stories about how the local heron (known in Northern dialect as “the hern-cran”) has cleaned out his pond time and again. I think probably nylon screening over the top should do the trick, when we’re away from home.
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…Of course, we have something Charles doesn’t have: three cats. The senior two would probably consider a heron to be a novel kind of Meals On Wheels, considering how often they’ve brought in various live / dead waterfowl from the pond to eat in the kitchen. (This brings up too many hysterical memories of how Mr. Squeak once brought in a live and very pissed-off baby duckling while we were in the middle of a conference call with a German production company about a miniseries we were preparing to do with them. Peter had to dump the phone and relieve Squeak of the duckling, run some water into the sink of the bathroom under the stairs, fire the duckling into it, shut the door and get back on the phone, while Squeak ran around shouting in [loosely translated] cat, “Gimme back my toy!” After the conference call Squeak was distracted with canned tuna while Peter repatriated the duckling. The vicissitudes of life in the country…)
Tsk, tsk, tsk…
Judge Throws Out ‘Harry Potter’ Copyright Suit
It always looked like a dumb suit. To find that Stouffer was faking evidence as well… (eyeroll) For those who might be interested, here’s a link to the complete judgment.
…Meanwhile, on the other side of the Atlantic: J.K. says she’s nearly done… Good for her, I say.
The other day I upgraded this blogging space a little to allow for image storage and other such things. One thing that also becomes available when you upgrade is BStats, a utility that allows you to see what URLs have been referring people to your blog. It’s fun.
Some people come in via direct links: some come via search engines. The most interesting one of these I’ve seen so far was an AOL-based search on the following phrase: “What to do about my broke out neck because of too much soda.”
Friend, whoever you are, I really doubt the soda was to blame. Welcome, anyway.
“Like something out of science fiction.” Don’t you just love that phrase? And the way it’s almost always used as a perjorative in the media? If something sounds crazy or impossible, that phrase turns up so often. Yet even when it’s used to describe something that’s really (finally!) happened, it rarely turns up without at least a hint of additional context that suggests, “Yeah, but those SF people are still nut cases.” Sigh…
Here’s today’s piece of cool news, anyway. Hurray for the Athena Group!
Does this sound familiar?
“First, I must solicit your strictest confidence in this transaction. This is by virtue of its nature as being utterly confidential and ‘top secret’….”
(sigh) Yet another “Nigerian” / “419” e-mail. I’ve lost count of how many of these things I’ve received over the past year. The first few lines always make me laugh. Partly it’s because of the “keep it Secret and Confidential” business — do they really believe that millions and millions of people don’t know about the scam already, or that they’re going to be able to keep knowledge of it from spreading if I keep the secret? But partly it’s the names of the people they purport to come from. Yesterday I got one that was supposed to come from Winnie Mandela. Yeah, I believe Winnie’s dying to send me millions of dollars… But the best one so far has been “from” Mrs. Helen Bongo and her son, Prince Dave Bongo. — This is doubtless that “more relaxed style” of modern royalty that we keep hearing about…
Yet it’s also true that these people take lots of money off the unwary every year. I wish I had the patience to do what this guy and this lady seem to have done. Two small pins in the butt for a representative couple of all those naughty people who’ve stolen so much from others….
Meanwhile, not only do I have someone else’s archives where mine should be, I now have two someone elses’ archives there….the new ones rather more personal than the old. “Tech — !!!” The heck with it, I’ll just turn them off again and see if that helps. (mutter, mutter)
But never mind. The author’s copies of A Wizard Alone have arrived. I now declare this book officially Real. It should be in the stores in a couple of weeks, if things go the way they usually do. Boy, I love these Cliff Nielsen covers (here’s what the new one looks like…).
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