Famous in Gaimanland

Wow, Neil Gaiman liked my Mythcon paper. I'm ... chuffed, I think is the word.

He also mentions the food sculptures ... this is a hallowed Mythcon tradition, consisting of art made out of banquet food scraps, usually in the form of visual puns on the GoH's (or other) book titles, and presented to him or her at the head table at the conclusion of the meal. This year we had The Sand(wich) Man, Never There (a blank plate), The Creaming, and more, but the one which seemed to cause Neil the most physical pain was the one I was privileged to present to him: two untouched rounded pats of butter, decorated with a US flag hand-drawn with lipstick and pen ink on the inside of a sugar packet: American Globs (concept by B., flag executed by nellorat).

I won't even get into the costume presentations of Sandman as a musical, or the parody Endless called the Gormless (Dave Sim already did the Clueless). Curious how many Mythies needed these explained, as while many of us know his fiction (Stardust even won the Mythopoeic Fantasy Award a few years ago), few have read Sandman. I anticipated this in writing my paper on the Sandman volume A Game of You, and while of necessity I had to include spoilers, I tried to gear the paper to an audience which hadn't read the book. (And no, I did not begin explaining the backstory with "There are seven beings called the Endless, who ..." which imho is grabbing entirely the wrong end of the stick.) B. also wisely took an elementary approach to her survey of Gaiman's re-use of old DC characters in Sandman, all of them obscure enough that I'd never heard of them before.

There was also a good audience for my hour on music inspired by Tolkien, with recorded music as illustration. Plenty of song settings of his poetry, but the audience seemed most appreciative of two purely instrumental classical works: Carey Blyton's charming Hobbit Overture and the great Finnish composer Aulis Sallinen's exciting and dramatic Symphony No. 7 "The Dreams of Gandalf".

The committee insisted on putting me on four panels this year. For a con as small as Mythcon this seemed a bit much even to me, but I went ahead and was judicious on the post-modernism panel (where nellorat got to be out on the left), was thoroughly injudicious on the Tolkien and film panel, and analytically enthusiastic on panels on Dorothy L. Sayers' fiction and C.S. Lewis's non-fiction, two bodies of work I greatly admire.

Other good papers included Rodney Green's "He Is Not A Crook" comparing the Mayor of Laketown to Richard Nixon; Nicholas Perry on legal disputes arising from Tolkien's works; and Sarah Betts' courageous attempt to criticize Tolkien for his portrayal of Eowyn (though nobody in the audience was buying it). I missed as many just as good, but at least I have copies of some of them.

Late one evening, I helped marykaykare plot a probable-possible 2006 Mythcon in Seattle (and about time, too), so Seattlites, be prepared to come. And I helped surround the briefly-appearing Ellen Kushner and Delia Sherman with Davids at breakfast one morning.

Other highlights of the Michigan trip included:
a Petting Tour of the Great Cats of Ann Arbor, conducted by anderyn and the elusive and legendary krj, who are accompanied at their homes by two each;
much listening to recorded music with the aforementioned persons and cats;
escorting and directing various Mythies to Zingerman's deli for post-con lunch on Monday, where we feasted very well;
before the con B. and I drove to Lansing, where we visited the zoo (highlight: the colony of Magellanic penguins) and the quite impressive state historical museum, as well as a bookstore with a cat;
and on Monday afternoon we drove to Canada, which was closed for the day, but we did find one defiantly open used-bookstore in Windsor.

Next year in Birmingham. Yes, the one in England. (Immediately after the Glasgow Worldcon, but I don't expect to be at that.)