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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