Neil Gaiman, The Graveyard Book, American Gods and Endless Reflections
Over on Neil Gaiman’s web journal there is all sorts of news about his newest novel, The Graveyard Book, due out by the end of the year. If you weren’t sure, I am pretty excited about this whole affair with Mr. Gaiman being one of my favorite authors of all time. A quick little quote from his site quoting Kurt Busiek talking about the novel: 
THE GRAVEYARD BOOK’s title is an homage to THE JUNGLE BOOK, since TGB is about a boy whose family dies, and who winds up being raised in a graveyard, by ghosts, and the other things that lurk there.
The boy, named Nobody (“Bod” for short), learns many things, discovers odd places and curious people, deals hesitantly with the world outside the graveyard and eventually has to deal with the forces that killed the rest of his family, and who are still looking for him. I won’t say much more about the plot, because hey, it’s not going to be out for months.
But I think it’s likely Neil’s best novel yet. It has a great deal of warmth, whimsy, dark fantasy (verging on horror), adventure, charm, suspense, monsters, ghouls, a witch, school bullies, policemen, ancient burial mounds, knife-wielding killers, dancing, mystery, trouble, a dash of romance, life lessons, and a creature named Silas, who is both what he seems to be and not. And the most endearingly dangerous and threatening ancient terror you’ve ever met. The story’s engaging, there’s a real sense of menace, and it builds to a strong and satisfying climax.
Either way, it’s in my things to check out list. If you are unfamiliar with Neil Gaiman’s work you can read American Gods for free on line. Personally, I like American Gods and it’s sequel Anansi Boys the best of his work. You can read the whole novel. In fact, I insist you read the whole novel. It’s free. The whole book. And it’s a pretty big book. You can read a few pages a day while at work or before bed. Whenever. But it’s free and it’s available and it would be a shame not to take advantage of it.
Which brings me to my next little subject, has anyone heard of Endless Reflections, the Sandman graphic novels? That link right before this sentence was something I stumbled upon which makes me think that there might be a TV series for the Sandman comics. How cool would that be!? If anyone has any news, please post in comments. I looked all over wikipedia and his site with no avail. I really hope this isn’t just a joke, I think this would be the coolest TV show.
Stranger Than Fiction – Two Real-Life Super Powers
A few months back we wrote about the comedic possibilities of super heroes confronting real life. In the last few years there has been a flood of super hero comics, movies, and TV shows and many of them place people with extraordinary abilities in ordinary situations. Witness the blockbuster Spider-Man movies, or heroes like Hiro from Heroes.
But beyond the world of fiction, what kind of super powers can we find in real life? Sure, it’s fun to come up with speculative pseudoscience explanations for Superman’s heat vision, but that’s not likely to produce any results. Even non-powered heroes like Batman rely too much on poor comic book physics and unrealistic survivability to produce real-life counterparts.
We’ll find our real-life super powers in less obvious places. In the 1980s Marvel had a character named Cypher, or more properly Doug Ramsey. Doug wasn’t known by his super hero name because his power wasn’t flashy or very useful in battle - Doug was genetically gifted with the ability to understand languages.
This amazing ability to learn languages (along with numbers, dates, etc.) is something you can find in real life, often linked with disabling autism. Often, but not always. Watch the video to see the life of Daniel Tammet, the boy with the incredible brain.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4913196365903075662How Does Uri Geller Still Get on TV?
Magician Criss Angel will join Uri Geller on Phenomenon on NBC. The show is billed as American Idol for magicians and “mentalists,” but that’s not really interesting. Within the next few years there will be an American Idol-style show for every profession, hobby, and pursuit in the history of man.
What’s interesting is that Geller, who has for years gone on TV all over the world claiming to have psychic powers, is still able to get on TV at all. He’s been caught cheating and had his powers debunked so many times it’s not even funny anymore.
He was probably most famously exposed by James Randi (The Amazing Randi). Watch the video below for some entertaining history.
Yes, that’s right, Geller is so busted that he flaked out on Johnny Carson. In 1973. That’s more than 30 years of being busted.
Liz Taylor, Marriage?!!
NOOOOOOOO!!!!! Just watch if you haven’t seen this already.
