In which I don't meet Neil Gaiman. Again.
Okay, so here's the story. For the last thirteen years or so, I have been unsuccessful at meeting Neil Gaiman. Not that I've been stalking him or anything, it's just that my timing sucks.
It started way back when I was still attending MiniCon. At least once a year, I would be wandering around the different room parties, and end up hearing that Neil had been there not too long before. I would always have missed him by, on average, half an hour. (Occasionally, I would end up being somewhere, getting tired (you know, up for 36+hours and all), crash out in my hotel room, and find out the next day that he showed up where I was at after I left, but that was an extremely rare occurrence.)
In 1999, I started going to CONvergence. Also in 1999, I heard the same stories as before, and it seemed as though Neil was doing his best to follow me around and be early at me.
"But wait," I hear you asking, "wasn't he a guest of honor at CONvergence in 2000?"
You mean the year I was working nights at the bank and couldn't get the time off? Yes. Yes he was.
And so it continues to this day. "Oh hey, Neil's going to make an appearance at this local book shop in... two days ago."
So, zoom in to last night. The wonderful mysticmoonstorm bought tickets to the Jonathan Coulton concert, and guess who was there. Go ahead guess. Yep, he even went on stage and did some guest vocals for 'Creepy Doll'! It was awesome!
So yeah, I ended up less than twenty feet away from him while he was on stage. I even saw where he was sitting in the audience. Now, I'm not going to walk up to him in the middle of a concert he's enjoying to introduce myself and let him know that I enjoy his work. I figured that I'd wait until the end of the concert when everyone was leaving, and see if I can try then.
So it's too bad that he, as near as I can tell, went backstage.
I'm still kind of laughing about it.
It started way back when I was still attending MiniCon. At least once a year, I would be wandering around the different room parties, and end up hearing that Neil had been there not too long before. I would always have missed him by, on average, half an hour. (Occasionally, I would end up being somewhere, getting tired (you know, up for 36+hours and all), crash out in my hotel room, and find out the next day that he showed up where I was at after I left, but that was an extremely rare occurrence.)
In 1999, I started going to CONvergence. Also in 1999, I heard the same stories as before, and it seemed as though Neil was doing his best to follow me around and be early at me.
"But wait," I hear you asking, "wasn't he a guest of honor at CONvergence in 2000?"
You mean the year I was working nights at the bank and couldn't get the time off? Yes. Yes he was.
And so it continues to this day. "Oh hey, Neil's going to make an appearance at this local book shop in... two days ago."
So, zoom in to last night. The wonderful mysticmoonstorm bought tickets to the Jonathan Coulton concert, and guess who was there. Go ahead guess. Yep, he even went on stage and did some guest vocals for 'Creepy Doll'! It was awesome!
So yeah, I ended up less than twenty feet away from him while he was on stage. I even saw where he was sitting in the audience. Now, I'm not going to walk up to him in the middle of a concert he's enjoying to introduce myself and let him know that I enjoy his work. I figured that I'd wait until the end of the concert when everyone was leaving, and see if I can try then.
So it's too bad that he, as near as I can tell, went backstage.
I'm still kind of laughing about it.