In the next few days I’m going to write a post about Neil Gaiman’s Anansi Boys, the reading of which may have saved my fragile mind over the last few weeks. However, first I wanted to tell you about Neil Gaiman being my literary soulmate in yet another sphere.
While I was reading Anansi Boys, I made that playlist post several days ago. Jeff made that comment about trying to volunteer at a smaller radio station for a shift of some sort to give it a whirl from time to time. I thought, “That’s a great idea!”
Then, this great idea combined with my more delusional writer fantasies in which I get published, and become well-known enough to call up ole’ KEXP and say, “Hey, it’s local writer Scott Small. Can I be on your radio station sometime when a DJ is sick or something?” And they’d be like, “Hey, I heard about you, you sold like 15 copies of your book to the local public, and it wasn’t even your mom who bought all of them! Sure, you can have the graveyard shift next week when our normal DJ is in Fiji.” And I’d be like, “Score!” Then I would punch the sky and freeze as if that was the end of the episode, just like Kenneth Parcell at the end of the Night Court reunion.
It was soon afterward that I learned that from time to time, Neil Gaiman guest DJs on various Minneapolis radio stations. He is living my fantasy life in so many ways. Yup, be still my heart. I love that man.
I forget, did I ever tell you all about that quote I found from Gaiman? I probably did, but here it is anyway:
“There have been two times in my life where I know how God feels, and only two. The first was in 1988, writing Black Orchid, the first time I brought Batman on and had him say words that I’d written. I was like, ‘Batman is saying words that I’ve written. If the world ends tomorrow, I will still have made Batman talk. It probably won’t, and this comic will be published, and Batman will be in it, and he will have said stuff that I wrote.’ It was this incredible power. So, there was that, and then there was the first time I got to type the words, ‘Interior: TARDIS.'”
Anyway, if you know me at all, you probably understand how excited that would have made me. It was as if someone had said, “Hey, Scott, I want you to make up a quote for Neil Gaiman to say that would make you disproportionately happy.” The only other thing I would have added if I wrote it would have been beginning the quote with, “I was just telling my friend Scott the other day that…”
