In which I narrowly escape death from laughter

I’ve had this insanely stupid cough for a year now. It started out as whooping cough (because you know I get all the obsolete diseases) and has never completely gone away. Some of my friends get nervous when they are talking to me because I’ll start coughing when I laugh and eventually I end up throwing up or passing out although luckily I haven’t done both at the same time.

So I knew I was taking my life in my hands by listening to Neil Gaiman read from Anansi Boys. He’s been billing it as a comic novel, for now anyway, and when Neil is funny he’s very, very funny. I would put him in the class of Douglas Adams and PG Wodehouse.

I laughed harder than I have in ages. Possibly more than I ever have. Maybe I laughed this much the time vorpal was telling me about all the films he has been in, for instance he played Hawaii in Hawaii Five-Oh.

This was like a natural disaster kind of laughing. Each laugh built on the laugh before until it built into a tsunami or hurricane of laughter. For the rest of the day whenever I would think key words like “Taft” I would start all over again. It was great.

Sure everything turned black around the edges a few times and yes I couldn’t breathe once or twice and Cullen did indeed wonder who Neil would feel if I actually did die during the reading but the important thing here is that I didn’t and it was well worth the risk.

Cullen felt sorry for Neil because of the questions he got during his Q and A. Mr. Pohl got deep, philosophical questions while Neil got things like “Why sushi?” and someone correcting a word choice. It reminded of this time a friend was doing a play and the audience asked questions after. The two most memorable were “Where'dja get those socks at?” and “Do you like to dance and sing like Elvis?”

After the reading Neil very kindly resumed signing. Mind you he had already signed for much more than his originally scheduled time. I knew when I saw how much time they gave him it would never fly but I was not involved in organization of this event.

Best estimates are that there were 80,000 people at the entire Festival. Neil says he signed for about 500 people over the course of several hours. <= 500 people from all over the world are going to Fiddler’s Green. Eight of those people are going to dinner with Neil. I am one of them. So is the lady who was right in front of us in the signing line. How crazy are the odds of that?

Proving once again that he is the nicest person every born, Neil not only autographed my arm for me, but when some guy asked him to dedicate American Gods to “A real American God” he actually did it. And he didn’t fall over laughing, or smirk or anything. He paused for a second and then went on signing.

When I told Neil that two of us in line were having dinner with him next month he said it looked like the Book Festival was the meeting place for Fiddler’s Green people. Who would have expected so many of us in the heart of DC on the mall of all places? I told him I was going to the One Ring Zero party in Baltimore said I’d pass on his regards. It’s kind of too bad I was so out of it from being sick because Michael from One Ring Zero was a little disappointed I didn’t bring Neil along. Although I suspect Neil was too tired to go anywhere but to sleep.

I cannot stress enough how much Neil’s sense of fair play with his fans impresses me. I have seen him signing until you’d think his brain would explode and his hand would fall off but he is unfailingly pleasant and doesn’t seem to lose any body parts or any of the fizz that makes up the Gaiman personality.