A very Gaiman party
Sunday, 01 February, 2009
It's the middle of summer here, so naturally my thoughts turn to my birthday (which used to be in summer when I lived in the northern hemisphere). Even though my birthday isn't for another six months, I started daydreaming about fun things I could do for it. (What can I say; I like planning ahead!) This year, my birthday even falls on a Saturday! When I was a kid, I had birthday parties, but in my recollection, I don't think I ever had a proper fancy dress party—not even for my 21st (which was a 21st and a half party on a Saturday afternoon in December, and a whole bunch of people didn't end up coming because they misread the invitation or thought it was a night thing. *Sigh*.)
But what theme could I choose for a fancy dress party? Themes have to be fairly visual, otherwise they don't work too well. For example, Lizz had the theme of music for her 21st, but for most people (with the exception of Tim who came as Alice Cooper, Ben who came as Mozart and a school friend who came as the Phantom of the Opera), you couldn't tell who they were.
Then it came to me: a Neil Gaiman party!
(At this point, I'm sure my regular readers are going, “Duh!”) His body of work (Neverwhere/Stardust/American Gods/Anansi Boys/Sandman/Coraline/The Graveyard Book/Beowulf, etc.) is broad enough to give my friends enough options to choose from, even if they only have a vague notion of who Neil is (shame on them ...) They can come as characters (though I have dibs on Death, but part of me would love to be Coraline as that's my favourite Gaiman book; it's just with the movie coming out this year, my hair is probably too long for her). Or they can come as something Neil-related (e.g. a panda, a Moleskine or Tori Amos). Or they can come as Neil (black T-shirt, black leather jacket, facial hair ...)
We can play Neil Gaiman trivia in teams, do readings from some of his short stories (or listen to him read; his rendition of “Shoggoth's Old Peculiar” [scroll down to “Last Angel Tour Readings for the CBLDF”; it's clip one] is way funnier than if you just read it in your head), and finish the evening with a screening of Stardust for those who want to stay. (I would screen Mirrormask [which I love very much] but I think Stardust has more popular appeal, and one ought to be nice to one's friends when they are tolerating your eccentricities.)
In terms of food, sushi, of course, must be on the menu (cue photo of my with the sushi pillows Ben surprised me with for Christmas:
They are currently adorning our new couches). But there has to be a few non-fish options for my friends who aren't into seafood. What else? Some of the things that have come up on Neil's Twitter feed have been interesting—for example, this Gaiman-inspired coffee (ewww, coffee!) and Coraline junket. I'm also keen to see if you can get tubs of green tea, black sesame and taro ice cream from Passionflower (although ice cream in the middle of an Australian winter might not be the best idea ...)—not necessarily because Neil likes those flavours (I have no idea if he does), but because I do. But what else? Tea? Honey? Coraline's chips and mini pizzas? Bod's banana? A phoenix? Certainly not babies! ;P
Suggestions welcome.
Current:
Bible: Isaiah (ESV) 28/09/2010
seen: Tropic Thunder 26/09/2010
seen: The Life of Mammals 24/09/2010
seen: What a Girl Wants 19/09/2010
seen: Jerry Maguire 19/09/2010
seen: The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 06/09/2010
seen: Tomorrow Never Dies 05/09/2010
seen: Nanny McPhee 28/08/2010
read: Mercury (Hope Larson) 27/08/2010
read: Spellcheckers Vol 1 (Jamie S Rich, Nicolas Hitori de, Joelle Jones) 16/08/2010
read: Solipsistic Pop Vol 2 (Solipsistic Pop) 16/08/2010
read: Chiggers (Hope Larson) 15/08/2010
seen: Josie and the Pussycats 14/08/2010
seen: Mr & Mrs Smith 14/08/2010
seen: Step Up 2 13/08/2010
Blinks:
How to recalibrate the home button on your iPhone.
Unsolicited manuscripts accepted by Pan Macmillan with certain conditions.
Thought Balloon is a group blog in which the writers tackle a new theme every week? month? with one-page scripts. This URL is for their Phonogram ones.
How to sew a zipper on a knitted garment.
Issues organised by tale.
Online magazine that publishes fairy tales that are not reworkings of old tales.
Journal that publishes fairy tale writing.
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Other comments
Button shaped cookies (sweet or savoury) would seem appropriate,
dark-chocolate dipped banana chunks on toothpicks?
Blackberry pavlova?
Little slices of madeira cake, cookie-cutter stamped out in the shape of angels and topped with marmalade and chocolate chips?
Miniature cut-out ham sandwiches where the bread is the cover of a tiny book and shaved ham are the pages…
And you could screen Princess Mononoke; Neil worked on the translation script for that one.
Endless Cakes! Desire might be a really decadent chocolate overload sort of cake. Destruction might be something odd and messy, like a pineapple upside-down cake. I hesitate to imagine what sort of cake Despair would be, for who can despair when they have cake? Therefore, it would probably taste like ash (or, to keep the Gaiman theme, be filled with thousands of little spiders).
Delerium cake be rainbow cake with a dozen types of frosting, and pudding baked into the middle, and jello on top, and eleventy-one birthday candles on top, but only the prime number ones lit, and there would be ice cream on the top with Popsicle sticks stuck in and on the sides, drawn in jam, would be a dozen little interesting fishies…
Poor Dream’s cake would probably be plain white cake with sensible amounts of white frosting. And at the very center, where it surprises everyone who eats it…a small burst of strawberries and custard.
(what would Death’s cake be like, I wonder. I have no idea.)
(Now I’m hungry…)
You could have an Endless Nibbles table! A little like an infinite nibbles table, only much much shorter.
Desire would be the easiest, with strawberries (possibly choc-dipped), and other such covetable snacks.
Nice airy insubstantial things for Dream, maybe. But darker, too. Can you get black candyfloss? I bet he’d like marshmallows.
Twiglets are ace because they can be on both desire AND despair’s table.
Also for despair - really sad looking snacks. Tragic ham sandwiches. Bits of tragic cheese on crumbling crackers. Torn pieces of bread.
Delirium - anchovies in eggcups of marshmallow fluff! And other such things. Maybe some of them could be palatable. You could buy some scorpions in lollies, or wrap up tiny tiny packages of chocolate ants in pretty tissue paper. Maybe a bowl of old keys to suck on. Cornflakes with little blobs of wasabi.
Cheese & chocolate on cocktail sticks. That would be quite good.
Also, many many lurid coloured candies.
Destruction - broken bowl. Nice and easy!
Destiny - either just an old book or a nice stack of edible paper… you know, i did think of a rather unpleasant scatalogical suggestions for this one, thinking of the destiny of food.
Death would be the most interesting table of them all. You could do a lot of black stuff, star-shaped things (home-baked cookies?). Edible glitter.
Oh! Meat! Would be meat be too tactless? It IS dead, after all.
Mmm… glittery meat…
There! I have had lots of fun with my suggestions! I shall probably come up with more ramblies later. I hope you don’t mind!
Laurie: Not at all! Your ramblies are terrific!
Thanks for all the ideas, everyone!
Such great ideas! I’m looking forward to the party even more now!
starfruit slices dusted with powdered sugar…
Death’s Cake:
Obviously, you’re aware that Mr. Gaiman worked with Terry Pratchett on Good Omens and Pratchett’s Death is very well… ahem… fleshed out. (sorry) Death’s cake would be black, because everything Death has is black, with a theme of skulls, scythes, and hourglasses. The trouble with Death is that, since he’s not alive, he’s always getting the little details of things wrong.. for example, his granddaughter’s tree swing wasn’t actually attached to anything, it just was. So he might mistake what cake actually tastes like, and since his favorite food is curry with raisins and currants, the inside of the cake would most likely be an improbably solid curry. I wouldn’t suggest trying to bake a curry into a cake, but perhaps a raisin and current spice cake with a hint of curry frosted in black would do the trick.
Hmmm, I think the powdered sugar would just dissolve on the starfruit slices unless you coated the starfruit in something dry.
I think a Desire cake would be carmel cake thin-sliced and layered with raspberry jam and vanilla pudding, the bottom layer sitting soaked in whisky and the top completely coated in shavings of very dark bitter chocolate and dark red shreds of rose petals.
A Despair cake would be a plain white birthday cake with pink and green trim on the edges and a single candle lit on top, at a party nobody went to.
A Destiny cake would be made from hard biscuits and dried fruit, and would be portable; the sort of thing that keeps forever, which you could eat on the road. It would have an unexpected bit in the middle, or in the last bite, which I won’t describe because then it wouldn’t be unexpected.
A Destruction cake would be a fantastic effort but would end up looking like it belonged on cakewrecks.com. If he were a real cake, he should be a Guinness cake with chocolate frosting.
Death would be a dark chocolate cake with cinnamon-almond frosting which did not contain any cyanide whatsoever.
Delirium ... already has the perfect cake up above. Add some confused frogs to that scenario and you’re all set.
Dream could be sweet white sponge cake made without flavors (just leave out the vanilla), layered with unflavored sweet-cream ice cream, frosted with mascarpone frosting. Or he could be ginger cake with dark chocolate frosting soaked in rum, or he could be a strawberry cake with cream cheese frosting and almonds on top, or lemon cake with lavender-scented frosting, or dark chocolate cake soaked in rum with blended cream cheese and sultana frosting.
Ooh! Button shaped cookies! May I come?
This line cracked me up: “something Neil-related (e.g. a panda, a Moleskine or Tori Amos)”.
By the way, The Hathor Legacy have had a few Gaiman related (and commented-upon) posts recently - I’ve linked to them on my latest.