And as you can see, in this picture Bob forwarded to me last week, he has the nerve to laugh about it!

I don’t care if the guy is a Grand Master—isn’t it time he had his license revoked?

And just to show that my memory isn’t what it once was, I had thought this accident had taken place at a publisher party at the 2001 Philadelphia Worldcon, but Bob assures me that he had instead mowed me down a year later at a party held at San Jose’s Tech Museum of Innovation during the 2002 Worldcon.

My first Worldcon was 1974, so they’re all starting to blend together, folks.

Reading of the death of French pastry genius Gaston Lenôtre in the pages of The New York Times brought me immediately back to mid-’70s Manhattan, when I first met the woman who was to become my wife and love was in bloom. I need no madeleine to bring back my past; give me an inspired Lenôtre creation any day.

The obituary refers to Chateau France, an 80-seat restaurant and pâtisserie, which he opened on East 59th Street in April 1974, the same month Irene began work at Marvel Comics, and two months before my start date. I don’t remember ever eating in the restaurant, but the pâtisserie, which in my memory was simply called Lenôtre’s, was immediately next to the restaurant, and once Irene and I discovered each other it became somewhat of a hangout for us.

I can close my eyes and remember specific pastries, Irene and I holding hands across the table as we ate. There was a swan encased in spun-sugar. A large orange filled with cream. Irene and I would walk there during our lunch hours, or after work, and enjoy Lenôtre’s amazing confections, and our budding relationship. Lenôtre was a culinary god, and his pastries were so sensual that eating them was almost a form of foreplay.

Lenôtre apprentice Michel Richards is quoted as saying about the restaurant, “It closed a year later. Americans weren’t ready for his pastries.” Irene and I surely were. You may remember what music was playing when you fell in love. I remember what I was eating. And often, what I was eating was the brainchild of Gaston Lenôtre.

Continued Richard, “When you’ve been at Lenôtre, it’s like a drug. You’ve been injected with his recipes that you have to carry your whole life.”

I have. I do. And almost 35 years later, I’m still high.

Roger Langridge‘s tribute to the King is the coolest thing I’ve seen all week. But then, since I recognized every reference, I guess I’m the target audience.

Langridge, the creator of Fred the Clown, apparently drew this for a convention program book, and according to his blog will be auctioning off the original for charity.

Steven Soderbergh is interviewed in the February 2009 issue of Esquire on his upcoming two-part, four-and-a-half hour biographical film Che, which stars Benicio Del Toro.

In the interview, the director talks about how much he admires Che Guevara’s work ethic, though not necessarily his politics, how the man “spent every waking hour trying to shape the world in a certain way,” and that “he just felt like there wasn’t enough time to do all the things that needed to be done.”

Which led the interviewer to ask:

ESQ: Sounds like you.

SS: Yeah, except what I do isn’t important. That’s the only difference.

ESQ: Don’t you think art makes the world a better place?

SS: What tragedy has it kept from happening? Tell that to the 13-year-old girl from Somalia who got stoned to death last week after being raped by three men and then convicted of adultery, buried up to her head, and stoned in front of a crowd of 1,000 people. If the collected works of Shakespeare can’t keep that from happening, then what is it worth? Honestly?

I’d already heard of that incident, but reading about it late last night in that context with that contrast took my breath away.

Too depressed to read any further, I just went to bed.

It seems that I made a mistake last month when I offered copies of my short story, “Petrified,” which appeared in Desolate Souls, the World Horror Convention souvenir program book last year, to active HWA members only.

Though voting is limited to active members, all members of the Horror Writers Association, and not just actives, may recommend a work.

With only a week to go until recs close for this year’s preliminary ballot, this is a reminder that you can either go to the rec list and click on the link to download a copy of “Petrified,” or else drop me an e-mail and I’ll send it to you as an attachment via return e-mail.

If you’d prefer, and if there’s enough time, I’ll even get a uniformed government employee to deliver it to you. Yes, I have that power.

You know where to reach me.

One of the problems with censorship is that what we can imagine is usually far worse than what’s actually being censored, something which I realized while reading the next graphic novel to be bowdlerized by at patron at my local library. I already told you about what he or she did to Wonder Woman. What was done to the Justice Society of America is even more amusing.

The latest collection to get the Wite-Out treatment is JSA: The Liberty Files, which is a bit ironic, don’t you think? A book with the word “liberty” in the title being censored?

As before, the book is filled with numerous instances of what I assume to be words such as “hell” or “damn” or “Christ” being obscured. But what this censor doesn’t seem to realize is what happens in the mind of a reader when facing such blanks, or as in the case of the page on display, replacements, such as the kind encountered when watching movies which, as the euphemism goes, have been edited for television.

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I’m trying to navigate the mind of a censor, but unfortunately, I’m getting a little lost in there.

I stopped by the Handley Regional Library in Winchester, Virginia this weekend, where I picked up about a dozen graphic novels so I could play catch-up on comics I’d missed. One of them was Wonder Woman: Bitter Rivals, a collection from four years ago (which shows exactly how much catch-up I desperately need to do).

While reading through the book, I discovered dabs of Wite-Out wherever a character might have said “hell” or “damn” or “christ.” I can’t tell for sure what was deleted in any of the panels, because the Wite-Out has been laid on so thick that I can’t make out the original lettering even when I hold the page up to the light. I guess I’d have to track down an unbowdlerized copy of the book to tell exactly what was being censored.

In any case, check out the first word balloon here for an example of what some library visitor did after he or she was offended:

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I just discovered this advertisement in the January 1893 issue of The Cosmopolitan, and since an entry of mine from last week caused Patrick Nielsen Hayden to comment on the difference between mimeography and spirit duplication, I thought I’d share it here.

If Wikipedia can be trusted, “Edison did not coin the word ‘mimeograph,’ which was first used by Albert Blake Dick when he licensed Edison’s patents in 1887.” And according to Wired, “The A.B. Dick Co. released the Model 0 Flatbed Duplicator in 1887. It sold for $12 ($270 in today’s money).”

Which means that this ad was published fairly close to the dawn of the technology, only six years after that license was first obtained and the mimeograph was offered commercially to the public.

I can’t tell if the product pictured is the Model 0 Flatbed Duplicator, but regardless of whether it’s the original or a later model, it still led to the launch of science-fiction fandom.

Let a thousand fanzines bloom!

Here’s how 2008 turned out for me … or rather, how it turned out for my words.

I completed three new short stories, but I won’t be telling you their titles or giving out any other details about them until they’re either sold or published. What can I say? I’m superstitious that way.

But here’s what I can tell you—

I published two stories:

“Petrified” in Desolate Souls, the World Horror Convention souvenir program book

“A Very Private Tour of a Very Public Museum” in Postscripts #15

And I sold five:

“Glitch” to The Solaris Book of New Science Fiction: Volume Three

“The Human Race” to Space and Time

“The Hunger of Empty Vessels” to Bad Moon Books, where it will be published as a stand-alone novella

“The Only Wish Ever to Come True” to Talebones

“The World Breaks” to Postscripts

All five of those stories are slated to appear in 2009. Watch for them!

So there I am in a dream this morning on a packed bus in Egypt, heading with a group of other tourists to visit the ruins. (In the real world, Irene and I visited Egypt in 2006, but I’m not sure whether my dream self was aware of that.) Only we never make it to the sites, instead ending up in a disappointing museum filled with broken audio-animatronics, cheap plastic replicas of artifacts, and tacky tabletop displays purporting to explain the history of the region which contain flickering lights that don’t always work and have been constructed with all the polish of a grade-school science fair.

No one else even bothers to look at these exhibits, instead scurrying straight through to the cafeteria at the far end of the building, but I pause at every one, reading plaques and pushing buttons, all the while wondering why we didn’t head to Abu Simbel or Luxor … or anywhere else but here.

By the time I finish my dutiful examination and catch up with the rest of the group, they’re seated in the cafeteria, having finished eating, and surrounded by the detritus of their meals. Most of them have pulled their chairs in a ring around Cory Doctorow, who I hadn’t even realized was traveling with us.

When I look at what’s available to eat, all I can see are candy bars, but these aren’t the standard U.S. ones I’m used to. They’re all foreign brands, such as those I’ve marveled at in London, like Mint Aeros and Cadbury Flakes. Finding these unfamiliar treats fills me with a strange sort of joy. I scoop up handfuls of the sweets, and as I dance back to show off my spoils to Cory, I wake.