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dbborroughs' Journal

11th May, 2003. 4:34 pm. Signing Randomly

The Books of Wonder signing of Eoin Cofler was a fast event for me.

I arrived not long before the noon start time and because of the way everyone was situated I was around the sole corner in the store and out of sight of the reading. This was bad for the reading but good for the signing when I was about fifth or sxith on line. (Cofler looked shellshocked or jet lagged and seemed not to be there when I met him. I made a remark about the codes causing my copies of the books to end up annotated and he just sort of stared at me...I felt odd until I looked at pictures from other signings and realized he always seems to look that way.)

He spoke briefly before reading a section of the new Artemnis Fowl book, the Infinity Code. He then took questions.

From all of this the following was gleened....

- He is a very funny man. His books tend to start out serious but end up funny.

- His book Benny and Omar started out that way, but ended up being cut partly because it was too long and partly because it was a bit too serious. It concerned actual kids who live "orphaned" on the street. The book was written to help them get off the street.

- Artemis looks like Damien in Omen2. always neat and in a suit.

-The goblins are all based on his brothers.

-He said the terrible thing about little brothers is that as the older brother you get blamed for everything. He said the best revenge is to wait until you grow up and write them into books where you can get to do nasty things to them. This is preferable to hitting them over the head with a hammer which isn't nice and would only get you into trouble.

-He said that when he was young his older brother would ask him what a jelly baby was, to which he'd reply a baby. Then He would ask you Eoin what he was and he would reply a baby. The brother would then bite the head off the jelly baby and tell him if he wasn't good he'd do that to him. He would sometimes squish the beheaded jelly baby and say that was his guts. The problem explained Cofler was that you can't go to your mum and say that your brother is eatting jelly at you since it doesn't sounf threatening.

-It will be two years to the next Artemis Fowl book. He has a new book in October and a scifi one next year.

-He would like to meet Lemony Snicket but hasn't done so since they tend to pass through places two years apart.

-Favorite author is Roddy Doyle.

-He tends to read his friends stuff more then anything else.

-He loves Mark Twain and Tom Sawyer and To Kill a Mockingbird.

-He went on in great detail about goblins not having eye lids so their eyes dry out and shrink and then fall out and ...

-If you visit www.EoinCofler.com please sign the book and say how much you like the site since his friend Liam did alot of work on it. He also said not to say Hello Liam I like the website since it would mean that you were put up to it by Eoin.

-He went on in great detail about how wonderful the Princess Bride is and how everyone should read it since only a fifth of the book is in the movie. He suggestes if you are embaressed about reading a book with princess in the title that you should buy the book and then place the dust jacket from an artemis fowl cook over it.

there was more to it, on how the code in the first and second books were an after thought and that the code in the first reveals much of the plot of the second.(Its a prophecy written by someone who reads phelm pots- like tea leaves but phelm.) There was also a discussion of the movie, no casting (Artemis will be found via open call), and the script is just about done. He didn't say who if anyone was cast only that Artemis hasn't been.

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Notes from the ride in:

The new LIRR policy of charging 3 bucks more on the ttrain for a ticket is a crashing failure. It used to be that you could buy a ticket on the train if the station was closed. Now you must buy them from the machine even if the train station is closed or else face a penalty. People were complaining of broken machines and the conductors said they know but they must charge the charge and that the passengers should complain in Penn Station. The conductors were telling them that the adjustments would be made at Penn and that they must complain loudly so the LIRR board hears it.

There were two kids on the train, a guy and a girl. She was so clingy and in love, it was disgusting, that she looked as if she would break if he got so much as two feet from her. It was boyh nice and frightening to see since she would clearly do anything he wanted.

I spent much of the ride in looking at racist graffitti on the back of the seat in front of me. Something about the killing of whites in the evil of new york city and the dark races. It was a rather odd statement and one that prayed on my mind since the mind set was so alien to any notion of reality that I know. The closest thing I could compare it to was the Turner Diaries or Mien Kampf where its interesting but so unconnect to reality you wonder who could believe it. It struck me as odd , like the old guy on the bicycle during the anti war rally who was screaming racial slurs among the chants. He was on the side lines and looked like Samuel Fuller on an 40 year old blue bicycle. He was on the side lines but was standing in the background yelling out his racism in such away as not to be noticed, which was good because it was on 26th street or thereabout and its a predominately black area and had anyone heard him he would have been killed.

There was also a young girl not quite twenty who was prim and proper and had everything under control. She looked like she had a lemon stuck under her nose at how things out side her control were beneath her. She was rattled when she was forced to pay the 3 buck surcharge and the lemon look disappeared momentarily. She was a cute girl but she really is going to have to remove the stick from up her ass at some point.

Make Notes

11th May, 2003. 7:37 pm. Legend of the Sacred Stone

A martial arts film done with puppets.

The most amazing thing is that they have it down. Two minutes after the movie starts you forget that you are watching puppets and you go with the fact they are simply telling a story.

Lucy Anne and I both were completely confused by the plot at first and then it started to make sense since despite the narration and the opening crawl you find you are simply dropped into the action.

It has something to do with the final battle against a super villain which is won by the good guys, however before they can fully end the evil the villain is rescued and taken away by another evil- the unfriendlies- who want to use him for their own ends.

Its really just a wonderful ballet of motion, much like many real peopled films of this sort.

If you like this type of film and want to see a new wrinkle in the old fabric see this movie....

That said Lucy and I didn't finish the movie yet. She stopped by to say happy mothers day to my mom. SHe wasn't planning on staying but I wanted to show her a bit... as the film unspooled she curled up in a ball and we watched almost a half an hour before she decided to that she must rescue the defrosting food... The movie could wait, the food couldn't. She didn't want to go... she wanted to watch the film.

Make Notes

11th May, 2003. 7:55 pm. NADIA; Battleground Disc 4

What a radical shift from one of the worst arcs to one of the best.

The plot of this disc starts with the group on the same island that they were on at the end of the last disc. The tempers that had flaired at the end of the episode 12 have calmed with the coming of the day. As old friendships are mended and new ones are formed the crew of the Nautilis finds that it is not alone, the Gargoyle and his men are using the island as a base...

As the inevitable happens and battle breaks out the crew is forced to flee. Complicating matter is the fact that a tropical disease strikes both Marie and Nadia and Nemo is forced to choose whether to save the two young girls or finish off the Gargoyle once and for all... And thats just the start of four truly exciting episodes that end with a great deal of serious thought provoking action. (Forgive me trying to explain it simply is not really possible, this is a really complex group of chapters in which many secrets are revealed, the opening narration , the fate of Jean's father, and why everyone is with Nemo)

What a difference a couple of episodes make...

Yes Nadia still complains about how any killing is evil, and you still want to smack her around when she gets into one of her rants, but at the same time, its not her only character trait. It also becomes very clear that the show was never meant to be seen in one sitting, or even seen in more than an episode or two in a sitting. Whats fine broken up even a day between part is intolerable in a large grouping of them.

Its here that the complexity of the series comes to the fore.This is not a straight adventure series, this is a series that has ideas on its mind, the most obvious is whether its ever okay to kill anyone or anything. Add to that the notion of death of the few preventing the death of the many, a notion that drives the last three episodes or so as a leak in engineering kills three men, who might have been saved at a greater cost... The question of technology for good or evilruns rampant through the series but here as the Nautilis goes to Atlantis to bury the dead we are faced with the notion of what happens when a "good" technology goes horribly wrong. Atlantis is a mass of melted barren rock. The technlogy that destroyed Atlantis accidently is the object of what Gargoyle wants to get hold of and use on purpose. To what lengths should we go to prevent that?

Heady stuff for a kids show.

It is becoming clear that this is a sister to EVANGELION in a big way. Actions and ideas that Gainax would use in the later mind blowing series are seen in an infant and more understandable form here .Its all a dry run, even EVA's final two episodes which are replayed or preplayed in a fashion as Nadia has an interior battle with herself about how to behave and what does reality and her way of thinking really have to do with each other. In a wierd sort of way Nadia maybe a key to Eva.

Do I like this disc?

Yes, but its part of something larger aand those coming in at this point will be lost.

Do I like the series?

Yes, but the previous disc seriously wounded my feelings for the show. Thankfully this disc helped to correct much of the damage. The craziness of the romances took a major back seat which was good and Nadia appears to be at a turning point in her behavior.

I like much of this but at the same time I get the feeling that the effort to be both complex in the way of Evangelion and the need to be reasonably kid friendly bent the series. As it stands now I have 23 episodes plus the feature film to get through, thats effectively a complete run of 26 episodes of any other series, what I think will happen when I get to the end of all that is anyones guess.....

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