News flash: help write a Gaiman short story

Running a bit behind on today's Odds & Ends, but I wanted to make sure you knew about the Neil Gaiman short story writing experiment today, starting at noon EST on Twitter. In collaboration with BBC Audiobooks America, Gaiman is offering 1,000 fans the chance to write a sentence each of a new story that will be recorded by BBC Audiobooks upon completion and offered for free download. Gaiman will pen the first line followed by everyone else with their 140-character or less contribution.

To participate, you must follow @BBCAA and tweet with the hashtag #bbcawdio. Official rules and disclaimers are at the BBC Audiobooks blog.

The whole thing seems like it'll be utter chaos but probably a lot of fun. Enjoy!

Joss, Neil and Time Magazine -- together at last, four years ago!

Courtesy of today's Nerd World column at Time Magazine, here's an interview from 2005 with Neil Gaiman and Joss Whedon. It's a great read with them both talking about totally different projects but also discussing what it's like to be nerd icons. A sample:

TIME: I almost miss the stigma that used to attach to these things. Now everybody's into Tolkien. And I feel a little like, hey, I've been into that stuff my whole life. And in fact, you used to beat me up for it.

JW: I miss a little of that element, the danger of, oh, I'm holding this science fiction magazine that's got this great cover. There a little bit of something just on the edge that I'm doing this. That's pretty much gone. Although when I walk into a restaurant with a stack of comic books, I still do get stared at a little bit.

NG: I always loved, most of all with doing comics, the fact that I knew I was in the gutter. I kind of miss that, even these days, whenever people come up and inform me, oh, you do graphic novels. No. I wrote comic books, for heaven's sake. They're creepy and I was down in the gutter and you despised me. 'No, no, we love you! We want to give you awards! You write graphic novels!' We like it here in the gutter!

JW: We've been co-opted by the man.

Oddly enough, neither of them talk about a future where they'll both be Nerd Men of the Month.

Odds and Ends

+ Score one for our boy, Neil Gaiman. His "Graveyard Book" won this year's prestigious Newbery Medal. You can watch him read the book here.

+ Speaking of books, Britian's Guardian newspaper has taken a stab at creating a science fiction literary canon, compiling their list of must-read sci-fi and fantasy novels. If you're headed for a desert island, it's probably a good idea to check this one out before departure.

+ The New York Times had an interesting article on the upcoming Guy Ritchie version of Sherlock Holmes, starring Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law as Watson. Really, though, it's just an excuse for me to repost this picture:


+ I'm practically purring at this news -- Daniel Craig will be playing the villain in the new Tintin movie with "Billy Elliot's Jamie Bell as the title character. With Nick Frost and Simon Pegg already on board and a screenplay co-written by "Doctor Who"'s Steven Moffat and "Shaun of the Dead" and "Hot Fuzz" co-writer Edgar Wright, well, I pretty much can't wait.

+ Very sad news for avid X-Files fan. Longtime X-Files director Kim Manners passed away Sunday night after a battle with cancer. He directed 54 episodes of The X-Files including the classics "Home," "Humbug," "Leonard Betts" and the underappreciated classic "Monday." He also directed more episodes of the CW series, "Supernatural."

Nerd Man of the Month: Neil Gaiman

Saucy AND literate!

Okay, ladies, I'm going to come right out and admit that I've only just begun my Neil Gaiman education. So, much as I was with David Tennant's Nerd Man recognition, I'm pretty much a neophyte singing the praises of our authorial honoree this month rather than a seasoned acolyte shouting my encyclopedic fan knowledge from the rooftops. So please bear with me as I shakily tip The Park Bench's nerdy hat in Mr. Gaiman's honor. Please bear in mind, too, that I'll be counting on you to fill in all the things I've missed.

Right now, I'm nose deep in "Fragile Things," a wonderful collection of Gaiman stories that merges Murakami-esque surrealism with a dash of Tim Burton, a wee bit of Stephen King, a smidge of Charles Addams and an ethereal, delicate sensibility purely and totally Gaiman's own. And yes, with each turn of the page, my literary crush is growing. This guy deserves recognition -- well beyond a Park Bench honor -- simply because he's a brilliant writer with a mind that brings wonderfully unimagined worlds to life.

Gaiman's collection of work extends well beyond my toe-in-the-water reference to "Fragile Things." He's probably best known as the author of "The Sandman" comic books, a number of children's books including the recent "The Graveyard Book" and "Coraline" which has been turned into a stop-motion film set to debut in January. He's also set to pen the end of Batman for DC Comics in 2009. But perhaps most impressive of all, his first book was a biography of Duran Duran. The man has documented the life of Simon LeBon! Nice.

Happily, Gaiman's nerdy goodness extends even beyond his way with curious plot lines and disturbing imagery; he's also got a fabulous journal that is instantly addictive from paragraph one. It's a compelling, funny and earnest account of a writer's life, like a less-mannered John Hodgman blog but with bigger words and fewer references to hobos.

Neil Gaiman is the best kind of nerd. He's smart, funny, literate, has a passion for his work and knack for blazing new paths. And he wrote an episode of "Babylon Five." In short, chicks like intelligent men and this guy uses the OED and the magnifying glass that comes with it, so let's all do the math here: Gaiman is the geeky ideal and that's why we're pleased to name him our November Nerd Man of the Month.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have some reading to do.

ETA: Thank you to Ruth for the suggestion!

Odds and Ends...book-style...mostly

• Neil Gaiman's new book, "Graveyard," sounds quite lovely. It's about a child raised by ghosts. I'm completely intrigued.

• Speaking of books, Girl Nerd Queen Bee Tina Fey will be penning her own tome, you betcha!

• And while we're on the subject of books, Newsweek had an article about what sounds like an extraordinary book called "The Oxford Project." The book's author set out in 1984 to photograph all 676 residents of a small town in Iowa called Oxford. When the original photos were destroyed in a flood, the photographer found the negatives and then decided to photograph all the residents again 13 years later. The book is filled with personal stories, like the girl whose mother was in the circus and who abandoned her and her dog, or the woman who took in more than 500 foster children. It's really kind of a touching article.

• Okay, enough about books: the announcement came out yesterday that "Battlestar Galactica" Season 4.0 DVDs will be released on January 6 because really, it seems silly to try to put them out before Christmas. Don't want Santa snatching them all up now, do we? Also, did I mention that Mary McDonnell is going to be appearing on "Gray's Anatomy" for five episodes, which will start airing in November...you know, two months before her other show returns? My girl crush is being seriously tested by this as I deeply, deeply dislike "Gray's." Why couldn't she be on "House?"