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Post by Amanda on Aug 8, 2004 7:14:37 GMT -5
These are from around 2001 and 2002 I just found them today: If you still think Lemony Snicket is just a kind of cocktail, then you are out of touch. The bestselling author of A Series of Unfortunate Events, Snicket has sold more than $4m worth of books, nudged Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire from the top of the New York Times children's bestseller chart, and landed a movie deal with Nickelodeon. But Snicket himself is a mystery. The author photographs supplied by his publisher show him only in shadow or from the back. But a mischievous 32-year-old named Daniel Handler describes himself as Snicket's "literary, legal, and social representative"; I recently visited the presumed author of Snicket's new Unauthorized Autobiography. Handler was a little subdued; he was recovering from a "mysterious virus" (what else?). While laid low for three weeks and forced to cancel a planned trip to England, he spent his time in bed with "Miss Manners" (an etiquette column). His own manners are indeed polished. He has schoolboyish features, a portly build, and a taste for undertaker suits worn with eccentric shirts (red satin with black devils, for example). Handler lives in San Francisco, where he grew up, in a Victorian house rather like the one you might expect Snicket himself to live in. It sits atop a very large hill and is often swathed in fog so clammy it might have floated out of one of his books. As befits the author of tales of woe, Handler seems to enjoy all things dark and melancholy. At readings, he sings mournful songs in a rather pleasant baritone and accompanies himself on a lugubrious accordion (he owns three, and can be heard on Magnetic Fields' indie hit, 69 Love Songs). His new couch, a Biedermeier reproduction, is as long and black as a hearse; he calls it "the Count Olaf couch", after the villain of his stories - which he writes seated at a doctor's examining table. Handler's Gothic sensibility even influenced his choice of partner. As a student at Wesleyan University in Connecticut, Handler used to suffer from periodic blackouts. One of these caused him to collapse, during a Chaucer class, into the lap of a young woman. He subsequently married her. Handler claims his wife appealed to him partly because of her resemblance to the daughter in The Addams Family. It is possible that Handler's present affliction is due to sheer exhaustion. He has been churning out the Snicket books at the hectic pace of three a year, and frequently travels for readings and signings. He is in such demand that he has installed extra phone lines. In addition to the private line, he now has a business line and a Lemony Snicket line, answered by a newly hired assistant. But just a few years ago, Handler was struggling to make it as a writer in New York. It took 36 rejections before he sold his first book, The Basic Eight ("I believe it was 37," he corrects me, with ironical modesty). The Basic Eight is the story of a teenage girl who brains a peer in novel fashion ("The croquet mallet was stuck in something wet and jagged, like a half-melon. I was unable to pull it out, even with both hands"). He also finished another book, which he then discarded, and abandoned a third 100 pages in. He moved from job to job, acting as administrative assistant for someone dying in hospital ("very light work") and reviewing movies for "the least prestigious of a number of low-prestige publications". Then Susan Rich, an editor at HarperCollins, read The Basic Eight and decided, despite the sex, violence and absinthe, that Handler should write for young people. As a joke, he suggested a story about an evil count who pursues three orphans, called the Baudelaires, in order to steal their fortune. (It was actually an impromptu reworking of his abandoned novel.) Rich loved the idea. The name Lemony Snicket popped into Handler's head from nowhere, "like an epileptic fit". While researching rightwing organisations for The Basic Eight, he decided it would be unwise to let his real name appear on their mailing lists, and the bittersweet sobriquet tripped off his tongue. It persisted as a joke among his friends, who used it to order pizzas and write letters to newspaper editors. They also invented a cocktail of the same name, involving white rum, lemon juice, sugar and mint - to be consumed, of course, during unhappy hour.
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Post by Amanda on Aug 8, 2004 7:15:48 GMT -5
Handler did not realise quite how successful the books were going to be until the summer of 2000. As he and his wife decided to leave New York for San Francisco, the New York Times launched its children's bestseller list; although Handler's publisher had warned him not to expect anything, five of his books were on it. Almost overnight, he had become rather wealthy. He bought himself the house, which has a view of the bay and sits on some of the most enviable real estate in the city. When he shows up for readings, it is not unusual for him to be greeted, like a rock star, by a horde of fans screaming for autographs. (He introduces himself along these lines: "Lemony Snicket was swimming across the bay and was bitten by a shark, so, unfortunately, I have come in his place.") The down side of Snicket's success is that Handler does not have as much time as he would like to write for adults. While adults may enjoy his children's books, his "grown-up" novels are not suitable for children. In his second, Watch Your Mouth, a student realises, during a summer living with his girlfriend's family, that they are all having sex with one another. The sex scenes are described at length and in meticulous detail, and then, halfway through the book, a golem rises from the mud and starts killing people. Like the Snicket stories, Handler's adult novels are Gothic comedies, but the marriage of the humorous and the macabre is far more unsettling. Handler is at work on a book of short stories about love and intends to keep writing for adults, but for now, Lemony Snicket is proving rather demanding. His contract requires him to complete 13 books, and he is also at work on the film script. When I ask Handler if his friends are jealous, he says they are gracious, yet bemused. This is not because of Handler's success itself, but because of the twist in this particular happy ending - they can't quite get over the fact that their old in-joke is blossoming into a household name. One, Handler says, has compared it to "seeing one of your old socks on TV". As Snicket, Handler receives about 100 emails a day. One young girl wrote from Singapore to say that she had discovered further information about the Baudelaires. Her research anticipated a plot twist that Handler had, in fact, planned. "I had her killed, of course," he confides. I ask if, in the 13th and final book, the Baudelaire orphans will also meet an unhappy end. "Happy and unhappy are comparative terms," Handler tells me, sly as ever is name sounds like a glutinous pudding - one of those steamed ones, like spotted dick - but Lemony Snicket is not so solid. It is hard to get a whiff, taste or glimpse of him. And yet his name is spreading like rumour itself. The hottest thing in children's publishing since Harry Potter, Lemony Snicket describes his stories as 'dreadful' and warns that 'under no circumstances should anyone be reading these books for entertainment'. But, in their millions, all over the world, children and adults are ignoring his advice: a total of 13 books are planned, known collectively as A Series of Unfortunate Events (published in Britain by Egmont Books), and those currently available change hands like contraband. They have been translated into 19 languages, will be made into a movie by Nikelodeon and sell as if there was no tomorrow (which Snicket maintains there may not be). But who exactly is he? Is Lemony Snicket anything more than ectoplasm? His latest book ought to provide an answer. But Lemony Snicket: The Unauthorized Autobiography is a volume of false leads and open endings. On its cover is the back view of a man in a dove-grey suit, with a walking stick, heading ominously towards the sea. It includes an obituary to which, in a looped hand, are added the words: 'This obituary is filled with errors - most importantly, I AM NOT DEAD - L.S.' Last Monday, I had a date with Snicket. We were to have met in the Blue Bar of London's Berkeley Hotel - and there, however penumbral the light, the dust sheets would be thrown off and in place of Snicket, a handsome 32-year-old named Daniel Handler - who likes to pretend that this is all he is, Snicket's handler - would have stepped forward and revealed how he began using the name Lemony Snicket as an alias while researching far-right groups for his first, adult, novel. But when a letter arrived from Daniel Handler's PR to say that he had been admitted to a San Francisco hospital with 'bad flu symptoms' and was therefore cancelling his European tour (including my interview and a glum launch party at The Clink, a former prison in Southwark), it seemed too bad to be true. Handler/Snicket is always making dire predictions about himself: 'Something terrible could happen to me at any time'. Mark Lawson, on Radio 4's Front Row , decided that the hospital story was a hoax - with no evidence beyond his own cynicism - telling listeners that Handler was absent 'for personal reasons'. But Susan Rich, his American editor at HarperCollins and a close friend, is abject, her concern unmistakable: 'Daniel couldn't even make it to the corner store, he was exhausted, not like himself.' He remains 'ill and deeply disappointed'. Life, it would seem, has been colluding with fiction.
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Post by Amanda on Aug 8, 2004 7:16:03 GMT -5
Meanwhile, his career goes from strength to strength. He is, inevitably, hailed as competition for J.K. Rowling - like all newly published children's fiction writers of any ability. But in this case Rowling should, for her own safety, be escorted discreetly away. She is too conventional to keep company with Snicket; she will not survive the comparison. Rowling relies on magic, Snicket does without it. And nor should Snicket be likened to metaphysical Whitbread-winning writer Philip Pullman. Snicket is his own man. And he believes in bad luck. 'If you are interested in stories with happy endings, you would be better off reading some other book. In this book, not only is there no happy ending, there is no happy beginning and very few happy things in the middle. This is because not very many happy things happened in the lives of the three Baudelaire youngsters. Violet, Klaus, and Sunny Baudelaire were intelligent children, and they were charming, and resourceful and had pleasant facial features, but they were extremely unlucky.' This is the opening paragraph of the first book, The Bad Beginning, in which the miserable trio lose their parents in a fire, and their guardian, an inattentive banker called Mr Poe, proves worse than useless. Violet is an engineer, Klaus a bookworm and Sunny is a baby girl who bites - a loveable thug. All three defy gender stereotype (and much else). They are in flight from Count Olaf, a villain who can be identified by the tattoo of an eye on his ankle. Some children, since 11 September, have asked Snicket whether Count Olaf is, like Osama bin Laden, a terrorist. (Olaf and Osama both have eyebrows that meet in the middle, like a single, monstrous caterpillar.) Others fear that Snicket might have perished inside the World Trade Centre (compelling Handler to compose reassuring emails to his fans). But let us be clear: the books are nothing like as frightening as they pretend to be. As Brett Helquist, their illustrator, observes: 'It is the sophisticated sense of humour that makes them what they are.' Snicket has been compared to Roald Dahl, Edward Gorey, Oscar Wilde and even Hilaire Belloc (without the secure morals). The tone is elegant Victorian pastiche with a trace of an American accent - teasingly inauthentic, like a starched wing collar that turns out, on close inspection, to be held together by elastic. But Handler/Snicket has done something original: he has turned 'bogus' into a bonus. Lemony Snicket appears to be a depressed romantic. He dedicates each book to Beatrice, a mysterious, deceased lover. Is Handler also a depressed romantic? A female acquaintance of his (who lives in London but prefers not to be named) describes him as 'very English' quite dry, an upmarket Californian. His humour is dark - and so is he. He is childless. He looks young, boyish, 'quite tasty in fact'. Like Chekhov's Masha, he always wears black, as if in mourning for his life. 'He is gothic, prone to swooning.' He is said to have met his wife (a designer named Lisa) by fainting: he fell on her, then for her. Susan Rich describes him as 'generous, energetic, funny, dynamic, a good listener - and a voracious reader'. His charm is in his 'subversive, irreverent' attitude to everything. It was Rich who launched him as a children's writer. They cooked up the plots together one evening while knocking back Whiskey Sidecars. Rich loved his idea of the mock-gothic novel. Handler supposed that, the morning after, Rich would blame the booze for her enthusiasm and say something like: 'I'm sorry I ever met you.' She didn't. Handler has also published two novels for adults. The first was The Basic Eight . His second, Watch Your Mouth , was reviewed as 'the funniest incest comedy you'll read all year' (an uncertain recommendation) and he is now working on what he refers to as his 'pirate novel'. He is delighted but astounded by his new notoriety. 'Five house cats have been named after me, and those are just the ones I know about,' he marvelled recently. Daniel Handler was born in a prosperous, verdant area of San Francisco. His father is an accountant and his mother a college dean. As a boy, he was 'a sort of sissy' and a bookworm. He graduated from Wesleyan University in Connecticut (where he read American studies and wrote poetry). He lived in New York for five years before moving back to San Francisco in 2000. He is a disciplined writer, a reliable chauffeur (he drives his wife to work every day) and a virtuoso cook. Rich says he cooks (rather as he writes) with no recipes, by instinct; he goes to the market and produces things unlike anything you have ever seen before. And he is, naturally, the inventor of a Lemony Snicket cocktail. Handler has one last claim to fame: he is an accordionist with the New York cult band, Magnetic Fields. I listened carefully to their latest CD. The sound is cool, withheld, deliberately bloodless. I tried to pick out Handler's accordion but barely succeeded. It was like the distant whine of mosquitoes on a summer's night - as hard to catch as Lemony Snicket himself. Born: 1999 (with the publication of The Bad Beginning), although Lemony's personal handler had used the name on an earlier project AKA: Daniel Handler (aged 32, married to Lisa, lives in San Francisco) Likes: Cooking and playing the accordion with Magentic Field Website: www.lemonysnicket.com The following correction was printed in the Observer's For the record column, Sunday September 1 2002 The profile above of Lemony Snicket aka Daniel Handler, stated that on Radio 4's Front Row presenter Mark Lawson, with 'no evidence beyond his own cynicism', decided that Snicket/Handler's admission to hospital and subsequent absence from a European tour was a hoax, and told listeners that the cancellation was for 'personal reasons'. We have been asked to make it clear that Lawson believed the hospital story, did not use the word 'hoax' and chose the phrase 'personal reasons' to avoid intrusion.
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Post by Amanda on Aug 8, 2004 7:18:20 GMT -5
daniel handler is a very funny author who wrote the basic eight and watch your mouth. his children's books penned under the moniker lemony snicket make harry potter look like barney. he's writing a musical film with stephin merrittt. and he has played accordion with the magnetic fields, the 6ths, and the three terrors. oh, and the edith head trio. gail got him liquored up on boilermakers at the 19th hole in new york city just before he relocated to san francisco. new york will suck without him! chickfactor: why did you call your band the edith head trio? daniel handler: the same reason you call your band gowns by edith head. I was in san francisco and I was in a band that was on its way to breaking up, I lived with a string player and I lived with someone who played bass and so we formed a band so we could rehearse in the privacy of our own living room and usually perform there. and I don't know, just cause her name's so cool and she was in all the old movie titles and if you ever read about her she was supercool and she was out and she was making gorgeous gowns. cf: was this a swing band? daniel: I don't know what it was. it was mock cabaret goth. I played accordion and piano, there was an upright bass player, and there was kate who sang and played viola. it was sort of gloomy, sort of sarcastic. we played songs that were called like "the donner party tango." we had this fantasy that the edith head trio would hit it big and people would be like, "which one's edith?" cf: when did you get your first accordion? daniel: in college. when I was in college it was so lame to play keyboards -- you couldn't play keyboards. I took piano when I was little so I already knew how to play piano but you couldn't possibly play keyboards in a band. there was no band that would have you. which is strange to think about now... cf: keyboards are back! daniel: keyboards are back and there's a million different ways to... you can be like cool retro 80s keyboards or you can do weird electronic things or be a saint etienne wannabe band or you could be the analog beck sort of thing. there was none of that when I was in school. so I started playing the accordion. actually I was inspired by the cowboy junkies, which is pretty embarrassing because I'm not such a big fan of theirs. that was the first time I heard the accordion and it didn't sound dorky. it just sounded pretty and chunky.
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Post by Amanda on Aug 8, 2004 7:18:56 GMT -5
cf: describe a typical day with stephin merritt. daniel: a typical day with stephin when he and I are trying to get some work done together is that we have a noon appointment at the I'm-never-supposed-to-name-the-name-of-the-top-secret diner... so we usually have an appointment at noon there which would be for me lunch and for him breakfast. and so, at 11:30 I call him and say "now I'm leaving" and at noon I get there and I call stephin and say "here I am" and then at 12:30 I call stephin and say "here I am" and then at 1:00 he shows up and has a pot of tea and we scarcely speak and then about 1:30 we start to work and he keeps ordering more tea and I'm sort of drinking the tea as we're working and I keep on drinking it and all of a sudden I'm waaay overcaffeinated and it's 5:00 and he of course remains absolutely immobile. cf: what kind of work are you doing? daniel: we're trying to write a new version of umbrellas of cherbourg. that's not really quite true. we're trying to write a new movie inspired by umbrellas of cherbourg about a flying saucer that arrived on earth and is about the size, shape, and texture of a 45 single and so is accidentally taken to be a 45 single and played and it makes a song that makes people fall in love, it makes an aphrodisiac song. then the song is of course misused by various scheming couples and eventually of course the song becomes a big hit so soon everybody's in love. cf: what's it like to be a three terror? daniel: it's a lot like sitting around a room with three people arguing over what sad songs they're going to do. the three terrors seems mostly conceptual and I'm not around for the conceptual part. it's mostly dudley and ld and stephin drinking and thinking of sad songs and coming up with whole theme evenings they can do.
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Post by Amanda on Aug 8, 2004 7:20:22 GMT -5
cf: who has the biggest ego of the three? daniel: I would say they all have different shaped egos, let's just say that. it's sort of nice because my day job is all about my ego, I'm sitting around alone in a room being my own tortured genius and then it's nice to as your hobby be a musician and be completely subservient. it's nice for me not to be the ego in the room I guess. cf: give your ego a rest. daniel: let's give my ego a much-needed rest! cf: what's it like to be an author opening up for a rock band? daniel: in new york and san francisco it was good, and then I also did it in l.a. it's, uh, good. it's getting out my rock-star fantasies without having to put together a band. we did that evening with the three terrors in new york, that was ld's idea actually, and that was fun and seemed to go well and we sold some books and people weren't nasty and rude and loud. cf: like they are in l.a.? daniel: well, like they turned out to be in l.a. it turned out to be in this really huge place with all these tables where people were having drinks and food and a whole balcony where they couldn't really see me. it was a situation where I don't think I would have been quiet either. the people who were quiet were appreciative and the people who weren't quiet didn't hear me. cf: did you meet dishwasherl creme davis? daniel: no, I didn't meet vag. the only real celebrity story about that trip to l.a. is that I played accordion on a couple of songs but obviously not for the majority of the show so I sat off to the side of the stage which was near a special roped-off table, and at that roped-off table arrived courtney love and chris rock and this producer guy. and they were chattering away and this was during the magnetic fields portion of the evening for which just about everybody else was quiet. every so often they would make some noise and I would turn my head the way you turn your head when someone makes a noise like completely involuntarily and then I'd think "oh right, don't stare at famous people," and I'd pretend I was just looking around. cf: what kind of musicals do you like? daniel: I like some really old movie musicals. the coconuts. that's the first marx brothers movie and that's sort of a musical. I like all the marx brothers movies which are all musicals. not really that many else. I'm not really a fan of the classic musical comedy. I more like the idea of everything being sung. I never go to musicals onstage. the last one I saw was the titanic musical; some friends were in town and wanted to go to the titanic musical and it was really the most embarrassing thing you can imagine.
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Post by Amanda on Aug 8, 2004 7:20:43 GMT -5
cf: do you think now that the dogma 95 people and björk are doing musicals, that will start a trend of lots of musicals? daniel: I don't know. I'm beginning to talk to people who are interested in making the musical that stephin and I are doing and it seems that every few years someone tries to make a musical and then it's usually a huge bomb. so maybe if these musicals do really well. school daze was a musical, and that was sort of a disaster. and they made newsboys and that was a disaster. this movie I'll do anything was supposed to be a musical and they cut all the songs out at the last minute. they had a couple tv musicals that all bombed. but those all sort of try to hearken back to the days of oklahoma, which is not a worthy goal and impossible. cf: so yours will be more xanadu? daniel: yeah maybe. I hope it's like umbrellas of cherbourg. I hope it's like blow up and other gorgeous eye-candy 60s things that are about music without being too "ta-daa!" cf: who's doing to direct and star in it? daniel: oh gosh, in our dreams? I'd like baz luhrmann to do it cause he's so cool and all his movies are so glorious and musical. and stephin and I have harbored this fantasy that sarah cracknell will be in it because she's like the catherine deneuve of '90s pop music. she would be perfect to do something like that. it would be fun to have a bunch of indie rock stars or pop people dressed to the nines being in some hopelessly giddy, romantic thing. that would be fun particularly being as most pop people are so cynical.
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Post by Amanda on Aug 8, 2004 7:21:47 GMT -5
cf: tell us about meeting david lachappelle. daniel: this is the last time I get drunk with you and do a pre-interview. when they were selling the movie rights to the basic eight, he was interested in making a movie -- I guess he directed some music videos and tv commercials and things -- and I was supposed to go over and give him the basic eight, and he was going to read it and we were going to talk. it was right before halloween and I went over there and he was like "tomorrow night I'll have read this and we'll have coffee and we'll talk about it" and the next night was halloween! and I was like, surely, david lachapelle, hottest fashion photographer of the moment, has something better to do on halloween than get together with me at a bar. sure enough he didn't call me and we never met but his studio is this wild and crazy place filled with props and he was a whirlwind of activity and he had an entourage of brightly dressed young men. it was a scene out of blow up to go over there and I never saw him again. cf: who's going to play flan? daniel: it's so depressing over who's going to play flan. when they started talking about it, it was drew barrymore. so now it can't be drew barrymore anymore and it can't be sara gilbert anymore and it can't be claire danes anymore. cf: sara gilbert! daniel: I would love it to be sara gilbert but I don't think she even looks like someone who could be playing a high-school student anymore. but maybe she does. I don't know. she looked pretty young in high fidelity. she's definitely the sort of person I had in mind but I'm sure they'll find a more glamourous person. cf: if you met annie lennox, what would you say to her? daniel: oh man. probably something embarrassing. the first rock star I met was fred schneider and I was totally excited to meet him and of course I immediately began babbling his lyrics in his face and being a total asshole fan. I'm sure if I met annie lennox I'd be like "oh my god! savage was like my favorite record when I was 15 and you mean everything to me!" I hope I can say something cool. I'm so deeply ashamed of my torrid love affair with the eurythmics reunion record. cf: why? daniel: probably cause I know it's terrible. hanging out with stephin, we end up talking about music a lot, he's so much more pickier than I am about that, so he's helped me develop a sense of shame whenever I'm listening to something I know is not that great. it's like me and books. I find most books totally unacceptable. cf: what's your poison? daniel: gin in the hot days and bourbon on cold days. that's my motto. I'm sort of a cocktail pig. I'm cleaning out my apartment now and I have all these bottles of obscure liquor I'm trying to give people: "take my pernod! take my chartreuse!" we used to play bridge with friends every week and we'd make a new obscure cocktail every time and now I have all this crap that I can't possibly pack up. so I guess my poison is like anything alcoholic. cf: what's the best bar in new york? daniel: all the best bars are closed. orson's used to be my favorite bar. that's gone. I like the gold bar. been there?
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Post by Amanda on Aug 8, 2004 7:22:11 GMT -5
cf: I hate that place. the furniture is so uncomfortable! daniel: yeah, the furniture is terrible but the first time I went there they were playing shostakovich string quartets which totally charmed me. I think classical music should be played in bars. there was that large german woman who ran it who reminded me of the woman in baghdad café. so I loved that place and that closed. so now I go to clementine because they have free fondue. but you have to go there early, otherwise it fills up with yuppies. as more and more of my friends get real jobs, it gets harder and harder to find people who want to have a cocktail at 5:30. cf: does it bother you that everyone assumes you're gay? daniel: [laughter] they do? even when I explain my deep love for annie lennox and the fact that I'm writing a musical with stephin? even then? no, I mean, they've always thought I was gay. they thought I was gay when I thought I was gay so um, no, it's never been much of a problem. it's gotten me a lot of free drinks in my hometown. when I got married, the ring really ended it. right after I got married I went to candy bar, which is another great bar that's now closed, which is in the heart of chelsea and is a big gay bar, and I was waiting for some friends and ordered a drink. it was early, the bar was just opening, and all the sassy young attractive waiters were being superflirtatious and we were all birds of a feather having a grand old time and then all of a sudden they just got superprofessional. they were like "here's your drink sir." it was because of the ring. suddenly they knew. we used to go to this bar called twin peaks, which was nicknamed the last coffin because it was nothing but old, old gay men and I'd never paid for a drink there in my life. they would call me the prettiest boy in the class and buy me a drink. I went there when I was 17. those days are over. cf: if you could take three things from new york when you move, what would you take? daniel: shopsins general foods. what I'll miss most about new york is the hours. I'll really miss the fact that in san francisco when you go to a movie at 7pm and you want to have dinner afterward, it's going to be a problem and that's really a bummer. I would take three places that were open late and serve delicious food and tangy cocktails. all my favorite things in new york are gone. all my favorite bars are gone. I had a great vintage clothing store that I loved. that's gone. I would take the film forum. cf: what's the biggest crime you've ever committed? daniel: gosh, I don't know. I went through a period where I stole signs out of airports and hotels. one thing I felt bad about that I felt bad about for a long time -- sort of a moral crime -- is that, one time it was raining really, really hard and I was miserable and I definitely wanted to get a cab. we saw a cab stop at the corner and we ran and ran and ran and leapt right into it and there was a young couple who was about to get in and they had a baby and they were like "please, please, we've been waiting for so long" and we just took it. we shut the door. I felt awful about it for months. I had some nightmare about it and I woke up and lisa was like "forget it." but I can't think of a bigger crime.
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Post by Amanda on Aug 8, 2004 7:22:47 GMT -5
cf: what are you addicted to? daniel: definitely coffee but that's easy. when I was 8 I started semicompulsively flipping unsharpened pencils when I was being imaginative. my parents said I used to stare into space and throw pencils, and that's something I still do when I'm writing. I guess I'm addicted to that. all my drug experiences are like nancy reagan's wet dream. I tried cocaine once and it made me projectile vomit for five hours. I have all these experiences where I'm like, "I'll never do that again." I don't have an addictive personality. cf: what writer do you steal from the most? daniel: oh gosh, either lorrie moore or vladimir nabokov. I reread both of them pretty compulsively definitely with an eye for what I can steal. cf: what's the point of writing under a pseudonym? don't you want credit? lemony snicket is a good pseudonym. daniel: yeah, I'm proud of the pseudonym. I actually had the pseudonym before I had the books. when I was researching the basic eight, I was contacting various religious organizations and rightwing political groups and I didn't want to be on their mailing lists and so one time they asked me what my name was and I said "lemony snicket." for a long time that was a joke, my friends for my birthday once gave me business cards with lemony snicket on it. it used to be the name we'd write wacky letters to the editor of the paper to see if we'd get in and stuff. when I started writing these children's books, the narrator's a character in them, the narrator's present in there and it's not me. I came up with the idea of doing them under a pseudonym and I sort of had this pseudonym waiting all along. it's pretty strange that the pseudonym's getting a lot more press than me. but I think it's fun.
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Post by Amanda on Aug 8, 2004 7:24:01 GMT -5
cf: do you keep up with children's book and film entertainment? daniel: no, not really. it took me forever to read even the first harry potter book and I haven't read the rest of them. when I started going out on children's book tours and stuff, they would say "have you read this person? have you read that person?" and I wouldn't have read any kids' books since I was a kid. I guess it's pretty embarrassing but I kind of feel like my ignorance is working to my advantage. cf: what were your favorites as a kid? daniel: I really loved edward gorey, roald dahl, and harriet the spy of course. cf: have you seen chicken run? daniel: no, I haven't seen chicken run. lisa and I actually have a zine that we're thinking of restarting called american chickens and for a while due to that we had so many... people would always give us chicken tchotchkes for presents and things and we began to become those people who collect some animal. it's really really awful. cf: how many friendships have ended when your friends recognize themselves in your characters? daniel: none although it was a near go with one of them. my friends had plenty of time to get used to the basic eight because I wrote it and it took about two years to sell, so they all read it. some of them were pretty mad at me. they mostly worked through it without talking to me. one of the things that helped is that it hadn't been published so it was just this thing lying around and by the time it was actually going to be in a bookstore people were really excited. if the movie ever comes out there'll be another wave of "oh my god, you think I look like that?" cf: are there any writers who give really good readings? daniel: um, I go to a lot of readings. who have I loved? I have a long attention span so I'm excited to see anybody as long as I like their work, even people who don't read so well, it's fun to be in the same room and hear their stuff and meet the little geek who's producing the works of genius you admire. cf: are you a dog man or a cat man? daniel: dog. I want to get a dog in s.f. if we have a yard but a real-size dog not a stupid stephin merritt talking cigarette box dog.
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Post by Amanda on Aug 8, 2004 7:24:40 GMT -5
cf: are you allergic to anything? daniel: cat. and abalone. I went to a chinese restaurant once and had abalone soup and then I went to the movies and I couldn't breathe. so I went to the emergency room and the emergency room woman said "what did you eat that you've never eaten before?" and I said abalone and she said "never eat that again." it's great when people have you over for dinner and they're like "do you eat everything?" and I have to be like "actually, don't make abalone." cf: in case you're planning an abalone paté. what's in your refrigerator? daniel: lots of food. there's always lots of food in my refrigerator: fresh basil, half a dozen eggs, some kinder eggs, all kinds of fancy mustard, bread, leftover pizza, lots of raw carrots, I eat a bag of raw carrots a day. cf: if you could make one big change to the new century, what's it going to be? daniel: I want a full-blown return to etiquette. judith martin, a.k.a. miss manners, is the finest person writing non-fiction. I met her, that was a big thrill for me. if there were a way to put her thoroughly in charge of the world tomorrow, I'd do it in a heartbeat. that would cover a lot of problems too. that would end hunger, misogyny, and tele-marketing and all the things we hate. cf: no more groping fests in central park. daniel: no, except consensual gropingfests. cf: do you think it's generally a good idea to meet your heroes? daniel: well, in my case, just about all my heroes are writers so it's great to meet them because I'm a writer and it's a direct inspiration to meet them and find that they're not really godly at all. CF
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Post by Amanda on Aug 8, 2004 7:25:20 GMT -5
I would have posted links but I have no clue where I got half of these from.
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Post by Kris da Geek Queen on Aug 10, 2004 20:39:21 GMT -5
Those were great. I call for consentual grope fests.
And I'm gonna have to make me one of those Lemony Snicket cocktails....
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