Neil Gaiman wins Newbery Medal

Neil Gaiman, English author of comic books and fantasy novels ( The Sandman comic series, Stardust, and American Gods) has won the prestigious Newbery Medal for the most distinguished contribution to children's literature for "The Graveyard Book," illustrated by frequent collaborator Dave McKean. It's a big month for Neil as one of his previous books, "Coraline", has been adapted to film and is due in theatres shortly.

The Newbery is awarded by the American Library Association, and the list of previous Newbery winners reads like the canon of children's literature, including Madeleine L'Engle's "A Wrinkle in Time", William H. Armstrong's "Sounder" and Katherine Paterson's "Bridge to Terabithia". Now, Neil Gaiman rightfully takes his place in that company. His works have shown limitless imagination and interpretations of dreams, myths and fables from all parts of the world fills many a bookshelf.

Neil got the news this morning and celebrated in exuberant style, as shown in this Twitter feed chain of events (http://twitter.com/neilhimself):

woken up by assistant at 5.30 in the morning. Not quite sure why. All rather bleary, to do with someone trying to call. argh. about 3 hours ago from web

oh. forget about it. about 3 hours ago from web

About to drink second cup of tea without Marmalade this morning. Also, I just won the Newbury Medal for THE GRAVEYARD BOOK. 42 minutes

Newbery, not Newbury. Also FUCK!!!! I won the FUCKING NEWBERY THIS IS SO FUCKING AWESOME. I thank you. 41 minutes ago from web

Updated: Neil blogs about the experience on his blog in an entry called Insert Amazed and Delighted Swearing Here, which includes this excerpt:

You are on a speakerphone with at least 14 teachers and librarians and suchlike great, wise and good people, I thought. Do not start swearing like you did when you got the Hugo. This was a wise thing to think because otherwise huge, mighty and fourletter swears were gathering. I mean, that’s what they’re for. I think I said, You mean it’s Monday?

(quote pointed out to me by Newsarama blog; Neil's post pointed out to me by Nikita)

LOST: Return to Craphole Island

LOST returns tonight for Season 5, it’s looking like a good ‘un. Unfortunately if you’re not watching it already, it’s going to be hard to get into with it’s rich narrative mythology, but if you’ve put in the work to catch-up you will be oh so rewarded, Jack’s tattoo origin aside. Lost is an excellent show to catch on DVD - I heard the Blu-Ray Season 4 set is gorgeous, and they’ll be releasing the first few seasons on Blu-Ray as well.

For a summary of the past 4 years on Craphole Island, you can’t beat the write-up by Isaac_Spaceman over at ALOTT5MA. It’s as funny as it is accurate. Here’s an excerpt:

PILOT: Is this a joke?

HURLEY: No, all of the jokes around here are mine.

PILOT: Oh, great, tell me a good one.

HURLEY: What has two thumbs and is dead?

PILOT: I give up.

HURLEY: My girlfriend and my best friend and the French paramilitary lady and her daughter and Arzt. Wait, that’s eight-to-ten thumbs.

PILOT: Ouch.

For the full write-up, click this link to ALOTT5MA - Previously on LOST

Come On Up For The Rising - Inauguration Day

It's a big day in Washington tomorrow as Barrack Obama swears the oath and becomes President of the United States of America. Once he cleans that old man smell out of the furniture in the Oval Office ("What the hell smells like Cheney in here?"), and changes the locks (Hilary probably still has a copy of the key) President Obama will some heavy lifting to do - Bush left the place a mess. But for the first time in a long time, the majority of Americans, and most of the world, seem to believe that things can get better. The air of optimism is almost tangible, you'd think this presidency is going to be scripted by Aaron Sorkin.

I'll have the radio tuned in tomorrow and plan to watch the highlights when I get home. I loved how some of my co-workers were looking forwards to "Obama Day". And why not, because this day is a big one. It proves change can happen if enough voices cry out. This is a day that's bigger than politics.

While you wait for the show to get underway in D.C., kill some time with the Obamicon.me site, where you can upload a picture and have it re-touched in the style of of Shepard Fairey’s iconic work shown above. You can't avoid it: I saw CBS network promos down in this style today. My contribution:

While we march into this new age, take one last, long lingering look at the clusterf*ck that was the Bush years, and no better narrative exists than The Story Of Bush, as told through the headlines from The Onion catalogued by Teresa Nielsen Hayden, As Teresa said:

There will be histories written about the Bush administration. They’ll be privy to information we don’t have yet, because the future is like that. On the other hand, we have our own privileged knowledge: We know how the story looked like to people who didn’t know how it was going to come out.

Now, in this moment before a changing world overwrites our memories of the era, let us pause to salute our constant companion of those years: The Onion. Other histories of the Bush years will doubtless be more factual, but none will ever be truer.

(via Accordion Guy, who also pointed out the brilliant someecards has out for the election).


This one's also a favourite.

Bye bye Bush. Hello hope.

Scrubs resuscitated on ABC

After years spent likes some neglected step-child on NBC, Scrubs is back for another season, but this time on ABC. And from all accounts, this last-minute extension has revitalized the show, with less trying-too-hard weirdness that's been around the past few seasons, and more of the type of show that captured a fanbase in the first few seasons that stuck with them through 9 timeslot changes over 7 years on NBC.

Alan Sepinwall's had a look at the first 2 new episodes and the prognosis is good. He proclaims the second of the two episodes on tonight is one of the best Scrubs episodes in its entire run, on far and in tone with the classic "My Old Lady" from Season 1 where a young JD (Zach Braff) takes the death of patient hard. I've loved this show from the start, but I found the past few seasons I had started to watch out of habit more than anything else. JD had turned into a man-child who despite 7 years of talking about what he was learning, never seemed to actually grow-up. But I stuck it through and there are gems in there, and now things are looking up since last time I checked in on the crew at Sacred Heart Hospital:

The past season has seen great work from the actors, but some lousy plotting. "Scrubs" has slipped down from my #1 TV comedy spot, as it is now bring up the rear behind "The Office" and "How I Met Your Mother". If "30 Rock" comes strong next season, it's going to slip further. I've got faith that the "Scrubs" can turn it around in the home stretch, now that a firm end is in sight.

By all accounts, the new season of Scrubs which starts Tuesday January 6th shouldn't exist. When the writer's strike came about last year, NBC denied Scrubs the opportunity to produce a small number of episodes to effectively end the series. In fact they outright said that was it for them. But in came ABC to offer an 18-episode eighth season. An ABC has been promoting the move heavily - I don't think I've seen more commercials for Scrubs on ABC in the past month then in all the years on NBC. They even have a slick new website set up with video clips, interviews with the cast and primers on the show:
Scrubs operating at ABC

It's likely the last season of Scrubs in it's current form. Producer Bill Lawrence and actor Zach Braff are both moving on after this season. But if ratings are decent, ABC may bring the show back in some incarnation or another next year. The show is in syndication, DVD sales are good, and once you remove Braff and Lawrence's salaries it's cheaper to continue the show then to produce new pilots. We'll see how it goes.

ABC (and City TV in Canada) is running back-to-back new episodes tonight. But really, what it comes down to, is any excuse to run Turk's dancing to Bell Biv DeVoe's "Poison" (updated: oh well, looks like Uncle Walt pulled the clip):