Two Garys, Two Daryls, and a Gaiman in Paris...

Hey, thanks to my pal Mike Grosvenor from Zoetrope Studios who flew on Delta airlines, read Sky West magazine which is distributed on all of their flights going out west, and noticed an article about Paul Green School of Rock Music which mentions its two most famous graduates to date, Adrian Belew Power Trio's Julie and Eric Slick which he lifted off the plane and snail mailed to me. Yay! Another one for the old scrapbook.

Okay, I don't keep a scrapbook but I should, huh. But hey, that's what this blog is for -- otherwise I would have abandoned it long ago.

So yesterday I had jury duty where I wasted an entire day because I didn't get picked -- I knew that was going to happen for a number of reasons -- but since I was assigned to a criminal trial with a pool of sixty jurors, each one of us had to be interviewed individually and I was at the end of the list. It truly sucked.

Luckily I had a judge who let me say more than yes or no when he questioned me and since the case involved a hand gun, I was allowed to tell him how I thought there should be zero tolerance and they should be illegal and I'm pretty passionate about it so the defense attorney was practically on his feet screaming like Get her out of here before I even left the room while he and the prosecuting attorney deliberated.

One funny thing did happen. When I was dismissed, I was given instructions to return to the juror waiting room, where, if you can believe this, I might have been subjected to another trial but as it turns out, I was the only one left and all they wanted me for was to give me my huge $9.00 check for "serving". Anyway, this guy comes over to me and says "Robin Slick?" and I'm like "Yeah", thinking he's going to give me my money so I can get the hell out of there, and then he says "Um, don't think me forward for asking you this, but would you happen to be related to Gary Slick?"

"Well, yeah, he's my husband."

The guy does a double take, makes kind of an angry face, and stares at me like it's not possible. Here, my usual first thoughts would be (1) he knows Gary from his guitar playing days; (2) He knows Gary because I write about him; or, (3) he knows Gary is father to rock star extraordinaires Julie and Eric Slick.

Nuh-uh.

And then, as I witnessed the range of not so pleasant emotions cross over this guys face, I realized what it was. My Gary has a distant cousin who isn't really a cousin - it's a step-cousin by marriage thing -- with the same exact name, only this Gary Slick did time for grand theft auto, robbing a Seven/Eleven -- you name it and it's against the law, he's done it.

"I'm his parole officer," he said to me.

Yup.

"He skipped out on me and has the audacity to call me from wherever he is and taunt me. But we'll get him."

"Err...well, I never met him; he's not even really related, but I guess I'd better mention to my husband that there's an all points bulletin out for someone with his same name."

And then would you believe I launched into a whole explanation of who my Gary really was, including husband of novelist Robin Slick (har har), distant cousin to Grace, father of 2/3 of the Adrian Belew trio -- and this guy stared at me like I was from Mars because like, what the hell did Robin Slick write, who the hell is Grace Slick, and Adrian who?

All he was interested in was catching his criminal and I came off like some crazy broad.

Sigh...nothing new about that.

The only good thing about being sent down to the waiting room was that they had big screen televisions (yeah, I know - our tax dollars at work) and there was a rerun of Monday's Entertainment Tonight on and what do you know, they made a huge deal out of showing Neil Gaiman's Stardust trailer except instead of on a small computer monitor, I got to see the whole thing on big screen. Oh my god, it looks amazing. Clare Danes, Sienna Miller, and Michelle Pfeiffer have got to be the three most gorgeous actresses out there and they are perfectly cast - the costumes and setting are to die for. It's been a long time since I've been anxious to see any new "blockbuster" but woo hoo, for this one, I may even do an opening nighter.

Speaking of gorgeous...sigh...Neil last week in Paris:



That's for newly signed author, Susan Henderson, who has an incredibly interesting interview up on LitPark today, and said interviewee just happens to be a friend of mine, Daryl Darko. Okay, that's not really his name, but read Sue's interview and you'll see how he came to use it. When I say "two Daryls" in the heading of this post, it refers to the fact that Daryl is bi-polar and has two distinct personalities which are totally fascinating.

And yeah, I'll take credit for this because I met Daryl through my blog during the Adrian Belew west coast tour -- he saw the band, took these awesome photos, and then when he mentioned to me in an email that he wanted to attend the show the following night and take more pictures, I got him on the guest list and a beautiful friendship was born. And when I found out he was an aspiring writer, I sent him to LitPark...and I suspect he won the Neil Gaiman picture contest because he reads my blog and Susan's and actually pays attention to what we write and knew about our fan girl crushes on Neil.

Sooo...that's this morning's news...I may post some other cool stuff this afternoon when I am more coherent.

Later,
xo