Shortly after the last post six of the Yahoos, plus Dave crammed into a rented minivan for the trip to the James Thurber House. First surreal moment of the trip: being crammed in the back seat of a minivan next to Dave Sim, who is truly one of the most friendly and down-to-earth “celebrities” you could meet. While at the house he read aloud a tale from Thurber’s My Life and Hard Times which I just read about a week ago, but it was all the more hilarious actually being in the house where it occurred.
Once we got back to the hotel, Jeff T, Margaret, Dave and myself drove over to the Super Wal-Mart to do some shopping for the spaghetti dinner planned for later in the evening. Second surreal moment of the trip: food shopping at Wal-Mart with Dave Sim (and both Jeff and Margaret asked me at separate points how surreal it was for me). As I said to Margaret, I’m doing my best to keep my inner fanboy bottled up (again, for most of you, imagine standing around Wal-Mart with Neil Gaiman or Alan Moore and you’ll get an idea of what it was like).
Once back at the hotel, preparing for the spaghetti dinner began, with all cooking duties handled by Jeff T, who cooks a wonderful sausage. At dinner we were joined by the rest of the Yahoos and the creators of the Day Prize winning book Mr. Big. After dinner had settled they began recording Cerebus Live III, where Dave and the Yahoos do a voice recording of selections from Cerebus. Here’s a recording of a scene from High Society from Cerebus Live II; the rest can be found on YouTube as well. First up was issue 51, “Exodus” which was quite hilarious. After that they recorded a lot of other scenes (more than any other year I think), largely from Church and State I and Guys, though they also pulled off a wonderful reading of issue 11 where the Cockroach first appears. (As I think everyone here knows I gave up on being in front of a camera years ago so I stuck to merely being the audience.)
Shortly I’ll be heading off to breakfast followed by SPACE itself, ostensibly the reason for coming, though if I had to leave right now it still would have been a worthwhile trip. More to come though.