Neil Gaiman on his night at the Oscars

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Apparently, attending the Oscars is not as exciting as one might think, if you're merely a best-selling author with a couple of made-for-movie books to your name. In his article in The Guardian, Neil Gaiman talks about what it's like to be a "nobody," at the Oscars (his words, not mine). What it's like to be a second-class citizen at one of the biggest events of the year, knowing you're not going to win and wishing you were home with your dog. But thank goodness for Twitter

I walk over to the stairs. A nice young man in a suit asks me for my ticket. I show it to him. He explains that, as a resident of the first mezzanine, I am not permitted to walk downstairs and potentially bother the A-list.

I am outraged.

I am not actually outraged, but I am a bit bored, and I have friends downstairs.

I decide that I will persuade the inhabitants of the mezzanines to rise up as one and to storm the stairs, like in Titanic. They might shoot a few of us, I decide, but they cannot stop us all. We can be free; we can drink in the downstairs bar; we can mingle with Harvey Weinstein.


And now our hosts: Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin. They come out, they make jokes. From the first mezzanine, the timing is off, the jokes are awkward, the delivery is wooden. But it doesn't feel as if they're playing to us. I wonder if it works on television, and send the question out on Twitter. A few hundred people tell me it's just as bad on TV, 20 tell me they're enjoying it. I decide this is what Twitter is for: keeping you company when you're all alone on the mezzanine.

While I admit that I would not be one to turn down an invitation to the Oscars, Neil's experience makes me feel better about the unlikeliness of my ever getting invited anyways. And frankly, if I were there I would have been much more excited to meet Neil Gaiman then any of the other celebrities present. Authors are way cooler then actors in my book.