What Ozzy Thing Am I Doing Now?

It has been a busy couple of weeks around here, as you'll see by the flurry of new blog posts you'll be seeing this week. But here are two of the biggies:

• Remember my mysterious other book I read, but couldn't tell you about yet? Well, here it is! I'm also a Doctor Who fan, and so I was very excited to hear about the new book The Wonderful Doctor of Oz by Jacqueline Rayner. Yes, it's a full-blown Wizard of Oz/Doctor Who crossover. And I get to tell you all about it because Laura and I were recruited to record an episode of the Trap One podcast about it! So, here it is!
  
• My other big recent Oz project involves the L. Frank Baum Memorial Award, the International Wizard of Oz Club's highest honor. It is decided on each year by the previous winners, which for some extraordinary reason has included me since 2013. Normally, we keep very tight-lipped about who won so that it comes as a complete surprise to everyone at the National Oz Convention when it's announced. But thanks to our current pandemic (get vaccinated and keep wearing your masks, everyone!), the last two years it has all been virtual, and the winners have been announced via a This Is Your Life-inspired video. Since this year's winner is someone I've known for over forty years, and I had all the contacts, I offered to put the video together. So, here is the announcement video for my long-time Oz friend, Lynn Beltz.
  

I think that's going to do it for big-time Oz projects for a while, since I start back to work tomorrow and that's going to keep me pretty busy. But you never know what this crazy hobby of mine will throw at you!

The Secret Is Out At Last!

Totally unrelated to the subject of today's post, but this year's Winkie Convention starts two months from today. And it's shaping up to be a really good one. But today I want to talk about something that happened last night, at the National Oz Convention in Chittenango, New York. The 2014 L. Frank Baum Memorial Award was presented, and unlike years past, I knew who was going to win ahead of time. You see, one of the benefits of winning the Award, as I so unexpectedly did last year, is that you get to help decide, with your fellow winners, who gets it the next year, and every year after that. I don't want to go into detail about the process, but I will say that we had a very large number of deserving nominees, and I would have been proud to vote for any of them, and could accept any one of them as the winner. The biggest problem of being a previous winner is that you have to keep it a secret until it's announced! It was hard enough for me to keep the name Gregory Maguire secret — for that is indeed who won. Imagine how tough it will be when it's someone that I know well and talk to on a semi-regular basis! But keep the secret I will, as I hope to be doing this for quite a few more years!

Poor Elphaba

Poor Idina Menzel. First, John Travolta flubs up her name during the Oscars, and now this happens!. (Thanks to my lovely wife, Luka Gadbrooks Laura Gjovaag, for finding this.)

(And for those of you who are wondering, my Travloltfied name is Edward Gadbrooks.)

Local Oz Fan Makes the News

And speaking of the L. Frank Baum Memorial Award (yes, it's still pretty surreal that I won it), it dawned on me today that I don't think I've linked to the news report about it here. Sure enough, nope, I haven't. So, here's the report on it run by the local paper. Okay, it's Laura's column, not a "real" "news" report. But that's about the only way to get it into the paper, most likely. Er, yeah, I'll just shut up now and let you go and read it.

A small family of Oz awards

We managed to finally get all of our Oz awards up on the wall this morning. So, to let you know what they are, at the top is the L. Frank Baum Memorial Award that I'm still not quite sure I won this year, but it was presented to me at the Winkie Convention. Below that, on the left, is the 1997 Winkie Award. The one on the right is Laura's Winkie Award, which she won last year. Now, unless they revive the Ozmopolitan or Munchkin Conventions AND I attend them and win one of those awards, or Laura wins the L. Frank Baum award, that should be it. Since I don't think any of those scenarios are terribly likely (and certainly not in the next decade or so), I think that's going to be it for our family Oz awards.

Catching Up Time

I am just now back from the Winkie Convention. We ran out of gas in central Oregon, took the wrong exit off the freeway in California and got lost, got lost again on the way back finding gas, and I appear to have left the power cord for my computer at Asilomar. However, AAA, Laura's navigation, smart phones with GPS, and Radio Shack helped to overcome all of those issues. But more importantly…

I WON THE L. FRANK BAUM MEMORIAL AWARD!!! (I know, me, neither, but I guess it was time.)

I will have more later, but I've pretty much been offline for the past three days, and I have a lot of catching up to do. Plus, long drive, and we're both tired. And the cat missed us, and needs some loving.

Jean Marsh, OBE

British character actress/producer Jean Marsh has been honored by Queen Elizabeth II, and made a member of the Order of the British Empire. Marsh is best known to Oz fans, of course, for playing Princess Mombi in Return to Oz back in 1985. For more details, see this article.

Today's spot-the-Oz-reference comic

Today's extra edition of Girl Genius has nothing to do with Oz. But this is congratulations to Cheyenne and the Foglios for winning their third Hugo. And since they're a local outfit, and Laura and I have crossed paths with them a few times now (Laura even took an old fish tank off the Folios' hands once), I just wanted to pass the word along and extend the congratulations. Plus, the line from The Wizard of Oz made me giggle. (Can you spot the Oz line?)

The Eisner Awards nominations

The Eisner Awards are the biggest prize in comic books. They are presented annually at Comic Con International in San Diego. And this year, there are four Oz nominations!

First up, Eric Shanower and Skottie Young's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz has two nominations:

• Best Limited Series or Story Arc
  
• Best Publication for Kids (for the hardcover collection)
  

The other big (and I mean really big, if you've seen the size of this thing) Oz nominee is the Queer Visitors from the Marvelous Land of Oz collection from Sunday Press Books. It was nominated for:

• Best Archival Collection/Project—Strips
  
• Best Publication Design (Philippe Ghielmetti)
  

Exciting stuff! Oh, and Fables, which has had Oz characters in it (I gather Ozma is a major part of the current storyline), was nominated for Best Continuing Series.

You can see the complete list of nominees right here.

Update on updating...

If it isn't one thing, it's another. I haven't been able to say much lately due to the following chain of events:

• The convention: Although I had access on the trip and at Asilomar, it was infrequent, and of course I was doing convention stuff.
  
• Net going out: When we got home, we found that our connection kept going in and out.
  
• Tummy troubles: Now it seems I've picked up some kind of bug, and I don't feel like doing much of anything (although I'm feeling better now, at least, and I think another day's rest ought to do it).
  
• The heat: Although I've been mostly inside lately, we've hit some all-time record high temperatures around here, and it's keeping me from being at my best.
  

The good news is, most of this is going to clear up soon, and I can get back on track and tell you all what happened at the convention — I hope. But just to get it down at last, I can at least mention that this year's L. Frank Baum Memorial Award, given by the Oz Club for lifetime achievement in Ozziness, went to Nancy Tystad Koupal, editor of the collection of Baum's Our Landlady columns, a major researcher into the Dakota days of L. Frank Baum, and organizer of the Aberdeen Oz Festival inAberdeen, South Dakota. An excellent choice, in my opinion.