200 Words with Paul Dini #14 – Snippets of London

Up late, I walk the old familiar streets of London, remembering bits of trips past… 

Misty and I going to see Sir Ian Mckellen camp it up as the Widow Twanky in the Old Vic’s pantomime of Aladdin. I was the one in the cheap seats yelling “Oi, Magneto! Put on your pants!”

Filming Rashy and Super Rica going nuts at London zoo’s Gorilla World, and tearfully beseeching the exhibit’s alpha male: “Brother! What was your crime?!?”

Reading the first Harry Potter book in a terrible Notting Hill Mexican restaurant while a flood raged outside. The characters were so new to me that I never minded the awful chili.

Pulling up to the Hilton one freezing night in time to see a drunken blonde punch out her equally drunk brunette friend. “Typical Christmas party antics,” I thought, stepping over the loser as I made for Trader Vic’s and a hot rum drink.

Spending the holidays with my mother in Knightsbridge a few months after she and my dad parted ways. Listening to the bells of Big Ben tolling in the New Year I thought about love, loss, joy and despair in a city that personifies all those things to me.

Paul Dini is the Emmy and Eisner Award winning writer of Batman: The Animated Series, Superman: The Animated Series, Detective Comics, Countdown among many, many other things. You can find him online at either kingofbreakfast.livejournal.com or http://www.jinglebelle.com/.