I have a confession to make.
I have never read Maurice Sendak’s Where The Wild Things Are.
There’s a film coming out in three weeks, give or take. Directed by Spike Jonze of Being John Malkovich fame. Screenplay written by Dave Eggers of A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius fame. Been in production for years.
I wrote about the film today. And products related to the film. For a variety of reasons, due mainly to efficiency on my part yesterday, my morning was generally open, and, needing something to fill the endless hours between sneezes and mint tea, I wrote an article about Where The Wild Things Are. The book. The movie. Toys based on the book. Toys based on the movie. Even a Lovecraftian parody of the book.
I was genuinely pleased with the way the article turned out. It ran to about 600 words. Lots of information. Dave Eggers gets mentioned. Arcade Fire, whose “Wake Up” features in the commercials for the film I saw last night, gets mentioned. There’s a link to McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, even. Someone would think the author of this piece, since the articles aren’t bylined, was a genuine fan. There’s a love of the material on display.
I’ve not read the book. I’m indifferent towards the film. *shrug*
The thing about that article that I am most proud of has absolutely nothing to do with my skill in faking fandom for the article. Rather, I’m absolutely pleased with how an HTML table I embedded in the article looks. The article is for a website, it needed a table, and I wanted to make the table look snazzy. It does. And I am pleased. 😎
I followed that with an article on the Muppets. Four hundred words instead of six hundred. Unlike the Wild Things article, this was one I had to write. Not specifically on the Muppets; I could have written about Pixar, but I’ll leave Pixar for another day or two. 🙂
Instead, I wrote about the Muppets. Specifically, the really good comics by Roger Langridge that BOOM! Studios are releasing. I don’t have the words in my vocabulary to tell you how superlative and sensational these comics are. All I can say is that if you’re a Muppet fan and you’re not reading them, you are either A) living in the United States (they’re not available elsewhere, unfortunately) or B) stupid and daft. They’re worth seeking out. The first trade paperback collection is a steal at ten dollars. Really.
I didn’t sound like quite the fanboy when writing about the Muppets as I did when writing about Where The Wild Things Are, though. :-/
Still, the writing was done. The articles were written, loaded into the CMS, scheduled, and sent. Not bad for before lunch.
After lunch? Different story entirely. 🙂
Hey Allyn – I’ve seen you around the Elbow forum (I’m ChrissieInFL there), but I ran across this blog by accident. I was looking at some Where The Wild Things Are blogs and eventually, after doing a lot of that aimless link-clicking sort of thing, I found myself here! But I was amazed to find four of the things I love – Wild Things, Arcade Fire, the Muppets and Pixar – name checked in one post. I’ll need to come back and do some more reading here, as it seems you have posted about many things that interest me. And I will also need to find out more about that Muppets comic. I’m sure I’d like it!
Welcome, Chrissie! I’ve seen you around the Elbow forum as well; am I right in thinking that you caught the band in their headlining show in Atlanta?
I am not at all surprised that you landed here by accident; a friend of mine says that he’s found his way here doing some truly random searches. “I’m looking for X and Y and Z, and somehow I got here!” 🙂
In my day job, I write a catalog for comics and pop culture merchandise. I get paid to write about geek things. Or, today, I got paid to write about Twilight: New Moon collector dolls and Bullrider trading cards. 😆
The reason for the Arcade Fire mention in the article I wrote Tuesday (which ran online today, and in a rare circumstance in my life, I’m happy with something I wrote) was this…
I was watching something on television last week, and I saw a commercial for Where the Wild Things Are. “I know that song,” a voice in my head said. But I couldn’t place it, the song they used in the background, and the mental gears kept turning. I put Arcade Fire’s CD in the stereo, just for background music to write to, and a couple of tracks in, I said, “Whaitaminute! I know that song! That was in the Where the Wild Things Are commercial!” That was how I knew the song when I saw the commercial. And I realized that there was a good chance that someone else might wonder what the song was in the commercial (and in the trailer, too, apparently). So, why not be helpful? 🙂
Do get the Muppet Show comic. The first mini-series is in a nice trade paperback collection for ten dollars, and it has something like fifteen pages of unpublished material. Amazon has it, and they also have a hardcover edition, which I did not know about. The gags are short, usually a page, sometimes two, but never more than that. Roger Langridge gets in, tells his joke, and he gets out. He gets the Muppets, and it’s really fantastic stuff.
And yes, I do use a lot of words.
Thanks for dropping by!