The AAUGH blog

* REPORT ON THE SCHULZ MUSEUM

* MUSEUM BOOKS

* FREE SHIPPING IS NOW CHEAPER!

* THE WRITING LIFE

* BOOKS NOW SHIPPING

* ODD PEANUTS BOOK: JAPANESE CATALOG

REPORT ON THE SCHULZ MUSEUM

I had a great time at the Schulz Museum. If any of you
are going to be in the San Francisco Bay area, it’s
certainly worth the hour drive north to Santa Rosa.

Admission is $8, with discounts for seniors and
students. Downstairs in this sharp new building they
have about 80 original strips on display, plus a
space for their current exhibition (at the moment, it’s
some of the Schulz tribute strips, plus a room showing
Peanuts videos. (There’s also an about-the-museum video
which is showing in the auditorium basically any time
that there isn’t anything else going on.)

Upstairs is a timeline of Schulz’s life, with a variety
of interesting mementos, including the famous
Schulz-decorated wall taken from his early-1950′s house.
On the other side of that wall you will find reproductions
of covers from Peanuts books in various languages around
the world.

If you go, be sure to sit in the sofas in the original
art room and check out the three scrapbooks there. They
have copies of correspondence to Sparky and Jeannie
during the days from Sparky’s retirement on through the
memorial service, with notes from everyone from young
fans to Donna “The Little Red-Haired Girl” Wold to
Bill Clinton. Some keen stuff.

My presentation there covered the history of Peanuts
books. Basically, I did a rundown on the history of
the primary reprint books, and followed it up with
some of the odder books that have come out over the
years. I talked to hundreds of people, did 9 shows,
and had time for plenty of questions and even a few
answers. It was fun! (And a “hi” to all the new
newsletter subscribers who saw me at the talks.)

So stop on by the museum, and the ice rink with its
Warm Puppy snack bar, and the Snoopy gift shop one
more building down. Tell them AAUGH.com sent you,
and you’ll get a free look of confusion!

For more info, go to: http://www.SchulzMuseum.org

============================================================

MUSEUM BOOKS

The Museum has its own little gift shop, with museum
t-shirts, stuffed Snoopy dolls with museum tags, and
some books. Most importantly for the Peanuts book
collector, they’re selling copies of the handy Peanuts
reference book 50 YEARS OF HAPPINESS. This book was
originally made available through the Peanuts Collector
Club, and this new printing was done specially for the
museum.

The museum is planning more books for the future. They
aren’t ready to publicly announce their exciting plans,
but there will be good stuff to come. (But to head off
the inevitable emails: no, they are not planning a
Complete Peanuts at this point.)

============================================================

FREE SHIPPING IS NOW CHEAPER!

Some of you AAUGH.com shoppers have been taking advantage
of Amazon’s free US shipping on orders over $49. Now
that deal is even easier to take advantage of, because
they have lowered the threshold to $25! So head over to
http://AAUGH.com, order a few Peanuts books at discount
prices, and luxuriate in the free shipping!

============================================================

THE WRITING LIFE

One of the AAUGH.com elves snuck me a peak at a copy of
the upcoming book, SNOOPY’S GUIDE TO THE WRITING LIFE.
As suspected, this book is basically a bunch of strips
featuring Snoopy as the World’s Greatest Author,
interspersed with short text pieces by thirty big name
authors about writing and being a writer. This book will
be out next month. Order now at:

http://AAUGH.com/go.htm?1582971943

============================================================

BOOKS NOW SHIPPING

If you’ve ordered a copy of WHY, CHARLIE BROWN, WHY?,
then it should be winging its way to you at this very
moment. And if you haven’t ordered a copy, why not?
This reprint of the book adaptation of the touching
animated special about a girl with leukemia contains
original Schulz drawings which make it the best of the
animated adaptations:

http://AAUGH.com/go.htm?0345455312

The storybook SNOOOPY: FLYING ACE TO THE RESCUE, part
of the Ready-To-Read line for kids, is also now
shipping.

http://AAUGH.com/go.htm?0689851480

============================================================

ODD PEANUTS BOOK: JAPANESE CATALOG

The Japanese are wild for licensed character products,
and Snoopy is one of their most popular characters.
(Interestingly, he’s more popular with men than with
women — he’s the third most popular character with
men, and the seventh with women, with only Winnie The
Pooh beating him out in both sexes.) My one big
Peanuts book find of the museum trip was a 1993 catalog
of Japanese Peanuts products, which was for sale not
at the museum but at the gift shop by the skating rink.

The catalog is a class act. It comes in a slipcover
box with a separate Index (it appears to be a listing
of the manufacturers with contact information.) Both
the 172-page book and the 48-page index are in full color,
with plenty of photos. Most of the products are
ones that were not released in the U.S., including such
things as Snoopy bowling balls, Peanuts breakfast
cereals, and Snoopy And His Friends chopsticks. The book
also has a guide to the relationships between the Peanuts
characters, pages introducing various characters, and
what appears to be a bio of Schulz.

If you like books of Peanuts collectibles and don’t need
to have a price guide as part of it, you’ll want this
book. Alas, the gift shop does not appear to offer it
through their website, but if you stop by the shop and
pick one up, it’ll run you a mere 5 bucks.

(The pictured item I most want? A diorama of the Peanuts
characters in traditional Japanese ceremonial dress.)

============================================================

Well, summer is winding down, and so is this issue of
the newsletter. Keep those questions, suggestions,
comments, and e-mail updates coming — address them to
nat@AAUGH.com

–Nat

proprietor

http://AAUGH.com

In this issue:

* SNOOPY’S WRITING LIFE

* CLARK GESNER PASSES AWAY

* MORE BABY SNOOPY STUFF

* MUSEUM READY TO OPEN (KINDA)

* THAT PEANUTS GOLF BROCHURE

SNOOPY’S WRITING LIFE

I’ve got more information that upcoming book
SNOOPY’S GUIDE TO THE WRITING LIFE. This
September hardcover will include advice
from 30 top writers, including such folks
as William F. Buckley, Jr., Danielle Steel,
Ray Bradbury, and Sue Grafton. Monte Schulz
is editing it with Monte Conrad, and you can
see the cover to it on the page of upcoming
Peanuts books:

http://AAUGH.com/upcoming.htm

(Pre-order it now for 30% off the cover
price!)

—————————————————

CLARK GESNER PASSES AWAY

Clark Gesner, the talented composer and lyricist
who was the creative force in turning the Peanuts
strip into the hit play “You’re A Good Man, Charlie
Brown”, passed away last month at age 64.

And while we’re on the sad news, Bill Mauldin,
the award-winning cartoonist who entertained the
U.S. forces with accurately hilarious cartoons
during World War II, is in failing health. Schulz
always had Snoopy visiting Mauldin to quaff some
root beers and talk about the old times; at this
point, it seems that the main thing that cheers
up this 80 year old is when he is visited by
WWII veterans telling tales about the war days.

—————————————————

MORE BABY SNOOPY STUFF

The amount of babystuff decorated in Baby Snoopy/
Little Snoopy designs is quickly growing. Just
added to the AAUGH.com shop are a walker, a
bassinet, a port-a-crib set, and a fleece blanket.
Go to http://AAUGH.com/ptoys.htm to see the full
list.

—————————————————

MUSEUM READY TO OPEN (KINDA)

The Charles M. Schulz Museum And Research Center
is less than a week away from its opening, and
it’s almost kinda ready. Some of the many features
planned for this museum may not be quite ready
on the opening day, but the museum folks are in
extreme hustle mode trying to ensure the best
possible experience for those who come to the
opening festivities. (And hey, a museum should be
a living, growing, changing thing, so there’s
nothing wrong with starting with a simpler museum
than planned.) And besides, with all of the
special things that they have planned for their
opening period (guest appearances by Peanuts
book authors, cartooning demonstrations, and so
on), any trip to the Schulz museum should be a
good one!

As for my own appearance there: I have my plane
ticket and my hotel reservations, so everything
is going ahead as planned! I’ll be speaking on
August 23rd, 24th, and 25th, several times each
day. I’ll be speaking for fifteen minutes or
so about the history of Peanuts books, showing
off some interesting volumes, and then fielding
questions.

For more information on the Schulz Museum
opening and related activities, go to:

http://www.SchulzMuseum.org

—————————————————

THAT PEANUTS GOLF BROCHURE

I finally managed to find my copy of that
Peanuts-illustrated golf brochure that I
first mentioned a couple newsletters back.
Luckily, the extra time has given me a chance
to get a better understanding of what I have.

EAY WAY TO LEARN GOLF RULES is an 88 page
self-covered 3″ x 4.5″ booklet put out in
1989. While the booklet does have a lot of
illustrations, the Peanuts material is only
on the last 6 pages, where you’ll find
five captioned drawings illustrating different
aspects of good golfing manners. Some of
these images looked familiar, so I did some
checking — they showed up in An Educated
Slice, a golf-themed Peanuts collection.
However, that book wasn’t published until
1990, and it seems unlikely that they had
Schulz do original drawings just to fill out
the back of a booklet, so I did a bit more
research. I discovered that the National
Golf Foundation, publishers of Easy Way,
has other booklets and brochures with Peanuts
images… including one on golf etiquette.
While the current edition was published in
1997, I suspect these drawings were made for
an earlier edition of the etiquette
brochure.

Two of NGF Peanuts publications are still in
print: WELCOME TO GOLF (a 32 page self-covered
booklet) and GOLF COURSE ETIQUETTE (a brochure).
I expect to lay hands on both of these soon.
Only problem is that I can only order the
Welcome To Golf booklet in fairly large quantities.
I’m thinking about offering these two booklets
plus two Peanuts illustrated golf booklets from
the USGA in a set for about $10 postpaid… would
anyone be interested in such a set?

—————————————————

That’s all the news and notes for now. Barring
a sudden spate of news, this will be the last
newsletter before I appear at the museum. I hope
to see some of you there!

As always, address any questions, comments, or
email address changes to: nat@AAUGH.com

–Nat

proprietor

http://AAUGH.com