*CHARLIE BROWN THANKSGIVING TONIGHT
*CHRISTMAS COMES TWICE THIS YEAR
*ANOTHER KIDS BOOK
*FREE SHIPPING
*POLITICAL PEANUTS SATIRE
*THE ANNUAL QUESTION…
*ODD PEANUTS BOOKS: TRIVIA AND REFERENCE BOOK
Not a lot of news today, but I realized that I’d been so concerned about letting people know what A CB Christmas would be on this year, I forgot to mention the airing of the Thanksgiving special — and since your response to my "Should I send out newsletters less frequently?" question was a resounding "NO!" (one person short of unanimous, in fact!), here it is.
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CHARLIE BROWN THANKSGIVING TONIGHT
Those of you in the U.S. should be able to catch A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving tonight on ABC, at the start of the prime-time lineup (that’s 8 PM in most areas, 7 PM in some.)
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CHRISTMAS COMES TWICE THIS YEAR
As long as I’m mentioning the specials: Peanuts animation guru Scott McGuire points out that ABC will air their hour-long double-feature of A CB Christmas and the documentaruy on the making of that special twice, on December 6th and again on the 16th. If you haven’t checked out Scott’s guide to the animated Peanuts, do so at: http://web.mit.edu/smcguire/www/peanuts-animation.html
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FREE SHIPPING
It’s gift-gathering season again. If you’re looking to get a pile of gifts, head over to AAUGH.com, click on any Peanuts books you want to order, and order them and most other things from the Amazon catalog. Rack up at least $99 in orders of items marked with a red truck picture (that’s most of the items that Amazon has, apart from toys) and get free shipping — that can be a major savings. Note that this is only on orders shipped in a single shipment to a single address within the 48 contiguous United States. (If you live in Hawaii and want to complain about the lack of free shipping, take a walk outside and realize that you get to live in Hawaii, and mellow out. And if you live in Alaska, say "hi" to my mom for me!)
I’m not sure when this offer runs out, so take advantage of it now!
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ANOTHER KIDS BOOK
Joining the list of Little Simon books coming out for kids in June is HERE’S TO YOU, AMERICA! This book is not yet available for preorder. I don’t have a lot of information about this, but what I do have makes me curious: it seems to be in the same format as the recent book adaptations of animated specials. However, there is no special called Here’s To You, America!, unless there’s an upcoming one that I haven’t heard about. Is it something new? Is it perhaps a version of one of the episodes of This Is America, Charlie Brown? I’ll try to find out for you.
You can keep track of upcoming Peanuts books at http://AAUGH.com/upcoming.htm — in fact, if you go there now you’ll see the new color image of cover to A Charlie Brown Valentine (which can be preordered.)
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POLITICAL PEANUTS SATIRE
While taking a spur-of-the-moment pleasure drive to Northern California last weekend, I listened to an abridged book-on-CD version of Al Franken’s WHY NOT ME?, a book about the famed satirist’s fictional presidential campaign. In the book, the Franken campaign is largely in the pocket of the insurance companies. When it comes time for campaign ads, MetLife arranges for some rather unlikely animated ads featuring the Peanuts characters, a couple of which are described in the book.
This book is an amusing satirical look at campaigns, both at the reality of politics and the truth that most of us are ill-suited for taht world. It came out in 1999, so it’s already available in paperback: Paperback: http://AAUGH.com/go.htm?0385334540 Hardcover large print: http://AAUGH.com/go.htm?0786218665 Audio CD: http://AAUGH.com/go.htm?0553456431 (with this, you get Franken’s fine reading of his own material, but you also put up with the abridgement — although at 6 hours, there is plenty of funny material here.)
And speaking of the trip: it was nice to see that the hotels were nearly full (admittedly, on a holiday weekend.) Still, there are lots of wonderful bargains to be had in travel these days, and this a great time to get out and see the country.
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THE ANNUAL QUESTION…
Around this time of year, I usually get the same question e-mailed to me a couple times: If you go to http://AAUGH.com and click through and order something from Amazon (or if you go to our UK Shoppe at http://AAUGH.com/uk/ and click through and order something from Amazon UK), does AAUGH.com make money? The answer is "yes", even if you don’t end up ordering the book you clicked through on or any other Peanuts book, for that matter. If you click the AAUGH.com link for PEANUTS TREASURY and order it, we get a cut of the money you pay. If you order PEANUTS TREASURY and a waffle iron, we get a cut of the money for both items. In fact, if you end up ordering the waffle iron and not the book, we still get a cut of what you spend. This doesn’t raise the price that you pay at all.
AAUGH.com is not a charity. I like to think of it as both a fan site and a business that makes a profit (although quite a small one for the amount of time that I put into it.) I’m not trying to guilt everyone into starting all of their Amazon orders through AAUGH.com. However, since so many folks ask: yes, those orders do help justify the time and money I spend on the site.
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ODD PEANUTS BOOKS: TRIVIA AND REFERENCE BOOK
In 1986, Henry Holt and Company put out THE PEANUTS TRIVIA & REFERENCE BOOK, edited by Schulz’s son Monty and Jody Millward. It’s hard to call this a reference book, since there really isn’t an organization of information. Instead, it’s a full-length trivia quiz. On each right-hand page there are trivia questions. Turn the page, and you see the strips which contain the answers.
The book is oddly limited in some ways. All of the strips are taken from the Peanuts Parade books, which means it includes no strips from before 1952 or after 1984 (this book was put out in 1986), nor any of the many hundreds of strips that the Parade series skipped over. (The back cover of the book claims that the authors combed through over 12,000 strips to make it, which would barely be true if the Parade books contained all of the strips from those years. They don’t.) Each question is marked with the name of the Parade book where the strip answer can be found, which at least gives the very book-aware some clue as to what period the answer is from. The questions range from the very general ("Who has naturally curly hair?") to ones that are extremely specific to individual strips ("What are the four classic cars Linus’s father has owned?")
It can be fun to pit your mind against this list of Peanuts minutae. Schulz himself took the quiz and missed five questions. (He also provides what appears to be a new cover image for the book, with quizmaster Charlie Brown asking questions of the expert panel of Spike, Woodstock, and Snoopy.)
Long out of print, this book is not easy to come by. It’s all that more elusive because it isn’t listed in most used book catalogs under "Schulz, Charles", but rather under "Schulz, Monte".
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USED BOOK COUPON
I’ve found Alibris to be a handy online used bookstore at times. However, their prices tend to be a bit high. But I’ve got a coupon for you, good for $5 off any purchase of $20 or more. Check it out! http://AAUGH.com/guide/alibris.htm
(And like all online used bookstores, you have to beware of their listings. I was just staring at a Charles Schulz book entry, "Super Times". Never heard of that one. Then I notice that it was published by Determined Production in 1968, and I realized that it was really a misentry of the book "Suppertime!")
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And so wraps up another newsletter. A little info, a little sales pitch (well, more than a little), and a lot of rows of dots. As always, feel free to send me your notes and questions! Now excuse me…
I have to head down to the mailbox to see if my French Peanuts Philosopher book has finally arrived!
–Nat, proprietor http://AAUGH.com
