Video Sunday

I don’t actually know if this will work, but I think I might be able to swing the existence of YouTube videos on my new site.  Bear with me as I test this theory out.

So what struck my fancy this week video-wise?  Well, first and foremost was this mighty odd piece of news found via Children’s Illustration.  The Charles M. Schulz Musem and Research Center (who knew?) received a kind of gift on 9/10/01.  Bad timing, perhaps, but an interesting gift.  Say they, "the delivery of a wall of original Schulz art from the Colorado home of Polly and Stanley Travnicek. The wall arrived by special truck at a Schulz storage facility in Santa Rosa, where it was stored until its installation in the Museum."  I took a gander at the slideshow of the removal and couldn’t help but wonder why they called it "original Schulz art" when so many of the images were undoubtedly lifted from Little Golden Books.  Still, if you want to see a small blurry version of them removing the large brown creation, look no further.

Gail Gauthier was pondering the existence of book trailers this week.  She wondered if they made any difference in the world at all, which is probably a pretty legitimate question.  Personally, I don’t there’s any way to calculate that kind of thing.  What I do know is that when I show someone a booktrailer, the title of the story sticks in their mind more effectively than if I just recommended it out of the blue.  Now, as Gail was asking all of this, she began to get into the very definition of the term itself.  I mean, we’ve seen separate YouTube trailers for books, but could an intro on a website like this could be considered the same kind of beastie?  Hard to say.

Thanks to Book Moot this YouTube video of early early Jim Henson came to light.  You know I don’t usually post ads, but I suspect that you’re not going to all go out and purchase La Choy chow mein after viewing this.  It is notable for the following reasons.

1. It contains Jim Henson talking about Playboy (albeit briefly)
2. It shows Kermit the Frog getting eaten. Repeatedly.
3. Jim Henson was rather hot as a young man.
4. There are go-go boots.  How can you say no to go-go boots?

There is also a rather lovely book trailer here for Mitali Perkins’ new title First Daughter: Extreme Makeover.  I always like to work in one book trailer per week, if I can.

Simon & Schuster has finally launched its BookTV YouTube site. I was rather amused by the frozen still from the Susan Patron piece they did. I’m sure the woman pictured there is perfectly nice, but Susan Patron she is not. And there are no other children’s book-related videos at this time (oddly).

Finally, in the realm of Ads We Begrudgingly Like Because They Make Us Hungry, Diane Duane directed me to this.

Yum yum yum yum yum.

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