Oz sighting

I thought I'd blogged about this earlier, but I can't seem to find it. No problem, I was going to recap it anyway, so now I'll just start from scratch. A few weeks ago, someone on the Oz Club's message board noticed something interesting in a movie he caught on the Hallmark Channel. When I read the note, I did some quick research and found that another showing was coming up later that morning. So I quickly set the TiVo to record it, and now I can share the whole thing with you.

The movie is Samantha: An American Girl Holiday, and yes, it's based on the very popular doll series. This one is set at the turn of the century, and early in the movie, Samantha gets a new book. Guess what it is? I'll let you take a look at the pictures...

As far as I could tell, the book only appears in the first fifteen minutes or so, then they get on with the actual meat of the story. Still, very cool.

Oz on Jeopardy!

They did it again! In today's show, in the Double Jeopardy! round, the category was Stately Museums, where you had the name the state in which the named museums are located. The $800 clue:

David, on the right, rang in and correctly asked, "What is Kansas?" And in case you weren't already familiar with it, you can find out more about the Oz Museum in Wamego, Kansas, by clicking here.

The Emerald City Comic Con!

Last Sunday, my wife dragged me and I went to the rather appropriately named Emerald City Comic Convention. This has been a growing affair for a little while now, and has started to get some big names and draw big crowds. You can read Laura's full report starting here (it's in four parts, and this is part four with links to the others), but I want to bring you the Oz perspective.

The first place we hit was the Illusive Arts booth. They're the publishers of the Dorothy comic book, and Laura and I have helped them out before, so they're always glad to let us use their booth as a rest stop and storage area. We dropped the worst of it off, and then went on the prowl for the other Oz booth, Hungry Tiger Press. I've known Eric and David for years now, even before they got together and started this little company, so I was glad to see them again. I bought the one thing I wanted for the whole convention, their new edition of Ozoplaning with the Wizard of Oz. Eric was also kind enough to sign my copy of Adventures in Oz. After that, we got busy!

Eric Shanower, David Maxine, and friend at the Hungry Tiger Press booth
Much to my surprise, one of the first people I met was Margot Kidder. Yes, she played Lois Lane opposite Christopher Reeve's Superman. Why was I surprised? Because she was only supposed to be there on Saturday, and Laura had already gotten me an autographed picture. The picture is her on the Smallville set with Annette O'Toole, who plays Martha Kent now and Lana Lang back in Superman III. Of course, both actresses also have Oz connections. O'Toole played Maud Baum in The Dreamer of Oz, and we all know about Margot Kidder narrating the movie compilations of the Cinar Wizard of Oz series. So now I have to find Annette O'Toole some time and get her to sign it as well.


Margot Kidder and friend
After that, Laura and I got serious about what we really go to comic conventions for: getting sketches! Most artists at comic conventions really enjoy drawing sketches for the fans, and over the years Laura and I have collected quite a few. When I started my sketchbook back in 2000, my theme was Green Lantern, my favorite comic book character. The nice thing about Green Lantern is that there have been quite a few over the years, and anybody who wears a Green Lantern ring could be a Green Lantern. So I made it very free-form and let the artists draw anyone they like as Green Lantern. I've had traditional ones from the comics, their own characters, self-portraits, and just freeform flights of fancy. But soon after I started the book, I also decided that I wanted to get Wizard of Oz sketches as well, so made it an either/or thing (except Eric Shanower; in 2001 I told him I wanted the Green Lantern of Oz — more about that at a later date). Many have even combined them. And this was one of my biggest all-time days of getting sketches. I think there were eleven new ones in all, plus a couple in a new book we started at this con (none of them Ozzy). It was great fun. Oh, yeah, and we also took our troll, Torvald, around to get his picture taken with everyone. In fact, that's him listed as "and friend" in the captions above.

It wasn't all standing around watching nervous artists draw in our books, however. I popped over back to Hungry Tiger Press at one point to scope out what they're publishing next (let's just say Oz fans should be saving their pennies), and made a few rest stops at Illusive Arts. One time, as we headed back, they told me to get back out to Hungry Tiger Press. It seems David Maxine had made another Oz discovery that day, and wanted me to know about it. At the booth for a computer animation company, they had a poster for an animated film version of The Tin Woodman of Oz. It only showed the Tin Woodman and the Scarecrow, but they looked good. We couldn't find out much more, but it looks promising. On our way out, a familiar intertwined "O-Z" motif caught my eye, and Laura and I stopped at the Cellar Door Publishing booth to see what was up. It appears that they have the comics rights to American Magee's version of Oz, but I've been hearing about that version for nearly a decade now, and I have doubts it will ever see the light of day in any form. Still, it's good to know.

So, that was about it. I had a lot of fun, and I know my wife had even more. (See how much fun she's having in this picture?)


But what about all those sketches? Would you like to see some of them here? Laura has now scanned my entire sketchbook, and I'd love to post them here if anyone is interested. In fact, here's a preview, from the Emerald City Comic Con last week, drawn by Karin Yamagiwa Maden, who for some reason kept apologizing for ruining my sketchbook, which she most certainly did not:


If you want to see more of the sketches I've collected, go ahead and tell me in the comments. If enough people want to see them, I think I can start a "Sketch of the Week" post...

Oz Sighting

Rubes today has an Oz theme.

Also, Edge City had Oz references yesterday, as Abby wakes up from her historical dream.

More McDonald's Toys!

Oh, wow, this is big news! I just found out that because it's been so popular, McDonald's has extended the Wizard of Oz Happy Meal promotion by a week. To accomodate them, Madame Alexander has quickly commissioned two more dolls, the Munchkin Mayor and the Wizard. They'll start showing up in Happy Meals on April 20. Here's the picture:

For more details, including all of the logistics of how they're going to pull this off, take a look at the article here.

The Challenge: Three Months On

Back at the very start of this year, I issued the readers of this blog who are also members of the International Wizard of Oz Club a challenge. It read, in part:

I hope that those of you who are reading this and are Club members will ask what needs to be done and can find a place to help out. Can you write? The Bugle and Oziana always need contributors, and right now the Bugle even needs assistant editors to help out with some sections. Can you draw? Oziana always needs illustrators, or you could contribute to the calendar. You could serve on a committee, help out at the conventions, help recruit new members at Oz events, host a local Oz party in your area, anything you can think of! The Club is only as strong as those who are working behind the scenes, so the more members can help out, the stronger the Club will be.

So now it's been three months. How's it going? Have you offered your help? What are you doing? Feel free to leave a comment here, or check out the thread I started about this on the Oz Club's message board.

Ozzy errands

I'm about to go out the door to run a few errands, and it just dawned on me that they're ALL Oz related! That doesn't happen very often. First, I'm going to the Post Office to drop off my registration for this year's Winkie Convention. More by accident than design, this year it's turned into a big party celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the International Wizard of Oz Club, and I was sure hoping not to miss it, as I've been going to these things since 1980. Laura wanted to come to, so we looked at our options and did a little number crunching and figured out how to do it. After the Post Office, I'm heading to McDonald's to get a Happy Meal for lunch, and oh, yeah, I may as well get a Wizard of Oz toy while I'm there — not that I need any more, as Laura has been very persistent (see her reports here, here, here, and here) — and I'm now one character short of two complete sets.

Tomorrow will also be a bit Ozzy, as I'll be going down to the Emerald City Comic Con with Laura (she's there today with her sister). I'm going to try to get some more Oz (and/or Green Lantern) sketches for my sketchbook, and I'll also pop in on the Illusive Arts folks (who publish Dorothy) and my old friends Eric and David at Hungry Tiger Press, where I hope to buy their new edition of Ozoplaning with the Wizard of Oz. Maybe Eric would also be kind enough to autograph my edition of Adventures in Oz. Laura caught up with them even before the con started this morning, which is good.

More good Oz news to come this weekend, I suspect.

We're Off to Eat a Happy Meal

You know, I could tell you all the story about how my wife got this, the first of what will likely be many Madame Alexander Wizard of Oz dolls. But she tells the story so well here on her own blog that I decided to just link to her entry. Enjoy!

UPDATE 3/24/07: Now we have Glinda, too. Two of them, actually. Here's Laura's report.

The latest Oz readings and acquisitions

It's been a little while since I've told you what I've been reading, and what I've gotten, so let's take care of all that at once, shall we? First off, what have I been reading?

• Trickster in the Land of Dreams by Zeese Papanikolas. This is an interesting little look at the American southwest, and the various myths that have sprung up in the area (Shoshone, Piyute, and other Native American tribes; the early Mormons; the founding and rise of Las Vegas; believe it or not, the Cold War). It's not quite non-fiction, but it's a lot like an anthropological study. There is a chapter devoted to Oz, but I never really seemed to get the connection or why it was in the book, and that struck me as the weakest section.
  
• Ophie Out of Oz by Kathleen O'Dell. Thanks to a long bus trip, I managed to tear through this short children's novel in about a day and a half, and thoroughly enjoyed it. Ophelia Peeler is a fourth grader who has just moved to Oregon, and is having the worst trouble fitting in. She's a dreamer who's a Wizard of Oz fan, and she has a pair of Ruby Slippers that are very important to her. The Oz references are pretty tangential, but they are there and enjoyable. This book reminded me a lot of Beverly Cleary's Ramona books, although I think a big part of this was the Oregon location. Ophie definitely has Ramona-like qualities, however.
  
• Since those weren't terribly Ozzy, I looked through the pile to see if there was something a little truer to form. Sure enough, I also found The Wizard of Oz Movie Storybook, and dipped into that. It's a picture book-style retelling of The Movie, using screen grabs from The Movie. The sophisticated Oz book reader in me would have liked to see this go on longer (it's only 48 pages long), but for what it is, it's quite satisfactory.
  
• I also finally managed to finish Judy Garland: A Portrait in Art and Anecdote by my good friend John Fricke. (You want to know how good? I think the inscription he signed in the front is almost as long as the book itself! And I'm only exaggerating a little!) I read this with my breakfast for several mornings, and it's a treat. Lots and lots of pictures, interspersed with anecdotes from those who knew and worked with Judy, as well as a few bon mots from Judy herself. It's a thorough, even-handed examination of her life and career, and it made me want to go out and watch a bunch of her other movies. (I was, in fact, very pleased to see John Fricke introduce the DVD of In the Good Old Summertime when I checked that one out of the library.)
  

I'm really looking forward to the next two books in my pile: The Oz Odyssey by Roger S. Baum (I know, his aren't the Ozziest of Oz books, but his heart is in the right place, and after the last two not-so-Ozzy books, it will be a pleasure to read this, I'm sure), and Wicked: The Grimmerie. Yes, the big fat hardback about the play that I got signed by Stephen Schwartz last year.

So, what new items have I gotten lately? Thanks to everyone who bought goodies through my website's bookshop last Christmas, I had a lot of credit to spend at Amazon, and I made good use of it!

• A Feast of Crime. This anthology of food-themed murder mysteries includes one set at an Oz convention! It should be fun. (This book was also why I haven't said anything earlier, since it took its sweet time getting here. I wanted to get them all before I posted about them.)
  
• The soundtrack to The Dreamer of Oz. No, it's not out on DVD yet (soon, pehaps, I hear through the grapevine), but at least you can listen to the charming music that ran through this 1990 TV movie about L. Frank Baum and how he created Oz.
  
• The Turner Classic Movies edition of the Scene-It? DVD game. I only saw the expansion pack available on Amazon.com, but I've since found that the full board edition is available directly from the manufacturers (and they're a local company, too). Yes, Turner owns The Wizard of Oz, so there are scenes and questions from The Movie in it. I haven't found anyone to play with yet, however.
  
• Another CD, Harold Arlen Sings Sweet and Hot. As I'm sure you all know, Arlen was the lyricist for The Movie, and this is a disc of him singing some of his famous songs, including "Over the Rainbow."
  
• Journey to the Emerald City: Achieve A Competitive Edge by Creating A Culture of Accountability by Roger Connors and Tom Smith. Yet another Oz-themed guide to life, this one about business. This is actually the follow-up to an earlier book that I've already read. No, it won't really apply much to me, but it will be interesting to see the Oz connections.
  
• A Wizard of Oz wastepaper basket. I'm not usually one to get trinkets and knickknacks and the like just because they have The Wizard of Oz stamped on them, but I thought a wastepaper basket would be a good addition to my room. Well, take a look:
  
  Why do all Oz items these days have to be pink? Hmm, those feet look familiar...
  
• Finally, not an item I got from Amazon, but maybe the most fun. I got an e-mail from the founder of Celebriducks, the folks who make rubber ducks that look like celebrities. They were doing an Oz line, and would I like to comment? Before long, we'd made a deal, and I finally got around to getting them. They look something — well, no, exactly — like this:
  
  Glinda and a Munchkin are in the works, and the preliminaries I've seen look really good. Now if they'd only do the Wizard…
  

And that's about it. Quite a lot, huh? I'll try not to be so long next time.

Wow, it might actually happen!

I've been hearing about the new SciFi Channel miniseries, Tin Man, for quite some time now, and like most previous Oz projects, I've taken it with a very large grain of salt, as I never expect to see it. But now it looks like this one may buck the trend, as SciFi keeps announcing casting, and filming starts in a few weeks (just up the road in British Columbia, no less). So here's the latest piece from SciFi.com, to get everyone caught up.

Where are YOU going to be eating starting March 23?

I ask only because Madame Alexander is now giving us a good reason to go to the Scottish place. Yeah, they have news and nicer pictures up on their website about the Happy Meal promotion. They look good! I'm particularly amused by one of the figures being the Wicked Witch of the East!

(Many thanks to Sharon Ray's Curiozity Corner for alerting the world to this picture.)

Oz in Jeopardy! yet again

I've seen lots of Oz clues on Jeopardy! before, but I'm not sure I've ever seen quite so many! On tonight's show, when the Double Jeopardy! category "Literature of the 19-Oughts" was revealed, I have a feeling Oz would pop up. Sure enough, the $400 clue at the top was:

Martin, the challenger on the far right, correctly responded with, "Who is Baum?" and Alex confirmed, "Yes, Frank Baum."

Mini-Linkdump

If you haven't checked out Strange Maps yet, you really ought to. All kinds of neat stuff there, from Oz to the DCU and back again.

A little something on The Tin Man, in case you haven't already heard.

Colleen Doran Sees Wicked then flaunts her stuff at the DC offices.

Oogaboo! Oogaboo!

For nearly thirty years now, I've been a part of a group of local Oz fans called the Oogaboos. We're named after the little country in the northwest part of Oz, since we're in the northwest part of the United States. We're a very laid back, casual group. About all we do is get together at someone's house every few months for dinner and conversation. About the only major Oz event we have any more is a quiz. Most of us come from the Seattle/Puget Sound area, but we have regulars from eastern Washington and Oregon, and we've even had visitors from California, Oklahoma, Utah, and New York. We've also become a bit of a group presence at the Winkie Convention.

Well, now we've gone high tech. We now have our own website, at oogaboo.org, although it doesn't have much up yet. We also have an announcements list going, so that we can quickly send out notices of upcoming meetings. So if you live in the Northwest and want to know when our meetings are — and the next one is coming up on April 14, I might add — please feel free to join our list. Go to oogaboo.org/announcelist.html and sign up. It's that easy, and we promise not to pepper your inbox with spam or sell your name to someone from Nigeria.

A whole BUNCH of Oz cartoons

Are you ready for a flood of Oz cartoons? Because Laura found not only the website for the panel Off the Mark, but also it's search function. Guess what search term she put in? Go on, take a look. (Mother Goose and Grimm and its creator, Mike Peter, also has a search feature, but unfortunately I can't link directly to the results. You'll just have to type "Oz" into the search box yourself. But it gets you many more cartoons!)

Today's Oz Comic

Today's Bliss has an Oz reference. I had to look up Manolo Blahnik on Wikipedia to get the joke, but, hey, I've done the hard part for you. Go, enjoy!

Follow the Yellow Brick Road to the Golden Arches

Oh, cool! Sharon Ray over at Curiozity Corner, a nice blog on Oz collectibles, has news of the next big Happy Meal promotion at McDonald's. Laura and I are not big McDonald's eaters (particularly after seeing Super Size Me), but this is something that can get us in again. Good thing the Happy Meals aren't too big, and we can get their tasty apple dippers in place of the fries.

Oz sightings

Oh, there are a lot of them to report on today. So let's get cracking, shall we?

SIGHTING: Way back on February 15, The Daily Show with John Stewart had an interesting quote about the debate in the House of Representatives for a non-binding resolution on Iraq. This comes from Rep. Rob Bishop (R-Utah):

Yesterday I had the opportunity of going back to Baltimore and watching a play, Wicked. ("Go on," John Stewart theatrically interjects.) And in the play, the main character, the male lead, Fiyero is in love with Elphaba. And she tries to distance herself from him by saying, "Yeah, but you're thoughtless and shallow." And Fiyero says, "I know, but I'm a deep shallow." This resolution is a deep shallow.

"The only thing I can say," adds Stewart, "is good thing he didn't get tickets to..." Um, a play I probably shouldn't talk about in a family friendly blog like this. So here's a link to the show's website (WARNING: Not work safe, and don't leet the kids see this!) On a side note: Hey, with that testimony, Wicked is now in the Congressional Record!

SIGHTING: Okay, who's the Oz fan now writing for Jeopardy!? Laura and I were eagerly looking forward to seeing the show last night, because word was that all of the categories in the Double Jeopardy round had to do with the X-Men. Yes, they did. (For the record, the categories were Wolverine, Storm, Magneto, Rogue, Colossus, and "X"-Men.) But before that, there was this $600 clue in the category Literary Baddies:



Sue, in the middle, rang in and asked, "Who is the Wicked Witch?" Alex prompted, "Of..." and Sue added, "...of the West?" Then, in Double Jeopardy, we got this $1600 clue in the category Storm, which is about storms in movies:



Defending champion Brad rang in immediately and got it right by asking, "What is 'Twister'?"

SIGHTING: Gili Bar-Hillel, Israel's biggest Oz fan, is in the news again, although yet again it's about her other job, translating the Harry Potter books into Hebrew. Man, it sounds like she's got some inside information that the rest of us will have to wait for until this summer. (Yes, I already have my copy on pre-order, and Laura's already on the wait list at the library.) So quit reading my stuff already and go read about her already. (UPDATE: Wow! This was even reported on in my local paper! Okay, yeah, it was a small blurb in the "Odds and Ends" section on page 2, two stories down from Britney Spears going back into rehab again, but still, I know her!)

SIGHTING: The folks at Illusive Arts putting together the Dorothy comic book seem to be following The Baum Bugle's publishing schedule, but at least they're kind enough to tell us. Yes, issue seven is coming out next week. Here's the press release.

No Ordinary Life...

The Seattle Times takes a look at Meinhardt Raabe.

Oz in Jeopardy! again

Wow, this has been a fun Teen Tournament on Jeopardy! this year. Tonight was the second Oz-themed clue of the tournament. In the category "Broadway," the $2000 clue was a picture of this issue of Playbill:

Alex read the clue: "It's the most bewitching musical on Broadway, and its Playbill cover is seen here." David was the first player to ring in, and he got it right by asking, "What is 'Wicked'?"