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Buy clothes Charlie Bucket couldn’t afford

May 7, 2005 Charlie, Projects

wonka t-shirt My best-dressed friend Jen sent me a link to Kitson, which has started selling a line of exclusive, and expensive, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory-related merchandise.

I certainly don’t lay any claim to the idea of Golden Tickets or t-shirts, but I was a little giddy to see that three of the slogan shirts feature dialogue from the script (as opposed to Roald Dahl’s book, or the original movie). The shirts in question are:

“I’m sorry. I don’t speak American.” (Spoken by Mr. Salt.)

“Chewing gum is really gross. Chewing gum I hate the most.” (Spoken by Willy Wonka.)

and

“I love de Chocolate!” (Spoken by Augustus Gloop.)

Okay, the third one is a bit of a stretch, because Augustus says similar things in every version of the story. So I’ll just claim the “de,” since I wrote out his German accent. The fourth slogan shirt, “There’s no know where they’re going”, is also in the script, but it comes directly from Chapter 18 of Dahl’s book.

Obviously, there will be a ton of Charlie-related products over the next few months, so I won’t point out every promotion. And to anticipate the first question in the comments section, no, the screenwriter doesn’t get any piece of the merchandise.

But if Kitson wants to send me a t-shirt or two, I’ll take a men’s large. Not XL. L. Cheers.

Readers speak, part two

May 6, 2005 News

Yesterday, I went through the top survey suggestions related to the site’s content. Today’s topic is everything else, from usability to new features.

THE ARCHIVES

Feature the archived stories and threads a little more prominently. There
is some great information in those old postings that many don’t know exist.

Good suggestion. I may dust off older entries more often. Also, you’ll see more “related entries” at the bottom of new posts.

Create a better filing system for previously asked questions. Make these
backlogged questions easier to locate.

Make browsing the archives easier.

Number the Q&A pages or create a better system to get back to the postings
(other than hitting “back” forty times).

The archives kind of suck, particularly considering they used to be much pimper before I changed servers. Improving the archives interface is one of my highest priorities, geek-wise. I can’t promise any timeline, though, because my Actual Job has to come first.

Readers speak, part one

May 5, 2005 News

survey In the recent survey, I got a lot of hard numbers to back up and/or refute my assumptions about who reads johnaugust.com. I also got a lot of good suggestions from Question 10, which read: “If I could do one thing to improve johnaugust.com, I would…”

Here’s a sampling of what people wrote, and how I might implement their advice. Today, we’ll look at suggestions about content. Tomorrow we’ll cover everything else.

Update the site daily.

Increase the frequency of updates (no matter how breezy or trivial).

I do my best to post a couple of times per week. Realistically, that’s the best I can do while holding down a full-time screenwriting career. Unlike Jason Kottke, I don’t think any number of micro-patrons is going to enable me to quit my day job. Though at times, it’s tempting.

Increase the Q&A sections, or at least make the IMDb columns less of a
rehash from what’s already been posted on the website.

The IMDb columns are the same questions I answer on the site. I could divvy them up differently, but I’d still be answering the same number of questions.

Be funnier. It’s a little dry.

Alas, dry is what you get. The truth is, I’m not crazy yuk-yuk funny, as you might guess by the movies I write: entertaining, sure. Hysterical, not so much. This site isn’t really meant to be a hoot-and-a-half. At its best, it’s probably edu-tainment.

English isn’t Latin

May 5, 2005 Rant

In an email a few weeks ago, my former assistant (and alarmingly successful writer/director) Rawson Thurber apologized for ending a sentence with a preposition. I insisted that he was well within his rights to dangle a preposition, split an infinitive, or break pretty much any rule he’d been taught about English — especially the seemingly-arbitrary ones.

Grammarians come in two flavors. A descriptivist studies the way people use a language, while a prescriptivist tries to lay down the rules of a language.

Prescriptivists are assholes. Ignore them.

Or better yet, try to make them explain why you’re not supposed to dangle a preposition. After all, there’s not a Bible of the English language, in which a certified deity listed his or her commandments. Backed into a corner, the prescriptivist will probably say, “because English comes from Latin, and that’s not allowed in Latin.”

Well, I studied Latin. It’s cool in a geeky way, sort of like computer programming. Many English words come from Latin, so it can be fascinating to play linguistic C.S.I. to figure out how “abscission” came from “away” and “to cut.” But here’s the most interesting and challenging thing about Latin:

It’s nothing like English.

Most notably, it has cases and declensions, which have pretty much disappeared in our happy language, replaced by word order and, you guessed it, prepositions.

But don’t just take my word for it. Here’s another article that does a good job explaining why the grammar Nazis are wrong.