(this is a press release from Star Farm Productions, which is where I work)

Please contact:
Colleen Fahey, SVP Marketing
Star Farm Productions LLC
Phone: 312-226-7130
Mobile: 312-451-7150

A WORLD OF MISCHIEF FROM EDGAR & ELLEN

Chicago, IL (Feb. 11, 2008) Cartoon Network Latin America has just signed the Edgar & Ellen series in a deal brokered by Pi Distribution. In the meantime, Cake Distribution pulled together a English and Gaelic language agreement with TG4 in Ireland.

It’s no wonder Edgar & Ellen love Cake and Pi.

Susanna Pollack, SVP of International Sales and Licensing at Star Farm Productions, says, “Edgar & Ellen are going to have to learn a lot of languages this year, they’re on there way to 72 countries.”

To learn about more licensing opportunities with Edgar & Ellen, please contact North American Licensing Agency, Lisa Marks & Associates, Inc. (LMA) at LMarks@LMA-Inc.com. For international opportunities contact Susanna Pollack at susanna.pollack@starfarmproductions.com.

Background Information

Edgar & Ellen®, for ages 6 to 12, are pranksters extraordinaire who crave outrageous fun. The Edgar & Ellen animated series is produced by Star Farm Productions and Bardel Entertainment in association with YTV. It currently airs on Nicktoons Network US, Nickelodeon UK and ABC Kids Australia. This multiple media phenomenon also appears in a six-book series with Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing and as a thriving online community at www.edgarandellen.com. Enjoy the ride and savor the inevitable consequences when each of Edgar & Ellen’s plan backfires!

Star Farm Productions® creates entertainment the way today’s digital generation consumes it. Star Farm merges user-generated content with mainstream multiple media. Partners include Nickelodeon International, Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing, Activision®, Lions Gate Films® and other global leaders in the family market.

Thanks to Izzy for the heads up on this story.

According to a Norwegian newspaper, a young boy and his sister were attacked by a moose, and the boy taunted the moose away from his sister and then played dead so that the moose would lose aggro and leave. “Just like you learn in level 30 in World of Warcraft,” the boy is reported as saying.

In World of Warcraft, level 30 Hunters can feign death for up to six minutes, which causes the attacker to lose interest in attacking and mosey on.

Which goes to show, gaming saves lives.

However, my level 23 Night Elf Hunter, Leafgarrett, would have been moose food.

Also however, if it had been a mountain lion instead of a moose, the strategy might not have worked.

Today the twins are three months old. I’ve been meaning to write something about the experience of them, but in the jumble of clichés and Frequently Asked Questions, the friendly advice and expert articles, and the straight lack of time to let thoughts settle, I’ve been unable to focus on what this whole thing has really been like.

No one reads this blog but Izzy and Joi, and sometimes my mom, so it’s a good place to take a stab at writing about it.

Here’s what I think it’s like:

It’s like a cross between having a very, very dearly beloved pet, and hosting a very tiny, elderly foreign man. Times two.

Beloved pet. You know how, when you have a pet you are really attached to, you just can’t wait to get home and see them? It’s sort of like that, but stronger. Whatever bigness and greatness you may have accomplished that day at the coal mines, it’s nowhere near as rewarding as making a baby smile. They are smiling now, and it doesn’t take much to make it happen. And it’s the coolest thing in the world when it does. Every time. It doesn’t get old.

Tiny. They were born about half the size of regular babies, and they’ve only recently become normalish sized. But a normal sized baby still makes for a very tiny foreign gentleman.

Elderly men. Complete with multiple chins and male pattern baldness. I don’t think they’re going to start looking like little girls until their baby hair falls off and they grow some little girl hair. Don’t get me wrong… they are cute. But in that miniature elderly gentleman sort of way.

Foreign. They don’t speak English, and they don’t seem to understand anything we say to them, though they do often grin politely while we’re talking to them. But as their hosts, we are obliged to decipher their needs. We want their stay to be a pleasant one, and so the burden of communication falls on our shoulders.

I imagine some sort of stork-run baby exchange program, and that my babies are in some foreign land, confounding their host family with strange noises and gestures that I would be able to understand completely.

My secret agenda has been for their first word to be aaarrgh! (with an optional “shiver me timbers”), complete with one eye closed and ugly pirate face. They’ve got the face down when they work it, but the noise they make needs practice. But in the past couple of weeks I’ve decided I should get serious, so I’m throwing in the occasional bit of Middle English, Chinese, and Klingon.

That’s a joke. The Klingon part, anyway.

Edgar & Ellen are in Target stores this Halloween. Visit your nearest Target and you can’t miss them, especially if you head to the halloween candy section. Also the Target website Halloween section. And the Edgar & Ellen TV series is now on Nicktoons on Sunday 8pm EST. Check them out on the Nicktoons site.

Why am I blogging about Edgar & Ellen, you ask? It’s the first entertainment property created by the company I work for, Star Farm Productions.

[googlevideo=http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docId=-5227504766782679119&hl=en]

I was tagged by Joi Podgorny to do this bit of viral nonsense, so here goes.

Here are the rules I must follow:

• Each player starts with eight random facts/habits about themselves.
• People who are tagged need to write their own post about their eight things and post these rules.
• At the end of your post, you need to choose eight people to get tagged and list their names.
• Don’t forget to leave them a comment telling them they’re tagged, and to read your blog.

8 random things about me:

1. I am father to a couple of 2-month-old twin baby girls.
2. I left school in the middle of my senior to work in a chicken processing plant. I finished during summer school (while working night shift at the plant).
3. I’m looking forward to becoming a cranky and eccentric old man.
4. I can sing the Prologue to the Canterbury Tales to the tune of the Brady Bunch, in Middle English.
5. I lived in China for a year, teaching English to adults and children, and practicing my Chinese on strangers.
6. I spent last Christmas and New Year’s at a Buddhist temple on a mountain Brazil.
7. The first time I shaved my head was when I was in London to speak at a virtual communities conference. I hadn’t bothered to get a haircut, and it was the only one I could successfully give myself.
8. I continued shaving my head, and the first time I used the name “Monk” was when I worked as director of a computer camp for kids.

I don’t know 8 people to tag (who read my blog…50% of my readership is Joi, who is the one who tagged me), so I’m going to let this meme die a quiet death right here.

Today I got the hiccups. That was pretty cool. I can see how it might get old after a while, but right now it’s all new.

Disclaimer: My blog posts may lean a little to the baby side for a few weeks.

5. Cliché. A writer is generally supposed to avoid cliché characters, but raising a baby seems to be a shroud of deliberate rituals. You want to give your detective some sort of quirk (a funny limp, a cute psychiatric anxiety disorder, or even a heart-warming addiction to over-the-counter medication) to make him stand out in the motley crowd of fictional detectives, but your baby you just want to be unabashedly stereotypical–fat and happy.

4. Character Arc. You have at least a vague idea of who your character will become when you start out. She starts out shy yet sassy, but after 250 pages of trials and tribulations, she has become confident and sassy. Your babies, you can only toss wild guesses as to who they will become.

3. Conflict. Conflict is drama, they say. You want your characters to face painful obstacles. You want them to suffer, so their triumphs will taste all the sweeter. Your babies, you want their lives to be smooth as a gosling’s butt.

2. Poop. Fictional characters don’t poop, usually. Not on the page. There are some notable exceptions, but for the most part you don’t get into that part of your characters’ lives. It turns out that babies, on the other hand, are about very little else.

1. Kill your babies, they say about writing. But please, not literally.