The Awesome Dr. Seuss

“We are all a little weird and life's a little weird, and when we find someone whose weirdness is compatible with ours, we join up with them and fall in mutual weirdness and call it love.”

- Dr. Seuss

This is exactly why I'm in love with Dr. Seuss. And my love for him has grown even more after seeing a documentary on him on Network Awesome. As a kid I have read The Cat in the Hat and the Fox in Sox, and I've loved his drawings and stories, but I never knew anything about Theodor Seuss Geisel (Dr Seuss' real name). To be honest I didn't even know what he looked like! I was relieved he really did look a bit like a doctor (at least later in life - with a grey beard and all).

It was so interesting to learn more about the man who came up with all those BIZARRE creatures and rhymes. And boy, did he have an amazing studio - on the top of a hill, with a stunning view (quite the opposite from Roald Dahl's humble shack!). When he was about to die (at the age of 87) they wheeled his bed into his studio and that's where he took his last breath. What a way for an writer/illustrator to go.

He was also a very wise man, as proven by this quote:

"Be who you are and say what you feel because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind."

I've embedded the Network Awesome docu here, but make sure to pay their website a visit because Network Awesome truly is awesome. It collects the greatest stuff that's out there on YouTube and if necessary they 'glue' it together so you can sit back and relax and watch it in one go, without having to click on the next clip every five minutes. They have an awesome collection of old tv commercials, art and music documentaries, obscure movies and cartoons and tv series that will fill your heart with nostalgia (Jem and the Holograms, 21 Jump Street, Pingu anyone?).

The Hut

I recently came across a story about Roald Dahl's writing hut: the shack in the back of his garden in Great Missenden, Buckinghamshire, where he wrote all his children's books. The family has started a fundraising campaign to move The Hut from the garden to the Roald Dahl Museum (also in Great Missenden) to prevent it from becoming a total ruin. It will be taken apart brick by brick and rebuild and then decorated it in exactly same way as it was. Great!! But. The costs: half a million pounds. Needless to say this caused somewhat of a stir...

Roald Dahl had The Hut built in the late 1950s. He was a man of discipline and routine: he went there everyday for 30 years. Nobody was allowed in! He sat in an old wing chair, that had belonged to his mother, with a writing table on his lap. It rested on a cardboard tube to tilt is slightly. According to Quentin Blake he had a sleeping bag to keep his legs warm in winter. At 12.30 he had Norwegian prawns and half a lettuce for lunch and had a Kit Kat for dessert. I don't know why, but I was touched by the fact that he liked to have a Kit Kat every single day.

On the table he kept all sorts of stuff, among which his own hip bone and a ball he made of tin foil candy bar wrappers ∨. Genius or what?!

Will we ever be able to 'room raid' The Hut?? I guess we'll just have to wait and see what happens to it (well, or if you're a little bit more pro-active and got lots of cash lying around you can find more information about the Save The Hut-campaign here)..