The Weird A-Coloring to Al: Colored-In VERY Special Edition
As readers of this blog and site are perhaps all too aware, I’m not only the author of The Weird A-Coloring to Al, the newish “Weird Al” Yankovic-themed coloring book I created with the brilliant illustrator Felipe Sobreiro: I’m also its biggest fan.
I’ve blogged about how diligently coloring a page or two of The Weird A-Coloring to Al every evening at the kitchen table while my seven year old son Declan works on his art had proven not only enjoyable but therapeutic.
After a long day of fretting constantly about book sales, and money, and how on earth I am going to survive in a brutal to the point of impossible business like pop culture media, there’s something deeply soothing about sitting down with a book that I helped create and losing yourself in the gloriously unchallenging task of coloring in someone else’s beautiful images.
As the publisher of The Weird A-Coloring to Al as well as the author I have, as you might imagine, many copies of the book. How many? Hundreds upon hundreds, as well as a smattering of paperback proofs.
There is consequently a preponderance of copies of The Weird A-Coloring to Al at hand whenever the urge to color strikes me, which is often.
So there are lots and lots of partially colored copies of The Weird A-Coloring to Al lying around my home, books where I colored in 3 to 5 pages before moving on to another book. My son has very severe ADHD and I would not be surprised if I have undiagnosed, untreated ADHD as well.
But I also have obsessive, OCD tendencies. I love a project, so for the last week and a half I have dedicated myself to coloring ALL of one book. That is so that someday, in the not too distant future, I will be able to hold up a VERY used copy of The Weird A-Coloring to Al and stand before God, the internet and the world and proudly proclaim, “I colored EVERY page of this coloring book! I did it! All by myself.”
I suspect that the universe’s response will be something along the lines of, “What are you, five? What adult in their right mind gets excited about coloring in a coloring book?”
I, alas, am an adult who gets excited about the prospect of coloring in a coloring book. I may be a forty-five year old husband, father and small businessman but I NEED a project to help distract my frazzled mind and right now I have two projects of varying importance: fulfilling the crowd-funding campaigns for The Joy of Trash and The Weird A-Coloring to Al and completely coloring in a copy of my coloring book.
What will I do with my completely filled-in copy of The Weird A-Coloring to Al? I honestly don’t know. Knowing nothing about coloring books somehow did not keep me from helping create what I can say, in all modesty, is the single greatest coloring book of all time.
What do people do with a coloring book that’s completely colored? Do they toss it gingerly into the trash? Or do they place it delicately on a bookshelf with a sense of pride?
I’ve thought about randomly sending out my fully-colored copy of The Weird A-Coloring to Al to a patron but I worry that they’d get a WHOLLY UNIQUE copy of the book colored by me and think, “Why on earth would I want this? I can’t even color it! And what possible value could something desecrated by an unemployable Juggalo have, now or ever?”
I don’t want to send my colored-in copy of The Weird A-Coloring to Al to someone who will throw it out so maybe I’ll hold onto it as incontrovertible proof that I did, in fact, succeed in realizing a goal that’s pointless and random, even for me.
THE JOY OF TRASH IS OUT!
Buy The Joy of Trash, The Weird Accordion to Al and the The Weird Accordion to Al in both paperback and hardcover and The Weird A-Coloring to Al and The Weird A-Coloring to Al: Colored-In Special Edition signed from me personally (recommended) over at https://www.nathanrabin.com/shop
Or you can buy The Joy of Trash here and The Weird A-Coloring to Al here and The Weird Accordion to Al here
Help ensure a future for the Happy Place during an uncertain era AND get sweet merch by pledging to the site’s Patreon account at https://www.patreon.com/nathanrabinshappyplace
Alternately you can buy The Weird Accordion to Al, signed, for just 19.50, tax and shipping included, at the https://www.nathanrabin.com/shop or for more, unsigned, from Amazon here.