What’s on Stephen King’s IT Mug?

Apropos of Something: Hidden meaning in movie mug?

Life is random, randomly filled with randomness. And a discerning Dad keeps careful track.

On my recent flight to London, I caught up on the second (movie) installment of It, and found myself squinting at the seat back screen during the author’s cameo, tying to pick out any clues or Easter Eggs that may have been hidden in the scene.

I’ve been a King fan since I was 11 or 12, turning my way through every paperback on the K shelves in the public library. Their weight was considerable, both in the mass they took up on that shelf, and soon enough, in my bedroom, and in their massive influence on my own developing writing.

One thing I always yearned for as a kid, across media — from TV shows to movies to books to comics, although comics did it most effectively from early on — was a connected universe, a collective memory, characters who’d been there before, as it were. And likely in several places.

As I grew up and King continued his output, he more than delivered with series like The Dark Tower extending and reflecting off of many other other books in his oeuvre. It was not only a treat to recognize the connection, and appreciate its deepening of the characters, but that it (usually) made thematic sense delighted as well.

I came to It, somehow, a bit late. I probably ready nearly everything else King published in the 1980s and early 1990s, and remember hauling this one home just for the sheer brick-ness of it. But though I’ve forgotten a lot over the years, and re-read a lot of books for the love of them, I recently completed this one, and watched both movies, and yeah. I hadn’t been through it before.

So I only got to the book after both movies came out. But I did pick up the book first, and enjoyed both films.

(I highly recommend it. Well, It.)

So, apropos of something, though I don’t tend to usually scour films or books for Easter Eggs, I found myself poring over King’s cameo in It: Chapter Two. Particularly the way he savored that sip of whatever-it-was in that crazy-looking mug.

So: what was it?

Consulting that source of easy sources, Google, I came across this article, mentioning that King was drinking yerba mate, and that the mug, or whatever — actually a mate — is independiente-themed, and something to do with director Andy Muschietti.

King apparently favors tea over coffee, and yerba mate is apparently an antioxidant-rich stimulant (not exactly the worst thing for helping us writers plow through the pages) loaded with lots of other beneficial goodies.

As for the mug, it bears the crest of the Argentine soccer club Independiente.

So, here I was, expecting to uncover details that linked up with other King books, like the turtle in It and The Dark Tower series, or just how much It, in spider form, reminds me of the Crimson King, again in The Dark Tower series. But I’ll settle for an everyday old Easter Egg, easily decoded.