1989 Part 1- I’m Very Fond of You Charles, But Stay Loose! - podcast episode cover

1989 Part 1- I’m Very Fond of You Charles, But Stay Loose!

Sep 10, 20241 hr 8 minSeason 9Ep. 125
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Episode description

What did the future look like to cartoonists in 1989? Harold shares a fascinating look at what people were predicting for the future of syndicated cartoonists. How close did they get? We will find out! Meanwhile, Violet’s back. In pigtails no less! And poor Olaf wants to hurt himself! Plus: That’s What It’s All About!

Transcript available at UnpackingPeanuts.com

Unpacking Peanuts is copyright Jimmy Gownley, Michael Cohen, and Harold Buchholz. Produced and edited by Liz Sumner. Music by Michael Cohen. Additional voiceover by Aziza Shukralla Clark. 

For more from the show follow @unpackpeanuts on Instagram and Threads, and @unpackingpeanuts on Facebook, Blue Sky, and YouTube. For more about Jimmy, Michael, and Harold, visit unpackingpeanuts.com.  

Thanks for listening.

Transcript

VO

Welcome to Unpacking Peanuts, the podcast for three cartoonists. Take an in-depth look at the greatest comic strip of all time, Peanuts by Charles M. Schulz.

Jimmy

Hey, everybody. Welcome back to the show. It's Unpacking Peanuts, and we're here in 1989 checking out the best, the worst, the all of Charles Schulz's work here in Unpacking Peanuts. I'm Jimmy Gownley. I'm your host for The Proceedings. Hey, I'm also a cartoonist. I did things like Amelia Rule, Seven Good Reasons Not To Grow Up, The Dumbest Idea Ever, and you could read my new comic, Tanner Rocks, for free on substack at gvillcomics.substack.com.

And joining me as always are my pals, co-hosts and fellow cartoonists. He's a playwright and a composer, both for the band, Complicated People, as well as for this very podcast. He's the co-creator of the original comic book Price Guide, the original editor for Amelia Rules, and the creator of such great strips as Strange Attractors, A Gathering of Spells, and Tangled River. It's Michael Cohen.

Michael

Say hey.

Jimmy

And he's the executive producer and writer of Mystery Science Theater 3000, a former vice president of Archie Comics, and the current creator of the Instagram sensation, Sweetest Beasts, Harold Buchholz.

Harold

Who, me?

Jimmy

Yeah, you. So we are here in 1989, wrapping up another decade. It seems hard to believe that we've been at it long enough that we could get this far out. First off, thank all of you guys out there for listening this long. And thank you for following along with us. And to my pals, co-hosts, fellow cartoonists, and producer Liz, thanks for sticking it out on this journey with me. This has been a lot of fun so far.

Michael

Yes.

Liz

Yeah.

Jimmy

Harold, I have a feeling you have something that you're going to tell us about what Schulz was up to in 1989. I don't know why I have that feeling. I just have it.

Harold

Well, I do have something that I hope will be of interest to our listeners and to you guys. As I'd mentioned before, I've been looking at Editor and Publisher Magazine, which was for editors and publishers of newspapers, including the buyers of Syndicated Comic Strips. It was a weekly publication. I subscribed to it when I was in college. I was going back chronologically with where we are in the strips to see what's going on in the Syndicated Comic Strip world.

We've been looking at polls from newspaper readers, how is Peanuts doing? But this particular one that jumped out at me, I thought was fascinating. I love reading things in the past where people predict the future. It says a lot about their present that we forget about. It's interesting to see how do we look at the future and how close do we often get and what biases do we have that sometimes maybe get us down the wrong path. This is from a column that was called Shop Talk at 30.

This is from August 5th, 1989. It's called A Look at the Future of Syndicated Comics by a guy named David Seidman who's been active in comics for years. He worked at the Los Angeles Times Syndicate. I think he helped develop like Foxtrot and Dilbert and he was an editor and wrote Disney comics. He's just done a lot of things in the comics field over the years. And here are some things that he was saying that he thought might be happening in the future with the syndicated comics.

So number one, he was saying the computer. He says it's going to cut back a cartoonist's drudge work and will do what assistants traditionally do, rule borders, cut pattern screens, fill in blacks, letter dialogue and captions and store and retrieve reference material. Some software and peripherals can correct perspective, shrink or enlarge elements of a drawing, turn and move objects within a composition or copy photographs. Goodbye light box and tracing paper.

I think he pretty much nails that, right?

Jimmy

Yes, that's crazy.

Harold

And he says, this is interesting, as the computer assumes these chores, young cartoonists will find it harder to get an entry level job as cartoonist assistants. Well, yeah, that's, that's not the first thing I think of going back. Oh, people just lost a job. And isn't it interesting that people almost never think of the jobs that go away? With technology. And certainly young people don't look back on things and say, Oh, I wish that cartoonist assistant job still would grow. Right.

I want to be a letterer. I guess a few would say, I wish I could be an apprentice under Jimmy Gownley.

Jimmy

But yeah.

Harold

It says when cartoonists finish drawing their comics, they will transfer them onto a computer screen. That is, if they have not done the drawing on the screen in the first place. Once the art is on screen, they will transmit it to their syndicate over the phone wires or by satellite. Okay. Pretty close. The syndicate will then send the work to newspapers by the same method. That is true too. Used to be they have to mail these things out weeks in advance.

He predicted the lead time would shrink as well. Like Doonesbury had to be done weeks in advance, Bloom County. I don't know if that's true, but I bet it is true. There's certainly nothing holding them back from being much, much tighter. Just like delivering a editorial cartoon. Why not be able to send your daily strip in a little bit later? Because everything's electronic. There's no mail or anything. He's also talking about over the past few decades, comic size has been shrinking consistently.

We talked about that a lot. The newspapers were making the strip smaller and smaller. He says, it will probably never get bigger. Space is tight in papers. He was right about that too. You can kiss the dramatic continuity strip goodbye, which was already on its way out. That's true. You couldn't tell a story with Steve Canyon or whatever because the space was so small. You couldn't move a story forward. He said, the readers will change. They will grow older. That's also true.

His prediction based on that is there was the rise of liberated women in the 20s with Tilly the Toiler and Ella Senders and Winnie Winkle. As the baby boom brought us Peanuts, Dennis the Menace, Miss Peach. He was saying that there would be strips for older readers often featuring older characters like Crank Shafts, the first one that comes to mind for me. So I thought that was interesting.

And then he says, one innovation that could actually widen the range of comic subjects and styles is video text or any other method of sending newspaper material electronically. Video text comics will be free of a newspaper's tight grid, giving cartoonists some room for experiments, but not a lot. Most of the first video text comics will be conventional newspaper comics rather than anything created expressly for video text, because they had got a built-in readership and they're cheap.

Says these comics will set the format, and as any editor can tell you, it is hard to establish a new comics format once one has been set. Boy, that is true. Yeah.

Jimmy

This guy's a wizard.

Harold

Yeah. Scott MacLeod, who wrote Understanding Comics, we've talked about him a lot. He was so into the infinite scrolling comic. Let's think of all the things you can do with comics, and it just took years and years and years for anybody to actually figure something out that people wanted to read that was not in the standard format. Still, the standard format is just by far the most common.

It's so strange how technology allows something to happen, but we don't necessarily want the full range of what that can be.

Jimmy

Right.

Harold

Then he starts talking about syndicates having other ways to sell comics, merchandising will get bigger as new tech creates new products. How about Calvin and Hobbes' poster on your wall and an animated hologram?

Jimmy

My dream come true.

Harold

Will United Features Syndicate license genetic engineers to create real live Snoopies? No.

Jimmy

Let's not do that one. Let's skip that one.

Harold

You'll see comics characters in new cartoons not reprints created for other media such as book publishing, graphic novels. Syndicates that belong to multimedia conglomerates will get a head start in expanding into such projects. The one thing he's getting wrong is syndicates because he's writing for people who are syndicate people. He's saying, oh, I think the future is going to be bright, buddy. Don't worry. I think he probably knew better, but he had to say that stuff to get this published.

Last thing I'm going to share, he says, here is the scene in the studio of a 21st century cartoonist. The cartoonist sits hunched over his table. He's designing an interactive video cassette based on their comic strip, which deals with a middle-age couple and their teenage kids. Her editor calls about the last batch of art that she transmitted to the syndicate. One of the gags is a pun and the editor says, come on, that's not going to play in Beijing.

The cartoonist juts a note, redo Thursday gag, no puns. So with the international nature of it, he was also saying that was going to happen. And then he says, when she is satisfied with the cartoon, she slides it onto her art scanner. The machine puts a copy of the art on her computer's monitor. With a few fast keystrokes, the cartoonist lays in pattern screens, fills in blacks, letters the word balloons, types in the copyright notice and transmits the art to her syndicate.

So pretty good, David Seidman, to be able to see where things went. I think he was pretty correct. And this is the world that Schulz is in. He's going to see the introduction of the internet in about six years, really kind of to the general public. And all of this stuff is going to be right on the tail end of his career.

Jimmy

Well, that's really interesting, Harold. And thank you as always for doing all that research. I think, you know, it's hard to really put in perspective what a 50 year career is and the amount of changes that go on in 50 years. And that was a really eventful 50 years.

Harold

It was, yeah.

Jimmy

Almost no television around to the internet is a big leap.

Harold

Well, he kind of threaded the needle, too. To have a 50 year career in comics, you can't have lived too much younger or too much later.

Jimmy

Yeah.

Harold

This was a window where something was consistent enough for 50 years that Schulz could do what Schulz did and make it a whole and make it feel like it's all of the piece.

Jimmy

Well, that is fantastic. What do you say, guys, with that prelude, shall we hit the strips here in 1989? Sure.

Michael

Let's do it.

Jimmy

All right. If you characters want to follow along, there's a couple of ways you can do it. First thing you got to do is go over to unpackingpeanuts.com, sign up for the great Peanuts reread. That will give you an email once a month from us, letting you know what strips we're going to be covering in upcoming episodes. Then if you want to read them all for free, they're available on gocomics.com. Andrews McMeal, the wonderful syndicate and publisher of Peanuts, allows them to be up there for free.

You can read all of these along with us. It won't cost you a penny unless you happen to have a little coin in your pocket and you want to get fancy, you can buy those fanographics books or the Andrews McMeal Decades books. And that's how you could follow along with us. So, with all that being said, here we go. January 10th. It's a single panel daily and we have a whole crew of people sitting on the benches in the schoolyard eating their lunches.

And Linus is reading the newspaper because he's an informed young lad. And he reads, listen to this, there's going to be an ugly dog contest to which Violet, in pigtails no less, says ugly dog. And then Lucy, looking at Snoopy, who is all shaken up and looking a little worse for wear, Lucy says, I think I've already found the winner. Now, the reason I want to talk about this is the pigtails.

Liz

Well, describe Snoopy's expression. If I'm ready, puzzling.

Jimmy

Snoopy looked like he has a hangover. He's holding his head, his tongue's out, his eyes are crossed and his ears are wrinkled and sticking out at right angles.

Liz

Okay. I can't really read that expression.

Harold

It's odd.

Liz

It does, Laurie. He's a little nauseous. And what's he reacting to? I mean, Lucy just insulted him.

Harold

When I read it, I thought he was actually trying to look like the ugly dog and be the winner. But now when I'm looking at it, I'm thinking maybe that's not what Schulz was going for. Maybe he, there's with no explanations, Snoopy's not feeling well. But that seems like a very odd choice.

Jimmy

Yeah, it's really strange. I think Snoopy has a hangover. No, I feel like...

Harold

Too many root beers with filled molds.

Jimmy

Yeah, exactly. No, I think for Schulz, it's like at this point, I mean, it feels to me like this is fatigue setting in. Like, ah, well, I'm not going to do a whole other strip explaining why Snoopy is just going to be making a face. I don't think it particularly works as a strip. But the reason I picked it was because why 40 years later is Violet there in her original hairstyle?

Liz

Yeah, very puzzling because we haven't seen her in years.

Michael

And it's not necessary. She doesn't have to repeat the ugly dog. It would work without it.

Liz

Yeah. Well, also it's not necessary. But the fact is, if he was thinking in terms of balancing, he has his big black waist can in the middle, and he's got Lucy on the right. So you'd think that if he was doing a spotting blacks thing, he'd want somebody on the left with black hair just to balance out the panel. So Violet, one of the few characters with black hair and Lucy are both on the right. So it's just a weird choice why he would pick her and make her look like she looked back in 1952.

Harold

Although Lucy is still in her classic dress and saddle shoes, and the little bow in the back and the collar.

Liz

It's confusing.

Jimmy

Yeah, the Sally's updated and those two are classic. He might have just been feeling nostalgic. It's cool to see Violet and it's cool to see the original.

Harold

Maybe she was in an animated special, he was thinking about her. Who knows? I will say the spotted blacks on the trash can, I find those incredibly distracting because they look like pen strokes to me. Whenever that happens, I get pulled out of the artwork and I see somebody drawing something rather than it representing whatever it's supposed to represent.

Jimmy

That's funny because I love that. I think that looks cool. I remember the first time that ever happened. Klaus Janssen, who was an inker for the first time it ever happened. The first time I ever noticed that. Klaus Janssen, who was an inker for Marvel in the 70s and 80s, and then for DC as well, had a really kind of scratchy and in some ways kind of ugly finishing style, but he used a lot of techniques where you could see the tools.

The first time I noticed, like, oh my God, that's a Sharpie and he just like scraped it across this guy's and it looks like a sleeve. I was blown away.

Harold

Really?

Jimmy

I think that's so cool.

Harold

Jack Kirby back in the early mid-50s, he was doing like Boys Ranch and that sort of stuff. Later as he goes later, he just has these elemental brushstrokes that aren't hiding that they're brushstrokes. They're just just- I can't read, I can't look at it. It's just-

Liz

Sorry, that's not his inking stuff.

Harold

He didn't do Boys Ranch? He didn't ink?

Liz

No, he rarely inked. It was Joe Simon.

Harold

Simon did that?

Liz

Yeah.

Harold

I'm surprised. Okay.

Jimmy

Yeah. Simon's inking is that puddley. I think it's muddled compared to Kirby's later anchors like Joe Sinna and stuff like that.

Harold

Interesting. I wonder if they were following in the style of Simon since Simon and Kirby were partners so much.

Liz

Yeah. But Simon was definitely inking and co-writing.

Harold

Okay.

Jimmy

Yeah.

Harold

It's interesting. I wonder, so are there any anchors that fought against that, even when Kirby was doing those really bold images?

Liz

I mean, it's a whole school of very clean anchors.

Harold

Inking Kirby stuff, like in this evidence?

Jimmy

Well, the example I can think of is in 1976. It's actually, you can get it. Well, it's kind of expensive to find it, but it's called Captain America's Bicentennial Battles. Actually, you can get it in reprint, but it was those big nine by 12 comics they used to put out in the 70s, and this was for the Bicentennial. Barry Windsor Smith inks a bunch of pages of Jack Kirby. It's in his period where he was all very elaborate, pre-Raphaelite Barry Windsor Smith inking over Kirby. It looks weird.

I'll send a photo to Liz, and we can put it up on the obscurity page, because it really shows the difference between what one person inking an artist looks like versus another one. It can totally change the vibe of the piece.

Liz

Apparently, Kirby did not care.

Harold

Yeah, really.

Liz

He turned the work in and probably never saw it again.

Harold

Right.

Jimmy

January 15th. It's a Sunday and Snoopy is out in a good old frozen pond, and he's having a fine time. He just hops out there on the ice and starts skating around on his paws, like he is want to do, and Lucy is also skating. She watches this for a little bit, but then she says to Snoopy, and she's annoyed by this, that's not skating, that's sliding. Then she continues ranting at Snoopy, you don't have any skates on, you're just sliding on your feet. That's not skating.

Skating is when you have skates on. You're not skating at all, you're just sliding. With this, an upset Snoopy walks away saying, how could I have been so stupid? Then he sits on a bench off the side of the ice and says, I thought I was having fun.

Liz

Now, why would Snoopy care what Lucy thinks about what he's doing?

Harold

Good question.

Liz

I mean, she's one of these nitpicky people who's going to complain about every little thing. Just ignore her.

Harold

An earlier Snoopy probably would, right?

Jimmy

Yeah, absolutely. He would have given her a kiss or something on the nose and say, sorry, sweetie.

Harold

You have some snappy comeback.

Jimmy

But every once in a while Snoopy has that where someone hits him with the truth that he has to go and contemplate for a while.

Harold

And this actually, I think, because that's where he is, when you see that little image of him sitting alone on a bench, this kind of forlorn look on his face, it's like, oh, poor Snoopy. But on reflection, seeing this strip again for us talking about it, my main concern is because Schulz has the kind of an uneven line for these vertical lines that represent ice. It kind of looks like the ice is steaming and melting away. So I'm getting nervous for Lucy and Snoopy here.

Jimmy

They're going to end up underneath.

Harold

I think it's interesting that Schulz, it really works well for me that he has ruled panels that are straight lines and then he will not use a ruler for the insides where the characters live. So they do seem to have this life of their own that separates themselves from the panel borders. And that's visually really appealing to me. I like that he does that.

Jimmy

Yeah, that's really interesting. I never thought about it that way, but that's really cool.

Michael

Do we have anything to say about Snoopy Watch?

Jimmy

Michael?

Michael

He looks different to me in this one.

Jimmy

I think he looks different to me on that second tier, first panel.

Liz

Yeah. Yeah, it almost looks like Jim Woodring in there.

Harold

Like Jim.

Liz

Panel three there. No, I mean, he's already, he does look like, more like a stuffed animal, I think, these days.

Harold

I love how his little nose in the third to last panel drops down further than where it normally would be while he's looking down. It's like the nose is looking as well. That's really cute.

Jimmy

Yes.

Harold

And also the second to last panel, the nose is lower than normal, which suggests maybe a little depression or deflation. It's just amazing cartooning that you move things that shouldn't be moved because emotionally somehow they feel right.

Jimmy

Yeah. And you can get in your own head about stuff like that. And I can't do that because of the... And it's always the wrong attitude to get in your own head about it. You got to follow Schulz's advice and just if it feels right and looks right, it is very freeing.

Harold

And even in that last panel, the nose and the eyes are super close to each other. More so, I think the nose should be further off to the left. And that somehow adds to the little forlorn look, like the eyes of her kind of coming together looking, looking at nothing in particular, you know, kind of a nearsighted kind of look. It's, he's a genius.

Jimmy

He certainly is. January 16th, Lucy, Charlie Brown and Snoopy are all sitting on the couch looking at a photo album. And Charlie Brown says, see, it's a photograph of all the puppies. Snoopy and Spike are right there in front. Lucy says, but who's that in the back row? And Snoopy, very excited, says, Olaf, that's Olaf. And Lucy says to Charlie Brown, he's the one we should invite to the ugly dog contest. And Snoopy, pondering this, says, ugly Olaf, that's what they used to call him.

Liz

These are pretty cruel.

Jimmy

Yeah, so poor Olaf here has been, been slighted his whole life, it seems.

Harold

Yeah, poor fella.

Jimmy

I love Olaf. I'm excited that we're about to see Olaf. And the reason I picked that one is basically because I wanted to set it up for this next one here.

Harold

Man, well, before we go, I mean, there is an odd visual under the Zip-A-Tone on the couch in the second panel. There's no shading in the first panel other than the Zip-A-Tone behind Charlie Brown, Lucy and Snoopy all sitting together.

Jimmy

I know what it is.

Harold

And it looks like stuff that didn't get erased.

Jimmy

That's what it is, yes.

Harold

And he laid it over and you can't... I mean, eraser shavings that got caught under there or whatever, yeah. And there it is, you know.

Jimmy

Yeah, you can see it right between Snoopy and Lucy, very clearly a line of, you know, eight dots or whatever. And then there's two between Charlie Brown and Lucy as well. Yep, that Zip-A-Tone was unforgiving.

Harold

I can attest to that.

Jimmy

January 26th. Speaking of genius, here we go. We finally see good old Olaf and who is entered, in fact, in the Ugly Dog Contest. And in this instance, we see him on top of Snoopy's dog house and they're reminiscing and Olaf think talks to Snoopy. Remember when we were puppies at the Daisy Hill Puppy Farm? I can't believe I've grown up to win an ugly dog contest. Then in panel two, Olaf hurls himself head first off the doghouse, calmly thinking, I think I'll hurt myself.

To which Snoopy replies, Olaf! And is shocked. Then the last panel, we see Olaf just perched on top of his head. He is upside down. He's landed on his head. And Snoopy's looking down off the doghouse, Adam. And Olaf says, not to worry. I've done this before.

Harold

Wow.

Liz

Jimmy.

Jimmy

This is one of my top four or five favorite peanut strips.

Liz

Really?

Jimmy

I don't know why, but I remember that where I was standing in my friend Mark's house, reading it at his kitchen table, I remember the day and I burst out laughing at panel two. I think that is just the funniest thing that this dog has just decided to basically end himself, but in the most daily newspaper friendly way.

Harold

Well, this is a disturbing strip. You can certainly read it that way. I mean, and Schulz, yeah, he's basically, he's won an ugly dog contest. So the world has labeled him ugly officially. And then, like you say, he just in the least amount of effort possible. That's exactly the same pose. His little arms are now up as his head is heading downward.

SPEAKER_3

Yeah.

Harold

But it's like if it's just a picture of him standing, if you've flipped it over on the grass, nothing has changed, including his hat. But he's like, I think I'll hurt myself. It's like, oh, oh, that's, I mean, to say it that way is really, really raw. It's raw.

Liz

You think the editor's interfered? You think he had, I think I'll kill myself?

Jimmy

I think he self-censored himself, but I'm sure that was the original thought.

Harold

But then the third panel kind of suggests he was thinking of hurt because he says not to worry, I've done this before. But the disturbing thing is, don't worry, I've done this before. I've hurt myself before. I'm like, oh my gosh, Olaf. We just met this guy.

Jimmy

Olaf has deep issues.

Harold

This is like, yeah, I mean, I thought Spike was sad. Olaf, oh my gosh.

Jimmy

Well, someone wrote in a while ago and said something about how Spike is like Snoopy's shadow and it's what he would be if he didn't have the gang, you know, I'm here. Well, I mean, here's another dog that's overweight, you know, Snoopy is obsessed with eating. He's depressed. There might be a way to look at these Snoopy siblings, almost as Snoopy surrogates, you know, like alternate.

Harold

The Marvel What If is now Snoopy.

Jimmy

Yeah, there, but for the greats of the great pumpkin, go I kind of thing, you know? Yeah, but I don't know that drawing that like you described it with the least amount of effort possible. I think I'll hurt myself. I don't know why it just made me laugh.

Harold

It could be me, but I'm glad he has the hat. It seems like it's a good cushion.

Jimmy

Oh, absolutely. It's an approachable hat and it serves as a safety device.

Harold

I will have to see if I can find that approachable hat for myself. I won't throw myself off of dog houses. Yeah, don't do that.

Jimmy

January 30th, Snoopy's out in the snow and he's carrying a hockey stick. He says, I hate playing hockey on Woodstock's home ice. We go to Woodstock's home ice, which is just a bird bath. Snoopy says, at other rinks, they play the national anthem before the game. Then in the last panel, we see them doing a little dance and Snoopy with it, really annoyed look on his face, explains, here we have to do the Hokey Pokey.

Michael

That's what it's all about.

Jimmy

That is what it's all about.

Liz

Now, wait a minute. Well, somebody will know. What is the origin of this song? Was it a hit song?

Jimmy

The Hokey Pokey? Was it a hit?

Liz

Well, I mean, did it come out as a 45 and a 50?

Harold

Well, I remember on American Bandstand, they said it had a good beat and you could dance to it.

Liz

What's its origin? Somebody had to have written this song.

Jimmy

The Hokey Pokey, as it is known in the United States and Canada, or Hokey Kokey, as it is known in the United Kingdom, Ireland and some parts of Australia and the Caribbean, is a participation dance with a distinctive accompanying tune. It originates in a British folk dance.

Liz

Somebody's collecting royalties every time somebody does this?

Jimmy

I don't think so. No, no, because it started in Scotland in 1842. I don't think anyone's collecting royalties on the Hokey Pokey.

Harold

But it probably was the first dance craze ever.

Jimmy

Ever.

Liz

Or the Hocus Pocus, that was the Latin, the Roman version of it.

Jimmy

People just disappeared at the end of it.

Harold

That's What It's All About! is what makes that song.

Jimmy

February 5th, Charlie Brown's on the phone. Really? That's terrible. They probably should get a dog. He walks out while he's saying this, and then he relates whatever he's heard on the phone to Snoopy. I don't suppose you heard the latest. The house next to us was broken into last night. Charlie Brown continues, They say the best thing for keeping away intruders is a dog who barks and has big fangs. Then he says to Snoopy, Let's see your fangs.

To which Snoopy flashes a very charming little grin. Charlie Brown walks away saying, Maybe we can get a bazooka. To which Snoopy replies, woof. Now they already have at least two machine guns at the Brown household. So I think the Browns have got it covered as home safety-wise.

Harold

It's nice that he has a little inscription to Happy Birthday Meredith in the last panel up the side of the panel. Saying hello to these kids.

Michael

It was your 17th birthday too, isn't it?

Jimmy

That was my 17th birthday. Yeah, that's right. What I was doing February 5th, 1979. I don't remember. It must have been a great one. February 8th, Charlie Brown is hanging out in the beanbag chair watching TV. And the TV is reporting some news, it seems. And he says, thousands of people paraded happily through the streets, but economists predict the cleanup will be costly.

And the next panel, skies were sunny today, but economists warn that this could cause an increase in the price of sunglasses. And then the third panel, which sends Charlie Brown into his feet up in the air pose, is, although audiences across the country love the film, economists are saying it will probably lose money. This is a great one, because first off, economists ruin everything. But this is like, I remember 1989.

This was the year of the Batman movie, the Tim Burton, Michael Keaton Batman movie, which would come out in just a few months after this. And all of the stories after it, you know, around Christmas time, after it had conquered the box office and it had all this merchandise and there were the VHSs were coming out for Christmas. It was, of course, it still will not make money. With, you know, famous Hollywood accounting. Well, that's when it got famous, really.

Harold

I can't, it's probably happened before, but this is one time when a peanuts character doesn't talk in a strip with talking, that's got to be kind of rare, right? It's all his reaction with the old classic feed up in the air response. But I don't remember, there's probably one or two, but I don't remember a strip where you, there's dialogue, but it's not one of the characters.

Jimmy

Yeah, there might be another TV strip at some point that would do that. That's definitely a window for him to do something like that.

Liz

Sally generally throws insults at the TV.

Jimmy

Yeah, that's right. She would usually make a comment. February 13th, Charlie Brown's in a drugstore, it looks like, and he says, yes, ma'am, I'd like to buy a box of Valentine candy for a girl who doesn't know I exist. He continues, no, ma'am, nothing too expensive. I'll never have the nerve to give it to her anyway. Now, that's some classic Charlie Brown consistency going all the way back. Yeah, it's interesting. He has the red-haired girl in the strip and then he makes her move away.

Then she comes back without any fanfare. Now we're just assuming, I guess, this is still the little red-haired girl, but there's no indication of it.

Harold

Right. At least in this one, we find out the next strip that it is.

Jimmy

Yeah. He plays fast and loose with her being a part of the neighborhood, it seems like.

Harold

Right. Yeah. Well, and maybe there's seven little red-haired girls.

Jimmy

Maybe.

Harold

He just likes little red-haired girls. He just hops from affection to affection. This is a weird observation. It's probably not worth much at all, but I'm interested that Charlie Brown's text, the first line, just slowly drops from the top panel border in each successive panel. So the last one looks like it's sunk into the bottom of the board balloon where he's depressed. I don't know if that's the thing or not, but I noticed that it somehow psychologically seemed to help his statement.

Jimmy

That really does. Whether he meant that or not, he might have felt it just as the artist doing it. Boy, when you stare at these things too long, like looking at ma'am with that apostrophe, it just looks like some sort of alien stitchel. It barely looks like a word anymore.

Liz

I was trying to think of, did he put enough detail into that dollar bill he's got in his hand?

Jimmy

He's got some jangly black on the dollar bill.

Harold

He has a packet of gummy worms he's trying to buy a card with.

Michael

Gummy?

Liz

What?

Jimmy

Gummy?

Harold

Where did you get that from? Gummy bears? Gummy worms?

SPEAKER_2

What? It's happening now.

Michael

It's got a double M.

Jimmy

I'm losing my mind.

Harold

It's German.

Jimmy

It's Gummy Bear.

Harold

It's Gummy. Gummy Bear. Oh my Lord. I was introduced to Gummy Bears. They came from Germany and my aunt was in Germany.

Liz

Gabbling down on Gummy.

Jimmy

I understand that it might be correct, but no one else is calling them the Boston Celtics. It's a Gummy Bear.

Harold

Well, I am.

Jimmy

All right. Well, we'll go see the Celtics and have some Gummy Bears. It'll be fun.

Michael

Would there be any reason to have a fourth panel on this strip?

Harold

What would you see there, Liz?

Michael

No, I don't. I just think it's one where it's perfect with three.

Jimmy

Yeah, it really is. Yeah.

Liz

I'm so used to it now. I don't even notice.

Jimmy

That seems crazy. It seems like that should have had such an impact. It doesn't. After having us read, you know, 16,000, 15,000, whatever it is of it, of these things. But it really doesn't. He mastered it pretty quickly, except for those one panels. They're they're hard. They don't always work, I think. March 9th, Pigpen is at the psychiatry booth, and Lucy says to him, Here's sort of a suggestion, Pigpen. Maybe you could start by trying to go for just one hour without getting dirty.

What would happen if you tried that? To which Pigpen replies, Do you have any idea how painful a migraine can be?

Liz

No.

Jimmy

I do. Migraines are bad. I never had one. Oh, really? Oh, God. Well, good. I hope you never do. They can last for days. You get the aura where you can't even look at a light. It's terrible. If this is the reason why Pigpen is filthy, I don't blame him.

Liz

I think it's a little odd that he brings Pigpen back for a couple of strips, considering he's two of what are now considered major characters, hardly appear this year at all. Rerun has one and Franklin has two, or appears in two.

Jimmy

The rerun thing is really surprising to me as someone who's read the 90s stuff. We are now, how many years are we into having rerun? Like 15, 16 years. And he has runs where it seems like he's making a stab at doing something with them. But then he just fades away again. And when you see him come back so strong in the 90s, it has to be tied to, I think, Schulz having kids in his life again as grandkids. Because, well, when you see it's a, he becomes the center of the whole strip.

Liz

Yeah, I'm curious to see it. But it hasn't happened yet.

Jimmy

No, it's interesting.

Liz

I wonder if there's any, if Schulz ever said anything about how he chooses which characters to do in a particular strip. I mean, does the guy come first or does he go, well, I haven't used Lucy enough this year.

Harold

He seemed to suggest that he would start with character. Right? I mean, I've seen things where he talked about the keyboard and each character is a key on the keyboard. And you have, if you have a good set of characters, it gives you the full range of Melaton. And that sketching method that we've all seen, it just seems like, you know, he's starting, he has to start with a specific character, right? If he's doing the sketch with them in mind, which leads to the gag.

Jimmy

And then I think, I think Michael, you're probably right in the part of him going, I have him put in Pig Pan in in a while. Like, I could imagine that being the impetus. And then he sits down with the sketch pad and just starts doodling Pig Pan and sees what happens.

Harold

I was looking at this second panel of close-up of Lucy in her psychiatric booth and how tortured that vertical line is going down to the side of it.

Liz

And her sleeves there.

Harold

Yeah, there's 16 different individual marks of tremor going down the side of one of those posts in her psychiatric booth. It's so weird that you can see. Again, talking about process and when you can see process in the art, how that can sometimes pull me out of it. That's been my concern going into, particularly into the 90s, that I'm going to be having a hard time actually seeing Schulz's, what he's doing with the characters, because I'm going to be seeing the line. I hope that's not the case.

I'm generally being sucked into the art. It's usually when we're talking about it and looking at it a second time, that really pops onto me.

Jimmy

So let me ask you a question about this. Is this a cartooning specific thing or does this extend to fine art? Let's say you're looking at a painting, like a Van Gogh versus a renaissance painting where you don't see any brushstrokes. You're more attracted to, say, the renaissance where you don't see the brushstrokes?

Harold

I'll just say if I'm looking at a Van Gogh, I'm highly aware of the process. So the overall experience of what the artist was depicting, it's almost like some people have this perfect pitch thing where they can hear two octaves at the same time when someone's hitting a note just perfectly. That's like, and it's really cool, but at the same time it's distracting because it's this strange phenomenon in your ear.

So when I look at a Van Gogh, it's like brushstrokes, starry night, brushstrokes, starry night, brushstrokes. It's like I'm hopping back and forth and it's not necessarily a pleasant experience. I mean, I don't really get into Van Gogh stuff that I don't know. Maybe that's why, I don't know. But yeah, a Rembrandt, I can just dive into these characters and the shades and stuff, and it's just a hole to me versus me seeing the pieces.

I generally like to see the hole and experience the hole and get pulled into it.

Jimmy

Yeah, it's interesting. Yeah, I feel like I'm the opposite. Well, I had a professor in college who was also my advisor, this guy, Leonard Ragazais, who was actually a great artist too. And I remember him talking about Vermeer once, and he said, you cannot see a brushstroke at all. Vermeer, that's why Vermeer is a saint. And then we were talking about Van Gogh, and he goes, you can see every brushstroke. That is why Van Gogh is a saint.

Harold

I guess he can have it both ways.

Jimmy

I guess, yeah, well, he could anyway. RIP Leonard Ragazais.

Harold

I mean, it's interesting to ask the listeners, is this ever an issue for you guys when you can see the pieces that go into a piece of art? Is that a cool thing? Do you like to see that? I love to look at like a comic strip original piece of artwork where I see the, you know, I'm looking at it really close to see how he did it, but to experience it, I don't like it because I never get the full experience of the thing without it kind of being tainted by distraction.

But to look at his Charles Schulz original, that's amazing. You know, see the little pencil lines and this and that all around it.

Jimmy

Yeah, because you're studying it and taking it in like fine art more than reading it. Michael, where do you stand on this? Are you pro seeing the hand of the cartoonist or anti?

Liz

I like technique. I like seeing mastery. And so I will always go for somebody who can do like super clean detail. And yeah, so probably not so much with the brush stroke stuff. I like things that really, really look finished.

Jimmy

Right. All right. I am on my own in this. What about you, Liz? We can make it two to two.

Michael

No, I was thinking about it in terms of film and noticing when the camera work makes me jump out and say, oh, that's camera work rather than being involved in the story.

Harold

Yeah. I told you with you on that.

Jimmy

You have to be such a master.

Harold

Yeah.

Jimmy

I think there's a couple of moments in Quentin Tarantino movies where the camera either stays where it is, where people move away from it or the camera moves to a different position. It's really interesting because you are so aware in that minute that it's Tarantino showing you something. I think if you're a fan and this is the kind of thing that happens, you're okay with it and you're like, oh, it feels like a meta thing.

I think if you just go into it as a movie, you might be distracted by it because you're not prepared for that interference from the director.

Harold

Anyway.

Jimmy

Okay, guys, so listen, we got another Pigpen strip coming up right now, but we're going to take a break because we just need to get some hydration and get some energy for the other half of this show. We'll be back on the other side. Catch you then.

Michael

Hi, everyone. We love it when you write or call to tell us how much you enjoy the show. But don't just tell us, tell your friends, tell complete strangers, share your appreciation in a review. It doesn't have to be on Apple podcasts. 60 percent of you listen on other apps. Some of those apps have review sections. Think of all the poor Peanuts fans out there who haven't found us yet. There are review instructions on our website at unpackingpeanuts.com/spread the word. Thank you for your support.

Now, let's hear what some of you have to say.

Jimmy

We're back. Liz, I'm hanging out here in the mailbox. Do we got anything?

Michael

We do. A friend of the show, Tim Young writes again and he says, from my point of view, Jimmy saw Star Wars practically the moment it came out. When he was 12, his family lived in a small town in southern Iowa with exactly one movie screen and that theater held over Smoky and the Bandit for what seemed like months. We didn't get to see Star Wars till November.

Jimmy

Wow. So disappointing. Yeah. But I do remember Star Wars being held over for a long time too. And then I also remember the one that was either concurrent with Star Wars or right before or right after that they never got rid of was Saturday Night Fever in my local town.

Harold

That was there forever.

Michael

Then Christopher Ouellette, I hope I'm pronouncing that right, Ouellette writes on Facebook, he says, in all the previous episodes, when you talked about Nancy, I thought you were talking about Kathy. I was shocked that it was written by a man and people were still fans. I don't read Nancy, but knowing what strip we're talking about makes it all much more sensible.

Jimmy

That does help. Listen, I don't know if this is too late, but this is not about the legume. This is actually about the commister peanuts. So if there was any fusion there. That's funny. Yeah, I guess a lot of people, Nancy might not register at all anymore.

Michael

Then we have a new listener who seems to be binging things on YouTube because we got a bunch of comments from Ice Cream Hero 2375. First he writes, or she says, I occasionally get emergency tests when I watch TV, because we talked about that.

Harold

So it's still going.

Michael

At one point, we talked about the animation in the 80s going downhill, and Ice Cream Hero says, I don't know about that. Gem is amazing. It's such a fun show. So are you familiar with the animated series Gem?

Jimmy

I think that that statement is truly outrageous.

Harold

Gem in the Holograms. I'm not terribly familiar with it, but my take on it, I was definitely into animation. I was considering becoming an animator in the 70s and 80s, and what I noticed was, yeah, the animation 70s is really, I think, consistently rough decade for animation. There's definitely exceptions to that. But the thing I noticed on the Saturday morning level was the Smurfs. In the early 80s, when that came out, it was just a little bit better.

Then everybody seemed to raise their game a little bit. Every year in the animation was getting more and more solid. I think a lot of young people who had grown up on the Warner Brothers cartoons and the Disney stuff, they got pulled into animation. I think from the bottom up in a way, we lost all these master artists and a bunch of young people came in who were just really, really into, why aren't they as good as they used to be?

Let's make them what I like, what I remember, and quite a renaissance. Then to me, the watershed moment was 1988 when Who Framed Roger Rabbit and Little Mermaid came out, and then we were off to the races again.

Jimmy

Yeah. The other thing on TV animation that I thought made that was a demarcation point was DuckTales. DuckTales was just a better syndicated.

Harold

Yeah. Animaniacs, the scenes, Elberg, Warner Brothers stuff. Yeah. That just was head and shoulders above what had been before.

Michael

Yeah. Ice Cream Hero continues with today's episode in September 3rd. I think you do is the funny or punch line. A pause before you do could be pretty funny because Lucy actually had to think about what Charlie Brown said.

Harold

Right. Yeah. I agree that doesn't make a funny punch line. Yeah. Well, thanks Ice Cream Hero. Yeah, that's cool.

Jimmy

Yeah. Just a panel of silent reflection always can make that next panel really hit harder. You can't overuse it, but speaking of overusing it, boy, I was realizing I was doing one facial expression in Tanner Rocks constantly. I had to go back in and go like, what is wrong with you? I had to digitally erase a bunch of eyeballs. It looks fine now, people. You won't know, but wow.

Michael

Zverina also writes on YouTube from episode 1962, part 2. She or he writes, I too begged and bargained for a deferment when told I would have to start kindergarten. Just one more good year, I pleaded. I knew it was the beginning of the end.

Jimmy

Well, she was wise. I was excited to go to kindergarten. I couldn't wait. I remember week 2 going, oh no. I thought it would be great.

Harold

I thought that was a step up from nursery school personally, but that's me.

Jimmy

We did not have nursery school in Gerardville.

Michael

That's it for comments and mail. Do you have anything on the hotline?

Jimmy

Got two things from the hotline. We heard from Todd Webb again. He wrote because he forgot to say some stuff while he was on. He left a message for us and we'll play it right here.

SPEAKER_1

Hey guys, it's Todd Webb. We had such a fun chat the other day that something slipped right through my brain that I had wanted to bring up while we were talking about the 1988, 1989 era of peanuts. One of the things I noticed when I was reading specifically in 1989 was there was a couple of strips that struck me as Calvin and Hobgish.

In particular, there was one in Redbury, February 6th, 1989, where the kids were sledding in a toboggan and they flew off the cliff and tumbled through the air much like the famous Calvin and Hobg's routine, and had a casual conversation while they were doing it, which is what made me think of Calvin and Hobg.

There was also a bunch of strips of them leaning against tree trunks, and there's a strip in November, I believe it's the 19th, the Sunday strip of 1989, where Peppermint Hattie is making a series of silly faces, which looks just like one of the more famous Calvin and Hobg strips, which I didn't check the date on that Calvin strip, which I probably should have, but I'll let you guys do that.

But anyway, my question and thing I wanted to point out was, it's so obvious throughout the years where Schulz influenced other newspaper strips and they did Peanuts-esque things. But it's a rare instance when the boomerang backed the other direction. It seems like 1989, Calvin and Hobg has been around for a few years, definitely climbing up the popularity charts.

It seems like Schulz was trying to put his own spin on some of the things that Walterson was trying with the kid in his comic, which is wildly different than the Peanuts King, but still shares some of the same comic strip DNA of kids of the world. So I just thought that would be something fun to discuss amongst yourselves since I'm not there right now. And that's all I got for you. Be a good year.

Harold

Yeah, yeah, definitely. Definitely them going going down the hill and in some vehicle is something that Skippy did and then and then Watterson did. I mean, Percy Cross was skipping from the 30s. Well, there you go.

Jimmy

Oh, a bunch of kids in some sort of vehicle heading down a hill out of control, which is very reminiscent of my childhood. I had a go-kart that looks exactly like Reggie. If you've ever read Amelia, it looks exactly like Reggie's amazing mobile. And it did not have brakes and it did not have a steering wheel.

Liz

Oh, well, you you called out Watterson in one of our very first episodes saying that he he stole it from Schulz, something where I think Snoopy was sliding off of the doghouse.

Jimmy

Oh, really? I remember saying that it was the Snowman sculptures that were. But I don't know. But yes, so thank you, Todd. Always good to hear from Todd. And then we heard from somebody.

SPEAKER_1

Hey, everybody. This is going to be a mysterious caller. I'd rather not reveal my identity. Just a longtime listener, first time caller. I was just thinking about what Jimmy screwed up there with the with the Pulitzer Prize winners. And I think I know what the problem was. I think in his mind, he was outraged about the fact that Trudeau won a Pulitzer before Pfeiffer. But then in the heat of the moment, I think he transferred his unnecessary outrage to Brezhid winning before Trudeau.

But you really can't tell what that guy, because he's nuts. Anyway, keep up the good work. I'll keep listening. Be a good cheer, the masked caller.

Harold

Well, be a good cheer masked caller.

Jimmy

You know, first off, I think that makes a lot of sense. You're obviously a very bright person. And I have to say, I think you sound kind of hot. I'm assuming this is a very handsome man. So thank you for writing.

Michael

Yeah, and a little concerned about about righteousness, I think.

Jimmy

All right. So that's the mailbox, huh?

Michael

That's it.

Jimmy

All right.

Michael

Thanks, everybody.

Jimmy

Yeah, we always love hearing from you. You can write to us at unpackingpeanuts at gmail.com. Leave a message there on on YouTube or follow us on our socials, which I will give you at the end of the episode. But right now, let's go back to the strips. Pigpen's still hanging out at the psychiatry booth here on March 10th. And he says, Do you think you're going to be able to help me? And Lucerie replies, I don't know, Pigpen, when I look at you, all I see is dirt and dust.

You don't need a psychiatrist. You don't need an archaeologist. It's a bit of a callback.

Liz

It's a good punchline.

Jimmy

Yeah. He did one something like this, right? That you'd be in the Christmas special, at least. And I'm sure it was from one of the strips about how he carries the dust of ancient civilizations on him.

Harold

Classic.

Jimmy

For a character who has only one joke, he is iconic worldwide.

Harold

Pretty amazing.

Jimmy

March 14th. It's a baseball game. Schroeder is out at the mound, giving Charlie Brown the signals. And he says, one finger will mean a fastball and two fingers a curve. Charlie Brown says, what about three fingers? Schroeder walking back to the plate says, three fingers will mean let him hit it and we'll all go home. And then Charlie Brown says, I'd be crazy to ask about four fingers. This is not good strategy.

After all these thousands of baseball games, letting them hit the ball will not make you go home earlier.

Harold

So they did not have Sandlot rules of once you have X number of runs.

Jimmy

Yeah, but it's 10 runs. 10 runs. That's a long time and you still have to play five innings.

Harold

Well, what if these were nine runs down? Would this, would that be true for Schroeder?

Jimmy

Oh yeah.

Harold

If they'd already given us nine runs.

Jimmy

That's true. If we're in the middle. But why? No, but he has to be for the game because why would he be giving the signals now? That could be why they're nine runs down.

Harold

Yeah, he's like, you know, maybe we should have a chat.

Jimmy

To sum up, there's deep problems with this baseball team. March 19th, one of them there, symbolic panels. We have a kite with Charlie Brown's head upside down on it. And then in the next one, a panel, we see him and Sally working on the kite. And he says to her, hold it just like that. Thank you. And then as he's setting up his kite, she says to him, I don't understand you. Why do you keep trying to fly these kites when you always get them tangled around the tree? It always happens.

Sometimes you don't even get out of our yard. Charlie Brown's ignoring all this and he already walks outside, or he walks towards the door anyway. And Sally yells out after him, wouldn't it be funny if you didn't even make it out the front door? And then we see in the last panel, that is what happened. Charlie Brown says, very funny. And we see his kite got tangled in the coat rack in the foyer.

Harold

That's a gorgeous last panel.

Jimmy

Yeah.

Michael

And it's sometimes called a coat tree.

Harold

Yeah, right?

Jimmy

Yeah, yeah, look at that even better.

Harold

But that front door, I don't remember seeing that front door at the house. I don't even know how they open it. That's, you have to kind of jump and have arms taller than your head to get out the front door. I'm not as worried about the coat rack as I am Charlie Brown being able to get outside. But I just love that art. That is so pretty.

Jimmy

Yeah, it looks really good.

Harold

Now, Schulz is doing something in the last two or three years. I'm not a huge fan of it. The pupil that has the line through it, cutting off the top part of it, so it looks like your eye is half open. We see it in the second panel in the symbol, past next to the symbolic one with Charlie Brown as he's saying, hold the kite. And then you see it in the final panel as well.

Just the line through the pupils, which is to show that you're, I don't know, you can mean you're a little haughty, it could mean you're not, plus it could mean you're not.

Jimmy

Because on the one hand in the second panel, it's like he's just professionally putting his kite together. So it's a very subtle thing to try to capture with one dot of ink.

SPEAKER_1

Interesting.

Jimmy

Oh, you know, one thing I was thinking that you were talking recently a few episodes ago, Harold, about, you don't like it when that line is across and it shows them being like disaffected throughout. Like you talked about tumbleweed like that. And I think what it is, I think it's a great look, but it's salt. It's a seasoning. And you know what I mean? And when you have salt soup, it's not good. Nobody want you have to use it.

Harold

Yeah. And I guess it became a thing, particularly, I think, in the 80s for, Schulz would use it, this kind of thing, often for a character who's a jerk, who just shows up like Tybalt or whatever, and just being a really jerky person. And then, say, in the era of Garfield, the half open eye is the whole strip. And it's kind of this dull cynicism that's supposed to be cool. And I'm like, bleh, no thanks.

Jimmy

Yeah, it's the whole strip that's the issue. You don't have all those notes on the keyboard if every one of them is minor.

Harold

Yeah, yeah, it's just like, I don't know, it's like asking you to go along with something that's maybe not the best. That's kind of the weird feeling it has to me sometimes.

Jimmy

March 26th, it's a Sunday, and Charlie Brown is reading a book in his easy chair. And he says to himself, I'll bet he's still sleeping. And then we see him go out to the dog house. And in the second tier, the strip starts off, Charlie Brown says, Don't you think it's about time you got up? And we see Snoopy tucked in very snugly in a sleeping bag on top of his dog house. And he says to himself, It was cold last night. I thought I was going to freeze to death.

Well, I'm not going to be the only one who's getting up, he says. And then having extricated himself from the sleeping bag, he yells, okay, everybody out. And we see a ton of little birds, the Peagle Scouts and maybe a few of their friends come tumbling out of Snoopy's sleeping bag. I just love that last panel. I love the idea of Snoopy having a sleepover with all the little birds in his sleeping bag. I think it's really cute.

SPEAKER_2

Yeah.

Michael

Do the birds have something? What is that dark area on the birds? I'm looking on Go Comics and it's not real clear.

Jimmy

If that's their feet, it's just blurry because of Go Comics, I mean.

Harold

Yeah, you got wing, foot, foot, wing.

Michael

Oh, OK.

Harold

And they're all like next to each other. They look like a little accordion.

Jimmy

March 27th. Oh, Linus is sitting, enjoying the day. And across his path comes the good old world famous lawyer. And Linus quotes, the lawyer is ever more the leader in society. Snoopy hears this and thinks to himself, I like that. I don't understand it, but I like it.

Harold

So we've had the lawyer ones popping up every so often for the last years. And I'm guessing that Schulz not only having had to go through legal things simply because, well, when you're a multimillionaire, it seems like people wind up in court for various reasons. And I don't think he's an exception. But Snoopy, it just seems like he has this book of quotations. And every once in a while, he'll just pull it out and start to go through things to find a gag or whatever.

And yeah, but I did look this one up. I was just like, okay, what exactly is this quote? And it's it's from 1895 law, Yale Law Journal.

Jimmy

Oh, I thought it was 1896. Okay, all right.

Harold

Yeah, yeah. Well, that's a common misnomer or misconception, I guess. But yeah, so the I think it was the Supreme Court Justice at the time. That was the beginning of his Yale Law Journal article. And then we see it again on the 14th of April. There's a He Who Cannot Dance Puts Blame on the Floor is another quote. So I'm guessing Schulz has some quotation books, and that's a Hindu or African proverb depending on who you're asking.

So, yeah, I think what better way to get the juices flowing than to crack out the old quote book and see if you can get a good trip.

Jimmy

And it's great to have a character like Linus who can just do it. And it seems like, yeah, it's reasonable. Linus could know that off the top of his head.

Harold

Yeah, right, right.

Michael

What kind of a hat is that?

Liz

It's a lawyer hat.

Jimmy

It's an official lawyer hat.

Harold

It's a lawyer in hat. It's an approachable lawyer in hat.

Jimmy

Do you think that? I don't think a bowler is approachable. I think it's supposed to be a bowler.

Michael

The brim is too big for a bowler.

Harold

Okay, so it's like Pharrell wearing a lawyer hat.

Jimmy

It's a Pharrell lawyer hat.

Michael

Harold, don't choose that one.

Jimmy

Yeah, that's not a good one.

Harold

No, okay. I'll refrain.

Jimmy

March 28th, Lucy and Linus are on the couch and they're watching some TV. And Lucy says to Linus, do you think people ever really change? To which Linus says, sure, I feel I've changed a lot this past year. To which Lucy replies, I meant for the better.

Liz

She gets some zingers off this year.

Jimmy

She does. I think this works well as a two panel strip.

Michael

Yeah.

Harold

So you don't think it would be better if Linus' response and her response to him were separated by a panel?

Jimmy

It doesn't bother me. I think it actually gives the zinger extra punch because it's so fast.

Michael

Yeah.

Jimmy

But I think if it was three panels, it would work fine as well. Pretty fancy looking couch there.

Harold

Yeah. Sip it into his wonders to your house.

Michael

Not a Nectorp because it has that mound in the middle.

Jimmy

Yeah.

Harold

The Nectorp, yes.

Jimmy

March 29th, Peppermint Patty is playing Charlie Brown's team in a baseball game and Marcy is behind the plate for Peppermint Patty's team. So she says to Peppermint Patty, I'm your new catcher, sir. And she's all decked out in her gear. Peppermint Patty says, you look good, Marcy. To which Marcy says, are we going to have any omens? Peppermint Patty says, signs, Marcy. Marcy says, whatever.

Liz

He used that punchline a lot too.

Harold

Yeah.

Liz

That's always good for a laugh.

Jimmy

I think baseball signs should be called omens. I like it and then, oh, this is some exciting stuff going on. This is going to be real grist for the mill in terms of Marcy's psychology. So on March 31st, Marcy walks up to the mound with Peppermint Patty on it, and she says to her, let's give Charles the old bean ball right now, sir. Which if you're not a baseball fan means plunking them in the head. Peppermint Patty says, Marcy, I can't believe you.

Then Marcy barks back to the plate and says, it's the new morality, sir. Win at all costs. Then she sets up behind the plate with Charlie Brown at the plate ready to bat and says to him, I'm very fond of you, Charles, but stay loose.

Harold

Wow. Yeah, that is a revelation about Marcy. She's all about the proper etiquette when you're at the Tiny Tots concerts, but when it comes to sports, she's pretty loose with sports. She's like, I don't like this stuff. Anything goes.

Jimmy

I'm very fond of you, but we're going to beam you. Now, that's our last strip for this episode though. That means that we're going to end on a cliffhanger. Does Charlie Brown get beamed? Does Marcy go to jail for manslaughter? We're going to have to find out. I hope you will come back next week. Until then, if you want to keep the conversation going, there are several different ways you could do it.

The first thing you could do is you could go hop over there to unpackingpeanuts.com and you sign up for the great Peanuts reread. That will give you one email a month, a little newsletter that lets you know what we're going to be talking about on this here show. Also, if you want to keep in touch with us on social media, we are at Unpack Peanuts on Instagram and threads and at Unpacking Peanuts on Facebook, Blue Sky and YouTube. We love to hear from you because when I don't hear, I worry.

But that's it for this week. Come back next week with more of 1989. It'll be just as much fun. For Michael, Harold and Liz, this is Jimmy saying, be of good cheer.

Michael

Yes, be of good cheer. Unpacking Peanuts is copyrighted by Jimmy Gownley, Michael Cohen and Harold Buchholz. Produced and edited by Liz Sumner. Music by Michael Cohen. Additional voiceover by Aziza Shukralla Clark. For more from the show, follow Unpack Peanuts on Instagram and threads. Unpacking Peanuts on Facebook, Blue Sky and YouTube. For more about Jimmy, Michael and Harold, visit unpackingpeanuts.com. Have a wonderful day and thanks for listening.

Harold

Wing, foot, foot, wing.

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