April 8, 2025 • 52 mins
Woodstock is at his wit’s end, and all his pal Snoopy can do is muse on Fitzgerald. Rerun shows us more facets of his ever expanding personality. Meanwhile Linus’s struggle for security rages on. Plus: Some Enchanted Evening
Transcript available at UnpackingPeanuts.com
Unpacking Peanuts is copyright Jimmy Gownley, Michael Cohen, Harold Buchholz, and Liz Sumner. Produced and edited by Liz Sumner. Music by Michael Cohen. Additional voiceover by Aziza Shukralla Clark.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
VO (00:02):
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 (00:19):
Hey everybody, welcome back to the show.
This is Unpacking Peanuts.
We're looking at 1995 today.
I'll be your host for the proceedings.
My name is Jimmy Gownley.
I'm also a cartoonist.
I did things like Amelia Rule, Seven Graces Not to Grow Up, The Dumbest Idea Ever, and my new comics are available for free at gvillcomics.substack.com.
(00:40):
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 original editor of Amelia Rules, the co-creator of the original comic book Price Guide, and the creator of such great strips as Strange Attractors, A Gathering of Spells and Tangled River.
It's Michael Cohen.
Michael (00:59):
Say hey.
Jimmy (01:00):
And he's the executive producer and writer of Mystery Science Theater 3000, a former vice president of Archie Comics, and the creator of the Instagram sensation Sweetest Beasts.
It's Harold Buchholz.
Harold (01:11):
Hello.
Jimmy (01:12):
And making sure everything runs smoothly, it's producer and editor, Liz Sumner.
Liz (01:16):
Greetings.
Jimmy (01:17):
All right, guys, we're here deep in the 90s, second part of 1995.
If nobody has a preamble, I think we should just get right into these strips.
Michael (01:28):
Let's do it.
Jimmy (01:29):
All right.
So if you characters out there want to follow along, first thing you want to do is go over to unpackingpeanuts.com, sign up for the great Peanuts reread, and that'll get you one email a month from us, letting you know what strips we're going to cover.
And then you can just go over to gocomics.com, type in Peanuts, type in the dates, and read along with us for free, because that's how things work here in the mid-
Michael (01:54):
In the future.
Jimmy (01:55):
In the future.
In the year 2000.
All right, so with all that out of the way, let's pick things up on May 8th.
Lucy and Linus are hanging out.
Linus is in classic thumb and blanket position, and Lucy says, and you do it all the time.
(02:16):
It drives me crazy.
She continues in the next panel.
Why can't you see that?
Why?
Why do you insist on?
And then, interrupting the scene comes in Rerun.
And Rerun says, are you two fighting?
And Linus says, she's fighting.
I'm just sitting here.
Michael (02:34):
That's a good one.
Jimmy (02:35):
That's a good punchline.
Michael (02:36):
Now, have we seen Rerun and Linus in the same panel before?
Harold (02:43):
It's been rare, right?
Yeah, it was kind of strange seeing the two of them together.
Although I think that's not a bad idea from Schulz's perspective given how similar they look.
Michael (02:52):
He's got to differentiate them.
And one thing he's doing is strangely enough, if Rerun's head is smaller in relationship to his body, then Linus is smaller.
Harold (03:01):
That is kind of odd.
Michael (03:02):
And usually depict younger kids as having bigger heads.
Jimmy (03:05):
Wow, that's true.
Yeah, I didn't notice that.
That's interesting.
Harold (03:09):
That is interesting.
Wonder what's behind that choice.
Is that consistent?
Are we going to see that again?
Jimmy (03:15):
That is it.
It is the exact opposite.
Normally, if you were going to cartoon a little kid, it's a giant head and a little body, because that's little kids.
Harold (03:23):
And strangely, it works.
Those little overalls sure do help him look young.
And he looked kind of baggy on.
I think that helps him too.
Jimmy (03:32):
Yeah, I love also just seeing the three Van Pelt's together.
Harold (03:36):
Yeah, it's how rare is this.
Michael (03:38):
Yeah, that's certainly the first triplet.
Jimmy (03:41):
Triplet, yeah.
Michael (03:42):
Triplet panel.
Harold (03:44):
Yeah.
I do like Lucy's sweatshirt.
Jimmy (03:48):
Yep, yep.
And her, I'm going to say, corduroy pants.
Yeah, and I also wanted to kind of just note as we're looking through there, it felt to me that like his art was tighter in a lot of strips.
And then once in a while, you would see one go really kind of astray with the tremor and just fatigue sitting in.
Michael (04:13):
Yeah, I picked a wonky one just because it was so wonky.
Jimmy (04:17):
I'm curious to see which one that is because, yeah, I saw it and noticed a couple, I thought.
Harold (04:22):
Yeah, but this one in particular does look pretty solid.
Jimmy (04:26):
Yeah.
Harold (04:28):
The blacks in Lucy's hair for some reason help a lot.
Jimmy (04:31):
Yeah, that's true.
Harold (04:33):
I don't know why that, I guess, because it seems like a solid, clean.
Jimmy (04:37):
Yeah, grounds it.
Yeah.
Yeah, and he's not doing the jangly blacks or anything like that.
I mean, just a very little bit of highlight on her.
Harold (04:45):
Yeah.
Well, maybe Lucy's not wearing corduroy's, maybe they're referee pants because she's refereeing life.
Jimmy (04:52):
Maybe.
Here we see on May 9th, the three Van Pels sitting on a couch.
Linus and Rerun are sitting on the bare base of the couch because Lucy has stolen the two other additional cushions, piled them on top of her cushion, and she is sitting on them stacked three high, so she's way taller than both of her brothers.
(05:17):
They're all watching TV, but Rerun says to Linus, maybe someday you can explain her to me, okay?
Harold (05:24):
I like this one.
Jimmy (05:25):
I do too.
Liz (05:26):
Princess in the Peak.
Jimmy (05:28):
Yeah, very Princess in the Peak.
Harold (05:30):
It's interesting that Schulz has twice chosen to have Linus with the blanket.
This seems like he's very self-conscious about rerunning Linus being differentiated when they are together.
Because we haven't seen a whole lot of this sucking the thumb and holding the blanket.
Jimmy (05:51):
No, not at all.
It is really smart to finally put them together like this and give them a three-way family dynamic as opposed to just Lucy and Linus that we've had for so long.
Harold (06:06):
It's surprising that he hasn't gone here before, given how rich this could be.
He's like he's unlocked something, it seems like.
Jimmy (06:14):
Yeah, definitely.
Well, he's unlocked something with Rerun.
Rerun has just blossomed everywhere this year.
And that's kind of fun to see.
May 14th, it's a Sunday, Schroeder's out there.
He's playing catcher as is his want.
But he either says to himself, do we assume that's what he's doing?
(06:36):
He just is saying the word E flat.
Yeah.
Okay.
So he says E flat and then he walks away from whatever, wherever he was looking and says, that was it, E flat.
And then he goes out to the good old pitcher mound to talk to Charlie Brown and he says, do you know who Robert Schumann was?
And Charlie Brown says, a composer.
(06:58):
And Schroeder says, he had a mental breakdown.
At one point, he thought he heard angels singing to him.
Charlie Brown listens, thinks about this and says, I have the same thing.
I keep hearing something too.
It comes and it goes.
And Schroeder says, like maybe a musical note?
And Charlie Brown says, no, it's a different sort of sound.
E-flat.
(07:19):
And then we hear from out in right field, it's Lucy yelling, try to get the ball over the plate, you blockhead.
And then Charlie Brown says to Schroeder, that's it.
Michael (07:31):
This E-flat business is a little mysterious.
Jimmy (07:34):
Yeah.
Michael (07:35):
Because it doesn't quite relate to the joke.
Harold (07:38):
Right.
Michael (07:40):
And he comes, doesn't he come in again with another E-flat reference?
Harold (07:44):
Yeah.
Do you think it's a second, he had a second thought about in the bottom left tier, having Schroeder repeat E-flat to Charlie Brown, given that it wasn't in there?
Imagine you didn't have the top tier.
Michael (07:59):
Yeah.
Harold (08:00):
Oh, yeah.
That would be even particularly, I mean, it is still mysterious, but you have the E-flat, for those of you listening, you don't have the strip in front of you, is kind of shoehorned in between Charlie Brown and Schroeder.
It's kind of rare.
They don't, he doesn't do it a lot, where you'll have within a single panel, a character having two different balloons.
(08:23):
And it is in time between the time Charlie Brown replies, we think, I guess.
Michael (08:27):
Can I just hear an E-flat?
Harold (08:28):
In the time he speaks.
Jimmy (08:30):
I thought I heard someone's guitar.
Harold (08:32):
Oh, my.
Jimmy (08:34):
You didn't know Michael plays the music live.
Michael (08:37):
No, it's not me, it's Liz and her little phone machine.
Harold (08:41):
I was just feeling like Schroeder for a minute.
Michael (08:45):
Yeah, I wouldn't be, as a matter of fact, if those two panels weren't there at the top, I would have read that as him going, a like he's Canadian or something.
Jimmy (08:55):
Yeah.
Like, yeah, I wonder, I don't understand why it's because if you don't have the top two, the top tier, then don't put E-flat at all because yeah, I don't recognize.
Michael (09:07):
I think it's the code.
I think we're trying to communicate something.
Harold (09:12):
I mean, I like the idea that Schroeder is hearing E-flat.
Then the first thing he thinks of is Robert Schuman's mental breakdown.
He's a little concerned, I guess.
Yeah, I looked it up.
I was reading about Schuman because of this.
SPEAKER_1 (09:31):
Peanuts, it's scuridies, it's swing.
Harold (09:34):
Kind of a sad story.
He died in his 40s in a mental institution.
But he did claim angels and demons were speaking to him and also giving him songs and music.
Oh, wow.
Jimmy (09:47):
And all Schroeder's getting is an E-flat.
Michael (09:49):
I think he's got tinnitus, which I have, and it's just a constant musical tone sounding.
Harold (09:57):
Yeah.
Is it super high?
Michael (10:00):
I've learned to totally ignore it.
Harold (10:02):
I do too.
Yeah, I've got it.
I've had it for years and years.
I don't, it's just been such a part of my life that the only time I hear it is when someone talks about it and then I hear it.
Jimmy (10:12):
It's like being aware of your tongue.
Harold (10:14):
Yeah, exactly.
Boy, this is going to be a tough show.
Have you guys ever done the thing?
This drives Diane crazy.
Because you're ever in a room where there's like resonance or you're in like a cave or whatever.
Jimmy (10:35):
Oh, the amount of times I've been in a cave, of course.
Harold (10:37):
Come on.
Right outside of where we live, we have this little vestibular apartment place where if you are at a certain low register, it resonates, the whole walls resonate.
When I hear that, I start going, trying to find it, and then the whole place reverberates.
Michael (11:01):
What happens now in my room is, so I've got all these musical instruments I've collected and people have given them to me.
They're all hanging on the wall in my room, and when I sneeze, it sets the whole room off.
Harold (11:16):
You're just at the right pitch.
That's interesting.
Jimmy (11:21):
May 18th, Snoopy, in his French Foreign Legion outfit, is leading the Beagle Scouts across the desert, and he is thinking to himself, or going.
Here's the world famous sergeant of the Foreign Legion leading his troops across the desert.
As they march under a moonlit sky, they sing a stirring fight song, and then we see the Beagle Scouts singing a little song of their scratchy graphics.
(11:48):
And then Snoopy turns and looks at them and says, Some Enchanted Evening is not a stirring fight song.
Michael (11:55):
What I like is that on panel two, it's got the right amount of syllables in the little hatch marks.
Jimmy (12:02):
Oh, it does.
Oh, that's amazing.
Harold (12:08):
Now we have a clue.
We now have a clue about how these little bird chirps are.
Can you imagine if they animated this and they actually had them chirping Some Enchanted Evening?
That would be a good use.
Too bad we don't have Snoopy.
We can't hear Snoopy.
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
So he couldn't do this gag.
Jimmy (12:25):
Right.
Liz (12:26):
I think you could turn Some Enchanted Evening.
Jimmy (12:59):
For next episode, are you OK?
The marching version, May 24th, Snoopy in his classic vulture pose is atop a very spindly looking Charles Schulz tree.
And Woodstock is on another branch looking down.
And he asked Snoopy a question.
And Snoopy, without moving at all from his vulture position, says, sure, I don't care what you do.
(13:23):
And then two panels of Woodstock going off, probably, to his nest.
And in the second one, he comes back carrying a tiny little chair, which he then sets up on his perch on the tree.
And Snoopy, as the vulture says, but a real vulture never sits in a chair.
Michael (13:42):
I picked this particularly good.
I'm a huge vulture fan.
It was always my favorite Snoopy impersonation.
And I think old Snoopy can't pull it off.
He's not as flexible as young Snoopy.
Jimmy (13:56):
Well, that's what happens when you get old.
Michael (13:57):
Especially the eye there just looks wrong to me.
Harold (14:01):
Oh, the eye?
Well, I noticed, didn't he have a full back arc through the top of the head to the ears back in the day?
Michael (14:10):
Well, his snout used to bend.
Harold (14:13):
Yeah.
At the collar now, yeah, he doesn't have the full drop on the head the way he used to.
Michael (14:20):
Yeah.
It's a pretty sad vulture.
Jimmy (14:23):
But what's crazy about it is, it is like an old dog.
I mean, I know a no dog would do that, but do you know what I'm saying?
He does look like the same dog, just older, doing a weirder thing, not as well, you know, which I relate to.
Michael (14:42):
Yeah, my snout doesn't bend anymore.
Jimmy (14:44):
Not at all, mine either.
Liz (14:47):
Judy Sladky said that she had some trouble doing the vulture, too.
Harold (14:50):
Oh, there you go.
Oh, man.
Yeah, that's got to be rough.
Now that we know what we know about Some Enchanted Evening, I'm going to start trying to figure out the syllables for each of the chirps.
So I think here Woodstock is saying, do you mind if I get a chair?
Jimmy (15:09):
That's right.
Do you mind if I get a chair?
I don't care what you do.
Oh, wow.
That's really...
Harold (15:16):
Do you think Schulz was doing that?
Jimmy (15:17):
Now I do.
Harold (15:18):
In his head?
Jimmy (15:19):
I mean, never in my life did I ever think that until Some Enchanted Evening, but now I do.
Harold (15:25):
Wow.
That blows my mind.
Michael (15:27):
So we can decode everything now.
Jimmy (15:29):
Every single one now.
Michael (15:31):
Yeah, let's do it.
Harold (15:31):
I think that's...
Well, there's a whole book of Woodstock decoded, and it's just strips where we pop in the words.
Jimmy (15:42):
The subtitle is the tragic story of how three cartoonists lost their minds.
Harold (15:47):
Right.
Well, this was a surprise to me.
This is my first time reading these strips and cracking the book to 1995, the fan of graphics editions.
But every single two-year span book has an introduction.
I was very surprised to see the introduction was done by two writers from Riftrax.
(16:11):
On the front cover, Riftrax is a spin-off of Mystery Science Theater, which I produced and wrote on as you guys hear every time.
Let's use a fast-forward to our introductions.
But I didn't know that they had done this.
It was two writers who worked on the show, and then they got, I guess, the three main guys who had worked at Mystery Science Theater to actually riff some strips.
(16:35):
If you are a Mystery Science Theater fans, see if you can get a hold of the 1995-96 edition, and they actually riff some Peanuts dailies, and some of them were very funny, so I thought that was cool.
Oh, that's very cool.
Jimmy (16:53):
May 29th, it's a panoramic panel, and we got the big four all hanging out at the thinking wall, and Linus says to Charlie Brown, so you don't think Jesus ever owned a dog?
And then Charlie Brown says, no, I doubt it.
And then Lucy says, but why?
And then Snoopy goes, if he had a dog, all the apostles would have wanted one.
Michael (17:17):
Yeah, we used to talk about the big four.
Jimmy (17:20):
Yeah.
Michael (17:20):
Because back in the day, the rule was at least one of these characters had to appear in every strip, which held true for like 20 years.
And I don't think this is the big four anymore.
Jimmy (17:34):
All right, let me ask you a question.
Who would be the big four these days?
Michael (17:37):
Well, I think Peppermint Patty.
I mean, Linus is making a little bit of a comeback, but he was kind of written out for a while.
So, I think she would be the number four at this point.
If you're just talking in terms of number of panels that they appear in.
Harold (17:55):
Yeah.
That's interesting.
I never would have thought Linus would have kind of fallen off as much as he has in the past years.
But he is making a comeback.
Jimmy (18:04):
Yeah, absolutely.
Absolutely.
Harold (18:06):
And seeing Rerun almost makes me feel like Linus is there.
Jimmy (18:10):
They're so similar.
And of course, I'm certain you all know that this is referenced in the classic REM bonus track, The Most Vestal Penthouse, which just starts with Peter Buck asking.
It's just studio chatter and he says, I always wondered, do you think Jesus had a dog?
(18:31):
And then it just sends the whole band into this.
Michael (18:34):
So that's why you picked this one.
Jimmy (18:36):
I think it's, I really think Peter Buck read this trip.
Harold (18:42):
And then when was that recording session?
Jimmy (18:44):
Oh, you know, after this, it would have been in the 2000s.
But it's so strange that, I mean, did Jesus have a dog?
It's a pretty specific thing.
And it felt like he was just, it was not meant to be, you know, actually released.
He was just goofing around in the studio.
And I think, I think of the, I think he stole it.
I think he stole it from here.
And I don't blame him.
(19:04):
This is a good one.
June 5th, this is the middle of a little sequence where Sally has decided she is going to leave home.
So we see her with the classic hobo sack on the stick, which has a name, but I can't remember what it is.
And but she's back in her house now.
(19:26):
And Charlie Brown is sitting there reading the one book he owns.
And he says to her, I see you decided not to leave home.
And then Sally says, I had to.
I walked all the way around the block.
My life didn't get any better.
So I came home.
She just sinks into the ground next to him.
Michael (19:42):
Well, this actually is the end of the sequence, which I had high hopes for, because I thought seeing Sally travel around the world would be an interesting idea.
Jimmy (19:52):
Great idea, right?
Michael (19:53):
I could do it.
You know, I'd be happy to see that.
Liz (19:56):
Yeah.
Michael (19:57):
But no, it was a fairly short sequence, and then she walks around the block and comes home.
Why is she wearing a Civil War hat?
Jimmy (20:05):
It's a very weird hat.
It's a very weird hat.
I like her in the hat.
I think it's cute.
I think it's very cute.
Harold (20:14):
I think her hair looks least crazy when she's wearing that hat.
Jimmy (20:17):
Yeah.
Some of those wings are tucked in, I think.
Harold (20:22):
Yeah.
It's a nice look for the profile particularly.
Jimmy (20:26):
Anyone know what that's called, the sack on the stick?
Harold (20:29):
Yeah, a bendle stick.
Jimmy (20:31):
Bendle stick.
Harold (20:31):
There you go.
A bendle, I guess.
SPEAKER_1 (20:34):
Yeah.
Michael (20:34):
I was wondering how little the world is when you're little.
SPEAKER_1 (20:40):
Yeah.
Michael (20:41):
I don't know.
I mean, I used to wander, but I don't know if I ever actually went around the block, because I discovered later, years later, me and my sister went back to where we used to live in LA, and drove around the block and there was a Catholic school there.
I didn't know that.
Harold (21:00):
Wow.
I never got to go around the block.
I lived on a cul-de-sac.
Jimmy (21:06):
I remember wanting to go to the Jiffy Mart, which was the little store in town, when I was eight years old and my mom needed stuff, and I was like, I can get it.
I can totally get it.
I can go to Jiffy Mart myself.
My mom very reluctantly gave me the money, and I went down to Jiffy Mart.
When I came out, I was so proud, and then I saw about a half a block away, my dad walking the dog.
(21:31):
My dad had never walked the dog in his life, and I was like, she sent him to spa.
It really irritated me.
Harold (21:41):
I just realized I lived in three cul-de-sacs in a row growing up, at the age of five, all the way through high school.
Jimmy (21:49):
Do you know that's where bag end comes from, Michael, in Lord of the Rings cul-de-sacs?
Michael (21:53):
Is that cul-de-sac, really?
Jimmy (21:55):
The bottom of the bag, yeah.
Michael (21:57):
Never thought of that.
I thought it had to do with bag ends.
Jimmy (22:01):
Well, I think it's a double whammy there.
Harold (22:04):
Well, and maybe that explains why I love Richard Thompson's cul-de-sac comedy so much.
That is an amazing strip.
If you guys have not seen, our listeners have not seen Richard Thompson's cul-de-sac, I think that is a masterpiece.
Jimmy (22:20):
I have an autographed edition.
I get gifted to me by my good pal, Harold Buchholz.
And Richard Thompson sadly passed away, so that's all we're getting from him and he's a great, great, great artist and I only met him once, but an unbelievably nice person it seemed.
Harold (22:36):
Yeah.
Jimmy (22:38):
June 18th, Linus, having been sitting around, I guess, for a while in thumb and blanket position, yawns mightily and this attracts the attention of his arch-enemy Snoopy, whose ears are pricked up as he looks out from behind a chair.
Then Linus goes back to classic thumb and blanket position, and we see just the tiniest little Snoopy in the distance sneaking up on him.
(23:05):
Then in the next panel, Clomps, Snoopy whizzes in and steals the blanket.
And for the first time, we also see that Lucy was sitting next to Linus, this time reading a book.
And Snoopy drags Linus off panel, we hear, Ah, g'bonk!
And then Lucy goes to see exactly what has occurred, and Snoopy has somehow shot right out the mail slot of the door, but Linus' big noggin was not able to do that, so Linus is still on this side of the door holding his blanket and dazed because he hit his head.
(23:37):
And then Lucy runs outside and sees, well, she doesn't run outside, she runs to the window and sees that Snoopy is on the other side of the door, still holding on, and he's also dazed because he was racing and got pulled back.
And then it just ends with Lucy going back to the book she's reading and saying, excessively weird.
Michael (23:56):
It is excessively weird.
And I mean, you can only do this in a comic strip.
Harold (24:04):
Right.
Yeah.
Michael (24:06):
This is really good cartooning.
Harold (24:09):
My favorite is Snoopy just peeking his head outside of the edge of the panel far away.
That's hilarious.
Jimmy (24:21):
And because you don't have any possible indication of perspective, that could also just be a tiny little Snoopy sneaking in from the side.
But because Schulz has the confidence to present it to us as Snoopy in the background, we buy it as Snoopy in the background.
Harold (24:39):
Wholesale.
Jimmy (24:40):
Totally.
Harold (24:40):
It's so cute.
Jimmy (24:42):
I also like Snoopy knocked silly.
I like knocked silly even better than Linus knocked silly.
Harold (24:49):
So is that a blanket in his mouth or his tongue?
Jimmy (24:54):
I think that is his blanket.
Harold (24:56):
We're going to have to take a look at the coloring.
Yeah.
Jimmy (24:59):
Is that the blanket and tongue?
Is that what you're saying?
Like the tongue sticking out over the blanket?
Michael (25:03):
No, there's a, you see a tongue, but it's in the signalized panel.
Jimmy (25:08):
Yeah, yeah.
Okay.
Interesting.
Michael (25:12):
I think it's...
Jimmy (25:13):
Yep.
That's a good looking strip.
I like the whole outside of the Ven Pelt House too.
That's, that looks really nice.
And like super clean, super clean lines.
Harold (25:24):
Now, although it strangely looks, maybe because of the way the door handle is, that it's weird.
It feels like the door is at an angle, but everything else is straight on.
Jimmy (25:37):
Oh, the door handle is at the angle.
I think you're right.
I think it's a slight...
Yeah.
Yeah.
I bet it looks good in color.
I'm looking at it in black and white.
I bet the color flattens it out.
Harold (25:47):
I think the other, maybe the other piece of that is the way he has the the edge of the stoop.
It's got that little concrete thing at an angle that maybe coincides with the door.
So there's like two things going on in terms of perspective.
Jimmy (26:09):
Okay.
Well, that seems like a good place as any to take a little break.
So we're going to get a beverage or something like that.
And you listen to this message and then we'll see on the other side.
Harold (26:19):
Be right back.
Liz (26:21):
Hi, everyone.
I just want to take a moment to remind you that all three hosts are cartoonists themselves and their work is available for sale.
You can find links to purchase books by Jimmy, Harold, and Michael on our website.
You can also support the show on Patreon or buy us a mud pie.
Check out the store link on unpackingpeanuts.com.
Jimmy (26:43):
All right, and we're back.
Hey, Liz.
I'm hanging out in the mailbox.
Do we got anything?
Liz (26:48):
We do.
Paul Ebert writes, and hey, gang, just a quick note to tell you about a couple of new-ish biographies of Charles Schulz.
Would love to hear your takes on them at some point.
The first is by Luca, I don't know how to pronounce that, Debuse and Francesco Matteuzzi.
(27:11):
It's called, the title is Funny Things, a comic strip biography.
And the second is by Yuzuzu Kiku, forgive me if I'm mangling anybody's name.
And it's the manga biography of Charles M.
Schulz.
Jimmy (27:25):
Very interesting.
Michael (27:26):
For somebody who had a boring life, he sure gets a lot of biographies.
Jimmy (27:33):
Chapter 12, he sits at the desk again.
That's very cool.
Liz (27:40):
And Wade Weston writes, just finished listening to your 1985 part three episode, your listener who thinks You're in Love, Charlie Brown is the most depressing cartoon of all time, is obviously not familiar with Why Charlie Brown?
Why?
Jimmy (27:56):
Oh, yeah.
Liz (27:58):
What have we learned, Charlie Brown?
Harold (28:00):
Yeah.
Liz (28:01):
Both deal with very difficult topics, but with sensitivity.
I think both are worth watching, but not to be watched alone, or at least not without supportive friends on speed dial.
And then he adds, also, Yellow Submarine is a brilliant and innovative film, and is one of my all-time favorite movies.
Anyone who disagrees is wrong.
Jimmy (28:23):
Well, first, I admire you coming out hot.
That's the way you're going to defend something.
That's the way to do it, my friend.
I'm going to bet he is a millennial or younger, because for Gen X people, we didn't really have that many opportunities to see Yellow Submarine to develop any kind of attachment to it.
Harold (28:45):
I will say Yellow Submarine is way better than the Beatles Saturday Morning Cartoon.
Jimmy (28:49):
Well, yes, that is true.
It is way better than that.
And I think my thing about Yellow Submarine is just that it feels so Beatles.
It's barely adjacent.
Yeah, right.
You know, it's not the real Beatles voices or whatever.
Harold (29:02):
Well, it's a shame that they got kind of turned off by what was done with the Saturday Morning Cartoon.
And so they didn't want anything to do with the making of this feature until they saw it after the fact and added that little post script where they were live action because it was too late to do anything animation.
Seen it sooner, they might have been.
Michael (29:22):
I think they just, it was just to fulfill their contract.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Harold (29:27):
I heard that they liked it, that they actually liked it and they wanted to do that.
Jimmy (29:30):
Oh, they did like, I think it's two things.
One, they had to do it whether they liked it or not because they had to appear in it to fulfill the contract.
But it is true that once they saw it, they did like it and were like, they even went to the premiere and all that kind of stuff.
They were, they ended up being big fans about it.
But it's always just been that and like Yellow Submarine, not Yellow Submarine, I don't know if that's what we're talking about, the Magical Mystery Tour.
(29:52):
They were just like impossible to see in the 80s and 90s.
Harold (29:55):
Yeah, and when we had a slightly edited version in the United States as well, my wife, Diane, huge Beatles fan and she loves animation.
She loves Yellow Submarine.
She'd already seen it multiple times.
And Hey Bulldog had been dropped from the US version.
Michael (30:09):
Yeah, that's right.
Harold (30:10):
And you're sitting and watching this movie that you think you know inside out.
And all of a sudden there's like this unexpected bonus thing.
Like, what?
Michael (30:17):
Wait, wait, what?
What?
Jimmy (30:18):
What?
Harold (30:20):
Oh my gosh.
SPEAKER_1 (30:22):
Yeah.
Jimmy (30:22):
Hey, Bulldog got no respect for decades.
SPEAKER_1 (30:25):
Oh yeah.
Michael (30:26):
Now it's like top 10.
Yeah, right.
Yeah.
Jimmy (30:29):
And I will say this, I don't know if you can hear this, but that is the lid on my Yellow Submarine cookie jar.
So I do have some of it.
Liz (30:40):
That's it for the mail.
Jimmy (30:42):
All right.
We heard from Super Listener Shaylee Robson who says, Hey guys, it's Shaylee Robson.
SPEAKER_6 (30:48):
I was just finishing up listening to 1993 for the comics, and I figured I'd tell you my strip of the year.
My favorite would have to be July 18th, where Charlie Brown was assuring Snoopy things will be all right during his time of need.
I just think it was so genuinely sweet seeing how much Charlie loves his dog, and it made me think of my close relationship with my dogs, Ailee, my girl, Luna.
(31:10):
She means the world to me, and I just think that our pets are such blessings.
Anyway, I hope you're all doing well, and I hope that your aunt has been doing nicely, Jimmy.
And yeah, I look forward to your next episodes.
Be of good cheer.
Jimmy (31:25):
I love that strip.
I think, yeah, it's just one of the best of the year.
And yeah, I totally agree.
I love seeing Charlie Brown's more real life dog owner role with Snoopy, you know, after decades of being kind of vexed and only the guy who, you know, gives him his food.
(31:45):
Now they're a much closer, like, master and puppy relationship.
Harold (31:53):
Yeah, that's a great strip.
I love that, too.
And I have to throw it out there to...
We were listening to us in Guatemala.
We are number three right now in Guatemala, according to Apple.
Jimmy (32:03):
Oh, yeah.
Harold (32:05):
So, that's exciting.
I don't know if one person's downloading everything we've ever done.
Jimmy (32:10):
Whoever you are out there, thank you, keep it going.
Harold (32:13):
Thank you, yeah.
And we're down from number three, so I don't know what's been going on in Guatemala.
Jimmy (32:17):
Wow.
All right, well, we got to make a trip and find out.
So, when we do our Unpacking Peanuts World Tour.
All right, guys, let's go back to the old strips.
June 23rd, Rerun is at Charlie Brown's house.
Outside, he's just knocked on the door, and he says to Charlie Brown, ask your dog if he wants to come out and frolic.
(32:40):
Charlie Brown answers Rerun by saying, yesterday you asked him if he wanted to come out and play.
And then Rerun says, we're upgrading the neighborhood.
Harold (32:49):
Yeah, he's raising the game here, Rerun.
Liz (32:52):
Frolicing.
Harold (32:54):
This is the last five years of Peanuts, as I know it.
Jimmy (32:57):
Lots of Rerun Frolicing.
Michael (33:00):
He uses this set up a lot this year.
It was just like Rerun used to be on the back of the bike.
Harold (33:07):
Right.
Michael (33:08):
Now he's knocking to see if Snoopy wants to come out.
Let's do 10 of these this year.
Harold (33:14):
So you're using this as the front door or the back door?
Jimmy (33:16):
I think Rerun's a back door guest.
Harold (33:18):
I think so.
Michael (33:19):
Yeah.
Jimmy (33:21):
Back door guests are best, as they say.
There is something about the kid who doesn't have a dog and the friends who do have a dog.
I had two close friends when I was very little, Marnie Marquette and Frankie O'Neill, and they didn't have dogs and they loved my dog, Spunky.
They would come and visit Spunky more than they would come and visit me.
Harold (33:46):
Well, when you're an only child, it helps to have somebody else there to mix it up, right?
Jimmy (33:51):
Oh, absolutely, absolutely.
Frankie eventually did get a dog named Barclay, which is a great name for a dog.
Harold (34:00):
What kind of dog did you have?
Jimmy (34:02):
I had an apricot poodle.
Yeah, never had the ridiculous poodle-like haircut, just had the puppy cut.
Very smart.
He could kick field goals.
I had a little toy field goal set up and a little plastic football, and you could tell him hike and he would run up and he'd kick it with his front paws through the holes.
(34:24):
Yeah.
Harold (34:26):
That's the best.
Jimmy (34:27):
He was a good puppy.
June 25th.
Lucy's out skipping rope, and she's doing that in two panels.
This is Sunday.
And then on tier two, she is explaining to Rerun exactly what's going on.
She says, see, you twirl the rope around and you jump up and down.
To which Rerun replies, why would I want to do that?
(34:48):
And then Lucy says, because it's fun, it's doing something.
And then Rerun says, why do I have to do something?
And he continues with, I don't like to do anything.
I just like to hang around.
This has actually caused Lucy to stop jumping.
But then she resumes by saying, you can't just hang around.
That's no way to live.
You're going to waste your whole life.
(35:11):
And then she sees Snoopy just chilling out, leaning up against a rock.
And he thinks, don't look at me.
I'm just hanging around.
Michael (35:20):
This is a whole new side of Rerun's personality.
Jimmy (35:24):
Yeah.
Michael (35:25):
Which hasn't been played up at all.
He just wants to hang around.
I mean, that makes for a good character to have a little something like a joke generating personality trait.
But I don't know if we see it again.
Harold (35:41):
Mostly seen him trying to do things, right?
Michael (35:43):
Yeah.
He seems to be a pretty active kid.
Jimmy (35:47):
I love just hanging around.
Hanging out, I would say, though.
But hanging out, I think, is an art form.
I think people have lost the ability to just hang out.
Michael (35:54):
I don't know.
I think hanging out has to do with other people.
Yeah, you could do by yourself.
Jimmy (36:00):
Well, that is true.
Yeah, that's true.
That's true.
Harold (36:02):
Yeah, there's a whole thesis on hanging out.
I think it was in The Whole World's Crazy, the real series.
Jimmy (36:09):
No, it's in the fourth one, whatever the fourth book is.
Harold (36:12):
Oh, really?
Was that late in the...
Jimmy (36:14):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Harold (36:15):
Oh my gosh.
For some reason, I had that pegged at the very beginning.
Jimmy (36:18):
Yeah.
It was a free comic book day issue that ended up in volume four.
Harold (36:22):
Yep.
Jimmy (36:22):
Hanging out.
Michael (36:24):
They're talking about Amelia rules.
Jimmy (36:25):
Oh, yeah, right.
Harold (36:26):
We're just...
Jimmy (36:26):
Actually, we're just talking amongst ourselves and sort of forgot there was a show going on.
June 26th, and it's a panoramic, one of my favorites here.
We see a semi-forlorn looking Woodstock sitting on the stump of a tree and then leaning up against another tree is Snoopy.
And Snoopy goes, you're emotionally bankrupt.
(36:48):
Scott Fitzgerald was emotionally bankrupt.
We're all emotionally bankrupt.
And that's the entire strip.
Harold (36:55):
That's a left fielder, yeah.
Michael (36:57):
The one thing I've learned from this podcast is predicting who's going to pick which strip.
And there's just no doubt in my mind, okay, Jimmy's going to pick this one.
Jimmy (37:11):
You were right, Zare.
Michael (37:12):
Frankly, I don't get it.
Jimmy (37:13):
No, I don't get it either.
I love it, but I don't get it.
But I did go down a rabbit hole.
I've actually used it.
Just this week, I put out the very first episode of my new graphic novel In the Real Dark Night on Substack.
And I use this as a quote at the beginning, as a little epigraph.
(37:33):
And so I went down a whole rabbit hole of what it is.
So Scott Fitzgerald went through a period in the 30s when he was, well, he was depressed and he was broke and all kinds of thing.
And he chronicles it in a book called The Crack Up.
And he also wrote a short story just called Emotional Bankruptcy.
(37:53):
So I think what it is, is I think Schulz read the story Emotional Bankruptcy, and then just was contemplating it.
And instead of the character in the story being emotionally bankrupt, he put it to Fitzgerald.
And I think it's impossible.
What I love about it is, imagine this in Beetle Bailey.
Harold (38:17):
Plato might have said it, right?
Michael (38:19):
Any comic strip.
Jimmy (38:20):
Yeah, right.
Michael (38:21):
This is not the language of comics.
You have to put a plug in Jimmy's new strip.
Liz (38:28):
Which is available on Substance.
Michael (38:30):
Yeah, check out.
I think this is absolutely brilliant.
Oh, get out of town.
And it's one of the best things I've ever read.
I can't wait to read more.
And it starts, it started a couple of days ago.
So go to Substance and start reading this thing.
It's really amazing.
Jimmy (38:46):
Oh, well, thank you.
That makes me feel so good.
Oh, all right.
Let's just end the podcast here.
Harold (38:55):
Well, I mean, it makes sense that Schulz would would not mention the concept of Fitzgerald as emotionally bankrupt if Fitzgerald didn't specifically go there, because that would be unusual for Schulz.
Jimmy (39:07):
Yes, yes.
Harold (39:08):
To just say he's emotionally bankrupt, this real life person.
Jimmy (39:13):
Yeah.
Harold (39:13):
Well, and for those of you who are listening, you may not know who F.
Scott Fitzgerald is.
Jimmy, do you want to give any background just who this is, in case we got some people going to scratch their heads?
Jimmy (39:25):
Well, he is a 20th century writer, most famous for writing The Great Gatsby.
He's the namesake of Francis Scott Key, who wrote the good old Star Spangled Banner.
And yeah, he was a very popular writer who then just became a very unpopular writer.
But then World War II, GIs started getting copies of The Great Gatsby sent to them through some, I don't know what the program was, if it was Reader's Digest or whatever.
(39:53):
And then that is suddenly is what made that become reconsidered in like one of the American classics.
Harold (40:00):
Yeah.
And he sadly died before World War II even began.
Jimmy (40:04):
Yeah.
Harold (40:05):
I mean, it's amazing that he died at 44 and he wrote.
Jimmy (40:09):
Yeah.
Harold (40:09):
Four novels and 164 short stories.
Jimmy (40:13):
And some screenplays too.
I don't know.
Harold (40:15):
Not bad.
Jimmy (40:16):
Yeah.
Not bad.
Michael (40:17):
Yeah.
Harold (40:18):
Michael, you might be surprised that I selected this one as well.
Although one of the reasons was, this is an interesting week of dailies.
Between the six dailies, there were nine panels drawn.
Wow.
Michael (40:31):
Yeah.
Yeah.
It was definitely a weird week.
Harold (40:34):
I'm wondering what was going on in Schulz's life.
Yeah.
Jimmy (40:38):
There could very well be some extenuating circumstances in his life that's causing that.
That is a really just a nice bonus for him as a person, by having changed the format that he can do.
A couple of panoramics or a couple of two panelers.
Because he doesn't abuse it because he'll also do five panel ones.
We've seen at least one of those this year so far.
(41:02):
Or this episode rather so far.
I think Woodstock looks really forlorn.
Harold (41:08):
Yeah, boy.
But it is strange that Schulz is assigning this to Snoopy and to Woodstock.
That's a bit of a surprise and it's off that Woodstock is getting this analysis by Snoopy.
Yeah.
Jimmy (41:24):
We never really find out why.
That was just it.
July 10th, Snoopy and Woodstock are atop the doghouse looking up in the sky and Snoopy says, Why are you sitting here when you could be up there flying around with all those other birds?
And Woodstock chirps an answer and Snoopy says, I know what you mean.
I'm not a joiner either.
Michael (41:45):
By the way, it's the same thing.
Jimmy (41:47):
I'm not a joiner.
Harold (41:48):
You know what, you gotta do the syllables.
Liz (41:50):
I'm not really a joiner.
A joiner type.
Michael (41:54):
No, I'm not really a joiner.
Harold (41:57):
A joiner.
Jimmy (41:57):
Yeah.
Harold (41:58):
I'm not really a joiner.
Michael (41:59):
Yeah.
Harold (42:01):
This is fun.
Jimmy (42:02):
If we actually decoded this.
Michael (42:05):
Some of them are bigger, so it's the emphasis.
I'm not really a joiner.
Harold (42:11):
Not really a joiner.
Liz (42:13):
That might be going a little too far.
Harold (42:15):
Yeah.
Jimmy (42:17):
July 12th, Snoopy and Woodstock are outside just perusing a field, and we see a long black furrow and raised portion of the grass.
Snoopy explains to Woodstock, moles have very weak eyes.
They dig tunnels just under the ground and hunt worms and insects.
(42:39):
Then Woodstock says something and Snoopy answers, you're right.
It's a tough way to make a living.
Michael (42:44):
So what's Woodstock saying?
Harold (42:45):
Two, three.
Jimmy (42:49):
Boy, that is a tough way to make a living.
That is a tough way to make a living.
Exclamation point.
Michael (43:01):
That is a tough way to make a living.
Jimmy (43:06):
Yeah, that's a tough way to run away.
Harold (43:08):
Woodstock decoded.
Jimmy (43:10):
Wow.
Guys, I'm worried about us.
I just don't think that's that.
I mean, we may be right about this.
And that upsets me.
Harold (43:22):
We have looked at this too closely.
150 episodes and we're tracking it.
Liz (43:28):
I was just gonna say that there's an element of Lucy in the way that Snoopy is explaining.
Moles have very weak eyes.
Jimmy (43:38):
Oh, it is true.
Yeah, yeah.
Except Snoopy is actually telling a real fact, as opposed to whatever Lucy would have come up with.
But that's definitely a little theme that has gone on for years.
You know, the one character explaining things to the slightly more younger or more innocent character.
Liz (43:56):
Dog-splaining.
Jimmy (43:57):
Dog-splaining.
July 16th, Spike is in World War I, and he's of course not a flying ace, he's just an infantry man stuck in a trench.
And we see him telling us that in panel one, I'm in the infantry.
And then the second panel, Snoopy is out on a mission as the flying ace, and he says, the flak is heavy today.
(44:22):
And he looks down from his sop with camel and says, good grief, there's my brother Spike.
Apparently, he lands the sop with camel and goes and greets Spike, hey Spike, I was flying over the trenches when I saw you.
To which Spike says, I'm in the infantry.
And Snoopy says, are you getting ready to lead a charge over the top?
And Spike says, the last time I looked over the top, someone threw a rock at me.
(44:46):
And then Snoopy says, well, I have to get back to the aerodrome.
I write to mom and tell her I saw you.
And this leaves Spike down in the little trench.
And he yells back after Snoopy, tell her I'm in the infantry and I miss her tapioca pudding.
And then Snoopy's back on the stop with Camel, flying in the other direction, saying, that's Spike.
He's a real soldier, always thinking of duty.
(45:09):
And then it ends with Spike in the trench again saying, when you're in the infantry, you never get tapioca pudding.
Michael (45:16):
I hate this strip.
Jimmy (45:18):
All right, what's the, what don't you like about it?
Michael (45:21):
In my head, we've established a rule that would, that Snoopy's imagining could be anything, but nobody else is in the scene.
But he's had people in the scene before.
This is like too weird because it's like they're both having the same fantasy at the same time and kind of meet.
(45:43):
It just violates all the rules for me.
Jimmy (45:46):
Well, here, I could give you something, a way to look at it.
Maybe Snoopy's also hallucinating Spike.
Michael (45:51):
Yeah, but we see Spike's thoughts.
Jimmy (45:54):
Yeah, that's true.
The reason I picked it is just because of all the black ink.
It's another one of his forays into Frank Miller territory.
It's really struck me as graphically completely unique.
Not completely unique, but pretty rare to see all that black ink just smudged all over the place, giving me his D-Day strip vibes again.
Harold (46:21):
I'd like to see this one in color.
Yeah.
I have to say, I just noticed that this was my dad's 65th birthday when this came out.
Oh, wow.
Although he was never in the infantry.
Michael (46:31):
Good.
Jimmy (46:33):
August 2nd.
Snoopy and his famous lawyer guys is defending a bunny.
The bunny is sitting right next to him and Snoopy says, What I'm trying to say, Your Honor, is that my client was severely wronged by Mr.
McGregor.
When Mr.
McGregor chased my client, this innocent little bunny with a rake, he caused him great emotional distress.
(46:56):
Both Snoopy and the bunny sniff and wipe a tear away from their eye.
Then this bunny actually snuggles up to Snoopy in the courtroom.
Snoopy says, Your Honor, may we have a 10-minute recess?
Harold (47:11):
Michael, can you guess who picked this one?
Michael (47:13):
Yeah.
Harold's going to pick this one.
Anything with a bunny, it's Harold's turf.
Harold (47:21):
This is a whole week-long sequence, right?
Jimmy (47:23):
Yeah.
Harold (47:24):
That's nice.
The bunny is very cute and very unusual.
I don't know anybody else who draws bunnies the way Charles Schulz does, but I like it.
Jimmy (47:36):
It reminds me of a bunny sock puppet.
It's such a minimal bunny face.
I really like it, too.
I could absolutely see a version where the bunny and Snoopy and Woodstock hang out together and become pals.
I can totally see that.
Harold (47:54):
Yeah.
Does everybody know who Mr.
McGregor is?
This is from Peter Rabbit, right?
I don't know if it's maybe the very first Peter Rabbit.
Jimmy (48:04):
Oh, wow.
No.
Michael (48:04):
If you just spot her.
Harold (48:06):
I didn't catch that.
Jimmy (48:08):
I should have known because of that cool movie, which I don't think is in any way accurate, but it's a wonderful movie.
Harold (48:14):
Mrs.
Potter.
Oh, that is a great movie.
I love Mrs.
Potter.
Yeah, there's a lot of, yeah, a lot of cool things in there.
That was made by the guy who did Babe.
Oh, yeah.
Jimmy (48:26):
Harold told me to rent it for my kids.
So I went to Redbox.
I rented it.
I liked it so much, I did not return it.
And they just charge you like 20 bucks when you know, or they did back in the day.
August 17th, Charlie Brown is helping out his sister, Sally, with her homework.
And he says to her, All right, how much is five times 10?
(48:48):
To which Sally replies, How should I know?
And Charlie Brown says, How about six times 20?
To which Sally replies, Who cares?
Charlie Brown, how about two times 11?
Sally, are you kidding?
And Charlie Brown says, I hope these aren't too hard for you.
And Sally says, Do I look discouraged?
Michael (49:08):
So guess who picked this one?
Jimmy (49:13):
No question.
Michael (49:14):
No sucker for the who cares attitude from Sally.
Jimmy (49:18):
It's great.
So, so funny.
And I love that.
Do I look discouraged?
Harold (49:25):
Yeah, you got that little board look in her eye there.
Yeah.
Jimmy (49:31):
I gotta say, I think this was a good run of strips that we chose.
I like that was, I think that was a stronger sequence of months than the first sequence of months in good old 1995.
Harold (49:43):
It's interesting.
I would have the opposite reaction to this group.
Yeah, I had a harder time picking strips.
Jimmy (49:51):
Interesting.
Michael (49:52):
Yeah, I did too.
Harold (49:53):
But I really do think it has to do with where I am in my life, not so much peanuts.
Michael (49:57):
Yeah, they were all worth discussing now, the ones we picked.
Harold (50:01):
Yeah, absolutely.
There's tons of interesting stuff in here.
Jimmy (50:04):
Absolutely.
If you want to continue this discussion, there's a couple of different ways you can do it.
The first thing you could do is go over to unpackingpeanuts.com, sign up for the Great Peanuts Reread and get that one email a month that will let you know the strips that we are covering.
And then once you do that, you get that, you follow along with us.
If you have something to say, you could write to us.
(50:25):
We're unpackingpeanuts at gmail.com.
You can also call us on the hotline at 717-219-4162, or you can follow us on social media.
We're at Unpack Peanuts on Instagram and threads and at Unpacking Peanuts on Facebook, Blue Sky and YouTube.
And we would love to hear from you, because remember, when I don't hear, I worry.
(50:47):
But that's it for this week.
Come back next week when we cover more strips from 1995.
Until then, from Michael, Harold and Liz, this is Jimmy saying, be of good cheer.
Harold (50:57):
Yes, be of good cheer.
Liz (51:00):
Unpacking Peanuts is copyrighted by Jimmy Gownley, Michael Cohen, Harold Buchholz and Liz Sumner.
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.
(51:23):
For more about Jimmy, Michael and Harold, visit unpackingpeanuts.com.
Have a wonderful day and thanks for listening.
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 (00:19):
Hey everybody, welcome back to the show.
This is Unpacking Peanuts.
We're looking at 1995 today.
I'll be your host for the proceedings.
My name is Jimmy Gownley.
I'm also a cartoonist.
I did things like Amelia Rule, Seven Graces Not to Grow Up, The Dumbest Idea Ever, and my new comics are available for free at gvillcomics.substack.com.
(00:40):
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 original editor of Amelia Rules, the co-creator of the original comic book Price Guide, and the creator of such great strips as Strange Attractors, A Gathering of Spells and Tangled River.
It's Michael Cohen.
Michael (00:59):
Say hey.
Jimmy (01:00):
And he's the executive producer and writer of Mystery Science Theater 3000, a former vice president of Archie Comics, and the creator of the Instagram sensation Sweetest Beasts.
It's Harold Buchholz.
Harold (01:11):
Hello.
Jimmy (01:12):
And making sure everything runs smoothly, it's producer and editor, Liz Sumner.
Liz (01:16):
Greetings.
Jimmy (01:17):
All right, guys, we're here deep in the 90s, second part of 1995.
If nobody has a preamble, I think we should just get right into these strips.
Michael (01:28):
Let's do it.
Jimmy (01:29):
All right.
So if you characters out there want to follow along, first thing you want to do is go over to unpackingpeanuts.com, sign up for the great Peanuts reread, and that'll get you one email a month from us, letting you know what strips we're going to cover.
And then you can just go over to gocomics.com, type in Peanuts, type in the dates, and read along with us for free, because that's how things work here in the mid-
Michael (01:54):
In the future.
Jimmy (01:55):
In the future.
In the year 2000.
All right, so with all that out of the way, let's pick things up on May 8th.
Lucy and Linus are hanging out.
Linus is in classic thumb and blanket position, and Lucy says, and you do it all the time.
(02:16):
It drives me crazy.
She continues in the next panel.
Why can't you see that?
Why?
Why do you insist on?
And then, interrupting the scene comes in Rerun.
And Rerun says, are you two fighting?
And Linus says, she's fighting.
I'm just sitting here.
Michael (02:34):
That's a good one.
Jimmy (02:35):
That's a good punchline.
Michael (02:36):
Now, have we seen Rerun and Linus in the same panel before?
Harold (02:43):
It's been rare, right?
Yeah, it was kind of strange seeing the two of them together.
Although I think that's not a bad idea from Schulz's perspective given how similar they look.
Michael (02:52):
He's got to differentiate them.
And one thing he's doing is strangely enough, if Rerun's head is smaller in relationship to his body, then Linus is smaller.
Harold (03:01):
That is kind of odd.
Michael (03:02):
And usually depict younger kids as having bigger heads.
Jimmy (03:05):
Wow, that's true.
Yeah, I didn't notice that.
That's interesting.
Harold (03:09):
That is interesting.
Wonder what's behind that choice.
Is that consistent?
Are we going to see that again?
Jimmy (03:15):
That is it.
It is the exact opposite.
Normally, if you were going to cartoon a little kid, it's a giant head and a little body, because that's little kids.
Harold (03:23):
And strangely, it works.
Those little overalls sure do help him look young.
And he looked kind of baggy on.
I think that helps him too.
Jimmy (03:32):
Yeah, I love also just seeing the three Van Pelt's together.
Harold (03:36):
Yeah, it's how rare is this.
Michael (03:38):
Yeah, that's certainly the first triplet.
Jimmy (03:41):
Triplet, yeah.
Michael (03:42):
Triplet panel.
Harold (03:44):
Yeah.
I do like Lucy's sweatshirt.
Jimmy (03:48):
Yep, yep.
And her, I'm going to say, corduroy pants.
Yeah, and I also wanted to kind of just note as we're looking through there, it felt to me that like his art was tighter in a lot of strips.
And then once in a while, you would see one go really kind of astray with the tremor and just fatigue sitting in.
Michael (04:13):
Yeah, I picked a wonky one just because it was so wonky.
Jimmy (04:17):
I'm curious to see which one that is because, yeah, I saw it and noticed a couple, I thought.
Harold (04:22):
Yeah, but this one in particular does look pretty solid.
Jimmy (04:26):
Yeah.
Harold (04:28):
The blacks in Lucy's hair for some reason help a lot.
Jimmy (04:31):
Yeah, that's true.
Harold (04:33):
I don't know why that, I guess, because it seems like a solid, clean.
Jimmy (04:37):
Yeah, grounds it.
Yeah.
Yeah, and he's not doing the jangly blacks or anything like that.
I mean, just a very little bit of highlight on her.
Harold (04:45):
Yeah.
Well, maybe Lucy's not wearing corduroy's, maybe they're referee pants because she's refereeing life.
Jimmy (04:52):
Maybe.
Here we see on May 9th, the three Van Pels sitting on a couch.
Linus and Rerun are sitting on the bare base of the couch because Lucy has stolen the two other additional cushions, piled them on top of her cushion, and she is sitting on them stacked three high, so she's way taller than both of her brothers.
(05:17):
They're all watching TV, but Rerun says to Linus, maybe someday you can explain her to me, okay?
Harold (05:24):
I like this one.
Jimmy (05:25):
I do too.
Liz (05:26):
Princess in the Peak.
Jimmy (05:28):
Yeah, very Princess in the Peak.
Harold (05:30):
It's interesting that Schulz has twice chosen to have Linus with the blanket.
This seems like he's very self-conscious about rerunning Linus being differentiated when they are together.
Because we haven't seen a whole lot of this sucking the thumb and holding the blanket.
Jimmy (05:51):
No, not at all.
It is really smart to finally put them together like this and give them a three-way family dynamic as opposed to just Lucy and Linus that we've had for so long.
Harold (06:06):
It's surprising that he hasn't gone here before, given how rich this could be.
He's like he's unlocked something, it seems like.
Jimmy (06:14):
Yeah, definitely.
Well, he's unlocked something with Rerun.
Rerun has just blossomed everywhere this year.
And that's kind of fun to see.
May 14th, it's a Sunday, Schroeder's out there.
He's playing catcher as is his want.
But he either says to himself, do we assume that's what he's doing?
(06:36):
He just is saying the word E flat.
Yeah.
Okay.
So he says E flat and then he walks away from whatever, wherever he was looking and says, that was it, E flat.
And then he goes out to the good old pitcher mound to talk to Charlie Brown and he says, do you know who Robert Schumann was?
And Charlie Brown says, a composer.
(06:58):
And Schroeder says, he had a mental breakdown.
At one point, he thought he heard angels singing to him.
Charlie Brown listens, thinks about this and says, I have the same thing.
I keep hearing something too.
It comes and it goes.
And Schroeder says, like maybe a musical note?
And Charlie Brown says, no, it's a different sort of sound.
E-flat.
(07:19):
And then we hear from out in right field, it's Lucy yelling, try to get the ball over the plate, you blockhead.
And then Charlie Brown says to Schroeder, that's it.
Michael (07:31):
This E-flat business is a little mysterious.
Jimmy (07:34):
Yeah.
Michael (07:35):
Because it doesn't quite relate to the joke.
Harold (07:38):
Right.
Michael (07:40):
And he comes, doesn't he come in again with another E-flat reference?
Harold (07:44):
Yeah.
Do you think it's a second, he had a second thought about in the bottom left tier, having Schroeder repeat E-flat to Charlie Brown, given that it wasn't in there?
Imagine you didn't have the top tier.
Michael (07:59):
Yeah.
Harold (08:00):
Oh, yeah.
That would be even particularly, I mean, it is still mysterious, but you have the E-flat, for those of you listening, you don't have the strip in front of you, is kind of shoehorned in between Charlie Brown and Schroeder.
It's kind of rare.
They don't, he doesn't do it a lot, where you'll have within a single panel, a character having two different balloons.
(08:23):
And it is in time between the time Charlie Brown replies, we think, I guess.
Michael (08:27):
Can I just hear an E-flat?
Harold (08:28):
In the time he speaks.
Jimmy (08:30):
I thought I heard someone's guitar.
Harold (08:32):
Oh, my.
Jimmy (08:34):
You didn't know Michael plays the music live.
Michael (08:37):
No, it's not me, it's Liz and her little phone machine.
Harold (08:41):
I was just feeling like Schroeder for a minute.
Michael (08:45):
Yeah, I wouldn't be, as a matter of fact, if those two panels weren't there at the top, I would have read that as him going, a like he's Canadian or something.
Jimmy (08:55):
Yeah.
Like, yeah, I wonder, I don't understand why it's because if you don't have the top two, the top tier, then don't put E-flat at all because yeah, I don't recognize.
Michael (09:07):
I think it's the code.
I think we're trying to communicate something.
Harold (09:12):
I mean, I like the idea that Schroeder is hearing E-flat.
Then the first thing he thinks of is Robert Schuman's mental breakdown.
He's a little concerned, I guess.
Yeah, I looked it up.
I was reading about Schuman because of this.
SPEAKER_1 (09:31):
Peanuts, it's scuridies, it's swing.
Harold (09:34):
Kind of a sad story.
He died in his 40s in a mental institution.
But he did claim angels and demons were speaking to him and also giving him songs and music.
Oh, wow.
Jimmy (09:47):
And all Schroeder's getting is an E-flat.
Michael (09:49):
I think he's got tinnitus, which I have, and it's just a constant musical tone sounding.
Harold (09:57):
Yeah.
Is it super high?
Michael (10:00):
I've learned to totally ignore it.
Harold (10:02):
I do too.
Yeah, I've got it.
I've had it for years and years.
I don't, it's just been such a part of my life that the only time I hear it is when someone talks about it and then I hear it.
Jimmy (10:12):
It's like being aware of your tongue.
Harold (10:14):
Yeah, exactly.
Boy, this is going to be a tough show.
Have you guys ever done the thing?
This drives Diane crazy.
Because you're ever in a room where there's like resonance or you're in like a cave or whatever.
Jimmy (10:35):
Oh, the amount of times I've been in a cave, of course.
Harold (10:37):
Come on.
Right outside of where we live, we have this little vestibular apartment place where if you are at a certain low register, it resonates, the whole walls resonate.
When I hear that, I start going, trying to find it, and then the whole place reverberates.
Michael (11:01):
What happens now in my room is, so I've got all these musical instruments I've collected and people have given them to me.
They're all hanging on the wall in my room, and when I sneeze, it sets the whole room off.
Harold (11:16):
You're just at the right pitch.
That's interesting.
Jimmy (11:21):
May 18th, Snoopy, in his French Foreign Legion outfit, is leading the Beagle Scouts across the desert, and he is thinking to himself, or going.
Here's the world famous sergeant of the Foreign Legion leading his troops across the desert.
As they march under a moonlit sky, they sing a stirring fight song, and then we see the Beagle Scouts singing a little song of their scratchy graphics.
(11:48):
And then Snoopy turns and looks at them and says, Some Enchanted Evening is not a stirring fight song.
Michael (11:55):
What I like is that on panel two, it's got the right amount of syllables in the little hatch marks.
Jimmy (12:02):
Oh, it does.
Oh, that's amazing.
Harold (12:08):
Now we have a clue.
We now have a clue about how these little bird chirps are.
Can you imagine if they animated this and they actually had them chirping Some Enchanted Evening?
That would be a good use.
Too bad we don't have Snoopy.
We can't hear Snoopy.
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
So he couldn't do this gag.
Jimmy (12:25):
Right.
Liz (12:26):
I think you could turn Some Enchanted Evening.
Jimmy (12:59):
For next episode, are you OK?
The marching version, May 24th, Snoopy in his classic vulture pose is atop a very spindly looking Charles Schulz tree.
And Woodstock is on another branch looking down.
And he asked Snoopy a question.
And Snoopy, without moving at all from his vulture position, says, sure, I don't care what you do.
(13:23):
And then two panels of Woodstock going off, probably, to his nest.
And in the second one, he comes back carrying a tiny little chair, which he then sets up on his perch on the tree.
And Snoopy, as the vulture says, but a real vulture never sits in a chair.
Michael (13:42):
I picked this particularly good.
I'm a huge vulture fan.
It was always my favorite Snoopy impersonation.
And I think old Snoopy can't pull it off.
He's not as flexible as young Snoopy.
Jimmy (13:56):
Well, that's what happens when you get old.
Michael (13:57):
Especially the eye there just looks wrong to me.
Harold (14:01):
Oh, the eye?
Well, I noticed, didn't he have a full back arc through the top of the head to the ears back in the day?
Michael (14:10):
Well, his snout used to bend.
Harold (14:13):
Yeah.
At the collar now, yeah, he doesn't have the full drop on the head the way he used to.
Michael (14:20):
Yeah.
It's a pretty sad vulture.
Jimmy (14:23):
But what's crazy about it is, it is like an old dog.
I mean, I know a no dog would do that, but do you know what I'm saying?
He does look like the same dog, just older, doing a weirder thing, not as well, you know, which I relate to.
Michael (14:42):
Yeah, my snout doesn't bend anymore.
Jimmy (14:44):
Not at all, mine either.
Liz (14:47):
Judy Sladky said that she had some trouble doing the vulture, too.
Harold (14:50):
Oh, there you go.
Oh, man.
Yeah, that's got to be rough.
Now that we know what we know about Some Enchanted Evening, I'm going to start trying to figure out the syllables for each of the chirps.
So I think here Woodstock is saying, do you mind if I get a chair?
Jimmy (15:09):
That's right.
Do you mind if I get a chair?
I don't care what you do.
Oh, wow.
That's really...
Harold (15:16):
Do you think Schulz was doing that?
Jimmy (15:17):
Now I do.
Harold (15:18):
In his head?
Jimmy (15:19):
I mean, never in my life did I ever think that until Some Enchanted Evening, but now I do.
Harold (15:25):
Wow.
That blows my mind.
Michael (15:27):
So we can decode everything now.
Jimmy (15:29):
Every single one now.
Michael (15:31):
Yeah, let's do it.
Harold (15:31):
I think that's...
Well, there's a whole book of Woodstock decoded, and it's just strips where we pop in the words.
Jimmy (15:42):
The subtitle is the tragic story of how three cartoonists lost their minds.
Harold (15:47):
Right.
Well, this was a surprise to me.
This is my first time reading these strips and cracking the book to 1995, the fan of graphics editions.
But every single two-year span book has an introduction.
I was very surprised to see the introduction was done by two writers from Riftrax.
(16:11):
On the front cover, Riftrax is a spin-off of Mystery Science Theater, which I produced and wrote on as you guys hear every time.
Let's use a fast-forward to our introductions.
But I didn't know that they had done this.
It was two writers who worked on the show, and then they got, I guess, the three main guys who had worked at Mystery Science Theater to actually riff some strips.
(16:35):
If you are a Mystery Science Theater fans, see if you can get a hold of the 1995-96 edition, and they actually riff some Peanuts dailies, and some of them were very funny, so I thought that was cool.
Oh, that's very cool.
Jimmy (16:53):
May 29th, it's a panoramic panel, and we got the big four all hanging out at the thinking wall, and Linus says to Charlie Brown, so you don't think Jesus ever owned a dog?
And then Charlie Brown says, no, I doubt it.
And then Lucy says, but why?
And then Snoopy goes, if he had a dog, all the apostles would have wanted one.
Michael (17:17):
Yeah, we used to talk about the big four.
Jimmy (17:20):
Yeah.
Michael (17:20):
Because back in the day, the rule was at least one of these characters had to appear in every strip, which held true for like 20 years.
And I don't think this is the big four anymore.
Jimmy (17:34):
All right, let me ask you a question.
Who would be the big four these days?
Michael (17:37):
Well, I think Peppermint Patty.
I mean, Linus is making a little bit of a comeback, but he was kind of written out for a while.
So, I think she would be the number four at this point.
If you're just talking in terms of number of panels that they appear in.
Harold (17:55):
Yeah.
That's interesting.
I never would have thought Linus would have kind of fallen off as much as he has in the past years.
But he is making a comeback.
Jimmy (18:04):
Yeah, absolutely.
Absolutely.
Harold (18:06):
And seeing Rerun almost makes me feel like Linus is there.
Jimmy (18:10):
They're so similar.
And of course, I'm certain you all know that this is referenced in the classic REM bonus track, The Most Vestal Penthouse, which just starts with Peter Buck asking.
It's just studio chatter and he says, I always wondered, do you think Jesus had a dog?
(18:31):
And then it just sends the whole band into this.
Michael (18:34):
So that's why you picked this one.
Jimmy (18:36):
I think it's, I really think Peter Buck read this trip.
Harold (18:42):
And then when was that recording session?
Jimmy (18:44):
Oh, you know, after this, it would have been in the 2000s.
But it's so strange that, I mean, did Jesus have a dog?
It's a pretty specific thing.
And it felt like he was just, it was not meant to be, you know, actually released.
He was just goofing around in the studio.
And I think, I think of the, I think he stole it.
I think he stole it from here.
And I don't blame him.
(19:04):
This is a good one.
June 5th, this is the middle of a little sequence where Sally has decided she is going to leave home.
So we see her with the classic hobo sack on the stick, which has a name, but I can't remember what it is.
And but she's back in her house now.
(19:26):
And Charlie Brown is sitting there reading the one book he owns.
And he says to her, I see you decided not to leave home.
And then Sally says, I had to.
I walked all the way around the block.
My life didn't get any better.
So I came home.
She just sinks into the ground next to him.
Michael (19:42):
Well, this actually is the end of the sequence, which I had high hopes for, because I thought seeing Sally travel around the world would be an interesting idea.
Jimmy (19:52):
Great idea, right?
Michael (19:53):
I could do it.
You know, I'd be happy to see that.
Liz (19:56):
Yeah.
Michael (19:57):
But no, it was a fairly short sequence, and then she walks around the block and comes home.
Why is she wearing a Civil War hat?
Jimmy (20:05):
It's a very weird hat.
It's a very weird hat.
I like her in the hat.
I think it's cute.
I think it's very cute.
Harold (20:14):
I think her hair looks least crazy when she's wearing that hat.
Jimmy (20:17):
Yeah.
Some of those wings are tucked in, I think.
Harold (20:22):
Yeah.
It's a nice look for the profile particularly.
Jimmy (20:26):
Anyone know what that's called, the sack on the stick?
Harold (20:29):
Yeah, a bendle stick.
Jimmy (20:31):
Bendle stick.
Harold (20:31):
There you go.
A bendle, I guess.
SPEAKER_1 (20:34):
Yeah.
Michael (20:34):
I was wondering how little the world is when you're little.
SPEAKER_1 (20:40):
Yeah.
Michael (20:41):
I don't know.
I mean, I used to wander, but I don't know if I ever actually went around the block, because I discovered later, years later, me and my sister went back to where we used to live in LA, and drove around the block and there was a Catholic school there.
I didn't know that.
Harold (21:00):
Wow.
I never got to go around the block.
I lived on a cul-de-sac.
Jimmy (21:06):
I remember wanting to go to the Jiffy Mart, which was the little store in town, when I was eight years old and my mom needed stuff, and I was like, I can get it.
I can totally get it.
I can go to Jiffy Mart myself.
My mom very reluctantly gave me the money, and I went down to Jiffy Mart.
When I came out, I was so proud, and then I saw about a half a block away, my dad walking the dog.
(21:31):
My dad had never walked the dog in his life, and I was like, she sent him to spa.
It really irritated me.
Harold (21:41):
I just realized I lived in three cul-de-sacs in a row growing up, at the age of five, all the way through high school.
Jimmy (21:49):
Do you know that's where bag end comes from, Michael, in Lord of the Rings cul-de-sacs?
Michael (21:53):
Is that cul-de-sac, really?
Jimmy (21:55):
The bottom of the bag, yeah.
Michael (21:57):
Never thought of that.
I thought it had to do with bag ends.
Jimmy (22:01):
Well, I think it's a double whammy there.
Harold (22:04):
Well, and maybe that explains why I love Richard Thompson's cul-de-sac comedy so much.
That is an amazing strip.
If you guys have not seen, our listeners have not seen Richard Thompson's cul-de-sac, I think that is a masterpiece.
Jimmy (22:20):
I have an autographed edition.
I get gifted to me by my good pal, Harold Buchholz.
And Richard Thompson sadly passed away, so that's all we're getting from him and he's a great, great, great artist and I only met him once, but an unbelievably nice person it seemed.
Harold (22:36):
Yeah.
Jimmy (22:38):
June 18th, Linus, having been sitting around, I guess, for a while in thumb and blanket position, yawns mightily and this attracts the attention of his arch-enemy Snoopy, whose ears are pricked up as he looks out from behind a chair.
Then Linus goes back to classic thumb and blanket position, and we see just the tiniest little Snoopy in the distance sneaking up on him.
(23:05):
Then in the next panel, Clomps, Snoopy whizzes in and steals the blanket.
And for the first time, we also see that Lucy was sitting next to Linus, this time reading a book.
And Snoopy drags Linus off panel, we hear, Ah, g'bonk!
And then Lucy goes to see exactly what has occurred, and Snoopy has somehow shot right out the mail slot of the door, but Linus' big noggin was not able to do that, so Linus is still on this side of the door holding his blanket and dazed because he hit his head.
(23:37):
And then Lucy runs outside and sees, well, she doesn't run outside, she runs to the window and sees that Snoopy is on the other side of the door, still holding on, and he's also dazed because he was racing and got pulled back.
And then it just ends with Lucy going back to the book she's reading and saying, excessively weird.
Michael (23:56):
It is excessively weird.
And I mean, you can only do this in a comic strip.
Harold (24:04):
Right.
Yeah.
Michael (24:06):
This is really good cartooning.
Harold (24:09):
My favorite is Snoopy just peeking his head outside of the edge of the panel far away.
That's hilarious.
Jimmy (24:21):
And because you don't have any possible indication of perspective, that could also just be a tiny little Snoopy sneaking in from the side.
But because Schulz has the confidence to present it to us as Snoopy in the background, we buy it as Snoopy in the background.
Harold (24:39):
Wholesale.
Jimmy (24:40):
Totally.
Harold (24:40):
It's so cute.
Jimmy (24:42):
I also like Snoopy knocked silly.
I like knocked silly even better than Linus knocked silly.
Harold (24:49):
So is that a blanket in his mouth or his tongue?
Jimmy (24:54):
I think that is his blanket.
Harold (24:56):
We're going to have to take a look at the coloring.
Yeah.
Jimmy (24:59):
Is that the blanket and tongue?
Is that what you're saying?
Like the tongue sticking out over the blanket?
Michael (25:03):
No, there's a, you see a tongue, but it's in the signalized panel.
Jimmy (25:08):
Yeah, yeah.
Okay.
Interesting.
Michael (25:12):
I think it's...
Jimmy (25:13):
Yep.
That's a good looking strip.
I like the whole outside of the Ven Pelt House too.
That's, that looks really nice.
And like super clean, super clean lines.
Harold (25:24):
Now, although it strangely looks, maybe because of the way the door handle is, that it's weird.
It feels like the door is at an angle, but everything else is straight on.
Jimmy (25:37):
Oh, the door handle is at the angle.
I think you're right.
I think it's a slight...
Yeah.
Yeah.
I bet it looks good in color.
I'm looking at it in black and white.
I bet the color flattens it out.
Harold (25:47):
I think the other, maybe the other piece of that is the way he has the the edge of the stoop.
It's got that little concrete thing at an angle that maybe coincides with the door.
So there's like two things going on in terms of perspective.
Jimmy (26:09):
Okay.
Well, that seems like a good place as any to take a little break.
So we're going to get a beverage or something like that.
And you listen to this message and then we'll see on the other side.
Harold (26:19):
Be right back.
Liz (26:21):
Hi, everyone.
I just want to take a moment to remind you that all three hosts are cartoonists themselves and their work is available for sale.
You can find links to purchase books by Jimmy, Harold, and Michael on our website.
You can also support the show on Patreon or buy us a mud pie.
Check out the store link on unpackingpeanuts.com.
Jimmy (26:43):
All right, and we're back.
Hey, Liz.
I'm hanging out in the mailbox.
Do we got anything?
Liz (26:48):
We do.
Paul Ebert writes, and hey, gang, just a quick note to tell you about a couple of new-ish biographies of Charles Schulz.
Would love to hear your takes on them at some point.
The first is by Luca, I don't know how to pronounce that, Debuse and Francesco Matteuzzi.
(27:11):
It's called, the title is Funny Things, a comic strip biography.
And the second is by Yuzuzu Kiku, forgive me if I'm mangling anybody's name.
And it's the manga biography of Charles M.
Schulz.
Jimmy (27:25):
Very interesting.
Michael (27:26):
For somebody who had a boring life, he sure gets a lot of biographies.
Jimmy (27:33):
Chapter 12, he sits at the desk again.
That's very cool.
Liz (27:40):
And Wade Weston writes, just finished listening to your 1985 part three episode, your listener who thinks You're in Love, Charlie Brown is the most depressing cartoon of all time, is obviously not familiar with Why Charlie Brown?
Why?
Jimmy (27:56):
Oh, yeah.
Liz (27:58):
What have we learned, Charlie Brown?
Harold (28:00):
Yeah.
Liz (28:01):
Both deal with very difficult topics, but with sensitivity.
I think both are worth watching, but not to be watched alone, or at least not without supportive friends on speed dial.
And then he adds, also, Yellow Submarine is a brilliant and innovative film, and is one of my all-time favorite movies.
Anyone who disagrees is wrong.
Jimmy (28:23):
Well, first, I admire you coming out hot.
That's the way you're going to defend something.
That's the way to do it, my friend.
I'm going to bet he is a millennial or younger, because for Gen X people, we didn't really have that many opportunities to see Yellow Submarine to develop any kind of attachment to it.
Harold (28:45):
I will say Yellow Submarine is way better than the Beatles Saturday Morning Cartoon.
Jimmy (28:49):
Well, yes, that is true.
It is way better than that.
And I think my thing about Yellow Submarine is just that it feels so Beatles.
It's barely adjacent.
Yeah, right.
You know, it's not the real Beatles voices or whatever.
Harold (29:02):
Well, it's a shame that they got kind of turned off by what was done with the Saturday Morning Cartoon.
And so they didn't want anything to do with the making of this feature until they saw it after the fact and added that little post script where they were live action because it was too late to do anything animation.
Seen it sooner, they might have been.
Michael (29:22):
I think they just, it was just to fulfill their contract.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Harold (29:27):
I heard that they liked it, that they actually liked it and they wanted to do that.
Jimmy (29:30):
Oh, they did like, I think it's two things.
One, they had to do it whether they liked it or not because they had to appear in it to fulfill the contract.
But it is true that once they saw it, they did like it and were like, they even went to the premiere and all that kind of stuff.
They were, they ended up being big fans about it.
But it's always just been that and like Yellow Submarine, not Yellow Submarine, I don't know if that's what we're talking about, the Magical Mystery Tour.
(29:52):
They were just like impossible to see in the 80s and 90s.
Harold (29:55):
Yeah, and when we had a slightly edited version in the United States as well, my wife, Diane, huge Beatles fan and she loves animation.
She loves Yellow Submarine.
She'd already seen it multiple times.
And Hey Bulldog had been dropped from the US version.
Michael (30:09):
Yeah, that's right.
Harold (30:10):
And you're sitting and watching this movie that you think you know inside out.
And all of a sudden there's like this unexpected bonus thing.
Like, what?
Michael (30:17):
Wait, wait, what?
What?
Jimmy (30:18):
What?
Harold (30:20):
Oh my gosh.
SPEAKER_1 (30:22):
Yeah.
Jimmy (30:22):
Hey, Bulldog got no respect for decades.
SPEAKER_1 (30:25):
Oh yeah.
Michael (30:26):
Now it's like top 10.
Yeah, right.
Yeah.
Jimmy (30:29):
And I will say this, I don't know if you can hear this, but that is the lid on my Yellow Submarine cookie jar.
So I do have some of it.
Liz (30:40):
That's it for the mail.
Jimmy (30:42):
All right.
We heard from Super Listener Shaylee Robson who says, Hey guys, it's Shaylee Robson.
SPEAKER_6 (30:48):
I was just finishing up listening to 1993 for the comics, and I figured I'd tell you my strip of the year.
My favorite would have to be July 18th, where Charlie Brown was assuring Snoopy things will be all right during his time of need.
I just think it was so genuinely sweet seeing how much Charlie loves his dog, and it made me think of my close relationship with my dogs, Ailee, my girl, Luna.
(31:10):
She means the world to me, and I just think that our pets are such blessings.
Anyway, I hope you're all doing well, and I hope that your aunt has been doing nicely, Jimmy.
And yeah, I look forward to your next episodes.
Be of good cheer.
Jimmy (31:25):
I love that strip.
I think, yeah, it's just one of the best of the year.
And yeah, I totally agree.
I love seeing Charlie Brown's more real life dog owner role with Snoopy, you know, after decades of being kind of vexed and only the guy who, you know, gives him his food.
(31:45):
Now they're a much closer, like, master and puppy relationship.
Harold (31:53):
Yeah, that's a great strip.
I love that, too.
And I have to throw it out there to...
We were listening to us in Guatemala.
We are number three right now in Guatemala, according to Apple.
Jimmy (32:03):
Oh, yeah.
Harold (32:05):
So, that's exciting.
I don't know if one person's downloading everything we've ever done.
Jimmy (32:10):
Whoever you are out there, thank you, keep it going.
Harold (32:13):
Thank you, yeah.
And we're down from number three, so I don't know what's been going on in Guatemala.
Jimmy (32:17):
Wow.
All right, well, we got to make a trip and find out.
So, when we do our Unpacking Peanuts World Tour.
All right, guys, let's go back to the old strips.
June 23rd, Rerun is at Charlie Brown's house.
Outside, he's just knocked on the door, and he says to Charlie Brown, ask your dog if he wants to come out and frolic.
(32:40):
Charlie Brown answers Rerun by saying, yesterday you asked him if he wanted to come out and play.
And then Rerun says, we're upgrading the neighborhood.
Harold (32:49):
Yeah, he's raising the game here, Rerun.
Liz (32:52):
Frolicing.
Harold (32:54):
This is the last five years of Peanuts, as I know it.
Jimmy (32:57):
Lots of Rerun Frolicing.
Michael (33:00):
He uses this set up a lot this year.
It was just like Rerun used to be on the back of the bike.
Harold (33:07):
Right.
Michael (33:08):
Now he's knocking to see if Snoopy wants to come out.
Let's do 10 of these this year.
Harold (33:14):
So you're using this as the front door or the back door?
Jimmy (33:16):
I think Rerun's a back door guest.
Harold (33:18):
I think so.
Michael (33:19):
Yeah.
Jimmy (33:21):
Back door guests are best, as they say.
There is something about the kid who doesn't have a dog and the friends who do have a dog.
I had two close friends when I was very little, Marnie Marquette and Frankie O'Neill, and they didn't have dogs and they loved my dog, Spunky.
They would come and visit Spunky more than they would come and visit me.
Harold (33:46):
Well, when you're an only child, it helps to have somebody else there to mix it up, right?
Jimmy (33:51):
Oh, absolutely, absolutely.
Frankie eventually did get a dog named Barclay, which is a great name for a dog.
Harold (34:00):
What kind of dog did you have?
Jimmy (34:02):
I had an apricot poodle.
Yeah, never had the ridiculous poodle-like haircut, just had the puppy cut.
Very smart.
He could kick field goals.
I had a little toy field goal set up and a little plastic football, and you could tell him hike and he would run up and he'd kick it with his front paws through the holes.
(34:24):
Yeah.
Harold (34:26):
That's the best.
Jimmy (34:27):
He was a good puppy.
June 25th.
Lucy's out skipping rope, and she's doing that in two panels.
This is Sunday.
And then on tier two, she is explaining to Rerun exactly what's going on.
She says, see, you twirl the rope around and you jump up and down.
To which Rerun replies, why would I want to do that?
(34:48):
And then Lucy says, because it's fun, it's doing something.
And then Rerun says, why do I have to do something?
And he continues with, I don't like to do anything.
I just like to hang around.
This has actually caused Lucy to stop jumping.
But then she resumes by saying, you can't just hang around.
That's no way to live.
You're going to waste your whole life.
(35:11):
And then she sees Snoopy just chilling out, leaning up against a rock.
And he thinks, don't look at me.
I'm just hanging around.
Michael (35:20):
This is a whole new side of Rerun's personality.
Jimmy (35:24):
Yeah.
Michael (35:25):
Which hasn't been played up at all.
He just wants to hang around.
I mean, that makes for a good character to have a little something like a joke generating personality trait.
But I don't know if we see it again.
Harold (35:41):
Mostly seen him trying to do things, right?
Michael (35:43):
Yeah.
He seems to be a pretty active kid.
Jimmy (35:47):
I love just hanging around.
Hanging out, I would say, though.
But hanging out, I think, is an art form.
I think people have lost the ability to just hang out.
Michael (35:54):
I don't know.
I think hanging out has to do with other people.
Yeah, you could do by yourself.
Jimmy (36:00):
Well, that is true.
Yeah, that's true.
That's true.
Harold (36:02):
Yeah, there's a whole thesis on hanging out.
I think it was in The Whole World's Crazy, the real series.
Jimmy (36:09):
No, it's in the fourth one, whatever the fourth book is.
Harold (36:12):
Oh, really?
Was that late in the...
Jimmy (36:14):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Harold (36:15):
Oh my gosh.
For some reason, I had that pegged at the very beginning.
Jimmy (36:18):
Yeah.
It was a free comic book day issue that ended up in volume four.
Harold (36:22):
Yep.
Jimmy (36:22):
Hanging out.
Michael (36:24):
They're talking about Amelia rules.
Jimmy (36:25):
Oh, yeah, right.
Harold (36:26):
We're just...
Jimmy (36:26):
Actually, we're just talking amongst ourselves and sort of forgot there was a show going on.
June 26th, and it's a panoramic, one of my favorites here.
We see a semi-forlorn looking Woodstock sitting on the stump of a tree and then leaning up against another tree is Snoopy.
And Snoopy goes, you're emotionally bankrupt.
(36:48):
Scott Fitzgerald was emotionally bankrupt.
We're all emotionally bankrupt.
And that's the entire strip.
Harold (36:55):
That's a left fielder, yeah.
Michael (36:57):
The one thing I've learned from this podcast is predicting who's going to pick which strip.
And there's just no doubt in my mind, okay, Jimmy's going to pick this one.
Jimmy (37:11):
You were right, Zare.
Michael (37:12):
Frankly, I don't get it.
Jimmy (37:13):
No, I don't get it either.
I love it, but I don't get it.
But I did go down a rabbit hole.
I've actually used it.
Just this week, I put out the very first episode of my new graphic novel In the Real Dark Night on Substack.
And I use this as a quote at the beginning, as a little epigraph.
(37:33):
And so I went down a whole rabbit hole of what it is.
So Scott Fitzgerald went through a period in the 30s when he was, well, he was depressed and he was broke and all kinds of thing.
And he chronicles it in a book called The Crack Up.
And he also wrote a short story just called Emotional Bankruptcy.
(37:53):
So I think what it is, is I think Schulz read the story Emotional Bankruptcy, and then just was contemplating it.
And instead of the character in the story being emotionally bankrupt, he put it to Fitzgerald.
And I think it's impossible.
What I love about it is, imagine this in Beetle Bailey.
Harold (38:17):
Plato might have said it, right?
Michael (38:19):
Any comic strip.
Jimmy (38:20):
Yeah, right.
Michael (38:21):
This is not the language of comics.
You have to put a plug in Jimmy's new strip.
Liz (38:28):
Which is available on Substance.
Michael (38:30):
Yeah, check out.
I think this is absolutely brilliant.
Oh, get out of town.
And it's one of the best things I've ever read.
I can't wait to read more.
And it starts, it started a couple of days ago.
So go to Substance and start reading this thing.
It's really amazing.
Jimmy (38:46):
Oh, well, thank you.
That makes me feel so good.
Oh, all right.
Let's just end the podcast here.
Harold (38:55):
Well, I mean, it makes sense that Schulz would would not mention the concept of Fitzgerald as emotionally bankrupt if Fitzgerald didn't specifically go there, because that would be unusual for Schulz.
Jimmy (39:07):
Yes, yes.
Harold (39:08):
To just say he's emotionally bankrupt, this real life person.
Jimmy (39:13):
Yeah.
Harold (39:13):
Well, and for those of you who are listening, you may not know who F.
Scott Fitzgerald is.
Jimmy, do you want to give any background just who this is, in case we got some people going to scratch their heads?
Jimmy (39:25):
Well, he is a 20th century writer, most famous for writing The Great Gatsby.
He's the namesake of Francis Scott Key, who wrote the good old Star Spangled Banner.
And yeah, he was a very popular writer who then just became a very unpopular writer.
But then World War II, GIs started getting copies of The Great Gatsby sent to them through some, I don't know what the program was, if it was Reader's Digest or whatever.
(39:53):
And then that is suddenly is what made that become reconsidered in like one of the American classics.
Harold (40:00):
Yeah.
And he sadly died before World War II even began.
Jimmy (40:04):
Yeah.
Harold (40:05):
I mean, it's amazing that he died at 44 and he wrote.
Jimmy (40:09):
Yeah.
Harold (40:09):
Four novels and 164 short stories.
Jimmy (40:13):
And some screenplays too.
I don't know.
Harold (40:15):
Not bad.
Jimmy (40:16):
Yeah.
Not bad.
Michael (40:17):
Yeah.
Harold (40:18):
Michael, you might be surprised that I selected this one as well.
Although one of the reasons was, this is an interesting week of dailies.
Between the six dailies, there were nine panels drawn.
Wow.
Michael (40:31):
Yeah.
Yeah.
It was definitely a weird week.
Harold (40:34):
I'm wondering what was going on in Schulz's life.
Yeah.
Jimmy (40:38):
There could very well be some extenuating circumstances in his life that's causing that.
That is a really just a nice bonus for him as a person, by having changed the format that he can do.
A couple of panoramics or a couple of two panelers.
Because he doesn't abuse it because he'll also do five panel ones.
We've seen at least one of those this year so far.
(41:02):
Or this episode rather so far.
I think Woodstock looks really forlorn.
Harold (41:08):
Yeah, boy.
But it is strange that Schulz is assigning this to Snoopy and to Woodstock.
That's a bit of a surprise and it's off that Woodstock is getting this analysis by Snoopy.
Yeah.
Jimmy (41:24):
We never really find out why.
That was just it.
July 10th, Snoopy and Woodstock are atop the doghouse looking up in the sky and Snoopy says, Why are you sitting here when you could be up there flying around with all those other birds?
And Woodstock chirps an answer and Snoopy says, I know what you mean.
I'm not a joiner either.
Michael (41:45):
By the way, it's the same thing.
Jimmy (41:47):
I'm not a joiner.
Harold (41:48):
You know what, you gotta do the syllables.
Liz (41:50):
I'm not really a joiner.
A joiner type.
Michael (41:54):
No, I'm not really a joiner.
Harold (41:57):
A joiner.
Jimmy (41:57):
Yeah.
Harold (41:58):
I'm not really a joiner.
Michael (41:59):
Yeah.
Harold (42:01):
This is fun.
Jimmy (42:02):
If we actually decoded this.
Michael (42:05):
Some of them are bigger, so it's the emphasis.
I'm not really a joiner.
Harold (42:11):
Not really a joiner.
Liz (42:13):
That might be going a little too far.
Harold (42:15):
Yeah.
Jimmy (42:17):
July 12th, Snoopy and Woodstock are outside just perusing a field, and we see a long black furrow and raised portion of the grass.
Snoopy explains to Woodstock, moles have very weak eyes.
They dig tunnels just under the ground and hunt worms and insects.
(42:39):
Then Woodstock says something and Snoopy answers, you're right.
It's a tough way to make a living.
Michael (42:44):
So what's Woodstock saying?
Harold (42:45):
Two, three.
Jimmy (42:49):
Boy, that is a tough way to make a living.
That is a tough way to make a living.
Exclamation point.
Michael (43:01):
That is a tough way to make a living.
Jimmy (43:06):
Yeah, that's a tough way to run away.
Harold (43:08):
Woodstock decoded.
Jimmy (43:10):
Wow.
Guys, I'm worried about us.
I just don't think that's that.
I mean, we may be right about this.
And that upsets me.
Harold (43:22):
We have looked at this too closely.
150 episodes and we're tracking it.
Liz (43:28):
I was just gonna say that there's an element of Lucy in the way that Snoopy is explaining.
Moles have very weak eyes.
Jimmy (43:38):
Oh, it is true.
Yeah, yeah.
Except Snoopy is actually telling a real fact, as opposed to whatever Lucy would have come up with.
But that's definitely a little theme that has gone on for years.
You know, the one character explaining things to the slightly more younger or more innocent character.
Liz (43:56):
Dog-splaining.
Jimmy (43:57):
Dog-splaining.
July 16th, Spike is in World War I, and he's of course not a flying ace, he's just an infantry man stuck in a trench.
And we see him telling us that in panel one, I'm in the infantry.
And then the second panel, Snoopy is out on a mission as the flying ace, and he says, the flak is heavy today.
(44:22):
And he looks down from his sop with camel and says, good grief, there's my brother Spike.
Apparently, he lands the sop with camel and goes and greets Spike, hey Spike, I was flying over the trenches when I saw you.
To which Spike says, I'm in the infantry.
And Snoopy says, are you getting ready to lead a charge over the top?
And Spike says, the last time I looked over the top, someone threw a rock at me.
(44:46):
And then Snoopy says, well, I have to get back to the aerodrome.
I write to mom and tell her I saw you.
And this leaves Spike down in the little trench.
And he yells back after Snoopy, tell her I'm in the infantry and I miss her tapioca pudding.
And then Snoopy's back on the stop with Camel, flying in the other direction, saying, that's Spike.
He's a real soldier, always thinking of duty.
(45:09):
And then it ends with Spike in the trench again saying, when you're in the infantry, you never get tapioca pudding.
Michael (45:16):
I hate this strip.
Jimmy (45:18):
All right, what's the, what don't you like about it?
Michael (45:21):
In my head, we've established a rule that would, that Snoopy's imagining could be anything, but nobody else is in the scene.
But he's had people in the scene before.
This is like too weird because it's like they're both having the same fantasy at the same time and kind of meet.
(45:43):
It just violates all the rules for me.
Jimmy (45:46):
Well, here, I could give you something, a way to look at it.
Maybe Snoopy's also hallucinating Spike.
Michael (45:51):
Yeah, but we see Spike's thoughts.
Jimmy (45:54):
Yeah, that's true.
The reason I picked it is just because of all the black ink.
It's another one of his forays into Frank Miller territory.
It's really struck me as graphically completely unique.
Not completely unique, but pretty rare to see all that black ink just smudged all over the place, giving me his D-Day strip vibes again.
Harold (46:21):
I'd like to see this one in color.
Yeah.
I have to say, I just noticed that this was my dad's 65th birthday when this came out.
Oh, wow.
Although he was never in the infantry.
Michael (46:31):
Good.
Jimmy (46:33):
August 2nd.
Snoopy and his famous lawyer guys is defending a bunny.
The bunny is sitting right next to him and Snoopy says, What I'm trying to say, Your Honor, is that my client was severely wronged by Mr.
McGregor.
When Mr.
McGregor chased my client, this innocent little bunny with a rake, he caused him great emotional distress.
(46:56):
Both Snoopy and the bunny sniff and wipe a tear away from their eye.
Then this bunny actually snuggles up to Snoopy in the courtroom.
Snoopy says, Your Honor, may we have a 10-minute recess?
Harold (47:11):
Michael, can you guess who picked this one?
Michael (47:13):
Yeah.
Harold's going to pick this one.
Anything with a bunny, it's Harold's turf.
Harold (47:21):
This is a whole week-long sequence, right?
Jimmy (47:23):
Yeah.
Harold (47:24):
That's nice.
The bunny is very cute and very unusual.
I don't know anybody else who draws bunnies the way Charles Schulz does, but I like it.
Jimmy (47:36):
It reminds me of a bunny sock puppet.
It's such a minimal bunny face.
I really like it, too.
I could absolutely see a version where the bunny and Snoopy and Woodstock hang out together and become pals.
I can totally see that.
Harold (47:54):
Yeah.
Does everybody know who Mr.
McGregor is?
This is from Peter Rabbit, right?
I don't know if it's maybe the very first Peter Rabbit.
Jimmy (48:04):
Oh, wow.
No.
Michael (48:04):
If you just spot her.
Harold (48:06):
I didn't catch that.
Jimmy (48:08):
I should have known because of that cool movie, which I don't think is in any way accurate, but it's a wonderful movie.
Harold (48:14):
Mrs.
Potter.
Oh, that is a great movie.
I love Mrs.
Potter.
Yeah, there's a lot of, yeah, a lot of cool things in there.
That was made by the guy who did Babe.
Oh, yeah.
Jimmy (48:26):
Harold told me to rent it for my kids.
So I went to Redbox.
I rented it.
I liked it so much, I did not return it.
And they just charge you like 20 bucks when you know, or they did back in the day.
August 17th, Charlie Brown is helping out his sister, Sally, with her homework.
And he says to her, All right, how much is five times 10?
(48:48):
To which Sally replies, How should I know?
And Charlie Brown says, How about six times 20?
To which Sally replies, Who cares?
Charlie Brown, how about two times 11?
Sally, are you kidding?
And Charlie Brown says, I hope these aren't too hard for you.
And Sally says, Do I look discouraged?
Michael (49:08):
So guess who picked this one?
Jimmy (49:13):
No question.
Michael (49:14):
No sucker for the who cares attitude from Sally.
Jimmy (49:18):
It's great.
So, so funny.
And I love that.
Do I look discouraged?
Harold (49:25):
Yeah, you got that little board look in her eye there.
Yeah.
Jimmy (49:31):
I gotta say, I think this was a good run of strips that we chose.
I like that was, I think that was a stronger sequence of months than the first sequence of months in good old 1995.
Harold (49:43):
It's interesting.
I would have the opposite reaction to this group.
Yeah, I had a harder time picking strips.
Jimmy (49:51):
Interesting.
Michael (49:52):
Yeah, I did too.
Harold (49:53):
But I really do think it has to do with where I am in my life, not so much peanuts.
Michael (49:57):
Yeah, they were all worth discussing now, the ones we picked.
Harold (50:01):
Yeah, absolutely.
There's tons of interesting stuff in here.
Jimmy (50:04):
Absolutely.
If you want to continue this discussion, there's a couple of different ways you can do it.
The first thing you could do is go over to unpackingpeanuts.com, sign up for the Great Peanuts Reread and get that one email a month that will let you know the strips that we are covering.
And then once you do that, you get that, you follow along with us.
If you have something to say, you could write to us.
(50:25):
We're unpackingpeanuts at gmail.com.
You can also call us on the hotline at 717-219-4162, or you can follow us on social media.
We're at Unpack Peanuts on Instagram and threads and at Unpacking Peanuts on Facebook, Blue Sky and YouTube.
And we would love to hear from you, because remember, when I don't hear, I worry.
(50:47):
But that's it for this week.
Come back next week when we cover more strips from 1995.
Until then, from Michael, Harold and Liz, this is Jimmy saying, be of good cheer.
Harold (50:57):
Yes, be of good cheer.
Liz (51:00):
Unpacking Peanuts is copyrighted by Jimmy Gownley, Michael Cohen, Harold Buchholz and Liz Sumner.
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.
(51:23):
For more about Jimmy, Michael and Harold, visit unpackingpeanuts.com.
Have a wonderful day and thanks for listening.
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Ding dong! Join your culture consultants, Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang, on an unforgettable journey into the beating heart of CULTURE. Alongside sizzling special guests, they GET INTO the hottest pop-culture moments of the day and the formative cultural experiences that turned them into Culturistas. Produced by the Big Money Players Network and iHeartRadio.
40s and Free Agents: NFL Draft Season
Daniel Jeremiah of Move the Sticks and Gregg Rosenthal of NFL Daily join forces to break down every team's needs this offseason.
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.