July 24, 2025 • 52 mins
Good Grief! Today, we're talking about a man whose creations are so ingrained in our culture, you probably think he was born with a beagle on his head and a football perpetually being pulled away.
In this episode of Dirt Nap City, we're diving into the wonderfully neurotic, surprisingly profound, and undeniably complex world of Charles M. Schulz, the artistic mastermind behind Peanuts! Forget your grand pronouncements and epic battles, because Schulz gave us something far more enduring: a bald kid who never wins, a dog with an identity crisis, and a psychiatrist who charges five cents.
But how did a quiet kid from Minnesota, nicknamed "Sparky," become the philosophical voice of generations? We'll journey back to the early days, when Peanuts wasn't even Peanuts! (Prepare for some seriously un-catchy original titles, folks.) Discover the surprising influences that shaped Schulz's unique brand of humor, from the little red haired girl that he had a crush on, to a real-life dog named Spike who might have been the original Snoopy. Snoopy's antics often defied gravity and common sense – much like our own lives! We'll unpack the moments that propelled Peanuts from a modest comic strip to a global phenomenon, spawning TV specials, Broadway shows, and enough merchandise to fill a thousand doghouses.
We'll also chuckle at the often-overlooked absurdity of the Peanuts universe: Lucy's perpetual bossiness, Linus's unwavering devotion to his security blanket (and the sheer bravery of anyone who tried to take it), and Charlie Brown's relentless pursuit of happiness, often just missing it by a hair.
So don't be a blockhead, grab your security blanket and join Alex and Kelly as we celebrate the genius of Charles M. Schulz and the enduring, often hilarious, legacy of Peanuts. Good grief, you won't want to miss it!
Drop us a quick text and we’ll reply in the next episode!
Dirt Nap City is the podcast about the most interesting dead people in history.
Subscribe and listen to learn about people you've heard of, but don't know much about.
Someday we'll all live in Dirt Nap City, so you should probably go ahead and meet the neighbors!
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Unknown (00:07):
Hello.
That was great, was it? Yeah? Ilike the fact that you backed
away from the mic as you gotlouder. That's real
professional, now, yeah, for theamateur, you know, blowing out
your your ears. Is that whatthey call it in the business,
red lining. It, yeah, yeah,peaking. It's peaking, like
(00:32):
hitting up at the highestlevels. Sure the red, hitting
the red hurts. That hurts. Bu,Vu, volume units, what are ohms?
That's, that's an electricalthing.
Okay, volume, volume units,yeah, your VU meter. It's called
a VU meter. And if it's, if it'sin the red, then it starts to
(00:52):
get a little crackly.
You want to be around minus six,minus, okay. Well, welcome to
another episode of dirt navcity. My name is Alex. I'm here
with my friend Kelly. How youdoing? Kelly? I'm doing well.
I'm doing well. I'm glad thatwe're here doing this today. I
decided to get a little dressedup for you. And, you know, put
(01:14):
myself in my podcasting place.
Yeah? Like, yeah. Thanks. Thanksfor the dress. Dressing up. Got
a nice suit. Yeah? Tie today.
See another, another look likeour award show with our 100
best. Yeah, now that I'm lookingcloser, that is a T shirt that
looks like a suit, right, withthe sleeves cut off the use,
(01:35):
Yeah, huge. You know, this is apodcast about interesting, dead
people, that's right.
And we're well past our 100episodes, and we're, we're
getting to the, we're still onfamous people, though. You know,
it's, it's gonna be a whilebefore we get to the non famous
people. I think, right, right?
And I think that's, that's anatural evolution, right? People
(01:57):
want to hear about just averageJoes. That's, that's, we'll have
to change the tagline, probablysure, you know, like I said,
we'll get to everyoneeventually, just, you know, wait
your turn. But we're gonnaconcentrate on some famous folks
for now. There's a lot of deadpeople. There are a lot of dead
people, and more and more addedevery day. That's the beauty of
it.
(02:18):
Wow. Never thought, neverthought about it that way, that
it's thatpeople dying is just more
content for us. Yeah, exactly.
We're just we're all about thecontent. If it takes people
dying to get it, then that's sobe it. Well, I'm going to talk
about somebody today who isexactly in our wheelhouse, kind
(02:39):
of surprised we haven't done himyet. Okay,
white guy from the 20th centuryicon.
Not that we're restrictingourselves to to white guys, it's
but you know, you do what youknow best, and we're a couple
old white guys, so it would beonly natural that we we lean
(03:04):
that way. But this guy's anicon, okay, born in 1922 in
Minneapolis, Minnesota, okay,died in 2000
in Santa Rosa, California. SantaRosa. Santa. Is that near Los
Angeles? Think so. Yeah. Okay, Ithink so. And Make Him 78 years
(03:26):
oldwhen he died, yeah. Okay, yeah.
And right now is the 75thanniversary of his, his the
work that he's known for themost, hmm, 75 years of the work.
(03:47):
You mean specifically his work,or just that type of work? Yeah,
his, his, hisinvention, or his work, his, I
don't know. It's not aninvention. Was he an artist?
Yes, okay, but sure, an artist,yes, okay. I mean, loosely
defined. I mean you,you wouldn't probably see his
(04:11):
stuff primarily in galleries,although there's probably
galleries that have his stuffmore commercially available. I
guarantee you've held several ofhis drawings in your hand.
I've held his. Oh, okay, okay.
Did he draw on money orsomething like that? Or draw not
(04:35):
money, but drew on newspapers.
Mm, hmm, yeah, so was it acartoon? Is it Charles Schultz,
you got it, man, hey, good one,yeah, he he didn't go by Charles
or Charlie. He went by Chuck. Hewent by Sparky. Sparky. Charles
(04:59):
Schultz, aka.
Sparky. He was an only child,and his nickname was Sparky,
okay, and his uncle gave himthat name after a comic strip.
There was a comic strip with ahorse, and the horse's name was
spark plugstrip. The Comic Strip was
called Barney Google. BarneyGoogle, all right, have you ever
(05:21):
heard of Barney Google? No,I've. I've heard of those things
individually, but not togetheras one thing. Apparently, Barney
Google was really, reallypopular, okay, back in, back in
the day, back in the, you know,1920s
and that comic still exists. Um,although you it's it kind of one
(05:47):
of the lesser characters havetaken over. Now, in this comic
strip, the lesser character'sname is Snuffy Smith. Snuffy
Smith, no, huh? No, no. Well,the comic is still running. It's
been running for 100 years now,since 1919
Snuffy Smith is the maincharacter now, but that only
makes it the third longestrunning comic. There's two
(06:09):
comics that have been runninglonger than this Snuffy Smith,
wow, and they sound when you saythem, it's like, Yeah, I've
heard of that, but I'm not areally big comic guy. The cats
and jammer kids. Never heard ofthat one, really. Jammer kids,
okay, so, like The LittleRascals kind of thing. I mean,
it's a comic strip so andgasoline alley, your gasoline?
(06:32):
Yes, I've seen that one thatthat's been around forever, but
Barney Google was so popularthat that they say he was the
inspiration. That character wasthe inspiration for the number
Google, which just the thereally big, like the biggest
number that you can 100 zerosafter it is what a Google is.
(06:53):
And a Google was the inspirationfor the company Google. So in a
way, Barney Google was theinspiration was the forerunner
to the company we known asGoogle right now. Okay, Barney
Google, so Charles Schultz willcall him Sparky from here on
out, because he really hated hisname. He never really answered
to Charles or chuck or orCharlie or anything. No
(07:16):
derivatives of Charles. No, no.
In fact, Charlie Brown wasn'teven named after him. It wasn't
named after his one of hisfriends. He grew up telling
people he was going to be afamous cartoonist one day. But
he wasn't. He didn't have any hewasn't arrogant or cocky. He
just was really focused. So hehe, you know, just just had a
(07:36):
hunch that if he just kept at itthat he would be famous someday.
He was a smart kid. He skippedtwo and a half grades. That's,
that's a lot. That is, how doyou skip half a grade? That's,
that's a weird one. I could seetwo or three, but two and a
half, I guess maybe you finishthe first semester, and then you
just skip right to the nextgrade. Okay, wow. Christmas time
(07:58):
or something. But when he wasyounger, he drew a picture of
his dog. His dog's name wasspike, if you remember, Snoopy.
Was it his alter ego? Yeah, Iguess his friend or something,
was named spike. I I mean, Iknow he pretended to be the Red
Baron a lot. That's a goodquestion. I don't remember
(08:20):
another dog named spike. Yeah,yeah. Anyways, he drew a picture
of his dog who kind of lookedlike Snoopy, although he wasn't
the same. He was a pointer, nota beagle, but he sent it to
Ripley's, believe it or not, andI guess they used to have
comics, strips, or books orsomething, and Ripley's
published it and said, This is ahunting dog that eats pins,
(08:42):
tacks and razor blades. Is ownedby CF Schultz, st, Paul,
Minnesota, and drawn by Sparky.
Oh, wow. Kind of his firstpublication. Wow.
When he created Snoopy, hewanted to call it sniffy.
Yeah, that's not as good. Well,someone else had used sniffy, so
(09:05):
he had to use a second choicecalled Snoopy. But yeah, I feel
like sniffy wouldn't have madeit like sniffy. Sniffy sounds
like sort of, I'm just remindedof tissues immediately, you
know. And again, his the, youknow, if his favorite comic was
Snuffy Smith. Sniffy is a littletoo close to Snuffy, right,
right. And again, it soundssick. It does. Snoopy is a good
(09:28):
name, though it is, it is. I'veoften wondered if Snoop Dogg was
inspired by Snoopy. Well, it washe. Snoop Dogg was named that
way because his becauseof the way it looked
when he was growing up. So they,yeah, they, it's, I think his
family named him Snoop, okay,Calvin. Calvin brought us, but
(09:53):
he's not dead, so we can't talkabout him, right, right?
You know, sparkies, you.
High school yearbook rejectedhis drawings, really, which he
was probably going to give themfor free? Yeah, of course. Now
they have, like, a big statue,like a five foot tall statue of
Snoopy in the lobby of the highschool, sure, sure. But at the
(10:16):
time, they rejected hisdrawings, and that's kind of a
theme of this guy, you know, thething I want to
talk about when and just thinkabout when you when you think
about Sparky Schultzis just kind of how before
people talked openly aboutanxieties and insecurities and
(10:40):
and those things that we carrywith us. He was out there with
his characters, kind of showingthings like insecurity, and he
had a lot of them. He had a lotof neuroses.
But that was, you know, that wasone of his first big setbacks,
was when his high schoolwouldn't even publish his
drawings. And he kind of tookthese things and internalized
them and brought him out in hisin his work. So he worked at a
(11:03):
place called Art instruction,Inc, and he didn't work there
long, but a lot of his friendsand co workers there became
inspirations for his charactersalong the way. Then World War
Two broke out, kind of towardsthe end of the war, he was
drafted in the army, and he wasa squad leader on a machine gun
team in Europe. Wow, but hewasn't very good at it. He would
(11:25):
tell you, he wasn't very good atit. He only had one opportunity
to fire the machine guns, and heforgot to load the machine gun.
It was a German soldier standingthere, and luckily for him, the
soldier surrendered before herealized that he forgot. And you
know, you know what he probablysaid. Probably said, Good grief.
(11:46):
There you go. There you go. AndGood grief, another example of,
like, just kind of showing yourneuroses, right? Sparky, you
block head. Sparky was kind of ablockhead when it came to
fighting. So when he came homefrom the war, he published his
cartoons in a book, an anticommunist comic book. I remember
(12:08):
this is, you know, the mid 40s,and the book was called, is this
tomorrow? And there was a panel.
It was a one panel, single panelstrip, kind of like Family
Circus, right? Yeah, you havesome one fan one panel strips.
You got one, one chance to befunny,
yeah? And the joke, the onepanel jokes, and the comic strip
(12:32):
was called Low folks, l, I, L,of course. Okay, little folks.
Little folks and, and that waskind of the beginning of the
what was later known as aspeanuts. A lot of the characters
were the same, or at leastCharlie Brown was introduced.
There was a dog that looked likeSnoopy. Was called rover. Okay,
(12:55):
talked about Beethoven a lot,yeah, yeah.
But the prime, the primary thingthat was the same was, it was
kids saying things that werekind of above their years, or
things that adults might say,right? And I think that's the,
the main takeaway from the fromthe Peanuts comic strip, when
(13:15):
you think about it, it was kidssaying things that kids wouldn't
say, you know, using big wordsand talking about, you know,
things that adults kind of andthis was little folks, little
folks, little folks, littlefolks. Okay,
he got paid 10 bucks persubmission. Charlie Brown was
(13:36):
introduced as a character in1948 Okay, and named after a
coworker of his art instructionplace named Charlie Brown. That
comic ran fromhe took it out of the
from the that is this tomorrowmagazine to the st, his hometown
(13:57):
paper, the St Paul para newpress, and ran from 1947 to 1950
and then he shopped it aroundand went to work for United
Feature Syndicate. Oh, yeah,yeah, yeah. You see that at the
Yeah. You see that at the bottomof those strips all the time.
(14:19):
That was in 1950 but because hewas, he was moving it for legal
reasons, they had to change thename Little they couldn't use
little folks anymore. The StPaul paper owned it, so the
United Feature Syndicate changedthe name to peanuts, which he
didn't really, Sparky didn'thave a say in at all. Yeah, he
(14:41):
hated the name. I kind of, Imean, it seems to match, because
we're used to it. It's what wegrew up with, right? But I never
call it peanuts, yeah, yeah, Idon't think anybody does. People
call it Charlie Brown. Peoplecall it Snoopy, yeah. I think
his hunch was right. Nobodycalls it peanuts, really. It's
like the official name. But, youknow.
Might say, Who's your favoritepeanuts character? But then
(15:02):
people go, what's peanuts? Yeah,he hated it. He said it sounded
trivial. Or he said, I don'twant people to think this is
about food. And also, he wantedto get paid more than that,
right? I mean, when they saythey're going to pay you in
peanuts, that's usually meansyou're not getting paid very
well. And boy, did he get paidwell eventually,
at its apex, peanuts waspublished daily in 2600
(15:27):
newspapers in 75 countries, wow,in 21 different languages. And
in the 50 years that he drew it,he drew almost 18,000 published
strips, producing a billiondollars in revenue a year. A
year. He a year. Wow, he wastaken in like 30 to 40 million a
(15:50):
year, which sounds like a smallpercentage of a billion, doesn't
it? Yeah, it does. But I guessthat billion was spread out
across all those differentthree to 4% goes to him. Wow,
that's amazing. Doesn't seemYeah. He only took one vacation
in his 50 years for his 75thbirthday in 1997 he took a five
(16:11):
week break, and the papers ranlike reruns, basically, like a
best of Yeah, thing, yeah. Thatwas the only, only vacation he
ever took in his life. So So ispeanut still published today.
They showed they in a lot ofpapers. They should they put,
(16:32):
well, papers aren't doing thatgreat anymore, but yeah, they
put the old ones on there. Butthere's as new ones. They're not
no, in fact, as a condition heput in his, I guess he put it in
his will. He said, nobody candraw this once I'm gone, nobody,
nobody can take it over. I ownthis, taking it to the grave
(16:53):
with me, what in terms of comicstrips? Now, since he never
considered the other media, likemovies and TV specials, the same
as comic strips. So they aremaking new ones. I think there's
a new one coming on Apple TVcalled something about the
Franklin. Remember Franklin?
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I rememberFranklin. He was representative
(17:16):
character in the in theotherwise mostly white group.
Yeah. So Franklin was introducedright after, like weeks after
MLK was assassinated.
Okay, so he introduces thisAfrican American character, but,
um, never did much with himthere. He's never the he was
(17:39):
never the sender of any story,he was just kind of there.
So, you know, this, the Sparkywas, you know, he was ahead of
the curve. He was, I guess youcould say he was progressive on
some of the things. But this is,you know, slow progression
through a white Midwesternerspoint of a lens, yeah. So, like,
(18:00):
you've got Franklin, but you'renot doing anything with them.
And there's a famous cell, Iguess, which call those
pictures, right? When we talkedabout some of these other
things, we talked about howthose are called cells, right?
Yeah, yeah. And there's a famousone of, like, all the kids in
the lunchroom, and Franklinsitting at a table by himself,
wow, and that was just drawnthat way. That was, I don't
(18:23):
think it was Sparky. I don'tknow. I don't think Sparky was
trying to say it should be thatway. Maybe he was saying it is
that way, or maybe he was justdrawing, who knows, he never
really addressed those kind ofthings. Gotcha, but it was out
there, and he was critic. Well,he's criticized now for that
kind of thing, but maybe he wastrying to make a commentary.
(18:45):
Like, if you notice this, thenyou should do something about
this or something. But he drewthat cell, he drew that frame,
yeah, but he didn't like draw itas, uh,
as a standalone, like it wasn'ta one strip thing. Part of that
would be some other it was partof some other longer cartoon.
(19:05):
And people just had that one andsaid, Look at this segregation
going on now. Man, if you could,if that had been a single cell
comic strip, that would havealmost been like a political
cartoon, yeah, yeah. You justdraw a single cell of a bunch of
kids at a but, but it wasn'tlike you said,
so those kind of things he wasahead of the curve on. I mean,
(19:28):
there wasn't any other comicsthat even had African American
characters. Soin a way, he was ahead of the
curve. But like I say, he didn'tdo anything with it. Right now,
there's a special coming out in2025 about Franklin. It took,
you know, 75 years to for him toget his own special but, but,
yeah, that's part of the legacy,you know. So, so now they are
(19:50):
also met life, right? ThePeanuts are sort of the mascot
like that life. Yeah?
Licensed as, yeah, MetLife, arethey them? And also, I think Six
Flags also has, like, CampSnoopy, Oh, really. They started
(20:11):
off at Knott's Berry Farm, okay?
And now I think Six Flags hasthem, and they have the Bugs
Bunny characters, and they'reallowed to run around in mascot
custom. So all that stuff islicensed. They just nobody can
draw new comic strips.
So did you? Did you watch thethe seasonal or holiday specials
(20:31):
that would come out?
You know, I watched the two, thetwo big ones, the Charlie Brown
Christmas and the Great wasgreat pumpkin, yeah. And the
Great Pumpkin, Charlie BrownChristmas actually came out in
1965 Wow.
And, you know, that's the kindof thing. You don't even it's
always around. You don't knowwhen it came out. You might have
(20:54):
thought it came out later thanthat. Yeah, it was, it was just
always there. And in the daysbefore, video on demand when you
had to actually catch it at atime that was going to play. I
can remember as a kid hearing,you know, watching NBC or
whatever in Houston, and itwould say, Oh, this Thursday,
we're going to play the CharlieBrown Christmas special. And we
(21:15):
would make an appointment, youknow, we would, we would time to
watch it. Oh, yeah, for sure.
Let's talk about some of thecharacters.
You remember the little redhaired girl?
Yeah, yeah, that was who CharlieBrown had a crush on. He had a
crush on her, and it was kind ofunrequited, right? Like she
didn't know he existed, right?
And like him back, that's basedon a real life person, and it
(21:39):
was a really big moment in hislife. I mean, a big thing that
she was a coworker of his atthat
at that art school, art school,she was an accountant, actually,
and he got up enough nerve toask her to marry him, and she
(22:00):
turned him down.
Oh, well, wait, wait, wait, so,so he asked her, asked her to
marry him, but that seems likeskipping over a lot, like, how
about let's go out for coffeefirst, right? In fact, he was so
clueless about it. The reasonshe turned him down is she was
already engaged to somebodyelse, and he didn't know it. No,
(22:21):
he didn't know it. Wow. Nowthat's a blockhead move, right?
That is a block Wow.
Yeah, yeah. I mean, you can see,like, the direct line between
him and those characters, likehe's so brilliant that he skips
two and a half grades, but notenough. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's
so weird.
(22:41):
On Valentine's Day in 2011 theCharles Schultz Museum in
Minneapolis gave free admissionto all redheads, nice, but
apparently this was a really bigmoment, like he said, that was
the only I mean, he's warytwice, and he still talked about
this lady as the only true lovehe ever had and
(23:04):
and that he was the worst day ofhis life when she turned him
down like it was the the onethat got away, or whatever, the
real lady, you know, poor thingshe had to live with this once
he kind of outed her as the ladyshe kind of had to always
apologize for. Do you have hername? Do you have her name?
Her name was,I do is she's still alive?
(23:29):
She she died?
Anddid she die of a broken heart?
Is the question.
She wasn't into himwell before, before, he was, uh,
famous and rich. She wasn't but,but after, after, she was no
gold digger or anything. No, allright, no, she, um, her name was
(23:50):
Donna Mae Johnson, Donna Donnamay with the hyphen. No, no,
three and three words, sheactually, she actually died in
2016but there's some people that say
that they were romanticallyinvolved and they dated for
three years. But if that's thecase, then how do you how is she
(24:12):
engaged to somebody else? Idon't, I don't really understand
it.
Yeah, I don't really get thatpart. Maybe it's better we just
leave that a mystery,yeah, but, but this Donna may
Johnson, like I said, kind ofouted who she was. So she was
kind of a, a public person, in away,
(24:34):
for for a while. Isn't that kindof weird? Yeah, yeah, to be, to
be well, especially for that,right? That's that's just a
really weird thing to be knownfor. Well, they remain friends
for the rest of his life. And hesaid, I can think of no more
emotionally damaging loss thanto be turned down by someone who
(24:54):
you love very much, a person whonot only turns you down, but
almost immediately will marrythe.
Victor. What a bitter blow. Thatis, like, that's crazy,
right? Yeah. I mean, you'rehearing one side of it there,
right? You're just hearing,you're just hearing this, his
butt hurt side, yeah? Maybe,like I said, they were friends
(25:15):
his whole life, you know, they,you know, she was small town
Minnesota girl, yeah, I wonderif her husband, the guy that he
actually did, she actually didmarry. I wonder if he was like,
Please don't talk to me aboutpeanuts. I'm done with that,
right, right? I would be if Iwas him, you wouldn't want to
talk about it, or would you wantto talk about it maybe once and
(25:37):
then and but not like, bring itup at every party we go to or be
known for it. You know, somebodysaid, tell us a fun fact about
yourself. Be like, you know, Imarried the little redheaded
girl, right, right? I My, mywife was the one who broke
Charles Schultz's or Sparkyheart. My wife chose me over a
billionaire, yeah, yeah, yeah,he Linus. Remember Linus? Yeah,
(26:04):
with a blanket, yeah. Linus wasnamed after his Sparky, his best
friend, okay? And they werefriends his whole life. They
were friends even, even in hislater years, they would go out
for coffee like every day. Youknow, Linus. Linus was another
fellow cartoonist. I think atthat art institute, he ended up
being a political cartoonist inthe
(26:30):
in the comic. Do you rememberwhat Linus? His last name is,
Linus and Lucy Van Pelt, yeah.
You got it, yeah. All right,you're real. You're a real fan.
I don't know why I rememberthat, but Linus Van Pelt, Lucy
Van Pelt, Peppermint Patty.
Yeah, so, so funny thing I justa couple of days ago, for some
reason, had searched forsomething online, and I came up
(26:53):
with peppermint patty and andPeppermint Patty was kind of
ahead of her time in the wholegender thing, right? The the
they them, Peppermint Pattyprobably would have been a they
them, right?
I don't think so. No, I don'tthink so. No, well, well,
(27:15):
because, because Marcy called,called Peppermint Patty, sir,
did? She did, yeah, and, andthere was kind of a weird
dynamic there. I don't know ifweird is not the right word, but
there was a dynamic betweenthem. Yeah, it was like Marcy
was in love with peppermintpatty, but Peppermint Patty was
oblivious. Peppermint Patty wasin was in love with Charlie
(27:37):
Brown, right? So PeppermintPatty was introduced in 1966
so she's not in Charlie BrownChristmas that came out the year
before. Oh, okay, um, that wasinspired by his favorite cousin,
who happened to have peppermintcandies in her house, and she
lived in, I think, California,the candy Peppermint Patty had
(28:02):
been out for 25 years already,but those were only on the East
Coast, so he didn't name itafter pep think it's a
coincidence. Didn't name it, hewouldn't have known about the
candy, and the candy definitelywasn't named after the character
because it had already been out.
But I think it was acoincidence. You're talking
about the York Peppermint Patty?
(28:22):
Yeah, right. When I bite into aYork Peppermint Patty, I get the
sensation of, remember thosecommercials? Yeah. They have
nothing to do with thedo you do? You know, this is a
real, real deep cut. Do you knowwhat Peppermint Patty's real
name was in the character name,I don't
Patricia, Reichardt. Patricia,and that was actually his
(28:46):
secretary's last name wasReichardt. He used a lot of the
people around him, okay, um, herroommate. His secretary's
roommate was the model. Was themodel for Marcy. She looked just
like Marcy. Marcy had glasses,right? And the running gag early
on, for like 10 years, therunning gag was that Peppermint
(29:07):
Patty didn't know that Snoopywas a dog. She thought he was
just a funny looking kid with abig nose. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. I
remember that. I remember thatshe would just say stuff like,
yeah, you can be on my team, orYeah. She would just talk to him
like he was a kid. And even,like, there was some, there was
a plot where Snoopy went toobedience school and she thought
(29:27):
he was, like, at a school forgifted children or something
she's never, never got okay. Andpeppermint Hattie also was known
for, she got a D minus on everyschool assignment or exam, just
scraping by right? And there wasone episode or a
instance where her teacher gaveher admittance into the D minus
(29:48):
Hall of Fame. Okay, I don'tremember so, you know. So going
back to what you're sayingbefore pepper and Patty, she
shows up in the 60s. She's gotsandals. She's got, if you watch
the cartoon, she's got a deepvoice.
She got a best friend who callsher sir.
The LGBT community really tookthat as what they call queer
(30:09):
coding. Or, you know, examplesof somebody
being a part of the communitywithout saying that, right,
okay? He never commented one wayor they he knew about it. He
never confirmed or denied it,and that was kind of how he was.
He did his characters. Didn'thave to explain themselves.
(30:30):
He wasn't running away from it,but he wasn't running towards it
either. He was just kind of, itwas out there. Just was what it
was. Yeah, like, I say the a lotof people. There's been, you
know, probably dissertationswritten about how pepper patty
is a member of the gay communityand and all the reasons why.
(30:51):
Basically, he drew her as atomboy who, like you said, was
called Sir, right? The idea,though, that a woman calling a
woman sir and the 60s was prettyrevolutionary, just the idea
that you could get away withsomething like that. And again,
these are children, and bymaking them children, it's maybe
(31:13):
you can introduce some themeslike that, if you want to,
without being so threatening,right. Right disarms people.
Again. He never really talkedabout this kind of stuff. So was
he a revolutionary progressive,or was he just kind of
inadvertently commenting on thisstuff? I don't know.
He considered Jim Davis hisbiggest rival in the game. You
(31:36):
know, Jim Davis is, yeah, yeah.
Hold on. Jim Davis drew,I know Bill Keen was Family
Circus, yeah. Who is Jim Davis,the Garfield guy? Garfield,
that's it. Thank you. He was alittle jealous. He was his
mentor. He was, he was JimDavis's mentor. But he was also
a little jealous when Garfield,like in the 80s, when Garfield
(31:58):
kind of made it big and was outearning peanuts, you know,
little comic book rivalry, yeah.
But they, like I said, they werecomic strip right, mentors and
friends and all that kind ofstuff. But, but yeah, so
(32:19):
when he died in 2000there was more than 100
comics that day that madereferences to the
to peanuts, oh yeah. All theother, all the other comic
strips made a reference toSparky, yeah. And there's a
website that I was looking attoday that has where you could
(32:40):
just click on it and see thestrip for that day. And everyone
from BC to funky winker bean toFamily Circus to, you know,
Dilbert beetle, Bailey and allthese,
it was crazy. They would justmake little references to it,
even, yeah, BC or Haggar, thehorrible even, yeah, oh yeah.
(33:01):
Hagar, the horse dressed up, wasdressed up in, like Charlie
Brown, he said, he came out.
Remember those were Vikings?
Yeah, right. He had the horns onhis head. So in that one he's he
came out. And he said, What doyou think of my new look? And he
had, like, Charlie Brown's shirtwith the the yellow and, you
know, the stripes. And then theother Vikings said, Good grief,
(33:24):
Oh, wow. This stuff's nothilarious. Most of it's not even
funny. A lot of it's just sortof like, Huh, you know, you just
kind of like, Huh? I know that'sthe thing. That's the thing I
always think about these comicstrips is they're not they're
humorous, I suppose, in thebroadest sense of the word.
I was never a really big likefunny papers guy, you know?
(33:47):
Well, I think the thing is, youbecome invested in the
characters. If you read it everyday or every Sunday or whatever,
you'd become invested in thecharacters. And then it didn't
have to be funny. It just waskind of like, you knew what
their tropes were. You knew whatthey were possibly going to do,
and then you saw what they did.
(34:07):
Do, you know, I was like, Ohyeah, I didn't expect that, or I
did expect that, right? Yeah,there were, there were several
comics that I read prettyregularly. My grandparents got
me a sort of anthology of FamilyCircus. So I had a lot of those.
I didn't pretty funny. Funny,no,
(34:28):
Kelly, there's, there's, therewas one where funny. There is
one whereyou see the the mom, the Family
Circus mom, and she's lookingaway from this doorway, and she
got a look of shock, and she'sdropped the dishes like the
dishes are falling off of aplate that she was holding. And
then in the in the through thedoorway, you see Jeffy coming
(34:49):
out, and he says, Hey everybody,I want to show you my birthday
suit. And he's wearing a suitlike he's got a he's got a suit
that he's gonna wear hisbirthday. But.
She thinks birthday suit, as inwhat he was born in, that he
walked out naked. That's funny.
I can't tell if you're prankingme right now, the only thing
less funny than Family Circus islistening to somebody explain.
(35:10):
Well, you know, itwas called Family Circle
originally, and then they had tochange it.
But Calvin and Hobbes. What didyou think of Calvin and Hobbes?
I was never really into that.
What about a lot of people wereand the far side? Oh, the far
side. The far side was so good.
(35:30):
Well, we mentioned, youmentioned some of the tropes. We
mentioned how those characterskind of a reflection of some of
the neuroses that he had. Solet's break down some of those.
So Charlie Brown was all aboutkind of rejection and low self
worth, low self esteem, right?
Walking around like he like,just insecure, you know, just
(35:52):
openly insecure about everythinghe was worried about everything
right now, do you think thatsong by, I don't know if it was
the coasters or the drifters,but Charlie Brown. Charlie Brown
dude, he's a clown dude. ThatCharlie Brown. You know that one
thinks so. Yeah, that waseverybody always thinking, Oh,
(36:13):
me. I don't think that hadanything to do with it. But I
don't know. Yeah, I don't knowwhat song, what year that song
came. I think that was acoincidence. It was a great
song. Yeah, I don't think thethe Venn diagram of of those two
fans even intersect that muchfrom back then. Hmm, okay, you
know Charlie, I mean peanuts wasa pretty white bread, Midwestern
(36:37):
audience kind of comic strip,you know, what song would have
been kind of revolutionary,like, I'm sure a lot of the
peanuts fans weren't really intothat. Yeah, I mean, I think it's
talking about who calls theteacher Daddy O, and it's
Charlie Brown. He that CharlieBrown, I guess had had some
attitude this. Charlie Brown didnot. He was just a kid running
(37:00):
around, insecure of himself, butnot in a way that a child would
be insecure or even a teenagermore like, more like an adult,
an adult, right? These weren'tteen angst, right? This wasn't
this, and he wasn't even ateenager. He was he was a kid.
He was in touch with hisfeelings way more than most kids
(37:20):
were. So he was substituting foran adult that felt that way,
right? What do you think abouthim always trying to kick the
football? Well, you know, theyasked
when Sparky got sick, he hadcancer, and when, when he got
sick, they asked him, you knowwhen, and he said he was going
(37:41):
to hang it up. In fact, his lat,the last one, was released the
day after he died. The timingcouldn't have been more perfect.
But they asked him, will Charliefinally kick the football? And
he said, No, no, that would be aterrible thing to do to him.
Like that would be, you know,kind of against type. But then
later on, and is at the very,very end, he says, You know, I
(38:04):
think it was cruel what I did bynot letting him actually get a
shot at the at the football. Oh,wow, Linus. Remember, Linus was
really smart, yeah, yeah. Hewould, he would give these sort
of soliloquies or speeches aboutthings that were like in the
Christmas special, you know, hesure told the whole story of of
of the North Star and the threekings and the baby Jesus and all
(38:26):
that stuff. Yeah, yeah. In fact,that whole, this whole success
of that show was kind of odd,that these had these long, like
Bible verses, and it was really,like melancholy, kind of sad,
and had a jazz soundtrack,right, right? Who would have
ever predicted that that wouldhave made it and it was all
Sparky. It was all his idea,right? If you ran that through a
(38:52):
focus group or a bunch of studioexecutives, they would have lots
of notes about those things, andit wouldn't end up looking like
it did, but he just was gonnaput out. What he put out, you
know, Can you name the jazzgroup that played?
Yeah, the Vince geraldi.
Geraldi, yeah. And Vince geraldiwas a friend of his that and it
(39:14):
was kind of randomly chose him,like it was not a famous jazz
musician. It was a buddy is,well, the the peanuts theme is
amazing, right? It is, it's,it's one of my favorite pieces
of music ever, sure. Well, youknow, so, so back to Linus. He
was, like, really intellectualand smart, but he had this
crippling anxiety, right? Hewas, he was, he was probably
(39:35):
more anxious than Charlie Brownwas. These kids are running
around with all these differentlike, I say,
Lucy was kind of a very, you'dcall it back then, bossy. Yeah,
right, yeah, some of that stuffmaybe doesn't hold up so well.
But she was also aggressive. Shewas, like, an aggressive woman.
(40:01):
Person, she was probablyaggressively overcompensating,
right? For her, maybe, maybe sheshouldn't have been as secure as
she was. Snoopy, they say, waskind of represented escapist
fantasy, right? You know, likeSnoopy was the only one that
didn't have insecurities, but healso was kind of like not real,
(40:21):
right? Like he was, he was veryconfident and and definitely his
little daydreams about being theRed Baron or, you know, his, a
lot of times the comic stripwould just be about some little
game he was playing withWoodstock or with himself, you
know, right, right? And hisadventures always seemed kind of
independent of all the otherkids. They didn't really accept
(40:44):
what? Except for Charlie Brown,nobody really seemed to know
that Snoopy was like aanthropomorphic Right, right?
Then you've got pig pen, pigpen, pig pen.
That's a really big one in termsof that was outward shame,
right? He represented outwardshame. This he was literally,
(41:07):
you could see his he was wearinghis stigma, right? Somebody that
carried that around with him.
Um,Sparky said about him, he's a
human soil bank who raises acloud of dust on a perfectly
Green Clean Street, and passesout gumdrops that are invariably
black. But you know, he leanedinto it his stigma. He said, I'm
proud of these dust particles.
(41:30):
They've been around forcenturies. He knows he's being
laughed at every time you heardhim speak, he actually was
pretty intelligent and prettywell spoken. You know, it he
didn't, he didn't talk like thesort of slack jaw you expected
him to be. No, he said he's heknows he's being laughed at,
judged uninvited, but he playsalong because he's given up
(41:50):
trying to be accepted. That's apretty
advanced theme, right? Yeah, tobe walking around with like, the
reason that everybody can seethe reason that you're not
accepted on you, right? Did hehave a real name?
I don't think so. I don't thinkso. Like, like his name was
actually pig pen, and then hehad Schroeder. Yeah, Schroeder's
(42:12):
neurosis was obsessive fixation,right? Like, he was just a
perfectionist, and he had to gethe was the one that played the
piano. Yeah, Lucy had a crush onhim, but he was totally
oblivious to that. He was, like,so inwardly focused and, like,
obsessed with with certainthings, right? These characters
had deep issues.
(42:36):
Yeah, I just think that's kindof interesting, like, I'd never
really thought about until Iprepared for for this. And I was
like, Well, I just alwaysthought was this kind of unfunny
strip, but the fact that it madesuch a
iconic presence in the in the20th century must have, must
(42:57):
have been doing something,right? Well, maybe they were
relatable. You know, when itcame down to it, you could
people could relate to thecharacters. You know his, his
Hollywood star, his Walk of Famestar is right next to Walt,
Disney. Oh, I did not know that.
Did you know that the Apollo 10command module was named Charlie
Brown? I did know that yes andthat the lunar module was named
(43:21):
Snoopy. Yes, yes, I do recallthat. So he had, he Sparky also
had, you know, I mentioned hehad these insecurities. He'd say
things like, I'm not a greatcartoonist, and I'm not a great
artist, I'm not a great writer,I'm just good at what I do.
And they asked him if he wasCharlie Brown. He said, I'm not
(43:43):
Charlie Brown. I'm all of them.
He talked openly about feelingcreatively inadequate, not
happy. So the only time he wasever happy was when he was
writing the writing it, drawingit. Other than that, he was
never happy. He referred to eachblank. He said that, you know,
(44:04):
looking at that blank piece ofpaper every day was a new chance
to fail. This guy that did18,000 of these, he looked at
every one of them as a newchance to fail. And he's
bringing in 30, 40 million ayear of his own money, you know,
billion, a billion dollars ayear and you still ceiling,
seeing that as an opportunity tofail. That's kind of like every
(44:26):
new episode of dirt nap city forus, right? Yes, yes. That's how
I feel. I see that blank, blank,blank, blank canvas. He said,
sometimes I lie awake at nightand I think, what have I done
wrong? And then a voice says tome, this is going to take more
than one night. Oh, that soundslike it comes right out of the
Linus. Yeah. Linus isinsecurities, right? Yeah.
(44:50):
So I read that in 2006 he wasthe third highest earning dead
celebrity. Okay, we haven't donethis in a while. We did this
early on.
Yeah, yeah. I checked the 2024,list of highest earning dead
celebrities. All right, so is hein the top 10? He is, he is
(45:10):
number um eight, number eight.
Okay, so this is from last year.
He's number eight. And besideshim, there are only three others
that have. We've done episodeson and and, and besides him and
one other guy,like seven of them are rock
stars. Ah, okay, well, WaltDisney, of course. Nope, no,
(45:33):
nope. Now remember, this wouldbe the estate. I think the way
they calculate this is like theestate has this much money. So
this, usually, this is peopledoing being smart, with
investors catalog, oh yeah,their intellectual property,
yeah. So maybe Walt Disney,maybe they sold, maybe they
(45:58):
cashed out long time ago andthey're not still earning money.
You don't know, yeah, I guess,like that is different than the
Walt Disney Company, right?
Right? You're talking about theactual individual person's
estate, right? Well, who are theothers? So no,
let's go backwards from number10. Number 10 is one that we did
(46:19):
on dirt nap city. John Lennon,okay, okay, the estate of you
know, pretty remarkable, though,that he died, what? 60 years
ago?
45 years ago? Yeah, yeah. Fourdied in 1980 Oh, right, right,
right. But in 15 years, you'llbe able to look at this, listen
(46:39):
to that, right? Then 60 will bespot on, right? Yeah. 45 years
ago, number nine is MatthewPerry.
How is that even possible?
Friends brings in so much money?
Wow. And it probably just allstill goes to his, you know,
just the syndicated rights. Andwhat is it on? I don't know if
(47:02):
it's on max or Netflix, orwhatever it is. It brings the
money, but pretty amazing. Andnow this isn't, this isn't since
they've died, this is in 2024how much they made? How much
did, how much did MatthewPerry's estate make in 2024 did
itsay? See, does it actually have
a number$18 million Wow,just for doing nothing, just for
(47:27):
being who it is, and invested instuff? Yeah. Number eight is
Sparky. Number seven, BobMarley, okay. Number six.
Prints, Okay, number five,somebody who isn't in the same
in terms of, in terms of itscatalog, not the same category
(47:48):
as Prince or some of these, butinvested wisely or sold at the
right time. Rico Kasich from thecars, hmm, okay.
Kind of a weird like, if youlook at this list, he's kind of
the one that doesn't look likehe belongs. And maybe Matthew,
not as much of a house householdname, at least maybe for for you
(48:11):
and I, it is, but for mostpeople, I don't think Rick
o'casick is, is a very householdname, very recognizable, no lead
singer of the cars, of course,$45 million Wow died in 2019
he had a deal withprimary wave, which is a
publishing company that he soldhis name, image and likeness to,
(48:34):
just what I needed was named oneof the 500 Greatest Songs of All
Time. He sold 20 millionrecords. But still, I don't
think that's a name that wecould have sat here all day and
not come up with that name,right? Agreed, agreed,
especially when you considerthat. Number four is Elvis, wow,
yeah, I don't, I don't considerthem in the same category,
although, but okay. Numberthree, Dr Seuss, okay.
(49:00):
Number two, Freddie Mercury, Oh,wow. Okay, and number one,
making $500 million $600 millionin 2024 the King of Pop, Michael
Jackson. Ah, yeah, of course.
600 million Wow. That's just in,in not even producing new
(49:22):
content. Also owned. OwnsBeatles catalog. I think too,
right? That was a wiseinvestment.
Yeah, no kidding. They they havea
they're touring. They're makinga musical of Michael Jackson
in in Hamburg, Germany, they'regoing to open it. Well, I think
(49:46):
it's out now, yeah, I think it'sout now, but it pulls in like $6
million a week, no, so that'sgoing to add to that bottom
line. Yeah, it's crazy.
But yeah. Charles M Schultz, i.
Sparky Schultz, allright, man. Well, I'm glad to
share some Snoopy Snoopy taleswith you. Snoop it out.
(50:13):
Oh, Sparky space.
They call him Sparky since hewas a boy, drew in the margins.
Found his own joy in a world oflines and ink. He can fight a
quiet dream with nowhere tohide. The little red haired girl
danced in his mind. A love hadspoken, a heart undefined. He
(50:33):
sketched a smile, but never saida word in his comic world, her
laugh was hurt. Oh.
Oh, Sparky spent coarse skies inthe night. With every stroke he
(50:53):
chased thighin a world of fame, His heart
stayed trueto the Love and Dreams.
Slowly heknew the years rolled by. His
comics took flight,a household name under every
(51:16):
light, but deep inside the boystill remain
longing for love, untouched byfame.
Sparky, the artist, rich yetshy, wrote his soul with a
gentle sigh. In every panel, inevery frame, lived the heart of
(51:41):
a man who never changes.
Oh, sparkies pink are skiesin the night with every stroke
he chased the his heartstayed true to
(52:08):
Love and Dreams only he knew he
Hello.
That was great, was it? Yeah? Ilike the fact that you backed
away from the mic as you gotlouder. That's real
professional, now, yeah, for theamateur, you know, blowing out
your your ears. Is that whatthey call it in the business,
red lining. It, yeah, yeah,peaking. It's peaking, like
(00:32):
hitting up at the highestlevels. Sure the red, hitting
the red hurts. That hurts. Bu,Vu, volume units, what are ohms?
That's, that's an electricalthing.
Okay, volume, volume units,yeah, your VU meter. It's called
a VU meter. And if it's, if it'sin the red, then it starts to
(00:52):
get a little crackly.
You want to be around minus six,minus, okay. Well, welcome to
another episode of dirt navcity. My name is Alex. I'm here
with my friend Kelly. How youdoing? Kelly? I'm doing well.
I'm doing well. I'm glad thatwe're here doing this today. I
decided to get a little dressedup for you. And, you know, put
(01:14):
myself in my podcasting place.
Yeah? Like, yeah. Thanks. Thanksfor the dress. Dressing up. Got
a nice suit. Yeah? Tie today.
See another, another look likeour award show with our 100
best. Yeah, now that I'm lookingcloser, that is a T shirt that
looks like a suit, right, withthe sleeves cut off the use,
(01:35):
Yeah, huge. You know, this is apodcast about interesting, dead
people, that's right.
And we're well past our 100episodes, and we're, we're
getting to the, we're still onfamous people, though. You know,
it's, it's gonna be a whilebefore we get to the non famous
people. I think, right, right?
And I think that's, that's anatural evolution, right? People
(01:57):
want to hear about just averageJoes. That's, that's, we'll have
to change the tagline, probablysure, you know, like I said,
we'll get to everyoneeventually, just, you know, wait
your turn. But we're gonnaconcentrate on some famous folks
for now. There's a lot of deadpeople. There are a lot of dead
people, and more and more addedevery day. That's the beauty of
it.
(02:18):
Wow. Never thought, neverthought about it that way, that
it's thatpeople dying is just more
content for us. Yeah, exactly.
We're just we're all about thecontent. If it takes people
dying to get it, then that's sobe it. Well, I'm going to talk
about somebody today who isexactly in our wheelhouse, kind
(02:39):
of surprised we haven't done himyet. Okay,
white guy from the 20th centuryicon.
Not that we're restrictingourselves to to white guys, it's
but you know, you do what youknow best, and we're a couple
old white guys, so it would beonly natural that we we lean
(03:04):
that way. But this guy's anicon, okay, born in 1922 in
Minneapolis, Minnesota, okay,died in 2000
in Santa Rosa, California. SantaRosa. Santa. Is that near Los
Angeles? Think so. Yeah. Okay, Ithink so. And Make Him 78 years
(03:26):
oldwhen he died, yeah. Okay, yeah.
And right now is the 75thanniversary of his, his the
work that he's known for themost, hmm, 75 years of the work.
(03:47):
You mean specifically his work,or just that type of work? Yeah,
his, his, hisinvention, or his work, his, I
don't know. It's not aninvention. Was he an artist?
Yes, okay, but sure, an artist,yes, okay. I mean, loosely
defined. I mean you,you wouldn't probably see his
(04:11):
stuff primarily in galleries,although there's probably
galleries that have his stuffmore commercially available. I
guarantee you've held several ofhis drawings in your hand.
I've held his. Oh, okay, okay.
Did he draw on money orsomething like that? Or draw not
(04:35):
money, but drew on newspapers.
Mm, hmm, yeah, so was it acartoon? Is it Charles Schultz,
you got it, man, hey, good one,yeah, he he didn't go by Charles
or Charlie. He went by Chuck. Hewent by Sparky. Sparky. Charles
(04:59):
Schultz, aka.
Sparky. He was an only child,and his nickname was Sparky,
okay, and his uncle gave himthat name after a comic strip.
There was a comic strip with ahorse, and the horse's name was
spark plugstrip. The Comic Strip was
called Barney Google. BarneyGoogle, all right, have you ever
(05:21):
heard of Barney Google? No,I've. I've heard of those things
individually, but not togetheras one thing. Apparently, Barney
Google was really, reallypopular, okay, back in, back in
the day, back in the, you know,1920s
and that comic still exists. Um,although you it's it kind of one
(05:47):
of the lesser characters havetaken over. Now, in this comic
strip, the lesser character'sname is Snuffy Smith. Snuffy
Smith, no, huh? No, no. Well,the comic is still running. It's
been running for 100 years now,since 1919
Snuffy Smith is the maincharacter now, but that only
makes it the third longestrunning comic. There's two
(06:09):
comics that have been runninglonger than this Snuffy Smith,
wow, and they sound when you saythem, it's like, Yeah, I've
heard of that, but I'm not areally big comic guy. The cats
and jammer kids. Never heard ofthat one, really. Jammer kids,
okay, so, like The LittleRascals kind of thing. I mean,
it's a comic strip so andgasoline alley, your gasoline?
(06:32):
Yes, I've seen that one thatthat's been around forever, but
Barney Google was so popularthat that they say he was the
inspiration. That character wasthe inspiration for the number
Google, which just the thereally big, like the biggest
number that you can 100 zerosafter it is what a Google is.
(06:53):
And a Google was the inspirationfor the company Google. So in a
way, Barney Google was theinspiration was the forerunner
to the company we known asGoogle right now. Okay, Barney
Google, so Charles Schultz willcall him Sparky from here on
out, because he really hated hisname. He never really answered
to Charles or chuck or orCharlie or anything. No
(07:16):
derivatives of Charles. No, no.
In fact, Charlie Brown wasn'teven named after him. It wasn't
named after his one of hisfriends. He grew up telling
people he was going to be afamous cartoonist one day. But
he wasn't. He didn't have any hewasn't arrogant or cocky. He
just was really focused. So hehe, you know, just just had a
(07:36):
hunch that if he just kept at itthat he would be famous someday.
He was a smart kid. He skippedtwo and a half grades. That's,
that's a lot. That is, how doyou skip half a grade? That's,
that's a weird one. I could seetwo or three, but two and a
half, I guess maybe you finishthe first semester, and then you
just skip right to the nextgrade. Okay, wow. Christmas time
(07:58):
or something. But when he wasyounger, he drew a picture of
his dog. His dog's name wasspike, if you remember, Snoopy.
Was it his alter ego? Yeah, Iguess his friend or something,
was named spike. I I mean, Iknow he pretended to be the Red
Baron a lot. That's a goodquestion. I don't remember
(08:20):
another dog named spike. Yeah,yeah. Anyways, he drew a picture
of his dog who kind of lookedlike Snoopy, although he wasn't
the same. He was a pointer, nota beagle, but he sent it to
Ripley's, believe it or not, andI guess they used to have
comics, strips, or books orsomething, and Ripley's
published it and said, This is ahunting dog that eats pins,
(08:42):
tacks and razor blades. Is ownedby CF Schultz, st, Paul,
Minnesota, and drawn by Sparky.
Oh, wow. Kind of his firstpublication. Wow.
When he created Snoopy, hewanted to call it sniffy.
Yeah, that's not as good. Well,someone else had used sniffy, so
(09:05):
he had to use a second choicecalled Snoopy. But yeah, I feel
like sniffy wouldn't have madeit like sniffy. Sniffy sounds
like sort of, I'm just remindedof tissues immediately, you
know. And again, his the, youknow, if his favorite comic was
Snuffy Smith. Sniffy is a littletoo close to Snuffy, right,
right. And again, it soundssick. It does. Snoopy is a good
(09:28):
name, though it is, it is. I'veoften wondered if Snoop Dogg was
inspired by Snoopy. Well, it washe. Snoop Dogg was named that
way because his becauseof the way it looked
when he was growing up. So they,yeah, they, it's, I think his
family named him Snoop, okay,Calvin. Calvin brought us, but
(09:53):
he's not dead, so we can't talkabout him, right, right?
You know, sparkies, you.
High school yearbook rejectedhis drawings, really, which he
was probably going to give themfor free? Yeah, of course. Now
they have, like, a big statue,like a five foot tall statue of
Snoopy in the lobby of the highschool, sure, sure. But at the
(10:16):
time, they rejected hisdrawings, and that's kind of a
theme of this guy, you know, thething I want to
talk about when and just thinkabout when you when you think
about Sparky Schultzis just kind of how before
people talked openly aboutanxieties and insecurities and
(10:40):
and those things that we carrywith us. He was out there with
his characters, kind of showingthings like insecurity, and he
had a lot of them. He had a lotof neuroses.
But that was, you know, that wasone of his first big setbacks,
was when his high schoolwouldn't even publish his
drawings. And he kind of tookthese things and internalized
them and brought him out in hisin his work. So he worked at a
(11:03):
place called Art instruction,Inc, and he didn't work there
long, but a lot of his friendsand co workers there became
inspirations for his charactersalong the way. Then World War
Two broke out, kind of towardsthe end of the war, he was
drafted in the army, and he wasa squad leader on a machine gun
team in Europe. Wow, but hewasn't very good at it. He would
(11:25):
tell you, he wasn't very good atit. He only had one opportunity
to fire the machine guns, and heforgot to load the machine gun.
It was a German soldier standingthere, and luckily for him, the
soldier surrendered before herealized that he forgot. And you
know, you know what he probablysaid. Probably said, Good grief.
(11:46):
There you go. There you go. AndGood grief, another example of,
like, just kind of showing yourneuroses, right? Sparky, you
block head. Sparky was kind of ablockhead when it came to
fighting. So when he came homefrom the war, he published his
cartoons in a book, an anticommunist comic book. I remember
(12:08):
this is, you know, the mid 40s,and the book was called, is this
tomorrow? And there was a panel.
It was a one panel, single panelstrip, kind of like Family
Circus, right? Yeah, you havesome one fan one panel strips.
You got one, one chance to befunny,
yeah? And the joke, the onepanel jokes, and the comic strip
(12:32):
was called Low folks, l, I, L,of course. Okay, little folks.
Little folks and, and that waskind of the beginning of the
what was later known as aspeanuts. A lot of the characters
were the same, or at leastCharlie Brown was introduced.
There was a dog that looked likeSnoopy. Was called rover. Okay,
(12:55):
talked about Beethoven a lot,yeah, yeah.
But the prime, the primary thingthat was the same was, it was
kids saying things that werekind of above their years, or
things that adults might say,right? And I think that's the,
the main takeaway from the fromthe Peanuts comic strip, when
(13:15):
you think about it, it was kidssaying things that kids wouldn't
say, you know, using big wordsand talking about, you know,
things that adults kind of andthis was little folks, little
folks, little folks, littlefolks. Okay,
he got paid 10 bucks persubmission. Charlie Brown was
(13:36):
introduced as a character in1948 Okay, and named after a
coworker of his art instructionplace named Charlie Brown. That
comic ran fromhe took it out of the
from the that is this tomorrowmagazine to the st, his hometown
(13:57):
paper, the St Paul para newpress, and ran from 1947 to 1950
and then he shopped it aroundand went to work for United
Feature Syndicate. Oh, yeah,yeah, yeah. You see that at the
Yeah. You see that at the bottomof those strips all the time.
(14:19):
That was in 1950 but because hewas, he was moving it for legal
reasons, they had to change thename Little they couldn't use
little folks anymore. The StPaul paper owned it, so the
United Feature Syndicate changedthe name to peanuts, which he
didn't really, Sparky didn'thave a say in at all. Yeah, he
(14:41):
hated the name. I kind of, Imean, it seems to match, because
we're used to it. It's what wegrew up with, right? But I never
call it peanuts, yeah, yeah, Idon't think anybody does. People
call it Charlie Brown. Peoplecall it Snoopy, yeah. I think
his hunch was right. Nobodycalls it peanuts, really. It's
like the official name. But, youknow.
Might say, Who's your favoritepeanuts character? But then
(15:02):
people go, what's peanuts? Yeah,he hated it. He said it sounded
trivial. Or he said, I don'twant people to think this is
about food. And also, he wantedto get paid more than that,
right? I mean, when they saythey're going to pay you in
peanuts, that's usually meansyou're not getting paid very
well. And boy, did he get paidwell eventually,
at its apex, peanuts waspublished daily in 2600
(15:27):
newspapers in 75 countries, wow,in 21 different languages. And
in the 50 years that he drew it,he drew almost 18,000 published
strips, producing a billiondollars in revenue a year. A
year. He a year. Wow, he wastaken in like 30 to 40 million a
(15:50):
year, which sounds like a smallpercentage of a billion, doesn't
it? Yeah, it does. But I guessthat billion was spread out
across all those differentthree to 4% goes to him. Wow,
that's amazing. Doesn't seemYeah. He only took one vacation
in his 50 years for his 75thbirthday in 1997 he took a five
(16:11):
week break, and the papers ranlike reruns, basically, like a
best of Yeah, thing, yeah. Thatwas the only, only vacation he
ever took in his life. So So ispeanut still published today.
They showed they in a lot ofpapers. They should they put,
(16:32):
well, papers aren't doing thatgreat anymore, but yeah, they
put the old ones on there. Butthere's as new ones. They're not
no, in fact, as a condition heput in his, I guess he put it in
his will. He said, nobody candraw this once I'm gone, nobody,
nobody can take it over. I ownthis, taking it to the grave
(16:53):
with me, what in terms of comicstrips? Now, since he never
considered the other media, likemovies and TV specials, the same
as comic strips. So they aremaking new ones. I think there's
a new one coming on Apple TVcalled something about the
Franklin. Remember Franklin?
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I rememberFranklin. He was representative
(17:16):
character in the in theotherwise mostly white group.
Yeah. So Franklin was introducedright after, like weeks after
MLK was assassinated.
Okay, so he introduces thisAfrican American character, but,
um, never did much with himthere. He's never the he was
(17:39):
never the sender of any story,he was just kind of there.
So, you know, this, the Sparkywas, you know, he was ahead of
the curve. He was, I guess youcould say he was progressive on
some of the things. But this is,you know, slow progression
through a white Midwesternerspoint of a lens, yeah. So, like,
(18:00):
you've got Franklin, but you'renot doing anything with them.
And there's a famous cell, Iguess, which call those
pictures, right? When we talkedabout some of these other
things, we talked about howthose are called cells, right?
Yeah, yeah. And there's a famousone of, like, all the kids in
the lunchroom, and Franklinsitting at a table by himself,
wow, and that was just drawnthat way. That was, I don't
(18:23):
think it was Sparky. I don'tknow. I don't think Sparky was
trying to say it should be thatway. Maybe he was saying it is
that way, or maybe he was justdrawing, who knows, he never
really addressed those kind ofthings. Gotcha, but it was out
there, and he was critic. Well,he's criticized now for that
kind of thing, but maybe he wastrying to make a commentary.
(18:45):
Like, if you notice this, thenyou should do something about
this or something. But he drewthat cell, he drew that frame,
yeah, but he didn't like draw itas, uh,
as a standalone, like it wasn'ta one strip thing. Part of that
would be some other it was partof some other longer cartoon.
(19:05):
And people just had that one andsaid, Look at this segregation
going on now. Man, if you could,if that had been a single cell
comic strip, that would havealmost been like a political
cartoon, yeah, yeah. You justdraw a single cell of a bunch of
kids at a but, but it wasn'tlike you said,
so those kind of things he wasahead of the curve on. I mean,
(19:28):
there wasn't any other comicsthat even had African American
characters. Soin a way, he was ahead of the
curve. But like I say, he didn'tdo anything with it. Right now,
there's a special coming out in2025 about Franklin. It took,
you know, 75 years to for him toget his own special but, but,
yeah, that's part of the legacy,you know. So, so now they are
(19:50):
also met life, right? ThePeanuts are sort of the mascot
like that life. Yeah?
Licensed as, yeah, MetLife, arethey them? And also, I think Six
Flags also has, like, CampSnoopy, Oh, really. They started
(20:11):
off at Knott's Berry Farm, okay?
And now I think Six Flags hasthem, and they have the Bugs
Bunny characters, and they'reallowed to run around in mascot
custom. So all that stuff islicensed. They just nobody can
draw new comic strips.
So did you? Did you watch thethe seasonal or holiday specials
(20:31):
that would come out?
You know, I watched the two, thetwo big ones, the Charlie Brown
Christmas and the Great wasgreat pumpkin, yeah. And the
Great Pumpkin, Charlie BrownChristmas actually came out in
1965 Wow.
And, you know, that's the kindof thing. You don't even it's
always around. You don't knowwhen it came out. You might have
(20:54):
thought it came out later thanthat. Yeah, it was, it was just
always there. And in the daysbefore, video on demand when you
had to actually catch it at atime that was going to play. I
can remember as a kid hearing,you know, watching NBC or
whatever in Houston, and itwould say, Oh, this Thursday,
we're going to play the CharlieBrown Christmas special. And we
(21:15):
would make an appointment, youknow, we would, we would time to
watch it. Oh, yeah, for sure.
Let's talk about some of thecharacters.
You remember the little redhaired girl?
Yeah, yeah, that was who CharlieBrown had a crush on. He had a
crush on her, and it was kind ofunrequited, right? Like she
didn't know he existed, right?
And like him back, that's basedon a real life person, and it
(21:39):
was a really big moment in hislife. I mean, a big thing that
she was a coworker of his atthat
at that art school, art school,she was an accountant, actually,
and he got up enough nerve toask her to marry him, and she
(22:00):
turned him down.
Oh, well, wait, wait, wait, so,so he asked her, asked her to
marry him, but that seems likeskipping over a lot, like, how
about let's go out for coffeefirst, right? In fact, he was so
clueless about it. The reasonshe turned him down is she was
already engaged to somebodyelse, and he didn't know it. No,
(22:21):
he didn't know it. Wow. Nowthat's a blockhead move, right?
That is a block Wow.
Yeah, yeah. I mean, you can see,like, the direct line between
him and those characters, likehe's so brilliant that he skips
two and a half grades, but notenough. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's
so weird.
(22:41):
On Valentine's Day in 2011 theCharles Schultz Museum in
Minneapolis gave free admissionto all redheads, nice, but
apparently this was a really bigmoment, like he said, that was
the only I mean, he's warytwice, and he still talked about
this lady as the only true lovehe ever had and
(23:04):
and that he was the worst day ofhis life when she turned him
down like it was the the onethat got away, or whatever, the
real lady, you know, poor thingshe had to live with this once
he kind of outed her as the ladyshe kind of had to always
apologize for. Do you have hername? Do you have her name?
Her name was,I do is she's still alive?
(23:29):
She she died?
Anddid she die of a broken heart?
Is the question.
She wasn't into himwell before, before, he was, uh,
famous and rich. She wasn't but,but after, after, she was no
gold digger or anything. No, allright, no, she, um, her name was
(23:50):
Donna Mae Johnson, Donna Donnamay with the hyphen. No, no,
three and three words, sheactually, she actually died in
2016but there's some people that say
that they were romanticallyinvolved and they dated for
three years. But if that's thecase, then how do you how is she
(24:12):
engaged to somebody else? Idon't, I don't really understand
it.
Yeah, I don't really get thatpart. Maybe it's better we just
leave that a mystery,yeah, but, but this Donna may
Johnson, like I said, kind ofouted who she was. So she was
kind of a, a public person, in away,
(24:34):
for for a while. Isn't that kindof weird? Yeah, yeah, to be, to
be well, especially for that,right? That's that's just a
really weird thing to be knownfor. Well, they remain friends
for the rest of his life. And hesaid, I can think of no more
emotionally damaging loss thanto be turned down by someone who
(24:54):
you love very much, a person whonot only turns you down, but
almost immediately will marrythe.
Victor. What a bitter blow. Thatis, like, that's crazy,
right? Yeah. I mean, you'rehearing one side of it there,
right? You're just hearing,you're just hearing this, his
butt hurt side, yeah? Maybe,like I said, they were friends
(25:15):
his whole life, you know, they,you know, she was small town
Minnesota girl, yeah, I wonderif her husband, the guy that he
actually did, she actually didmarry. I wonder if he was like,
Please don't talk to me aboutpeanuts. I'm done with that,
right, right? I would be if Iwas him, you wouldn't want to
talk about it, or would you wantto talk about it maybe once and
(25:37):
then and but not like, bring itup at every party we go to or be
known for it. You know, somebodysaid, tell us a fun fact about
yourself. Be like, you know, Imarried the little redheaded
girl, right, right? I My, mywife was the one who broke
Charles Schultz's or Sparkyheart. My wife chose me over a
billionaire, yeah, yeah, yeah,he Linus. Remember Linus? Yeah,
(26:04):
with a blanket, yeah. Linus wasnamed after his Sparky, his best
friend, okay? And they werefriends his whole life. They
were friends even, even in hislater years, they would go out
for coffee like every day. Youknow, Linus. Linus was another
fellow cartoonist. I think atthat art institute, he ended up
being a political cartoonist inthe
(26:30):
in the comic. Do you rememberwhat Linus? His last name is,
Linus and Lucy Van Pelt, yeah.
You got it, yeah. All right,you're real. You're a real fan.
I don't know why I rememberthat, but Linus Van Pelt, Lucy
Van Pelt, Peppermint Patty.
Yeah, so, so funny thing I justa couple of days ago, for some
reason, had searched forsomething online, and I came up
(26:53):
with peppermint patty and andPeppermint Patty was kind of
ahead of her time in the wholegender thing, right? The the
they them, Peppermint Pattyprobably would have been a they
them, right?
I don't think so. No, I don'tthink so. No, well, well,
(27:15):
because, because Marcy called,called Peppermint Patty, sir,
did? She did, yeah, and, andthere was kind of a weird
dynamic there. I don't know ifweird is not the right word, but
there was a dynamic betweenthem. Yeah, it was like Marcy
was in love with peppermintpatty, but Peppermint Patty was
oblivious. Peppermint Patty wasin was in love with Charlie
(27:37):
Brown, right? So PeppermintPatty was introduced in 1966
so she's not in Charlie BrownChristmas that came out the year
before. Oh, okay, um, that wasinspired by his favorite cousin,
who happened to have peppermintcandies in her house, and she
lived in, I think, California,the candy Peppermint Patty had
(28:02):
been out for 25 years already,but those were only on the East
Coast, so he didn't name itafter pep think it's a
coincidence. Didn't name it, hewouldn't have known about the
candy, and the candy definitelywasn't named after the character
because it had already been out.
But I think it was acoincidence. You're talking
about the York Peppermint Patty?
(28:22):
Yeah, right. When I bite into aYork Peppermint Patty, I get the
sensation of, remember thosecommercials? Yeah. They have
nothing to do with thedo you do? You know, this is a
real, real deep cut. Do you knowwhat Peppermint Patty's real
name was in the character name,I don't
Patricia, Reichardt. Patricia,and that was actually his
(28:46):
secretary's last name wasReichardt. He used a lot of the
people around him, okay, um, herroommate. His secretary's
roommate was the model. Was themodel for Marcy. She looked just
like Marcy. Marcy had glasses,right? And the running gag early
on, for like 10 years, therunning gag was that Peppermint
(29:07):
Patty didn't know that Snoopywas a dog. She thought he was
just a funny looking kid with abig nose. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. I
remember that. I remember thatshe would just say stuff like,
yeah, you can be on my team, orYeah. She would just talk to him
like he was a kid. And even,like, there was some, there was
a plot where Snoopy went toobedience school and she thought
(29:27):
he was, like, at a school forgifted children or something
she's never, never got okay. Andpeppermint Hattie also was known
for, she got a D minus on everyschool assignment or exam, just
scraping by right? And there wasone episode or a
instance where her teacher gaveher admittance into the D minus
(29:48):
Hall of Fame. Okay, I don'tremember so, you know. So going
back to what you're sayingbefore pepper and Patty, she
shows up in the 60s. She's gotsandals. She's got, if you watch
the cartoon, she's got a deepvoice.
She got a best friend who callsher sir.
The LGBT community really tookthat as what they call queer
(30:09):
coding. Or, you know, examplesof somebody
being a part of the communitywithout saying that, right,
okay? He never commented one wayor they he knew about it. He
never confirmed or denied it,and that was kind of how he was.
He did his characters. Didn'thave to explain themselves.
(30:30):
He wasn't running away from it,but he wasn't running towards it
either. He was just kind of, itwas out there. Just was what it
was. Yeah, like, I say the a lotof people. There's been, you
know, probably dissertationswritten about how pepper patty
is a member of the gay communityand and all the reasons why.
(30:51):
Basically, he drew her as atomboy who, like you said, was
called Sir, right? The idea,though, that a woman calling a
woman sir and the 60s was prettyrevolutionary, just the idea
that you could get away withsomething like that. And again,
these are children, and bymaking them children, it's maybe
(31:13):
you can introduce some themeslike that, if you want to,
without being so threatening,right. Right disarms people.
Again. He never really talkedabout this kind of stuff. So was
he a revolutionary progressive,or was he just kind of
inadvertently commenting on thisstuff? I don't know.
He considered Jim Davis hisbiggest rival in the game. You
(31:36):
know, Jim Davis is, yeah, yeah.
Hold on. Jim Davis drew,I know Bill Keen was Family
Circus, yeah. Who is Jim Davis,the Garfield guy? Garfield,
that's it. Thank you. He was alittle jealous. He was his
mentor. He was, he was JimDavis's mentor. But he was also
a little jealous when Garfield,like in the 80s, when Garfield
(31:58):
kind of made it big and was outearning peanuts, you know,
little comic book rivalry, yeah.
But they, like I said, they werecomic strip right, mentors and
friends and all that kind ofstuff. But, but yeah, so
(32:19):
when he died in 2000there was more than 100
comics that day that madereferences to the
to peanuts, oh yeah. All theother, all the other comic
strips made a reference toSparky, yeah. And there's a
website that I was looking attoday that has where you could
(32:40):
just click on it and see thestrip for that day. And everyone
from BC to funky winker bean toFamily Circus to, you know,
Dilbert beetle, Bailey and allthese,
it was crazy. They would justmake little references to it,
even, yeah, BC or Haggar, thehorrible even, yeah, oh yeah.
(33:01):
Hagar, the horse dressed up, wasdressed up in, like Charlie
Brown, he said, he came out.
Remember those were Vikings?
Yeah, right. He had the horns onhis head. So in that one he's he
came out. And he said, What doyou think of my new look? And he
had, like, Charlie Brown's shirtwith the the yellow and, you
know, the stripes. And then theother Vikings said, Good grief,
(33:24):
Oh, wow. This stuff's nothilarious. Most of it's not even
funny. A lot of it's just sortof like, Huh, you know, you just
kind of like, Huh? I know that'sthe thing. That's the thing I
always think about these comicstrips is they're not they're
humorous, I suppose, in thebroadest sense of the word.
I was never a really big likefunny papers guy, you know?
(33:47):
Well, I think the thing is, youbecome invested in the
characters. If you read it everyday or every Sunday or whatever,
you'd become invested in thecharacters. And then it didn't
have to be funny. It just waskind of like, you knew what
their tropes were. You knew whatthey were possibly going to do,
and then you saw what they did.
(34:07):
Do, you know, I was like, Ohyeah, I didn't expect that, or I
did expect that, right? Yeah,there were, there were several
comics that I read prettyregularly. My grandparents got
me a sort of anthology of FamilyCircus. So I had a lot of those.
I didn't pretty funny. Funny,no,
(34:28):
Kelly, there's, there's, therewas one where funny. There is
one whereyou see the the mom, the Family
Circus mom, and she's lookingaway from this doorway, and she
got a look of shock, and she'sdropped the dishes like the
dishes are falling off of aplate that she was holding. And
then in the in the through thedoorway, you see Jeffy coming
(34:49):
out, and he says, Hey everybody,I want to show you my birthday
suit. And he's wearing a suitlike he's got a he's got a suit
that he's gonna wear hisbirthday. But.
She thinks birthday suit, as inwhat he was born in, that he
walked out naked. That's funny.
I can't tell if you're prankingme right now, the only thing
less funny than Family Circus islistening to somebody explain.
(35:10):
Well, you know, itwas called Family Circle
originally, and then they had tochange it.
But Calvin and Hobbes. What didyou think of Calvin and Hobbes?
I was never really into that.
What about a lot of people wereand the far side? Oh, the far
side. The far side was so good.
(35:30):
Well, we mentioned, youmentioned some of the tropes. We
mentioned how those characterskind of a reflection of some of
the neuroses that he had. Solet's break down some of those.
So Charlie Brown was all aboutkind of rejection and low self
worth, low self esteem, right?
Walking around like he like,just insecure, you know, just
(35:52):
openly insecure about everythinghe was worried about everything
right now, do you think thatsong by, I don't know if it was
the coasters or the drifters,but Charlie Brown. Charlie Brown
dude, he's a clown dude. ThatCharlie Brown. You know that one
thinks so. Yeah, that waseverybody always thinking, Oh,
(36:13):
me. I don't think that hadanything to do with it. But I
don't know. Yeah, I don't knowwhat song, what year that song
came. I think that was acoincidence. It was a great
song. Yeah, I don't think thethe Venn diagram of of those two
fans even intersect that muchfrom back then. Hmm, okay, you
know Charlie, I mean peanuts wasa pretty white bread, Midwestern
(36:37):
audience kind of comic strip,you know, what song would have
been kind of revolutionary,like, I'm sure a lot of the
peanuts fans weren't really intothat. Yeah, I mean, I think it's
talking about who calls theteacher Daddy O, and it's
Charlie Brown. He that CharlieBrown, I guess had had some
attitude this. Charlie Brown didnot. He was just a kid running
(37:00):
around, insecure of himself, butnot in a way that a child would
be insecure or even a teenagermore like, more like an adult,
an adult, right? These weren'tteen angst, right? This wasn't
this, and he wasn't even ateenager. He was he was a kid.
He was in touch with hisfeelings way more than most kids
(37:20):
were. So he was substituting foran adult that felt that way,
right? What do you think abouthim always trying to kick the
football? Well, you know, theyasked
when Sparky got sick, he hadcancer, and when, when he got
sick, they asked him, you knowwhen, and he said he was going
(37:41):
to hang it up. In fact, his lat,the last one, was released the
day after he died. The timingcouldn't have been more perfect.
But they asked him, will Charliefinally kick the football? And
he said, No, no, that would be aterrible thing to do to him.
Like that would be, you know,kind of against type. But then
later on, and is at the very,very end, he says, You know, I
(38:04):
think it was cruel what I did bynot letting him actually get a
shot at the at the football. Oh,wow, Linus. Remember, Linus was
really smart, yeah, yeah. Hewould, he would give these sort
of soliloquies or speeches aboutthings that were like in the
Christmas special, you know, hesure told the whole story of of
of the North Star and the threekings and the baby Jesus and all
(38:26):
that stuff. Yeah, yeah. In fact,that whole, this whole success
of that show was kind of odd,that these had these long, like
Bible verses, and it was really,like melancholy, kind of sad,
and had a jazz soundtrack,right, right? Who would have
ever predicted that that wouldhave made it and it was all
Sparky. It was all his idea,right? If you ran that through a
(38:52):
focus group or a bunch of studioexecutives, they would have lots
of notes about those things, andit wouldn't end up looking like
it did, but he just was gonnaput out. What he put out, you
know, Can you name the jazzgroup that played?
Yeah, the Vince geraldi.
Geraldi, yeah. And Vince geraldiwas a friend of his that and it
(39:14):
was kind of randomly chose him,like it was not a famous jazz
musician. It was a buddy is,well, the the peanuts theme is
amazing, right? It is, it's,it's one of my favorite pieces
of music ever, sure. Well, youknow, so, so back to Linus. He
was, like, really intellectualand smart, but he had this
crippling anxiety, right? Hewas, he was, he was probably
(39:35):
more anxious than Charlie Brownwas. These kids are running
around with all these differentlike, I say,
Lucy was kind of a very, you'dcall it back then, bossy. Yeah,
right, yeah, some of that stuffmaybe doesn't hold up so well.
But she was also aggressive. Shewas, like, an aggressive woman.
(40:01):
Person, she was probablyaggressively overcompensating,
right? For her, maybe, maybe sheshouldn't have been as secure as
she was. Snoopy, they say, waskind of represented escapist
fantasy, right? You know, likeSnoopy was the only one that
didn't have insecurities, but healso was kind of like not real,
(40:21):
right? Like he was, he was veryconfident and and definitely his
little daydreams about being theRed Baron or, you know, his, a
lot of times the comic stripwould just be about some little
game he was playing withWoodstock or with himself, you
know, right, right? And hisadventures always seemed kind of
independent of all the otherkids. They didn't really accept
(40:44):
what? Except for Charlie Brown,nobody really seemed to know
that Snoopy was like aanthropomorphic Right, right?
Then you've got pig pen, pigpen, pig pen.
That's a really big one in termsof that was outward shame,
right? He represented outwardshame. This he was literally,
(41:07):
you could see his he was wearinghis stigma, right? Somebody that
carried that around with him.
Um,Sparky said about him, he's a
human soil bank who raises acloud of dust on a perfectly
Green Clean Street, and passesout gumdrops that are invariably
black. But you know, he leanedinto it his stigma. He said, I'm
proud of these dust particles.
(41:30):
They've been around forcenturies. He knows he's being
laughed at every time you heardhim speak, he actually was
pretty intelligent and prettywell spoken. You know, it he
didn't, he didn't talk like thesort of slack jaw you expected
him to be. No, he said he's heknows he's being laughed at,
judged uninvited, but he playsalong because he's given up
(41:50):
trying to be accepted. That's apretty
advanced theme, right? Yeah, tobe walking around with like, the
reason that everybody can seethe reason that you're not
accepted on you, right? Did hehave a real name?
I don't think so. I don't thinkso. Like, like his name was
actually pig pen, and then hehad Schroeder. Yeah, Schroeder's
(42:12):
neurosis was obsessive fixation,right? Like, he was just a
perfectionist, and he had to gethe was the one that played the
piano. Yeah, Lucy had a crush onhim, but he was totally
oblivious to that. He was, like,so inwardly focused and, like,
obsessed with with certainthings, right? These characters
had deep issues.
(42:36):
Yeah, I just think that's kindof interesting, like, I'd never
really thought about until Iprepared for for this. And I was
like, Well, I just alwaysthought was this kind of unfunny
strip, but the fact that it madesuch a
iconic presence in the in the20th century must have, must
(42:57):
have been doing something,right? Well, maybe they were
relatable. You know, when itcame down to it, you could
people could relate to thecharacters. You know his, his
Hollywood star, his Walk of Famestar is right next to Walt,
Disney. Oh, I did not know that.
Did you know that the Apollo 10command module was named Charlie
Brown? I did know that yes andthat the lunar module was named
(43:21):
Snoopy. Yes, yes, I do recallthat. So he had, he Sparky also
had, you know, I mentioned hehad these insecurities. He'd say
things like, I'm not a greatcartoonist, and I'm not a great
artist, I'm not a great writer,I'm just good at what I do.
And they asked him if he wasCharlie Brown. He said, I'm not
(43:43):
Charlie Brown. I'm all of them.
He talked openly about feelingcreatively inadequate, not
happy. So the only time he wasever happy was when he was
writing the writing it, drawingit. Other than that, he was
never happy. He referred to eachblank. He said that, you know,
(44:04):
looking at that blank piece ofpaper every day was a new chance
to fail. This guy that did18,000 of these, he looked at
every one of them as a newchance to fail. And he's
bringing in 30, 40 million ayear of his own money, you know,
billion, a billion dollars ayear and you still ceiling,
seeing that as an opportunity tofail. That's kind of like every
(44:26):
new episode of dirt nap city forus, right? Yes, yes. That's how
I feel. I see that blank, blank,blank, blank canvas. He said,
sometimes I lie awake at nightand I think, what have I done
wrong? And then a voice says tome, this is going to take more
than one night. Oh, that soundslike it comes right out of the
Linus. Yeah. Linus isinsecurities, right? Yeah.
(44:50):
So I read that in 2006 he wasthe third highest earning dead
celebrity. Okay, we haven't donethis in a while. We did this
early on.
Yeah, yeah. I checked the 2024,list of highest earning dead
celebrities. All right, so is hein the top 10? He is, he is
(45:10):
number um eight, number eight.
Okay, so this is from last year.
He's number eight. And besideshim, there are only three others
that have. We've done episodeson and and, and besides him and
one other guy,like seven of them are rock
stars. Ah, okay, well, WaltDisney, of course. Nope, no,
(45:33):
nope. Now remember, this wouldbe the estate. I think the way
they calculate this is like theestate has this much money. So
this, usually, this is peopledoing being smart, with
investors catalog, oh yeah,their intellectual property,
yeah. So maybe Walt Disney,maybe they sold, maybe they
(45:58):
cashed out long time ago andthey're not still earning money.
You don't know, yeah, I guess,like that is different than the
Walt Disney Company, right?
Right? You're talking about theactual individual person's
estate, right? Well, who are theothers? So no,
let's go backwards from number10. Number 10 is one that we did
(46:19):
on dirt nap city. John Lennon,okay, okay, the estate of you
know, pretty remarkable, though,that he died, what? 60 years
ago?
45 years ago? Yeah, yeah. Fourdied in 1980 Oh, right, right,
right. But in 15 years, you'llbe able to look at this, listen
(46:39):
to that, right? Then 60 will bespot on, right? Yeah. 45 years
ago, number nine is MatthewPerry.
How is that even possible?
Friends brings in so much money?
Wow. And it probably just allstill goes to his, you know,
just the syndicated rights. Andwhat is it on? I don't know if
(47:02):
it's on max or Netflix, orwhatever it is. It brings the
money, but pretty amazing. Andnow this isn't, this isn't since
they've died, this is in 2024how much they made? How much
did, how much did MatthewPerry's estate make in 2024 did
itsay? See, does it actually have
a number$18 million Wow,just for doing nothing, just for
(47:27):
being who it is, and invested instuff? Yeah. Number eight is
Sparky. Number seven, BobMarley, okay. Number six.
Prints, Okay, number five,somebody who isn't in the same
in terms of, in terms of itscatalog, not the same category
(47:48):
as Prince or some of these, butinvested wisely or sold at the
right time. Rico Kasich from thecars, hmm, okay.
Kind of a weird like, if youlook at this list, he's kind of
the one that doesn't look likehe belongs. And maybe Matthew,
not as much of a house householdname, at least maybe for for you
(48:11):
and I, it is, but for mostpeople, I don't think Rick
o'casick is, is a very householdname, very recognizable, no lead
singer of the cars, of course,$45 million Wow died in 2019
he had a deal withprimary wave, which is a
publishing company that he soldhis name, image and likeness to,
(48:34):
just what I needed was named oneof the 500 Greatest Songs of All
Time. He sold 20 millionrecords. But still, I don't
think that's a name that wecould have sat here all day and
not come up with that name,right? Agreed, agreed,
especially when you considerthat. Number four is Elvis, wow,
yeah, I don't, I don't considerthem in the same category,
although, but okay. Numberthree, Dr Seuss, okay.
(49:00):
Number two, Freddie Mercury, Oh,wow. Okay, and number one,
making $500 million $600 millionin 2024 the King of Pop, Michael
Jackson. Ah, yeah, of course.
600 million Wow. That's just in,in not even producing new
(49:22):
content. Also owned. OwnsBeatles catalog. I think too,
right? That was a wiseinvestment.
Yeah, no kidding. They they havea
they're touring. They're makinga musical of Michael Jackson
in in Hamburg, Germany, they'regoing to open it. Well, I think
(49:46):
it's out now, yeah, I think it'sout now, but it pulls in like $6
million a week, no, so that'sgoing to add to that bottom
line. Yeah, it's crazy.
But yeah. Charles M Schultz, i.
Sparky Schultz, allright, man. Well, I'm glad to
share some Snoopy Snoopy taleswith you. Snoop it out.
(50:13):
Oh, Sparky space.
They call him Sparky since hewas a boy, drew in the margins.
Found his own joy in a world oflines and ink. He can fight a
quiet dream with nowhere tohide. The little red haired girl
danced in his mind. A love hadspoken, a heart undefined. He
(50:33):
sketched a smile, but never saida word in his comic world, her
laugh was hurt. Oh.
Oh, Sparky spent coarse skies inthe night. With every stroke he
(50:53):
chased thighin a world of fame, His heart
stayed trueto the Love and Dreams.
Slowly heknew the years rolled by. His
comics took flight,a household name under every
(51:16):
light, but deep inside the boystill remain
longing for love, untouched byfame.
Sparky, the artist, rich yetshy, wrote his soul with a
gentle sigh. In every panel, inevery frame, lived the heart of
(51:41):
a man who never changes.
Oh, sparkies pink are skiesin the night with every stroke
he chased the his heartstayed true to
(52:08):
Love and Dreams only he knew he
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