1996 Part 1- The Strange Death of Tapioca Pudding

In this episode, the guys have a long discussion about what makes Peanuts work, and how Schulz’s presence is felt in the strip. Can that be the key to understanding Peanuts? Or is it possible we’re overthinking this? Meanwhile, Rerun provides some of the strip’s best moments. Charlie Brown is still up all night. And Spike is still fighting in the trenches. Plus: Charlie Brown has a thing for redheads.

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. 

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

Thanks for listening.

 

Episode Transcript

VO (00:02):
Welcome to Unpacking Peanuts.
The podcast where 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.
I'm your host for the proceedings, Jimmy Gownley.
I'm also a cartoonist.
I did things like Amelia Rules, having good reasons not to grow up and the dumbest idea ever.
And guess what?
You can read all my comics, my new comics anyway, for free over at gvillecomics.substack.com.

(00:39):
Joining me as always are my pals, co-hosts and fellow cartoonists.
He's a playwright and a composer, both for the band Complicated People as well as for this very podcast.
He's the co-creator of the original comic book price guide, the original editor for Amelia Rules and the creator of such great strips as Strange Attractors, A Gathering of Spells and Tangled River.
It's Michael Cohen.

Michael (00:58):
Say hey.

Jimmy (00:59):
He's the executive producer and editor 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 (01:10):
Hello.

Jimmy (01:12):
Making sure everything runs smoothly, producer and editor Liz Sumner is here.

Liz (01:17):
Greetings.

Jimmy (01:19):
Well, guys, 1996 is here.
We have a bunch of good strips to get to, a bunch of mail to answer.
But before we do, I want to talk just a little bit about a couple of things.
First off, I want to tell everybody about the fun we had this weekend at our Patreon event, just to let people know if they had an extra couple of bucks, they wanted to kick in the shenanigans, hijinks, and good times they would be a part of.

(01:47):
Harold, why don't you start?
Tell us exactly what we were doing.

Harold (01:50):
Well, we got together and we had prior to the event, taken a crack at using all of the Peanuts characters and trying to build our own subset of those characters to create a different comic strip, with the theme that Jimmy came up, that there are so many amazing characters in Peanuts that they could carry their own strip.

(02:13):
So we tried to prove that by building our own teams of characters.
And we did it kind of like a draft pick for baseball.
And we took turns choosing characters in also the setting of where it would happen and trying to build a team and then figure out what the theme of that strip would be.
So when we got together for the Patreon, all the people who were joining us teamed up with us and we did it again together.

(02:39):
And we figured out some pretty amazing faux strips based on Peanuts characters.
It was a blast.

Jimmy (02:47):
Yeah, it was so much fun to do.
And it really highlights just the depth of the Peanuts strip.
There are very few.
You could probably do it with Doonesbury.
You might be able to even do it with Bloom County and maybe Pogo.
But there are very few strips you could do.
You couldn't do it with Krazy Kat, for instance.
It would be a real short, short draft.

Michael (03:08):
I have a strip about a dog policemen in the desert.
He's the only one there.

Jimmy (03:19):
Oh, Michael.
So he ended up with you.
Tell us about your strip and your addendum you want to make.

Michael (03:25):
Well, this is mine.
It was a team.
We teamed up with one of our listeners, and that was Frank.
So between me and him, with no plan in mind, we ended up with, it's a sports strip.
The main characters are all girls.
So it's Peppermint Patty and Lucy and Sally.

Liz (03:46):
Lydia.

Michael (03:47):
And Lydia.
And we decided that what it is, it's a strip about a girl's volleyball team.
And the team is called Volley of the Dolls.

Harold (04:02):
That's a new one.
It took a while to figure that one out, right?

Michael (04:04):
Yeah, I thought of that one yesterday.

Harold (04:05):
You always have the great ideas afterward, right?

Michael (04:09):
And since, you know, all the Peanuts characters are so short, they actually play their volleyball games on the tennis court.
And Shermy is the manager.
So that's the concept of the strip.

Jimmy (04:24):
Yeah, and we just had like, what, about an hour, 15 hour and a half of goofing around doing this with listeners.
So if you want to be a part of any kind of events like that, head on over to unpackingpeanuts.com and you can sign up for our Patreon.
It's a lot of fun.
We've also done things like we've produced commentary tracks for a boy named Charlie Brown and for the American Masters documentary that you could listen along with.

(04:53):
So lots of fun stuff, being a good old Patreon member.

Liz (04:57):
And thank you to all of our current Patreon supporters.
We couldn't do it without you.
Thank you very much.

Michael (05:03):
And Deb did some really great cartoons of some of the strip choices.

Jimmy (05:08):
Oh, yeah.
Super listener Deb Perry, who is the fastest pencil in the West.
She can sketch things.
It's amazing.
Just boom, boom, boom.
Can we put some of those sketches up on?

Liz (05:22):
They are on Blue Sky.

Jimmy (05:23):
Oh, great.
All right.
So follow us over there on Blue Sky and check out that because it's really cool.
So, okay, before we get to today's strips, I want to talk about another idea, a concept that I have of how we can use these little introductory chats perhaps for the next few episodes.

(05:43):
So one of the ongoing themes, if you are a long time listener, is Michael is very interested in things having rules and logic and some way to make sense of it, as opposed to it being a formalistic exercise of income paper.

(06:06):
It's got to make inherent sense, let's say, as a fictional world.
When we have these conversations, it ends up being like, don't worry about it.
Michael says, I have to worry about it.
I say, don't, which doesn't get anybody.
So I thought though, because I'm working on this book now that you can see on Substack and your first read through, I think would probably seem like completely total free-form fantasy.

(06:40):
But it's actually, I really thought about the rules going into it.
Partly because I didn't want to upset Michael, because that would be a terrible thing, right?

Michael (06:50):
Like you did in the Millie rules.

Jimmy (06:52):
I know that he's never gotten over the standing there, Ron is standing there for a year and issue one.

Michael (07:00):
I thought it was Reggie jumping.
It was like a-

Jimmy (07:03):
Oh, that too.
Yeah, both of those, I think, happened in issue one.
So it's all downhill from there.
So I started to think maybe the four of us, along with you listeners out there, can start contemplating, because Peanuts obviously does work.
So, I mean, obviously it works.
It works for millions and millions of readers for 77 years.

(07:26):
But what we are not finding at this point yet is the language to describe how it works.
So I think we should talk about this.
How does the fantasy work in Peanuts?
How does the reality work in Peanuts?
And how does all of this make sense, at least as a coherent work of art?

(07:47):
Maybe not necessarily as something that you would find in real life.
But does that make sense?
Sure.
Does it sound appealing?
Did Harold fall asleep?

Michael (07:58):
Well, I'm sure he'll wake up when we get into a big argument.
Yeah, it's a really interesting question, and I'm thinking about it a little bit.
First of all, we have to establish that there are rules.

Harold (08:10):
Establish some rules.

Michael (08:11):
Well, there are rules in comic strips and movies and TV shows, and the jump the shark phrase comes about because when the rules violated, you no longer believe in the world.
No matter how crazy the world is, once you've broken the bond with the viewer, it's hard to get it back.

(08:36):
But there are rules, and the example I was coming up with with comics is mixing realistic characters and cartoon characters.
And you might think like, well, you can't do that, but there is very successful histories of comics that blended superheroes and funny animals.

(09:01):
And the most successful of those would be the original Captain Marvel comic, which not only had superheroes and a family of superheroes and costumes and villains, it had a talking tiger, which didn't bother anyone.
The book generally was considered a kid's book, but the characters survived.

(09:27):
You know, the Shazam characters.
So it's not like that universe, the fact that you blended cartoon characters and superheroes ruled out the character as being viable.
And there are cases where that would not work.
Okay, Jimmy, I'm going to pose a question to you.

(09:48):
Yeah.
Okay, let's say you're doing your new Amelia material.
Yeah.
And you're talking to some big publisher and they're really interested.
And they said, look, we want a talking cat.

Jimmy (10:02):
I'd say how much?

Michael (10:04):
You would?

Jimmy (10:05):
How much?

Michael (10:06):
We want a talking cat in this strip because people love talking animals.
Would you do it?

Jimmy (10:11):
Well, okay, here's the thing.
That's a totally separate issue because that involves economics and a million different things.
And the idea being that, but what I guess I would say, and if someone was listening who was trying to navigate those waters, the first thing you do is go, well, that's great.

(10:32):
That's a brilliant idea.
I cannot believe you, Mr.
Editor, are so genius.
And then you try to figure out some way to do some version of it, however remote from what they would want, just to make them feel that they contributed something, but you protected yourself.

Michael (10:49):
And then you wouldn't do it.

Jimmy (10:51):
Well, I don't know if I figured out a good way to do it, and I could do it.

Michael (10:54):
Is there a good way?
I mean, you've established the world.

Jimmy (10:57):
Well, maybe.
Yeah, maybe.

Harold (11:00):
Well, okay, yes, because here's why.

Jimmy (11:02):
And here, this is actually the key point that and this is where I think we get into trouble with.
It depends what you define as the world.

Michael (11:11):
Well, yeah, you're the only one who can do that.

Jimmy (11:13):
Well, yeah, but Amelia also defines it.
Amelia is telling you a story.
In Amelia, so if I had to face that issue where we're going to have a talking cat in it, Amelia is telling you the story.
Amelia can tell you a story where a 15-foot-tall carrot comes by and menaces the school.

Harold (11:32):
Well, here's an example.

Jimmy (11:34):
And when the past is a present, when I'm actually, I think I'm one, it might be my favorite, just regular issue of Amelia.
It's called Funny Story.
Amelia's mom goes out on a date with a bathroom, men's bathroom sign.
The idea was, it's got to be the most generic person in the world that Amelia can't even think of what he looks like.

(11:57):
So she actually goes on a date and it's just a little sign on the front of a bathroom door, you know?
And that's what's happening in the story Amelia is telling you.
Right.
Okay.
So what I'm saying is you just expand it a little bit.
So for example, in the world, a man that looks like the sign on the front of a bathroom door doesn't exist.

(12:19):
But in a world that Amelia is describing to you, it does exist.
So it's talking cat too.
Yeah.

Michael (12:26):
And that's one way to bridge that gap, is to create a meta story.

Jimmy (12:33):
Which I think, I think that's the secret to Peanuts.

Michael (12:37):
Well, sometimes it works.
I mean, the whole World War I flying ace is a meta story that Snoopy's telling himself.
Where I start having problems is when he's not telling it to anybody and somebody, another character is in it.
I don't like.

Jimmy (12:57):
I understand that.
And you might not like it.
And you might, we might never even get to a set of rules that anybody necessarily likes all parts of it.
And those rules might, Schulz might break sometimes, right?
They might just might not be good or whatever.

Michael (13:10):
Okay.

Jimmy (13:11):
But I think, again, just expand it one step outward.
There is somebody else there.
The key is that Schulz is a character in the strip.
That, that makes everything else make sense.
That and the concept of play, that the, that the characters are playing with each other.

(13:32):
And Schulz facilitates those games becoming larger for us to see.
I think that is one of the big keys.

Michael (13:42):
Okay.
There are jump the shark moments in Peanuts, but you can overlook them just because there's a massive amount of material, and you forget about it.
And I think Schulz, I don't think he's forgotten about it, but okay, here's a situation.
Snoopy is with the Scouts, the Bird Scouts, and they're climbing the mountain.
And right away, you can go, well, why don't the birds just fly to the top?

(14:05):
Because they can do that, but they don't.
That's fine.
They've established they like the adventure.
They like Snoopy telling them things.
Okay, they get to the top, and they're really tired, and they realize they're really high up, and Snoopy's hungry, and he thinks, okay, now I got to walk back down, and the birds fly away, right?

(14:28):
Right.
Snoopy can fly.
It's been established in Peanuts.
He has these helicopter ears.
Now, if he pulled that off and said, well, I've established that Snoopy can fly like a helicopter, and the last battle is he flies down, I would hate that.
Right.
It would be like, no, I don't care how funny it is.

Jimmy (14:51):
Yeah, but that didn't happen, right?

Michael (14:53):
No, it didn't happen, but it could, because he's established the rule that Snoopy can fly, but I'm saying that was not a good decision.

Jimmy (15:01):
Okay.

Michael (15:01):
If you're going to do it.

Jimmy (15:03):
Okay.
But all right, so here's another way we can look at that rule.
He, and go, and not just going by things I like, things I don't like, whatever, but things he's said.
All right.
So Schulz himself has said, I think of these guys as a little repertoire company, and I use them and I move them around to create those strips I want, the themes I want, all of that sort of stuff, right?

(15:28):
So with that, and he's even then said, so if I want to have an adventure strip, it's an adventure strip.
Okay.
And we've all, and even in the strip itself has said that it's a comic strip.
It's not a three-dimensional world.
So the reality, these rules you're talking about don't need to live from 1950 to 2000.

(15:50):
They only need to live for that sequence where in this story, they're a bunch of hikers.

Michael (15:56):
Okay.

Jimmy (15:57):
And in this story, they're a World War I flying ace.
And Schulz allows the play, Schulz is playing with them.
And then when the story's over, it's over.

Michael (16:08):
All right.
Okay.
So here's an example and Harold can identify with this because he worked with Archie.
Okay.
Archie in some ways, similar to Peanuts.
I mean, very different, but a large cast of well-known characters who, any one of them can star in their own strip.

(16:28):
They never age.
They're eternally in high school.
But there's a thing that they do with our, at least when I was reading it, I don't know if they do it anymore.
You could pick up an Archie comic, let's say from the 60s, and there'd be a story where they're cavemen.
It's just no explanation.
It's just Archie's walking around with a big club and they're all wearing like leopards clothes.

(16:53):
No explanation, but they could do that.
They could be in Imperial Rome as their same characters.
It's not jarring because they've established that Archie stories can happen anywhere and anytime.
Peanuts hasn't done that, but if suddenly Lucy is Cleopatra and people are calling her Cleopatra, I'd be going like, this is the wrong strip.

(17:21):
How did this get in Peanuts?
Because I think there are rules.

Harold (17:25):
I think one of the problems with Peanuts has to do with, especially how all of us are reading this.
We're jumping in and reading a year at a time.
And it's kind of one of those no beginning, no end worlds, because that's just the nature of a daily strip.
But the way we're reading it, it's even more just randomly, okay, January 1st is where you begin for this year.

(17:50):
December 31st is where you end, or in our case, the end of April right now and the end of August.
And we do four months at a time.
And that's how we're engaging with them.
And one of the things that struck me, I think I've mentioned this before when I was in film school, was how do you get an audience to accept something in your fictional story?

(18:13):
And the rule that struck me as I was looking at it was, you have to establish the premise at the beginning, like the Archie stories.
The very first panel of the six-page Archie story that's got a title on it, you know, it's the beginning, is that they're wearing Roman garb.
And I was like, okay, these guys are in Rome.

(18:33):
And so you accept it.
In Peanuts, you don't have that luxury because it's a daily strip and you may be reading them randomly, or you may be reading them in order, or you read one in the newspaper.
And Schulz doesn't have that luxury to say, okay, reset, you know, this is a whole new thing, unless the reader just assumes that, and it's up to the reader to decide, because it's really not baked into how you experience it.

(18:58):
And I think that's the problem.
I mean, to me, the classic example for a, say, a film that sets the rules up front is It's a Wonderful Life.
Number one, the title is It's a Wonderful Life.
So you kind of know what you're getting.
You know, they say, don't make a message in a movie.
And that's the movie that breaks all the rules.
The message is in the title.

(19:19):
This is what you're gonna see is this is, I'm gonna tell you it's a wonderful life through this story.
Then where does it start?
It starts in heaven.
So, if either you reject the film outright in the first minute of the film and turn it off or just get mad all the way through the film because heaven's involved in the story, or you say, okay, I'm gonna suspend any disbelief I might have.

(19:43):
I'm gonna say, okay, in this world, there's a heaven where there are angels who care about people down on earth and we're gonna send a guy down.
And that's a strange film because he doesn't show up to like halfway into the film, actually into the life of the person, which is kind of that Schulz thing, right?
Schulz is descending into his characters in ways that are kind of invisible.

(20:04):
And he's not saying, hey, everybody, his name's above everything, his sign's every single one of the strips.
But depending on how you choose to approach the strip, you may not accept that premise that Jimmy's saying is that he's a character in the story because it doesn't hit you over the head and say, these are my rules.

(20:24):
You have to kind of figure them out and then you have to decide whether you accept them or not in ways that when you just, in real time, you're watching a movie, the rules set up in the beginning and you either accept them or you don't.
Most people do.
If they're going to watch a movie, they say, okay, take me on a ride.
I'm going to go with you.
Now, if you had introduced Clarence the Angel halfway through the movie without having the opening scene where they set it up that that was happening, you lose half the audience.

(20:52):
They say, what?
Wait a second.
That's not the world that I got introduced to.
What's an angel showing up in the middle of George Bailey's life?
It was because it was placed at the beginning and the rules were set there.

Jimmy (21:03):
Well, I think Harold's right.
And I think that about one of the bigger issues with doing this is we do have to keep in mind, this is a comic strip.
It's not a TV show.
It's not a movie.
It's not a novel.
It's not any of those things.
And also, we might find and figure out a holistic way to understand Peanuts that we don't even jive with or maybe some of us don't jive with.

(21:27):
But I think there's a way to do it.
And as far as setting up his presence in this, I mean, this goes back to Snoopy with the flower and the fourth strip.
It feels to me that Schulz's presence is there from the beginning.
But it's not going to be ever something that's announced.

(21:48):
That angel thing is a really good example.
And it is important that in a movie that it's set up, Tarantino once said, I'm not Catholic, but I am when I'm watching The Exorcist.
You know, it's not important that you have to believe in the rules of Catholicism for the rest of your life, but it's important that you believe in them for the 120 minutes The Exorcist is, because that's where the superpowers come from or whatever.

(22:13):
So, you know, I think this is an interesting conversation and I'd love for our listeners to get involved with it.
But I do think if we're going to start, I really think that idea of Schulz being an integral, active part of the strip itself is going to be the key that lets us make something that makes a larger sense.

Harold (22:40):
And I think you're right, Jimmy, that if, say, you, Jimmy, came in at the beginning of anybody ever experiencing peanuts and going, okay, here's the deal.

Jimmy (22:49):
Yeah.

Harold (22:50):
Just like the beginning of a movie.
He said, this is what this is.
Schulz is a character in the strip, enjoy.

Jimmy (22:55):
Right.

Harold (22:55):
Right.
And you set it up.
Then if people were saying, okay, I'm going to listen to this guy and I'm going to look through that lens, there are going to be very few people that would have any issues or problems with it because the rules have been set.
I think just in the last episode we did, I was talking about what I was seeing in what Schulz was choosing to do was he was saying, okay, these characters, different characters have fantasy lives, it's not just Snoopy.

(23:24):
You got Spike, you got Woodstock, there's a lot going on.
And it seems like with the kids, and I'm just dawning on me as I'm saying this, but the kids have, you wouldn't even call them a fantasy world, it's just the world they wish that it was.
Lucy wishes Schroeder loved her.
Charlie Brown wishes that he could be a great baseball player.

(23:47):
And with the kids, more of it seems to be, it's the unrequited love, it's denied fantasy.
It's denied, wishing this is the way reality was and it's not.
But through the animals, he lets them have that fantasy and they get away with it.
And we kind of, in general, delight in it.
And he has a dichotomy all the way through the strip, where you, there is something satisfying that Snoopy can go to the heights that he goes to.

(24:18):
But for the most part, he does reserve it for the animals.
But because both of them live side by side in the strip, you get that mixture of the person who keeps hoping but never gets what they want, and the little animal that hopes and can go off into outer space.
And I think the two of those together in the strip give Schulz and us a really rich world to live in where hope is fulfilled but also hopes can be dashed.

(24:46):
And it feels real, I think, in aggregate, even with all the fantasy that that's kind of, at least emotionally, what we all experience.
We get a mixture of both living in this world.

Liz (24:57):
I have a question, or I have a request.
Jimmy, could you describe or give some examples of what you mean when you say Schulz is a character in the strip?

Harold (25:10):
Yes.

Jimmy (25:10):
Okay.
I'll give an example.
So let's say the premise of a strip is Snoopy and Linus on top of the doghouse, and Snoopy is going to fly Linus somewhere.
All right.
Well, let's just think about this.
If this is some sort of real world, then we can assume that Linus is playing with the dog.

(25:32):
Like if I think about this a little bit like when you're a dad with kids and they present you with play, and sometimes you go, oh, that's really cute.
That's great.
Okay.
That's fun.
And then sometimes you go, that's great.
Okay.
And you get involved and you play with them and it becomes this bigger thing.
So back to the strip, Snoopy and Lyons are on the dog house, right?

(25:54):
That's kids playing.
In this example, Snoopy is a kid.
He's a sentient being in the Peanuts World.
It's two characters playing, right?
If you see the bullet holes appear in the dog house because they're getting shut down by the Red Baron, that's Schulz playing with the kids.

(26:15):
He's there in the strip.
Imagine he's just on the other side of the fourth wall, and Snoopy is like, oh no, the Red Baron is here.
He's like, oh, Schulz says, oh, he got you too.

Harold (26:25):
He puts his little pen and ink, bullet holes on the side of the strip.

Jimmy (26:30):
Or an example being, boy, oh boy, nothing will ever go wrong for me today.
The next panel, a torrential downpour that would have taken hours to sweep in along the gulf stream, just appears in the next panel and dumps on Charlie Brown's head.
That's Charles Schulz playing around with them.

(26:50):
That's what I mean.
It's when things that, his interaction with the strip is what allows the what would be in our world, impossible things to happen.

Liz (27:02):
Okay.
Thank you.
That helps.
It's like Clarence.
I mean, he's influencing it.
The character in was the part that I was struggling with, but he's interacting with it.

Jimmy (27:20):
But he's also above it.
Yeah.

Liz (27:22):
Yes.
Got it.

Jimmy (27:23):
Yeah.
That's a dimension below him to get really through about it.
He has ultimate power in that dimension below him.
He could draw the bullets, he could put the smoke, he could then erase it in the next panel.
Right?
He's playing with those characters.
And that's what's allowing to them and even to us seem like rules are breaking, rules of physics are breaking.

(27:46):
Well, no rules of physics are breaking because he's doing it.
He's just putting pen and ink on it.
But to Charlie Brown, it's a torrential downpour.
So that's, and it's different than in Calvin and Hobbes, for example, where it's obviously, well, I mean, if you really want actually a strip that doesn't have as many rules as you would think, Calvin Hobbes is a big one because he's intentionally trying to blur the line about whether or not Hobbes is real.

Michael (28:11):
Yeah, but I'm curious.
The parents would never see Hobbes as a talking creature.
So that is a rule.

Jimmy (28:22):
Right.

Michael (28:22):
Did he ever violate that?

Jimmy (28:24):
No, but you could see the results of Hobbes.
You could see Calvin tied up in chair and him saying, Hobbes has me kidnapped or whatever, which could never have happened because how could Calvin have tied himself up?
But the parents wouldn't see Hobbes doing that now.

Michael (28:45):
It's an interesting topic.

Jimmy (28:47):
That's Michael's way of saying, let's move on.
I will tell you why.
Here's what we're going to do.
That's like, we'll put it in the old idea pile.
Yeah, we'll never see that again.
So guys, though, seriously, I think this is a really important thing.
I think it's a great way to spend the last few episodes, or at least a few of the last few.

(29:09):
All right.
So you characters out there, we would love to hear your thoughts on the rules of peanuts.
What's the words for that?
The aesthetics of peanuts.

Michael (29:17):
No, not aesthetics at all.

Jimmy (29:19):
Metaphysics.
No, what's the world?

Michael (29:21):
Any rules is the word.

Jimmy (29:22):
No, it's not.

Michael (29:23):
It's so square.

Jimmy (29:26):
Listen, I should have been in LA running around the comic book stores, and you should have been in Catholic school.
You would have loved it.

SPEAKER_2 (29:33):
You would have loved it.

Jimmy (29:35):
There's a rule for everything.
You can have all the rules.
All right.
So I think this is an interesting discussion.
I think this is something we could definitely do for the next few episodes, sort of stretch out and flesh out, rather.
Poetics, that's what it is.
The poetics of Peanuts.

(29:55):
That's something that will explain the inner workings of it, the mechanics of it.
So if you want to be a part of that, give us a call, 717-219-4162, or you could leave a text message there, or you could just email us over at unpackingpeanuts.gmail.com.
We'd love to hear from you.
All right.
With that being said, let's take a break now and we'll come back on the other side, and we'll do strips at the end.

Liz (30:21):
Sounds good.

Jimmy (30:22):
All right.
We're just going all kinds of crazy today.
All right.
Be right back.

Liz (30:26):
Hi, everyone.
Have you seen the latest Anger and Happiness Index?
Have you admired the photo of Jimmy as Luke Skywalker, or read the details of how Michael co-created the first comic book price guide?
Just about every little known subject we mentioned is referenced on the Unpacking Peanuts website.
Peanuts' obscurities are explained further, and other stories are expanded more than you ever wanted to know.

(30:52):
From Albert Peisenter-Hune to Zipatone, Annette Funicello to Zorba the Greek, check it all out at unpackingpeanuts.com/obscurities.

Jimmy (31:04):
And we're back.
Unprecedented that we haven't gotten to strips yet.
Actually, I don't think it's unprecedented, but it's almost unprecedented.
So how about we get the mail out of the way?
Liz, I'm hanging out in the mailbox.
Do we got anything?

Liz (31:17):
We do.
We got a couple.
So Troy Wilson, proud Canadian.
I'm happy to support our Canadian listeners.
Troy writes, like Harold, I am none of the above.
The only baseball I care about appears in Peanuts.
I'm not a sports guy.
Don't play any, don't watch any, don't care about any.

(31:38):
But I do wish all athletes and sports fans well.
Be of good cheer and be in good shape, athletes.

Michael (31:46):
Yeah, be in good shape.

Harold (31:47):
Yeah, Schulz is the most athletic cartoonist I know.

Michael (31:51):
That's true.

Liz (31:52):
And then, John Marullo, super listener John, writes, hi all, there was some discussion in the baseball episode who our best hitter, who according to Patty, was coming up to bat after Charlie Brown was.
It was guessed, but not confirmed, to be Snoopy, Shermie or Pigpen.

(32:14):
Now, in the adaptation in Charlie Brown's All-Stars, the three batters who precede Charlie Brown are Linus, Lucy and Snoopy.
Patty still states that their best hitter is coming up, thus assuming the same continuity, eliminating Snoopy.
This leaves Pigpen and Shermie.
In a 1977 strip, which I looked up and it happens to be March 13th, 1977, Lucy states that Shermie is their designated hitter, which Charlie Brown confirms saying he is a good hitter.

(32:47):
This leads me to believe that the best hitter to whom Patty is referring is none other than our friend Shermie.

Harold (32:54):
Go Shermie.
All right.
Shermometer edition, right?

Liz (32:57):
We did.

Harold (32:58):
I guess we already had that in there, don't we?
We forgot.

Liz (33:01):
He's on the Shermometer in 1977 as good hitter.

Jimmy (33:06):
That's right.

Harold (33:07):
Yeah.

Michael (33:08):
All right.
And that's why he's captain of the volleyball team because he's a really sports-oriented person.

Harold (33:17):
Wow.
Thank you for clearing that up and reminding us.

Liz (33:21):
So that's it for the mail.

Jimmy (33:23):
And we got, we heard from, on the hotline, we heard from Captain Billy.
He writes, super fan Captain Billy here.
The Cleveland Guardians were named after the Stone Guardians on the Superior Avenue Bridge.
Fun fact, Bob Hope's father came to Cleveland to work on that bridge and brought five-year-old Bob Hope with him.

(33:44):
That's why the bridge was renamed after his father recently.
Also, Bob Hope was a partial owner of the Cleveland Indians for around two decades.
So there you go.
So that's the Guardians who used to be the Indians.

Harold (33:56):
I was going to say that Bob Hope was a partial owner of the bridge.
She bought it for a dollar.

Jimmy (34:02):
No, he had a partial bridge.

Harold (34:06):
His upper.

Jimmy (34:07):
Yes.
All right.
Well, that's the mail.
So if you want to contact us, unpackingpeanuts.gmail.com 717-219-4162.
We would love to hear from you because remember when I don't hear, I worry.
So guys, with all of that prelude out of the way, how about we finally at long last and with great.

(34:35):
No, you know what?
Actually, hang on.
Let's take a moment and really think, okay, no, let's get to the show here.

Michael (34:44):
Hope you enjoyed this trip.

Jimmy (34:47):
January 6th, Rerun, Snoopy, and Lucy are in the Van Pelt house and Rerun is writing something.
He says, we're writing a story about a little kid who wants a dog, but his mom won't let him.
It's a heart wrenching tale.
Then he hands it to Lucy and as she reads it, he says, don't read it if you fear having your heart wrenched.

Michael (35:09):
Now, Rerun doesn't have a whole lot of characteristics, but this year really established the boy who really wants a pet dog.

Jimmy (35:19):
Yeah.

Michael (35:19):
As a major characteristic.

Harold (35:22):
Yeah.
I like Snoopy watching him figuring out his story.
Of course, Rerun can't write yet, can he?
So he's just looking at a piece of paper.
I don't know that he's actually-

Liz (35:32):
He's got a pencil.

Harold (35:33):
He's got something there for Lucy to read.
I don't know if it's a-
Maybe it's an illustration of the idea.

Jimmy (35:39):
Well, yeah.
Now, one of the reasons I picked this is because Rerun and him being creative becomes a real theme.
He eventually goes on and his life's goal is to become an underground cartoonist.

Harold (35:55):
Cool.
Wow.

Jimmy (35:57):
Yeah.

Harold (35:57):
He is an interesting kid.

Jimmy (35:59):
He's the best.
He's so cool.
He seems so 90s, which is amazing because this is a guy who is doing things that were so 50s and so 60s.
Here he is.
He feels like a 90s kid to me.

Harold (36:17):
Yeah.

Jimmy (36:17):
We also are seeing though just the hint of him starting to do the bird's nest here.

Harold (36:23):
I don't think he's actually writing at a table because the table keeps morphing that space there.
And it's shapes.
I think he's working off of a water bag.

Liz (36:35):
Or the bean bag chair.

Harold (36:38):
Giant bean bag.

Jimmy (36:40):
January 8th.
All right.
If you want to know what made me laugh the hardest this episode, just this little simple thing.
It's Marcy and Peppermint Patty and they're sitting in school in their desks and a consternated Peppermint Patty looks down at her shirt and goes, Rats, I just got grape jelly on my shirt.

(37:01):
To which Marcy replies, In math class?

Michael (37:05):
I don't know.
I almost picked this just because I absolutely did not understand this trip.
I do not get through the relationship.

Harold (37:15):
Okay, Jimmy, can you lay it out here?

Jimmy (37:18):
Why would she be eating something with jelly in math class?

Harold (37:22):
That's the joke.

Jimmy (37:24):
Oh my God.

Michael (37:26):
I still don't get it.
I don't know anyway.

Jimmy (37:30):
Because you're not supposed to, you get jelly on your shirt at lunch, not at math class because why would she be getting jelly?

Michael (37:36):
Well, I don't know.
People might be sneaking food into my string class.

Jimmy (37:40):
Has anyone ever told you you're a tad too literal?

Michael (37:46):
Anyhow, this breaks all the rules.

Jimmy (37:53):
Oh my God, that's so funny.
January 21st.
It's a Sunday and we start with a big symbolic panel of a snowman dressed like he's ready to play baseball.
In the next panel, Linus is talking to Charlie Brown, who's standing atop the pitcher's mound, which is covered in snow.
Linus says, why are you standing up there, Charlie Brown?

(38:15):
Charlie Brown says, memory is Linus.
My pitcher's mound may be covered with snow, but the memories are still there.
To which Linus says, happy times, huh?
Charlie Brown says, some of my happiest memories.
We didn't see those, I guess.
Linus says, what about all the games we lost?
Charlie Brown says, it was my right fielder.
It was always my right fielder.

(38:36):
Linus says, I remember our last game.
She dropped an easy fly ball, says Charlie Brown.
Then Charlie Brown continues in the next panel.
Then the next batter hit another easy one in the right field, and she dropped it.
Then she missed another fly ball, and then a grounder went through her, and then she dropped another fly ball.
And now we see Charlie Brown pounding on the snow-covered mound, and he says, Memories, Memories, Memories.

(39:00):
And then Lucy, who has walked in and has seen all this happening, now walks away and says, I think I'll go build a snowman.

Michael (39:09):
I want to know how this other team has all these pole hitters.
When they're all lefties, I don't know, hitting the right field is not easy.

Jimmy (39:18):
I think that breaks all the rules.
No, do you know why it is easy as a kid, though, because you're slow and you swing late.
So lots of little kids do hit to right field.

Michael (39:30):
Okay.

Jimmy (39:31):
The other reason I picked this is this feels like a throwback to me.
It's three of the big four.
It's a baseball strip.
It's that him pounding on the ground.
I think I mentioned this before in that book, Parables of Peanuts by Robert Short.
He talks about Schulz repeating iconic poses again and again so that they lodge in our minds as being meaningful.

(39:57):
And that pounding on the ground like that is one that went out.

Michael (40:01):
Pounding on snow, which is totally different.

Jimmy (40:03):
Pounding on snow.
January 26th, Charlie Brown is asleep in bed, tucked under his comforter and Snoopy is lying on top of the comforter asleep as well.
Well, Charlie Brown is actually not asleep.
He's up and he's thinking, saying to himself, sometimes I lie awake at night and I wonder if my life would be different if I had it to do over.

(40:24):
Then a voice comes out of the dark that says, boy, there's an original thought.
That's Schulz.
That's absolutely Schulz in this show.

Harold (40:36):
Schulz being a character, he's really being a character.

Jimmy (40:39):
Yeah, exactly.
Boy, there's an original thought.

Harold (40:45):
That's got a lot of levels.

Jimmy (40:47):
Yeah.
Well, I said in one of our earlier episodes, at least when we were recording, I don't know if it's in the show, but there is a thing about depression that's narcissistic because you can't see beyond yourself, and including beyond your own myopic thoughts.
And sometimes you might just need a voice from beyond telling you to snap out of it.

(41:13):
Hard to prescribe that though.

Harold (41:15):
Yes.

Jimmy (41:17):
Please take one voice from beyond and call me in the morning.

Harold (41:21):
I love the drawing of Snoopy sleeping on top of Charlie Brown in the bed.
We're seeing a lot of that in these recent years.
But they're poses that you'd never seen Snoopy.
The kind of, for pet owners, the animal kind of just wraps them around whatever themselves around any curve that they might have, whether it's your body or in a couch or a pillow or something.

(41:44):
They're really nice, simple drawings.
And we hadn't seen that before in Snoopy's.
He's being more genuinely dog-like in these later strips probably because of Andy.

Jimmy (41:57):
February 3rd is another one that just made me laugh really hard.
Sally's sitting in her beanbag chair watching TV, and Charlie Brown's behind her and she says, how about that?
When the program ended, the lady said, thank you for watching.
I didn't think she even knew me.
Nothing to say about that.
Just made me laugh.

Harold (42:18):
Well, the thing that stands out to me is we've talked about how elongated the characters are when they're sunk down into a beanbag.
The feet are way far away from where they would be if they were standing.
Look at that arm in the second panel.
It's just way far away.
The longest peanuts are.

Jimmy (42:36):
Yeah.
What are you guys thinking about the shakiness of the line this year?

Harold (42:43):
It stood out to me.
It started to hit me seeing these again.
I was just very aware.

Jimmy (42:53):
I actually remember I started reading it almost every day in 1995, again, because I was out of college and had a job and stuff like that.
I remember around 96 thinking that's when you could really see some days where he was struggling.

(43:14):
But he can still put together a very nice looking comic strip.

Harold (43:17):
Definitely.
The thing I hadn't noticed up until this point is, I'm saying that my theory was that he found a way to do the lettering, that he was able to get a quick stroke in between the tremors.
Because you imagine how specific you have to be with lettering, and he's able to hold it together even to this point, where the letters generally look clean.

(43:44):
And we were saying also the really important curves on the characters, like Charlie Brown's head and the noses, and certainly the eyes, he's able to get that, so there's not a tremor in that.
I'm starting to see a tremor in the bottom of Snoopy's snout, going down to his neck, and I'm starting to see a tremor sometimes in the letters.

(44:08):
And he said he had to hold his hand with his other hand.
Can you imagine doing that with the pen and ink?
I mean, this is not easy stuff to be dealing with in the first place, but then when you're shaking and you're dealing with like wet ink that can smear and drip and drop, and this is a real challenge.

(44:28):
I mean, I feel for the guy, but when I start seeing the tremor in the letters, I think, oh, wow, he's working super hard to make these as good as you can at this point.
You just kind of feel it.

Jimmy (44:44):
He would say things like, I work harder on the strip now than I ever have.
Part of that is because he's fighting his own limitations just physically, and that's a heroic struggle, and I don't think it has anything to do with money.
If it does have something to do with money, it's the money that's coming, that he's responsible for so many people.

(45:05):
It's not just his money, it's everything.
I don't mean the five kids and step kids and a wife and any of that, and how, I mean the syndicate, the salespeople, the animators, the licensees.
I think he feels that really, and is choosing to spend his last few years, he didn't know it at the time, but that's what it ended up being, continuing to do this strip to the best of his ability.

(45:34):
I think it's heroic, because that's-

Harold (45:36):
Yeah, he could have stopped.
He saw that he was just slipping a little bit in the polls, and next episode, I'll go over some of that information.
But yeah, this year, he got his star on the Walk of Fame.
I mean, that's a big marker, especially for a cartoonist, to get that kind of thing in Hollywood.

Jimmy (45:54):
Yeah, how many cartoonists could possibly even be on it?

Harold (45:56):
Any other ones?

Jimmy (45:57):
Maybe Al Cap?

Harold (45:59):
I think it would be interesting to go back and see which cartoonists have gotten on the Walk of Fame.

Michael (46:03):
I mean, you have to have some connection with the film industry.
I mean, it's the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Jimmy (46:10):
Yeah, he would have been on for TV, probably.

Harold (46:13):
Yeah, it could be TV, radio, film.
Yeah, you're right.
Yeah, that's possible.
But the other thing he did in a slightly related note is the International Museum of Comic Art, which was relocating to Boca Raton, Florida, that the Walkers were involved in.
Biddle Bailey and all of those characters.

Liz (46:33):
I was thinking of old people with Walkers.

Harold (46:37):
Well, in Florida, I can...
Yeah, okay.
But we always have talked that there's this little bit of a rivalry and a little bit of each didn't seem to kind of get the other because they were different kind of cartoonists.
But I thought it was cool that the number one donor to the Museum of Comic Art down in Florida was Schulz.
He donated a million dollars to help them go.

Jimmy (47:00):
Wow.

Harold (47:00):
That was pretty cool.

Jimmy (47:01):
That is very cool.
That's given back for sure.
February 4th, Lucy is behind the psychiatric booth.
But in this symbolic panel, it's still saying psychiatric help.
It says, why not?
And who knows?
But then we're back to the regular old booth and her regular old patient, Charlie Brown.

(47:22):
And Charlie Brown says, I just had a terrible thought.
What if I finally meet that little red haired girl?
And what if she really likes me?
But what if it turns out that I don't like her as much as I thought I was going to?
To this, Lucy rolls her eyes.
Charlie Brown continues, how could I tell her?
How could I break up with her?
How could I leave her?
And then Lucy says, you're worried about leaving someone you haven't even met?

(47:45):
Hopeless, completely hopeless.
And then Charlie Brown responds with, maybe I could leave her now and meet her later.

Michael (47:53):
Only a true neurotic would have come up with this idea.

Jimmy (47:56):
Right?
That's amazing.
That is so neurotic.

Harold (48:03):
Yeah.
Actually, there's going to be a moment this year that is, I think, slightly historic in the strip related to a little red-haired girl, so I'm looking forward to that.

Jimmy (48:12):
Oh, yeah.
I know what one you're talking about.

Michael (48:15):
I have no idea.

Jimmy (48:17):
It turns out she actually dies.
No, no, no.
I meant her hair.

Liz (48:22):
Oh.

Jimmy (48:25):
As soon as it came out of my mouth, I'm like, that's not going to be what they came up with.
February 11th, another Sunday, and it's a symbolic panel, Linus and Sally on opposite sides of a big giant Valentine's Day heart, with Snoopy perched at the top where the two halves meet.

(48:48):
Then the strip starts in the next tier with Sally saying, I made this Valentine especially for Linus, and we see that she has made a little homemade Valentine.
Then she gives it to Snoopy saying, I want you to deliver it for me.
Snoopy goes over to Van Pelt's, kicks on the door, bam, bam, bam.
Linus answers and says, what's this?
Snoopy hands the Valentine to him, and they're inside now, I think anyway.

(49:12):
And Linus reads it and says, for my sweet baboo.
And then he freaks out, I'm not her sweet baboo.
Where did she get that idea?
Why does she keep calling me that?
He's screaming to the heavens, I'm not her sweet baboo, and I'll never be her sweet baboo.
And Snoopy is looking at the Valentine at this point.
Then we cut back to Sally at home, and Sally asks, did he like it?

(49:35):
And Snoopy thinks he loved it.
And then we cut to Linus in the last panel with the valentine smashed into his face and his nose poking through it, which is how Snoopy ended up delivering it after Linus' complaints.
Much funnier when you look at that one than when I read it, but oh, this is another one.

(49:57):
Maybe I was just in a great mood because I've been in a pretty good mood lately, but this year made me laugh out loud a bunch of times.
And this is one of them.
This one just kills me that Snoopy's like just had enough of this nonsense.
He loved it.
February 16th.
It's a panoramic panel, one of those done in one things.

(50:19):
And it is another one of our Frank Miller-esks, a look at World War I, Spike the Infantryman, just in the trench surrounded by darkness and mud and piled sandbags.
And he's thinking to himself.
So I stood in the chow line in the rain for an hour today because the cook said we were having tapioca pudding.

(50:40):
So what happens?
They ran out and I got bread pudding.
I hate bread pudding.
I'm in the infantry.
I'm standing in the rain.

Harold (50:46):
Rats.

Jimmy (50:49):
I just picked this one because I can't believe that they killed and ate tapioca pudding.

Harold (50:54):
Oh.

Jimmy (50:55):
Our famous character.
The girl whose dad was in advertising.
I think he's leaning partly into these World War I strips because it's custom-made for hiding his tremor.

Harold (51:18):
Anybody who's been through war, especially at a young, impressionable age, in your teens, early 20s, going off to war, what a strange interlude in your life that you're going to carry with you, the rest of it.

Jimmy (51:32):
Yeah.

Harold (51:34):
And the things that you were asked to do that you can't do in polite society and how jarring that is.
Yeah.
That can never leave a person.

Jimmy (51:45):
Well, yeah, not just asked to do, but trained to do.
Went through a rigorous, let's call it training program, to become a certain way, to behave a certain way, so that you can survive what's about to happen.
And then like you say, the world is over, eventually, thankfully, hopefully, and hopefully you survived it.

(52:06):
But then you go home and you're this person that can't do any of the things you were trained to be.
Well, that's why the GI Bill was so great, because, I mean, it gave so many people.
Schulz used his GI Bill, right, to get the correspondence course, I think, right?
So, yeah, I mean, yeah, and that's what it is.
It's an interlude.
It's these two or three years or whatever it is that make no sense when, you know, put in the context of everything else of your life.

(52:32):
And yeah, and that there's definitely that PTSD element in these war strips, for sure.
February 27th.
It's a panoramic from one extreme to the other.
Snoopy, dressed as a pirate with the kerchief over his head, the bandana over his head, an eye patch, and Woodstock on his shoulder as a parrot, are standing at the bus stop with Linus and Charlie Brown.

(52:57):
And Linus says, things change.
In the old days, you never would have seen a pirate waiting for the school bus.

Michael (53:05):
I picked this because it seems like it would have been an obvious choice for Snoopy's fantasies.
I mean, he's doing all the classic adventure, kid's adventure story, tropes.

Harold (53:15):
Well, he did do it, right?
When the eye patch, he stole the eye patch.

Jimmy (53:20):
Oh, yes, that's right.
For one strip or one or two strips, that's right.

Michael (53:25):
Seems like a real natural.

Harold (53:27):
I thought you picked this, Michael, because you was like, this is Linus saying, Schulz is breaking the rules.
He's just saying if things change, you would never have seen this in the old days.

Michael (53:35):
No, no, no, this fits totally in Snoopy's persona.
But adding Woodstock as the parrot was a genius move.

Jimmy (53:42):
That is what makes it, yeah.

Harold (53:44):
Did we ever establish that Snoopy said he didn't have any shoulders?
Like, it wasn't possible to do something like this?

Michael (53:49):
What's Woodstock standing on?

Harold (53:50):
He's got to be clawing in.

Liz (53:53):
Or he's just flying like a hummingbird.

Jimmy (53:56):
Yeah, right next to him.
Marge 8th.
Marcy and Peppermint Patty are in class, and of course, Peppermint Patty is trying to cheat.
She goes, quick Marcy, what's the answer to the first question?
Then Marcy says, I can't tell you sir, that would be cheating.
Hey, we just talked about this.
Then Peppermint Patty says, you're right Marcy, what was I thinking?

(54:16):
What came over me?
It's so unlike me.
I must have blanked out.
Then Marcy just gives him a says 10.
Patty says, got it.

Harold (54:25):
Yeah, this is like Schulz poking in the eye if you're like, having characters cheating and they have absolutely no regrets, no, they're no conscience.
Marcy points out that she's completely aware, it's on top of her mind that it's cheating, and they just go right ahead and do it.

Jimmy (54:42):
I love it.
It gives, you know what?
Because it gives it that little bit of spice.
If it was a bunch of goody-goodies going, I can't do that and I can't do that, it wouldn't have a little bit of spice to it, you know?

Harold (54:54):
Well, I think it would have been even more spice if you did have a character in the strip who's like, you can't do that.
It's odd that it just goes one way when it's cheating.
You think Linus would be, you'd have something where he's like, oh, this is terrible, Lydia.
Imagine Lydia.
Did she ever ask him for an answer?

(55:17):
I mean, that would have been an amazing strip.

Liz (55:20):
It assumes that Marcy is telling the truth.

Harold (55:23):
Well, that's true.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I remember in eighth grade being seated next to a girl that I liked a lot.
At one point she did.
She just turned to me, looked straight at me, and asked me the answer to one of the questions, and I was Charlie Brown.
I just stared at her.
She didn't talk to me normally unless she's wanting to.

Jimmy (55:50):
I like it.
It's a little bit of anarchism that is nice to have thrown in there now and again.
March 17th.
It's a Sunday, and the old Beagle Scouts are out on a hike, walking across a large bridge made from a fallen log in the first panel.
Then they're out in a field, and Snoopy says, okay, troops, here's where we'll spend the night.

(56:13):
I'll go off and gather some firewood while you prepare the camp, and then we see the little birds looking around, and Snoopy says to them, we're going to be here for a couple of days, so make it a happy place.
Then he goes around to pick up some sticks.
When he comes back, it's an entire fairground.
There is the tent set up, of course, but there's also a Ferris wheel.

(56:38):
And a merry-go-round, and the little birds are enjoying themselves.
And Snoopy's hat, of course, shoots straight off his head.

Harold (56:46):
Yeah, this one made me laugh out loud.
And of course, the hat flying off the head is just an additional delight.
And these are adorable, these little birds.
And boy, they did a nice job with the Ferris wheel and the merry-go-round.

Michael (57:01):
Help set it in color.

Liz (57:02):
Yes.

Jimmy (57:03):
Oh, yeah.

Harold (57:04):
It just looks great.
And for anybody interested in what I was talking about in terms of the tremor starting to affect the actual faces of the characters, which is a big deal.
You can see it here on the bottom of Snoopy's snout in multiple panels where he's got the tremor there, which I just had not seen before.

Michael (57:23):
Yeah.

Jimmy (57:25):
Really good looking strip.

Harold (57:26):
What do you think of the horses and the merry-go-round?
Very childlike, like the bunnies we were talking about.

Jimmy (57:32):
There is that first one, the one right in the center.
In my high school, we were the Cardin-Renning Chargers, and they renovated the gym, my freshman year, and they painted a horse on the side, represents the charger, and it looked like that.
It looked like a stuffed animal, aardvark.
I mean, it was the worst horse ever.

(57:55):
I actually like the horse that's coming around, the one in the far left that you can see in a circle around.
Yeah, totally the abstract cartoon.
March 22nd, we're back in the school room with Peppermint Patty and Marcy, and Peppermint Patty is soaked to the bone.
She says, yes, ma'am, I walked to school in the rain again.
Yes, I got kind of wet.

(58:16):
Homework, she says, did my homework get wet?
Then Marcy just loses it.
She just laughs her head off for no reason at this.
Ha ha ha ha ha ha.
And then Peppermint Patty says, ignore her, ma'am.
She's humongously weird.
I pick this because of the word humongous.

(58:38):
That is something I think Schulz heard one of his grandkids say, that humongous is a very late 80s, early 90s word, it feels to me.
I mean, I know this is mid 90s, but still.
Humongously weird.
April 20th.
So this is a sequence, Charlie Brown has gone to a dance school, as you may remember from one of our previous episodes, where he danced with a girl and he really liked her, but he was the only one who remembered her.

(59:10):
But now here we are and it's a sweetheart ball, and there is Emily and she's dancing with Charlie Brown.
And Charlie Brown says to her, I can't believe I'm here with you at the sweetheart ball, Emily.
And she says, do you remember how we met at dance class?
And then she says, I still enjoy dancing with you, Charles.
And then an announcement comes over the PA system.

(59:32):
Ladies and gentlemen, your attention please.
Does anyone here own a small white dog?
And Charlie Brown says, oh no.
Which is going to be a cliffhanger.
That's where we're leaving it this week.

Harold (59:45):
You know, so I kind of like Charlie Brown is vindicated because it was kind of questioned that this wonderful time he had dancing with this little girl who enjoyed dancing with him that he had, he just couldn't stop thinking about her.
And then all of a sudden it was kind of set up in this weird place like he imagined the whole thing.
I was very happy to see that Emily showed up again.

Michael (01:00:06):
I was very convinced she didn't exist.
So I think this whole thing is a dream or hallucination.

Liz (01:00:15):
Nice suit.

Jimmy (01:00:17):
How about that lapel on the last pad?
I have no idea what is going on there.

Harold (01:00:22):
That is, that's like Hugh Hefner kind of jacket.

Liz (01:00:26):
He'd be wearing a bathroom.

Harold (01:00:28):
Okay, right.

Jimmy (01:00:30):
It is like, it does have like that smoking jacket or kind of like a weird 70s tuxedo vibe.
It's so strange.
I think Emily's really cute, even though she's clearly just Charlie Brown in a wig.

Michael (01:00:43):
What color do you think that hair would be?

Jimmy (01:00:45):
Oh, he has a thing for redheads, clearly.
They're all redheads.
All right, so that brings us to the end of this episode.
We will find out what happens next episode.
If you characters want to keep this conversation going, there's of course a couple of different ways you can do it.
First thing you could do is you got to go over to the old Unpacking Peanuts website, unpackingpeanuts.com, and there you sign up for the great Peanuts reread.

(01:01:10):
That'll get you one email a month and that email will tell you what we're going to be covering as far as we know at the time of publication anyway.
So you want to do that.
If you want to email us, you can do it at unpackingpeanuts.gmail.com.
If you want to call or write the hotline [phone], you can leave a message or send a text.

(01:01:31):
If you send a text, remember to identify yourself.
And of course, you can follow us on social media.
We are at Unpack Peanuts on Instagram and threads and at Unpacking Peanuts on Facebook, Blue Sky, and YouTube.
And we'd love to see you there.
So that's it for this week.
Come back next week for more 1996 and more about the rules of peanuts.

(01:01:51):
From Michael, Harold and Liz, this is Jimmy saying, be of good cheer.

Liz (01:01:55):
Yes.

Harold (01:01:56):
Be of good cheer.

Liz (01:01:58):
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.

(01:02:21):
For more about Jimmy, Michael, and Harold, visit unpackingpeanuts.com.
Have a wonderful day, and thanks for listening.