1997 Part 2 - Everyone Needs A Break Now and Then

Charles Schulz announces he will be taking his first five week sabbatical after Jeannie says he’s “getting jumpy.” Then he gets a big thrill from a call by one of his artistic heroes. In the strip, Rerun is in kindergarten and the stress is slowly destroying him! Plus: The Little Pig Haired Girl?

Transcript available at UnpackingPeanuts.com

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

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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 (00:18):
Hey everybody, welcome back to the show.
This is Unpacking Peanuts, your favorite podcast that talks about your favorite comic strip.
I'll be your host for the proceedings.
My name is Jimmy Gownley.
Hey, I'm also a cartoonist.
I did things like Amelia Ruehl's 7 Good Reasons Not to Grow Up and The Dumbest Idea Ever.
And guess what?
You can subscribe to my new comics for free right now over on gvillcomics.substack.com.

(00:41):
And joining me as always are my pals, co-hosts and fellow cartoonists.
He's a playwright and a composer both for the band Complicated People as well as for this very podcast.
He's the co-creator of the original comic book price guide, the original editor for Amelia Ruehl's and the creator of such great strips as Strange Attractors, A Gathering of Spells and Tangled River.
It's Michael Cohen.

Michael (01:00):
Say hey.

Jimmy (01:01):
And he's the executive producer and writer of Mystery Science Theater 3000, a former vice president of Archie Comics and the creator of the Instagram sensation, Sweetest Beasts.
It's Harold Buchholz.

Harold (01:11):
Hello.

Jimmy (01:12):
And making sure everything runs smoothly and keeping us out of trouble, it's our producer and editor, Liz Sumner.

Liz (01:19):
Say hey.

Michael (01:20):
Wait a minute.

Jimmy (01:24):
Oh, and thus begins the downfall of Unpacking Peanuts, the infighting and lawsuits.
Well, I hope all you guys are doing well and I hope our listeners are doing well.
It's a beautiful day out here in sunny Pennsylvania.
We only get about nine of those a year, so that's exciting.
And I'm sitting here with my pals ready to get into the comics, but I bet my good buddy Harold has some info to share with us first.

Harold (01:51):
Sure, yeah.
So 1997, we're deep into it and Schulz is doing something he has not done in the history of the strip.
He announces this year that he is going to take a five-week sabbatical from the strip, which earlier he was a little, I don't know, critical of people who were taking hiatus from their strip.

(02:17):
So I'm not exactly sure what was going on.
But there is, again, from our friends at Editor and Publisher, there is some interesting information that came out.
Because at first, when they announced it, they were tight-lipped about why he was taking this five-week break.

(02:41):
It's so unlike him.
I didn't know he did this.
Except when he went into the hospital, I knew he had to stop because he was in the hospital.

Jimmy (02:50):
Yeah, but even then, he worked ahead, so he didn't have to take, so there were no reruns, right?

Harold (02:54):
It's crazy.
So yeah, what was actually going on?
I don't know.
I'm sure a few people know, but I don't.
In any case, the choice was made for a five-week hiatus beginning on Thanksgiving of 1997.
And they ran reruns of the strip that were between 1987 and 1992 while he was away.

(03:21):
And they interviewed him about this.
And he said, I guess this was during his hiatus.
Of course, what's he doing?
He's talking to a reporter from Editor and Publisher.
But he said, it's amusing and a little deflating, but I have to get ahead for when I return.
He said he was working on two daily strips for February and a Sunday for April when Editor and Publisher called.

(03:44):
This was a December 20th article.
That gives you a sense of how far ahead he was.
Then he said, even when he's not at the drawing board, ideas for Peanuts continue to fill his brain.
The comic's always on my mind, including when I wake up at night and can't go back to sleep, he said.
The cartoonist is also busy keeping up with Peanuts licensing, working on the annual ice show at his skating rink, seeing visitors and answering correspondence, including birthday greetings, as this was his 75th birthday.

(04:13):
He got one phone greeting from painter Andrew Wyeth, whom Schulz said he'd never spoken to before.
It was the biggest thrill I've had in years.
He said, I'm in total awe of his art.
He also, this is on the Schulz timeline at the museum as well.
There was a big announcement this year that he and Jeannie announced that they were going to give a million dollars toward the construction of a D-Day Memorial in Virginia.

(04:38):
And we know that's obviously a big part of his life, having been over Europe in World War II.
He said, the Peanuts break has made things somewhat easier for him, and he's glad that he asked United for it.
So he was the one who definitely made it happen.
And he said, my wife had noticed I was getting a little jumpy.

Jimmy (05:01):
That's amazing.

Michael (05:04):
So my question is, does this affect the number of strips in the total Peanuts reread?

Jimmy (05:12):
No, no, no, no.
Yeah, no, that's only counting original strips.

Michael (05:16):
OK.

Harold (05:20):
And then he was asked, what about a longer vacation trip?
And he said, that doesn't interest me.
He says he also doesn't think he'll be interested in another extended break in the future.
He said, I've always managed to get ahead enough to take a week or two off.
That's good enough for him.
So, you know, I'm glad he got a break.

Jimmy (05:36):
I am too.
I mean, just to think to do anything that long without interruption is mind boggling.
Mind boggling.
I just want to throw out there, Andrew Wyeth, Pennsylvania artist, go PA.
Yeah, that's really, really cool.
Well, thank you for all that, Harold.
I appreciate it.
It's always good to know where Mr.
Schulz was in his life at these times.

(05:59):
So what do you guys think?
Should we start in on these comic strips?

Michael (06:03):
Let's do it.
Sure.

Jimmy (06:05):
All right.
So if you guys want to follow along, there's a couple of things you got to do.
The first thing you got to do is you got to go over to unpackingpeanuts.com and sign up for the great Peanuts reread, which will get you that one email a month that will let you know what we're up to, what strips we're going to be covering so you can be prepared to follow along with us.
And then of course, you have to find a way to read the strips.
There's the beautiful Fantagraphics books.

(06:27):
There's obviously millions of reprints all over the world.
Different kinds.
There is gocomics.com, which you can now subscribe to for $4.99 a month, and you won't only get Peanuts, but you'll get every comic strip that they carry, which is tons and tons of them.
Anyway, let's hit the strips.
May 15th, Rerun and The Little Pig Haired...

(06:49):
What am I going to call this girl?
The Pig Haired Girl?

Harold (06:52):
That's not good.

Jimmy (06:54):
The Little Pig Haired Girl.

Michael (06:56):
The Nameless Girl.

Harold (06:57):
Maybe she's Pigpen's little sister.

Michael (06:59):
Maybe.

Jimmy (07:00):
That's when the strip really went downhill, when they brought in the Little Pig Haired Girl.
Let's try this again.
The Little Pig-Tailed Girl and Rerun are sitting in class working at a little table.
This is Rerun in kindergarten.
And Rerun says to the teacher, Yes, ma'am, I'm writing a story.
It's about this kid who's in kindergarten and how the stress is slowly destroying him.

(07:25):
Every morning he, ma'am, well, I have another one here about some Purple Bunnies.
This is my life.
This is my life.
This is exactly my life.
From kindergarten to dealing with publishers right now.
I have this thing that's very, no, you bought by Purple Bunnies.
Okay, great.

Harold (07:43):
Well, and this totally speaks to what we just talked about.
I was noticing before I learned about the hiatus that there were, it seemed like self-referential things here with Schulz.
Here, he's saying the stress is slowly destroying him.
This right before he calls United and says, look guys, I need a break.

(08:06):
You know he didn't want to do that.
Oh my gosh.
That must have been the hardest thing.
Thank God for Jeannie that she helped him do the wise thing.

Jimmy (08:17):
Yeah.
You got to take care of yourself.
There are a lot of tragic stories in cartooning and we don't need any more of them.
So if any of you guys are out there are cartoonists, remember to take care of yourself.
All kinds of, physically, mentally, I mean, my gosh, back problems alone in cartooning.
But yeah.

(08:38):
I love seeing Rerun in school.
There's a line coming up in our next episode that I think is one of the funniest lines ever in Peanuts.
So that's a lot that Rerun delivers.
So I'll have to have to wait for that.
May 18th.
Woodstock is walking along what looks like, you know, a series of little dips and divots in a road.

(09:01):
And he's approaching a castle, a Woodstock sized castle.
Then mysteriously, in the next panel, we see him shooting out of a tube that's in the side of the, assuming the castle wall.
Then he's walking along a little green tarmacs, a little field, something like that.
We can't see autos.
Walks up to another stone building, goes in that, shoots out a tube on the other side of that building.

(09:24):
And then the process is repeated at a windmill.
And then some other thing, possibly a bridge.
Always he walks into a building and then shoots out the other side.
And then we see him dazed and a little befuddled on top of Snoopy's doghouse.
And Snoopy says to him, like I said before, never take a shortcut through a miniature golf course.

Michael (09:47):
And I wonder how good this would look in black and wet.
We've got it in color.
And it really, really stands out.
It looks more like some of those things from the 20s and 30s.
Cartoonists were doing all kinds of really interesting graphic things using really bright colors.

Jimmy (10:05):
Yeah, like Polly and her pals or something like that.

Harold (10:08):
Yeah, yeah, or even a crazy cat strip, some of the coloring.
Yep.

Jimmy (10:14):
Yeah, absolutely.
Yeah, I'm not sure how it would look in black and white, but it really does look nice in color.
I was wondering, do you think some of these things reflected his little miniature golf course he used to have back on the coffee grounds days?

Harold (10:29):
Maybe, yeah.
That would have been pretty cool to have.

Jimmy (10:33):
It's very, very cute.
Now my question, now I don't know.
I mean, are we supposed to know that that's what he's doing all the way through it?
Or is it supposed to...
Yeah, we are.

Michael (10:43):
Okay.
I really...
Well, we could talk about how we read comics.

Jimmy (10:49):
Yeah, go for that.

Harold (10:49):
That's...

Michael (10:50):
But I always do a scan of the page.
I can't help it.
My eyes do it.
So I realized what it was before I even looked at the first panel.

Harold (11:00):
I see.
Harold, what about you?
I was reading it in black and white in the fanographics thing.
I was just enjoying the strip because it was so surreal.
It took me a while to figure out that it was a miniature golf course.

Jimmy (11:15):
Well, a lot of the indicators are in cut like the red.
Well, you can't see it if you're looking at it in black and white.
But the borders of each of like, what do they call it?
The fairways of the miniature golf course are colored red.
So you can tell that he's on some sort of bordered path.
So I think a lot of the clues come in the coloring.

Harold (11:36):
Yeah, there are plenty of clues.
There's no question.
If you're looking at it at all, it's interesting.
The way I think most people engaged with the comics, they were getting it in their newspaper and they're scanning their favorites or maybe they're just reading everything just very quickly.
I'm guessing that Schulz, given the punchline at the end, was expecting that a good number of people were just going to be like, skim, skim, skim, skim, skim, skim, skim.

(12:05):
Oh.

Jimmy (12:07):
Yeah, right.

Harold (12:07):
Because if you're paying attention, you will absolutely understand what's going on.
But even as I was reading it, I think I was reading in color, I would have gotten it.
Yeah, yeah.
Because there are lots of color cues.

Liz (12:18):
But it's the windmill.
It has to be a windmill.

Harold (12:23):
Right.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I like the little water hazard.
I don't remember having many water hazards in the golf course.
Oh, yeah.

Jimmy (12:31):
Some places have them down in Chincoteague, Virginia.
Do they have them for sure?
At their mini golf place?

Harold (12:37):
Neat.

Michael (12:37):
We saw the miniature golf was one of the great American sports.

Jimmy (12:43):
Yeah, it is a very American.

Harold (12:45):
Well, that's how we started with our honeymoon.
We had our miniature golf tour of North America.
As we went around, we had three weeks to just travel around, and that was the common denominator, was trying out all the different miniature golf courses.

Jimmy (13:03):
That's so fun.
I recommend the miniature golf course within Canobles Amusement Park.
You can go to Canobles for free.
It's a huge amusement park and there's no entrance fees in Pennsylvania.

Harold (13:14):
It's one of the last in the country like that.
It's got some good stuff, right?
You just pay per ride.

Jimmy (13:19):
It has one of the best roller coasters in the world.
In one point, it was one of the top 10 wooden roller coasters in the world, the Phoenix.
They have also though, most importantly, the Alamo restaurant where you can get a meatloaf dinner, which is exactly what you want at a day at the amusement park.
They have a great miniature golf course within it.

(13:40):
May 21st, Peppermint Patty lounging about in her house on a nice little fluffy pillow, calls her friend Marcy and says, hey Marcy, I understand there's a rumor going around that I may be named outstanding student of the year.
Marcy says, that's interesting, Sarah.
I heard another rumor that the moon is going to fall out of the sky.

(14:02):
Peppermint Patty says, I'm hanging up, Marcy.

Harold (14:06):
Where do these rumors start?

Jimmy (14:08):
Peppermint Patty.
This is why that's actually what I wanted to talk with.
Do you think that like Peppermint Patty is trying to get some buzz going?
That's what I think.

Harold (14:15):
Absolutely.

Jimmy (14:15):
Right.
Okay.
But then we find out she's 400th.
Is that in the whole school or does she have 400 people in that classroom?

Harold (14:27):
No wonder she's having troubles.
Surprising how often the teacher is calling on her.

Jimmy (14:34):
I like the pillow.
I like the way he writes or he draws the little frills on the edges of the pillow, especially in the first panel, which I didn't even realize what it was until I saw them in the last panel but I thought that's really cool.
I also like the Peppermint Patty has such a frilly, girly looking bedroom set.

Harold (14:53):
Yeah.
She has a little college pennant on her wall that seems to be colored in where her mood is at the moment.

Liz (15:04):
Maybe her dad got a new job and they hit more money.

Jimmy (15:08):
Maybe.

Harold (15:08):
Maybe.

Jimmy (15:09):
Yes, it absolutely is a little less whatever we said it was before.
There's something, I don't know if this is just me or what, but it feels like the Peppermint Patty strips, the Peppermint Patty strip within the strip really lends itself to the shaky line.
She's kind of rumpled, she seems a little, she's very emotive, she's grungy and hard scrabble, and I think it kind of looks good.

(15:40):
I wonder if this strip with this shaky line always looked like that.
I still think it would be successful.

Harold (15:49):
I agree with you.
There are lots of strips like this in this era.

Jimmy (15:52):
There really were, the Frank and Ernest era or whatever.

Harold (15:56):
Frank and Ernest, yeah, Shoe.

Jimmy (15:58):
Shoe, yeah.
I mean, Shoe had a lot more slick lines, but it was still rumbly for sure.

Harold (16:04):
Yeah, but even the brush line was kind of crunchy.
So this was definitely the era for that sort of thing.

Jimmy (16:13):
Yeah.

Liz (16:14):
Weren't there cordless phones by 97?

Jimmy (16:17):
Yeah, but I still had a cord on my phone.
Oh, no, I didn't.
Not 97.
Yeah, you would think so.
A lot of people were anti-cordless phone because the police scanners used to be able to pick them up.

Harold (16:30):
That's probably what Pepper and Patty's concerned about.

Jimmy (16:33):
Maybe it's what Pepper and Patty's dad's concerned about.
That's why I didn't have a cordless phone in GVIL.
My dad's like, why you want people listening to you all day?
May 26th, we're back in Revolutionary War times, and Snoopy is the famous patriot at Valley Forge.
And it's wintery and looks very cold.

(16:55):
And he says, it's another cold day at Valley Forge.
I've baked General Washington a piece of fire cake.
He says to me, where's the grape jelly?
I tell him, we haven't had grape jelly for six weeks.
Then he says, can't someone go over to the mall and get some?
And then Snoopy goes back to the fire and says, it was too hard to explain.

(17:15):
The reason I picked this one, I picked this, right?
I picked this because I had a joke in my Tanner Rock story that I thought was so funny and I cut it just because I knew Michael wouldn't like it.

Michael (17:28):
You're a good man, Jimmy.

Jimmy (17:29):
You're welcome, because it would ruin the world.
And it was like, Tanner gets her guitar stolen.
A kid takes it and goes running away with it and they're trying to find it.
And they tried to, well, can we call your house?
Let me use your phone.
And the joke was, no, this is the 80s slash 90s.
They haven't been invented yet.
And I just thought it was so cute and drawn so well.
And then I threw it out because I knew Michael wasn't there.

Michael (17:50):
Wow.
Can I have that page?
Do you still have it?

Harold (17:53):
Well, I know I ditched it.
Well, for those of you who want this, the Snoopy recipe book.

SPEAKER_2 (18:03):
Peanuts, Ascimites, Explained.

Harold (18:07):
Apparently, fire cake, you make it by mixing flour, water and salt.
2.3 parts flour to one part water, forming a thick, damp dough.
And then you bake it on a rock in the fire or in the ashes.
So there you go.

Jimmy (18:21):
That sounds terrible.
That sounds like something you would eat during the Revolutionary War.

Liz (18:27):
No wonder you need grape jelly.

Jimmy (18:29):
Yeah, you really need a little moisture on that thing.

Harold (18:32):
It says it was a not very popular substitute when the Commissary failed to issue bread to soldiers.

Jimmy (18:38):
Yeah, I couldn't imagine.

Harold (18:39):
They were then issued flour and they had to make it themselves, just like we see Snoopy doing here.

Jimmy (18:44):
Wow, that's amazing.
So I guess Schulz was reading some Revolutionary War books or something like that.

Harold (18:50):
I wouldn't put it past him.
He was a reader.

Jimmy (18:53):
Oh, absolutely.
June 2nd, Charlie Brown and Snoopy are all snuggled up in the beanbag chair watching TV.
And Charlie Brown says, this is my favorite program.
And Sally says, why?
All they're doing is dancing.
Charlie Brown says, I like to watch old people having fun.

Harold (19:12):
Yeah, I'm thinking about Schulz here again.
He's, you know, he's aware of his age and dealing with it and try to keep himself in the best shape he can.
And I'm guessing, you know, okay, if we have to guess, what was he watching?

Liz (19:28):
Well, Lauren Swelk.

Harold (19:29):
Yes.

Jimmy (19:30):
Yeah.
It's obvious in Lauren Swelk, but what it would have been in Gerardville is after Lauren Swelk, they had the Polka Hour.

Harold (19:39):
Oh.

Jimmy (19:39):
And still, in my mind-

Harold (19:40):
And where was it coming from?
Where did they shoot the Polka Hour?

Jimmy (19:43):
Scranton, Scranton Wilkes-Barre.

Harold (19:45):
So it was, was it local, just a local show that was just on the Scranton Wilkes-Barre channel that you put up?

Jimmy (19:50):
It was on Scranton Wilkes-Barre PBS channel.

SPEAKER_1 (19:52):
Yep.

Jimmy (19:53):
And I mean, this ran my whole life to the point, one of my favorite memories, and there is a video of it somewhere.
It was, my mom watched it religiously every Saturday night.
She would watch the Polkas.
And there's a video of her teaching my twin daughters to Polka when they're just toddlers.

Harold (20:09):
Oh, that's so cool.

Jimmy (20:10):
Oh, it's so fun.
It's so fun.

Harold (20:12):
What was the name of the show?

Jimmy (20:14):
Oh, boy, I don't know.
What was it?
It might have just been Polka Hour, but I bet.

Michael (20:20):
Did your uncle play there?

Jimmy (20:21):
No, no.

Liz (20:22):
Did your mother play there?

Michael (20:24):
No, no.

Jimmy (20:25):
They were more in the amateur circuit.

Michael (20:28):
You had an uncle who played in Polka Band, so right?

Jimmy (20:31):
Yeah, absolutely.

Michael (20:33):
What's his name?
Let's make him famous.

Jimmy (20:35):
Bernie McAndrew.
It was the Bernie McAndrew Polka Band.
It was a three-piece.
It was drums, bass, and accordion, and vocals, so.

Harold (20:47):
Is it Pennsylvania Polka?
Was that the name?

Jimmy (20:50):
Oh, that might be what it was called.
Yep.
WVIA, was that the name of the?

Harold (20:56):
Let's see.
Yes, WVIA.
I think it's still going.

Jimmy (21:00):
Oh, wow.
That's amazing.
That is amazing.

Liz (21:03):
Maybe they'd like to advertise.

Jimmy (21:05):
Yeah, maybe we can have this sponsored by, what's it called?
Pennsylvania Polka.
That makes sense.

Harold (21:10):
Pennsylvania Polka.
Yeah, those PBS shows love to advertise.

Jimmy (21:14):
Well, they're famously flush with cash.
But they would have bands come from all over the world.
There's like Mexican Polka.
There's actually lots of weird cross-pollination between Polka music and Mexican music because of the accordium.
Yes, it was all right, I guess.

Harold (21:31):
Wow.
So it's been going over 35 years.

Jimmy (21:34):
That's incredible.

Harold (21:35):
You have Schulz around for his money.
It keeps going.

Jimmy (21:37):
Yeah.
Yeah, that's amazing.
All right, go Pennsylvania Polka.
June 7th, Linus, Lucy and Charlie Brown are standing in line and they're waiting to go see a movie again.
And Charlie Brown says to Linus, What are you doing here?
I thought you wanted to see the cowboy movie.

(21:58):
And Linus says to Charlie Brown, I did, but Lucy wants to see this space movie.
We took a vote.
I lost one to one.
That's a good joke.
I actually have used that joke for years and things, and I didn't realize I was stealing it from here, but I now remember that.
Yeah, I've totally been stealing it from here.

Michael (22:16):
So what space movie came out in 97?

Jimmy (22:22):
Battlefield Earth, is it?

Harold (22:24):
Oh, I sure hope for there.
So Independence Day was about 96?

Jimmy (22:29):
96, yeah.

Harold (22:31):
Okay.

Jimmy (22:31):
Oh, no, Battlefield Earth is 2000, so it's not that six, or what was it, the fifth element?
I'd like to see Lucy go to see the fifth.
Yeah, that's the fifth element, 1997.

Michael (22:43):
Okay, and there were probably no cowboy movies.

Jimmy (22:47):
When was, like, let's see, Westerns of 1997.
All right, and these are, oh, there were one, two, three, four, five, six Western movies relayed to 1997, according to the Wikipedia.
And I don't think-

Harold (23:03):
What did he miss?
What did he get to see?

Jimmy (23:05):
I don't think anything.
I don't think I've heard of any of these.

Harold (23:08):
Wow.

Jimmy (23:08):
Last stand at Saber River, Los Locos, once upon a time in China and America.
Nope.
Promise the Moon, The Shooter.

Harold (23:19):
I don't know what Linus was.
Maybe it was The Retro House.

Jimmy (23:23):
And True Woman.
Yeah, maybe it was.
That's what it was.

Harold (23:27):
I thought this was interesting, judging by the size of the dollar bills that they're handing over to get into the theater, I can now say with somewhat a bit of accuracy that the height of Linus is 22 inches.

Jimmy (23:48):
You heard it here first, folks.
June 14th.
Okay.
So Olaf, this is a sequence where Olaf and Spike have showed up in the Peanuts universe, and they seem to be wanting to settle in and stay there.
So Charlie Brown is trying to give Olaf away to a home that would care for him.

(24:13):
And we see him at this particular time, he comes up to Marcy's house and says, I've come to offer you a free dog.
His name is Olaf.
Does he bite?
Only if attacked by a pizza.
Can he do tricks?
As Marcy, Charlie Brown, he's doing one now.
He's standing on the porch without falling off.

Harold (24:32):
It's a pretty good trick.
This four months that I read, I don't know it was because where I was, again, you know, you bring yourself to the strips when you're reading it, but these four months were very, to me, very rich.
They were very silly and I was fascinated by this particular period of the strip because, and there's melancholy, there's some really dark stuff.

(25:03):
It's just a really incredibly rich piece of a late part of this guy's run that surprised me and I really enjoyed it.
I mean, the thing that made me pick this strip was just, does he bite only if attacked by a pizza.
That to me is classic Schulz silliness where he loves to, but he's not willing to make it the final punchline.

(25:29):
But he has to get it in there.

Michael (25:31):
The fact is, Charlie Brown usually doesn't tell jokes.

Harold (25:37):
Maybe this isn't a joke to Charlie Brown.

Michael (25:42):
It's usually not the funny one, which is interesting.

Harold (25:44):
Yeah.

Michael (25:45):
Funny strip.
Yeah.

Jimmy (25:49):
For sure.
Man, that Olaf design is the weirdest thing in...

Michael (25:55):
Is that a mouth or what is his tongue hanging there?

Jimmy (25:57):
Well, you know how dogs, like, if you think of like a, but St.
Bernard, you know, how they have those kind of flappy jowls.
I think that's what it is.

Michael (26:06):
But is his tongue hanging out?

Harold (26:08):
Is that a tongue or a collar with a little...

Jimmy (26:11):
No, I believe his tongue is hanging out, but he also has a collar.
And this one, it really looks like it's more the collar, but I think his tongue is always out.
Let's look at it.

Harold (26:19):
Because it's not on the side view.

Jimmy (26:22):
Right, let's take a look.
No, it's definitely his tongue, yeah.

Harold (26:25):
Okay.

Jimmy (26:26):
I looked at a different drawing and you can see.

Harold (26:29):
It is a strange drawing.

Michael (26:29):
Well, look at the color one.

Jimmy (26:31):
That's what I looked at it.
Yeah, it's definitely.
He doesn't seem to be wearing a collar in the other drawings, but he does in the Snoopy Olaf plush toy.

Michael (26:42):
What?

Jimmy (26:43):
Which is on eBay.
Oh, interesting.
Don't, I might snatch that up before this airs.
And I won't really.
June 16th.
Now, Charlie Brown has gone over to Rerun's house and he has, and this must kill poor Rerun because he has both Andy and Olaf that he's offering.

(27:05):
And he says, would, how would you like to have a free dog?
This is Andy and this is Olaf.
And Rerun says, Mom says dogs are too much trouble.
They bark too much and our yard isn't big enough.
And then they walk away, you know, the dogs and Charlie Brown, and Charlie Brown says, well, at least she didn't say anything about preferring cats.
And then Rerun calls out after them.

(27:25):
Mom says, do you happen to have a cat?
I could see Lucy as a cat owner for sure.
Yeah, because Lucy and the cat both kind of glaring at each other and trying to ignore them.
I could see that.
I could be a whole relationship between the two of them.

Harold (27:41):
So what's going on here with the, does Schulz extend the back steps of the porch to match whatever number of characters you're standing on?

Jimmy (27:50):
Yeah, well, you remember that in the 90s, the expanding porch steps.
That was a big thing.

Harold (27:55):
Oh yeah.
Was that Ronco?

Jimmy (27:58):
Yeah, it was Ronco, absolutely.

Harold (28:00):
Okay.

Jimmy (28:01):
Oh, man.
I do like Fuzzy Andy.
I think that's a really cute character design.
Another great thing, boy, you're not going to have to worry about your tremor when you're drawing a fuzzy dog.
Those tiny little short strokes.

Harold (28:14):
Or a rose bush.

Jimmy (28:16):
I love the rose bushes, the scribble spiraled rose bushes.

Harold (28:19):
I love those.

Jimmy (28:21):
June 19th, Snoopy's atop the dog house and he's typing away and we're summing up what's happened.
And he says, about a month after Andy and Olaf left, I received a note from Spike.
He said Andy and Olaf never arrived.
I remember saying goodbye to them that morning.
That's the last time we ever saw them.
Right, because he had sent Olaf and Andy off to Spike.

Michael (28:45):
What is he writing?
Is this a journal?
He's never done this before.

Jimmy (28:49):
Yeah, I think it's like a journal, which is weird, for sure.
Maybe it's a Roman Aclef, right?

Harold (29:00):
I was reading this.
I was like, oh no, is this the last time we see Andy and Olaf?
That's brutal.
That's like Charlotte Broad.

Jimmy (29:07):
No, they show up right till the end.
I also have the feeling that we say things like Schulz, he's getting feedback, he knows what's right.
I think for 40 years, he made absolute great use of that.
I think now he might get feedback and go, oh, you don't like it?
Here's 20 more of them.

Harold (29:27):
Yeah.
Well, now he's probably getting tons of e-mails.
Being forwarded from United Feature and he's like, what the heck?

Jimmy (29:35):
That's true.

Harold (29:36):
That's why we had to take the break probably because we have the answer to 75 e-mails a day.

Jimmy (29:40):
I bet they didn't answer the e-mails.
I bet they answered letters.
I don't imagine.

SPEAKER_2 (29:47):
I don't know.

Jimmy (29:48):
I mean, it's too easy.

Harold (29:50):
Maybe that's, yeah.
He had to make that transition.
He tried it first and then, you know, versus nothing.
He's like, oh, cool.
I got something electronically.
And then two years later, he's like, oh.

SPEAKER_2 (30:00):
Yeah.

Jimmy (30:02):
June 21st.
It's a baseball game.
Schroeder comes up and tosses Charlie Brown the ball, who is on the mound and Schroeder says to him, the other team is trash-talking us, Charlie Brown.
I got even with him though.
I said, you guys think you're so great?
Mozart was writing symphonies when he was your age.
That really shut him up.

(30:22):
Charlie Brown rolls his eyes and says, I'll bet it did.
I love the trash-talking.
I love that that is such specific trash-talking.
And it wouldn't work at all, but I love that Schroeder believes it worked.
June 26th, Peppermint Patty and Marcy are off at camp.
And now we have a situation where Peppermint Patty has been writing to Charles, as she calls, or as Marcy calls him.

(30:51):
And Marcy's pointed out that she has, in fact, written a love letter to Charles, and even though Peppermint Patty was not aware of it.
So now they're lying in their bunks at night, and Marcy says to Peppermint Patty, I don't think you're being fair to Charles, sir.
One day you tell him we're not thinking of him.
The next day you tell him we miss him.
You're playing lovers' games, sir.

(31:13):
And then Peppermint Patty says, lovers aren't real people, Marcy.
What does that mean?

Michael (31:18):
Yeah, what does that mean?

Jimmy (31:20):
Don't know.
I don't know, because here's the thing.
I have in my little, whatever it's called, Dumbest Idea Ever book, I use as an epigraph at the beginning.
He says, cartoonists don't live anywhere.
They aren't real people, which I don't fully understand, but I thought it was perfect for the beginning of my memoir.
But here's this again, lovers aren't real people.

(31:43):
I just think that's such a strange thing.
I thought maybe one of you people would have insight into that.

Michael (31:48):
Do you want us to make up something?

Jimmy (31:50):
Yeah.
No, if you don't either, that's fine.
I was just curious.

Harold (31:56):
I was just thinking it meant that because lovers act so strangely that the rules of being human don't count when you're a lover.

Jimmy (32:11):
And so in that instance, Pepper and Patty is like defending herself, saying, hey, because to me I thought maybe it was like, oh, that's just something from movies, Marcy.

Liz (32:23):
Yeah, that makes more sense.
I mean, that's more the way I'd interpret it.
It's like the idea of lovers is romanticized.

Jimmy (32:32):
Right.

Liz (32:32):
And not like reality.

Harold (32:35):
Right.
Oh, interesting.
Okay.
I want to put this to our listeners.
You have any thoughts about what Pepper and Patty is meaning here?
I'd like to know what people think about that one, because that is a really unusual strip.

Michael (32:50):
I'd like to put in a quick plug for one of my favorite comics.
It's just rereading Finder, Carla McNeil's series.
There's a character named Marcy, one of three children of the lead character's girlfriend.
Anyway, Marcy calls her older sister, Sir, continuously.

(33:14):
I thought that's a nice little tribute.

Jimmy (33:16):
That is very cute.
June 27th, Sally's at the mailbox and she has a handful of letters saying, junk mail, all we ever get is junk mail.
Then she comes back inside and Charlie Brown's in the beanbag and she says, here, we got some junk mail with your name on it.
And she reads it and says, we miss you and we think of you night and day.

(33:36):
And it's on Pink Stationery.
And then she gives it to Charlie Brown and says, probably a tire company or something.
So this is the love letter Charlie Brown got from Pepper and Patty at a camp in Mars.
Or and Sally seems to think it is just junk mail.
I guess that's because of Charlie Brown's record.

(33:58):
I guess if you're going to, is this a real love letter or is it something else?
I guess Sally was playing the odds.

Harold (34:04):
And Charlie Brown believes her and does think it is junk mail, which that was totally.
The other thing I thought of when I was reading these month's strips in particular was Fever Dream.
He's gone so far right now in some of these character traits and storylines and what you can and can't do in the strip, that something that has its own weird internal logic that would not happen in real life is so much a part of the strip.

(34:38):
And this is a great example of it where there's a handwritten envelope with a stamp on it in the handwriting on page stationary.

Jimmy (34:49):
All right, guys.
Time to take a break.
I'm going to get a little iced tea and then come back for the back nine of these strips.

Liz (34:57):
We're going to go on hiatus for about five weeks.
No, no, fine.

Jimmy (35:02):
All right, guys.

Harold (35:03):
I will be right back.

Liz (35:06):
This week on the Pennsylvania Polka Hour, we feature Bernie McAndrew and the Latchkey Kids with special guest, Animae Gownley.
Tune in every Saturday night to WVIA, Scranton Wilkes-Brows Polka Partner for 35 years.
This program is made possible by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the Van Pelt Foundation, and listeners like you.

Jimmy (35:30):
And we're back.
Hey, Liz, I'm hanging out in the mailbox.
Do we got anything?

Liz (35:33):
We do.
Steven Edwards comments on the 1996 Part 2 episode, referring to the May 5th strip.
And he says, I think Lucy's pivot to Laundress conveys the Van Pelt kids' exposure to Victorian literature, the historical emergency hustle.

Michael (35:57):
Wow.

Harold (35:58):
Yeah.
Well, she's going to be a professor.
She's got to bone up a little bit.

Jimmy (36:03):
Yeah.
Well, just a little bit.
Hopefully she's boned up on some stuff since the 50s when she was teaching Linus.

Harold (36:09):
Yeah.
Right.
Yeah.
Well, she has that teacher in her, though.
She does.
She absolutely does.
Yeah.
Now, whether she has the Laundress in her, I don't know.
That's a real commitment to Schroeder.

Jimmy (36:19):
Anything else, Liz?

Liz (36:20):
No, but I do want to do a shout out to our listeners in South Korea, because they have consistently kept us in the top 20 podcasts in South Korea.

Jimmy (36:31):
So thank you so much.
That's amazing.

Michael (36:33):
And all you folks in South Korea.
Do you know a band named HOA?
Are we pronouncing it correctly?

Jimmy (36:40):
They're so good.
The Beatle-y band?

Liz (36:42):
They really are.

Jimmy (36:42):
Oh my gosh.
Yeah.
So good.

Liz (36:45):
We love them.

Harold (36:46):
We do.

Jimmy (36:47):
We also heard on the voicemail, we got a text from Charles Kulak, who just wanted to tell us that he enjoyed our Lynn Johnson episode and is voting for more episodes of us interviewing comic strip artists from the newspaper days.

Harold (37:01):
Oh, well, thank you.
Yeah.

Jimmy (37:03):
And I would love that too.
You know what?

Liz (37:05):
We will make it happen.

Harold (37:07):
Yeah.
I was just at a National Cartoonist Society get together last night in Manhattan.
It was a lot of fun.

Jimmy (37:13):
Oh, wow.

Harold (37:14):
Not a lot of us there, but some really interesting stories.
It's cool to be able to do that.
I always dreamed, through Schulz, of being a member of the National Cartoonist Society, and it's been really, really special.

Jimmy (37:29):
Yeah.
Yeah, it is cool.
All right.
That's it for the mail this week.
If you guys want to get in touch with us, there's a couple ways you can do it.
You can call our hotline [phone] and leave a message, or you can just text that number.
But if you text it, please identify yourself so we can identify you on the air.
And of course, you can email us.
We're unpackingpeanuts at gmail.com.

(37:52):
And Harold, if people want to find you, where can they find you out and about in the world?

Harold (37:57):
So, well, thank you.
I'm going to be in the Licensing Expo, the 20th, 21st, 22nd in Vegas.
So, if anybody happens to be there and wants to get together or say hi, go to my website.
I have a list of all of the events that I'm doing, and you can also find the contact for me.
You can reach out to me through the website.

(38:20):
And then, big news on Friday the 6th and Saturday the 7th.
For those of you who know Mystery Science Theater 3000, I will be at the Mahoning Drive-In Theater in Lehighton, Pennsylvania with Joel Hudson, the creator of Mystery Science Theater and his new host, Jonah Ray.
They are going to be showing some of their favorite Mystery Science Theater episodes that they worked on together and I worked on.

(38:45):
And Joel is going to be showing one of his favorite movies.
His 35-millimeter pick to show late at night on Friday is Cat Ballou.
I don't know if you guys ever seen it.
And then Saturday, Jonah made a movie recently called Destroy All Neighbors.
That's the late, late show.
And also, there's going to be a live riff that I helped write on for Billa Lugosi's Devil Bat.

(39:11):
So anyway, it's going to be a fun weekend.
You can actually camp overnight there if you want, and just make a weekend of it in Lehighton, Pennsylvania at the Mahoning Drive-In Theater.
So lots of stuff going on, but I hope to see somebody who might happen to be in my neck of the woods.
So look forward to it.

Jimmy (39:28):
All right.
Why don't you say we go back to the strips.

SPEAKER_2 (39:32):
All right.

Jimmy (39:33):
June 29th.
It's night and Snoopy is atop the doghouse, but he's not sleeping.
He's very alert.
His ears are shooting straight up in the air and he thinks to himself, is it them?
Rats, it wasn't them.
He lies back down.
Then Snoopy, throughout this whole strip, is just tossing and turning across the doghouse because he's very worked up.

(39:55):
Because in the next panel he thinks, I hate being left home alone.
Maybe they'll never come back.
That round headed kid wouldn't leave me, would he?
No, he wouldn't, would he?
He looks up again, looking for the car and says, I'm never sure they're coming back until I see the headlights coming around the corner.
I shouldn't keep looking.
He looks back, but I can't help it.
Is it them?

(40:16):
No, it wasn't them.
And then he ends with, watched headlights never come.

Harold (40:23):
I picked this strip because this is at the tail end of him making strips around the time he said, I need a break.
And boy, Snoopy, I've never seen Snoopy look this rough.
That last panel, look at the top of his paw.
It is total, a total divot in the drawing.

(40:47):
And the interesting thing to me is, Schulz doesn't go back and fix these things, but it's all over the strip.
Look at his hind leg.

Jimmy (40:53):
In the middle of the second tier?

Harold (40:55):
No, on the very last panel.

Jimmy (40:56):
Oh, yeah.

Harold (40:56):
But you'll see it again in the middle of the second tier as well, it's crazy.
And the second panel on the bottom tier, it's just all over this strip that he is struggling like I've never seen before.
And he doesn't bother to try to fix it, because as a cartoonist, you do have the ability to go in, it's a pain in the butt, you know, white it out with a certain kind of a white paint, and then you ink over it.

(41:24):
Schulz doesn't silly seem to do that.
If he has a line that goes astray, he's kind of used to it now.
But I've never seen anything like this in the strip, where this looks so incredibly rough.
I'm glad he got a break.

Jimmy (41:37):
Yeah, he definitely, definitely needed one.
Yeah, you know, it's tough because you don't want to see your pal struggle.
I was thinking about this in my other podcast, my dumbest idea, or what's it called?
Jimmy Gownley's dumb ideas, that how to be an artist.
I think it's this, if you want to be an artist, you probably won't be one.

(42:01):
If you have to be an artist, you already are, and you can't stop being one, whether you want to or not.
I mean, there are so many periods of my life where I would have been better off in so many ways if I would have just done something else, quit.
You can't quit.
It's a compulsion.
And that's just personally from an interior of an artist.

(42:24):
When you're thinking of a guy who, like you said, Harold, earlier, is responsible for all these people's incomes because of your drawings, I mean, that's a huge responsibility, and I'm sure it's a huge worry.
And yeah, he is struggling.

Harold (42:40):
But as much as he loves it, right?
He loves it.
It's his weird mix.

Jimmy (42:43):
It's not love.
Because no, I don't think it is love.
I mean, yes, it is love, obviously.
But it's also, it doesn't matter if you love it.

Harold (42:51):
This is what you do.

Jimmy (42:53):
That's it.
You might be miserable doing it for the next five years, but this is who you are and what you do.
And the other thing about it, though, this is a beautiful strip in its content.
And this is, I love what this says about a dog and a dog's relationship to the people who own it.
And if this were, if he was able to whip through this with that 1960s, you know, beautiful incline, this would be up there with all of them.

Harold (43:24):
Yeah, it's still a great strip despite these idiosyncrasies.
I mean, sorry to keep pointing things out, but I'm just kind of marveling over what he's doing here.
In the second panel, in the second tier, look at Snoopy's hind leg and paw.
Yeah.
It's so tiny, but it's all part of the, you know, not taking over the general arch of his back as he's looking out into the darkness.

Jimmy (43:53):
Wow, I didn't even notice that.

Harold (43:55):
But that is, I'm assuming he's doing, he does it in the first panel as well, the throwaway panel, but it's crazy.
His little paw, his tiny little paw in the back, it just, it's like, you don't think about it usually when you're looking at it until you look at it and you start obsessing over this stuff, you know?

Jimmy (44:12):
It feels like a complete loss of control on those panels, sadly.
Having said all that, boy, I love that panel right next to it.
Snoopy looking down on the dog house.

Harold (44:22):
Oh, that is, yeah.
There's some gorgeous ones of him hanging his little snout over the dog house.
Yeah.
What do you think of the coloring?
We don't talk a lot about this, but the Sunday coloring Schulz is kind of free and easy with backgrounds and even the dog house coloring.
Does this strike you anyway?

(44:43):
Do you like how he chooses to use color to mix it up?

Jimmy (44:48):
There are times I love the color.
This one is fine, isn't either?
Well, I'll tell you what I do like.
I like the rich blue.
I like, partly it's maybe because I decided in the real dark night book I'm doing is I wanted to color in jewel tones because I wanted it to look expensive and nice for the people who are depressed reading this book.

(45:09):
I think that there's some element to that in this one, which is nice.
You don't often see those rich blues and purples because especially on newsprint and the red even at the dog house, those are the things that go off register because there's so much ink.
But look, it looks okay.
It looks nice.
July 3rd, Peppermint Patty's lying back on her bed again and making another phone call.

(45:33):
And she says, I guess I learned something, Marcy.
A broken heart stays with you forever.
Never give your heart to a blockhead.
But then we see Marcy is-

Liz (45:44):
Dun dun dun.

Jimmy (45:45):
Is with Charlie Brown right at that very moment.
And Marcy says, that's good advice, sir.
I'll remember that, sir.
Intrigue.

Harold (45:56):
There they are together.
Either they're showing off their salt shaker collections or they're playing chess.

Jimmy (46:02):
But there's playing chess without a board or are they action figures?

Harold (46:06):
Yeah.

Michael (46:06):
I think it's their Pepper collection.

Jimmy (46:08):
It looks like Pepper.
Yeah, that must be it.
It definitely does.
July 4th.
This one just made me laugh.
Rerun has been trying to play basketball and just utterly failing because he's just too small and can't reach the rim.
So we see him try again and this one goes about halfway as far as it needs to and then lands right on Snoopy's head.

(46:31):
Bonk.
And then Rerun says to a dazed Snoopy, I hit you on the head.
So I think that means you get a free shot.
And Snoopy takes it by throwing it right at Rerun's hand.

SPEAKER_2 (46:43):
Bonk.

Jimmy (46:45):
Just made me laugh.
I don't have much more to say about it than that.
I think it's funny.
I love rerun, running Snoopy together.
I love it when they're having goofy fun.
And I also love it when Snoopy is the older one and has to...
This is a moment like this, you know?

Harold (47:06):
Yeah.
This is great.
I do love their relationship.
And I was looking forward to seeing more of this in this middle of 97.
We're getting it.
I'm really enjoying it.

Jimmy (47:20):
Oh, here's a nice colored Sunday.
Much more pastelly.
So Rerun is over at Charlie Brown's house and he's borrowing Snoopy yet again.
And he says to Charlie Brown, and thanks for letting your dog come out and play with me.
So they go over and they have a little ball with Snoopy and Rerun.
And Rerun says, we'll go over here where there's lots of room.

(47:41):
This is the game I've invented and here are the rules.
And Rerun has the ball and he's ready to throw it.
And he says, I'll throw the ball and you'll catch it, OK?
If you catch it on the first bounce, you get three points.
Two bounces, you get two points.
Three bounces, one point.
If you don't catch it, I get 10 points.
There was one other rule, too, but I've forgotten what it was.

(48:02):
And then Rerun revs back as if he's going to throw the ball.
But before he does, Snoopy comes in and knocks him to his butt.
And then Rerun lying on the ground says, now I remember, no body checking.

Michael (48:17):
I like making up rules for games.
Maybe being Rerun could have been pale.

Jimmy (48:25):
Oh, I could absolutely see that.
Now, did you guys make games up like this when you were a kid playing?

Michael (48:31):
Absolutely.

Jimmy (48:32):
Yeah.
Do you remember any of them?

Michael (48:36):
I think Schulz stole one of my games.
This is my game.

Jimmy (48:40):
Did you play this?

Michael (48:42):
Well, things like this.

Jimmy (48:44):
We had a version, because I lived directly across the street from a public school.
And we would, when the school was out, would play off the wall, we called it, which was a game basically like this, but the thrower would bounce it off the wall and the other person would have to try to catch it.
And there was a point system.

Michael (49:03):
So you stole another.
That's my game too.

Jimmy (49:06):
I stole that from you too.

Harold (49:08):
I think it gives some insight into Rerun's character that, you know, Snoopy gets three points at most if he catches it on the first bounce.
But if Snoopy doesn't catch it, ten points, ten points to Rerun.
I was like, okay, I see what's going on.
This is a van pelt for sure.

Jimmy (49:33):
Absolutely.
July 19th, Lucy approaches Charlie Brown who's standing on The Pitcher's Man and she says, look, I found a list of the players on the other team.
Clay, Blake, Morgan, Travis, Trent, Hunter, Bailey, Madison, Taylor, and Justin.
Charlie Brown says, nobody's named Bill anymore.

(49:56):
Charlie Brown as Old Man often comes up in these later strips.

Harold (49:59):
Yeah.

Jimmy (50:01):
Like, you know, a nine-year-old would say, nobody's named Bill anymore.

Harold (50:07):
Whatever happens to Old Bill?
Old Bill.

Jimmy (50:11):
I think when you look at Lucy's glove there in that second panel, you might understand why she's not catching many things because that looks like it's about ready to fall apart.
Oh, here's a classic.
July 20th, we start off with one of them there, Symbolic Panels.
We see a King of Spades, or Clubs?

Harold (50:32):
Spades?

Jimmy (50:32):
I can't tell.
A card with Rerun on it and an Ace of Clubs card with Snoopy on it.
And they are locked in a very fierce game in Panel 2, some sort of card game.
And now we see them playing and Rerun very definitively says, OK, you put down a 9, so I'll put down a 10.

(50:53):
And he slams the card down in the ground, sending Snoopy and all the cards flying.
And then Snoopy's turn.
He thinks, OK, you put down a 10, so I'll put down a Jack.
And he slams the card down and Rerun goes flying.
And then it's Rerun's turn.
OK, you put down a Jack, so I'll put down a Queen.
Again, Snoopy goes flying.

(51:13):
And Snoopy's turn.
OK, you put down a Queen, so I'll put down a King.
And Rerun goes flying.
Cards go flying.
Lucy comes in and says, What kind of game are you guys playing?
And Rerun says, We don't have the slightest idea.

Harold (51:28):
Big smiles on both of Rerun's and Snoopy's face.

Jimmy (51:32):
And they're just on the ground, cards flown everywhere.
That's just fun.

Harold (51:37):
This is the late Peanuts I remember.
I love this.

Jimmy (51:44):
I love it, too.

Harold (51:45):
These two characters.

Jimmy (51:46):
Isn't there a game, a card game where you do do that with your last card?
You like slap it down.
There is a card game like that.
Not like this, but a milder version, right?

Harold (51:56):
Yeah, I think so.

Jimmy (51:57):
It's called...

Harold (51:58):
Our listeners might know that.

Jimmy (51:59):
Yeah, listeners.
What's that card game where you slap down a card is like a trump card or something like that?
I don't know.
I was an only child.

Harold (52:07):
I didn't play a lot of cards.

Jimmy (52:11):
July 31st, Rerun's at the beach and he says, A pirate ship?
I see a pirate ship.
And the pirate ship is a tiny little ship that has four of the Beagle Scouts and Snoopy.
And Snoopy says, Here's Black Beagle, the world famous pirate leading his scurvy band ashore.

(52:31):
And they all have eye patches, except Conrad, who walks directly into a fence because he has two eye patches on.
And Snoopy says, Somebody tell Conrad he's only supposed to wear one eye patch.

Liz (52:47):
I thought it was sunglasses.

Jimmy (52:48):
It looks like sunglasses.
So cute.
Bunk.
During the break, Michael and I were talking that we think the world's ready for a good funny pirate strip.
If you want a tragic pirate strip, you can make it about the Pittsburgh Pirates.

(53:08):
Bottom.
As my dad would say, they're the strongest team in the league.
They're holding everybody else up.

Harold (53:15):
This is a laugh out loud one.

Jimmy (53:17):
Yeah.

Harold (53:18):
It's a really, really great strip.

Jimmy (53:20):
I like the little boat on a pirate ship.

Harold (53:24):
It looks like the kind that you'd make with a little index card stuck through a straw.

Jimmy (53:30):
Absolutely.

Harold (53:31):
These are balsa wood.

Jimmy (53:34):
August 8th.
This is just how I feel in the morning.
Peppermint Patty looks in the mirror and goes, I don't look so bad after all.
Then her and Marcy walk away into the world and Peppermint Patty says, that's always been my ambition to not look so bad after all.

(53:54):
I don't have much to say about that.
Just made me laugh and I think as you get older, not looking so bad after all is basically the most you can hope for.
Amen.
No, you always look lovely.

Liz (54:09):
That's because we don't have our cameras on.

Harold (54:15):
It looks like this is another upgrade that Peppermint Patty's dad made.
He has a modern art sink in the bathroom.
Looks like a bread bowl with a faucet.

Jimmy (54:28):
It does look like a bread bowl or a beanbag chair.
August 27th, it's a panoramic strip, one panel and it's Andy and Olaf and they're in a hayloft in a barn, just chilling out and Andy says, We shouldn't have to be hiding in barns Olaf.

(54:49):
Maybe we should have been hunting dogs.
Then Olaf says, I chased a rabbit once.
He just laughed at me.
Later we became quite good friends.
I love Olaf becoming quite good friends.
But here's a way that he's able to hide the tremor in plain sight, by just going with almost pure expressionism.

Harold (55:14):
It works.

Jimmy (55:14):
It totally works.
The hay is just scribbles, the black slats in the back of the barn looks really good.
It looks like a rickety old barn.

Harold (55:25):
The wagon wheel is really good.

Jimmy (55:27):
The little rain barrel or whatever it is on the other side.

Harold (55:30):
That's another bread bowl.
It's a bread bowl.
They got a fire sale.

Jimmy (55:34):
Yeah.
Still looks really good.
I like it.

Harold (55:38):
It's funny reading that first piece of dialogue by Andy.
To me, I can accidentally read it and says, We shouldn't have to be hiding in barns Olaf.
Maybe we should have been hunting dogs.
No, I was hunting rabbits.

Jimmy (55:56):
What are you talking about?
That's funny.
Yeah.
This comic illustrates one of the veins of my existence as a colorist.
I'm guaranteeing anybody who's colored comics or inked comics, maybe has done this once or twice.
But anyway, this is a sequence where Andy has been found and is tied to a tree, because he's being kept now as a pet.

(56:27):
But Olaf has now come to free him and he says, Psst, Andy, I've come to help you escape.
But Andy says, I can't escape.
I'm tied to a tree.
Olaf sees this and then Olaf apparently rips the tree out of the ground by the roots, and the two of them run off into the night.

Michael (56:47):
So Olaf's like super strong.

Jimmy (56:50):
He's got some power behind him.
It's not all flab.

Michael (56:55):
So what's your remark about coloring?

Jimmy (56:58):
Well, I do this.
I have done this in the past.
I try to not do it anymore.
First panel, two word balloons.
The sky, he forgot to color the area between the two word balloons.
Little triangles of space, often between word balloons and stuff, just get forgotten and you'll see a mistake made.
It draws my attention to it and then I get anxiety because I know I've done it.

(57:23):
I know everyone's noticing it in mine too.

Michael (57:26):
Well, it's Zip-A-Tone too, so that's a pain in the butt to cut a little piece out.
Right.

Harold (57:31):
Could I play Devil's Advocate here?

Jimmy (57:33):
No.
Oh, it's the moon?

Harold (57:35):
Yeah.

Michael (57:36):
All right.

Jimmy (57:36):
There you go.
Harold solved it.
There you go.
See, that's why you got to have smart friends.
They solve these things for you and you don't have to have sleepless nights.
Me, you all have friends as good as the friends I have.
But that's it.
We're done for the episode, aren't we?

Michael (57:53):
We sure are.

Jimmy (57:54):
Wow.
We made it.
We got another episode coming up here for 1997.
That'll be next week.
If you characters want to keep this conversation going between now and then, well, gosh, there's a couple of different ways you can do it.
The first thing you want to do is head on over to unpackingpeanuts.com.
Sign up for the great Peanuts reread.

(58:17):
And that will get you that one email a month to let you know what we're going to be covering.
Then you can also, if you want, call our hotline [phone].
And you can leave a message or, of course, you can send a text.
Remember just to identify yourself.
And of course, you can also follow us on social media.

(58:39):
We are at Unpack Peanuts on Instagram and threads and at Unpacking Peanuts on Facebook, Blue Sky and YouTube.
That's it for this week.
All there is to say is, for Michael, Harold and Liz, this is Jimmy.
Be of good cheer.

Harold (58:53):
Yes.
Yes.

Liz (58:54):
Be of good cheer.
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.

(59:14):
Unpacking Peanuts on Facebook, Blue Sky and YouTube.
For more about Jimmy, Michael and Harold, visit unpackingpeanuts.com.
Have a wonderful day and thanks for listening.

SPEAKER_1 (59:28):
WVIA's Pennsylvania Polka Party is back.
Current members are invited to the next recordings here at WVIA Studios in Pittston on Saturday, September 10th with the Golden Tones from Macadoo, and Sunday, September 11th with Tony's Polka Band from New York.
For more information or to reserve your spot, call 570-602-1110.