dual personalities

Tag: Snoopy

May 2, 2018

Curse you, Red Baron!

by chuckofish

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Today is the birthday of Manfred Albrecht Freiherr von Richthofen (May 2, 1892 – April 21, 1918), also known as the “Red Baron” and Snoopy’s nemesis.

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A fighter pilot with the German Air Force during WWI, he was considered the ace-of-aces of WWI, being officially credited with 80 air combat victories.

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The Red Baron’s all-red Fokker

Charles Schulz introduced Snoopy as the WWI Flying Ace in 1965, and over the decades the Flying Ace became one of Snoopy’s most recognizable personas.

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He was even on a stamp!

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I was always a Peanuts fan and I loved Snoopy as the WWI flyer. Our pater, whose own father had been a pilot in WWI, was also a fan. His father had been shot down and pulled from the wreckage of his plane by members of the Royal Tank Corps. Our father corresponded with one of them for many years.

Well, FYI, there is actually a new traveling exhibit called “Snoopy and the Red Baron” from the Charles M. Schulz Museum and Research Center in Santa Rosa, CA. It made it’s national debut at the Elmhurst History Museum–that’s in Elmhurst, Illinois in flyover country. It moves on to Virginia Beach, VA. in July. So if you’re interested, start planning your road trip!

Screen Shot 2018-05-01 at 11.35.43 AM.pngI think this calls for root beer and a viewing of Dawn Patrol (1938), don’t you?

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August 11, 2017

Well, I’ll be a brown-eyed beagle

by chuckofish

Another big weekend ahead! The OM and I will be driving to Columbia with daughter #1 in her new car and the boy in his new truck–both packed to the gills with her stuff.

Life in the fast lane, right?

Meanwhile, it is the “Summer Under the Stars” month on TCM, so each day the schedule is devoted to a different star. Tomorrow is John Wayne day, so set your DVRs!

Screen Shot 2017-08-10 at 11.51.54 AM.pngCheck it out if you feel so inclined.

Screen Shot 2017-08-10 at 1.40.09 PM.pngHappy belated birthday to Snoopy whose birthday was yesterday. Perhaps you will recall that this was revealed in a comic strip on 8/10/1968. I did not remember that, even though I was a huge fan of Peanuts back in the day.

Speaking of birthdays, tomorrow is the birthday of one of our favorites, Mark Knopfler. He’s turning 68!

Mark has played with all the greats from Bob Dylan to Chet Atkins and Eric Clapton. He’s the greatest and we love him.

Have a good weekend! Listen to some good music, watch a good movie, read a good book, enjoy the great outdoors! Smell the pine in your nostrils.

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December 29, 2015

The party’s over

by chuckofish

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“Live in each season as it passes; breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influence of the earth.”

–Henry David Thoreau, Walden

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October 2, 2013

Good grief, Charlie Brown

by chuckofish

The comic strip Peanuts was introduced on October 2, 1950 and ran for nearly 50 years. The final original strip ran on February 14, 2000.

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According to Wikipedia, Peanuts is the most popular and influential strip in the history of the comic strip, with 17,897 strips published in all. At its peak, Peanuts ran in over 2,600 newspapers, with a readership of 355 million in 75 countries, and was translated into 21 languages. It helped to cement the four-panel gag strip as the standard in the United States, and together with its merchandise earned Schulz more than $1 billion. Reprints of the strip are still syndicated and run in almost every U.S. newspaper.

Calvin and Hobbes creator Bill Watterson wrote:

“Peanuts pretty much defines the modern comic strip, so even now it’s hard to see it with fresh eyes. The clean, minimalist drawings, the sarcastic humor, the unflinching emotional honesty, the inner thoughts of a household pet, the serious treatment of children, the wild fantasies, the merchandising on an enormous scale — in countless ways, Schulz blazed the wide trail that most every cartoonist since has tried to follow.”

As a child, I was a great fan of Peanuts. My 5th grade friends always compared me to Lucy, but I definitely related to the misfit Charlie Brown who didn’t get invited to parties and never got Valentines, and to the spiritual, but uncertain, Linus who sucked his thumb and had a blanket. So had I. I kept a scrapbook of clippings and had many books and several stuffed Peanuts character dolls. My brother once made me a balsa wood dog house for a Snoopy figure. It was painted to look like his WWI doghouse-fighter plane.

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It was probably the nicest present he ever gave me.

Although a “comic” strip, I always had the sense that it was inherently sad. Life is sad and the knowledge of that is what ultimately binds us together. Clearly Charles Monroe Schulz (November 26, 1922 – February 12, 2000), even with a nickname like Sparky, understood that too.

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