From "The Comfort Zone/Growing up with Charlie Brown" by Jonathan Franzen, published in The New Yorker on November 21, 2000.
This material also appears in Franzen's "The Discomfort Zone: A Personal History," which I'm rereading because it also tells about his experience as a teenager in a church youth group that is very much like the youth group at the center of his new novel "Crossroads."
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WOW Blogging at 2:42 a.m. Wonders never cease.
The voice actor for Lucy was our school's Drama club teacher starting around when I was a junior or so.
Drama club was quite popular in our school a year or two after I graduated. My brother did the Knight of Ni. They did a Monty Python play for years at Christmas.
"WOW Blogging at 2:42 a.m."
I almost used my "blogged strangely early in the morning" tag again. In the early days of the blog, I'd use it when I was blogging at 4 a.m. or something like that, but that's just not *strange* anymore.
But this week, ever since the clocks fell back, I've been going to bed insanely early and waking up at 1 a.m.
I tell myself that's really 2 a.m. and I haven't really adjusted yet, but 2 a.m. is also too early! And what kind of adult has trouble staying awake after 7 p.m.?! I tell myself, well, that's really 8 in CDT, but still, 8 seems crazy.
We have been saying if it's dark, it's fine to go to sleep. But it's dark at 6! Civil twilight is over at 5.
The whole thing is strange!
I told myself I'm not a clock person, I'm a sun person... and then things got a little too serious.
Same thing here. I collapsed into my chair and went out at 7 last night. Up at 1:30.
The sunrise was spectacular here - hope yours is as good.
Under this government, if any state refuses the daylight time move we could see a possible replay of the Vendee massacres. "Never give an inch," says the Commander-in-Chief.
The Charles Schultz estate is worth about $200 million and raking in about $30-40 million a year. His competition is Dr. Seuss, Bing Crosby, and Elvis. The big winner this year was Roald Dahl who leaped ahead of Prince and Michael Jackson to grab the #1 spot.
If I'd known that there was such big money in dying, I'd have tried it by now.
The first part of my three-part series of articles about the book The Gospel According to Peanuts.
How awesome that a verbal account of a 50-year-old comic strip could make me laugh out loud (and on a train no less).
What a great strip Peanuts was. Gotta love that Linus.
Actually a lot of older adults have trouble keeping awake after 7 PM, especially the "early risers". Years ago, my Boss who was then about retire, fell asleep over desert at a Business going away party. It was about 700. We asked his wife if he was OK, and she said "He always does this, he's usually in bed at this time".
Subject change: I was so happy we "fell back" an hour. Darkness at 0700 feels too depressing.
Peanuts was one of the greatest comics of all time. I always love that Lucy never got the Christmas Present she really wanted: Real Estate.
Schultz was a national treasure.
I had the paperbacks when I was a kid.
Maybe I didn't understand politics then, but looking back I don't believe he played political games...
Comparing history to fictional history almost always leaves the fiction looking less interesting than the real thing. An exception to this is comparing the real artist to artworks produced. Even Bob Dylan, I dare say, wasn't as good, or as interesting, as his songs.
I also learned everything one need know about how to treat a noxious virus. You cough, and Lucy stamps on the virus. Why has the CDC lost this knowledge?
Every year I play the three biggie cartoon specials and when Linus recites the nativity story in "A Charlie Brown Christmas" I still get teary eyed. It was that Christmas special that hooked me on Vince Guaraldi.
The Schultz empire includes sponsorship of the Redwood Empire Ice Arena in Santa Rosa, CA aka Snoopy's Home Ice. https://www.snoopyshomeice.com/home
I've been feeling the same thing this week - yawning over a book at 8pm, and just feeling like everything time-wise is out of sorts. I already wake up in the middle of the night as it is and this hasn't helped. I'm old.
In one of the books I read about Charles Schulz, there was a story about his failing first marriage. His oldest son asked him why he would not go to therapy and address the issues he had. He said his dad just looked at him and asked, "What would happen to the strip?" I think like many creative geniuses, he had major flaws. In his case, he used them to both deal with life, and to fuel his creativity.
Given the time of the post, I’m reminded of a weekday (4-panel) strip that had Snoopy awake at night, then awake in the day, with the last two panels providing the punchline, “It’s true…if you think about something at 2am and 2pm, you get different answers!”
Peanuts got me through my childhood and adolescence in the ‘60s and ‘70s; I read it every day in the “funny papers” and had all the paperback collections. Thank you Sparky!
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