1. Nose-in-the-air attitude
2. Only black character not given lines or personality
3. THAT FUCKING SAX AS ADULT VOICE SOUND
4. Hovercraft used in “Au Revior, Charlie Brown” did not have classic BR logo
5. Vince Girauldi only did the music for a few of them before his heart attack
can we cover the feature-length movies, too?
6. the complete downer section in all the movies, especially traumatic for 6-year-old-and-Snoopy-loving me. e.g. No Dogs Allowed, snoopy loses his best friend while rafting, etc
What? NOOOOO DOOOOOOGS ALLOOOOOOOWED is classic, son.
7. Peppermint Patty & Marcie furthering militant lesbian agenda
bbbut the dancing!!
8. It’s Arbor Day, Charlie Brown
what the fuck is wrong with you people??!?!?! you probably hate christmas, too.
I gotta go with Stencil here.
9. Linus’ completely overrated Christ-o-centric speech. (I love just about everything else though.)
Note that I love the specials(i make my family watch the Christmas one every year), but the movies were disappointments.
Also, “What have we learned, Charlie Brown?” (the one where they visit Normandy where Charles Schultz himself served) not shown nearly often enough.
10. I don’t think proto neo-con Linus gave an Arbor Day speech to balance that out
11. Linus is a little shit in the Xmas one. He’s only redeemed by his turn in “Great Pumpkin”
9. Linus’ completely overrated Christ-o-centric speech. (I love just about everything else though.)
— Matt Cibula (expresso222...), December 20th, 2006. (later)
ITS A CHRISTMAS SPECIAL, DUH
also linus is the “philosophical” one, of course he’s gonna talk about jesus!
O RAELLY I DID NOT KNOW THAT THANK YUO FOR THIS INFORMATION
I MUST NOW REFLECT ON THE THINGS YOU HAVE TOLD ME
ALSO, SKY IS BLUE.
so many things wrong with this thread.
this thread is an abomination before the lord
okay reflection over, I still think it’s overrated
maybe you would feel more comfortable on a thread entitled “Everything in Peanuts TV Specials Is Perfect”
Stence, many xmas specials have avoided such angles. See Rudloph.
I’m reading half the posts in this thread in “adult voice”.
I got 99 problems but the Peanuts ain’t one.
oh wow: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Peanuts_television_specials
This thread has been brought to you by Dolly Madison(TM) Zingers.
12. Emboldens crap Bell and Sebastian fans to embrace their inner reactionary, hoever gilded by fat childhood nostalgia
o man dolly madison zingers were no joke
and i got no problem with popcorn and toast
I always ALWAYS waited for that ‘CBS HOLIDAY SPECIAL’ logo to come arcing around the screen...
dudes i’m an atheist but i still don’t see any point to an xmas special that doesn’t at least mention jesus h., even in passin’!
13. Easy target for boilerplate ILX Christ hate
14. Not enough baseball content
Dolly Madison cakes unavailable in Northern states when I was small so when driving to Florida once, and upon finding them in Kentucky, I was all WANT ONE.
I love ‘adult voice’ and used to do it to my mom whenever she started talking total shit. She talks *more* total shit now (today’s one is ‘Stephen Colbert and GWB: BUDDIES!’) so perhaps time to take out of mothballs?
Hey Stence!
stence otm, what the fuck?
3. THAT FUCKING SAX AS ADULT VOICE SOUND
— editio princeps (pato.g2...), December 20th, 2006.
WELCOME TO FUNNY
If Rankin/Bass can slide it over sticking with weird pagan “Myths of Thule” nazi shit, there’s no reason to bring The Lord unto Television
hi suzy!
srsly even the new school peanuts special that was on last night was worth it, if only for spike, snoopy’s brother.
WELCOME TO FUNNY
Oh, get a fucking grip.
ooh, memey.
Spike is the Bukowski of beagles
It was a weird day when I discovered that “Peanuts” was actually a respected, seminal work of art and not the unfunny scribblings of a senile crank, as I’d dismissed it for much of my life.
I always ALWAYS waited for that ‘CBS HOLIDAY SPECIAL’ logo to come arcing around the screen...
YES! with the big drums and brassy flares!
I bought 1961–62 Peanuts volume for friend’s 10-yo son, hope someone explains Willie McCovey and Biblical references to him.
15. Peppermint Patty never grabbed Marcy’s ass.
my daughter finds Charlie Brown incredibly creepy, I’ve been trying to work with her on this and explain historical context and all that shit but she’s still like AAAAAAAAA and runs out of the room
It was a weird day when I discovered that “Peanuts” was actually a respected, seminal work of art and not the unfunny scribblings of a senile crank, as I’d dismissed it for much of my life.
Alien.
(Okay, that was a bit abrupt, but this might help explain my feelings on the matter more.)
I never trusted Charlie Brown because he seemed to have as much hair as I did at age eight.
If anything sums up the 20th century, it’s Linus explaining to Charlie Brown that The Great Pumpkin perfers homely, backyard pumpkin patches to the giant corporation-owned pumpkin farms.
When I was 8 or 9 my favourite film of all time was ‘Bon Voyage, Charlie Brown (And Don’t Come Back)’, but I never saw the last twenty minutes because it had been recorded over. I need to find somewhere that vends pristine copies of that film.
Ah, Snoopy’s tennis match... :-D
I kind of don’t trust people who can’t tell the difference between a saxophone and a trombone.
the unfunny scribblings of a senile crank
This is the nastiest thing I will hear all day, I know it.
Of course, quality control wasn’t always there
It’s the big football game where Snoopy wins a game from Peppermint Patty’s team. That night when all of the lights go off, out comes the radio and Snoopy becomes Flashbeagle (with an ouftit inspired by Olivia Newton-John’s “Physical” look: headband, sweats, and so on).
yeah dan OTM, that was the third trombone noise we learned to make in 5th grade band! (first: airplane going down in flames; second: fart)
of course, the specials turned to crap around ’75, like everything else.
LIKE MY LIFE
yeah dan OTM, that was the third trombone noise we learned to make in 5th grade band! (first: airplane going down in flames; second: fart)
— Matt Cibula (expresso222...), December 20th, 2006.
SECOND was fart? Where were your priorities in 5th grade?
I kind of don’t trust people who can’t tell the difference between a saxophone and a trombone.
— Jesus Dan (djperr...), December 20th, 2006. (later)
totally agree. i also think that people who think black dudes from minnesota don’t have “personality” are suspect, as well.
Talk about two different worlds: watch the Christmas ep back-to-back with the Easter Beagle one(produced 9 years later in 1974).
Gauraldi busts out the funk organ, the gang goes to try out fashions, etc.
xp HAHAHA! yes! we have our own franklin, who now try out for the Bruins!
hey Que it takes time and practice to make a really GOOD fart sound on the trombone. anyone can do a basic crowdpleaser — we were technicians.
This is the nastiest thing I will hear all day, I know it.
Despite the fact that as a child I had some of the very early collections from the 50s, which were elegant and simple, I spent much of high school staring at each new strip in the Tribune and shrugging. It wasn’t as offensively bad as “Cathy,” it was just like “All right, old man, time to pack it in.”
black dudes from minnesota
Henry Gale?
oh, okay good fart sounds Matt, got it, just wanted to make sure!
we have our own franklin
wtf
haha!
Oh man that “Charlie Brown Kwanzaa” is total white-dude “I saw an episode of Dave Chappelle once while drunk” bullshit
wtf nothing. you can only remain pontiff for so long
“It’s Ramadan, Charlie Brown” was surprisingly good though — guest appearance from Hakeem Olajuwon!
okay that didn’t happen
Don’t forget “It’s a Very Special Prostate, Charlie Brown,” where Linus teaches a few more facts about life.
No one can forget that classic “Holy Shit Charlie Brown, Kingfish Is An Overfamiliar Cockfaced Dipshit” where a dude who was overly confident in his comedic skills said some nonsense that was shockingly unfunny bullshit even for him.
Snoopy’s awesome in that one
HALL OF FAME
awesome that this thread got even worse.
I just gathered half my office around the warm glow of full-screen YouTube and watched the Charlie Brown Christmas special in its entirety. If there’s any better way to get into a Christmas mood, I don’t know what it is.
OK, that counts as crappy thing #16
i’d be miserable too if i was a balding, depressed nine year old who wears shorts all year long.
of course, the strip turned to crap around ’72, like everything else.
jaymc needs to be beaten around the head and neck
I think there are more than 99 things, but very few of them have to do with the oh-so-timely Christmas special.
just came here to say fuck you to jaymc
16. no breasts being dipped in chocolate
17. the It’s Only LSD, Charlie Brown special never actually aired
(although they once had a midnight screening of it in Dublin, OH)
jaymc needs to be beaten around the head and neck
just came here to say fuck you to jaymc
strictly e-thuggin’
I now have something to post on the “reasons why I hate Christmas” thread
I’ve given up on asking wtf is wrong with most of you. hpencil is completely 100% otm excepting the thing about how Christmas specials are weird if they DON’T mention Jesus (wtf is your problem with that one with the Abominable Snowman then). But he is right in thinking that Christmas specials should NOT mention Jesus is really batshit insane.
Speaking of, yesterday I finally saw most of that movie where Christian Bale plays Jesus. Want to talk about 99 crappy things, watch that movie.
that movie where Christian Bale plays Jesus
Batman Begins?
Linus mentioning Jesus is not my problem. I just always hated Linus’ speech, even back when I was Young Catholic Numero Uno. I believe I am allowed to say this on the Internets.
I always will have fondness in my heart for that speech, considering that I lost my virginity while it was playing.
Linus mentioning Jesus is not my problem. I just always hated Linus’ speech, even back when I was Young Catholic Numero Uno. I believe I am allowed to say this on the Internets.
— Matt Cibula (expresso222...), December 20th, 2006.
I’m not trying to be too Cap’t Save a Bro here, but yeah, even as a kid I was like WTF? with this. But I love everything else about the show.
Dan Perry yousa liar.
Okay Dan I did not know this. I now take my hatred for that speech the fucc back.
^_^
you are not allowed to say anything on the internets, ever.
I always will have fondness in my heart for that speech, considering that I lost my virginity while it was playing.
t m i
LOLpwnedbyhugebaerd.jpg
Oh this thread is breaking my heart.
i totally have a spot in my heart for the xmas special, but i think i can hang 90% of that on the “christmas time is here” piano instrumental.
I lost my virginity while it was playing
“And the Angel of the Lord came unto them...”
My college friend Anthony could replicate all the dances here, one after another, in order, without breaking stride. While drunk.
So could my older cousins!
My favorite is the dude in the yellow shirt in the bottom left corner.
bottom left?
I think it’s the same guy, since my son saw this for the first time last week he has been doing that dance like 15% of the time he is awake.
the only dude i see bottom left is schroder?!?
i meant the bottom right but I am stupid. i type too fast on ilx, don’t know why.
I caught just enough of this special the other night to watch the dancing segment. It was mesmerizing.
Bottom right guy in yellow ruled.
is that sherman?
Nah, Sherman’s up top doing that great zombie dance.
oh man for me it is the beatnik interpretive dancing of Violet at center, she’s like Audrey Hepburn in “Funny Face”
The twins were just strange. And for all that Linus allegedly couldn’t stand Sally he was not afraid to dance with her.
is it Linus’s kid brother Rerun?
(Cersei + Jaime, Ned)
rerun sucks!
aw man Rerun wasn’t born yet. not even The Original Rerun was born yet. and i am agreeing with slothrop/stencil here.
ubiquitous dance scene video mashup
xpost
poor rerun!
no you’re right. rerun had stringy hair, this kid has a yellow pomp.
(Cersei + Jaime, Ned)
I am afraid of you.
I vaguely recall trying to get people to call me “Pigpen” in high school because I played bass and rocked the dirt bag style.
(NB no one should ever try to make up their own nicknames.)
esp. “pigpen”
No, not Batman Begins, let’s not all be smart here. I was talking of course about the television special Mary, Mother of Jesus. Until you’ve seen that you’ve got no right to complain about any holiday films, is something I decided last night, while Christian Bale was being sort-of graphically crucified and screaming “WHY HAVE YOU FORESAKEN ME” in this ridiculous not-actually-his (surprise) English-via-“Orient” accent.
Also Pigpen rules, dudes.
I’ve never seen that hey ya mashup, pretty awesome.
Hahaha I made up my own nickname in college and online and TO THIS DAY some people still use it!
I have the “Hey Ya” mashup on my home computer. It holds a warm place in my heart considering I lost my virginity while it was playing.
searching for ‘peanuts dance’ on youtube netted this.
DO NOT WANT
I watched all 38 seconds of that :(
xp
I said it before on the games thread and i’ll say it here: this represents everything I could have prayed for in a video game from ages 4–10+.
I watched all 38 seconds of that :(
xp
— Onimo has his finger in the stink (gerry.watt@*****.com), December 20th, 2006.
dude no
ally, this one?
no roger, no rerun, no rent!
I had the Snoopy and the Red Baron 45 was a little girl. That, Ernie’s “Rubber Ducky” and “Wooly Bully” pretty much rocked my world.
dude no
— Jesus Dan (djperr...) (webmail), December 20th, 2006 9:25 PM. (dan perry) (later) (link)
I was waiting patiently for the frenzied hammer attack that never came.
lol “frenzied hammer attack” sounds like a guitar technique you would learn in a Steve Vai video
How about a thread entitled “99 Crappy Things About Breathing Clean Air”?
No one can forget that classic “Holy Shit Charlie Brown, Kingfish Is An Overfamiliar Cockfaced Dipshit” where a dude who was overly confident in his comedic skills said some nonsense that was shockingly unfunny bullshit even for him.
wtf?
haha I love that the first comment on that YouTube link is “you’re a porn addict”
wtf is your problem with that one with the Abominable Snowman then
I found that while I was looking for this:
i love how there’s only like two losers who actually criticized peanuts on this thread and the rest of us rightly reacted like someone had just called for all children under 10 to be crucified or something.
Haha, which only makes me marvel even more at its sacred-cow status.
jaymc check out some of the current fantagraphics reprints, which are just getting into the prime ’60s era stuff. you’ll get a pretty good idea of why it’s so highly regarded.
i think that most of us tend to go easy on the frequently lame later years because schulz had the integrity not to turn it over to a team of assistants like every other multimillionaire cartoonist. and the reason he didn’t just retire is that, as he frequently said, the strip was his life and he would’ve died if he’d been forced to give it up—and he did die the very day the last one was published.
If he had lived another day, maybe he would have made another one.
he’d been forced to retire because of terminal cancer a few months before.
Also — and it was Casuistry who first noted this to me properly — the last decade was in many ways a marvellous reinvention of the strip in terms of its look. Having evolved his spare style that he then maintained for most of the 60s through 80s, in the 90s he started experimenting much more with perspective, more detailed backgrounds and rejection of the box format. Certainly he did so in response to those who followed after him, most notably Watterson, obv. But the fact that he DID do this is all the more important, I think. This past year I’ve been going through the day-by-day calendar, which has reprinted the entire 1995 year, and what I’ve been struck by constantly is how readily he played around with his style, something I didn’t fully appreciate at the time.
I remember my birthday (Dec 15) 1999 wz when the newspapers were all over the place announcing Schulz’s retirement. It was a weird birthday.
Haha, which only makes me marvel even more at its sacred-cow status.
Sacred cows are one thing, but you called a really beloved, sharp, and warm person a “senile old crank.” Do you also believe that Fred Rogers was a sociopath?
>i think that most of us tend to go easy on the frequently lame later years
also, every once in a while, like once or twice a year, he’d do a strip that was more bizarre, non-sequitous and profound than all of the early strips put together
but you’d have to wait for them
kenan otm
schulz was by all accounts the nicest man ever. after his death someone published an interview with some off-the-record remarks he’d made about how nauseating he thought “the family circus” was—which he’d asked the interviewer not to print because he didn’t want to hurt bil keane’s feelings.
He actually considered himself a secular humanist even though the kiddies talked about the Good Book a lot.
I don’t think I’d care if he believed in Snake Wrangling.
Handling.
Oh, I’m so old that I’m MISquoting The Simpsons.
lesson of thread = every aggro dude is actually corny/twee if you push the right button
And vice versa
The guy on the bottom left’s name is 555 95472.
“Bottom left”.
I thought 5 didn’t appear until later? But you’re right, 1963. Rock.
I’m a british and charlie brown doesn’t have the same cultural cache in the UK (at least, not in my house) so I’d never seen this before. Through the magix of Youtube, I can report back the following thoughts:
- The music does indeed rock. In fact, all the music scenes seem like a random slow drop of magic, like the sun rising on teletubbies or something, only happier.
- When all the kids are laughing at charlie brown for buying the wrong xmas tree, that shit’s ice cold.
- The God speech is a bit odd, but I think it sets up CB walking off with his tree and making it cool. This bit made me happycry.
- Why have I not seen this before? I’m adding this cartoon to the list of things sent to us from aliens to make us happy.
Oh, and snoopy’s little dance on top of the piano cracked me up, which is unusual cos I usually can’t stand the fucker.
i wish i’d saved the text from my post of yesterday, which has either been deleted or just didn’t show up...in short, anyway:
“oh, this thread.”
I loved Peanuts as a kid. Now I find it annoying. WHAT’S UP WITH THAT?
Why Charles Schultz was awesome:
In 2000, it became known that a fan of Peanuts had written Schulz a letter requesting that Charlotte Braun be removed. Schulz wrote back, promising to remove the character but asking the reader if she wanted to be responsible for “the death of an innocent child”. The letter included a picture of Charlotte Braun with an ax in her head.
Rod McKuen’s bloody songs.
That Narrator Who Stole Xmas is some funny shit.
in fairness re Franklin’s blandness, Sherman was quite dull, and Violet was nothing more than a less memorably mean Lucy.
Anyway, let’s hear it for Jose Peterson!
Charlotte Braun letter: http://www.cagle.com/hogan/webextras13/charlotte/home.html
- When all the kids are laughing at charlie brown for buying the wrong xmas tree, that shit’s ice cold.
The early years of the strip are FULL of that. Really, really vicious. Now that we know how neurotic Sparky was, it was like watching someone cut himself a little every day, or self-flagellation with barbed chains.
Yeah, the early strips were great. Dark as fuck for a ha-ha comic featuring children in Eisenhower-era funny pages.
A nice bit about the darker side
That one on the bottom is the first strip ever, yeah?
Yep, the bottom of those two strips is the very first daily...really set the tone. (xpost!)
That bottom one could be an inner self-dialogue.
All OTM here. Schulz himself once pointed out how the dynamics of the strip were based on how cruel children could be to each other, which from my own experiences is extremely accurate.
yeah, the design of the fantagraphics books hints at the tone quite well:
jaymc check out some of the current fantagraphics reprints, which are just getting into the prime ’60s era stuff. you’ll get a pretty good idea of why it’s so highly regarded.
Like I said, I read some of the very early stuff when I was a kid, and I remember finding it elegant, but it didn’t leave much of an impression. It’s partially because of the Fantagraphics reprints, which I haven’t read but have read about (dozens of paeans from respected comics artists and folks like Jonathan Franzen), that I’ve begun to see why “Peanuts” was supposed to be so great.
Sacred cows are one thing, but you called a really beloved, sharp, and warm person a “senile old crank.” Do you also believe that Fred Rogers was a sociopath?
He didn’t seem all that sharp to me when I was reading him in the ’90s. “Crank” certainly wasn’t accurate, though. I should have said “doddering old man.”
Also, I’m just telling you what my impression of him was when I was a teenager, when I probably preferred “FoxTrot” or some shit that I’d have a hard time defending now (one thing I did like about “FoxTrot,” though, was that there was always a bonus joke after the main punchline in the third panel). I thought that Schulz was out of touch, but in retrospect, the fact that he didn’t update the strip to make pop-culture jokes was probably what contributed to its simple, timeless appeal.
the fact that he didn’t update the strip to make pop-culture jokes
He had those plenty of times, but they didn’t become the mainstay of the humor, wisely.
jaymc, you are ice cold!
yeah, see the ill-advised “Spuds Mackenzie” strip
xp
i remember one peanuts strip from the mid-’90s where snoopy keeps trying to get a license of some sort (it was a series over several days). the last one has charlie brown talking to some unseen woman, then turning to snoopy and saying, “no, she says you don’t need a license for that. . .”
then charlie brown walks out, followed by snoopy, who is carrying an assault weapon!
jonathan franzen is respected? by who, exactly/
They sacrifice ironic people to him daily at the Church of Our Lord Eggers.
I didn’t say Franzen was respected. “Respected comics artists” was one group; “folks like Jonathan Franzen” was another.
oh so you mean “total douchebags” as the second group?
Fantagraphics reprints are SO SO GREAT. With any luck I’ll be getting the 59–60 and 61–62 collections for Chrismahannukwanza
I keep trying to figure out how much shelf estate, and how awesome they will look, when I have all, what, 25 volumes.
i hate that they combine classic 65 charlie brown christmas special with shitty, computer-animated, sub-par unfunny 80’s charlie brown christmas special when they broadcast it every year.
ICP vs. A Charlie Brown Christmas—http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qLIWt4taJIU
I’ve only seen one CB special, where they’re in a river-rafting race.
Christmastime is here.
Let us never forget
17. Set up the “adult-talkin’ kids” meme that has turned 99% of children’s entertainment into nerd smarm.
18. No Vince Guaraldi vocals except for “Joe Cool” and “Little Birdie”