Snoopy and Uno

News Clippings
and
Press Releases



Two world-famous beagles go nose to nose. (The other one is Uno.)



These articles are arranged from the most recent down, so you'll always find the newest news about Charlie Brown and his friends toward the top; older articles will be located further down, or on previous pages.




Good Grief!

December 18, 2008

By Alicia Grega-Pikul
Electric City [Northeastern Pennsylvania]

San Francisco native and jazz pianist Vince Guaraldi came of age in the North Beach beatnik scene. The famously mustachioed icon would go on to win a Grammy, enjoy copious TV and radio air time, and compose a modern jazz soundtrack for the Eucharist before skyrocketing to popular fame as the composer behind Charlie Brown's Schroeder. But it's the soundtrack he wrote to Charles Schulz's animated universe that would forever define his career.

Thanks to the series of Peanuts TV specials that began with A Charlie Brown Christmas in 1965, Guaraldi's music has further become synonymous with the holidays.

Those most popular selections, other holiday classics and traditional jazz standards will be performed at the Sherman Theater Saturday by the Eric Mintel Quartet. Titled A Jazz Holiday, the program also features Mintel's own original compositions and is itself becoming a holiday staple.

"Guaraldi's smooth trio compositions -- piano, bass and drums -- perfectly balanced Charlie Brown's kid-sized universe. Sprightly, puckish, and just as swiftly somber and poignant, these gentle jazz riffs established musical trademarks which, to this day, still prompt smiles of recognition," Derrick Bang wrote in an article titled "A Few Words About Dr. Funk" which serves as Guaraldi's biography at the musician's official Web site, www.vinceguaraldi.com.

While friends commonly referred to Guaraldi as Dr. Funk, he would forever describe himself as "a reformed boogie-woogie piano player," Bang explains.

While it's certainly possible the composer could have emerged from the dominant shadow of his three Peanuts albums -- A Boy Named Charlie Brown, A Charlie Brown Christmas and Oh, Good Grief! -- he died prematurely of a heart attack at age 47 while breaking between sets in a Menlo Park motel room.

Guaraldi's compositions, and "Linus and Lucy" in particular, have been embraced not only by Peanuts fans but by jazz peers and proteges including George Winston, Wynton Marsalis, Dave Brubeck, David Benoit and, now, Eric Mintel.

A native of Perkasie, Mintel has maintained his roots in Bucks County while touring the country with his quartet. He performed at the White House for President Clinton in 1998 and was a featured guest on Marian McPartland's Piano Jazz on NPR. The Eric Mintel Quartet also features Nelson Hill on saxes and flute, Dave Antonow on acoustic and electric bass and Dave Mohn on drums.

A Jazz Holiday features video projections from everyone's favorite G features and have proven particularly popular with children. The concert is scheduled to begin at 8 p.m. Tickets are $15. Call 420-2808 or visit www.shermantheater.com for more information.



Snoopy and friends not gone, just moved to new home

December 17, 2008

By Candy Brooks
ThisWeekNews [Columbus, Ohio]

Snoopy lovers, do not despair. Jaws did not finally catch your favorite beagle.

The chase around the ice rink continues this year, just a few blocks away from where the Peanuts characters have been entertaining families for more than 20 years.

The new location of Worthington's favorite home Christmas decorations is McBurney Place in the Woods of Lawndale, a new subdivision located off Worthington-Galena Road, about a quarter mile from High Street.

Jim and Darleen Goebel moved there this year from 550 Lambourne Ave., where they had lived since 1975.

They hope that all of the families that have admired the Charlie Brown characters, along with the rest of their holiday display, will find them this year as well.

They have added even more to the display this year, decorating a 40-foot evergreen in their front yard with glowing red candy canes.

There are also cut-out carolers, a cut-out wooden Santa and sleigh, and Mexican lanterns in another tree.

But the star of the yard is the Charlie Brown display, which features Snoopy being chased around an ice rink by Jaws.

Every night through the holidays the duo laps the rink, with Snoopy always slipping the grasp of the gnarly shark.

Watching alongside are Woodstock sitting on top of Snoopy's house, and, of course, Charlie standing haplessly nearby.

The Goebels first built and displayed Snoopy when they lived in Zanesville in 1967. They moved him with the family to Louisville, Ky., for five years, then to Worthington in 1975.

Jim built the display. The characters are made of a papier-mch type of material over wire mesh figures.

Early displays were operated by a Sears paint-mixer motor. Jim Goebel is a retired Sears kitchen and bath remodeler.

Now an exercise machine motor keeps the lovable duo making their laps.

The early displays had Woodstock on the pond. In later years, Snoopy was chased by Kermit, then by a Ninja Turtle.

"Jaws has been around for 20 or 25 years," Jim Goebel said. "He is my favorite."

The Goebels have only kept the lighted display dark one year. In 1974, when the country was facing an energy crisis, the couple decided to conserve electricity. They placed in their yard a sign saying: "Snoopy has gone to Washington to help with the energy crisis."

Neighbors were disappointed. One left them a note promising to take down their decorations if the Goebels would put Snoopy back where he belonged.

Another year, someone stole Snoopy. Goebel went down to Worthington Hardware, bought the supplies and rebuilt the display.

"By 4:30, we had a new Snoopy," he said.

The couple loves the response they get from passersby.

It is not unusual now to hear a parent tell a child that they came to see Snoopy with their parents.

Each piece of the display comes with a history. None was purchased at a discount store.

The Santa and sleigh was purchased from a woman in Louisville. It was homemade, and is quite old.

Last year, Jim Goebel slipped and caught his arm between the reindeer and Santa as he was putting them on the roof.

This year, they are on the ground.

The Mexican lanterns are 50 years old, and two of the carolers were rescued from a trash can.

That, they say, is part of the fun.

"Most of my stuff is unique, that is why I like it," Jim said.



Jeffrey Butzer

A very Charlie Brown Christmas

December 12, 2008

By Chris Starrs
The Athens Banner-Herald [Georgia]

When Marietta-based musician Jeffrey Butzer wants to pay tribute to an artist he admires, he goes all out.

Earlier this year, Butzer and his band, the Midwives, joined Don Chambers and Dancer vs. Politician's Sanni Baumgrtner at Tasty World for an evening of songs by Tom Waits, Leonard Cohen and Nick Cave. He's also working on an event to perform songs from the films of David Lynch of "Blue Velvet" and "Twin Peaks" fame.

This time out, however, Butzer is thinking Christmas and Charlie Brown.

On Thursday at Flicker, Butzer will team with T.T. Mahony (piano), Adrian Ash (bass) and Anna McBath (vocals) for a presentation of tunes from the soundtrack of "A Charlie Brown Christmas," created by Grammy Award-winning jazz pianist Vincent Guaraldi, who composed the scores for 16 "Peanuts" television specials and a feature film.

"I grew up listening to that album," says Butzer, who released his debut album "She Traded Her Leg," last year. "That was one of my favorite shows and my favorite Christmas album. I wanted to do a show with a holiday theme, but I didn't want a hodgepodge of Christmas songs, so I decided we'd play the songs of Vincent Guaraldi."

Butzer says the concert will feature "traditional" readings of Guaraldi's songs, although their version of "Hark, the Herald Angels Sing" will be performed on toy piano and bowed bass.

"Depending on the version, there are between 12 and 16 songs on the album," says Butzer. "We're going to do 12 songs and we might take on a few other Christmas songs at the end. On the album, there's two versions of 'Christmas Time is Here' back to back; one is a five-minute instrumental version followed by a two-minute version with vocals. We kind of split the difference by doing it once as a long instrumental piece with some vocals."

The album also contains non-Guarldi compositions including Mel Torme's "Christmas Song," "Greensleeves" and "O Tannenbaum."

"The show will be about 60 percent Guaraldi's original music and about 40 percent traditional things," says Butzer.

While he usually plays piano and accordion (and is capable of playing a number of other instruments), Butzer says he's not good enough on the ivories to tackle Guaraldi, so he'll be on the drum kit.

"For this concert, I needed someone who could play jazz piano, so I called T.T.," he says, noting that Mahoney will appear with his band, Standard 8, as one of the openers at Flicker. "Drums were my first instrument, but I haven't ever played jazz drums before. And T.T. hasn't played jazz piano in public in a while either."

Butzer and his colleagues also will play "A Charlie Brown Christmas" on Dec. 20 at the Earl in East Atlanta.

"We actually booked that gig first and then decided to push for an Athens show," he says. "We figured as long as we learned all this music, we should play it as many times as we can."



George Winston to perform Sunday at Rose-Hulman

December 11, 2008

By Mark Bennett
The Terre Haute News [Indiana]

TERRE HAUTE -- Versatility is one thing. But George Winston's repertoire encompasses songs from "A Charlie Brown Christmas" and The Doors.

"I just concentrate on playing the tunes as best I can," Winston said of his effect on listeners, "and what will be, will be."

Winston plays melodies on piano. His fascination with keyboards emerged in the mid-1960s. Charlie Brown and Jim Morrison -- along with fellow Doors band mates Ray Manzarek, Robbie Krieger and John Densmore -- deserve equal credit for Winston's plunge into a stellar career spanning four decades, including his concert this Sunday at Rose-Hulman's Hatfield Hall.

After the Peanuts TV cartoon classic "A Charlie Brown Christmas" aired in 1965, Winston bought the soundtrack album, which was filled with songwriter Vince Guaraldi's memorable tunes. "I think he was the perfect composer for those cartoons at the time," Winston said Tuesday in a telephone interview.

Two years later, Winston -- then 18 years old -- heard The Doors' debut album. He bought that LP even before its single "Light My Fire" hit the radio charts. The seminal sound of that band, anchored by Manzarek's hypnotic organ playing, motivated Winston.

"I thought, 'This is the greatest album I've ever heard. I've got to get an organ, and play in a band,'" Winston remembered.

Forty-one years later, Winston has 11 solo piano albums to his credit, including the Grammy-winning "Forest" from 1994 and the 2006 release "Gulf Coast Blues and Impressions: A Hurricane Relief Benefit." Touring takes the 59-year-old Santa Cruz, Calif., resident around the world for about 110 concerts a year.

He's finishing up his latest album "Love Will Come: The Music of Vince Guaraldi, Volume 2."

That disc, due in stores by September 2009, follows his 1996 first tribute to the late Peanuts composer, "Linus & Lucy: The Music of Vince Guaraldi."

Guaraldi, who died in 1976 at the young age of 47, "just had this great sensibility," Winston said.

Guaraldi's Peanuts songs are a staple of Winston's winter concerts. Doors fans at Sunday's Rose-Hulman show, though, probably won't hear covers of their favorites. Those adaptations, which Winston recorded on his 2002 album "Night Divides the Day: The Music of the Doors," are typically reserved for his summer gigs.

Still, his cache of influences extends far beyond Guaraldi and Manzarek. Winston feels a direct connection, in terms of piano styles, to New Orleans greats such as Professor Longhair, Dr. John, Allen Toussaint, James Booker and others. "I've gotten so much from New Orleans," Winston said.

Thus, after Katrina devastated the Crescent City and the Gulf Coast in 2005, Winston committed an entire album to that unique sound and the volunteer effort to save that region. "I just wanted to help out, like everybody else did, and I figured that was the best way to help -- to just do what you do," he said.

Winston has raised funds for food banks and charities for more than two decades, and, fittingly, Sunday's event in Terre Haute continues that tradition. Folks attending the show are asked to bring canned goods, to be donated to the Catholic Charities food bank. A portion of Winston's merchandise sales at the show will also go to Catholic Charities, according to a release by Rose-Hulman director of news services Dale Long.

Winston is driven to record and perform by a passion for music. While he also plays slack guitar and harmonica, the piano remains a central inspiration.

"The piano is a mountain," he said, "which is a never ending climb."



Jazz of 'Peanuts' got him hooked

Pianist and composer first drawn by comic as child, music as adult

December 3, 2008

By Jerry Fink
The Las Vegas Sun

Surprisingly, David Benoit's favorite character in the "Peanuts" comic strip is not Schroeder, the obsessive, classical-piano-playing prodigy who loves Ludwig van Beethoven and scorns Lucy.

Benoit, one of the top jazz pianists and composers in the country, is a Charlie Brown guy.

He will be performing a lot of "Peanuts" music in "A Charlie Brown Christmas," his concert Saturday at UNLV.

"I identified with Charlie Brown from the beginning," Benoit says from his home in Palos Verdes, Calif. "I liked the fact that Charlie Brown couldn't succeed in anything. Like me, he was a loser -- a nice loser. I couldn't do anything really well when I was growing up, so I understood Charlie Brown's pain.

"A lot of people liked Snoopy because he was so cool and hip. A lot of people think of me when they think of Schroeder, but Schroeder was very confident and devoted, and practiced all the time. When I was that age I loved the piano but I didn't practice that much and wasn't nearly that devoted or serious about music, so I identified with Charlie Brown."

Benoit's fascination with "Peanuts," which Charles Schulz produced from 1950 until his death in 2000, began at the age of 8 and continues today.

"It's a lifelong fascination," says the 55-year-old musician. "Absolutely. I loved the strip and then when the first Christmas show aired I loved the music."

The music for that first "Peanuts" special, "A Charlie Brown Christmas" in 1965, was composed by Vince Guaraldi, who was closely associated with the TV shows until his death, in 1976.

Benoit credits Guaraldi -- who wrote the "Peanuts" theme song, "Linus and Lucy" -- for his interest in jazz.

"I started to play 'Linus and Lucy' when I was a teenager," the native of Los Angeles says. "I just loved the music. And as I got older and started making records, I recorded some of Vince's songs -- 'Christmas Time is Here' and 'Linus and Lucy.'

After Guaraldi died, film and TV composer Ed Bogas scored several "Peanuts" productions. He was followed by Judy Munsen.

And then came Benoit, who had gained a lot of respect in the music community when he toured with Lainie Kazan for eight years and then with the Rippingtons, Kenny Loggins, Dave Koz, David Sanborn and many others.

Lee Mendelson, producer of the "Peanuts" TV specials, liked what he heard from Benoit.

"He introduced me to Charles M. Schulz and the rest is history," says Benoit, who considers the day he met Schulz was one of the greatest of his life. "Lee drove me up to the wine country from San Francisco. He was telling me, 'I'm going to introduce you to Sparky' cartoonist's nickname.

They met at Schulz's roller skating rink in Santa Rosa and dined on cheeseburgers and fries.

"Talking to him was like talking to any other guy," Benoit says. "He was so down to earth and natural that it actually surprised me. I thought he would have a bodyguard or people surrounding him or an entourage or something and I would have maybe a couple of minutes with him and then I would be dismissed and he would be on to the next appointment. That was not the case. There were no bodyguards, no assistants. Nothing. Just him and me hanging out in a burger joint. It was amazing. This man who had given so much to the world and was so world famous, but he was so humble."

The purpose of the meeting was to see whether Schulz would be willing to accept Benoit as his composer.

"Mendelson liked me," Benoit says. "He thought I was bringing back more of the jazz element, and he wanted to introduce me to Sparky and to get his blessing. Once we had the meeting, Sparky kind of made me the official Charlie Brown composer. That's was the purpose of the meeting, to sort of pass the torch, you might say."

Unfortunately, the friendship that was forged at that first meeting was too short.

Schulz died less that two years later.

"The family had invited me on a private cruise in Alaska they had planned for him, and then he died," Benoit says.

But Benoit is keeping the music alive.

He recently released "Jazz for Peanuts," which includes the themes from several of the 40 or so TV specials that spanned almost 40 years.

"Selecting the music for the CD was a long process," Benoit says. "I went through every single TV show they ever did and tried to find what I thought were the best themes. That was one of the reasons for the CD -- they discontinued doing the TV shows about two years ago, so I thought this was a good opportunity to put something out there and showcase some of the lesser-known songs and some composers that people would be surprised to know contributed to the show."

The composers include Wynton Marsalis ("The Buggy Ride"), Dave Brubeck ("Benjamin") and Kenny G ("Breadline Blues").

"I've joked that this is probably the only time in CD history where Kenny G and Wynton Marsalis are on the same CD," Benoit says.

Half of the UNLV concert will be devoted to Charlie Brown Christmas music.

He also will perform selections from the new album as well as several from an album he released in the spring, "Heroes."

"Heroes" is an album of covers highlighting some of the musicians who influenced him in his formative years -- such as Guaraldi, Brubeck, the Doors and Elton John.

But you won't find Schroeder on the list.



Dorney ice show the next hot ticket?

November 19, 2008

By Andrew C. Martel
The Allentown Morning Call [Allentown, Pennsylvania]

This year, Dorney Park brought us Voodoo. In 2009, the new arrival will be Snoopy. On ice skates.

The park, which will celebrate its 125th anniversary next year, plans to put on an Ice Capades-like show featuring mascot Peanuts characters.

Called "Snoopy Rocks on Ice," it will open in June and have multiple shows a day, six days a week, through Labor Day, according to park spokesman Charles Hutchison.

To host the show, Dorney is building Good Time Theater, a 600-seat, 18,000-square-foot venue immediately to the left of the main entrance to the South Whitehall Township park.

After "Snoopy Rocks" completes its run, the theater will be available for other shows and events, and will also serve as an attraction in next year's Halloween Haunt, Hutchison said Tuesday.

"It'll be a really good addition. It'll be the one venue in the park, an air-conditioned facility, that the whole family can enjoy," he said.

The show is likely to feature more than a dozen skaters who will perform stunts and routines to familiar music. Cedar Fair Entertainment, which owns Dorney Park, has put on similar shows at its other amusement parks, including Cedar Point in Ohio and California's Great America. Those shows have been big hits among families, said Stacy Frole, a spokeswoman for Cedar Fair.

The announcement of an ice-skating show might not excite roller-coaster fanatics, but Hutchison said Dorney Park has had a good run of introducing a new thrill ride almost every year. They include the floorless coaster Hydra in 2005, some high-speed water slides at Wildwater Kingdom in 2006, and Voodoo in 2008.

The addition of "Snoopy Rocks on Ice" helps Dorney Park balance family-friendly entertainment with attractions for thrill-seekers, Hutchison said.

"When you look at all those thrill rides, obviously they're going to be for a specific person," he said. "We try to keep a balance and offer something for everybody."

Dorney will also have other celebrations and special events throughout the season to celebrate its quasquicentennial, commemorating the park's founding in 1884 by Solomon Dorney, Hutchison said.

Cedar Fair announced Tuesday it will spend $62 million next year on new roller-coasters, family rides and attractions, including "Snoopy Rocks on Ice." Its amusement parks in Missouri, Ohio and North Carolina will see new roller-coasters next year, while several parks will feature a stunt show featuring tricks by bikers, skateboarders, in-line skaters and gymnasts.

Business at Cedar Fair's parks was strong in 2008, despite the slowing economy. High gasoline prices helped encourage people to go to the amusement parks, which were usually a shorter drive away than traditional vacation destinations, Frole said.

Overall, Cedar Fair's parks reported a 3 percent increase in attendance, and net income rose 7.2 percent during the first eight months of 2008, according to the company.

Dorney Park's performance reflects Cedar Fair's, Hutchison said.

"We shared in that. That buzz word last summer was staycation, and a lot of folks really took advantage of that," he said.



Growing up

Growing up with Charlie Brown

November 15, 2008

www.theurbanwire.com

The side of his living room is an astonishing sight to behold: a customised wooden bookshelf covers the wall, housing over a hundred plush toys, dolls, and rare figurines.

Mr. Chong Ching Liang and his wife sit together with a Charlie Brown doll, Mr. Chong's first Peanuts character. The Interdisciplinary Studies lecturer has travelled with the doll overseas on many occasions. Photo: Yeo Kai Wen.

Mr. Chong Ching Liang, a School of Interdisciplinary Studies lecturer, received his first Charlie Brown doll when he was in Primary Five. It was this gift that ignited his fanaticism in collecting toys, especially his stash of the Peanuts gang, which has four levels of the shelf to themselves.

"I was one of the eBay pioneers in the mid-90s," said Mr. Chong, "When I first started, it was compulsive buying and I never kept track." True enough, it was easy to spot quite a number of 'stray kids' lying around the house.

His wife, Sharon, also shares his passion for all the little trinkets.

"The Pokemon ones are Sharon's because she loves that little one," Mr. Chong chuckled, pointing at the top of the shelf.

Like most people, the couple met at work. In their case, while they were both at the National Archives of Singapore. He was a Research Officer at the Oral History Centre, while she was in the Audio Visual Archives department.

"We started as friends. After four years, we start to see each other as more than friends. We felt that we would be very comfortable growing old together," he says.

Despite the kiddy treasure trove, the 41-year-old lecturer teaches modules related to politics and current affairs, and even keeps up with Thai politics.

Back in the '80s, Thai construction workers and prostitutes were being treated poorly and unfairly, so Mr. Chong felt it crucial that he became a social worker or a researcher to help people understand the situation.

"I want to get everyone to think. Politics and current affairs aren't subjects you can mug," said Mr. Chong.

During his school days, Mr. Chong was already linked to the Peanuts character -- long before his collecting frenzy even started.

"I had a hairless big round head when I was a kid, so Charlie Brown became my nickname. A lot of people got it wrong: It wasn't Snoopy that started it," he says.

Mr. Chong had expanded his collection to all the Peanuts kids because they were rare collectibles.

It was also partly because Snoopy has always been in the limelight, but the children are often ignored. Soon, the character always seen as "a permanent case of bad luck" became a huge part of his life.

"I see Charlie Brown not as the born loser, but as someone who never gives up despite being given a very raw deal all the time," Mr. Chong says.

Having grown up with the Peanuts underdog, he uses Charlie Brown as a reminder that even though being a teacher might be difficult at times, he will never give up.

Says Mr. Chong, "We can breeze through classes and not care, or we can be acutely sensitive to how we can coax students to be better than our generation."

The Peanuts fanatic has dreams:

"I want to change the world -- one person at a time."



Good Grief

Why I love the melancholy Peanuts holiday specials.

October 31, 2008

By Dana Stevens
Slate [www.slate.com]

What sound is most evocative of autumn? The crackling of dry leaves? The singsong chant of trick-or-treaters? The zip-zipping of corduroy jeans as you walk down the street? For anyone who remembers watching the original Charlie Brown Christmas special in 1965 -- or in any of the 42 years it's aired since -- the single best aural reminder of the waning year has to be the bouncy piano vamp of Vince Guaraldi's "Linus and Lucy," better known as the Peanuts song. The Van Pelts' theme doesn't appear until midway through A Charlie Brown Christmas, but it was so instantly and indelibly associated with Charles Schulz's characters that it became the opening song for subsequent specials.

Those specials -- at least the big three: the Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas shows that were recently released in a "deluxe holiday collection" by Warner Bros. -- have a mood unlike any animated film for children made before or since. For one thing, they're really, really slow -- slow not just by our ADD-addled contemporary standards but also next to the programming of their own time. Just compare the meandering pace of A Charlie Brown Christmas (in which Charlie tries, and fails, to direct a single rehearsal of a Christmas play) with the generation-spanning epic crammed into Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer (1964). But what really sets the Peanuts specials apart is their sadness. Even digitally remastered, with the background colors restored to their original vivid crispness, the Peanuts holiday specials have a faded quality, like artifacts from a lost civilization. As Linus observes of the wan, drooping pine sprig Charlie Brown eventually rescues from a huge lot of pink aluminum Christmas trees, "This doesn't seem to fit the modern spirit."

Here I could write an epic poem detailing the multiple felicities of the Peanuts specials: the van Gogh-esque night sky that dwarfs Linus and Sally as they wait in the pumpkin patch for the Great Pumpkin, Linus' stirring reading from the Gospel of Luke at the end of A Charlie Brown Christmas, the impossibly hip "Little Birdie" song that plays in the background as Snoopy and Woodstock prep for their Thanksgiving feast. But I'll let you rediscover the specials' quiet joys for yourself, and I'll stick to describing the added value this collection provides: the fascinating but far too short making-of documentaries that are appended to each disc.

Those early specials were the output of a small creative team that was given free rein by CBS, as long as the results continued to pull in a giant Nielsen share. (The debut of A Charlie Brown Christmas was watched by literally half the viewing audience, a percentage unimaginable in our cable-fragmented era.) These were men who took their Peanuts very seriously indeed: Schulz, producer Lee Mendelson, and legendary animator Bill Melendez, who died last month at 91. It was Melendez who was responsible for figuring out how to turn Schulz's famously flat, spare drawings into moving pictures with backgrounds, as he recounts in interviews here. How were the characters' flat, boatlike feet actually supposed to walk? (Melendez had to invent a special gait, several beats faster than the normal human footstep, to make them move convincingly.) How does Charlie Brown's single strand of hair change shape when he moves from a profile to a front view?

The making-of featurettes also detail Schulz's close involvement in the writing and animation process. He insisted on the absence of a laugh track and on giving the Peanuts kids the voices of real children, many of them nonprofessionals. Since the kids, who ranged in age from 6 to 11, rapidly aged out of their parts, there was an ongoing search for new voice talent (though sometimes it could be found close to home; Christopher Shea, the original voice of Linus, was eventually replaced by his younger brother Stephen). The younger actors, still unable to memorize lines (or, in some cases, to read), had to have their lines fed to them half a line at a time by Melendez, who supervised all the recording sessions and provided the nonverbal stylings of Snoopy. This line-by-line editing process is what lent the Peanuts voices their signature choppy rhythm -- if you listen carefully, you can hear the seams between words. Mendelson, a charming storyteller, remembers how a girl voicing the part of Sally once had to be rushed into the studio for an all-night recording session before she lost her front tooth, which would have given her a lisp that matched poorly with the scenes she'd already recorded.

If these making-of features disappoint, it's only because they leave you wanting something longer and more comprehensive (like this 1985 Schulz-hosted tribute to the 20th anniversary of the Peanuts specials). An interview with Schulz's grown son Monte provides a tiny glimpse of his father as the troubled, egotistical man portrayed in this 2007 biography of the cartoonist. Monte describes how, as an airplane-mad boy, he suggested Snoopy's Red Baron persona to his father, who promptly incorporated it into his strip. But Schulz refused to acknowledge his son's contribution, in interviews or in conversation, until the final years of his life.

Vince Guaraldi, who deserves a two-hour documentary of his own, appears in only a few tantalizing images, improvising at the piano from a storyboard drawn by Schulz. It was Guaraldi's idea to use a trombone to simulate the off-screen voices of adults, and the "wah-wah" bleat of unseen teachers and parents became a defining feature of the Peanuts universe. After Guaraldi's early death in 1976, the musical standard of the Peanuts specials went way downhill, as evidenced by this Flashdance-influenced Flashbeagle number from 1985. The extras in this collection include three latter-day Peanuts specials, from 1981, 1988, and 1992 -- perfectly pleasant viewing but illustrative of the shows' decline from their '60s heyday.

Making-of documentaries about animated films have a unique fascination; it's a trip to witness the collaborative process by which a bunch of photographed drawings can somehow convince us that we're really watching Lucy yank away that football. Still, all the knowledge in the world about how these shows were produced can't account for the melancholy beauty of the opening of A Charlie Brown Christmas, in which poker-faced children skate on a pond to the strangely funereal carol "Christmastime Is Here." Or the bleak hilarity of Charlie Brown's Halloween-candy haul: "I got a rock." If the featurettes were the high point of this collection for me, it's only because, like everyone else who grew up with them, I can never see these wonderful specials again for the first time.



Hollywood Stars Spill the Beans on Who They're Voting For!

Stars Tape Humorous Online PSAs for Peanutsrocksthevote.com

October 15, 2008

www.businesswire.com

NEW YORK--The secret is out--Hollywood stars are taking sides in the Presidential race and they're not afraid to tell the world who they're voting for: Charlie Brown! Or Lucy! Or Snoopy, Linus or Sally!

Several dozen celebrities of the large and small screens have recently taped lighthearted online PSAs touting the new Peanuts website, www.Peanutsrocksthevote.com, where visitors can vote for Charlie Brown, Snoopy, Linus, Lucy or Sally for President. Then visitors can click through to www.rockthevote.com to view the PSAs and get up to speed on the real election.

Whoopi Goldberg, Kathy Griffin, Seth Green, Sharon Gless, Robert Morse of Mad Men, Virginia Madsen, The Daily Show's John Oliver, Dog Whisperer Cesar Millan, Ross the Intern from The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, comedian Shelley Berman of Curb Your Enthusiasm, "Announcer Guy" Joel Godard of Late Night with Conan O'Brien, comedian Jeffrey Ross, co-host Sal Masekela from E!'s Daily 10 and Dirty Jobs star Mike Rowe are just a few of the celebrities who are taping the PSAs.

"You might be surprised to learn this about me, but I love to give my opinion," says Whoopi Goldberg. "So when it's time to give my opinion on the most important issue of all--who should be our President--I am all over it...I'm talking about the major, major election going on right now at Peanutsrocksthevote.com."

Several stars made time to tape their PSAs between interviews on the red carpet at the Creative Arts Emmys or at the celebration of the 100th episode of The Dog Whisperer. In fact, Kathy Griffin and Kathryn Joosten (Desperate Housewives) won Emmys just minutes after taping their Peanuts PSAs.

"I know who I'm voting for for President--Lucy!" says Griffin. "Who else could boss Congress around?"

Lucy proved to be popular with quite a few female stars, including actress Sharon Gless, who notes approvingly that Lucy "will be tough on...everything."

Snoopy is the candidate of choice, naturally, for Dog Whisperer star Cesar Millan, who proclaims the cartoon beagle "the second-coolest dog on the planet. The first is [Millan's dog] Daddy!" And, Millan adds, "We need a balanced pack leader."

Joosten, who took home an Emmy for her role as Karen McCluskey on Desperate Housewives, adds, "[Snoopy is] the philosopher of the bunch, the one who looks at life with reality, laying on his doghouse. If I had a doghouse, I'd probably lay on it, too."

Charlie Brown got the vote of actor/comedian Shelley Berman and Inside the Actors Studio host James Lipton. "He may be wishy-washy, but he never gives up," says Lipton, who urged viewers to register to vote in the November 4 election. "You'll never, ever as long as you live, be faced with a more important choice."

Virginia Madsen, holding her dog Spike at the Dog Whisperer party, casts her vote for "Sally--because she'll give us school vacations permanently!"

Mike Rowe, host of Discovery Channel's Dirty Jobs, went for the "real man," Linus, "because real men believe in security blankets....So register to vote on November 4. And wash your blanket!"

Joel Godard, the "Announcer Guy" for Conan O'Brien, found it hard to choose among the candidates, since he has something in common with all of them--even Sally: "Pink is my favorite color, too," Godard says with his trademark grin.

Comedian Jeffrey Ross, the first celebrity to be voted off Dancing with the Stars this season, encourages visitors to www.Peanutsrocksthevote.com to make "a thoughtful, informed, logical decision about which cartoon character you think would make the best President. Wow, as a comedian there are so many ways I could go with this... ."

Ross the Intern, of The Tonight Show with Jay Leno fame, finds himself having a hard time deciding between the five "green" candidates, who include Charlie Brown ("Obviously he's green, because who else could love that pathetic little Christmas tree?") and Lucy (whose psychiatric booth, at 5 cents per customer, "is seriously raking in the green").

And British Daily Show correspondent John Oliver is excited to be able to vote in an American election for a change. "You can vote for an actual dog," Oliver says. "How bad can that be?"

E! Daily 10 co-host Sal Masekela encourages citizens to register and vote through both a PSA and by participating in a photo shoot with celebrity photographer Christopher Ameruoso for the issue of In Touch Weekly magazine that hits the stands on October 31. Masekela posed with his Shar Pei/Staffordshire Terrier, Lola--who sported a "Snoopy for President" button on her collar.

Among the other celebrities who have participated in the Peanuts campaign--either by taping PSAs or being photographed wearing political Peanuts tees--are: Simon Pegg (How to Lose Friends and Alienate People, the new Star Trek film), Julie Benz (Dexter), Gregory Cruz (Saving Grace), Cat Deeley (So You Think You Can Dance?), Brendan Fehr (Samurai Girl), singer-actress JoJo, Stacy Keibler (Dancing With the Stars), actress Kate Linder (The Young and the Restless), comedian Mark Malkoff (who made headlines by spending a week in an Ikea store), Vincent Martella (Everybody Hates Chris), Shane Sparks (America's Best Dance Crew) and Francia Raisa (The Secret Life of an American Teenager.)

News flash: Hollywood stars will work for Peanuts--when the cause is a good one. And www.Peanutsrocksthevote.com is just that cause.



Cartoon candidates abound with Peanuts Rocks the Vote

October 7, 2008

By Lorrie Lynch with Kathy Rowings
USA Today Weekend

Many states are wrapping up their voter registration periods these days, getting ready for one of the most talked-about presidential elections ever. This year, however, finds the youthful Rock the Vote campaign reaching out to all ages with new team members: Snoopy, Charlie Brown, Linus and the rest of the Peanuts gang. The Peanuts Rocks the Vote website allows you to vote for your favorite of the late Charles M. Schulz's timeless comic-strip characters and get involved so you can also vote on Nov. 4. We recently talked with Schulz's widow, Jean (seen here with Seth Green), about the campaign for an upcoming issue, but our Brian Truitt found she had a lot to say about the issues, palling around with young celebrities and who her late husband would choose among his creations to run the country. Click read more below for a full report and one of the Peanuts Rocks the Vote PSAs, and tell us which Peanuts candidate would get your vote.

This year could see more younger voters than every before coming out on Election Day, and Jean Schulz is bringing in the young guns to help out with celebrity PSAs in conjunction with Peanuts Rocks the Vote: Green, who she met at Comic-Con in July; Whoopi Goldberg, a friend from way back when Charles Schulz was a guest on her show; and singer JoJo, who Jean Schulz ran into and befriended at a fashion show.

"Things are skewing younger, and more young people are involved," Schulz says. "I think Barack Obama has really energized a younger vote since before the primaries. They say that he's appealing to people who don't have home phones, so they're wondering about the validity of the recent polling data because they use people's home phones. But the important thing is to have people look at the issues."

Schulz's iconic husband, the man she lovingly refers to as "Sparky," was always interested in politics, she says, and was a "nominal Republican." But even more, the Peanuts strips that dealt with the campaigns from the 1960s to the '80s reflected a certain prescience about the evolution of politics. In one strip from the 1960s, Lucy talks about redecorating the White House -- "This was before Kennedy was elected," Schulz says. And in a March strip from 1984, Lucy foretells that we'll probably have had a woman president by the time she grows up. That may still be a little ways off, but with Hillary Clinton's run in the Democratic primaries and the political world's keen interest in Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin, it might not be that far. "But wouldn't you have thought in 1984 that it might have happened sooner?" Schulz asks.

She mentions that she's as politically engaged as anyone right now, but is more interested in the issues, especially climate control. "It's barely -- BARELY -- on the radar screen," Schulz says. "People talk about it, yes. We have some local initiatives here in Sonoma County in California, trying to reduce our carbon footprint and people are doing a lot of work, but it's a lot of talk. To me, that hasn't risen to the level of political discourse that it should have. With Rock the Vote, the online campaign is cute, and voting for the characters is fun, but I'm hoping that people really take it seriously and realize that their futures, it's going to matter to them."

Visitors to the Peanuts Rock the Vote site can choose between Snoopy, Charlie Brown, Linus, Lucy and Sally for president. Who would have been Charles Schulz's pick? Probably Linus, according to Jean Schulz. In the 1972 TV special You're Not Elected, Charlie Brown (which debuts on a special-edition DVD today), Linus was way ahead in the race until he made the most disastrous of the political mistakes: the verbal gaffe. During a speech, instead of talking about politics, he brings up the Great Pumpkin when he finally has an audience and it all falls apart. "He completely loses that election and much to Lucy's dismay, she probably wanted to run out of the auditorium screaming," Schulz says. "I think he needs another chance. Now, he's probably a little politically wiser, and he knows that you say what your advisers tell you to say, not what you really believe."



Will the 'Great Pumpkin' show up this year?

He can be at your house, in a newly remastered DVD

October 3, 2008

By James Grant
The News-Sentinel [Fort Wayne, Indiana]

Can you imagine spending 42 years in a pumpkin patch? Seems like a long time, doesn't it?

Just ask Linus and Sally and the rest of the Charlie Brown gang of characters. Its approaching 42 years since they first hit television screens in the classic cartoon special, "It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown."

For those of you who tuned in late, the plot centers on a Halloween evening with Charlie Brown and his friends -- and, of course, his dog Snoopy, the beloved World War I fighting ace.

While Charlie Brown goes trick-or-treating (where he repeats the immortal line "I got a rock" in response to not getting candy) and to a Halloween party; his friend Linus and Charlie Brown's love-struck younger sister, Sally, wait in a pumpkin patch all night in hope of finally seeing the Great Pumpkin.

This year, "It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown" has been spruced up and re-released in a remastered deluxe edition DVD that hit the shelves in September.

The picture and sound have been cleaned up, the colors sparkle, and the sound is crisp and bright. Plus, the disc includes another cartoon, "It's Magic, Charlie Brown," as well as a new featurette titled "We Need a Blockbuster, Charlie Brown!" that details the behind-the-scenes aspects of bringing "Great Pumpkin" to the small screen.

As an added bonus, two free digital downloads of two songs from the "Great Pumpkin" soundtrack are offered.

If you buy this new edition of the cartoon but still can't get enough of Charlie Brown and the Great Pumpkin, Hallmark stores carry a wide range of Great Pumpkin items for sale, including cards, Halloween ornaments, books and a musical pumpkin that a masked Snoopy pops out of.

Deb Meisner, manager of Anne's Hallmark Shop on Dupont Road, said Hallmark has the exclusive license for the Peanuts characters and that the Great Pumpkin holds a special appeal to several generations.

"We grew up with it, and then our kids grew up with it and now their kids," she said. Peanuts creator Charles Schulz explained the appeal of the Great Pumpkin (as well as Charlie Brown, for that matter) best in the book "It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown: The Making of a Television Classic."

The Great Pumpkin is really a satire on Santa Claus, because Linus, of course, writes for gifts and expects to get them, Schulz said. And when the great Pumpkin doesn't come, Linus is crushed. It shows that you can't always get what you hoped for, but you can still survive and you can keep trying. Linus never gives up, and neither does Charlie Brown.

So, if you want to spend a fun-filled evening in a pumpkin patch, there's no more enchanting or humorous a pumpkin patch than in "It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown." Oh, and if you see the Great Pumpkin, wish him a happy Halloween and tell him Linus sends his best.



Singer Sandi Patty even shows up in the funnies

She knew Charles Schulz of 'Peanuts' strip fame

September 23, 2008

By Terry DeBoer
The Grand Rapids Press [Michigan]

Sandi Patty sometimes pops up in unexpected places. Earlier this month, the "Classic Peanuts" syndicated comic strip referenced the singer's piercing voice.

"I saw that, and it brought back sweet memories," Patty said from her Anderson, Ind., home.

The strip by the late Charles Schulz -- now in classic reruns -- published an episode Sept. 9 featuring a disheveled, headphone-wearing Linus lying on the ground after a fall while skating.

"As I rounded the corner, Sandi Patty hit a high note," he says in the single-panel strip.

"I got to meet Mr.. Schulz a couple of times, and he was a sweet, kind man," Patty said of the comic illustrator, who died in 2000.

That strip originally was published not long after Patty's voice was showcased on a version of the "Star Spangled Banner" used in 1986 for the rededication of the Statue of Liberty and broadcast on national television.

"It's an odd song to be identified with," the five-time Grammy Award winner said. "But it's still a song that people recall me singing."

Since her first recording, in 1979, Patty has built a career that has overgrown the boundaries of her inspirational-music roots. Although she still performs in churches and is a regular on the national Women of Faith conference dates, she also performs pops concerts with local symphonies. Her repertoire includes Broadway, big band and show tunes.

But her most recent release, "Songs for the Journey," is largely a collection of hymns, gospel and inspirational ballads.

"Having grown up in the church, I grew up singing and loving all those great hymns," said Patty, who packs three familiar hymns into a single package she titles "Savior Medley."

"We recorded them quite intimately, with just my pianist and me, and what you hear is exactly how we did them," she said.

Patty also has written several books. Her latest, "Layers," is a revealing story of some of the performer's struggles, which she expands on during her conference speaking and singing dates.

In 2004, Patty was enshrined in the Gospel Music Hall of Fame. This summer she and several other artists were honored in a Grammy salute to gospel music at the Lincoln Center in Washington, D.C.



A day trip to the Schulz Museum: You're a good man, Charlie Brown!

September 23, 6:55 AM

By Ed Uyeshima
The San Francisco Travel Examiner

He created nearly 18,000 Peanuts strips over five decades without interruption. His last one ran on January 3, 2000, and he died five weeks later. For a generation of us, his characters were like family, his merchandise were permanent fixtures in our bedrooms, and the annual ritual of watching "A Charlie Brown Christmas" was as necessary to the holidays as baked yams with mini-marshmallows. After Elvis, legendary cartoonist Charles Schulz has been the "highest paid deceased person" for the past five years according to Forbes Magazine. His place in popular culture is intractable, which is why a daytrip visit to the Charles Schulz Museum & Research Center is a must for any self-respecting baby boomer and for every generation of Peanuts fans thereafter.

An hour north of San Francisco when the traffic karma is good, the state-of-the-art facility built in 2002 is in Santa Rosa, Schulz's hometown for the last thirty years of his life. It's too bad he didn't live to see the place since it represents an adroit reflection of a man who was aware of his pervasive influence but at the same time, remained a modest, easygoing fellow who went by his childhood nickname ("Sparky") all his life and ate twice a day like clockwork at the Warm Puppy Coffee Shop in the Redwood Empire Ice Arena right across the street. The multimillionaire Schulz built the ice rink in 1969 out of his passion for hockey. One would expect the challenge in building a museum to his legacy is making something visually interesting from a million little comic strip panels.

The 27,000-square-foot museum, however, is far more than Schulz's individual strips, one hundred of which are showcased in the Strip Rotation Gallery and continuously rotated among the seven thousand in the archive to show how Peanuts evolved over time. The entire place feels like a big house albeit a very nice modern one with slate floors, cherry ceilings, and a copper roof. It features six thousand square feet of gallery space, several education and research rooms, expansive outdoor areas with exhibits surrounding the building, and the Great Hall. The latter makes quite an impression with a huge mural by Japanese artist (and obvious Peanuts aficionado) Yoshiteru Otani, made up of 3,500 tiles, each a Peanuts strip. All together, they form a 22-foot high version of the iconic picture of Lucy taking the football away before just before Charlie Brown kicks it. Otani also designed the bas-relief sculpture overhead called "Morphing Snoopy", a 3.5 ton wood sculpture depicting the evolution of the famous beagle.

There's a colorful impressionistic painting by Tom Everhart of a Red Baron-chasing Snoopy at the dinner table in the Strip Rotation Gallery. Go upstairs to see a complete recreation of Schulz's office, Sparky's Studio, as well as intriguing exhibits like environmental artist Cristo's paper-wrapped doghouse and a near-primitive mural Schulz painted for his infant daughter that was somehow salvaged from a Colorado home. You can also see works by other cartoonists inspired by Schulz. Outside in the back are some nice figurines of Charlie Brown and Linus, a familiar kite stuck up in a tree, and even a Woodstock birdbath with holographic images as you walk around it. In front is a low-level labyrinth shaped in the profile of Snoopy's head.

Of course, there's an unavoidable little gift nook in the entry area. But if shopping is your main incentive, then walk past the ice rink to the two-story Snoopy's Gallery & Gift Shop, an embarrassment of riches when it comes to Peanuts paraphernalia. There's even a viewing space on the second floor for the kiddies to watch the TV cartoons non-stop. The cash cow is obviously Snoopy in all his simple glory, whether he is plush, plastic or pliable. One wonders what Schulz would have made of all this. Embarrassed perhaps, but if you believe David Michaelis' dark-hued portrait in his voluminous 2007 book, "Schulz and Peanuts: A Biography", the cartoonist may have been quite pleased with himself.



Schroder and Beethoven forever

Exhibit showcases the young pianst in 'Peanuts' and his classical music

September 21, 2008

By Edward Ortiz
The Sacramento Bee

SANTA ROSA -- "Good grief!"

That familiar Charlie Brown cry from "Peanuts" might have been Ludwig van Beethoven's reply had he learned that, 130 years after his death, his music had become part of the internationally distributed comic strip.

It's tempting to think that Beethoven would have warmed to the idea of being part of the long-lived "Peanuts" comic strip by Charles Schulz.

After all, "Peanuts" was often about unrequited love. And Beethoven's own love life suffered plenty of it.

This theme is the focus of the exhibit "Schulz's Beethoven: Schroeder's Muse," which runs through Jan. 29 at the Charles M. Schulz Museum in Santa Rosa.

The show tastefully and engagingly offers more than 50 comic strip panels and other media. Some of those include displays of Schulz's most-loved Beethoven recordings. The show offers 50 musical excerpts as well as spoken narratives that can be heard using an audio wand. Also in the show are some Beethoven ephemera on loan from the Ira F. Brilliant Center for Beethoven Studies in San Jose. Those include a life mask of Beethoven, first- edition scores and two vials containing tiny wisps of the composer's hair.

"It's interesting to see how much of the strips start out with sheet music from Beethoven's work," said Bill Meredith, director of the Brilliant Center and co- curator of the exhibit. Schulz was keen on including Beethoven's music, faithfully reproduced, in the strip's panels. It proved to be an unprecedented use of music in a comic strip.

Most interesting is how the exhibit chronicles Schulz as an artist ready to use musical ideas in graphic form. The medium for his musical interests was the character of Schroeder, whom Schulz drew as a young and aloof piano prodigy hunched over a toy piano. Schroeder first appeared in "Peanuts" on May 30, 1951. However, the first mention of Beethoven came earlier that year, in January, when a violin-playing Charlie Brown talks about the composer to Snoopy.

Schulz actually preferred the music of Johannes Brahms, but he told interviewers that the name "Beethoven" offered more comic possibilities.

For many, it was in the comic strip, and not school, where the name "Beethoven" was first encountered.

"That was true for me," said Derrick Bang, entertainment editor for the Davis Enterprise and a Peanuts expert. Bang has written four books on the strip including the upcoming "Security Blankets: How Peanuts Touched Our Lives," due in 2009 from Andrews McMeel Publishing.

"I was born in 1955 and started reading 'Peanuts' somewhat precociously in the early '60s, which was the period when Schulz nailed Schroeder's big Beethoven involvement," said Bang.

At the time, Bang was taking piano lessons, but Beethoven was yet to pervade his musical mind.

"I don't think I sought out Beethoven, because his music is incredibly complicated to play, particularly for a small kid," he said. "But whenever I heard something and I discovered that it was Beethoven, I would immediately say: "Oh, that's 'Peanuts.' "

"Peanuts" has outlived Schulz, who died in his Sebastapol home in 2000 at 77. The strip is still published daily in The Bee and in publications worldwide. The global readership is estimated at 330 million.

Schulz drew music into the strip with painstaking accuracy, Meredity said.

"Schulz mentioned that he liked to have things exactly perfect because he knew that musicians would be looking closely at the music," Meredith said.

And look at it they did.

It is a little-known fact about the Beethoven strips that if you were to take the music in them and play them at the piano, they would be as accurate as any of Beethoven's sheet music.

Curiously, the comic strip appeals to musicians in ways that are not apparent to non-musicians. That's because Schulz deepened the meaning of what was going on in any given comic strip panel by his use of music.

To glean that meaning required knowing enough about Beethoven's works to identify which piece of music and which movement of it Schulz was alluding to.

"I was looking at a 'Peanuts' strip one day and I realized that Schulz drew in one of Beethoven's Opus 2 sonatas," said Meredith. "But it did not say that it was Beethoven's music in the strip anywhere, and it did not hint that the passage of music is a funny one."

In another strip the use of Beethoven's "Pathetique" piano sonata was used to further underscore the running theme of unrequited love that Lucy felt for Schroeder.

"You can see in the music that there is a dialogue going on between Schroeder and Lucy," Meredith said.

Putting the show together was a painstaking process. Meredith and museum co- curator Jane O'Cain went through thousands of Schulz's comics to find examples that dealt with Beethoven or classical music.

Initially, O'Cain ran a search in the museum's database on various word topics related to Beethoven or classical music. That winnowed Schulz's 17,800 strips down to 600. Finally, 53 were chosen for the show, O'Cain said.

"The curious thing is that when we were looking through Schulz's personal effects, we did not find any Beethoven scores," she said.

However, they did find several biographies on Beethoven, such as Schulz's heavily notated copy of Anton Schindler's biography "Beethoven as I Knew Him," whose scribbled pages yield a trove of information on where Schulz got many of his ideas.

SCHULZ'S BEETHOVEN: SCHROEDER'S MUSE

WHEN: Through Jan. 26, 2009
WHERE: Downstairs Changing Gallery, Charles M. Schulz Museum, 2301 Hardies Lane, Santa Rosa
TICKETS: $8; $5 youth, seniors and students
INFORMATION: (707) 579-4452 or www.schulzmuseum.org



Get your 'Peanuts' at Charles M. Schulz Museum in Santa Rosa

September 21, 2008

By Christopher Reynolds
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

Santa Rosa, California -- Maybe you came here, to the edge of wine country, for some grown-up fun amid the Cabernets and Chardonnays of Napa Valley. But for dessert, you get the house that Charlie Brown built.

Or rather, the museum Charles M. Schulz built. And the ice rink, the coffee shop, the gift shop, the gardens and the baseball field.

Schulz, the father of the "Peanuts" cartoon strip, lived in Sonoma County for more than 40 years, constructing an empire around the hapless Charlie Brown and the irrepressible Snoopy. Within two years of the artist's death in 2000, the Schulz family had put up the Charles M. Schulz Museum & Research Center here, 56 miles northwest of San Francisco. It gets about 60,000 visitors a year.

If you're one of those people who knows that Snoopy's brother Spike lives in Needles or you can identify the African American kid in the "Peanuts" gang (Franklin, introduced in 1968), this will be a sort of inky nirvana for you. And even if you're not usually a comic-strip consumer, you may want to look in, now that we grow closer to the season of the Great Pumpkin. When a guy draws a comic a day for nearly 50 years -- 17,897 strips in all, every line traced by Schulz himself -- you can't help but wonder what made him tick.

Current exhibitions cover "Peanuts" and politics, baseball as allegory and the whole Lucy-Schroeder-Beethoven love triangle. One wall of the 27,000-square-foot museum is covered with ceramic tiles bearing 3,588 comic strips, which together make a black-and-white mural. The artist's studio, desk and bookshelves are preserved in a room, and a place of honor is reserved for a wrapped-up Snoopy doghouse -- a gift to Schulz from his longtime friend Christo.

Many exhibitions also look more broadly at cartoons in American culture or American culture in cartoons. During my visit in May, one area was filled with "The Language of Lines: How Cartoonists Communicate," featuring original works from Garry ("Doonesbury") Trudeau, Walt ("Pogo") Kelly, Bill ("Calvin and Hobbes") Watterson, Mort ("Beetle Bailey") Walker and Berkeley ("Bloom County") Breathed (who will appear at the museum Oct. 18).

The museum also stages classes for kids -- fundamentals of art, basics of animation, the science of "Peanuts," making movies with Lego pieces, you name it. In the garden just outside the front door, there's a Snoopy labyrinth.

What you may not find at the museum, however, is a copy of "Schulz and Peanuts: A Biography," by David Michaelis, a 2007 book that portrayed Schulz as a depressed, removed, compulsively productive figure who channeled his frustrations into art. Schulz family members have criticized the book as an unfairly dark rendering of the man, but in a Wall Street Journal review, Watterson found it "perceptive and compelling." (Gina Huntsinger, the museum's marketing director, says the museum bookshop did have the book in stock for a while, but it wasn't there in May, nor was it in early September.)

To catch your own further glimpse of the artist, cross the street to the Redwood Empire Ice Arena, which Schulz built as a gift to the community in 1969. By that time, he was 47 and had been doing the daily strip for 19 years. (He later donated the baseball field behind the museum as well.)

Schulz was raised mostly in St. Paul, Minn., with a couple of years in Needles. (Aha!) He was the only child of a barber and a homemaker, and very shy. He went on to marry twice and have five children. He served in the Army in Europe as a machine-gun squad leader during World War II. Returning to St. Paul, he worked as a teacher for Art Instruction Inc., where one of his coworkers was named, yes, Charlie Brown.

In the late 1950s, Schulz moved his family from the frozen north to Sonoma County and over the next decade he made a lucrative alliance with Hallmark cards, made a few television specials and made the cover of Time magazine. From 1969 to late 1999, the rink was Schulz's daily refuge between bouts at the drawing board. He would eat breakfast and lunch every day at the Warm Puppy Cafe (bacon and eggs for breakfast until a heart attack forced him to switch to an English muffin with grape jam; a tuna fish sandwich for lunch). And every Tuesday, he'd lace up for seniors hockey games.

Schulz's last daily Peanuts strip ran on Jan. 3, 2000. On Feb. 12 of that year, at age 77, he died in his sleep. On the day after his death, the last original Sunday "Peanuts" strip was published.

In Sonoma, grab a bite at the cartoonist's favorite diner, the Warm Puppy; the priciest dish is $8.50 and you can check out Schulz's chosen table (they keep it empty) or watch the good people of Santa Rosa gliding on the ice. But you're not quite done with the "Peanuts" experience yet. Continue past the ice rink and you will find the two-story Snoopy's Gallery and Gift Shop. Here you can be reminded of Schulz's spectacular commercial success. Also, if you wish, you can lay down $3,950 for a signed, framed, limited-edition print. Or outfit your kid with a hockey stick.

You can take the cartoonist out of the frozen north. But taking the frozen north out of the cartoonist -- that never happened.



Bill Melendez, 'Peanuts' animator -- and voice of Snoopy -- dies at 91

September 4, 2008

By Charles Solomon
The Los Angeles Times

Animator, director and producer Jose Cuautemoc "Bill" Melendez, whose television programs and theatrical films featuring Charles Schulz's "Peanuts" characters earned four Emmy Awards, an Oscar nomination and two Peabody Awards, died Tuesday at St. John's hospital in Santa Monica, according to publicist Amy Goldsmith. He was 91.

Melendez's career extended over nearly seven decades, including stints at Walt Disney Studios, Leon Schlesinger Cartoons (which later was sold to Warner Bros.), United Productions of America and Playhouse Pictures. In 1964, he established Bill Melendez Productions, where he created his best-known works, including the holiday classic "A Charlie Brown Christmas" (1965). Over the years, his films were honored with two additional prime-time Emmys, three National Cartoonist Society awards, a Clio Award and 150 awards for commercials. Ê

"A Charlie Brown Christmas," which Melendez and his partner Lee Mendelson produced for CBS, established the format of the half-hour animated special -- and began one of the most popular franchises in animation history.

Animating Schulz's simple drawings posed problems. "Charlie Brown has a big head, a little body and little feet," Melendez said in a 2000 interview for The Times. "Normally, a human takes a step every 16 frames -- about two-thirds of a second. But Sparky's [Schulz's] characters would look like they were floating at that pace. After several experiments, I had them take a step every six frames -- one-fourth of a second. . . . It was the only way that worked."

"A Charlie Brown Christmas" won an Emmy and a Peabody; CBS has rebroadcast it every holiday season since. Breaking with tradition, the filmmakers used an upbeat jazz score by Grammy-winning composer Vince Guaraldi and real children for the characters' voices, rather than adult actors imitating children.

Melendez supplied Snoopy's laughs, sobs and howls. Schulz insisted that as a dog, Snoopy couldn't talk. Melendez experimented with making sounds that suggested a voice and speeding them up on tape -- assuming a professional actor would do a final recording. But time ran short, and Melendez ended up serving as Snoopy's voice in 63 subsequent half-hour specials, five one-hour specials, the Saturday morning TV show and four feature films. In his later years, Melendez chuckled over the fact that he received residuals for his vocal performances.

Working with Mendelson and Schulz, Melendez brought the "Peanuts" characters to the big screen in 1969 with "A Boy Named Charlie Brown." Time magazine reported that "when 'A Boy Named Charlie Brown' sticks to a boy named Charlie Brown, it becomes a good deed in a naughty world, bright, nonviolent and equipped with an animated moral, the way Snoopy is equipped with a tail."

Three sequels followed: "Snoopy, Come Home" (1972), "Race for Your Life, Charlie Brown" (1977) and "Bon Voyage, Charlie Brown (and Don't Come Back!!)" (1980).

"Bill Melendez brought his special warmth, charm and directness to the Charles Schulz characters and brought them to life," animation historian and Oscar-winning filmmaker John Canemaker said Wednesday.

Melendez also oversaw the first specials based on the comic strips "Garfield" (1982) and "Cathy" (1987), two adaptations of the "Babar" books, and an animated version of C.S. Lewis' "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe" (1979). Through the London branch of his studio, he directed "Dick Deadeye, or Duty Done" (1975), rewritten fragments of Gilbert and Sullivan operettas with designs by illustrator Ronald Searle.

Born in Sonora, Mexico, Nov. 15, 1916, Melendez moved with his family to Arizona in 1928, then to Los Angeles, where he attended the Chouinard Art Institute. He was one of the few Latinos working in animation when he began his career at Walt Disney Studios in 1939, contributing to the features "Pinocchio," "Fantasia," "Bambi" and "Dumbo," as well as Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck shorts.

Melendez was an active participant in the bitterly fought strike that led to the unionization of the Disney artists in 1941, after which he moved to Schlesinger Cartoons, animating Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig and other classic Warner Bros. characters.

In 1948, Melendez joined United Productions of America and was delighted by the company's innovative approach to animation. "The animation we were doing was not limited, but stylized," he recalled in a 1986 interview. "When you analyze Chaplin's shorts, you realize people don't move that way -- he stylized his movements. We were going to do the same thing for animation. We were going to animate the work of Cobean, Steinberg -- all the great cartoonists of the moment -- and move them as the designs dictated."

After animating numerous UPA shorts, including the Oscar-winning "Gerald McBoing-Boing" (1951), Melendez served as a director and producer on more than 1,000 commercials for UPA, Playhouse Pictures and John Sutherland Productions. In 1959, he directed the first animation of the "Peanuts" characters for a series of commercials advertising the Ford Falcon.

"What made working in commercials fun then was the quick turnover of ideas," Melendez said. "That speed was refreshing."

Melendez is survived by his wife of 68 years, Helen; two sons, Steven Melendez and retired Navy Rear Adm. Rodrigo Melendez; six grandchildren; and 11 great grandchildren. Memorial services will be private. Donations can be made in Melendez's name to Childrens Hospital Los Angeles.



Good grief! Franklin's 40

August 5, 2008

By Cary Clack
The Albany [New York] Times Union

It happened on a beach on July 31, 1968.

The white boy's little sister threw his beach ball into the water. The black boy who was swimming retrieved the ball and took it back to him. The white boy thanked the black boy, and that was how Charlie Brown met Franklin in Peanuts.

With that appearance, Franklin became the first black person in Charles Schulz's magnificent comic strip.

HAPPY 40th, FRANKLIN!

Had Charlie truly been a blockhead, when Franklin brought him his ball, he could have said something stupid like, "Good grief! I didn't know you people could swim." Instead, future strips show Franklin and Charlie playing ball.

Franklin was never as big a star as Linus, Lucy, Snoopy, Schroeder or Pigpen. He didn't have a last name and wouldn't even win a contest for best Afro among the Peanuts characters. But as the first black in the most successful comic strip of all time, Franklin is the greatest black cartoon figure in American history. Even though it was the end of the racially charged 1960s when Schulz introduced Franklin, the cartoonist wasn't attempting any kind of political statement, and Franklin being darker than his friends was never something commented on in the strip. Franklin's debut and the appearance a few months later of The Jackson 5, fronted by the otherworldly talented Michael Jackson, was a wonderful representation of black adolescents. Franklin proved to be wise and dignified and has never done anything he should have to apologize for, except for the strange dance he did with the other kids in, A Charlie Brown Christmas.

[Webmaster's note: As all Peanuts fans know full well, Franklin, not having debuted until 1968, obviously didn't appear in this 1965 animated special. Shameful research!]

Like Charlie, he's close to his grandfather and, like Linus, he quotes the Old Testament. His father was in Vietnam and, most of all, Franklin has a good heart.

Nowhere was that more evident than in a 1969 strip in which Peppermint Patty cries because of shoes she's required to wear to school. Franklin says, "All I know is any rule that makes a little girl cry has to be a bad rule."

So here's to a comic strip trailblazer, a thoughtful and decent lad who loves his grandfather, is loyal to his friends and never made any little girls cry.

You're a good man, Franklin.


Political wisdom in 'Peanuts'

Santa Rosa exhibit shows Schulz's take on presidential races

August 2, 2008

By Guy Kovner
The Santa Rosa Press Democrat

In a four-panel cartoon soliloquy, Lucy the Peanuts character laments that another woman will likely be elected president before her.

"Boy, that makes me mad!!" she fumes.

It's one of "Peanuts" author Charles M. Schulz's rare dips into political ink, but remarkably prophetic.

Four months after the strip appeared on March 29, 1984, Walter Mondale named Geraldine Ferraro as his pick for vice president, the first U.S. woman named as a running mate on a major-party ticket. They lost in a landslide to Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush.

In the midst of another presidential campaign, the Charles M. Schulz Museum has mounted a compact exhibit, "Political Peanuts," capturing Schulz's sparse takes on the topic.

"We thought a little lightness was needed," said Jane O'Cain, museum curator. Generally averse to politics, Schulz nonetheless weighed in with the same artistic simplicity and psychological depth that propelled "Peanuts" to global fame for 50 years, appearing in more than 2,600 newspapers in 75 countries, reaching an estimated 335 million people a day.

Central to the exhibit are the three series of strips Schulz penned in 1960, 1964 and 1968 -- three of the 12 presidential campaign years during his half-century of cartooning.

A longtime Santa Rosa resident, Schulz died of complications of colon cancer on Feb. 12, 2000, the day before his last original strip was published.

In the 1964 series, Lucy talks Linus into running for school president, and a reporter for the school paper asks what he will do if elected.

"I intend to straighten things out," Linus declares. "We are in the midst of a moral decline. We are . . ."

The reporter says: "I'll just put down that you're very honored and will do your best if elected."

Linus, in the final panel, utters a thought that has no doubt occurred to most real-life political candidates: "The press is against me!"

O'Cain admires the 1960 series in which Lucy talks Charlie Brown into running for president and envisions the two of them watching the election returns on TV, "and me with my plans by my side."

"Plans? What plans?" the endearingly clueless round-headed kid asks.

Lucy: "For redecorating the White House."

"Brilliant," O'Cain said. John Kennedy won the 1960 election, the exhibit notes, and Jackie Kennedy immediately went about redecorating the White House.

Not openly political himself, Schulz said he was "raised a Republican" but for many years registered in California as in independent, the exhibit says.

In a 1997 interview, he said it was "difficult to label somebody liberal or conservative." The closest he came to self-identifying was: "I think I'm very liberal in my outlook on life and how I treat people."

"Political Peanuts" is on display through Dec. 1.

The exhibit includes its own presidential election, allowing visitors to cast bright yellow ballots into clear plastic boxes for Charlie Brown, Lucy or Snoopy.

So far, the outcome is clear, O'Cain said.

"I'm afraid it looks like Snoopy in a landslide."


Charlie Brown and the gang come to Riverside museum

July 12, 2008

By Jennifer Dean
The Riverside [California] Press-Enterprise

Do you miss Lucy, Woodstock, Pigpen and Snoopy?

Get reacquainted with Charlie Brown and the rest of the gang next weekend at the Riverside Metropolitan Museum, where a new exhibit, Peanuts at Bat: The Life and Art of Charles M. Schulz, will start Saturday and run through Sept. 14.

On display will be pieces from the Charles M. Schulz Museum and Research Center in Santa Rosa as well as collections donated or lent to the museum by local residents, said Danielle Leland, associate curator of education.

The opening reception will be an event the whole family can enjoy, Leland said. "The first 100 visitors will receive a Peanuts gift," she said. "We'll have different activities that were featured in the comic strip -- things like kite making and solar s'mores.

"We'll have a caricature artist who will do free drawings and a comic-drawing demonstration," Leland said. "And Beagles and Buddies Pet Adoption will be there." "Kids can even make birdhouses for birds like Woodstock," she added.

The exhibit will showcase Peanuts comic strips, collectibles -- such as plush toys, baseball memorabilia, games -- photographs and more.

Schulz wrote, designed and drew the comic strip for 50 years until 2000, when he died at age 77 at his home in Santa Rosa.

He once said, "It seems beyond the comprehension of people that someone can be born to draw comic strips, but I think I was."

Opening Day
Where: Riverside Metropolitan Museum, 3580 Mission Inn Ave., Riverside
When: 11 a.m.-4 p.m. Saturday
Cost: Free
Information: (951) 826-5273 or www.riversideca.gov/museum


You're A Good Man, Charles Schulz

July 1, 2008

by Scott Gummer
The Hall of Fame Network [HOFN.com]

Like every American kid born in the last half-century, I grew up on Peanuts. Charlie Brown and the gang offered a daily dose of laughter and levity, even though I had nary a care in the world. However, my connection ran deeper than most of the boys and girls who read Peanuts while stuffing their faces with cereal because I knew the man behind the gang, Charles Schulz.

I knew Schulz in the way that kids grow to know people in their parents' circle. He and his wife, Jeanne, were friends with my folks in my hometown of Santa Rosa, California, the wine country burgh that Schulz, a Minnesota native, adopted in the late 1950s.

Two years after his death from cancer in 2000 at age 77, the Charles M. Schulz Museum and Research Center opened in Santa Rosa. The first time I took my own gang, ages 15, 11, 9, and 5, I discovered a timeless wonder that continues to span the ages. I also discovered a desire to return without the kids so that I might take a longer, deeper look at the meaning ofPeanuts.

What sticks with me about Charles Schulz was his modesty. He was rich beyond the wildest of dreams in every regard -- fortune, fame, adulation, respect -- and yet he exuded zero ego. He did not understand the fuss he created, which continues to rake in $35 million annually, ranking Schulz second only to Elvis on Forbes' list of the richest celebrities in Heaven. Schulz would not fit the definition of a modern celebrity, for he was not only exceptionally talented but also alarmingly humble. He was the anti-Trump.

The understated design of the Schulz Museum reflects the Tao of Schulz. The building and the exhibits it houses are physically simplistic, just as the comic strip itself. Therein lies the genius of Peanuts. The austerity of Schulz's drawing, his clean lines and crisp lettering, open up an uncluttered space in which Schulz's simpleton children experience the most complex of human emotions: insecurity, frustration, longing, aspiration, friendship, kindness, and happiness, which Schulz so brilliantly defined when he wrote, "Happiness is a warm puppy."

The downstairs of the 27,000 square foot museum includes a gallery displaying more than 100 original strips (updated every few months), a 100-seat theater that shows Peanuts movies and related programs including a fascinating 1997 interview with Schulz by Charlie Rose, and two exquisite pieces by Japanese artist Yoshiteru Otani: a 7,000 lbs. "Morphing Snoopy" sculpture, and a 17' x 22' Charlie Brown and Lucy mural composed of Peanuts strips on 3,588 ceramic tiles.

There is also an exhibit hall, and on the recent afternoon I revisited the museum alone, I was treated to Woodstock: Small is Beautiful, which runs through October 23. Contemplating Woodstock's relationship with Snoopy it struck me that I had never questioned how or why a dog and a bird could be the closest of friends.

Instead, as I suspect Schulz intended, I had only ever seen the purity of the friendship.

Upstairs there are biographical exhibits and mementos that chronicle Schulz's life and career; a vintage photo from his father's barbershop; the wall from his daughter's nursery on which Schulz painted a mural in 1951; a kite-eating tree and birdbath in the courtyard; memorabilia from Snoopy's Senior World Hockey Tournament.

(The museum is located next door to the world-class ice arena that Schulz built for the town in 1969. An avid hockey player, he hosted and participated in the annual 64-team tournament, now in its 36th year.)

The one piece of memorabilia I found most compelling was Schulz's sketchbook from his stint in the military. Drafted at age 20 in 1943, Schulz served as a machine gun squad leader in Germany, France and Austria. Later he would write, tellingly, "The Army taught me all I needed to know about loneliness."

I poked my head in the educational center, where docents were teaching kids, and even a few older kids at heart, how to draw cartoons. I lingered longest in Schulz's studio, meticulously reassembled in the museum. Schulz conceived and crafted every strip solo, for the same reason, he explained in a looping video, "that Arnold Palmer doesn't have people hit his 9-irons." Knowing firsthand the feeling of being one man alone in a room with a blank page to fill, I felt the most profound respect and admiration for a man who touched millions by touching nerves deep in our innermost child.

A visit to the Schulz Museum is not only a trip through time but also, and more so, a trip through one's self. "Sparky," as Schulz's friends called him, would likely scoff at such retrospection. As his quote on the gallery wall reads, "Cartooning is still just drawing funny pictures."


Gene Persson, Film and Theater Producer, Dies at 74

June 21, 2008

By Bruce Weber
The New York Times

Gene Persson, a movie and theater producer best known for a controversial racial drama, "Dutchman," and a charming children's musical, "You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown," died on June 6 in Manhattan, where he lived. He was 74.

The cause was a heart attack, said his wife, Ruby. Mr.. Persson was stricken in a Times Square pizzeria after coming from a movie, she said.

Mr.. Persson was a child actor in Hollywood, starting in movies when he was 11 and appearing, most notably, as a "Kettle kid" in four different comedies about Ma and Pa Kettle, a loopy country couple on a ramshackle farm. In the 1950s he appeared on several television shows, including the crime series "The Walter Winchell File" and "Dragnet."

By the end of the decade, however, he was married to the actress Shirley Knight and had begun to turn his attention to producing, starting with early plays by LeRoi Jones, who later became known as Amiri Baraka. In 1964 Mr.. Persson was a producer of two of Mr.. Jones's angry, racially charged Off Broadway plays, "The Toilet" and "The Slave."

The next year he produced "Dutchman" in Los Angeles, where the play, a two-character drama set in an empty subway car in which a white woman (played by Ms. Knight) provokes a black man to fury, was barred from one theater, then temporarily shut down by the police in another. Objecting to the subject matter and the script, which was liberally salted with obscenities, The Los Angeles Times and The Hollywood Citizens-News refused to accept ads for the play. Mr.. Persson then produced a film of the play in London; he was prohibited from filming on the New York City subway because of the film's content.

In 1967, within weeks of the New York opening of the brutal "Dutchman" film, the cheerful musical "You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown," an adaptation of Charles Schulz's "Peanuts" comic strip, opened at Theater 80 St. Marks in Manhattan. It was an instant hit and ran nearly four years. It subsequently had two Broadway productions, in 1971 and 1999; neither was a success, but it has nonetheless become one of the most-presented shows in the world, a favorite in schools and community theaters. It was adapted for television twice, in 1973 with live actors and in 1985 as an animated special.

Eugene Clair Persson was born on Jan. 12, 1934, in Long Beach, Calif. His father, Oscar, was an itinerant seaman who was often gone and who disappeared completely when his son was 12. His mother, Leah Krascoff, worked as a governess for the Hollywood upper crust. Unable to care for her son, she placed him in an orphanage. It was there he was discovered by one of his mother's employers, who, struck by his appearance, plucked him for the movies.

"He was blond with all kinds of freckles and blue, blue eyes," Mr.s. Persson said in an interview on Friday.

Mr.. Persson and Ms. Knight were divorced in 1969. He met his second wife, also an actress, when she auditioned for the part of Lucy Van Pelt in a San Diego production of "Charlie Brown."

"He hired me on the spot," Mr.s. Persson said. "We went out once and ran off to Vegas."

In addition to his wife, he is survived by three children, Lukas Persson, Markus Persson and Kaitlin Hopkins, all of New York City.

Mr.. Persson produced many other plays off Broadway, in London and elsewhere in the United States, including Peter Barnes's "Ruling Class," which became a film starring Peter O'Toole, and "Album" by David Rimmer, which starred a 21-year-old Kevin Bacon.

He never made a mark on Broadway, however. Aside from the "Charlie Brown" revivals, he was a producer of four Broadway shows. Two closed opening night and the other two within a week.


Biz Buzz: For the Meadowlands, profiting from Peanuts

June 17, 2008

By Maura McDermott
The New Jersey Star-Ledger

Guess it's true what the slogan says: Get Met. It pays.

At least it does for the new Giants and Jets stadium rising in New Jersey's Meadowlands, which landed the insurance giant MetLife as its first major sponsor.

MetLife's name and Snoopy logo will be posted all over one of the four main entrances -- from the video displays to the walls and escalators -- and one of the four main scoreboards, the insurer said yesterday. Terms weren't disclosed. But people familiar with the details who requested anonymity because they weren't authorized to discuss the agreement, said it was worth between $6 million and $8 million annually over 12 years.

Still in the works are agreements for the stadium's overall naming rights and three more "corner" sponsorships.

With two National Football League teams in the New York media market, the overall naming rights are expected to break records, going for "at least" $20 million a year and possibly much more, said Marc Ganis, a leading consultant to the sports industry.

The $1.3 billion sports stadium -- complete with 200 luxury suites and 9,000 club seats -- is set to open in 2010.

'It's just a terrific opportunity for us," John Calagna, a MetLife spokesman, said of the stadium sponsorship.


Snoopy to visit local comic contest winner

June 6, 2008

By Jennifer MacLean
The Battle Creek Enquirer [Michigan]

On Wednesday, June 4, Snoopy will be visiting the classroom of the Air Zoo's comic strip winner Alec Isham, who is in the fourth grade at Sonoma Elementary in Harper Creek Community School district, located in Battle Creek.

Isham created a three-panel Snoopy comic strip and was chosen as the Grand Prize Winner from more than 450 entries submitted. Classmate Bryce Bagwell was also recognized as one of 10 runners-up. The contest was offered by the Air Zoo as part of the events surrounding the Snoopy as the World War I Flying Ace traveling exhibit on display at the museum through June 22.

As the winner of the contest, Isham and his classmates will get a visit by Lorraine Austin, the Air Zoo's acting education director -- who will give a short program on Snoopy's alter egos, like the Flying Ace -- and Christine Camp, vice president of marketing for Educational Community Credit Union (www.eccu.org). Camp will be presenting Isham with a $200 savings deposit, courtesy of ECCU. After the presentations, Snoopy will be making an appearance at the classroom.

In addition to the Snoopy appearance -- courtesy of United Media -- and savings deposit, Isham has also won a free pass for two to the Air Zoo, a supply of Charles M. Schulz books for his classroom -- courtesy of Charles Schulz Creative Associates and Random House -- and a stuffed Snoopy classroom mini-mascot.

"I have a classroom of budding artists, so when I saw this contest I knew it would be the perfect way to showcase their talents," says Cheryl Makinder, Isham's teacher. "The minute I saw Alec's drawing, I knew he had a good chance of winning."

For more information about the Snoopy as the World War I Flying Ace traveling exhibit and other Air Zoo events, please visit www.airzoo.org or call 269.382.6555.

The Air Zoo is located at 6151 Portage Road, Portage, MI. It is a full-service attraction offering a restaurant, gift shop and banquet facilities. General admission includes unlimited access to all the theatres, simulators and rides on the Main Campus and the East Campus, which houses the Michigan Space Science Center.

Admission charges are $19.50 for adults, $17.50 for seniors 60-plus and $15.50 for children, aged 5 15. Children 4 and under enter free. AAA and military discounts are available. Group rates are available for advanced purchase.


Washburn High's class of '58 reunion will be right on the button

June 2, 2008

By C.J.
The Minneapolis/St. Paul Star Tribune

Members of Washburn High's Class of 1958 who held on to a homecoming button designed by Charles Schulz have a piece of memorabilia that might be worth more than a few Peanuts.

The Minneapolis-born, St. Paul-raised cartoonist lived down the street on Minnehaha Parkway from Tom Smith. "I was asked to go over to his house and see if he would do a homecoming button for us, probably in 1957. So I did and he did," said reunion committee member Smith, who now lives in Florida.

"I wasn't surprised [Schulz agreed] because my younger brother, Bob, was in the same class as Schulz's daughter -- boy, I wish I could remember her name -- so we sort of knew each other," Smith said. "That was way back when. He was very cordial, very nice. He was becoming famous at that point."

As we know, Schulz went on to become world famous as creator of the comic strip Peanuts, starring Charlie Brown. Schulz drew a cartoon of Charlie holding a Washburn pennant while lamenting "Good grief."

Class members will be in the metro celebrating their 50th reunion at various venues June 20-22. Smith was unsure how or if classmates would incorporate the Schulz memento into the reunion.

"I wish I had mine, I tell you that," Smith said remorsefully when asked what that button would be worth. "I've got a picture of it. In fact, I even had some of his old comic strips and I gave them away."

Good grief, Tom Smith.


Snoopy, Actress Lauren Holly, Craig Schulz and Best in Show Beagle Uno Celebrate

Grand Opening of Planet Snoopy at Cedar Point

May 5, 2008

PRNewswire

SANDUSKY, Ohio -- All the "Top Dogs" will be celebrating in style when Planet Snoopy, the new Peanuts-themed area at Cedar Point amusement park/resort in Sandusky, Ohio, has its grand opening on Saturday, May 10.

America's favorite beagle, Snoopy, will serve as master of ceremonies during the day's festivities, welcoming celebrity guests of honor Lauren Holly (who co-stars as NCIS director Jenny Shepard on CBS' hit show "NCIS") and her family, and canine star Uno, the first beagle in history to win Best in Show at the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show. Craig Schulz, son of Peanuts creator, Charles M. Schulz, will also participate in the event.

Free cake and ice cream and T-shirts for young children (while supplies last) will be part of the excitement when Planet Snoopy opens for the summer. Following the ribbon-cutting ceremony at 10:15 a.m., Snoopy and Uno will greet guests and pose for pictures at Planet Snoopy from 10:30 a.m. to noon.

"As a longtime Snoopy fan -- and with three sons who love the Peanuts gang -- we were honored and delighted when Snoopy invited us to join the opening-day festivities at his new 'digs,' " says actress Lauren Holly. "And the fact that it's my son Alexander's birthday this weekend is the icing on the cake!"

Planet Snoopy will be Cedar Point's fourth children's area and will feature seven rides that young children can ride by themselves or with their parents. There will also be kids' games and a family center that will provide changing areas and rooms for feeding and nursing in a private atmosphere. Snoopy and the other Peanuts characters will also make special appearances.

"The Schulz family is pleased to see the partnership between Cedar Point and Peanuts result in such a great new venture, and we're very much looking forward to the opening of Planet Snoopy," said Craig Schulz. "It's sure to bring happiness to many families."

Next door to Planet Snoopy will be the Joe Cool Cafe that caters to children by offering favorites such as jelly and peanut butter sandwiches, macaroni and cheese and hot dogs. Each child's meal will be served in a souvenir Snoopy lunch box.

"Planet Snoopy will bring a whole new level of excitement to the park for young families," said John Hildebrandt, vice president and general manager of Cedar Point. "There will be a lot of memories made here this summer."

Besides the festivities at Planet Snoopy, The Ohio State University Spring Athletic Band will also perform at the park on Opening Day. Under the direction of Assistant Director Jonathan Waters, the 225-member band will play from 1-1:30 p.m. between the Iron Dragon and WildCat roller coasters.

Riders will also have plenty to do at Cedar Point. With 75 rides, including 17 coasters, Cedar Point has more rides and more coasters than any park in the world. Back for its second season is Maverick, the ground-hugging coaster that was named the "Best New Ride of 2007" in several polls.

In between rides, guest will be able to watch some of the park's award- winning live entertainment. Country Unleashed will be presented in the Red Garter Saloon while Charlie Brown's Funtime Frolics will be performed in Camp Snoopy. Snoopy's Big Bow Wow on Ice ice-skating show and the All Wheels Extreme stunt show will open later in the summer.

Cedar Point will open for its 139th summer on Saturday, May 10 and will be open daily through Labor Day, Sept. 1, plus Friday nights, Saturdays and Sundays, Sept. 7 through Nov. 2. For a complete operating calendar and more specific information about the 2008 operating season, guests can log on to cedarpoint.com or call the park's general information line at 419.627.2350.

Website: http://www.cedarpoint.com/


Peanuts gang at the Paramount

April 26, 2008

Kevin Canfield
The Journal News [New York's lower Hudson Valley]

David Van Taylor was rummaging through some old boxes in his father's basement when he rediscovered his collection of Peanuts comic books.

Eventually, his fascination with "Peanuts" would become a film biography about Charles Schulz and a follow-up to his acclaimed documentary "With God On Our Side: George W. Bush and the Rise of the Religious Right in America."

Van Taylor brings "Good Ol' Charles Schulz" to the Paramount Center for the Arts in Peekskill tomorrow. The 3 p.m. screening is free, and Van Taylor will take questions after the movie.

He recalls that he and his wife/filmmaking partner Ali Pomeroy "started talking and wondered whether there had been the biography of Charles Schulz on film. ... Then we looked into it and there hadn't been. That's when you know you're on to something interesting."

The film charts Schulz's development as a person and an artist. He drew his daily strip more than 18,000 times from 1950 until the end of 1999; he died in early 2000.

Looking at those old comics reminded Van Taylor just how much Schulz was able to convey in a few panels. "In retrospect I realized I was into 'Peanuts' for the profound questions that Charlie Brown grapples with every day," he says. "I wasn't into 'Peanuts' just because I liked watching Snoopy dance."

The film draws parallels between Schulz's own experiences and their artistic depiction in the comic strip.

"I did come away with an overwhelming feeling, as his widow says in the film, that really the strip was like his diary," Van Taylor says. "Always, the strip reflected the things he was working out mentally in his life at any given moment."

An example: When he's away at camp, Linus is worried that his parents would never come to pick him up. "That's a universal fear," Van Taylor says, "but it was also, when you start thinking about it, a very specific realized fear in Schulz's life. He was sent off to the Army and when he came back everything had changed. His mother was dead. He didn't have the same house to go back to. ... It's all about his life."

"Peanuts" was such a huge success, Van Taylor says, in part because Schulz never showed off.

"The main thing was, in a way, what he didn't do. It was a radical act of restraint on his part. 'Seinfeld' was the show 'about nothing.' 'Peanuts' was the original comic strip about nothing," he says.

"Basically as I see it, 'Peanuts' was about two things on the existential level: man's inhumanity to man and the question of whether the universe is just. And yup, those are timeless," he says.

"And the joyful aspects of it are timeless, too. The Easter Beagle is timeless, the notion of the pure joy expressed in Snoopy's dance will always appeal to the child in all of us."


Uno thrills beagle fans at Knott¹s

March 26, 2008

By Serena Maria Daniels
The Orange County Register [California]

BUENA PARK -- Two of the world's most famous beagles met at Knott's Berry Farm on Wednesday -- Snoopy, of course, and this year's winner of the Westminster Kennel Club dog show, Uno.

Hundreds of parents lined up with toddlers and strollers so their tots could get a shot with the celebrity pooches.

Uno, two-and-a-half, was mostly calm, thanks to the breakfast sausage nibbles provided by David Frei, co-host of the Westminster Kennel Club and dog show. At times though, he seemed to need a little extra encouragement to hold still for the camera.

"Poor thing, I hope he gets a vacation soon," said Veronica Covarrubias, 24, of Rowland Heights. She brought her daughter Liliana, 5, to Knott's.

Like Liliana, most children delighted in nuzzling the pooch, the first beagle to win in the competition's 132-year history.

Uno is on a national tour with Frei and his handler, Aaron Wilkerson, who has worked with the beagle since the dog was six months old.

Wilkerson said Uno loves the attention he gets from making appearances.

"The important thing is he's brought so many smiles to people's faces," Wilkerson said as they shared an ice cream.

Most of the kids who visited with Uno and Snoopy did not know who the live beagle was, but plenty of Knott's employees were excited to get in line and have some one-on-one time with the boisterous pooch.

"We're huge beagle fans," said Cathy Harman, 51, whose husband works at the amusement park. Harman, whose own two beagles, Max and Whitney, have passed away, still has a pint-sized portrait of the dogs on her keychain.

"I'm actually quite pleased that we got to meet him and actually touch him, rather than just looking at him from afar," Harman said.


Needle nose pliers among space items sold at auction

Astronauts' checklist containing Snoopy sketch is the top seller at $41,825

March 26, 2008

The Associated Press

DALLAS -- The combination of Snoopy and outer space proved irresistible to one eager bidder, who tendered the winning offer for the most expensive item sold Tuesday at an auction of air and space artifacts.

An online bidder paid $41,825 for a checklist that astronauts used aboard Apollo 10 during rendezvous and mission maneuvers on its lunar module, nicknamed Snoopy, said Kelley Norwine, a spokeswoman with Heritage Auction Galleries. The checklist also contains an original signed sketch of Snoopy by Charles Schulz, the creator of the Peanuts comic strip.

A first-time bidder from New Hampshire spent nearly $70,000 buying two items: a bracelet containing 11 silver medallions that were in space on different Apollo missions and a ring bearing the family crest of the Richthofen family, whose most famous family member was better known as World War I flying ace "The Red Baron."

A pair of needle nose pliers used on the Apollo 16 lunar module sold for more than $33,000, while the patches from Buzz Aldrin's Gemini 12 spacesuit were sold for nearly $30,000.

The item with the most expensive minimum required bid went unsold. No one offered to pay the minimum price of $161,325 for a foot-long aluminum scoop used by astronauts Alan Shepard and Edgar Mitchell to pick up moon dust on the 1971 Apollo 14 mission.

"We're so excited about the auction and the fact that these space items seem to have really taken off," Norwine said.


From Beagle to Flying Ace to Art Icon

March 25, 2008

By Michael Morain
The Des Moines Register [Iowa]

Linus: "In 1927, Charles Lindbergh made the first nonstop solo flight from New York to Paris. He was known as 'The Lone Eagle.' "

Charlie Brown: "Who else do you think could have made a flight like that?"

Who else? The answer is obvious to a certain dog in aviator goggles and a wind-whipped scarf, heroically perched atop his doghouse: "The Lone Beagle."

That certain dog's alter-ego barrels into the Dubuque Museum of Art today as part of a month-long exhibition called "Snoopy as the World War I Flying Ace." The touring show, on loan from the Kansas City-based group ExhibitsUSA, showcases photos of late cartoonist Charles Schulz, books, video and 40 high-resolution prints of The Lone Beagle himself.

In one strip, he's battling a deadly bout of influenza. In another, he's sniffing around a French mademoiselle. In several more, he's sparring with his arch rival, the Red Baron.

The adventures are imaginative, of course, but they also inform.

"I was so impressed with the amount of research Charles Schulz did in crafting the strips," said curator Jane O'Cain, who chose the Flying Ace cartoons from a digitized database of 17,897 strips at the Charles M. Schulz Museum and Research Center in Santa Rosa, California.

"There are maps drawn in the throw-away panels (the first one or two frames of a strip that are often cut from publication), and all those maps were very accurate. He did a lot of research on the planes in World War I. There's even a reference to a type of engine and how it might fail."

Sopwith Camel

For the record, Snoopy's doghouse was a Sopwith Camel, a hump-backed biplane that could swoop and swerve with help from a 110-horsepower engine. Approximately 5,500 of the planes were produced during 1917 and 1918, the final years of the war. Incidentally, engineers developed the Sopwith Camel to replace something Snoopy may have preferred: the Sopwith Pup.

Although most people can picture the doghouse soaring through the clouds, Schulz rarely drew that image in his strips.

"Most people think they have seen that, but it's from an animated sequence in 'The Great Pumpkin,' " O'Cain said. In the strips, "it's only implied by (Snoopy's) scarf trailing behind him and his teeth bared into the wind."

But even if the doghouse stayed firmly planted in Charlie Brown's back yard, the Flying Ace gradually coaxed other Peanuts characters to join him in his periodic flights of fancy.

The rest of the gang was initially puzzled when Snoopy's alter-ego first appeared on Oct. 10, 1965 -- 15 years into Peanuts' five-decade run -- but members eventually got swept up in the adventures unfolding in his noble canine brain.

** In one strip, the Flying Ace retreats from a rainy night-time mission to join his owner in bed, where Charlie Brown quips, "I smell a wet pilot."

** In another, when Lucy disapproves of the Flying Ace's antics, he plants a sloppy kiss on her cheek, as if she were a Parisian paramour.

"The interplay between the Flying Ace and the rest of the gang seemed to evolve over time," O'Cain said. "There was quite an evolution."

Snoopy's looks change

There was an evolution, too, with the way Snoopy looked. When Dubuque Museum of Art collections and exhibitions manager Stacy Gage saw the first and last Flying Ace prints side by side, she spotted slight differences.

"You'll notice his snout was more pointed and his nose was a dark circle in the first one," she said. "On the last one, his whole figure is a little more rounded."

And what, really, is more human than that?

Schulz's ability to capture universal themes and often profound emotions with a ragtag group of schoolkids and a beagle (based on Schulz's childhood dog, Spike) won over millions of newspaper readers over the course of his career.

When Peanuts first appeared in the 1950s, comics were dominated by action heroes and slapstick gags.

Schulz suffers insecurity

But the Minneapolis-born cartoonist, who served as an army sergeant in World War II and moved to Santa Clara, California, in the late 1960s, confronted a lifelong sense of alienation and insecurity by drawing comic strips that reflected honest reactions to the world around him, according to accounts published after he died on Feb. 12, 2000, at age 77.

When the Flying Ace first took to the skies in 1965, for example, the United States was mired in a conflict in Vietnam -- and Schulz was building model airplanes with his oldest son, Monte.

"It all comes around," Gage said, referring to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

People who see the strips today "will have the same reactions and responses and feelings that (Schulz) did at the time he made them."

Visitors can trace how all of the Peanuts characters changed over the years -- and how their creator changed with them.

But it's important to remember the comics always appeared on the funny pages.

"They can be so serious if you take them that way," Gage said.

"But they're so light-hearted. Everything (Schulz) did makes it easier to deal with a subject that is usually serious and sad."


Rare ride in Snoopy blimp

March 25, 2008

By Aaron Chimbel
WFAA mobile journalist

I really didn't quite know what to expect. Blimp rides are not your usual way to travel. For the 13 crewmembers for the MetLife Snoopy Two blimp, it's an everyday journey that takes them across the country.

I arrived at Arlington Municipal Airport shortly before 11 a.m. Monday, MetLife's 140th anniversary. There I met Allan Judd, the chief pilot. He led me to a side entrance and to an open field where the blimp was landing. He told me to stay back as he helped dock Snoopy Two.

He gave me a quick rundown, comparing a blimp to a ship being guided by a tug boat. It has to be carefully guided. The wind, like the water, pushes the blimp back and forth. Only two 80 horse power engines control the 4,400-pound blimp.

Then comes the dance to get in. The crew carefully tries to steady the blip and pull up a ladder to the small gondola, which only has room for a pilot and three passengers.

I get in and go to the front seat. Next to me is Mandy Scott, who tells me she has been flying the blimp since June. Then she reassures me she was a commercial airplane pilot before, as well as an Air Force veteran.

Her seat looks like a wheelchair. Two large wheels on each side and two foot pedals she uses to move the blimp up and down, left to right.

Then we prepare to take off. Wind constantly pushes the blimp from side to side.

Scott also has to coordinate with the airport control tower and 10 crewmembers on the ground.

Finally we begin our slow ascent to 1,500 feet. We begin to head east to Downtown Dallas.

The ride is slow. The average speed is about 45 miles an hour, much slower than a helicopter or airplane and much more at the mercy of the wind.

We pass over Grand Prairie and Oak Cliff before circling downtown. It's a new perspective on the majestic skyline.

The ride itself is bumpy; Scott has to consistently move the wheels up and down to keep us steady. She says it's much more difficult than holding a plane steady.

After a downtown, we head back to Arlington to get a glimpse of Six Flags, Rangers Ballpark and the future Cowboys stadium.

Scott says she is one of only about 60 blimp pilots in the world, a smaller group than people who have been to space. But it's a hard life, she explains. The crew is on the road 365 days a year. Scott sold her house and car when she was hired about a year ago. Turnover is high. Still she says she loves it and will keep flying until it's not fun anymore.

After cruising right over the new stadium, we head back to Arlington Municipal. It's a tricky landing because we have to approach from the west and drop right over hangers and a tower. Just before 1 p.m. we touch down safely and I'm only a bit queasy.


Space music

Crew awakened for evening of heat shield inspections

March 11, 2008

By William Harwood
spaceflightnow.com

The Endeavour astronauts were awakened today at 4:29 p.m. to begin their first full day in space. Heat shield inspections are planned, along with spacesuit check-outs, rendezvous preps and a pair of rocket firings to fine-tune the shuttle's approach to the international space station. At crew wake-up, the shuttle was about 1,000 miles behind the lab complex, on course for docking Wednesday night.

Engineers on the ground, meanwhile, are analyzing launch imagery to identify any possible ascent debris strikes from falling external tank foam insulation or other sources. Just before the crew went to bed earlier today, flight controllers reported a possible debris impact event about 10 seconds after launch. Another possible debris event was noted at 83 seconds into flight, but no impact was observed.

Endeavour took off at 2:28:14 a.m. and, given the reduced lighting with a night launch, the astronauts will rely more on detailed orbital inspections to verify the health of the ship's heat shield than would be the case for a daylight ascent.

The astronauts were awakened by a recording of "Linus and Lucy" from "A Charlie Brown Christmas," beamed up from mission control in Houston for shuttle flight engineer Mike Foreman.

"Good morning, Endeavour. And a special good morning to you, Mike," astronaut Al Drew radioed, from the Johnson Space Center.

"Well good morning, Houston, we appreciate that song," Foreman replied. "We had an exciting trip to orbit yesterday morning, and we're looking forward to our first full day in orbit."

The major activity in space today is a detailed inspection of Endeavour's reinforced carbon nose cap and wing leading edge panels, which experience the most extreme heating during re-entry. The astronauts also will use cameras on the shuttle's robot arm to inspect tiles protecting the upper surfaces of the shuttle, including two aft rocket pods.

The possible impact event at T-plus 10 seconds occurred in the nose area of the shuttle, but nothing obvious could be seen in the launch video from NASA television. For today's inspections, commander Dominic Gorie, pilot Gregory Johnson and Japanese astronaut Takao Doi will use the shuttle's 50-foot-long robot arm and the equally long orbiter boom sensor system, or OBSS, mounted along the right side of Endeavour's cargo bay. The OBSS is equipped with a laser scanner and high-resolution cameras capable of spotting any significant impact damage to the critical nose cap and wing leading edge panels.

"We're all operating the shuttle's robotic arm, and we'll first grapple the OBSS, the Orbiter Boom Sensor System, and it about doubles the length of the arm," Johnson said, in a NASA interview. "Then we can reach around and look underneath the orbiter and check out all the tiles and the reinforced carbon nose cap, and we can also reach around and look at the nose of the shuttle. It's an all-day task."

While the heat shield inspection is going on, the other crew members will check out the spacesuits that will be used for station assembly spacewalks later in the mission, test the handheld lasers and other gear needed for the station rendezvous and rig the ship for docking.

A mission status briefing is planned for 2 a.m. Wednesday on NASA television.


Good grief!

Snoopy, celebs and some well-dressed dogs celebrate "It's the Easter Beagle, Charlie Brown" with Canine Couture Fashion Show

March 10, 2008

www.businesswire.com

PALM BEACH, Florida -- Large and tiny, plump and svelte, longhaired and hairless, deep-throated and yappy, dozens of dogs dressed in an outrageous array of cutting-edge canine fashions joined Snoopy and celebrities onstage in Palm Beach, Florida ,on Saturday afternoon, as "The Easter Beagle Presents Canine Couture" fashion show celebrated the release of a newly re-mastered DVD deluxe edition of "It's the Easter Beagle, Charlie Brown" from Warner Home Video.

Actress Kelly Rutherford and actor Matthew Settle of the CW's "Gossip Girl," Settle's actress-wife Naama Nativ (appearing this June in Adam Sandler's "You Don't Mess with the Zohan") and larger-than-life style guru J. Alexander of "America's Next Top Model" joined Snoopy in the fashion show, with Rutherford, Settle and Nativ strutting the catwalk with their own pet dogs: Rutherford's beloved rescue dog, Oliver, and Settle and Nativ's Pomeranian Jackie O and Chihuahua Zoe.

"I've been a Snoopy fan for years, and now I have a child who loves Snoopy almost as much as I do, so I was thrilled to join the fun today," said Rutherford, who plays wealthy socialite Lily van der Woodsen on "Gossip Girl."

"My son, Hermes, was so excited to meet the Easter Beagle, and my dog, Oliver, was delighted to play a starring role in the show!"

The event was also a chance to spread an important and timely health message as Easter -- and chocolate Easter eggs -- approach: Dog owners should never let their pups eat chocolate; the sweet treat is a health threat to man's best(-dressed) friend.

"We're real dog people, so to be onstage with Snoopy and help get out this important health message was the best of all worlds for us," said Settle, who plays Rufus Humphrey on "Gossip Girl."

Adds Nativ, "Now we just have to hope that Jackie O and Zoe don't demand their own trailers when we get back home!"

Wearing a bedazzled "I Believe in the Easter Beagle" tee, J. Alexander set the style tone for the afternoon. Dogs and their human companions displayed 30 different fashion statements: from miniature canine suits of armor to Chinese silk robes; "diamond" tiaras to pearl necklaces; suits and ties to cocktail gowns. (The humans looked good, too.)

"I've seen a few dogs in my fashion career, but they've never been as good-looking as the ones I saw today," added Alexander. "And I'm glad we're getting the message out that chocolate is death to models, especially those of the canine variety. Good health is always the most important fashion accessory."

"The Easter Beagle Presents Canine Couture" was sponsored by Warner Home Video, which recently released a newly re-mastered DVD of "It's the Easter Beagle, Charlie Brown." This deluxe version features updated packaging and all new special features including a bonus episode: "It's Arbor Day, Charlie Brown" and an original featurette, "In Full-Bloom: Peanuts at Easter."


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