WARNING!! Charles M. Schulz, the creator of the comic strip Peanuts, and five-minute birthday parties are unrelated topics that I’m putting into the same blog post.
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Charles Schulz and I share the same birthday, November 26, and for years I’ve been meaning to share my favorite Peanuts comic strip on Dysfunctional Literacy, but I keep forgetting. Today, I remembered and posted it below in four parts. The Peanuts Treasury (cover posted above) has a bunch of classic Peanuts strips from the 1960s (I think) and 1970s.
Later on today, I’ll have my five-minute birthday party with dozens of people, loud music, and maybe a few dancers. And then after a few minutes, I’ll get tired of everybody and tell them to leave. And then I’ll read a book and watch a movie. Maybe I’ll even read a Peanuts book. It’ll be great!
If people stay late during a five-minute birthday party, that’s okay, but when I tried the one-hour birthday party a few years ago, the lingerers got on my nerves, so I said never again. When it comes to crowds and music and dancers, five-minutes is about all I can take before I need my quiet again.
Another benefit of the five-minute birthday party is that it’s not long enough for any drama to take place. When I was younger, I thought a party wasn’t any good unless there was a fight, a girl started crying, or someone threw up. Now that I’m older, I don’t want any of those things happening at my five-minute birthday party, especially if it’s at my place. I don’t mind if the drama happens at somebody else’s party, though.
At any rate, if you’re borderline antisocial but still have friends/acquaintances that you don’t want to ignore, you might want to consider the five-minute party.
Haha! I related to this strip a lot when I was a kid. Anyway, Charles Schulz was an introvert (I think). He might have approved of the five-minute birthday party.
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A grammar-obsessed English teacher falls in ‘luuuvvv’ but discovers how chaotic and dangerous ‘luuuvvv’ can be.
The Sunset Rises: A 1990s Romantic Comedy
Get a signed copy of my one and only novel, The Sunset Rises: A 1990s Romantic Comedy. My handwriting is actually legible, but I’m left-handed, so I might smudge my signature sometimes. Free delivery in the United States!
$10.00
Or you can buy a copy here on Amazon!
Not sure? Read a sample chapter of The Sunset Rises: A 1990s Romantic Comedy.
Aaaarrrrgh! Here’s another comic strip where my older brother lost the original drawing. Even the scrapbook version he saved is kind of messed up. This is one of my favorites as well, but the setup line is smudged over from the adhesive on the other side. Why is it THIS one that has to be messed up?
And just in case you don’t know, smoking was a thing in 1979.
For more context, go to The Lost Adventures of “Calloway the Castaway” Episode 1!
And come back next week for The Lost Adventures of “Calloway the Castaway” Episode 14.
My older brother lost the original drawings for several episodes of his 1979 comic strip “Calloway the Castaway.” Thankfully, he cut out a copy of each strip from our local weekly newspaper and pasted them into a scrapbook that he’s somehow hung onto for over 40 years. The newsprint has yellowed, but the comic strip is still readable.
For more context, go to The Lost Adventures of “Calloway the Castaway” Episode 1!
And come back next week for The Lost Adventures of “Calloway the Castaway” Episode 14.
Out of all of his episodes of “Calloway the Castaway,” this one might make my older brother cringe the most. As it is, he gets uncomfortable looking at his old comic strips from 1979 because all he sees are the flaws, but he really doesn’t care for this one. Yeah, the punch line probably wouldn’t be taken well today, but for 1979 this was pretty light.
For more context, go to The Lost Adventures of “Calloway the Castaway” Episode 1!
And come back next week for The Lost Adventures of “Calloway the Castaway” Episode 13 !
Having a continuous storyline in a weekly comic strip had to be kind of kind of tough for my older brother when he was a cartoonist for our local weekly newspaper in 1979. Each episode had to be self-contained enough that new readers understood what was goin on without reading past episodes, and each episode had to be compelling enough for familiar readers to come back.
I think this comic strip works on both levels.
For more context, go to The Lost Adventures of “Calloway the Castaway” Episode 1!
And come back next week for The Lost Adventures of “Calloway the Castaway” Episode 12.
The potential problem with drawing a weekly comic strip is that readers might not be able to keep track when the comic strip has an extended storyline. This was one of my older brother’s concerns in 1979 when he was drawing “Calloway the Castaway” for our local weekly newspaper. It’s one thing to have a continuing story for a daily comic strip that everybody reads. But a weekly in an obscure newspaper?
And now it’s a weekly on an obscure blog.
For more context, go to The Lost Adventures of “Calloway the Castaway” Episode 1!
And come back next week for The Lost Adventures of “Calloway the Castaway” Episode 11!
My older brother doesn’t like looking at his early comic strips because when he does, all he sees are flaws. One of his concerns when he gave me permission to put his newly-found “Calloway the Castaway” comic strips on my blog was that a few of the episodes had humor that might be considered sexist today. Even though I might not be thought of as the best person to judge, I think the sexism (if it’s actually there) is somewhat mild, especially compared to 1970s standards.
The sexism (if it’s actually there) is probably mild compared to today’s standards too, but I’m not sure what today’s standards are. Anyway, when this comic strip was published back in 1979, the weekly local newspaper received no backlash, at least none that we know about.
For more, go to The Lost Adventures of “Calloway the Castaway” Episode 1!
And come back next week for The Lost Adventures of “Calloway the Castaway” Episode 10.
Back in 1979, the most popular video games in the arcades were Space Invaders, Asteroids, and some regular pinball machines that all looked alike to me. These games seem ancient when compared to what’s available today, but they’re still fun (and frustrating) whenever I find them in backroom arcades with the old, good stuff.
If the arcade game in the comic strip below looks archaic, that’s because video games looked like that in 1979 when my older brother’s comic strip came out in our local weekly newspaper. Those of you who were around back then, you probably remember some of those games.
For more, go to The Lost Adventures of “Calloway the Castaway” Episode 1!
And come back next week for The Lost Adventures of “Calloway the Castaway”: Episode 9.
Television ads for the movie version of The Late Great Planet Earth by Hal Lindsey used to scare the crap out of me when I was a kid in the 1970s. Looking back on the ad now, it’s really cheesy, but keep in mind that back then there were only three television channels, with no cable/streaming, no internet, and no social media. Kids weren’t exposed to as much as they are now.
The tv ads were on in the afternoon when kids were watching syndicated cartoons after school. Even back then, advertisers were warping the minds of children.
CHEESY MOVIE TRAILER ALERT!!!!
At any rate, I never read the book The Late Great Planet Earth by Hal Lindsey until this week when I saw an old copy at a used book store, and I decided to face my childhood fears. It’s tough to give a fair review of a book like this, though, because I automatically don’t have a favorable view of it.
In The Late Great Planet Earth, the author interpreted a lot of Biblical verses, including several from the book Revelation, and made a bunch of predictions based on his interpretations. When it comes to interpreting The Holy Bible, I’m not a Revelation kind of guy. Revelation causes a lot of arguing amongst people who probably don’t even know what they’re talking about, so I stay out of that stuff.
Instead, I’m a Sermon on the Mount guy. It’s short, and it’s clear in a lot of ways. Basically, I’d rather work on myself and not worry about judging others too much. If these ARE the end times, then I still need to behave properly during them, and I can’t control much (if anything) of what’s going on around me anyway.
Of course, the apocalyptic predictions in The Late Great Planet Earth didn’t come true (or haven’t come true yet). I could just make fun of all the predictions that haven’t come true, but I won’t because I don’t want to jinx anything. I’d feel really stupid if I made fun of The Late Great Planet Earth, and then the next day all of the author’s predictions came true, just 50+ years later.
Now that I think about it, it’s kind of arrogant (or paranoid) to think that you’re the generation that’s living through “the era of the Anti-Christ” (whatever that even means). Out of all the generations that have lived since the Christ walked the earth, and all the generations after us, WE’RE supposedly the THE generation that will see the… Ugh, I don’t even want to get into it.
I have to admit, though, this book is kind of entertaining, and I can see where Lindsey was coming from because a lot of people think/thought the 1960s and 1970s sucked from economic, social, and foreign policy points of view. A lot was going wrong in the United States when this book was selling millions of copies. Riots across the country. Politicians were getting assassinated. The Watergate scandal added more political instability. Saigon fell to the communists, making the Vietnam War a giant waste/failure. Both inflation and interest rates were high. At the end of the decade, President Jimmy Carter even said the country was in a “national malaise.” The 1970s was a great decade for a book like The Late Great Planet Earth.
I actually don’t mind a little fear mongering with my first cup of coffee. Times have always had the potential to go really bad, and times will always have the potential to go really bad. I’m just wary of people who try to make money off that fear, and this book (along with its low budget movie) seem to have been doing that.
Maybe right now is a great time for another book like The Late Great Planet Earth, but I’m not going to be the guy who writes it.
DYSFUNCTIONAL BOOK REVIEW:
I had fun reading The Late Great Planet Earth. And I’m not scared of it or the movie trailer anymore. I have faced my fears!
*****
Here are more more Dysfunctional Book Reviews:
Is This Self-Help Book Still Relevant? How To Win Friends And Influence People
A Time To Kill vs. To Kill A Mockingbird
Bad Sentences in Classic Literature: The Great Gatsby
It by Stephen King and The Novel by James Michener: A Conversation
Literary Glance: The Corrections by Johnathan Franzen
*****
And here is my one novel!
A grammar-obsessed English teacher falls in ‘luuuvvv’ but discovers how chaotic and dangerous ‘luuuvvv’ can be.
The Sunset Rises: A 1990s Romantic Comedy
Get a signed copy of my one and only novel, The Sunset Rises: A 1990s Romantic Comedy. My handwriting is actually legible, but I’m left-handed, so I might smudge my signature sometimes. Free delivery in the United States!
$10.00
Or you can buy a copy here on Amazon!
Not sure? Read a sample chapter of The Sunset Rises: A 1990s Romantic Comedy.
When my older brother’s comic strip “Calloway the Castaway” came out in 1979, inflation was a major financial issue in the United States, maybe even more so than it is now. I’m not sure how I feel about inflation also being an issue on other planets. I guess some human problems are universal.
For more, go to The Lost Adventures of “Calloway the Castaway” Episode 1!
And come back next week for The Lost Adventures of “Calloway the Castaway” Episode 8!
Dysfunctional Literacy 