As is our tradition whenever there is a holiday, we like to wish it from a cartoon character, kitschy celebrity (such as Barry Manilow) or whacko politician (ie. Michele Bachmann). And, today we go with the legendary comic strip character Charlie Brown, the brainchild of Charles Schultz (1922-2000).
When I was tutoring a student taking an English class, I actually compared Charlie Brown to Willy Loman, the character at the center of Arthur Miller's stage play "Death of a Salesman," in order to get the student to grasp the play's themes and simplify them.
Charlie Brown made his debut in "Peanuts" on Oct. 2, 1950. Snoopy came into the picture two days later. The beloved pooch also made its Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade debut as a float in 1968, a full 16 years before a float for Garfield, the comic strip cat created by Jim Davis that debuted in 1978, made his way down lower Manhattan in 1986.
Today's parade also feature a reincarnation of a float for the video game character Sonic the Hedgehog and a float created by filmmaker Tim Buron, called Character B.
Charlie Brown is noted for his rivalry with Lucy van Pelt, who pulls the football away from him as she did in the very last original "Peanuts" strip on Feb. 13, 2000.
The Little Red Head Girl is the figure of Charlie Brown's infactuation, but since he represents futility across the board, he never gets to meet her_ not even for a date at Starbucks (yes, we are aware there were no Starbucks around in 1950; it was a joke). She never actually physically appears in any of the comic strips, but her face has been shown on tv specials for "Peanuts." The character usually appears in strips that were written by Schultz around Valentine's Day.
Charlie Brown is also associated with the holidays because of both the Thanksgiving special, which first aired on Nov. 20, 1973, and the Christmas special, which premiered on Dec. 9, 1965, before folks in the United States started celebrating Christmas in September!
SIDE DISH: As we reported yesterday, my alma mater Radford University played the Univeristy of Kentucky, the #2-ranked men's basketball team, in Lexington, Ky., last night. And, like Charlie Brown trying to kick the dreaded football, the Highlanders came up very short in an 88-40 loss to the Wildcats. Terrence Jones scored 17 points for the home team; Jonathan Edwards scored 10 points and grabbed eight rebounds for RU.
SIDE DISH TWO: Yes, folks started lining some time ago for the Black Friday Sale at Target which gets underway at midnight here on the East. According to a tweet from "The Charlotte Observer," some 15 customers had started lining up at the main Charlotte, NC, Target store circa 8:00 p.m., a full hours before the madness begins.
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