Happiness is Jonathan Winters

I’m watching an old Jonathan Winters special from the mid-1960s when suddenly, wham, Peanuts reference. Coming back from commercial, the camera pans across a bunch of stuffed Peanuts dolls piled in and around a toy box. Winters appears, saying “a friend of mine, Charlie Schulz,  wrote a book about a child’s idea of happiness. I love it, I think you would too. Because in it, I think Charles found what I think happiness is all about.” He then goes on to talk about the happiness in his own life with his family.

If anyone’s curious, the DVD of the show (Jonathan Winters: Rare & Riotous) is out of print, but can be rented through Netflix. Better yet, it can be streamed through Netflix streaming. The piece occurs about 32 minutes into the streamed version. (It would be at the end of the original hour-long specal, but this version is missing some material – presumably, the performances of the New Christie Minsterals were left out due to music rights reasons.)

Classic finds
A needle-ssly fine present

Being a) an adult and b) not a Christmasian, it makes sense that I’m not given much in the way of Christmas presents. This year’s haul was just two items, both given by Dr. Mrs. The AAUGH Blogger: a Terry’s Chocolate Orange (yum!), and this Peanuts embroidery book from Japan. …

New releases
Double Love

Simon Spotlight has dropped two books for the Valentine’s Day Shopping Season, and they’re pretty similar. Love is Everywhere, Snoopy! is a board book that is supposed to be Charlie Brown explaining love to Snoopy (who is said to have asked, which raises the usual how-does-Snoopy-communicate-to-Charlie-Brown question.) Charlie Brown answers …

New releases
“Books”

My grocery shopping today landed me two new Peanuts “books”. The more bookish of the two is the latest edition of The Great Big Book of Peanuts Word Seeks, volume 5 to be precise, which as I’ve mentioned before I’ll allow to qualify as a book… particularly because it not …