It was a teenage wedding and the old folks wished them well
You could see that Pierre did truly love the Madamoiselle
And now the young Monsieur and Madame have rung the chapel bell
"C'est la vie" say the old folks, it goes to show you never can tell.
So is it Lucy as Mia Wallace and Charlie Brown as Vincent Vega? Provocative, if so. I'm going to imagine it is. (From illustrator Ed Harrington)
After one too many times of Lucy pulling out the football from him, Charlie Brown snapped and went ultra-violent, but he was still a blockhead. (Mike Capp)
Snoopy gets his droog on as he gets ready for a little bit of Peanuts ultra-violence. What he did to Woodstock I just can't repeat. (Snoopy DeLarge by D4N13L)
Newspapers are filled with comic strips that have long past their prime and should be immediately put of their misery. Several artists had the same thought at WWA gallery's show, Off the Strip.
Garfield as a hat? Seems like something Mr. Burns would appreciate, especially with some Odie boots and a Nermal boutonniere. (Blue Monday by Casey Weldon)
Dennis has never really been much of a menace, but once he beheaded his frenemy Margaret the strip took on a whole new meaning. (Dennis the Menace to Society by Damian King)
Woodstock was always kind of annoying, but he wouldn't make much of a meal. To paraphrase, eating Woodstock would only arouse my appetite without bedding it down. (Unfriended by Scott Stulen)
And here I figured Hagar would die of cirrhosis of the liver or be stabbed in the back by "Lucky" Eddie. (Hagar's Horrible End by Keith Noordzy)
What would the Peanuts Gang look like in real life? Wonder no more, thanks to Phil Jones. I ran this awhile back but it got enough votes to be printed, so now you can wear your legume-based pop culture reference, if that's the sort of think you're likely to do.
Even superheros need to let loose sometimes. And I imagine Wolverine could really let it rip on guitar. From an image Chris Giarrusso (of Mini Marvels) drew for a Christmas card. (Image via zombiemothra).
Here is the original A Charlie Brown Christmas image for comparison:
What the Peanuts Gang would look like in real life. A Threadless concept by Phil Jones, so you still have a chance to vote for it and get it made. I love how all the characters are so easily recognizable, even as legumes, and the fact that Woodstock is shelled. (Link via The Daily What)
It's almost Christmas, so time to turn on the TV and bathe in its seasonal warmth. I've already introduced three-year-old to Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer (and instilled a life-long fear of dentists) and I'm ready to watch my annual favourites: How the Grinch Stole Christmas! (animated, of course), A Christmas Story ("You'll shoot your eye out!") and Scrooged.
We all have regulars that we return to year after year, but Joanna Wilson thinks there is a better way. The author of The Christmas TV Companion has watched hundreds of Christmas specials to create a guide to unusual, overlooked and often bizarre Christmas-themed television episodes and film releases.
(Above: It's Jihad, Farley Towne, from Denis Leary's variety show, Merry F#%$in' Christmas. "It really isn't such a bad little bomb. It just needs a little hate.")
Wilson's thorough book highlights many of the more offbeat seasonal offerings, especially if your tastes aren't exactly in line with White Christmas. Her section on animation (my favourite) digs up gems like Saturday Night Live's TV Funhouse's take on A Charlie Brown Christmas.
A devoted fan of the Rankin/Bass stop-motion features (Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, Frosty the Snowman, The Little Drummer Boy) she gives high praise to MAD TV's excellent parodies, placing Rudolph into Goodfellas and The Godfather. That is my kind of Christmas tale.
In the Sci-Fi section Wilson declares Futurama's yuletide tales "hands down, the far most interesting projection of Christmases future." Mostly because Santa is now a robot in the year 3000 who is out to kill everyone seeing as his naughty/nice gauge is set too high.
Wilson says, and I agree, that the "most jaw-dropping Christmas episodes have to be those from the series notorious for its crude tastelessness, South Park. In 1997, the creators popularized a new holiday icon for modern audiences: Mr Hankey, the Christmas Poo. The yuletide turd becomes a symbol that everyone in the town can embrace without offending their individual religious of family traditions.
While not the edgiest of their offerings, Mr. Hankey's Christmas Classics has become a seasonal tradition for me. The duet between Santa and Jesus gets me every time.
Not surprisingly Wilson devotes a significant amount of time to the 1978 television special, The Star Wars Holiday Special. As someone who was eight when he watched this two-hour travesty when it originally aired, I mostly recall being bored. It really wasn't about Star Wars at all. I tried to watch it again last night but just couldn't get through it. But there it is above if you've only heard about it and want to find out for yourself. Good luck with that.
The real joy of The Christmas TV Companion is flipping through the pages and being introduced to something bizarre that you never knew existed. For me that was Franz Kafka's It's A Wonderful Life, which "dramatizes the anxiety-filled absurdist writer Franz Kafka's struggle to create the opening line of his novel Metamorphosis on Christmas Eve." It's truly odd.
So this Christmas, do yourself a favour: get this book and go watch something a little strange to get yourself into the holiday spirit.
Good ol' Chris Brown, he just can't help himself, right? Who knew MAD magazine had gotten so edgy? Or that they were online. Well, not really, but I hope to see more of this.
It's funny, Peanuts hasn't had a new strip in nine years, but its cultural cache is as current as ever. Witness Charlie Brown as drawn by Frank Miller, as The Comedian from Watchmen and as Spider-Man.
