"Da-da, What Do You Do All Day While We're in School?"

Da-da invents new and exciting playground diversions.

It's Colonel Petrov Day! AGAIN!

This nice man saved your borscht from hitting the fan.

Yay, it's Colonel Petrov Day! Who is Col. Petrov, you ask? He's your basic hero. A real one.

32 years ago today, Col. Petrov was hunkered in the bunker, the lone officer in charge of the former Soviet Union's ICBM Early Warning System for a given sector. On that day, said system (rigged by the cabal, we've recently learned) suddenly alarmed and showed five American ICBMs inbound. Rather than fully commit his missiles to a retaliatory strike, Col. Petrov had a "funny feeling" (he told the WashPost back in '99) that something wasn't quite right. Needless to say, it was just a false-positive computer glitch, and Col. Petrov did NOT launch his missiles, and by failing to do so he saved the world from nuclear annihilation -- and THAT is why today is Col. Petrov Day, living proof that you don't need gigantic superhero muscles or a fancy suit to save the world, Timmy. Alas, no one can save you from Da-da's run-on-sentences.

Vodka and blintzes for everyone! Or failing that, a pumpkin blancmange. Heroes LOVE pumpkin blancmange.

Fig. B. The Pumpkin Blancmange

Tipping Sacred Cows: The New Peanuts Movie

This magic is gone, save for DVDs.

Da-da and family were in a theater not too long ago to see some kid movie Da-da has strangely forgotten. Anyway, during the previews, we were at first pleased to see that a new Charlie Brown feature was soon to be released... but grew less and less interested -- and indeed, horrified (Da-da's boys especially) -- as we watched the preview. There was something WRONG about it. It wasn't the 3-D-ish animation, it was...

It was the music.

There was no Vince Guaraldi jazz music accompanying the images we all grew up with. The Charlie Brown canon simply does not work without a tasty jazz trio accompaniment. Indeed, we --  AND EVERYONE ELSE IN THE THEATER -- were repulsed (and making repulsed noises) by the marriage of Peanuts characters and contemporary music. It was awful. Given the fluidity of "film" these days, they could easily swap sound tracks, but Da-da fears they won't.

Perhaps Da-da et al are old-school purists, but it seems to us that the Charles Schulz family has made a tactical error in allowing this (one of Da-da's friends called it, "an abomination") to exist; a mistake, hopefully, that they take steps to correct.

P.S.

Charlie Brown rapping? Really? This is Rap's jump-the-shark moment. It was never music anyway.

That Metaphoric Look of Parenthood

Where is Da-da??

Questions keep rolling in. Where is Da-da? What happened to Da-da? Da-da is actually readying his third book for e-book launch, as well as that of his first novel (which he's fallen in love with all over again). AND Da-da's readying his fourth and fifth books, a non-fiction supernatural memoir and a secret project, respectively. AND he has new duties at Schrödinger's Öther Cat. AND he's a bit burned out from being burned out. Needless to say, Da-da's busy being Da-da, so this blog must suffer. But from suffering comes great work. Or perhaps more suffering. Anyway, please stay tuned. Clouds are already forming.

That Bond Villain Look of Parenthood