Out The Window

Graef Windows, Inc. independently manufactured aluminum windows and vinyl windows. In 2008, when the company was purchased whole by enclosure company Joyce Manufacturing. The Joyce Windows ⇒ division continues to make vinyl windows from the acquired Graef assets.

Donor Charlie * offered me this single shirt before he was going to throw it into a garbage can. That he only ever had one copy of this shirt was unusual for him. In his lifetime, he would get, or at least want, two or more of whatever he would consume. I never understood how he could afford to do this or what compelled him to do so.

York Peppermint Patty

The drawing screened on this shirt features a golfing dog that has sent a ball through a house window. A bird is seen standing near the house. A young boy wearing a shirt with a zig-zag pattern is seen close by to be thinking “Good Graef!”. Though the quality of the drawing is poor, the characters are obviously meant to represent Snoopy ⇒, Woodstock ⇒, and Charlie Brown ⇒ of the Peanuts ⇒ comic strip created by Charles M. Schulz.

Peanuts was a comic concerned with character development rather than “ha-ha” jokes. To put it another way, the intent of the strip is not for the humor to be in Lucy van Pelt ⇒ pulling the football away from Charlie Brown, but in that Charlie Brown falls for it every time and that he is the one that gets blamed for missing the field goal. The strip is wildly popular

I feel neutral to Peanuts as a strip. When I was younger, I enjoyed it and comics in general more than I do now. The reader’s mileage may vary.

Unauthorized Peanuts

The drawing clearly is of a different hand than normal. I doubt that this shirt was authorized by either United Feature Syndicate, the publisher of Peanuts, or the Schulz estate that is known to vigorously defend the intellectual property. I wonder if either knew of this shirt’s existence. This particular shirt does not explicitly disavow a connection, nor is the drawing a parody.

Other than this shirt, two other things stick in mind about unauthorized Peanuts. A Peanuts parody worth reading would be Peanuts, by Charles Bukowski ⇒. Perhaps Bukowski is easily imitated (consider that guy at the coffeeshop who is always trying to sell the books he “published” on a vanity press while others just want to enjoy their drink), but I find this parody to be tone accurate. The other thing that I will never forget is a school newspaper had an illustrator on staff decide to provide a tribute to Schulz by having a poorly drawn figure in holding position while another figure with a zig-zag shirt kicking a football. Essentially, some kid took it upon himself to mark the occasion of Schulz kicking the bucket by drawing the one thing that Schulz would never have allowed to happen in the real strip.