MemeMachineGo!

=v= The writers of Funny Paper seem to be suffering from terminal snideness, but now and then they can really strike a chord:

"Sometimes I feel like I want to run away from everything," Classic Charlie Brown tells Classic Linus Wednesday. "I remember having that feeling once when I was at the Daisy Hill Puppy Farm," Classic Snoopy thinks. "I climbed over the fence but I was still in the world!" I climbed over the fence but I was still in the world! Every absinthe-swilling poet who ever lived wishes he could have put it that way.

Exactly.

=v= Peanuts creator Charles Schulz lived 50 miles north of here, where his Redwood Empire Ice Arena has long been a local fixture. It's also been a mecca for his fans, who'd go there just to dine at the Warm Puppy Café. I'm a Peanuts fanatic myself, but the prospect of munching on warm puppies did not lure me up to Santa Rosa. It took the new Charles M. Schulz Museum to do that.

American museums dedicated to comics and comic strips are few in number. The Teenage Mutant Ninja Words and Pictures museum closed its doors and went all-online, and the Cartoon Art Museum here in San Francisco has struggled a bit, but is doing well now (in no small part to the generosity of Schulz). I'm usually content to walk around and look at comic strip originals, which is admittedly not much different from perusing a good collection of comic strip books, but curators tend to put other things on display as well.

In addition to original Peanuts strips and sketches, the Schulz museum has a gallery of anniversary and get well strips drawn by hundreds of his peers, elaborate Peanuts-based sculptures by other artists, a tasteful display of old spinoff merchandise, covers of books translated into many languages, and a biographical timeline display. A wall is preserved from Schulz's 1950s home in Colorado Springs, where he'd painted a mural with very early versions of Snoopy and Charlie Brown (who's sporting a very short blond crewcut).

For me, though, the highlight of the museum was the room where they'd preserved Schulz's studio, with his bookshelves, chair, pens, and drawing table. The table still had an unfinished comic strip taped to it. The presence of genius was tangible, and I just stood there in awe. This made the visit for me.