Greetings music slutinos, and welcome to a special Winter Holiday Edition of Manor Music Monday! For me, the holidays aren't complete without a few things, like delicious dark chocolate, squealing chirruns and Vince Guaraldi. If that name is unfamiliar to you, I'll bet his music isn't, since he composed the indelible music for "A Charlie Brown Christmas," a 1965 TV special that's all but imprinted on our minds, much like "The Wizard of Oz." And just like the music was important to "The Wizard of Oz," it was crucial to "A Charlie Brown Music," conveying not only seasonal giggles 'n fun, but Charlie Brown's deeply melancholic state of mind. And perhaps most head-turning of all for a mass-market TV special in the mid-60s, the score was jazz.  In fact, it was the very first time jazz was used prominently in animation - for the big or small screen - giving Peanuts a wholly unique, sophisticated, yet accessible sound. The soundt...

I've always loved the gentle spirit of "Mutts," a comic strip by Patrick McDonnell which first popped up in the early 1990s and is still running to this day. It was an immediate popular hit. McDonnell himself was delighted when his childhood hero, Charles Schulz, publicly praised the strip, and thereafter, the two became close friends, one of the few that the notoriously agoraphobic Schulz had (along with Cathy Guisewite, the author of the "Cathy" strip, whom he adored).  In addition to his strip, McDonnall is well known for his animal rights advocacy , and the strip regularly addresses these issues. But for me, I treasure "Mutts" most for its powerfully minimalist design and its hushed tone, which seems to tap directly into a child's subconscious.  McDonnell's and Schulz' friendship extended into their own strips, as when "Earl," a character from "Mutts," appears in a painting admired by "Rerun" in "Peanu...