Six Linus Van Pelts, from Eric Shea in "A Charlie Brown Christmas" to Alex Saxon in "A Charlie Brown Christmas, the Musical"

A Charlie Brown Christmas (1965) is the first of the animated specials based on Charles Schultz' Peanuts, and arguably the only one that holds up for adults.  I first saw it when I was so young that when Lucy says that she wants "real estate" for Christmas, I had no idea what she was talking about.

Linus has always been my favorite Peanuts character: witty, intellectual (an aspiring theologian), and a good friend to Charlie Brown.  If it weren't for their frequent heterosexual romances, I would identify them as a gay-subtext couple.  

And no other voice artist comes closer to capturing his inner beauty than  Christopher Shea.

Christopher  (1958-2010) voiced the wise-beyond-his-years Linus in  A Charlie Brown Christmas (1965),  It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown (1966), and three other Peanuts specials.  He starred in the Western Shane (1966), a short-lived tv version of the iconic movie, playing the "Come back, Shane!" Joey Starrett, and did a lot of guest spots.  Kids of the 1960s probably saw him in  The Invaders, Green Acres, The Odd Couple, and Here Come the Bride.

Here he buddy-bonds with Kevin Tate in Firecreek (1968).

I always thought that he played Tim Matheson's little brother in Yours, Mine, and Ours (1968), but that was his brother Erik.

His last credited role is A Little Game (1971), about a teenager (Mark Gruner) who plots to kill his stepfather.

He's hard to research because of another Christopher Shea, who appeared in more recent tv series like Will and Grace and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, but I found his obituary: He moved to Humbolt County, in northern California, where he died in 2010, leaving a wife and two daughters.

Eric Shea, born in 1960, did the usual tv guest spots: Batman, Here Come the Brides, Gunsmoke, The Flying Nun, Room 222 -- but he snared some more substantial movie roles, such as Lucille Ball's son  in the big-family comedy Yours, Mine, and Ours (1968) (top photo, the one in the pajamas.  The other one is Tim Matheson).

More after the break

Angus De Kirkby: Posh femme boy with long legs, a boyfriend, and a lot of furs. But is he a royal, a model, a fashionista, or just rich?

This photo appeared on my Instagram feed with the comment "He's 40 years old already!"  Obviously a gay couple. The guy on the right has a private account, but his diva boyfriend is Angus De Kirkby.

Very skinny and extraordinarily femme.  Dude is all legs.

"The awful period between Christmas and New Year's, when you don't know what to do with yourself."

I disagree. That's the period where you celebrate the end of the dismal melancholia.

He posts photos with both men and women.  This is his "ride or die," but usually I can't tell if they are buddies, romantic partners, or modeling partners.  

Most of his Instagram photos depict him in ridiculously posh outfits, dripping with diamonds, slathered in furs: "You're nobody until PETA hates you."

 And in the most elegant settings imaginable. 

"Paris, je t'aime."  

I agree, but why pose in front of a n*de lady?

How do you rate these costumes and country estates, buddy?  Are you a jetsetting supermodel or Prince William's cousin?  Or both?

We find out after the break

My Boyfriend and I Play "Fighting Prince of Donegal"

This is the Scholastic Book Club edition of Fighting Prince of Donegal, by Robert T. Reilly.

It may not look like much now, but when I was in fourth grade at Denkmann Elementary School, it appeared among the selections offered by the Scholastic Book Club.  I was entranced.

This was no wimpy fairy-tale prince in love with a princess.  He was a Fighting Prince, strong and powerful.  I had never heard of Donegal, but it was obviously a mystical, distant country with castles on high mountains, outlined against an orange moon.

My boyfriend Bill and I both ordered copies.  They wouldn't arrive for four to six weeks.

We talked about the book every day.  Would the Prince have muscles?  Would he have a best man?  Would he rescue his best man, who would then sigh "My hero?" and melt into his arms?

We made swords out of cardboard and played "Fighting Prince of Donegal."  My brother got to be the villain, who would lock Bill in the dungeon (the lilac bushes outside my house) so I could rescue him.

We often talked about what the Prince looked like.  If you read the ad very carefully, you could see that the book was originally published in 1958 and called Red Hugh, Prince of Donegal.  That meant a red-head.  He must look something like this.

Or, from an adult point of view:

We looked up Donegal in the Golden Book Encyclopedia.  It was a county in Ireland, on the northeast coast.

There was a book in the Denkmann Library called Donegal Stories, but it was all fairy tales, which we  hated.

Would those books ever arrive?

Bill's big brother Tom told us that a couple of years ago, Disney made a movie version of The Fighting Prince of Donegal, starring Peter McEnery.

"Did he rescue a boy or a girl?" I asked expectantly.

More after the break

Earthfasts: Modern day Yorkshire boy and 18th century soldier fall in love. Plus a n*de model, a soap opera teen, Joe Orton, and Doctor Who

I remember reading William Mayne’s Earthfasts (1966) on a summer day in the mid-1970s, sitting a lawnchair in the back yard, the air thick and heavy with the scent of lilacs from our backyard bush, while my brother kept rushing in and out and asking “is that all you’re going to do all summer?” But I couldn’t put the book down.

David (the blond) and Keith, two teenagers in Yorkshire, northern England, are investigating a tapping sound in an old tumulus, when suddenly a boy emerges, costumed as an 18th century redcoat, carrying a candle and a drum. He is Nellie Jack John, a drummer boy in King George’s army, and he entered the tumulus to look for buried treasure “an hour ago,” in 1742!  

I especially remember a scene where they have breakfast: he won't eat Corn Flakes, which he calls "wood chips."

Eventually Nellie Jack John realizes that he has become lost in time, but he reasons that the tumulus might send him home. David, however, is obsessed with keeping the boy in the twentieth century: he grabs him, tries to hug him, tries to talk him into staying. But Nellie Jack John shakes him off, rushes back to the tumulus, and vanishes.

David is disconsolate. He spends hours staring at the candle Nellie Jack John left behind (which burns but doesn’t go out), and says “It’s as if the world has vanished, not the boy. . .nothing in the world is quite touching me."  

Meanwhile, weird things are happening: the earthfasts (standing stones) move by themselves; giants roam the countryside; ghostly soldiers attack passersby. Keith and David theorize that instead of returning to his own time, Nellie Jack “jammed” the time flow so that the past is intermingling with the present. They return to the tumulus to effect a rescue, but this time David vanishes!

Later Keith finds a way to enter the tumulus, find his two friends, and rescue them both from the jammed time stream. Back in 20th century England, Nellie Jack John finally understands that he can never go home. He becomes hysterical with fear and loss and tries to run away several times, but each time David grabs him and holds him tightly like a lover. Eventually he calms down and allows himself to be held. His new situation can’t be helped, after all, and the future might be rather fun. He agrees to go home with David.

There's a remarkably intimate scene near the end of the book (not in the miniseries) where David puts the Nellie Jack John into a hot bath, admires his naked body, and begins scrubbing his back.

I was mesmerized by David’s passion for Nellie Jack John. It begins as suddenly and mysteriously as love at first sight, a passion too profound for words, and compels David to risk everything for a boy he only just met. Nellie Jack John at first wants nothing to do with David, for he represents the loss of his entire world; but finally he acquiesces, allowing himself to be touched, held, and loved.  It was a remarkable evocation of a gay romance.

The Earthfasts tv series (1994) starred Paul Nichols, left, as David.  He moved on to play a troubled teen in the longrunning soap East Enders, then had starring roles in a lot of tv series, including City Central, A Thing Called Love, Harley Street, The Fear, and CSI: UK. 

More after the break