Now hear this: as some of you have guessed, there’s news about the book. This is uofficial and premature and not totally guaranteed. I probably shouldn’t even be bringing it up yet. However, it appears now the book will be in the spring catalog of NewSouth Books next year. I am told copies could be available for sale as early as November. Hopefully, this spring, there will be news here about pre-ordering. That is all.
31 Comments » Posted by jimmyjohnson / Vintage A&J
I’m running late this morning, and I don’t have much time. I hope, however, I’ll have some interesting news tomorrow morning.
34 Comments » Posted by jimmyjohnson / Vintage A&J
I like to do topical humor, humor based on things happening in the culture at the time. It gives the illusion I’m hip. However, there’s an inherent drawback in that sort of joke. This 1994 cartoon refers to a series of television commercials for a brand of instant coffee. The commercials featured the same yuppie man and the same yuppie woman getting acquainted over a cup of Joe, each commercial advancing their dialog and setting the stage, soap-opera style, for a later commercial, so that all of America was supposed to be on tenterhooks, wondering if these cloying goofballs would wind up in the sack. The commercials worked: people noticed them. Of course, without me telling you all this, the above comic strip makes no sense at all today.
33 Comments » Posted by jimmyjohnson / Vintage A&J
I may have confused some of you and understandably so. When I speak of “the United Media Web site,” I mean “comics.com.” Comics.com is where you find comic strips distributed by United Media. I am so accustomed to using the two names interchangeably that it never occured to me readers cannot be expected to automatically know this. To further cloud the issue, United Media is made up of two syndicates, United Feature Syndicate and Newspaper Enterprise Association, commonly referred to as NEA. This is the vestigial effect of a long-ago merger and makes little practical difference today, even to those of us associated with United Media. UFS and NEA have the same offices, the same editors, the same accountants, the same telephones, the same deadlines, the same break room… well, you get the picture. For the record, A&J is an NEA strip.
39 Comments » Posted by jimmyjohnson / Vintage A&J
To give credit when it’s due, comics.com seems to be working better for me this morning; I hope it is for you, too. I don’t do all this every day just to drive you to the United Media Web site, but it does make me look better the more people who visit my strip there. The best way to help me still is to subscribe to your local paper and get it to carry A&J if it doesn’t already, but that isn’t easy, I know. Believe me, I know. In the end, I’m just glad you’re here.
32 Comments » Posted by jimmyjohnson / Vintage A&J
If you’ve been having trouble getting to the comics.com Web site, where the new daily strips appear, don’t feel alone. I have, too, and, no, I don’t know what the problem is. It seemed to be working fairly well after the Web site was technically upgraded a few months ago, but now its performance is wretched. Maybe they’ll work it out. If I do learn anything, I’ll let you know.
We’re leaping all the way ahead to 2007, with today’s old cartoon.
25 Comments » Posted by jimmyjohnson / Vintage A&J
The Postal Service wants to eliminate Saturday delivery to save money. I don’t have a strong opinion about that one way or another. It might be a good idea. However, it stirred a deep memory that may not be accurate, but when I was a very young tyke, I believe our mail was delivered to the door twice a day, in the morning and in the afternoon. The poor mailman! We lived on a hill, back from the street, and he carried the mail on foot, in a big leather bag. Once a day was bad enough.
67 Comments » Posted by jimmyjohnson / Vintage A&J
I’ve been following the comments about blue jays with some interest. Around here, the blue jays don’t haunt the feeders very much. The main customers are cardinals and finches and doves and, of course, squirrels. In addition, there are chickadees, titmice and assorted woodpeckers. (We’re talking sunflower seeds exclusively.) The blue jays hang mostly in the tree tops, and a solitary jay will visit the feeder every now and then. The brown thrashers scratch around in the leaves under the bushes and pretty much ignore everyone and everything else.
30 Comments » Posted by jimmyjohnson / Vintage A&J
The bird in today’s A&J strip was supposed to be a cardinal. I suppose he’s now a blue jay, although it’s been my experience that blue jays are not feeder bums. They will, however, go nuts for dry cat food.
34 Comments » Posted by jimmyjohnson / The Daily Grind
Did you watch the Hawaiian tsunami yesterday? I must admit, it was exciting, the prospect of actually watching a significant tsunami event roll ashore live, but, of course, I was relieved the waves that eventually arrived were on the small side and not destructive. You can’t scoff at the National Weather Service: they repeatedly tried to tell the television folks, “We can’t really predict these things.” They did their job, warning folks. We all know it could’ve happened.
In Chile, the news is not so good.
25 Comments » Posted by jimmyjohnson / The Daily Grind