Apr 3rd 2012 07:39 am Black and white and red all over

Buy the new book, "Beaucoup Arlo & Janis!"Today's "Arlo & Janis!"
I’ve been trying the last couple of weeks to select an old cartoon that that was not reprinted in Beaucoup Arlo & Janis. I just this morning noticed that yesterday’s retro cartoon is, indeed, in the book. Who can keep up? I believe the old cartoon above did not make the cut.

It’s a springtime cartoon and pairs well with yet another round of news that tanning beds and sunburns are not good for you and that if you plan to go outside, you should wear at least a white linen suit and a Panama hat. And socks and welder’s goggles. The cartoon is from 1988, and I can see my cartooning skills developing. It was about this time I began to regularly use drawing in telling a story. In other words, imagine the above cartoon without the scene in the last panel.

Posted by jimmyjohnson / Vintage A&J

35 Responses to “Black and white and red all over”

  1. David in Austin on 03 Apr 2012 at 7:57 am #

    I have inlaws that actually need sunscreen…my family’s genetics has enough Native American heritage that no one actually ever burns. My wife has northern Europe and Welsh heritage, light skin, light eyes, black hair…. my two daughters are happy that they inherited my skin rather than hers.

    It probably was bad for my skin, but as a child I spent the summers wearing shorts but shirtless. By September I was a uniform mahogany. At 50 I’m not worse for wear, but who knows what will happen in another 20 years. : )

  2. Mindy on 03 Apr 2012 at 9:12 am #

    The evolution of Arlo & Janis is grist for a social anthropologist, Jimmy, just as A&J itself is a social anthropologist’s semi-voyeur’s eye view of the rest of us. I think that’s what makes the cartoon so special, more, really, than just a cartoon.

    I never use sunscreen, rarely burn, but when working outside it’s always in long-sleeved shirts and with a camouflage “boonie” hat given to me by someone who got it from Vietnam many long years ago. It’s treasured and hand washed as needed. I get a laugh when I come in with bamboo leaves stuck in a very long ponytail, more camouflage I’m told, to go along with the BDU trousers [didn't think I knew the term for them, aka "utilities," did you, sandcastler?] which are a foot or so too long for me. Cats, by the way, love to lurk in the slowly diminishing grove of Asiatic horror as they stalk our chipmunks and visiting birds. Odd that the resident cat gives them all a pass except for the bluejays and starlings and she chases the interlopers away more often than we do. Best watch-cat in the business. [That goes with yesterday's cat strip, Jimmy.]

  3. Mindy on 03 Apr 2012 at 9:13 am #

    Oh, Lord! “Cat strip” left me wide open for some harassment, didn’t it? I refuse to blush!

  4. sandcastler on 03 Apr 2012 at 9:22 am #

    Mindy, very good. Now about those BDU’s, do you blouse your trousers? If not the old SGM can come by and show you how.

  5. Neal in Bahstawn on 03 Apr 2012 at 10:03 am #

    Having grown up in south Florida in the 1950s and 1960s, the notion of sunscreen was nowhere on the cultural radar screen. Instead, we slathered on Coppertone to enhance the tan. Yep, times have changed, in this case, for the better!

  6. Bob S. on 03 Apr 2012 at 10:23 am #

    Dermatologist is on my case about the dangers of sun. Even living in Fl and LA never paid it much mind. Now I’ve had three cancers cut off so am a bit more careful. Luckily not melanoma.

  7. Mindy on 03 Apr 2012 at 10:23 am #

    Sandcastler, I not only wear boots quite similar to the old jump boots [black leather, not that new no-polish suede-like style], but I DO “blouse” the trousers to keep out spiders, ticks and other unwanted visitors. Even if you were an old Master Chief, I would not and WILL NOT tell you how, exactly, I’ve been known to blouse said trousers. That is NOT a story for yet another day! :)

  8. sandcastler on 03 Apr 2012 at 10:59 am #

    LMAO

  9. Redman in the "Big O" on 03 Apr 2012 at 11:38 am #

    “Red all over”, I represent that remark JJ!!

    I think there is an older photo of you somewhere wearing a Panama hat.

  10. John in Virginia on 03 Apr 2012 at 11:53 am #

    Add my LMAO to sandcastler’s, Mindy. You blushing yet?

  11. John in NY on 03 Apr 2012 at 1:25 pm #

    My wife is of Filipino desent and early in our dating lives we went for a sail with my folks. Although offered sun screen she said no thanks. She never burns. Well anyone who has been out on the water in the summer can tell you that between the direct sun the sun reflected off the water everyone burns. And although I could barely make out that she had a slight pinkish glow she had never been sun burnt before and was miserable for week.

    Being of Irish stock I have burned to the point of blisters in my life. I rarely go into extended direct sun without some sort of protection. Either a shirt or lotion.

    Rarely. Not never.

  12. Jerry in Fl on 03 Apr 2012 at 1:34 pm #

    “All cats are gray in the dark.”-Ben Franklin

  13. Blinky the Wonder Wombat on 03 Apr 2012 at 2:08 pm #

    JJ,it is that last panel that demonstrates why A&J is such a treasure. A lesser cartoonist would have “told” the joke, but instead you have left it to the reader to discern the joke. Many of my favorite A&J strips fall into this category.

  14. Debbie in Alabama on 03 Apr 2012 at 2:35 pm #

    Back in the day our suntan lotion of choice was baby oil mixed with iodine. Don’t know if we tanned or became stained by the iodine. Anne Rivers Siddons, another AU grad, mentions it in her book Burnt Mountain….”In those days of ‘laying out’ slathered with a mixture of baby oil and iodine,…..”

  15. Galliglo in Ohio on 03 Apr 2012 at 4:31 pm #

    I remember those baby oil & iodine days. Being a natural redhead with the corresponding fair, freckled skin, that treatment never worked very well for me. I SO envied the gals wth the beautiful dark tans.

    After living in FL and knowing more about skin cancers, I decided to forego my wish for a dusky skin. I still admire tans, but I know that look is not for me. Vive la différence!

  16. emeritus Minnesota biologist on 03 Apr 2012 at 8:25 pm #

    Craig [from yesterday]: I checked two African mammal field guides and Ven den Brink’s “A field guide to the mammals of Britain and Europe” for pictures, as well as: http://www.bucknell.edu/msw3/ [which you will find dry as dust] for taxonomy. There is debate among taxonomists whether some small wild cats of Eurasia and Africa are one, two, or three species, aside from other small wild cat species about which there is general agreement. Most are sort of tabby, but one illustrated African sort from the Samburu region of Kenya is unspotted. I saw a relatively unspotted one by a lodge in the Tsavo West park in Kenya [where I bought the African guides] across the border from Kilimanjaro, and it had little spotting. Accepting the monospecific taxonomy, DNA work suggests that all domestic cats have their origin in the populations of Felis catus of the Middle East-East Africa, rather than those of Europe and central and eastern Asia.

    Van den Brink is a Lamarckian, but it’s a good field guide. Actually most biologists were more Lamarckian than Darwinian until mid-20th century; it lingered longest in France.

  17. emeritus Minnesota biologist on 03 Apr 2012 at 8:31 pm #

    Sorry about that snide [sic]. I wrote that in Word and intended to remove it before sending it. I am an incurable copy editor, probably irredeemable.

  18. CW in 617 on 03 Apr 2012 at 8:47 pm #

    For a comics cross-reference, sometime last year (sorry, no definite date), “Get Fuzzy” used the phrase “You’re whiter than an Irish sunscreen tester.”

    That’s me. As a lifeguard at an outdoor pool in California, when we thought that this ozone layer business couldn’t affect us teenagers, I disdained lotion, and nobody had hear of an SPF. My dermatologist had much to say about this, just prior to a biopsy (benign).

    If I could expand on what John in NY tells us, the worst burn I ever got was hiking on a mountainside in Southern California in the winter. Bright sun, south side of the mountain, air warm enough to go with just a T-shirt, but still enough snow to reflect the sun. Ouch.

  19. CW in 617 on 03 Apr 2012 at 9:19 pm #

    Okay, I botched that one, being unintentionally funny. Not just a T-shirt, but also pants and boots. No hat, which has become another, but related, issue.

  20. Mark in TTown on 03 Apr 2012 at 9:32 pm #

    Galliglo, the tan might look great as a teenager and into your 20′s, but later it turns to old leather.

  21. Nancy in Bucks County on 03 Apr 2012 at 9:51 pm #

    As a lifeguard in the 70′s, we used baby oil to “enhance the tan.” I am now avoiding (deterring?) the dermatologist as best I can. Just bought a sailboat and considering what hat I might need. Grrrr…

  22. Mindy on 03 Apr 2012 at 11:39 pm #

    Nancy, I’ve found a long bill baseball-type cap, usually available at any nautical shop, works best since it helps protect against both sun and water glare. [Don't forget a good pair of polarized sunglasses!] Sometimes I dampen a cloth and put one edge under the read band of the cap French Foreign Legion style to protect the neck. Works for me even if it isn’t a fashion statement.

  23. hc on 04 Apr 2012 at 7:51 am #

    Galliglo in OH – ditto – My mother used to send me to the pool with a shirt over my swimsuit but I still remember getting very bad sunburns when I was a child. My parents both had some skin cancer so I try to be careful now … but between golf and the garden, I’m not as careful as I should be!

  24. sandcastler on 04 Apr 2012 at 8:00 am #

    Mindy, thougt that yellow sundress was a fashion statement.

  25. Jean from Dahlonega Ga aka Trapper Jean on 04 Apr 2012 at 8:15 am #

    And this, folks, is why I prefer winter to summer. As another natural redhead if I even think of going outside in the summer my skin starts to blister. Many times in my teen years I ended up wearing my Dad’s old t-shirts because they were the only things soft enough not to rub on my blistered back and shoulders.

    In college I had a friend who used the baby oil and iodine mixture. She was a brunette with dark skin, but wanted a darker tan. She ended up looking like a well-tended leather handbag.

  26. Steve from Royal Oak, MI on 04 Apr 2012 at 9:48 am #

    I love today’s strip (4/4/12) regrarding “When did this happen?’ It is never more apparent when we visit my mother-in-law in Northern Michigan and she has dial up. It makes sense for her because the cost for broadband would not justify the benefit for her. But I pull out my phone and can do everything that laptop can do, but even faster.

    She was also complaining about how the television screen shrinks on certain channels and there is a lot of glare. Almost have her talked into a plasma. The added benefit is that she can get the HD channels from her dish for a nominal price, which will improve the sound so she can hear what the TV is saying.

  27. Nancy in Bucks County on 04 Apr 2012 at 5:08 pm #

    @Mindy, thanks for the hat suggestion. Off to Search for the perfect chapeau.

  28. TruckerRon on 04 Apr 2012 at 8:19 pm #

    For financial reasons, I’ll continue with the old color set until it dies (or my severely autistic daughter kills it)… I’d like to ask those of you with the modern sets whether everything is properly adjustable so that standard broadcasts aren’t stretched across the screen? I’d like for people to NOT look like they’ve added 20 pounds when upright or stretched on a rack when they’re lying down.

    The widescreen DVDs and such show up properly, right?

  29. TruckerRon on 04 Apr 2012 at 8:32 pm #

    The reason I asked the above question is my limited experience with modern sets at motels and restaurants. I hope the owners are just being lazy and letting the sets default to the full-width mode with standard broadcasts.

  30. Mark in Boston on 04 Apr 2012 at 10:45 pm #

    There seem to be more aspect ratios than you can shake a stick at. A friend of mine just got an expensive new big-screen TV and I note that everything he watches seems to have a different aspect ratio. Sometimes there are narrow black bars at top and bottom; sometimes wide black bars. Sometimes there are narrow black bars at the sides; sometimes they are wide black bars. Sometimes the image fills the screen but it’s stretched or squeezed.

    The TV is supposed to “learn” over the first few minutes of program content and optimize the picture. Sometimes this makes an old movie not look like an old movie anymore. There’s something wrong about the motion, like the 24 fps jerkiness is gone (24 fps is OBVIOUSLY jerky; anybody can see it). It’s weird.

  31. TruckerRon on 04 Apr 2012 at 11:33 pm #

    The first time I watched anything on a plasma screen TV at a motel, a car commercial was running and I found myself wondering how a car could have oval tires. That was freaky weird!

  32. Galliglo in Ohio on 05 Apr 2012 at 6:43 am #

    Great strip today. At one time I was a “champion” at pop culture trivia. Now… I don’t know about anything if it happened in the last 20 years!

  33. Neal in Bahstawn on 05 Apr 2012 at 7:24 am #

    Regarding today’s strip – Assuming they don’t make direct eye contact, Arlo may be able to tell Janis that he has no idea who Jane Asher is, but c’mon…. Every teenaged guy in America (and the English-speaking world) panted after her.

  34. Karla on 05 Apr 2012 at 9:28 am #

    I had to Google Jane Asher. I love it when this place makes me do that! And, as much as I loved the Beatles in my early 20′s I’m ashamed to say I didn’t know who she was. (But I’m not old enough to have loved them when THEY were in their early 20′s).

  35. Lost in A**2 on 06 Apr 2012 at 7:27 pm #

    I still don’t. I looked at IMDb, but didn’t see anything I’ve seen. Some day, maybe, I’ll see “Alfie.”