A pithy comic strip about life, love, lust and puthy cats.

Est. 1985

Extra, Extra!

Forward to the Past

By Jimmy Johnson


Buy the new book, "Beaucoup Arlo & Janis!"Today's "Arlo & Janis!"
I scanned this old Sunday this morning, just for you. I drew a lot bigger back then! It took two passes on my 11X17 flat-bed scanner to get it all. That is the very reason I began drawing smaller, shortly after this cartoon appeared in 1995. It was about that time I started scanning the daily cartoons and digitally transmitting them to my editors in New York. I started drawing smaller so I could scan a cartoon in one pass of the scanner. It was sometime later before I began transmitting the Sunday cartoons, because they simply were too big to transmit by dial-up modem. As it was, I remember it would take 12 to 15 minutes to transmit six daily cartoons. Now, it takes about three seconds.

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314 responses to “Forward to the Past”

  1. Jackie Monies Avatar
    Jackie Monies

    For last six years, Mike has been wanting to build another larger boat but one to take down Mississippi, in Intracoastal Waterway, into Great Lakes, that kind of boat, not to cross the oceans. We have a friend in New Zealand who has been working on it during this time but boat has changed.

    First reiteration of boat was called The Rendezvous, a name I totally hated! Liked boat, hated name. Current rendition is a smaller power cruiser, not a sail boat, and named “Footloose” for the movie and song and hopefully won’t take as long to get built.
    All the materials are in our boat shop already, just waiting for plans.

    Designers usually name boat plans same way people pick restaurant names, to appeal to theme, or to help sell the boat.

    My friend has dozens of boats that sell all over world, Navigator, Pathfinder, but he has one I thought was a naming mistake: “Sweet Pea”, a good design but doesn’t sell well. (Mike likes it and wanted to build one for himself, did build one for a friend) I wrote friend and told him a boat named for a flower would not appeal to Americans much and he would be better to rename it something more

    Turned out boat was named for “Sweet Pea” the cartoon character baby in Popeye, the Sailor Man. My friend said that the baby was always so fast, he’d crawl off faster than anyone could catch him.

    Anyway, a good name can sell a restaurant, a boat or any other business. Somehow managed to weave all that together, stayed on topic, as Ghost would say.

    Love, Jackie

  2. Ghost Rider 6 Avatar
    Ghost Rider 6

    Debbe 😉 Well, perhaps Southern Comfort on my corn flakes in place of regular bourbon. And I’ll bet your Kahlua-from-long-ago story would compare with some of my tales. 🙂 (The link below is to an animated picture–you may have to wait a moment for it to start animating.)

    http://whatshouldnyucallme.tumblr.com/post/23149902848/when-ive-secretly-added-kahlua-to-my-cheerios

    If the bistro is to be anywhere near the Redneck Rivera, I still like “Le Café de Cou Rouge”.

    I usually just do a “drive-by” post on The Dark Side late at night and never bother to go back and look during the day. (Although I did a couple of days ago, for some reason, and commented again about what I think may be the basis of ML’s current behavior, because some there seemed to piling on her, and I like her.) But yes, many over there seem to try to put much too fine a point on elements of the story line. Others seem incapable of letting go of their pet theories, no matter how thoroughly overtaken by events they may become. And a few seem to be following an entirely different cartoon than the rest of us.

    But I think what that may demonstrate as much as anything is Jimmy’s genius for crafting an illustrated story that captures and holds the attention of such a wide variety of people. Including mine.

  3. Jackie Monies Avatar
    Jackie Monies

    Good, no make that great, analysis, Ghost! I never read them until about lunch after I get up, if at all, so I get full effect!

    I have decided Jimmy is genius in his art and story telling and has been for a long time. Look at the retro one up here for awhile— look at the various perspective of character, poses, the leg over couch. No talking heads here.

    Did anyone else notice that in last “new” strip the couch was longer, perspective had changed in distance Arlo and Janis were sitting apart?

    Love, Jackie

  4. Lilyblack Avatar

    Good afternoon, Villagers. I have been a busy Susie, we had overnight housepests and this woman seems to think I am a personal valet/maid for her.
    Ghost, there is a persistent element of The Dark Side that keeps insisting that Mary Lou is pregnant! Or might get pregnant! Those were the ones that mistook the heron for a stork. They have been doing that since the strip when Gene talked about “food for five,” even though it was obvious to most sane people that it was a poke at Arlo’s appetite.

  5. Jackie Monies Avatar
    Jackie Monies

    Wondered about you Suzie Did she thank you or offer a tip? I always accept tips, comments, say I will report it to the boss if they will give me their card? Or hand them a card and say please call this person here!

    Strange thing, coming back from grocery just now I saw a flock of around 20 birds soaring and circling over the lake, looked just like JJ’s bird, huge wing spans, white bodies with black under wings, tops of wings seemed white. No flapping of wings.

    We are on pelican migration routes and sometimes you see big flocks floating on lake. We get gull migrations, geese, ducks but these were huge birds and looked more like herons to me?

    I was in truck and almost ran off road!

    Love, Jackie

  6. Lilyblack Avatar

    Huh, a tip from Cruella DeVille? Maybe “Buy low and sell high.”

  7. sandcastlerâ„¢ Avatar
    sandcastlerâ„¢

    Le lieu de prédilection des coureurs fantomatiques des courants.

  8. Jackie Monies Avatar
    Jackie Monies

    Lily, I meant that under MOST circumstances I was the boss, so I handed them my own card and told them to call that number! Then if they did, I talked to them about whatever complaint they had about my “employee”, knowing I had already heard it!

    When people offered cash, I took it and said “Thank you”, never mind saying “No thank you, I’m the owner.” That is false pride.

    Love, Jackie

  9. Jackie Monies Avatar
    Jackie Monies

    Lily, I meant that under MOST circumstances I was the boss, so I handed them my own card and told them to call that number! Then if they did, I talked to them about whatever complaint they had about my “employee”, knowing I had already heard it!

    When people offered cash, I took it and said “Thank you”, never mind saying “No thank you, I’m the owner.” That is false pride.

    Love, Jackie

  10. Lilyblack Avatar

    Je vais avoir besoin d’un verre quand je rentre à la maison. Mais quoi d’autre i nouveau?

  11. Nodak Wayne Avatar
    Nodak Wayne

    Jackie, do you know if you are in the Whooping Crane flight line?

  12. emeritus minnesota biologist Avatar
    emeritus minnesota biologist

    Jackie: ‘flock of around 20 birds soaring and circling over the lake, looked just like JJ’s bird, huge wing spans, white bodies with black under wings, tops of wings seemed white. No flapping of wings. . . . in truck and almost ran off road.’

    Both white pelicans and whooping cranes can fly like that, if the thermals are right, but both have some black atop wings. Sounds like this was a brief [almost not brief enough] observation, and that you missed black atop wings. It’s easy to do that / short glimpses. I have the same problem, bird-watching while driving.

  13. Mark in TTown Avatar
    Mark in TTown

    Maybe this is the bird Jimmy had in mind: http://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Great_Egret/id

    The range looks right, as do the colors. Although he might have intended this to be a Blue Heron and the colorist just didn’t get it right.

  14. emeritus minnesota biologist Avatar
    emeritus minnesota biologist

    Long, drawn out overture, but a decent eruption.

    Great Blue and Great White herons are considered the same species, the all-white form being > common in the South. Great Egrets are smaller, Snowy Egrets smaller still, and Cattle Egrets still smaller. CE were strictly OW birds but crossed the Pond at its narrowest, Afr. to SA, on their own, early in the 20th C. [maybe late 19th] and are now the most numerous heron in NA, I think. Do a search.

    Don’t know about the flocking behavior of herons and egrets in general. . Living where he does, JJ might know his wading birds pretty well, but we don’t know if he meant a particular species or ssp. He may not have had a specific gull in mind at the kids’ wedding.

  15. Lilyblack Avatar

    Living in Texas, I can tell you cattle egrets abound and definitely flock

  16. Ghost Rider 6 Avatar
    Ghost Rider 6

    On a VFR flight down to Brownsville some years ago, I crossed over large fields with so many egrets flocked on the ground the area appeared snow-covered. Impressive.

    As was the TexMex dinner I had during my layover that evening. No lingerie floorshow like the ones in Mobile, but the food was wonderful. 🙂

    Here’s an idea for ML’s new eatery…French-TexMex fusion food. Chez Chipotle, perhaps?

  17. Ghost Rider 6 Avatar
    Ghost Rider 6

    Avez-vous eu votre boisson, cher Munchkin?

  18. Ghost Rider 6 Avatar
    Ghost Rider 6

    I just saw Matthew McConaughey in an online car commercial that made absolutely no sense. And the car was ugly.

  19. curmudgeonly ex-professor Avatar
    curmudgeonly ex-professor

    For a mixed European-style place, adapting a name from Bizet’s “Carmen”, how about “Chez Pasta”? One has the French “chez”, the Italian pasta, and the place in “Carmen” is Sevilla in Spain.
    From memory, the line goes “Pres des ramparts de Sevilla, chez mon ami Lillas Pastia….”. Yep, there is an extra “i”.

  20. Mark in TTown Avatar
    Mark in TTown

    Since they want to serve fresh food, partially grown by themselves, why not translate The Farmer’s Kitchen into French and go with that?

  21. Mark in TTown Avatar
    Mark in TTown

    Here is Google’s translation: la cuisine de l’agriculteur

  22. sandcastlerâ„¢ Avatar
    sandcastlerâ„¢

    I offer up, famille cuisine de la ferme, family farm kitchen. It combines: family, local framing, and the simplicity of the rural cooking.

  23. sandcastlerâ„¢ Avatar
    sandcastlerâ„¢

    Or, Ritz Cracker Barrel.