Apr 24th 2012 07:54 am From hair to eternity
Today’s retro strip is from 1999 and is the last A&J strip routinely featuring Janis with long hair. I’ll post a few more from this not insignificant series in coming days, but I’m running late today. Come back tomorrow for the first look at Janis with short hair.
Posted by jimmyjohnson / Vintage A&J
54 Responses to “From hair to eternity”
David from La Grange on 24 Apr 2012 at 8:33 am #
Was Janis’ shorter hair an aesthetic decision, or because you could draw her quicker?
Sylvia in MS on 24 Apr 2012 at 8:34 am #
Just got mine cut about 2 weeks ago. I had grown it long because I wanted to see what it would be like to have long, flowing hair. Realized it wasn’t that wonderful. Hard to keep “fixed”. Made me look OLD! Should have cut it shorter long before now. Keep getting compliments on it. Makes me wonder what they thought before!
Hurd in Bay Minette on 24 Apr 2012 at 8:36 am #
Its time for the summer haircut. shorter and easier to deal with.
Tom (somewhere in Georgia) on 24 Apr 2012 at 8:44 am #
JJ- did your fans vote on the choices for this hairstyle or was that later?
Nancy in Bucks County on 24 Apr 2012 at 8:50 am #
As a product of the Farah Fawcett era, cutting your hair short was not an easy decision. Motherhood made the decision for me. Chasing toddlers left little time for hair maintenance. That being said, my hubby still pines for the long tresses of the Farah days. And now, as a mature woman, my response is, “Get over it!”
Mindy on 24 Apr 2012 at 8:56 am #
Big hair. Why do men like big hair? Robert A. Heinlein wrote, truthfully, and this is not a verbatim quote, that a woman with her hair cut off is a woman.
Blinky the Wonder Wombat on 24 Apr 2012 at 9:42 am #
Mindy-
I think men think they like women with long hair because culturally we associate long hair with youth.
DW had shoulder length hair when we first started dating (she was 19 years old) but she had it cut short a month later, never to grow it long again. Personally, I find when it is cut right (and that varies from woman to woman), short hair much more attractive. In fact I think long hair on a mature woman looks bizarre. Still, I’m not sure if I was the impetus for DW to cut her hair and what that means…
Mindy on 24 Apr 2012 at 9:43 am #
Now I have a serious question. [Which proves Sandcastler's theory that I have too much time to spare?] I just spent an hour looking for the remote control thing. Today’s real time A&J made me realize it was missing, oddly enough. Anyway, I found it and realized that we don’t change channels all that often; we change the volume. Constantly. Which made me think…
The volume “button” is a rectangle. It has a line scribed left to right [that's another question: would the line be "horizontal" since it's on the same plane as the "button" itself?] and above the line is to turn the volume up and below the line is to turn the volume down. So far, so good, but it’s not like an on/off button. It’s more like two-buttons-in-one. And therein lies the question: is it the volume button or, due to it’s two-sided nature, is it the volume buttons? In which the question would be, more correctly, are “they” the volume buttons, but that can’t be since there’s only one and one isn’t plural…
I’m going to go fight bamboo.
John in Richmond Texas on 24 Apr 2012 at 9:44 am #
Hey, Phil mentioned me yesterday, Hi, just Root beer for me though, thanks I know you told me the group you were with, but I didn’t see it on a schedule or anything.
A few days ago I had a whole lot to say about preserving Super 8 film and old vinyls but the subject got away. I never miss any comments, but I’ve been scanning them pretty fast, I’ve been going through the ordeal of placing Mom in a nursing home – that is one crushing task – mentally – emotionally and even physically – I lost a few pounds.
I’ve always found all different lengths of hair just right on the right woman, long and luxurious or short and spunky and in-between all work differently on different women.
John in Richmond Texas on 24 Apr 2012 at 9:46 am #
Mindy – I’m still working on is one leg a pant?
Mindy on 24 Apr 2012 at 10:14 am #
It’s too windy outside to be working in the bamboo jungle. I can’t hear the Viet Spiders sneaking up on me. [The last one I caught doing that I hit 27 times {someone counted} with a 9-pound hammer I'd been using on stalks. The spider was a confirmed kill.]
Anyway, John in [the other] Richmond, I’ll give you a bigger pants related problem. I was always taught that men wore trousers and women wore slacks ["jeans" are unisexual]. “Pants” were undies. Which is why mothers always insist, “Keep your pants on!” Bet you didn’t know that.
Isn’t it amazing, JJ, just how diversified postings in here become? And all because you used a remote control gizmo! I’m fascinated by just how many uses there are for small battery powered contraptions and how much a part of our every day life they’ve become. I’ll have to take the time to count them around the house since the Bamboo War has been put on hold.
Dave in MA on 24 Apr 2012 at 10:18 am #
Mindy, It’s “A” button (singular) that activates one of two different switches (plural) – how’s that?
John in Richmond Texas. I run a business out of my home preserving home movie film (8mm and Super8) with frame by frame scanning, color correction, speed correction, full frame viewable on standard TV despite overscanning/underscanning of some TVs, etc. Been doing this for years.
I just encountered my first Super8 film with sound. I can’t do sound. I can transfer the images for the woman, but not the sound. There’s equipment to do it, but I don’t have that equipment. I’m tempted to thread the film (after transfer) onto one of my reel to reel players and see if I can line either the mag stripe or the balance stripe up with one of the channels on the head to see if I can hear anything. Just because it’s sound film doesn’t mean they had sound equipment. It’s Fotomat film, which would have been in the 70s most likely, and in the 70s, near the end of the life of most people’s use of movie film, it was getting harder to find film. It’s possible they settled for the more expensive sound film to run through a silent camera. I’ll have to check with the owner to see if she remembers anything.
Obviously if the film is a talking head, I’ll presume there was sound and have to advise her on somewhere else to have the work done for these few rolls that had the mag sound stripe on them.
As for records, I still have thousands, and a working turntable, although I also have thousands of CDs, and many different format of reel to reel decks (Professional 600 pound decks with half track stereo up to 30 ips, and home decks with quarter track 4 channel down to 3 3/4 ips) for most formats and speeds of 1/4″ tape, plus a tape baking setup. I transfer reels for record labels looking to do catalog releases on newer digital formats as well as home users looking to recover their old home recordings with mom/dad/grandma/grandpa’s voice on them, etc.
Love preserving old analog family memories of all types for today’s generations.
I have a working cassette desk with Dolby B, C, and dbx, plus a working 8-track recorder.
I actually got into the planning stages with a Canadian record company a few years back to do a novelty release of one of their CDs as an 8-track cartridge just for giggles, but while I can find plenty of new old stock blank cartridges, custom timed cartridges seem to be no longer available.
I also handle most formats of video tape from 3/4″ to VHS to many digital formats, but no beta (either old analog or digital versions).
I don’t have any of the old open reel video decks, too many formats to maintain and too little call for them.
Alas, it’s getting harder and harder to get working units for most of the video formats. Reel to reel decks for audio are constantly being refurbished by knowledgeable engineers so there will still be a supply of units, and parts, for some time to come.
And film transfer equipment is still being made, custom units with HD and sound are even out there now. Truly wonderful results. Wish I could afford them.
John in Virginia on 24 Apr 2012 at 11:06 am #
Dave in MA, the proverbial “kid down the street” actually exists here and the guy, who is about 15, converted reel-to-reel to his Dad so it uses VHS tape! Talk about some audio fidelity even for us fossils with hearing shot out by too many guns! I would ask him how he did it but I wouldn’t understand and I’m afraid the government is watching him to see if he escaped from Area 51 or something. How come the kids can pick up all this electronic and computer stuff between Twinkies and Cokes and I’m still trying to figure out how to program the DVD player I got last year?
Jim on 24 Apr 2012 at 11:06 am #
So Jimmy, not to change the subject… but in the current strips whatever happened to the Gene storyline with the new house, child and possible marriage on the horizon? That story was getting interesting and then just fell off the earth.
Just wondering!
Thanks a bunch!
Jim
John in Virginia on 24 Apr 2012 at 11:06 am #
I have no idea at all WHY he did the conversion except may because he could?
David on 24 Apr 2012 at 11:54 am #
Janis with short hair looks (I think) just like my wife. Especially in the black and white strips, where the lighter color resembles her smattering of gray (which I like). It’s kind of surreal, really, to open A&J everyday and see your wife in an alternate universe…
Nancy in Bucks County on 24 Apr 2012 at 12:14 pm #
Do we cut our hair or our hairs?
Bob, near Mark on 24 Apr 2012 at 12:18 pm #
Do you go to get a hairscut or some haircuts?
Mindy on 24 Apr 2012 at 12:20 pm #
Hair, Nancy, as a single entity made up of myriad parts, all designed to make it difficult to look halfway decent in the morning.
Okay, Dave, that makes sense I reckon, so the two-way thingie is a button.
Now it’s started to rain/drizzle so the bamboo is really out of the question. Drat. I’d hoped to make another dent in the beast!
Blinky the Wonder Wombat on 24 Apr 2012 at 12:26 pm #
John in RT-
The word “pants” is derived from “pantaloons”. Each pantaloon was separate from each other, so they were sort of like leggings. The codpeice covered the naughty bits and held up the pantaloons.
phil in Missoula, MT on 24 Apr 2012 at 12:36 pm #
John, I used to play with Fish and Chips, but I don’t think they were at Dickens this year and I wasn’t in any case, the commute being a bit much. I still have a son in the area there so we’ll be returning from time to time.
My sympathy about putting your Mom in a nursing home. We just did the same with my mother-in-law. A rotten experience all around. We finally had to trick her to get her into assisted living because she was a danger to herself in her dementia, but after she was there she was much happier. Now she is in the nursing home and happy enough but her memory span is about 5 minutes at best.
A fellow here died of a heart attack while snorkeling in Hawaii. That’s the way I want to go.
Dave in MA on 24 Apr 2012 at 12:54 pm #
Hair is not only singular, it is the plural collective, so yes, cutting your hair involves all of them, or one of them. Nice and ambiquous.
(And I have no idea if I spelled that right.)
I do get a haircut. I also do get haircuts. However, I believe the phrase that “Bob, near Mark” was looking for is “hairs cut”. Do we get a haircut or do we get hairs cut.
Haircuts, yes, I’ve had hundreds during my lifetime, so plural is accurate.
Mindy, yes, “the two-way thingie is a button”. And that’s a good technical word for that thingie.
Or to quote George Harrison in “Help!” – “it’s a fiendish thingie!”
Mindy said, “Drat. I’d hoped to make another dent in the beast!” careful. Denting beasts tends to just make them angry.
Phil, heart attack while snorkeling? Too scary. I’d much rather die in my sleep like my grandfather did, not screaming and yelling like the passengers in the car he was driving at the time.
Dave in MA on 24 Apr 2012 at 12:54 pm #
And for those of you who are shocked, don’t worry, that last bit was just a joke I like to repeat.
Dave in MA on 24 Apr 2012 at 1:24 pm #
Just typed it up. It’s way too long for here. Will post it to a web server tonight so people can read it once I post the link.
sandcastler on 24 Apr 2012 at 2:12 pm #
Phil, Jerry Bittle, the cartoonist that did the Geech strip, went out diving. I just hope to see the bullet coming, always been told it is the one you don’t. From experience I know the misses whine.
sandcastler on 24 Apr 2012 at 2:13 pm #
Don’t hear. Drarts!!!!
Steve from Royal Oak, MI on 24 Apr 2012 at 2:43 pm #
Yes I love it when asked if I got my haircut, I respond “Yep all of them.” It gets old though.
But you do bring up another issue that a buddy who is a beat writer for the Tigers fights with. There are people who state that a two run double should be said “The batter got 2 RBI rather than 2 RBI’s. The plural of the word is Runs, so they argue that in general. people are saying 2 runs batted ins.
Which brings up another question: It is 10 POWs or 10 POW in a camp? In this acronyn, the plural is in Prisoner and not in wars.
My opinion? “Who Cares?”
Bob, near Mark on 24 Apr 2012 at 4:06 pm #
Dave in MA,
If you look back at the post, I did say “hairscut,” but without a space.
Bob, near Mark on 24 Apr 2012 at 4:10 pm #
Steve from Royal Oak,
Then, more than one RBI should be RsBI?
Same with in-laws. If you’re a polygamist with more that one wife, you have multiple mothers-in-law! Some would say that’s a punishment to fit the crime.
Bob, near Mark on 24 Apr 2012 at 4:11 pm #
Arghhh! More THAN one wife!
Nancy in Bucks County on 24 Apr 2012 at 4:55 pm #
Do I have sons-in-law or son-in-laws? Reminds me of that old song, This is the song that never ends…
Mary in Ohio on 24 Apr 2012 at 5:02 pm #
“There was not a single survivor.”
What about the married ones?
Steve: What’s the difference between in-las and outlaws?
Outlaws are wanted.
Mary in Ohio on 24 Apr 2012 at 5:02 pm #
Oh Steve I’ll bet you knew I meant inLAWS, not LAS.
Bob, near Mark on 24 Apr 2012 at 5:53 pm #
Nancy in Bucks County,
The song that I’m reminded of is “I’m My Own Grandpa.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eYlJH81dSiw
for the Ray Stevens version.
And if you have married daughters, what you have are sons-in-law… usually.
Mark in Boston on 24 Apr 2012 at 6:29 pm #
What happens in-las stays in-las.
Mindy on 24 Apr 2012 at 6:51 pm #
Sons-in-law, Nancy. I read somewhere, it may have been in a law book back when I had to spend a bunch of time in a lawyer’s office sitting on my…anyway, spouses may be divorced and become Ex. In-laws, however, are forever. Oh, my God, that’s just disgusting! [In some cases! Only in some cases!]
Quick! Someone comment on the weather or something! I dood it again!
Jerry in Fl on 24 Apr 2012 at 7:20 pm #
Posted in the wrong place for the umpteenth time. If you are still with me that thing that you have your right hand on is a mouse. Two of them would be what? Watched Steve McQueen in Bullitt last night for the first time. Loved the movie and all of the vintage cars. The answer to the bamboo problem-plant kudzu around it. I promise you the bamboo will disappear forever. What happened to the Appearances column? Is the world tour over? On the subject of baseball, Pensacola has a new pro team-the Blue Wahoos. I’ve never been to a game, but I wonder what the fans yell. Probably something like the old Yahoo commercial. Now that winter has finally arrived I suppose that we will build an Uncle Sam out of snow for the 4th of July. How do you make snow red and blue? No yellow snow answers please.
Steve from Royal Oak, MI on 24 Apr 2012 at 7:20 pm #
Mary, in some parts of the country they call in-laws cousins….
Mindy: When we start talking about the weather, we get into arguments. Maybe a better discussion is Sox. I hope everyone practices safe socks. Socks are especially dangerous in the dryer, where they go in but never come out.
Jerry in Fl on 24 Apr 2012 at 7:24 pm #
Mindy, I tried, but I expect that Steve’s subject will now take the lead. No sex is safe and I have a stack of divorce papers to prove it.
Mindy on 24 Apr 2012 at 7:50 pm #
I am sooooooooooooooo lost!
Tom on flat land on 24 Apr 2012 at 8:07 pm #
Was the hairstyle change due to a life changing event? Early hairstyle Janis resembled Rheta, the later, shorter style…not so much.
CW in 617 on 24 Apr 2012 at 8:17 pm #
Acknowledging Bob near Mark’s remark about sons-in-law:
When when of my many uncles passed away a few years back, his obituary named his three sons and two daughters, and added that he was survived by “three sons-in-law and two daughters-in law.”
Not a typo! Do the math!
Charlotte in NH on 24 Apr 2012 at 8:37 pm #
Dave in MA, I am SO impressed with all the work you do with the various media. It’s so technical, but it’s fascinating. I have no home movies, but do have a lot of family events on videotape; we have a working VCR, hope it lasts a long time. Also have many audiotapes of music, and tape decks, also hope they are long lasting. It would be nice to transfer them, but I don’t see it happening. Art is long, life is short.
Mark in TTown on 24 Apr 2012 at 9:21 pm #
Charlotte, and the life of videotape is short as well. I have read that the biggest problem causing loss of existing works is the rapid change in storage media. As the media change, the ability to play back existing material is lost in the process. For example, the open-reel videotape Dave in MA mentioned. Think of old computer languages and games. If I upgrade to Windows 7 I will lose the opportunity to play most of my game collection. That is why I prefer real books to the electronic variety. No incompatible formats or locked-out copies. Just pick it up and read.
Bob, near Mark on 24 Apr 2012 at 9:49 pm #
CW in 617,
There are a couple of ways that could have occurred. One son could be unmarried, and one daughter may have married twice. Either that, or one of the sons is in a marriage where both individuals wear the same hosiery – a same-socks marriage.
BTW, I used to be in 617, but am no longer, and I didn’t move. Durned phone company!
John in Richmond Texas on 24 Apr 2012 at 10:11 pm #
I had my life from age 10 to 28 (1968 – 1986) on super 8. I was the one using the camera, it was me and my friends doing dumb stuff, then morphed into more adult things, as I got my own family. I had done the telecine boxes and stuff but was never really satisfied so I finally sent it all off to yesvideo.com. I had 20 400 foot reels, so it was pricey. But some of the early stuff was too embarrassing for any stranger to see, so I got a small manual BAIA viewer-editor on ebay and cut out a few snips. yesvideo.com does super 8 sound, I got a sound camera near the end (but not projector) and did a couple rolls, but they were silent, I had messed it up somehow. It’s bizarre watching your life, but I have lots of priceless film of all over Houston of decades ago. I went to work at JVC in 1979 and waited for the second generation of VHS-C camcorder, I would have hated to be stuck with the full size VHS system with separate recorder and camera. I have a (now old !) Philips CD recorder I used for my tapes and LP’s and keep all the equipment because I sometimes find weird obscure records on ebay. Real audiophile artistes still make LP’s, even have a section in Best Buy .
Recording only sound on VHS was the way people got their radio talk shows before websites.
Phil – that’s pretty much my Mother, but she has a little southern belle in her and as long as people are waiting on her, she’s happy but she mostly sleeps.
And is there a singular of scissors and troop is another word that’s singular and plural
Jerry in Fl on 25 Apr 2012 at 12:06 am #
And one of the children could have been married and died leaving an in-law as a survivor. I don’t know how anyone learns English. Notice that I am referring to many people with a word that contains “one”. A crowd of a million people “is” a singular thing. My wife and I disagree on whether “they” can refer to a single person or not. I say that it can. I’ve aked this question before. Does anyone remember? What is the English word with the most different meanings? It’s a common everyday word and contains only three letters. Tomorrow, the return of the earthquake crackpot.
Mindy from Indy on 25 Apr 2012 at 8:40 am #
Jerry in FL
I’ve heard it referred to as the “singular they” – if the gender of the person is unknown or speaking in general terms. As US English doesn’t have a popularly accepted general neutral pronoun for humans (We did btw, thee or thou.), and writing he/she, he or she, or alternating between he and she are all annoying, people use the singular they. It’s been going on for hundreds of years, so even though grammar Nazis (I have a mild case myself, but it’s mainly about homophones and punctuation.) freak out when they see it, it isn’t that bad.
Re:Bullitt – Loved the movie (McQueen and cars!) but it is definately a product of it’s time. I just can’t take a cardigan-wearing cop seriously.
Re: red and blue snow – food dye.
Steve from RO You lose socks in the washer, not the dryer. They get caught under the agitator and pulled into the sides of the drum. The dryer gets blamed because no one counts socks before putting them into the dryer.
Jerry in Fl on 25 Apr 2012 at 10:27 am #
I bel
.ieve that Steve wore turtleneks, which I never liked, but I think that it would have been a mistake not to take him seriously. Also, I believe that he died of prostate cancer. Guys, get that lab work done. Don’t listen to that slow moving BS.
Jerry in Fl on 25 Apr 2012 at 10:31 am #
Sorry, an earthquake hit as I began my comment. Saving my real earthquake comment for later when Cilla isn’t “helping” me type.
Mindy from Indy on 25 Apr 2012 at 4:08 pm #
Steve McQueen was awesome and I do respect him as an actor. However he does rock a cardigan in the film (along with the aforementioned turtleneck). What struck me most about the film (besides the sweater) was the soundtrack, or lack thereof. Never would happen in a movie today.
Mark in Boston on 25 Apr 2012 at 4:44 pm #
The word with the most meanings is “set”. Mathematicians added another one when they invented set theory.
Why is it called a “TV set” when you get only one? Well, originally it wasn’t only one. Video and audio are two separate circuits. In the experimental days of the 1920′s you had to build one receiver for the picture and a different one for the sound.
Gary in PNS on 25 Apr 2012 at 5:12 pm #
Jerry in FL: Have been to several Blue Wahoos games, and the fans chant “lets go Wahoos”. Go catch a game sometime, you will be impressed with the Waterfront Park and the tesm staff.
Gary in PNS on 25 Apr 2012 at 5:14 pm #
That’s TEAM sttaff.