We’re more than 20 years down the road since this 1993 A&J appeared, and a lot of people still are waiting to find out what they’re going to be doing. Now, I’m going to waste a large portion of your day. We’ve been talking about Web sites. Search “wayback machine archives” and type “arloandjanis.com” in the search field. Find your way back to dozens upon dozens of old A&J Web sites, including the old FrontPage sites, some of which were pretty awesome if I say so myself. So, let’s not worry today about the future.
Profit of Doom!
By Jimmy Johnson
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109 responses to “Profit of Doom!”
The future continues to grow shorter as the naps grow longer.
I mentioned yesterday how much I enjoyed Jimmy’s earlier blogs. I think that his email got pretty full from a bunch of us writing him. I don’t do it as much as I did back then, but when I got a response from him, it was pretty cool. JJ was a “friend” before there was Facebook!
Some of the photos on the old A&J site from late 2005 are still painful to look at. On the bright side, some of the entries reminded me of something I didn’t learn about until later…The Hurricane Cartoon Auction Jimmy held to raise recovery funds. (I must have been distracted at the time…something about a demolished house, probably.)
I meant to email a message of appreciation to him when I found out about it, something I cannot now remember if I did or not. If not, belatedly, “Thank you, Jimmy.”
To add another layer to the fruitcake discussion, has anyone ever had or made “Refrigerator Fruit Cake”?
GR6, did the refrigerator thing once. Was not a failure, Loon stands clearly on the anti- fruit cake front and I was eating it all winter.
JJ, don’t say this often enough, thank you for a daily sanity moment. Just survived a lunch meeting that makes web page design look like a stroll through Gory Park. It is through your artistic and writing skills, plus the Village folks, that I have not yet been committed to the John Nash sanitarium.
I loved getting a signed drawing from Jimmy for donating a blanket to the Katrina victims. It is still on a shelf above the bed….
Here’s a neat story that emb will probably like: http://www.al.com/news/birmingham/index.ssf/2014/12/this_bald_eagle_had_a_surprise.html#incart_river
Huzzahs for the recent comics that are not to be found on GoComics. I have always enjoyed ancient history. 🙂
And yes, I emailed Our Bard back in the day and got a very gracious response as well, but that was a Long, Long Time Ago. How long was it? We were both on AmericaOnline.
@ Steve from Royal Oak, Mi & JJ
My copy of the drawing is framed and hanging in the room we call the office. We were happy to help out and send a blanket.
I tried the “wayback machine archives” thing and got nowhere. How is this done, step-by-step? Yes, I entered the A&J site into the search area….
cxp, if you get the page that has a calendar, find a year you want to look at. click on the year at the top of the page, look for days in the monthly calendar that are highlighted. Those are the saved links. Click on the date and then pick your link. For some reason the images aren’t coming up on the 1998 saves for me.
Oh Glory Be! The Wayback Machine Archive saved the I-thought-they-were-gone-forever daily comments. I’m in digital heaven.
I went to Google and searched for ‘wayback machine archives’ and got this link.
http://archive.org/web/
I enter the above and there’s a search box there and that’s where you put
arlonandjanis.com
When the results come back, there’s a bar at the top that’s a slider for the dates.
Kind of tricky in a way.
I have a large list of direct links for the old 2004-2006 time frame. Think
I’ll stick to them.
Here is snippet from an A&J.com with the old blog on February 23 2006:
I saw Arlo last night. It was a rare treat. He came onstage at the Opelika Center for the Performing Arts and by way of introduction said, “I’ve been doing this for 40 years, and I thought I’d been just about everywhere, but they found a place I hadn’t.” Then, he and his band, The Massacree, proceeded to mesmerize with two and a half hours of music, 20 minutes of it taken up with his trademark song “Alice’s Restaurant.”
Arlo and The Massacree closed the regular show with his father Woody’s most famous song, “This Land Is Your Land,” including the seldom-heard final stanza:
Nobody living can ever stop me
As I go walking
That freedom highway.
Nobody living can make me turn back.
This land was made for you and me
Which brings us to the question, was Arlo the cartoon character named after Arlo Guthrie? Only indirectly. Maybe. When I was in college, I had a friend named Pat Wingo, who had long, kinky hair resembling the young Arlo Guthrie, who was just becoming well known at that time. Pat’s nickname among our crowd was “Arlo,” because of his hair. Years later, casting about for an arresting name to give a cartoon character, I recalled the name Arlo. Exactly which synapses in my brain produced the suggestion is open to interpretation. Of course, “Janis” seemed a good match for “Arlo.”
That’s not to say I’m not an earnest fan of Woody Guthrie and his dedicated, talented and funny son Arlo. I am.
I’m running dreadfully late today. For now, I’m going to leave you with only today’s newspaper cartoon. (02/23/2006)
And don’t forget, you have to read the older websites from the bottom up to get
chronological order.
Tom in Glendora, but as Ghost said above, the old comments are available on the wayback saved links. And Jimmy’s commentaries with the retro strip of the day.
Lot of screen names from 2011 that no longer appear. Wish they would come back, the more the merrier! Most times anyway. Noticed a debbie posting in these 2011 dates. Is that the same debbe who posts now?
No, Mark, “debbie” was not the same as “Debbe”. debbie was a hospital medical transcriptionist who was a great fan of Jimmy and A&J, and a regular commenter on the blog for two or three years. (She was, I believe, the first to propose an “Arlo and Janis Get-Together”.) Apparently she had some issues in her personal life that lead her to stop commenting. After she had been absent for a while, she directed one comment to me, but that was quite some time ago. The last thing I recall seeing from her was an email to Jimmy on the occasion of Gene’s wedding. I’ve directed an occasional comment to her, but I’ve never had a response.
I still miss her.
Mark:
Yes, emb was happy to read that item, rather touched actually. 27 years! Birds are generally long lived for their size. Many dicky birds live that long in captivity, and I expect eagles can live 40 years or more. But, in the wild, that’s an achievement. I bucked the URL to a couple of my blind-copy groups.
Thanks, emb
Taking a random look at some of the old comments has just reinforced my feeling that this blog has *always* been a fun, friendly and informative place. In fact, here’s a comment from six years ago that I happened across:
“For my money, this is the best blog on the ’net…informative, humorous, sometimes silly, but always civil.
“‘For me, politeness is a sine qua non of civilization.’ – Robert A. Heinlein”
And no, that wasn’t one of my comments.
emb, you are welcome. I remembered you as having a real interest in birds. So I thought you would like the story of the 27-year-old eagle. She certainly looked alert and in good condition in the pictures which accompanied the story.
Not read any above posts…)
Meanwhile…some thirty years later………………..
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_cPxKq-gMDo
….and then we became “digitally remaster”………………..
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_cPxKq-gMDo
I know what Santa is going to buy herself…..earplugs…Boze 🙂
goodnight…..
Debbe 😉 A saxy Christmas song…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5aw2yuYAKoE