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

Est. 1985

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The Big Fib

By Jimmy Johnson


Buy the new book, "Beaucoup Arlo & Janis!"Today's "Arlo & Janis!"
From 1994, Arlo & Janis gets serious. Well, not really. Or not. Really. Yesterday, I tuned in to the Liberty Bowl in Memphis, and it stirred an old memory from my boyhood. It was a bit surreal. I wasn’t sure memory was serving me well, so I looked it up online, and there it was confirmed. The 1964 Liberty Bowl, featuring the Utah Utes and the West Virginia Mountaineers (one of the teams in the 2014 version), was played in Atlantic City. Indoors. So what, you ask? I’m glad you did. This was before the era of domed stadiums. The Astrodome had not yet opened. This was the first indoor college football game ever. It was played in the Atlantic City Convention Hall, a cavernous building that had hosted, among other things, a national political convention, but it was not a sports stadium. Four-inch-thick sod was brought in to build the playing surface over a concrete floor, and the end zones were shortened from the regulation 10 yards to eight. And I remembered watching that on TV. I guess it would make an impression on a young sports fan. Utah won, 32-6. The next year, the bowl moved to Memphis, where it has remained. You could look it up.

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68 responses to “The Big Fib”

  1. Steve from Royal Oak, Mi Avatar

    Jimmy:

    I did not see it,but I did see a picture of it in a “Year in Review” book that we got with our encyclopedias. If I recall, the field was not quite a regulation field, but certainly bigger than the Arena Football league games.

    The Astrodome planned to use real grass, but the field never go enough light and the glare from the roof was so bad, that they had to paint it. That lead to Astroturf.

  2. Steve from Royal Oak, Mi Avatar

    Oops, it looks like I didn’t see your comment about the shortened end zones. I found it interesting that the TV rights were $95,000 and the attendance was just over 6,000. Not much less than a few games with small schools that were played this year! But the TV money allowed the organizers to recoup their investment, but the schools probably lost money. They did, however, get TV exposure.

  3. Jerry in Fl Avatar
    Jerry in Fl

    Well I swan. Who would have thunk that it would have started such a discussion?

  4. Jerry in Fl Avatar
    Jerry in Fl

    Thanks for telling us about TCM Remembers. I’m always shocked when I see who died during the year because I don’t remember some of them have died. This year gave a special tug on the heart because so many of my old favorites didn’t survive the year.

  5. James Riendeau Avatar
    James Riendeau

    You can’t put up a comic strip like that and not define the “big lie”. Is it that nuclear annihilation is imminent, so we must spend godless amounts of money protecting the world? Is it that the welfare queens are bankrupting the country? Is it you have a civic duty to spend more than you make to keep the economy from collapsing? Is it that drugs are bad, mmmmmkay?

  6. Ghost Rider 6 Avatar
    Ghost Rider 6

    In case you ever wondered why New Orleans needed an enclosed stadium…

    Alabama met Ole Miss in the Sugar Bowl, played at Tulane Stadium, on January 1, 1964. New Orleans got six inches of snow the night before. Bama won, 12-7, with all of their points coming from field goals. By all accounts, it was a cold and miserable day, on the field and off.

  7. Ghost Rider 6 Avatar
    Ghost Rider 6

    Actually, our Gubmint controls its citizens with laws, and by extension, taxes. Who are these people bemoaning the fact that the current Congress passed “only” 296 bills this session? Do you know how many Federal laws there are on the books already?* (At least enough to likely make each and every one of you reading this some kind of felon, whether you know it or not.) I suspect we might all be better off if Congress met in January of each year; dealt with pressing business for 90 days; and then went the hell home until the next January, subject to recall for emergencies.

    * No, you do not. According to several sources I checked, even the Federal Government does not know exactly how many laws it has on the books.

  8. Ghost Rider 6 Avatar
    Ghost Rider 6

    Debbe 😉 Glad it was Old Dell that crashed and not you, hon. Yes, my life is back to what I laughingly refer to as normal. Last week was the best one my Mom has had since she was hospitalized a couple of months ago. I am for the moment encouraged.

    Jean dear, as I believe I once mentioned. I’ve heard that in the South one woman can say most anything about another woman (who is not present) and get away with it, as long as she suffixes her remark with “…bless her heart.”

    sand, vis-à-vis the possible existence of any Giada sex tapes, I’ll simply say that there may be more than one way to sweat over a hot stove.

  9. NealinBawstun Avatar

    According to this morning’s Boston Globe, there are 38 bowl games this year. In 1971 there were 11. The question no one can answer is ‘why?’

  10. billinbossier Avatar
    billinbossier

    Today’s strip. I completely understand how Arlo feels. Mine does the same thing.

  11. Mark in TTown Avatar
    Mark in TTown

    NealinBawstun, I can answer it quite simply: $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

    Not everybody is taken in by that lure, though. The University of Alabama Birmingham cancelled their football program after the end of the season this year. Reason given, cost outweighed the benefits and they can spend the money on other sports where they do better.

  12. sandcastlerâ„¢ Avatar
    sandcastlerâ„¢

    Sometimes “The Big Fib” is a cover for the big secret. This case in point; http://venturebeat.com/2014/12/29/cia-takes-blame-for-more-than-half-of-ufo-sightings-in-late-1950s-and-60s/
    Seems the CIA knew there was UFO’s, it was named the U-2. They also used pigeon cams, sounds like something from “Get Smart.” The truth and Hollywood both create the unbelievable.

  13. Lynn from Memphis Avatar
    Lynn from Memphis

    🙂

  14. Jerry in Fl Avatar
    Jerry in Fl

    Remember the east-west blue gray north south bowl for left handed seniors?

  15. emeritus minnesota biologist Avatar
    emeritus minnesota biologist

    I’ve not yet read anything posted after 0600 this morning, and will not be able to send msgs out from early morning tomorrow until whenever.

    OF webcam essentially covered w/ snow.

    TIP BlogSpot not bad.

    http://thatispriceless.blogspot.com/

    Peace, emb

  16. sandcastlerâ„¢ Avatar
    sandcastlerâ„¢

    Jerry, that bowl was played in Cincinnati on New Year’s Day. If I recall correctly, is was sponsored by WKRP. Only the first half was played, as the half time entry of the New Year Baby went tragically wrong.

  17. Steve from Richmond Avatar
    Steve from Richmond

    “You could look it up.” Do we now start referring to you as the old perfessor?

  18. TruckerRon Avatar

    No one has to tell me that drugs are or are not bad. As a chaplain, I work with dual-diagnosis patients at the state hospital.

  19. Ruth Avatar
    Ruth

    Jimmy, you were a man ahead of your time with today’s retro panel. I was sure you must have loaded the wrong cartoon and given us a soon to be published one. Then I saw the year was 1994. It is still as true today as it was when. A truly timeless strip.

  20. Rick in Shermantown, Ohio Avatar
    Rick in Shermantown, Ohio

    Jimmy:

    Nice nod to J. Thurber, one of my favorite humorists.

    If you’re ever in Downtown Columbus, be sure to visit the Thurber House.

  21. Tom (formerly) from the Front Range Avatar
    Tom (formerly) from the Front Range

    In 1981 (or maybe 82) the ANPA (American Newspaper Publishers Association) held their trade show in that convention center. The company I worked for had the stage for its booth. It was a time when every exhibiting company had at least one computer in the booth and these were not PC’s but mini’s like PDP 11’s, Data Generals, IBM 360’s, etc. The show was in June, the building was hot because the ancient air conditioning could not keep 500 computers and 5000 people cool. Heat rises and heads for the stage. We bought every fan in every store in Atlantic City to keep our equipment from melting down. Between the noise of these fans, the equipment itself and the roar caused by the Quonset hut shaped ceiling echoing all this noise, demonstrating our goods became a nightmare. Other vendors had the same problems. The net result was that virtually every represented company said they would never attend another trade show in that venue. The ANPA (now the NNA) got the message.

  22. Mark in TTown Avatar
    Mark in TTown

    In answer to James above, some truths: the misuse of drugs is bad, the misuse of guns is bad, the misuse of governmental authority is bad, the misuse of automobiles is bad. I could go on, but you get the idea. All of these things have their proper use and can help us when they are used that way. But we don’t abandon all of them because some people choose to misuse them. That would bring another old saying to mind: Throwing out the baby with the bathwater.

  23. Mindy from Indy Avatar
    Mindy from Indy

    Off on a kitty related tangent –

    I traverse the Internets via a Samsung tablet. Invariably, I am holding the tablet upside-down after a while, I have no idea why. Normally, it isn’t an issue, except when Blacklight enters the equation. She has latched on to a new “thing” while she is in my lap: both rear paws *must* rest on my hand/forearm. I tend to hold the tablet left-handed, leaving my right hand free for kitty scritches. Blacklight will contort herself in the course of scritches, and trap my hand and arm between the back of the couch and her back paws. Trying to toggle between screens via task manager, one-handed, with the buttons at the top, gets interesting. Playing Words With Friends gets even more interesting. I fidget too much, Blacklight extends her claws into my arm, letting me know I am disturbing her.

  24. Mark in TTown Avatar
    Mark in TTown

    Ghost, this looks like a place you and Symply would enjoy visiting. I’m probably going to give it a try next spring myself. I had thought it was just a racetrack, but it combines that with a racing-themed museum and an outdoor art exhibit. Cool!

    http://www.al.com/living/index.ssf/2014/12/a_skeleton_in_the_elevator_ins.html#incart_gallery

  25. Jerry in Fl Avatar
    Jerry in Fl

    Sometimes they leave us off of the Florida map anyway, so I will be more than glad to become part of Alabama. See you all at the Rose Bowl.