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

Est. 1985

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Back after This…

By Jimmy Johnson

Buy the new book, "Beaucoup Arlo & Janis!"Today's "Arlo & Janis!"
Obesity has become a real problem in this country; we all know that. I’ve heard a lot of theories about why that is. Some of them make sense, but I have my own theory that I haven’t heard voiced elsewhere. I believe people began getting fatter in direct proportion to the length of commercial breaks on television. Think about it! We all have to do something to fill the one-third of airtime that is now devoted to advertisements. Makes sense to me.

I didn’t say anything about the passing of Robin Williams yesterday, because it was news to me when I was updating this page. I just didn’t know much. Plus, I knew there’d be a lot said by others, and I was right. There was a third reason, maybe. I didn’t want to make any comment that might be construed as negative at such a time. That comment would have been: I have always thought Robin Williams was best as a dramatic actor. Of course, that isn’t a negative thing to say, but with so many emphasizing his original and frenetic approach to comedy, I just didn’t see going into it. Also, let us remember Betty Bacall, who left us yesterday.

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334 responses to “Back after This…”

  1. Ghost Rider 6 Avatar
    Ghost Rider 6

    Well, they ain’t CCR, but they ain’t bad.

    Debbe 😉 I get up and go to work facing the possibility that my day will be filled with chicken $#!+. You get up and go to work facing the certainty that yours will be. And yet, almost always, you maintain your grace and humor. I admire you for that, hon. 🙂

    Oh, and I hope you took your BP meds today…

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B98KWh-2Kp4

  2. Lilyblack Avatar

    Good morning, all. A little cloudy but a nice change. Did wind sprints till I puked this morning, but that is kinda the point.
    Debbe, *I* don’t have a Pot Room, our casa has a Pot Room, which is full of pots and pans and a genormous punchbowl all wrapped up in a sheepskin. It was named by My Adopted Twin Brother when he was small, and the name was retained, as The Man In My Life is fond of saying, “to give visitors some innocent mirth.” It also holds the food processor and other counter-top items that The Man In My Life refuses to countenance in his kitchen. I go into it ever morning to get out Oscar Osterizer to make my smoothie, but it has to be back in its place, washed and dried, by the time The Man In My Life comes downstairs. Which isn’t hard, since that is long after we have left for the hospital and the office.

  3. Jackie Monies Avatar
    Jackie Monies

    Chip-n-Dales, Ghost? For shame!

    Love, Jackie

  4. Lilyblack Avatar

    Jackie, I asked The Man In My Life about Mike Royko last night, and he said the only things he remembered about him was that his office was the only one at the Chicago Tribune where smoking was allowed, and a quote: “As Slats Grobnik says, if work is so great, how come they got to pay you to do it?” Too bad he smoked, he could have still been with us

  5. Jackie Monies Avatar
    Jackie Monies

    Think he died of a heart attack following a brain aneurysm, Lily, but I agree on the smoking.

    Having quit cold turkey so that Mike would marry me, I am not sympathetic to those who say you cannot quit. Mike says when they autopsy me they will find some smoke still there, as I never exhaled which he noticed. Along with all the spray paint manufactured by Design Master and Floralife when I spent years inhaling that stuff as a show designer every weekend. Coughed up colored mucus for years afterward!

    I am in baking frozen biscuits for my mama. She and my late Granny would be horrified, horrified I say! They used nothing but canned ones, whack-a-can!

    Love, Jackie

  6. Lilyblack Avatar

    Smoking hits all the blood vessels, Jackie: brain, heart, what-have-you. Coincidence? The Man In My Life quit smoking the day before his wedding to The Boss Of My Life. I guess that happens a lot?

  7. Jackie Monies Avatar
    Jackie Monies

    How do I adopt you, Lily? I need a neat freak again, I had to give it up when I became old and infirm and my housekeeper sure isn’t one! I thought having been a nurse and a nun in her past she would be but she isn’t.

    The garden help and dog sitter complain about her too!

    Dogs heard the dog sitter drive by just now and set up a giant howling for her to stop. They know her car’s motor.

    Love, Jackie

  8. Trapper Jean Avatar
    Trapper Jean

    As I believe I have said, we got to looking at our bill and decided we could cut the cable tv side out completely, so we did. We kept the Internet side, and for tv subscribed to NetFlix and HULU. That, plus what we watch online gives us everything we want at a fraction of the cost. The main annoyance now is that several online sites, such as USA and FOX, now require viewers to specify their cable suppliers in order to watch a program on their computer. I have several shows I can’t watch now until the full season comes out on dvd and I can get it from NetFlix and watch the whole season at once.

    I don’t read Dave Barry nearly often enough, and I still miss Erma Bombeck and Lewis Grizzard.

  9. Jackie Monies Avatar
    Jackie Monies

    There was so much smoke in the college newspaper offices where I worked while I smoked that you could just inhale the air or cut it in chunks and chew it.

    It is ironic that Mike has lung cancer and I did not.

    Love, Jackie

  10. Jackie Monies Avatar
    Jackie Monies

    Jean: Me too.

  11. Lilyblack Avatar

    Me a neat freak? Hahahahaha! The girl that just got reamed for putting a pair of red socks in with the whites so everything came out pink? The girl whose room gets inspected once a week to make me get clothes and shoes off the floor? The girl who left a black barrette in the bathtub and scared Somebody cause they thought it was a spider? Think again. 😀

    Now I gotta go to choir practice. Later!

  12. Jackie Monies Avatar
    Jackie Monies

    What the heck, go for broke. I miss Designing Women too. Good Southern humor, most of them gone now.

    Mama is getting homemade pear preserves with her biscuits and fresh cantaloupe. OJ in a wine glass because no clean juice glasses within my short reach. Last time I did that she viewed it with great suspicion, thinking it might be mimosa’s.

    Once I was so notorious for serving beverages with alcohol no one would let their children drink lemonade without asking first.

    Love, Jackie

  13. Jackie Monies Avatar
    Jackie Monies

    But you respond well to discipline and correction it would seem, Lily. Maybe I could find a neat freak male roommate? Wait, I have one but age has gotten him too it seems.

    Love, Jackie

  14. Mark in TTown Avatar
    Mark in TTown

    With all the talk of Southern comics I’m surprised nobody has mentioned Jerry Clower. I recall one of his stories where he talked of how his mama made homemade biscuits. Now, he said, “when women want to make fresh biscuits they open up a can. It sounds like a war zone with all the popping and banging of those cans opening.”.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cqw4IayN1AI
    Not the biscuit story but a good sample of his work.

  15. Jackie Monies Avatar
    Jackie Monies

    Mark, I love Jerry Clower and have heard him in person long, long ago. The biscuit story is his best and I cannot see a canned biscuit without thinking of him. I still open them the way my Granny did, whack them hard on edge of counter.

    Never saw my mama or granny bake a homemade biscuit. My stepdad came to visit once and I served buttermilk biscuits. He ate them and wanted to know where I’d learned?

    I am told my ancestors owned wooden biscuit bowls but lord knows where they went? Dog or chicken feeders?

    Love, Jackie

  16. Frankly Anon Avatar
    Frankly Anon

    No cable for me. Just buy a cup of java with a side of free WiFi.

  17. Ghost Rider 6 Avatar
    Ghost Rider 6

    Chip-n-Dales? Naw, just talented “male underwear models”. And no, I didn’t go looking for them, just ran across them looking for a birthday song for Debbe and decided to give her (and perhaps others) a little boost to the blood pressure.

    Re Jerry Clower, I served in the Air Force with a guy from Liberty MS, so there really is such a place. I understand Jerry was a fertilizer salesman before he became a comic. Imagine that.

  18. Jackie Monies Avatar
    Jackie Monies

    Looked for the biscuit story on youtube, could not find it but I bet someone can. Found a lot of others, all funny. Then I looked on wiki to see if it might link over there?

    He was married to same woman for 47 years, Homerline Wells Clower. You cannot make stuff like that up about the South. My true name is Jackquline, a combination of my father and mother’s names, with Ann in middle for good measure, all run together by family and pronounced JacknenAnn.

    I changed to Jackie at about age 10 or 11 for good reason!

    Love, Jackie

  19. David in Austin Avatar
    David in Austin

    Jackie, I tell a biscuit story on my wife every time I have a new audience (family wedding rehearsals, engagement parties, etc.). It goes generally like this.
     
    “Some of you may have known my mother (she died when I was 18). If you did, you’d know that cooking was a really important part of what she believed necessary to take care of her family. One of the ways she did that was to cook a full breakfast, EVERY day. She would could homemade buttermilk biscuits, bacon or sausage, and generally fried eggs for my daddy in the morning, no matter what time. We’d have homemade biscuits before school or work, before church on Sunday, before we went fishing on Saturday morning, even at 3:00 am before we left to go deer hunting. She even made homemade biscuits on the mornings they got up to drive 90 miles for dialysis treatments after her kidneys failed.”
     
    “You can believe we were grateful, too. Getting up, having a hot breakfast, with those delicious homemade buttermilk biscuits was a highlight of the day. It’s still very high on the list of good things I remember about growing up.”

    “My mother had biscuit making down to a science. She never measured anything, at least by the time I started watching her bake biscuits. She had an empty can from tomato sauce that “lived” in the canister with the self-rising flour. The can served as both scoop and biscuit-cutter. She would scoop out some flour, pour in some buttermilk, then add some melted butter from the heavy-duty metal pie pan preheating in the oven. (I was probably 12 years old before I called those round, angled side pans anything but a biscuit pan.) A few stirs, then the sticky dough got turned out onto a sheet of waxed paper with flour. A little more flour, a couple of folds, and the dough was ready to press out and cut. She never used a rolling-pin, just mashed it down gently with her hands. Then she’d cut the inch-thick dough with the can, dipping it in flour to be sure it didn’t stick to the dough. The air pressure in the can would pop the biscuit right out. The hot pan with melted butter would come out of the oven, each biscuit dipped in hot butter, then turned over and nestled into place in the pan. She never measured, but she never wasted anything either. There were always EXACTLY the right number of biscuits to fill the pan minus one. That one was made from the trimmings of the dough around all the other biscuits when they were cut. There might, sometimes, be a small tidbit of raw dough left for the little boy watching.”
     
    “So did I say that my mama made biscuits EVERY day? It was like the sun, rising in the east. In fact, she made homemade buttermilk biscuits the morning before she died. She had a heart attack one day on the 90-mile drive for her dialysis treatment. You’d better believe that there were hot, homemade buttermilk biscuits that morning, just like any other.”

    “I’m sure most of you are beginning to wonder about the point of my story. You’re probably saying, ‘I’m sure those were some good biscuits, but what does it have to do with this wedding rehearsal?’ Well, the truth is that those biscuits so affected my life that when Elise and I were in college I proposed to her by asking, ‘Would you marry me and make me biscuits every day like my mama did for my daddy?’ She said ‘Yes!’.”

    “It was a moment of joy for both of us, followed by many more through a lot of years of marriage. But you know what? During the past 25 years [30/etc.] she has YET to make me homemade biscuits. NOT ONCE!”

    “The truth is it isn’t the biscuit-making that I was asking for. It was the unwavering, sacrificial love for her husband and family.That’s part of what the biscuits were for my mama, but there are lots of other things that my wife, Lindsey and Sarah’s mom, has done to show her love. The things Elise has done because of my kidney disease you wouldn’t believe! The support for her children is resolute. My hope and prayer for this couple is that they find the ‘biscuits’ in their relationship and have many happy years together.”

  20. Lilyblack Avatar

    Good afternoon, all. We had a nice service with five(!) baptisms. We Episcopalians don’t get that many but once in a blue moon. I sang lead soprano in “I Belong To Jesus” and managed not to come in too soon on the third verse, which is a real feat for me. Or choir director was glaring at me so I waited till he signaled to sing out. Afterwards he said, “Well, Susie, glad to see you were watching me. For once.” Brought me down proper.

    We are on our way to eat brunch, which will be fun. I haven’t eaten since six AM so my insides are making demands.

    Don’t know Jerry Clower. Before my time, maybe? And I haven’t had a biscuit in over a year. It was at the Greenbriar restaurant so I have no idea whether it was made from scratch or not. I ate it with butter only and eschewed the gravy. Big shock, I know

  21. Jackie Monies Avatar
    Jackie Monies

    What a beautiful story, David. My mama while no homemade biscuit maker (not even from mixes) always got up and made what my husband called “man killing breakfasts” for all the “men folks” especially on deer hunting days. Sausage, bacon, ham sometimes, pancakes, fried eggs, those canned biscuits.

    I get up and cook for her every day, the things she is used to.
    Forget granola or muesli or a veggie breakfast. Grits, oatmeal plain, not potatoes since we are Southern.

    Did I mention she was still deer hunting when I moved her up here? Blind as a bat or getting that way at 93. She had about 44 deer stands all over our family farm!

    Episcopalians don’t recruit converts well, Lily. Husband says we are declining church as not enough new baptisms, as you pointed out. I once told someone here in Oklahoma that I had to study religion extensively to be confirmed and go to classes. They asked if there was a test? I said I thought so.

    Studying religion doesn’t appeal to a lot of people.

    Love, Jackie

  22. Galliglo from Ohio Avatar
    Galliglo from Ohio

    Beautiful story, David. I hope the “young’ns” take it to heart.

  23. sideburns Avatar

    Jackie, I have fond memories of Designing Women, but there were two things that I found impossible to ignore: not only was there an unhealthy dose of male bashing, the writers even made Anthony agree with the women and participate in the bashing.

  24. Lilyblack Avatar

    Yeah, Jackie, Episcopalianism is too intellectual for a lot of people. They like to go with feelings and be told what to do (Here she omits the name of two denominations and feels her priest smiling at her). Our church is growing, though (Christ Church in Tyler). We get a lot of converts from the college students, here. One of them told me that she was jogging by our church and the singing was so beautiful she stopped to listen (she was raised C of C but had lapsed) . She came into the narthex and was kind of hiding behind a door when we (the choir) came out during Recessional and followed me back to the choir rehearsal room. She was embarrassed to be wearing shorts but when she saw me doff my robe and saw I was wearing short culottes, she came over to me and introduced herself. We talked for like thirty minutes and I took her to meet our youth minister. She has been coming to traditional service for over a year now and I am trying to get her to join the choir.

  25. Steve From Royal Oak, MI Avatar

    I was kind of thinking that we might get some comments regarding today’s strip. I personally can identify with it as this is one of the most pleasant part of being married. With all the troubles in the world and in our personal lives, a good hug is all we need.