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

Est. 1985

Extra, Extra!

Fondue Attitude

By Jimmy Johnson

December 4, 2003


I’ve got something a bit more current for you this morning, from 2003. The original of the above Arlo & Janis comic hangs in the guest bathroom of a friend’s house. I’ve noticed I have a lot of artwork hanging in bathrooms, but there’s no such thing as bad publicity. Actually, the above is part of a week-long series, which you can see by clicking on the date below the cartoon. I should mention this, because it just encourages you (You know who you are!), but this flashback from Arlo and Janis younger years was one of my sneaky attempts to depict Janis in a “diaphanous” blouse.


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71 responses to “Fondue Attitude”

  1. Steve From Royal Oak, MI Avatar

    A bathroom is a great place to display Art. Most people go there once or twice a day and when they do, they have time to appreciate it.

    There is a restaurant in the Norfolk VA area that displayed art of a more adult nature. I had no idea until a female colleague came back from the restroom and suggested that I needed to go. Since it had been about 50 years since a woman (my Mom) had suggested that I needed to go to the bathroom, I went. I made sure that I didn’t spend too much time in there.

  2. greg searcy Avatar
    greg searcy

    Looks like Arlo has tried some “Magic Mushrooms!”

  3. MontanaPhil Avatar
    MontanaPhil

    Well, you lured me down the rabbit hole with that link. The next series about Gene and the magazine is good too. And so were the next three months of strips.

    1. Bob Avatar
      Bob

      Yep, went right down that hole myself. The party ones …. WOW.

    1. Ghost Avatar
      Ghost

      Oh, wait. “Diaphanous” means “see-through”, doesn’t it? OK, then, me.

      1. Jym Dyer Avatar
        Jym Dyer

        @Ghost – I like a diaphanous blouse as much as the next red-blooded heterosexual male, but all I see is one line of ink. There have been more exciting lines of ink in this strip.

        1. dithering fool Avatar
          dithering fool

          Wandering about in the GoComics archive I found an early spring ritual in progress…
          https://www.gocomics.com/arloandjanis/1997/03/20

          Spring hath schwinged. Party on Wayne, thou art worthy.

  4. Jeff Renner Avatar
    Jeff Renner

    Guilty as charges. Is that the blouse that Argo wanted years later to use to strain paint?

  5. Jackie Avatar
    Jackie

    I was at a customer’s house in Santa Fe once. Nice middle size house in upscaled renovated area. I asked to go to bathroom and turned on light to find a Blue Dog ORIGINAL not a print. I nearly fainted.

    Politely asked and complimented my customer and yes, she paid about cost of house for her bathroom art. It was a BIG Blue Dog size of wall.

  6. Old Bear Avatar
    Old Bear

    Jerry T G reminds me of when our son was in elem. school he had a Crayfish (4-5 inches long)
    he went missing from the aquarium – we looked all over, no luck. Years later while replacing
    our mattress & box spring we found his exoskeleton behind the leg of the bed. How he got
    out of the aquarium and 30 + feet across the living room, down the hall and along the wall
    of the bedroom we have no idea.

    1. Ghost Avatar
      Ghost

      Gulf Coat crawfish are both smart and agile. They probably know where they will end up if they aren’t. We’ve caught them hightailing it across the yard trying to escape the pot. You’d have to respect their spunk, if they weren’t such good eatin’. (Sort of reminds me of the joke about the pig with a wooden leg.)

  7. Jackie Avatar
    Jackie

    Crawfish will help each other escape, forming a “ladder” to escape buckets or tubs. They can walk dang fast. Crabs are far worse.

    1. Sideburns Avatar

      Jackie, my understanding is that a crab bucket doesn’t need a lid because if a crab tries to clime out, the others will pull it back.

  8. Ghost Avatar
    Ghost

    Yes, I remember getting fitted for my Buster Brown shoes this way, but (fortunately) only a couple of times.

    https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-history/heroic-failures/when-xrays-were-all-the-rage-a-trip-to-the-shoe-store-was-dangerously-illuminating

    1. TruckerRon Avatar

      We didn’t ever, to my knowledge, have our feet x-rayed. Maybe we poor Southerners didn’t go into the fancy stores that had it? OTOH, as a young adult I wore a Swiss self-winding watch with the glow in-the-dark dial… and two years ago I had a squamous cell cancer cut out of that wrist.

    2. curmudgeonly ex-professor Avatar
      curmudgeonly ex-professor

      Me, too – 1940s and, maybe, 1950s in NYCity. I found the machine fascinating. In retrospect, once anyone had second thoughts – and the machine was already in place – it seems reasonable to think shielding could have (and would have) been installed all around except for the viewing ports.

      Inside the box was also a pointer so that the salesman could point out to the customer exactly where the shoe was, say, too tight.

    3. Bonnie Avatar
      Bonnie

      We had a local store that offered that, but my mother wanted no parts of it. Felt it couldn’t be good for you. She was a wise woman.

      1. TruckerRon Avatar

        Our culture has a poor record regarding radiation. We tend to embrace new scientific discoveries, start using or manufacturing products based on them, go into denial when the inevitable downsides and risks become apparent, grudgingly accept the fact that the dangers are real, then attack all facets of how the discovery is used as if they were all equally dangerous. That’s why nuclear power is totally condemned by so many when it’s ultimately safer and cleaner than most other power sources, as in the typical coal-burning power plant releasing more naturally occurring radioactive materials into our air than any nuclear power plant.

        My wife recently read Radium Girls : The Dark Story of America’s Shining Women, and she highly recommends it. Maybe the movie based on the play based on the book is good?

        1. David in Granbury Avatar
          David in Granbury

          Ron, I’ve been saying that about nuclear power since the 80’s. I also spent a lot of time explaining how a Chernobyl-type meltdown was impossible with U.S. powerplants. What kills me is that many people fail to understand that coal and oil are very limited and have more important uses than burning to create electricity. I lived and attended college within a few miles of the Arkansas Power and Light nuclear plant in Russellville. It’s been operating for 46 years and has another 14 years of licensed operation. The second unit there has 18 more years on its license. Though we joked that the girls from Russellville (my wife is one) have a certain glowing beauty, there’s never been a significant (measurable) release of radiation. There was one fatality from an industrial accident in a non-radiation area in 2013.

  9. Tim Neumark Avatar

    I have your “flush before they finish” strip — https://arloandjanis.com/13025 — hanging above my toilet in the master bath. It makes me smile every day.

    1. John II Avatar
      John II

      Tim,
      Thanks, plus going through all the old comments, 340.

  10. Ghost Avatar
    Ghost

    Re 11-5-20 real-time cartoon: Two points (no pun intended)…
    One, the cartoon from some years ago, where she ran to catch the trash truck, was more interesting, due to her wearing a shortie nightgown rather than a longer and less “diaphanous” gown.
    Two, does Janis have her arms crossed simply to stay warm, or is she hiding something? (If I weren’t so high-minded, I’d suspect I’m seeing evidence of a pokie in the final panel.)

  11. Jackie Avatar
    Jackie

    I assumed she had on a robe with no fastener and she had her arms crossed to prevent it coming open from neck to ankles. I have done that. You flap one side over the other and clutch with one hand or fold arms across to anchor.

    Doing piles of sheets and comforters/ quilts accumulated from time in bed. Rarely any clothes

    Doing something so risky tomorrow. Going for pedicure and manicure. My old shop and tech for years. Sfill afraid

    1. curmudgeonly ex-professor Avatar
      curmudgeonly ex-professor

      There are no drawn lines in any panel to indicate either a closure or an overlap in her outer garb, so I think she is holding her arms that way just to keep a bit warmer.

  12. Jackie Avatar
    Jackie

    Off to library today for more Harry Potter books. I can see why kids got hooked. I found myself moved by concern for nonhuman characters not to mention wizards. There is so much in there besides magic tricks.

    Appropriate reading at a time when our own world is torn by compulsive desires for power and dark days seem coming.

  13. Steve From Royal Oak, MI Avatar

    If an election lasts longer than 4 days please see a doctor….

    1. Galliglo from Ohio Avatar
      Galliglo from Ohio

      Where is that “laugh” button?

  14. Ghost Avatar
    Ghost

    Re 11-6-20 real-time cartoon: From Janis’s expression, her feeling is akin to mine…”early rising” is a mental disorder. 😀

    1. Steve From Royal Oak, MI Avatar

      We have mentioned CPAP machines on this blog many times but I am definitely a better sleeper. I can wake up in the morning. I’m not usually cheerful until my shower, maybe, but what a difference. The added benefit is that the mask has made living in this pandemic world a bit easier. I am not as claustrophobic as many of my friends and family.

  15. curmudgeonly ex-professor Avatar
    curmudgeonly ex-professor

    Any villagers been getting phone calls from “Alexa”, supposedly connected with Amazon, asking if the call recipient ordered something [a phone?] costing $$$ to be delivered to Birmingham, AL? Message requests calling a certain number if recipient did not make such an order, but doing nothing if the order is OK.
    The number given by caller identification – likely to be fabricated – and the number to be called have, according to Google [which knows everything] no known connection to Amazon.
    My MBH does support Amazon quite generously, especially at this time of year, but she and I know something “Alexa” doesn’t. It gives the lie to the call.
    Of course, we don’t call the recommended number.
    There was also an earlier call of this kind with a different amount – $279 and change, if I recall – specified, and that one can be found on Google as a known scheme.

  16. curmudgeonly ex-professor Avatar
    curmudgeonly ex-professor

    “to have been fabricated”

    1. Ghost Avatar
      Ghost

      I’ve had emails supposedly from FedEx, UPS, DHL, and USPS, all saying something about delivery problems in the title. In every case, I had nothing on order to be delivered, and I had not been notified by any individuals they were sending me anything, so I never opened any of them, figuring they were full of malware. (Plus, most all of them ended up in my “spam bucket” anyway.) But I can see how some people would unthinkingly open them, especially if they were expecting anything, which a certain percentage would be.

      1. Steve From Royal Oak, MI Avatar

        I just watched an old Dick Van Dyke where Rob is trying to write a book on his vacation at home and Laura comes out in a sheer black nightgown. Rob gets mad at her because she is distracting him! Of course the standards in the mid-sixties made the outfit less than distracting, but knowing Mary Tyler Moore was underneath it made it very distracting to me!

  17. Oldbear Avatar
    Oldbear

    I get calls claiming Amazon activity in Ohio, Texas, and Alabama – “call xxx #”
    .
    I did call Amazon from their web site – telling them I do not have an account – they agreed and said there
    were unscrupulous people out there. DUH
    .
    Back on Candid Mic. (before Candid Camera) Alan Funt asked person had any “Scruples” – she said no –
    she thought her sister had but sold them. {^!^}

    1. Ghost Avatar
      Ghost

      Your scruples are near your cockles, aren’t they?

  18. emb Avatar
    emb

    In a ’20s volume of the Journal of Mammalogy [vol. 1 was fall 1919-all of 1920, I believe], a short article about 13-lined ground squirrels [now Ictidomys tridecemlineatus], their weight was given in scruples. Not sure I ever looked up how many scruples were in an oz.
    Peace,

  19. emb Avatar
    emb

    Scruple, unit of weight in the apothecaries’ system, equal to 20 grains, or one-third dram, and equivalent to 1.296 grams. It was sometimes mistakenly assigned to the avoirdupois system. [Wiki?]