This old strip indirectly echoes events in the current strip, if something from seven years ago can “echo” something today. All the recent discussion in the current story line about a drastic change in the situation of Arlo and Janis inevitably leads to the question: are they retired? Well, I could make up something, but really all that exists in the world of A&J is what appears in the strip, and that question never has been directly addressed. You know what I know. However, I am the author, and therefore I am entitled to make something up. So, watch this space in the coming days, where I will make something up!
65 responses to “In Days of Old”
According to the photos we’ve had taken, I quit aging at 50. In person, the only part of me that looks anywhere near my calendar age is the back of my left hand which caught the sun more than its mate while trucking.
“So, watch this space in the coming days, where I will make something up! ”
Oh, Like the current occupant of the White House?
FAKE COMICS!
🙂
Looking at Arlo’s hat, it appears that we are echoing “We are Devo”.
I love people that look for and find inconsistencies or errors in movies. After all, it IS a movie. One of the great movies of all time, Casablanca, “made up” the Letters of Transit. It was simply a plot device to move the film forward. So Jimmy can make up anything that he pleases.
The work status of Arlo and Janis is occasionally the source of comment, both here and on The Dark Side. My take is, “What does it matter?” Other than, I suppose, it having caused a recent lack of “office based” humor which, as I recall, was never a major thing in A&J. Besides, if one wants office based humor, go read “Dilbert”.
I would wonder, however, if they are indeed retired, how they managed that feat at such a relatively young age.
Steve: Re “inconsistencies”, who caught several years ago that two different spellings for Gus’s last name were used over a period of time?
Of course, movies are supposed to have people whose only job is to ensure continuity from one shot to another. (Rather than a single over-worked artist often scrambling to meet deadline. 🙂 )
And there are still often glaring inconsistencies in movies, despite that.
Counter to how Scott Adams turned more to office humor when he discovered people liked that, Arlo and Janis has never done much regarding the workplace. I’ve always just presumed that Arlo has a job somewhere, and Janis might (especially once Gene got older). Depending on how old they were when Gene was born, how well they’ve done for themselves in their jobs and their savings, my guess is they are in a position to consider early retirement in a few years, which is about how long it would take to get the building permits and the contractors lined up, actually build the new house, and sell the current one.
Just finished my preoperative tests again as Forest Gump would say AGAIN. Long drawn out.
Found doctors haven’t sent in letters. AGAIN.
I want a Diet Coke. I will have an iced tea.
Maybe Arlo and JAnis could put up a manufactured housing kind of place? Had some relatives do that in VA and NC…both families seemed very happy.
Whatever happens it will be fun.
Buy a houseboat and dock it alongside the other boat. No building permit, no construction, no clearing the lot. And Arlo gets his tiny house living space.
Shanty boat?
I recently saw a punished claim that living in a “tiny house” was “cultural appropriation” from “poor people”. (I’m not making that up)
Along those lines…”Invented in Asia and subsequently spreading worldwide, the oldest known trousers are found at the Yanghai cemetery in Turpan, Xinjiang, western China, dated to the period between the 13th and the 10th century BC. Made of wool, the trousers had straight legs and wide crotches, and were likely made for horseback riding.” – Wikipedia
I wear trousers, and I’m not Asian, so am I guilty of cultural appropriation?
As I’ve said before, it’s just so hard to keep with the PC Rules these days.
Bad headline combinations from today’s Herald-Citizen of Cookeville, TN.
Half of Montery’s board of aldermen absent for meeting
Several arrested in unrelated crimes
These two headlines ran in that order on the newspaper’s website today.
So, when I drive my car (with some parts made in Japan) to a Japanese restaurant (Benihana’s in SLC) and order a Filet Mignon Yakitori in my once-fluent Nihongo (it’s been almost 40 years since I learned Japanese), am I guilty of cultural appropriation?
If growing old gracefully means fighting it tooth and nail, yes, I am growing old gracefully.
Still going strong at 70 and so’s my dear wife who’s 78. Well, maybe not strong, but still going!
Grow old gracefully? Why should I? When I can jump up and down and blow rasberries at it and act like a goofy teenager.
At 87, before last Easter dinner at the home of a most beloved couple, stepped from one room [with vinyl flooring] into a carpeted room, not realizing it was a step down. I did not age gracefully, but am better, although a bit worse for wear.
‘…only job is to ensure continuity from one shot to another’: Re movies, other shows, books, paintings, etc. that have anachronisms or geographic inconsistencies or such, they have a special problem with specialist audiences. Anyone can spot costume or architectural booboos in sacred paintings of David and Goliath [the world’s biggest Philistine] with Roman arches in the background, but only biologists, specifically herpetologists, will notice that our current heroes, slogging through the Everglades or the East Anglian fens, have a chorus of West Coast frogs in the background.
G&S: ‘… a tiger, from the Congo or the Niger …’. ‘The Mikado’, Act 2.
Peace,
Don’t go to sailing or nautical movies with a sailor.
Nor fire fighting movies with a fireman.
Or cops movies with a cop.
The list goes on and on because anyone who really does it is going to spot it and bitch.
Jackie, you’re right. As a young adult attending college and full of plans that didn’t involve trucking, I loved Smokey and the Bandit… you’d probably not want to watch it with me today.
Perhaps growing old gracefully means that one has accepted the inevitable.
Or does it actually mean that one does not talk about physical ailments as so many of us do?
(An item I wrote about 14 years ago.)
Ode to Old Age
To those who have gone before
I do not want to climb mountains
I no longer want to soar in the clouds
I do not need to be a king
Or even control myself
I long to be part of the earth
I now feel its call
and anticipate its embrace
I desire to spread throughout the land
and enter the realm of blissful oblivion
I long to be in the earth
I have tired of the struggle
I do not yearn to right wrongs
I cannot question any more
I shall not find answers
I long to be part of the earth
JJ has specifically portrayed A&J in different office jobs. Once, A phoned J. Not sure if his words were shown, but, later panel, she rebuffs him for calling her at work, and, last panel, answers his question, ‘Pink’ [if I remember rightly]. Gene was still a kid when she worked in an office. There was also a short run re some woman in Arlo’s office who was after his bod.
About PC, and related matters. PC is mostly nonsense on the left, and I grant that it gets silly, and often stifles free expression. For perspective, aside from the need to remedy various social wrongs, go back to when I learned to read in the ’30s, and devoured the comics as well as newspapers and magazines, and also watched newsreels in theaters. Blacks, Jews, other non-Christians, Chinese, American Indians, women, hillbillies, homeless, the poor, etc. were all fair game, often blatantly and falsely so. Scientists, sometimes, still are: e.g., atheistic evolutionists. I forgive them.
Yesterday [I’ve not gone back] someone posted re talkative women. It’s been statistically shown that, on average, men gossip more, dominate conversations more, interrupt more, and such. I’ve watched it at university, church, other organizations, and caught myself at it [when Elaine didn’t do so first].
As to stretching to make a political or other point, at a House Un-American Committee hearing in the ’50s, Rep. Bullhorn was unsuccessfully trying to prove some victim a pro-Soviet, and finally asked him if he liked Russian music. Don’t know what followed, but I’d have been in deep trouble. Hard to surpass Mussorgsky’s ‘Pictures’ or Borodin’s 2nd String Quartet.
PETA [I think] once objected to two zoos arranging a tryst btw their respective M and F gorillas, protesting that using him at stud violated his dignity, or whatever. Their concern over artificial insemination is mostly for the poor raped cow. Cannot find their view of the bull’s role in semen collection. My guess is, he likes it. What their response might be to the natural mating behavior of sea otters and other mustelids I don’t know. It’s basically rape.
Peace,
If you want to read about the mistakes in movies, try the IMDB website. They have lists of casts, directors, etc. And then they have best lines, errors, and the like. Everything you need to know in a short summary.
Here’s an example for Jaws: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0073195/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1
OF course Arlo is retired! He is the alter ego of Jimmy Johnson, right? A cartoon artist is the same thing as being retired isn’t it?
Don’t you all remember Janis getting involved with the man at her office and contemplating having an affair with him? We all commented on that, it wasn’t long ago.
We talked about people having office wives and being emotionally deep with secretaries, people who fill your needs there.
There were many strips involving offices for both Arlo and Janis. Arlo would day dream about boats and sailing mostly.
Frankly unless Jimmy wants them to work to get more characters to interact with, what difference does it make.
For God’s sake people, it’s a comic strip! They aren’t real!
Sorry Ghost, there is no naked Janis in that bath tub. There isn’t even a tub.
Go see Jessica Rabbit if you want live comics with bosoms that heave and bounce.
GM Debbe
Your last of Monday should be on everyone’s icebox
https://i.chzbgr.com/full/9028934144/h3138CED5/