You probably won’t believe me, but I could not find any more prototypical strips featuring Skeeter and Nat. That project, by the way, went under the working title of “Perdido.” I’ll keep looking, but don’t get your hopes up. Today I am going to show you a strip from 1995, featuring Gene and his first “real” girlfriend, Susan, on a movie date. My favorite thing about Susan was her feisty little sister Emma. I’ll try to post some material featuring her when we’re done at the movies. Speaking of the strip in the previous post, there was a mention of “Tallahassee,” which obviously would be the city in northern Florida. This led to a discussion of whether Arlo & Janis is a “southern” strip. I think I’m qualified to opine on this one. While there might be occasional geographical or meteorological references owed to my own long life in the southeastern U.S., I have never regarded A&J as a “southern” strip. In fact, I strive to make it universal. I do not believe by doing so I am erasing potential color and charm. On the contrary, I don’t think throwing around words like “cornpone” and “pot likker” would add much. Personally, I don’t know what cornpone is, but I do know pot likker is delicious!
Red-Carpet Treatment
By Jimmy Johnson
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63 responses to “Red-Carpet Treatment”
Jimmy, I think A and J is where ever the reader wants it to be.
You know what corn pone is! It’s that slab of cold cornbread you break off the part left in the pan and eat with whatever you have, be it milk, buttermilk or some of the pot likker.
Good morning!
Love, Jackie
All signs point to the strip’s location is being within driving distance of the Red Neck Riviera. Nothing wrong with that though, some of the friendliest most hospitable folks in the world make that area their home.
I like “Perdido”, lost place. Isn’t there actually such a place on coast?
During the Everglades Challenge you have to hang out a lot at Placido waiting for your boat and crew to arrive and get through whatever challenges nature has thrown in their way. I know that a lot of the guys seem to end up in Perdido.
Like the still lost back places of the Panhandle and plan to head that way in March hopefully.
Closer to that date I would like some recommendations on places to eat, especially the ones you would not take your mama to because they are too ramshackle!
Love, Jackie
I think you all will enjoy this collection: http://www.al.com/entertainment/index.ssf/2015/01/post_293.html#incart_river
“I have never regarded A&J as a “southern” strip”: an A&J/Snuffy Smith cross-over could be interesting.
I guess I have always thought of A&J as a metro southern setting, like Shreveport or Jackson, although not just those two exclusive. But, not big time metro like New Orleans or Atlanta.
Why, cornpone is what one uses to sop up the pot likker, of course.
I never said that A&J was a Southern strip, but I thought that Jimmy had been advised not to pin the characters in a certain geographic location as to not limit the story line. Many strips have snow/winter strips during the winter which many here in the Midwest can identify with. I especially enjoy Crankshaft, who of course is in Cleveland. I am sure that there are a few others that specify a location too.
The TV shows in the 50’s and 60’s were usually pretty generic as to where they were located, like the Bumsteads Peanuts other popular strips. However TV and movies tend to put their stories in a specific town or city. As much as I love Christmas vacation, I always laugh at the scene where they get their Christmas tree (Colorado in real life) I mean you would need to drive 18-24 hours to see mountains like that from Chicago!
Thank you for the Alabama quotes, Mark, some of my favorite writers were there. Rick Bragg I adore, someone I wish I could meet. I love everything he writes and one of his essays on his family plot being lit by the bright yellow light of the Dollar General sign and him telling his wife that he didn’t think it would shine in her eyes in the afterlife has become one of my favorites.
Think of Rick every time I see a Dollar General.
And his essay on boat building and “Alabama time” has moved into my files of timeless writing.
So many wonderful writers in your state.
Love, Jackie
*applause*
This strip is among those in August 1995 that are not available online. Have not seen it since it was on newsprint.
Embarrassing children by dropping them off and picking them up appears to be a universal constant. The family car is always an embarrassment, too. (I read where Dave Barry persuaded Oscar Mayer to allow him to take their Weinermobile to his son’s school to pick him up. The horn played the “Oscar Mayer” notes, and Barry sounded the horn over and over. How that man was not murdered by his son then and there is a mystery.)
Susan was a piece of work. Just when Gene thought he had an actual boyfriend/girlfriend thing going, he got thrown overboard but good. Our Bard’s depictions of Gene getting hit with a ton of bricks and having the scales fall off his eyes are classic. Emma was a hoot, using Mr. Fuzz to put the Evil Eye on folks, but Susan was a heartbreaker.
Hey, what if Susan showed up in the present? That would result in an epic cat-fight if she still acted like a Mean Girl to Gene. Mary Lou would take no prisoners!
There are occasions when it seems A & J are in a southern location, but for the most part I (as a Pennsylvanian) consider them to be living just down the street. I’m sure most readers feel the same, no matter where they call home.
“I think Ghost might be interested in them, don’t you?” Since I am as interested as the next horny male, I shouldn’t point fingers. Interest, of course is one thing, capability another. I’m not as young as I once was, and wasn’t very young then. Also, tastes vary. As far as I am concerned, all of the women our UK Pre-Raphaelite portrayed were more than ample. As I’ve often repeated here, “More than a handful . . ..” [Also, what will she look like at 60? Wife looked and #### fine.]
Jackie: It was fluffed feathers. Birds are good at that, and feathers better built for it than hair. Sometime at the county fair, dig your hand down into the wool on an unshorn ewe. It’s impressive. The next will be more difficult, since swans are protected everywhere. I once did the same with the body feathers of a confiscated swan at the Museum of Zoology at the U. Mich. in Ann Arbor. Incredible insulation.
Gosh, just when I was beginning to think that there was a possibility that full bodied voluptuous women were once more in vogue with big breasted and big butted women like the K women!
And the preRaphaelites!
EMB, among my many life experiences, I used to have to help my grandmother pluck down from geese and ducks to make feather pillows and feather beds. How many modern women can say that? That and owned two Keishounds and a enormous Newfoundland that produced bales of undercoat when you used shedders on them. And I honestly had to learn to clip sheep in college but that poor sheep looked really terrible with the job I did and not nicked up a good deal.
But I have never touched a swan, although I love them and always wanted some.
The birds are magnificent out in yard. I keep feeders out in yard and some up under porch overhangs to protect from rain and snow. One cardinal flew into windows and died yesterday and “staff” wouldn’t tell me but I have large expanses of windows on house and they dive too fast under porches. Although sitting on porches and having birds whiz past you is a great experience. If you are quiet, they will fly all around you and feed.
Nothing wrong with older men either, by the way. Don’t know what I’d do with one half my age although I have had a chance to find out in past!
Love, Jackie
Not “not”. Meant to say “got nicked”, I was awful. And to think I almost opened a dog grooming salon!
Ahh, Perdido, as in Perdido Key in Pensacola Florida! Spent two of some of the best years in my life down there during Flight School- living on the beach, bar-hopping by boat along Perdido Bay and Old River. You definitely are from the part of the South I love.
I certainly never considered A&J to be local to my area, too many deciduous trees, too much grass, etc to take place in a desert environment. But that never detracted from my enjoyment. I always figured them to live somewhere near the Gulf.
Except for Roadrunner and Coyote I can’t recall any ‘toons that took place in these parts, and those were animated, not “real life”.
Tuna, always heard Navy flight school was easy, but that easy? 😉
Tuna, don’t know how far back that was. Were you at NAS Mainside or at Corry Field before it became the Naval Technical Training Center?
Jackie, that type never went out of vogue for me, nor did most others. Besides, when you are 6’5″ and around 250, most anyone else looks small next to you. Never cared for those who were excessively thin, though.
Yes, Perdido is definitely a part of the Redneck Riviera. Something else over that way is Pensacola NAS which was also the name of a brief tv series with James Brolin. It was great watching them take off from Pensacola, fly over the Florida desert and then the Florida mountains. I’m surprised that no one mentioned Jerry Vandyke and “My Mother the Car” featuring the voice of Ann Southern. Today we were treated to a comment by a Repub congressman who said “Even Hitler got to Paris”. I don’t believe I need to comment when none of his own party will.
I thought of some of you when I saw this…Lady Mindy in particular.
http://lolheaven.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/2386-600×450.jpg
Well, Mark you gave me yet another reason to want to visit Alabama besides the sea food and barbque!
My Texas coastal friends used to laugh about the John Wayne movie where he gets off the train and the railroad station is for this south Texas town, maybe Liberty, I forget? Anyway looming in the back ground are all these south Texas mountains.
Discussing this, one of my customers/friends said the town was so low it was almost below sea level and if an ant built a nest the towns people would all stand on top for a view.
I feel the same way when I see the old John Wayne movie “True Grit” because my street ends in the road that used to cross the Canadian River during the time the movie is set in, before the lake was built. I can tell you we didn’t have rapids, high cliffs and all that alpine greenery even in the Indian Territory days!
Don’t Hollywood beat all? As my relatives used to say.
Love, Jackie
Jimmy:
I like the test of observation in the last panel. It reminds me of the
the test that I’ve seen involving the other repeated article.
Forgot to mention –
How ’bout them Bucks?
What a game.
While you’re listing mistakes in John Wayne movies, don’t forget the final scene in Green Berets where he’s walking on a beach in Vietnam and the sunset is setting over the ocean.
Drat. Everything moved! Anyhow. I need cabana boys. And warm weather.
Ghost – Yes. It feels like Hoth here. Supposed to be -10 tonight. In fact, Sunday, I was driving home in nasty freezing rain, and passed a poor little, older, lady walking – with her walker, in a light hooded sweatshirt, no gloves, and soaked sneakers – in the road (sidewalks are buried under snow), on her way to CVS. I didn’t get too far before my guilt forced me to turn back. She was almost there by the time I caught back up with her. I told her I would wait for her to shop and then take her home. She only lives the next block over it turns out. She said it was the first time anyone had ever stopped to offer a ride. There was no way I could pass this poor shivering lady and not see her home safe. The roads were awful and it was getting dark and if she fell or got hit … I’d be ashamed for life. I guess I was supposed to see her and pick her up – my job and most of my errands are north of my house. By dumb luck, I had been further south and was coming home from the opposite direction. I would not have seen her in the normal course of my day.
For Jackie – or anyone who needs a good laugh. (This lady is quite funny.)
Jeanne Robertson “Men don’t know the style in N…: http://youtu.be/QNfzKiS-eTU