“Save us the aisle seats”

by Jimmy Johnson

April 15, 2013


There absolutely is nothing noteworthy about this old A&J strip except it gives me something to talk about this morning. In the course of preparing these posts, I look at a lot of old work; it isn’t my favorite task of the day. Many times I come across something that, today, makes no sense to me at all. Too often, the explanation is that it makes no sense; other times, it is because the old strip was topical, as in this comment on the passing of film critic Roger Ebert. This morning, I had to stop and think what I was getting at seven years ago. But I don’t mind topical humor. We’ve talked about this before. Given the choice (if they are the only two) between drawing a pedestrian comic related to some current event, thereby given it a shiny new sheen (see above), or doing another Arlo-isn’t-listening-to-Janis gag even if it might be funnier, I’ll choose the former. However, topical cartoons don’t hold up very well over time, but when one produces a daily comic strip, it is a price worth paying, I think. Besides, I can use the Arlo-not-listening gag the next day!


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38 responses to ““Save us the aisle seats””

  1. Norm Sullivan Avatar
    Norm Sullivan

    Funny, my 1st thought was of Laurel and Hardy.

    1. Old Bear Avatar
      Old Bear

      Me Too

  2. joe d Avatar
    joe d

    Yes: I thought of them too

    1. Jimmy Johnson Avatar

      If you follow the link to the old comic on the GoComics site, there is a rousing discussion about that very thing. Where’s an eye-roll emoji when you need one?

        1.  Avatar
          Anonymous

          ? there is an eye roll emoji but it showed up as ? ????

  3. Otis Avatar
    Otis

    The aisle seat title was enough for me to catch the intent.

    Jimmy, draw whatever you want to. We’ll be here. Sometimes scratching our heads, but always enjoying the show.

  4. Jerry in Fl Avatar
    Jerry in Fl

    My first thought was of Moe and Curly.

    1. Mark in TTown Avatar
      Mark in TTown

      Except that Moe was the business brains of the group. Curly was more of a good-time guy.

  5. Rebecca Hedges Avatar
    Rebecca Hedges

    If I don’t get it, I’ll ask. I ain’t scared.

  6. Old Bear Avatar
    Old Bear

    As the saying goes “Strike while the iron is hot.”
    .
    Topical Lasts but a moment – the other stuff has meaning any time –
    as illustrated at this gathering repeatedly.
    .
    Give us topical , and when you repeat it here – we will say “That was so true”.

  7. Old Bear Avatar
    Old Bear

    As the saying goes “Strike while the iron is hot.”
    .
    Topical Lasts but a moment – the other stuff has meaning any time –
    as illustrated at this gathering repeatedly.
    .
    Give us topical , and when you repeat it here – we will say “That was so true”.
    .
    Us old Geezers that remember – and if we don’t it is All new.

  8. Tom (formerly) from the front range. Avatar
    Tom (formerly) from the front range.

    And speaking of cliches, Roger Ebert was a prolific author of movie related books. One such book is “Ebert’s Little Movie Glossary.” When he was putting this together he solicited contributions on his website. I sent him one and low and behold, it appeared in the book. (Look for a contribution by “Tom from Derry.”)
    He started the book with his favorite, “Fruit Cart.” Every movie that contains a chase sequence through a retail setting e.g. bazaar, open air market, will have at least one fruit cart knocked or run over by the culprit, chaser(s) or both.
    I see now that there is a sequel or expansion of the book called “Ebert’s Bigger Little Movie Glossary.” I’m off to Amazon to buy a copy (using the money I was saving for “Arlo & Janis After Dark.”)

  9. DJJG Avatar
    DJJG

    Didn’t anybody else think of Lou Costello?

    1. ruralbob Avatar
      ruralbob

      That was my first thought. “Shorter and heavier” doesn’t describe Oliver Hardy.

  10. Rick in Shermantown, Ohio Avatar
    Rick in Shermantown, Ohio

    Except for slapstick and jokes about sex, almost all humor is topical. It is the sharpest and most humorous. Of course, it also fades the most quickly.

    Case in point: Shakespeare’s humor. Even his bawdy humor has become lost in time, not to mention his insightful political jokes.

  11. TruckerRon Avatar

    Here are two things to think about:
     
    1) When a young Isaac Newton was “quarantined” by the bubonic plague he invented calculus. Can you imagine being that bored?
     
    2) Quarantining healthy people is probably the wrong thing to do for our survival and health according to this doctor:
     
    https://youtu.be/wyjtDH__Px4

    1. curmudgeonly ex-professor Avatar
      curmudgeonly ex-professor

      Bored? One can do amazing things with even trivially basic calculus. It was an entirely new world to me when I first met up with it in the middle ’50s, and I would not have missed it for anything. There is a dispute as to whom credit belongs for its invention, though. I tend to run with Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibnitz more than I. Newton.

    2. Jerry in Fl Avatar
      Jerry in Fl

      ………………………and I will never die as long as nothing serious happens to me.

  12. emb Avatar
    emb

    At least 2 Can. goose eggs in the “osprey” nest structure. MTDNR’s new osprey structure nearer the lake has an osprey pair, but no webcam.
    https://explore.org/livecams/birds/charlo-montana-osprey-nest
    Peace,

  13. curmudgeonly ex-professor Avatar
    curmudgeonly ex-professor

    Recently attained four score years, something I never, in my wildest dreams of youth, figured would happen – and with decent eyesight, too.

    I mentioned calculus earlier. One of my best moments therein was when learning how to compute areas or volumes via multiple integrations. As I seem to learn best when I can make a mental model, it was a total thrill to be able to do so in a sudden “scales fell from my eyes” moment during Christmas break. That mental image is still with me, though I don’t use it much nowadays.

    Lost a friend yesterday. He had multiple medical problems, and I do not know which one got to him. I am about to address a condolence card to his widow, a friendly person willing to spend a few moments with this (now “official”) geezer the rare times we happen to meet. She has now lost her 3 closest relatives in the past year or 14 months; there is a lot on her plate, still.

  14. Mark in TTown Avatar
    Mark in TTown

    I’ve had a really nice weekend, up till about 4 pm today. Then I found standing water in my bathroom and heard dripping, but couldn’t find a leak. Sent maintenance request via onlline service. An hour later I found it was coming from the ceiling around the bathroom fan. Nobody home upstairs, sent another request for service. After 8 my neighbor came home and found water leaking under her bathroom sink from the feed pipe. She tried to turn it off and the knob broke off. Now my bathroom looks like the shower is running in the middle of the room. Water starting to come through bedroom ceiling and soaking the carpet. Found water in my closet ceiling light and kitchen light and dripping through living room ceiling. Neighbor’s boyfriend and I turned off water at meter outside, thought it was just theirs but turns out to be mine too. I found emergency maintenance phone number and called it. Guy says he’s coming (or sending somebody, he wasn’t clear). Now I’m waiting.

  15. Steve From Royal Oak, MI Avatar

    Praying for you Mark. Hope that we don’t read “Man in TTown drowns in condo due to a Leaky Faucet” I hope that you don’t mind my attempt at humor.

    I love crossover comics. Today’s Blonde is great.

    1. Mark in TTown Avatar
      Mark in TTown

      Thanks Steve. They got a carpet cleaner out here to begin drying things out after the maintenance man had been here. The water finally stopped raining from my ceiling and then the textured paint overlaying the sheet rock started dropping off. I had to run some collectible books and other items out and lock them in my car to keep them dry. But, the water didn’t reach my bed, although it did soak the carpet in the bedroom. Good thing the local stores have toilet paper now, because the water ran into the closet where mine was stored. The carpet cleaner was a very nice guy who stayed here till after midnight vacuuming out the water from the carpet and the standing water in my bathroom and kitchen. He is to return today with a dehumidifier and other equipment to help dry things out. So, no fun, but it could have been much worse.

  16. Old Bear Avatar
    Old Bear

    Mark

    Yes you could have been doing it in the dark.

  17. Steve From Royal Oak, MI Avatar

    Mark: I had a situation like that at a hotel that we stayed with my wife and my sister. It was a bit damp for first day and got worse by the time we checked out. My sister told my wife and I that we needed to complain at check out and both of them did. The clerk left to find the manager and both my sister and wife let me have it as I said nothing. I told them I wasn’t going to waste my time on the clerk as she could not make any decisions.

    I left them and walked down the hall where I spotted the manager. As we walked back to the lobby I explained that we had a lot of water in our room and before I could say anything, he told me that he had been up half the night as a pipe had burst in the room above us and it had caused quite a mess. By the time we got to the lobby he agreed to only charging us for one instead of three nights (we were only expecting him to take off one night).

    I hope that you will be compensated for their mess.

  18. TruckerRon Avatar

    My worst plumbing experience has been with the bit of pipe just above the shutoff valve and below the pressure regulator in the wall of our downstairs bathroom. And when I say “in the wall” I mean that the original owner finished the downstairs himself and enclosed the valve without leaving an access to it. The plumber had to rip out the wall to reach the leak. At least we were left with a levered valve instead of the outdoor-faucet-wheel-handle original. The original hadn’t been used in the 40 years between when the house was built and the incident.
     
    https://s16962.pcdn.co/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/81081-1.jpg

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

      TR, that is what plumbers loving call a “spinner”. I had one of those in a house in New Hampshire. I needed to turn off the water for a bathroom remodel to be done before a houseful of guests to attend my son’s graduation.
      The contractor suggested turning the water off at the street, easy if the street valve could be found. The house was on a community well. There were no drawings of the pipes as the original installer had a dispute with the builder and took them all. Cut to me digging up my front yard to below the frost line. Black flies abounded. I was saved by a neighbor who brought out two copper rods and suggested that I dowse to find the junction of the house feed to the main. I thought he was nuts but in desperation I tried it. Dang if I didn’t find a point along the lines where the two pipes came together. I dug down and found the valve. Now I’m a true believer.

  19. Ghost Avatar
    Ghost

    Sorry to hear of your water situation, Mark. That can be a huge PITA, at best. Last two episodes I had were both at work, the first caused by a broken water cooler line that soaked the carpet in reception, and the second by a heavy overnight downpour and a clogged storm drain outside the building that produced 3 to 6 inches of standing water inside. (Imagine my surprise when I opened the employee entrance the next morning, on the side of the building with the deepest water in it.) Long story short, in both cases, as in yours, the commercial cleaning service did a superb job and their crew was super friendly.

    1. Mark in TTown Avatar
      Mark in TTown

      Thanks Ghost. The carpet cleaner came back around noon. Now I have three squirrel cage fans blowing on various portions of the apartment, and a jumbo dehumidifier going as well. I took today off work due to maintenance arriving so late last night and not finishing till past midnight. But I plan to work the rest of the week. The guy from the cleaning service estimated it might be dry enough to pull the gear out by Wednesday. As far as I know, it didn’t damage anything of mine except two 4 roll packs of toilet paper, and an assemble-it-yourself bookcase I hadn’t put together yet. This is the first flooding problem I have had, but the house we rented in Cookeville had a weird placement for the breaker box. It was downstairs in an unfinished basement, so every time a storm or something tripped a breaker, you had to go outside and into this creepy space under the house to turn the power back on. I don’t know how it passed codes inspection and I always wondered if the house was built pre-electricification and had the wiring added after.

      1. Ghost Avatar
        Ghost

        My 1925 Craftsman-style cottage that Hurricane Katrina ate back in Aught-Five was obviously wired sometime after it was constructed and still had a box with screw-in breakers on the utility porch. (The house had three chimneys, two for heating fireplaces and a smaller one on the back of the house that had to have been for a wood cook stove.) I had the wiring checked by an electrician when I bought it, and I had pending plans for rewiring when it got smashed by a 100-year-old oak tree. (I did the math. Well, counted the rings in the stump, anyway. Calculating the percentage of uncoverage of bikinis is much more fun, believe me.)

  20. Ghost Avatar
    Ghost

    Re 5-4-20* real-time cartoon: The list for a recent shopping trip happened to include olives, limes, corn chips, ice cream and peanuts…and bread and milk. But no, I didn’t include the latter two to add gravitas or make the trip look “serious”. At least I don’t think it did. 🙂
    *Hmmm. It’s Star Wars Day, isn’t it?

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

      Metaphors be with you.

      1. Ghost Avatar
  21. Ghost Avatar
    Ghost

    Seen by Jackie on Book of Face: A farmer used his COVID-19 stimulus check to buy baby chickens for his farm. So he got his money for nothing and his chicks for free.
    (With apologies to Dire Straits.)

    1. David in Granbury Avatar
      David in Granbury

      That ain’t working, that’s the way you do it—