Welcome to the Saturday Morning Post. Events spread me a bit thin this past week. I wasn’t able to share much here on the Web site, so I’ll try to make up for it with this. Is your index finger in shape? The link above will take you to the beginning of more than a month of comic strips from 20 years ago this month, comprising without a doubt the most bizarre and different I’ve ever done. Yes, I’ve shown them here before, but it’s been a while. I might talk about the experience more in upcoming posts, but I won’t be posting the entire sequence here. You’ll have to follow the link. (Look closely! In many scenes, I appear as Arlo’s stunt double.)
The Land Down Under
By Jimmy Johnson
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48 responses to “The Land Down Under”
JJ – A nice surprise on a Saturday am. Thanks
Hsve never seen this one so will read entire series. If my phone lets me. Misbehaving.
JJ, did you have something extra in your coffee this morning? (or back in 2001?)
Another day, another missing post.
(That was me). And another day where my name/email wasn’t saved.
Tom, if you “force” your browser to reload the page it will often produce the errant posting. In Chrome, on my desktop I merely have to hold the shift key and click on the circular “refresh” icon. Back in the old days, shift-F5 would do the same thing. I don’t know the shortcuts to force a page reload on any of the mobile devices, though.
AHHHHHH, and now the post appears!
Patience is a virtue.
Jimmy:
Have you lucky enough to travel to Cuba?
Twice. Once with an organized group of editorial cartoonists and again on a sailboat with a buddy of mine. Much of the series is based upon the latter trip.
I’m envious.
I remember the Cuba series and loved revisiting it. It was great. I was one of those who wrote you at the time, but email, not snail.
FYI: I got an email from my OB/GYN the other day that expanded on something I had read elsewhere. They suggest waiting 4 weeks after receiving the final COVID vaccine before doing any screening breast imaging (like your annual screening mammogram). They also recommend waiting 2 weeks after having any kind of vaccine (such as Shingles or the Flu Shot). The reasoning behind this is that mammograms include imaging of the lymph nodes under the arm. These lymph nodes may be enlarged shortly after having the vaccine which can lead to having to do repeat imaging on the area. Both the extra procedure – and the worry that goes with it – are something we would all rather avoid!
Momma Bear & I got our first “poke” yesterday –
No problem for me but Momma’s arm ached but an ibuprofen
helped that.
.
Ghost- from yesterday’s last post.
“That would be a bit more humorous to me if Skipper hadn’t recently developed the habit of “moving” things from the kitchen table to the kitchen floor.”
Here is proof that the world is NOT flat. If it were, cats would have everything loose over the edge. {^¿^} {^¿^}
.
Name not saved today. 🙁
Jimmy,
Is that you as the stunt double in the taxi scene? Or was it you in the Speedo greeting the Spanish senorita in the bikini? 🙂 Had I been an extra in the series it could have only been a taller version of the portly gent looking for the Jimmy Buffet store. My Polo/Izod shirt would have likely been untucked, though.
Sitting here wearing my Air Margaritaville cap from New Orleans…Motto: Fly Fast – Live Slow.
Perhaps Jimmy Buffett bought a guitar pick with his royalty on it.
So posting from my phone doesn’t work :-(…. I walked 15 miles today and felt great. No great aches or pains, just the normal. I get home, take a shower before going to Mass at 4:30 and I sneezed violently. During Mass, I kept having to remove my mask to stop my nose from running like a leaky faucet. We ate a local restaurant and when I got home, my eyes started tearing up like a leaky faucet. My wife was getting worried and asked if I felt achy. I told her “Of course I feel achy, I just walked 15 miles!” She thought that I was kidding but then she has never walked that far. I decided to use a saline rinse before going to bed and that has made me feel better. I am hoping that the humidifier on my CPAP will help keep the air moist and that I will feel better in the morning. Chances are that I won’t, if it is just allergies, I should be OK.
Our charming and so capable young waiter today whom we had returned seeking was Marlon. His accent was so difficult to detect I finally asked if he was of Hispanic discent.
Yes, Cuban, born there, came to America at age nine with his family by way of Las Vegas and Salt Lake City and a lot of moves before Tulsa.
I thought European accent. He gets to wait on Spanish apeaking customers, he was only bilingual waiter on shift today.
I last visited Cuba on the first anniversary of the Cuban Revolution. That was an accident, Delta was still flying there enroute to Venezuela. We were met by the Castro government who were greeting all planes.
My memory is of bearded ragged Revolutionary soldiers carrying rifles. My classmates in boarding school had gone into mourning for family lost. A close family friend had gone to Cuban prison for being caught doing beach pickups of Cubans trying to fly out. He was American.
Then Bay of Pigs attracted Louisiana and Mississippi volunteers along the coast in college. Yet by the 1970s in Texas when we planned to live on our boat in Carribean I was ready to sail there. We never left Houston.
Thanks, Jimmy; thoroughly enjoyed rereading the whole Cuba sequence – but it brought to mind a question I’ve pondered. We know Cubans love baseball (Fidel Castro had a try-out with the Yankees, but wasn’t quite good enough), so I have to ask – does the Cuban national team play their home games in Ché Stadium?
Nice one. Second reading to get it. Yesterday I only visualized the man named Ché when I read the word. Today I must have “read out loud ” inside my head and got your word play correctly. Chuckles were had, and appreciation felt.
The Castro MLB tryout story (NY Yankees or Washington Senators version) is a widespread myth. Here’s a true story: our local Rochester NY AAA club, the Red Wings, were the last American team to play in Cuba before the US embargo. Here’s the link; if it’s paywalled for you let me know and I’ll find another way: https://www.democratandchronicle.com/story/news/2014/12/18/red-wings-last-baseball-team-cuba/20600617/
Mark I enjoyed the baseball article. It was huge sport in Venezuela too. Thank you.
Attempted revolution happened often in late 1950s in Venezuela. We were often stopped by military roadblocks not knowing which side was stopping us.
The one time our school bus was forced to lay in road face down while military held guns on us was more than enough. One of our Americana students had made a wisecrack about hidden guns when troops stopped and boarded the bus.
At age 13 I was beautiful and very adult woman. Our state governor’s son/heir met me at a country club dance and decided to marry me. I went back to boarding school and continued to write refussals as his offers escalated. We left the country and I never contacted him again.
Sadly among my friends in 1950s and 1960s from the Central American and South American/Caribbean countries if their families were wealthy or political they were always on one side or the other. No one was neutral.
No amount of wealth or power seemed worth revolution. My friends seemed to plot their relatives over throw.
Some revolutions come about because of clashes between those who merely want to be left alone to live their lives and those who want to control other people. Others come about because they want to boot out the current rulers and take their place. I’m in the first group… leave me alone!
Re 3-7-21 real-time cartoon: I sort of enjoyed “Attack of the Killer Tomatoes”. As I recall, it ended with the giant killer tomatoes being lured to the Hollywood Bowl where soldiers using flamethrower tanks filled with alcohol sprayed them down, so the Air Force could bomb them, converting them into a giant Bloody Mary, which the local populace drank while celebrating the tomatoes’ defeat. Or something like that. I saw it at a drive-in movie theater and may have been a bit distracted.
I remember going to see Ben Hur at the drive in with one of those “descended from really good Southetn historical families” I used to date.
Only two things I remember happening was the chariot race, parting of the Red Sea and the Ten ommandments.
This was about Moses and the Judaic return to Holy Land? I never saw it (.) Then or again.
This young man never killed anyone ( like others I dated from good families) and finally retired from the board of directors of some truly successful and legendary Southern companies. No Revolutionary family there.
Jackie, I think you have the movies Ben Hur and The Ten Commandments conflated. The chariot race was in Ben Hur, and the other two were from the movie The Ten Commandments.
Maybe it was a double feature? Distractions being what they are, conflation could be a natural result.
Unlikely, Mr. Met, as each of them was about 3.5 hours long, although in the case of The Ten Commandments, that includes the intermission.
Details are getting in the way of humor. Ir would have been a very long night. While no real world drive-in owner would schedule such an evening, joke world proprietors might allow their audience the leisure to pursue their various distractions. The length of time between periods of awareness is part of the humor. Like an epic drama, some encounters are longer than others.
You clearly established the memory is flawed. I found humor in the way such a memory could form, so shared it here. Stay well in these trying times.
Skipper comes up and talks to Ghost in bed every night. Ghost always asks him what he wants? Maybe it is this?
He complains about food during the daytime
Neb: Sandhill cranes assembling to migrate N.
https://explore.org/livecams/birds/crane-camera
Peace,
Re 3-8-21 real-time cartoon:
Ludwig: “Oh, I see!”
Me: “Wut?”
Sorta like posting to this blog right now. If everything is aligned, your post will appear immediately. If not, give it a awhile.
Just read fascinating tie in with Cuban and Hispanic baseball players and Spanish language in today’s Washington Post. It seems a Louisiana born player decided to learn to speak Spanish so he could communicate.
He ended up teaching English in return for Spanish lessons, became bilingual and friends with his teammates. He just retired and I found the story so inspirational.
That’s what teams should be, friends.