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

Est. 1985

Extra, Extra!

Yes, More Harvey!

By Jimmy Johnson


Buy the new book, "Beaucoup Arlo & Janis!"Today's "Arlo & Janis!"
It will come as a giant shock to you that I’m running a little behind here. Over the weekend, I was going to slip in a couple of 1991 strips from the first visitation of Harvey for those interested. Many of us, I imagine, have seen quite enough of Harvey. Of course, if you don’t want to see Harvey, you probably haven’t seen him at all. This is getting very existential. So, without further ado, I am going to post two old comic strips from the first appearance of Harvey. This short series led to the later send-up of the movie “Harvey,” which we saw in its entirely recently. It’s probably worth noting that Harvey’s appearance was one of the first times Arlo & Janis got, well… weird. OK! I promise, no more Harvey after today.

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64 responses to “Yes, More Harvey!”

  1. Dave in MA Avatar
    Dave in MA

    I, for one, enjoy the Harvey strips.

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

    As evidenced by the fact that we hang out here, we tend to like weird!

    Bring it on.

  3. Jackie Monies Avatar
    Jackie Monies

    So do I. It could be because my house is a losing battle to spider webs and dust, even though dogs and cats are now quarantined back in back of house with me. I think I am coughing up hairballs like Bill the Cat and the recent hair replacement recipients in Bloom County.

    I don’t mind the weird at all, obviously!

    Love, Jackie

  4. Mark in TTown Avatar
    Mark in TTown

    Jackie, I want your mama’s breakfast!! Prayers to Mike and you for good news and early recovery. Ya’ll have a lot more sailing to do yet.

  5. Tom in Georgia Avatar
    Tom in Georgia

    Thanks- I enjoyed the dust bunny visit. Jackie- Dust bunnies are better than hairballs any day!

  6. Jackie Monies Avatar
    Jackie Monies

    Mark, the funny thing is my favorite breakfast is actually muesli or multigrain oats with nuts and fruit, yogurt, that kind of healthy stuff. My mom will NOT eat anything remotely healthy although I can usually get a sweet fruit yogurt down her.

    She even rejected the oatmeal that had flax seeds which she suspected of being bugs.

    Her favorite breakfast involves biscuits and gravy. I am not inclined to make this too often but she likes them drowned in it.

    Mike still maintains an alien space ship dropped me off while following the Mississippi River as a reference point, kind of like Ghost and me talking about pilots following the roads.

    Love, Jackie

  7. Ghost Rider 6 Avatar
    Ghost Rider 6

    But of course the squash in the Okie meal would be fried, Jackie. (Just as it would be around these parts.) What did you think, that it and some zucchini and some sweet onion would be cut into a rough dice; lightly seasoned with sea salt, fresh ground pepper and dried basil; and gently sautéed in a bit of olive oil until it is al dente? Sure you did. 🙂

    I ran across this “fact” recently and saved it for the Village’s inevitable chili discussion:

    On September 26, 1820, Robert Gibbon Johnson stood before a crowd on the courthouse steps in Salem, NJ, and became the first person in American to eat a tomato, proving that it wasn’t poisonous.

    This news has yet to reach the chili makers of Texas.

  8. David in Austin Avatar
    David in Austin

    Buttermilk biscuits, sausage gravy, bacon, and three fried eggs (in the bacon grease) with fried potatoes and onions is an optimal southern breakfast. Extra biscuits with butter and either honey, strawberry jam, blackberry jelly, or molasses are desert. Beverage is your choice of coffee, milk, or juice.

    Of course, after eating one must spend all day working on the farm, or walking in the woods while hunting/trapping. Growing up, I had such a breakfast most days of the week. My work consisted of football and basketball. Usually the choice would be gravy or potatoes– on the weekend we might have both. (I may have neglected to mention that I was 6’2″ tall and weighed 200 pounds before my 13th birthday. I played Lil’ Abner in our high school musical in ninth grade… I was 6’6″ by then.)

    There is little to beat a southern breakfast. It’s especially good when camping!

  9. sideburns Avatar

    David, if I were working on a farm, I’d probably want that kind of breakfast too, because I’d need it.

  10. Jackie Monies Avatar
    Jackie Monies

    Mama used to get up in the dark and cook her “Man killing breakfasts” as Mike called them for all the deer hunters and then go out hunting with them. Double duty service, plus she’d make them all a sack lunch. My step dad ate pretty much like this his entire life but I did not see him do much work after he retired from the oilfield.

    Mike used to call it my field hand menu, as I was used to cooking for a huge crowd of men and often field hands. I still am not good at small portions, so we tend to have a lot of left overs too!

    I also make mama coffee, despite fact I never touched it. I live on unsweetened iced tea and diet Coke, water. She won’t touch these and has sweet tea only. I keep mentioning she is 93 and in fantastic health. Different genes apparently.

    Love, Jackie

  11. David in Austin Avatar
    David in Austin

    Went back and caught the rest of yesterday’s postings. Jackie, I’m sorry that the news was not good. :/ A trip might be just the thing!

    I love seafood as well. My favorite way to eat oysters is grilled… throw a bunch on the barbeque, grab the shells and pop open with an oyster knife. Add a sprinkle of salt or dip into some cocktail sauce and you have pure deliciousness! Fried or fried on a Po’ Boy are good too. Actually, most seafood is good. I’m going to try to smoke some salmon… I had alfredo once with smoked salmon that was UNBELIEVABLY good.

    I’m smoking bacon today. I started the pork bellies in a wet cure about 10 days ago, then dried yesterday to develop the pellicle. The cure was brown sugar and maple syrup, plus the appropriate salts and water. I’m using cold smoke, with 3/4 apple and 1/4 pecan wood. I’ll slice and vacuum pack tomorrow. The bacon was inspired while making sausage from a wild pig my son-in-law shot. Some of the commercial pork fat we add had bacon-type meat. We ended up with over 60 pounds of breakfast sausage and sweet Italian sausage.

  12. David in Austin Avatar
    David in Austin

    Jackie, like your mother, my mother cooked full breakfast every day. It didn’t matter what time we were leaving the house, there was always breakfast. She baked homemade biscuits every day, too– no toast at our house. Even the day she died on the way to dialysis, there were biscuits with bacon and eggs.

    I may have told the story before: When I proposed to my wife (of 31 years) I asked her if she’d bake me biscuits every day like my mama did for my daddy. She said yes, but she hasn’t made homemade biscuits once! She says that I do just fine making my own biscuits. I like to cook, but I don’t do big breakfasts every day.

  13. David in Austin Avatar
    David in Austin

    Off the computer for me. I have an annual follow-up with the local kidney transplant clinic. I’ve *only* been on the waiting list for 6 years. The labs and tests will take most of the day.

  14. sandcastler™ Avatar
    sandcastler™

    Tom ((f)ffr), I don’t doubt our weirdness. I only wonder from whence it came: birth, Satuday morning TV, the drugs in college, raising of children, living our work life in little prison cells called cubes, or the aging process. My own suspesion, all of the aforementioned were responsible.

    Now we only have Clack without Click, God nmlkkesz you Tom M..

  15. Rusty Avatar
    Rusty

    Ghost…tomatoes are fine (in the form of paste), just don’t put any beans in it and attempt to pass it off as chili! As the song says, “If you know beans about chill, you’ll know chili has no beans.” 🙂
    Rusty

  16. sandcastler™ Avatar
    sandcastler™

    God bless you Tom M. Unsure what Siri was doing; looks more like a Robin Williams line from Mork.

  17. Ghost Rider 6 Avatar
    Ghost Rider 6

    I’ve not tried this yet, but it is filed in my recipe collection under “Real Texas Chili”. You’ll note it has no onion, beans or tomatoes in it.

    INGREDIENTS:
    3 pounds boneless beef chuck roast, cut into 1″ cubes
    2 tablespoons olive oil
    3 cloves garlic, minced
    3 tablespoons chili powder
    2 teaspoons ground cumin
    3 tablespoons all-purpose flour
    1 tablespoon dried oregano
    2 (14 ounce) cans beef broth, divided
    1 teaspoon salt
    1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper

    DIRECTIONS:
    1. Heat the oil in a large skillet over medium high heat. Sauté the beef cubes in the oil for 2 minutes. Reduce heat to medium and stir in the garlic.

    2. In a small bowl, combine the chili powder, cumin and flour. Sprinkle over the meat and stir until evenly coated. Crumble the oregano over the meat and pour in 1 1/2 cans of the broth.

    3. Add the salt and ground black pepper, stir together well, bring to a boil, reduce heat to low and let simmer, partially covered for about 90 minutes. Pour in remaining broth and simmer 30 minutes more, until meat begins to fall apart. Cool, cover and refrigerate to allow the flavors to blend. Makes 8 servings.

    I don’t know, but it basically looks to me like it would be “boiled beef”.

  18. Jackie Monies Avatar
    Jackie Monies

    Or we could just skip to New Mexico style chili/Chile which seems to forgo the meat as well and is ground chilies and water apparently.

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

    @Sandcastler:

    As it happens, I’m listening to Fresh Air with Terri Gross at the moment. Today’s program is a repeat of a Tom & Ray interview from 2001 in remembrance of Tom Magliozzi.

  20. Jackie Monies Avatar
    Jackie Monies

    Back to the chili contention with a radical opinion here: I like vegetables in my chili.

    So, I put fresh chopped chili peppers, bell peppers, whatever I have usually, onion, green onions, ditto what is on hand. I like beans too and tomatoes. Corn. I have even made green chili with green tomatoes before, green peppers, cilantro.

    Purists will say this is called soup, not chili. That is same way my husband is about gumbo, which he insists not have okra, tomatoes or other extraneous foliage in it beside the Trinity.

    Love, Jackie

  21. Ghost Rider 6 Avatar
    Ghost Rider 6

    That’s why my recipe collection currently includes 15 very different recipes for chili.

  22. Mark in TTown Avatar
    Mark in TTown

    Jackie, one of my favorite add-ins for chili is a little Bufalo Chipotle Sauce. It’s a Mexican import so you can probably find it there in OK. Be careful adding it because it is quite hot, but it adds a great flavor. For those who don’t know, Chipotle is a smoked Jalapeno pepper and the smoking is what gives this a different flavor for chili.

  23. Ghost Rider 6 Avatar
    Ghost Rider 6

    I discovered Car Talk on NPR some years ago when I traveled out of town for several consecutive Saturdays to visit my best in the hospital. (If you think I’ve spent a significant chunk of my life going to hospitals to visit; visiting in hospitals; and returning from visiting in hospitals, you would probably be correct.) Perhaps my favorite Tom Magliozzi story is that during the time after graduating from MIT when he worked for Sylvania in their Semiconductor Division, someone asked his Mom what he did for a living. “He makes light bulbs,” she said.

  24. DellaMae Avatar
    DellaMae

    Just wanted to join the chorus here. Godspeed, Tom Magliozzi, and bless you. He made everyone who was ever around him smile. How many people can say that?

  25. Jackie Monies Avatar
    Jackie Monies

    Ghost, do any of your chili recipes include chocolate/cocoa? That is actually one of the secret ingredients in my very best chili recipes which helps to make it very rich and dark, which I either stole from a mole’ recipe or Rick Bayless a long, long time ago!

    That and cooking for about 10-12 hours until your arm falls off from stirring at low temp. I know, you’d use a slow cooker crockpot!

    Love, Jackie