Let’s Play Two! A Double-Header!
A first for the comic! A double-wide page spread that, in print form, would be continuous across the comic book, but here on the internet, that’s not possible. Well, it is, but the page would look odd and everything would be hard to read. Bottom line is that Page 9 and 10 are both published today, so be sure to click previous above to see page 9! This also explains why this page seems a bit out of place as you need to read Page 9 first.
I have visited the states in the map many, many times in my life as I’ve driven the highlighted route below to travel to New York city for both work and fun. I’ve been to New York so many times I’ve lost count. The best trips were when I tabled at New York Comic Con, or just went to the convention to hang with fellow artist friends for a couple nights of drinking and raising hell in New York.
I’ve marked just a few of the cities I have visited in my many travels as both a comic artist and video producer. If you’ve ever driven through Pennsylvania, you know it’s a very wide state with not a whole lot going on from the west side to the east side. I have been in Detroit more times than I’d like to remember, but it did offer me the chance to cross over into Canada for a very nice dinner one night after a convention. I was paying the bill and apparently did not do the math correctly of converting USD to CAD and tipped the waitress a shitload of money. She practically followed me home. 🙂
Below you can see what the double-wide page is supposed to look like in print form. Clicking it will enlarge the image and make it easier to read. At least to my old eyes.
Some Priest today as the gang surely broke a few laws along the way to New York. They were just lucky enough to avoid Smokey Bear givin’ them a bill.
Ah…Scranton…the banana city
Based almost word for word on a true story from 1965
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q8I-zPmTPzM
Love that Harry Chapin song! The live version is the best version. The album version just doesn’t have the same feel to it.
Correct 🙂
Some times the live version is better, or at least longer, but most times the studio version is done the way the artists wanted it to sound and they get to try it over and over until they’ve got it ‘right’.
Story telling songs like this one tend to grow and mature over the years and the live version is very often much more detailed, especially if the artist connects with the crowd and they give that back so the end result is greater than the sum of it’s parts.
I find that most often the ‘big jam bands’ like the Allman Brothers or CCR or The Band tend to sound best live and the Grateful Dead are famous for never palying the same song the same way twice, their studio work is good but there’s nothing like a Jerry Garcia 48 hour guitar solo with the rest of the band jamming in and out.
Misspelled Philadelphia (L before the second P). Grew up 1 hour SW of there just over the MD border.
Well, crap… It’ll be fixed in when I updated the inks and colors. Thanks for letting me know!
I feel like all I am doing is criticizing but I have really been looking forward to this road trip! Don’t forget to fix both Philly’s on the map. By the way, the twin CB whips look fantastic. I sold a lot of those when I worked at Radio Shack in Newark, Delaware. Still have my last Realistic CB on a shelf in the garage. I am 66 and remember those days well.
I take constructive criticism and suggestions as that my readers are as invested in the comic as I am. I’m a one-man studio, so to speak, and I miss stuff all the time. So, please, keep the suggestions and pointing out boob-boos coming.
I worked at Radio Shack in… wait for it… the fall of 1977. Getting customers to give me their addresses on the receipts was like pulling teeth sometimes. If a customer refused, I’d open the phone book after the customer left and put in any name and address so my manager wouldn’t yell at me for not getting addresses. And, man, those battery cards. I still remember seeing the first of the Tandy Model 1 computers arrive one day. Fun times!
Regarding CB dual whips, if I didn’t have the trunk mounted antennas, then I install dual whips. Watching them fly in the wind at highway speeds was awesome! I had a ’73 Dodge Coronet that was dark green that had the dual whips on it as well as big yellow fog lights under the front bumper that I installed. I called it “The Bee” and everyone knew as that. 🙂
In ’77 I’d just sold my ’68 VW Bug to the guy that towed it’s carcass off the road for more than I paid for it (paid $60, got $100 with a shattered block 🙂 ) and had a ’71 Vega with a Kojak-mount antenna for the (Realistic, of course) CB. There was a rash of people’s antennas being stolen/cut off at the time so I used to keep it between the seats whenever I parked and put it on the roof before starting out or just using it in the parking lot, until a town cop where I was living cruised through the lot behind the apartment building then stopped and came over to me where I was having a beer and chatting on the CB and reminded me he could charge me for having impaired operation of a motor vehicle just by sitting in it with the keys…
Clicking on the two-page spread looked great on my 39″ wide-screen monitor. I was able to see the whole map in a decent size.
The town I grew up in was named Rising Sun, MD. and would be on your map in the upper right corner of Maryland. It was just off both US 1 and I-95 half-way between Baltimore and Philadelphia. If I missed a concert in one, I could catch it in the other next week and sometimes they included Wilmington, DE on the circuit. Only about an hour drive any which way.
Instead of thinking there is nothing to see between Pittsburgh and Philadelphia, I would think curiosity would have taken them South to US 30, Amish country, to see the towns of Blue Ball, Bird in Hand, and Intercourse, all leading to Paradise. These are real towns just east of Lancaster.
Lived in the land of tuques and timbits even if I hate tuques, but I love timbits 🙂
We didn’t get a lot of the big name bands from ‘down south’ but I saw April Wine, Guess Who, Stampeders, Lighthouse and a bunch of others in this tiny town’s arena and ones like Kiss, Styx, Yes and some others in the ‘city’ an hour away. Saw J. Geils, Sha-na-na, Horslips, Downchild Blues Band and a bunch of others at the local University when I attended.
“It’s a long way to New York City!
It’s a long way to go!
It’s a long way to New York City,
‘Cause the way there really blows.
And it seems like a real pity
On the way there’s nothing there,
‘Cause it’s a long way to New York City,
And we don’t really care!”
Indiana is not empty it’s home to the Indiana colts NFL team, Notre Dame fighting Irish in South Bend and the Indianapolis 500. Ohio is not empty it has two NFL teams Cleveland browns and Cincinnati Bengals plus the Ohio State buckeyes and the infamous Kent State shooting by the local National guard in 1970. Plus Devo are from Akron. Cincinnati apart from the set of WKRP TV show is home to the Rock and Roll hall of fame and Rhythm and Blues music hall of fame. while Cleveland is home to the American Classical music hall of fame. Pennsylvania is not empty it was home to Hersey chocolate, which moved to Smith Falls Ontario Canada. Boarders the Mason Dixon line the battle of Gettysburg and Abraham Lincoln’s address. Three mile island near Harrisburg and home to Penn state, Philadelphia naval yard and the Amish. New York state is not empty home to Adirondack mountains and Hudson river known as America’s Rhine where lake Placid held 1932 and 1980 Olympic winter games. West Point is the US army academy along the Hudson river as is the city of Albany. Further south is the Catskill mountains, Sleepy Hallow and the headless horseman. Apart from boarder with the great lake New York boarders lake Champlain with a SAC airbase deploying FB 111 bombers, Griffis air force base Rome and the 10th mountain division outside of Watertown. In 1969 Woodstock concert was in New York State while Rochester is near 7 flags Darrin Lake pop singer Willa Ford advertised the theme park wearing a sexy uniform should have adopted it boast sales. Buffalo is famous for the 1968 and 71 war of the worlds broadcast sponsored by Syamore fashions and home to the Bills and sabers. While Syracuse the salt city is home to orange men and I have not mentioned old forge nor leather stocking country in up state New York after leather stocking tales set in the 7 years war fought 1756 to 1763. Ontario has Toronto the CN tower, science center, zoo, maple leafs, agros, blue jays and raptors. Hamilton has the tiger cats and Ottawa red blacks and senators amazing what Ads on hockey night in Canada teach you. Now you see some of the geography missed there is more but plan 9 didn’t visit Ontario. Incidentally Robyn is real crabby and mean wouldn’t want her on a trip! But to comfort the neurotic travelers here is top ten road songs 1, Beat city by the Flowerpot men 2, Blitzkrieg bop the Ramones 3, Holiday Road Lindsey Buckingham 4, Driver’s Stuff’n’tears 5, Diesel Sausalito summer 6, Rock the Bus Frankie Smith 7, Joyride Roxette 8, Heart land the Motels she stole the Pontiac “You know whos got it.” love the Pontiac girl. 9, Rocket 88 Ike Turner/Jackie Bresten and his delta cats 10, Hotrod Lincoln Commander and his lost planet airmen. 11 wildcard Drums a go go the Hollywood persuders. The moral don’t have a road trip with mean ole Robyn have the Pontiac girl she can’t be as crabby.
“Driver’s Seat” by Sniff ‘n’ the Tears is a damn good song! I have the single and played the song constantly on my car’s cassette deck back in 1979! That’s a great list of driving songs as well.
Yes, Robyn is crabby. It’s kinda her nature. But, she and Bud did do the lowland fling on Hemp Island, so she has her lovable side too.
Everyone has their “honestly Officer, I didn’t know I was going that fast” type of music and it’s different for each, some glaze over to Heavy Metal and some to Country Rock. For me it’s just the rhythm that grabs me and the genre is mostly irrelevant.
My ‘half hour drive to work’ MP3 CD had a hundred odd tunes on it, everything from the above mentioned ‘Sausalito Summer Nights’ to the Stones ‘Undercover of the Night’ to Molly Hatchet’s ‘Flirtin’ with Disaster’ to some of the the most insidious ones like The Seeds’ ‘Pushin too Hard’ or Rawlins Cross ‘Little Beggerman’ or ‘Colleen’; Deep Purple’s ‘Ted the Mechanic’ or pretty much anything else 😉 Queen’s ‘Stone Cold Crazy’ or ‘Ogre Battle’; The Outlaws version of ‘Ghost Riders in the Sky’, Grateful Dead’s ‘Alabama Getaway’ or one the worst ones for me, April Wine’s ‘The Band has Just Begun’ or Tragically Hips’ ‘Fireworks (aka The Hockey Song)’…try not ‘breakin the law’ when one of those pops on, they just subconsciously cause your right foot to flex..hard.
The only thing that saved my candy apple red Mustang with the top down ass from getting a ticket every morning was that it was shift change for the local Mounties when I was heading for mine 😉
i forgot to mention New Jersey since they drove though it to reach New York. Anthony Bourdain visited the state ate cheese steaks, showed the rural part where they called them pineys saw the battleship USS New Jersey. It is home to the New Jersey Devils, Bon Jovi, Bruce Springsteen and Atlantic city where the game monopoly was founded. The city is even home to Donald Trumps casinos and hotels some which have barred him from visiting. Donald Trump even used seed money from Chinchilla farms, spying tan salons scaring children and small dogs in central park being a gargoyle. Almost like the 1972 movie gargoyles accept Donald wears a hell toupee and lacks the abs to be a gargoyle in a green speedo rahahahaha. Really he inherited millions of dollars and doesn’t fly around catching careless night travelers dooming them gruesome fate involving euro beat, claws and talons. Look to the night sky with fear he could watching behind that cloud in S&M speedos even doctor Carlin nor Robyn can’t save you mohahahaha.
Thanks for the additions. A pleasant surprise this morning.
Did you leave Delaware off of your map on purpose? It is under an arc drawn from the corner of MD. When it was split from PA, a compass was put on a map at New Castle, the new capitol, with the other end at the corner of MD and an arc drawn to the Delaware Bay to form the new border. Unfortunately there was a slight error leaving a tiny triangle of disputed land.
Nope, I just traced over the Google Maps screen shot of directions from Lombard to New York. I see what you’re saying, I didn’t draw in the line for Delaware. I don’t know who originally came up with the state lines, but it makes no sense to split that land mass (island?) that is partly Delaware and Maryland. I’ve been to Ocean City and didn’t realize it was just a short trip to Delaware from there!
I’ve driven from my town here in North Carolina to Philadelphia and didn’t even notice I passed through Delaware. That’s probably why I left it off the map. 😉
Delaware was part of Wm Penn’s land grant. When Mason & Dixon surveyed the MD/PA border, it included what is now the MD/DE border. The people who settled DE were mostly Presbyterians from the Netherlands and did not like the strong Quaker rule of PA. That is why they split into a separate colony. The map and compass method to determine the border seemed the fairest way. DE and MD share the Delmarva peninsula along with a little bit of VA. This is a large peninsula bordered by the Chesapeake Bay and the Delaware Bay/Atlantic Ocean. The bay becomes the Susquehanna River in MD and heads to the mountains of PA. The Delaware Bay becomes the Delaware River and goes through Philadelphia before forming the PA/NJ border.