Update Change!
I will be posting a new comic every WEDNESDAY
for here on out.
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Bud’s daughter is learning, much like my three sons, not to ask her old man questions about the ’70s as the answer always turns into a long story of drunken nights, chaos, and debauchery. Next week we head back to 1977 with our usual gang of misfits and troublemakers.
As a little Easter Egg, the poster in the background of the first panel is actually a very old drawing of Plan 9 back when I had Bud in a black leather coat when on stage. It is also a rare time I drew Jeff where you could see his eyes. I updated the coloring and the background for use in today’s comic. Click the image below to see it full size.
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Unfortunately I have some sad news to deliver. My wife’s older brother, who is her only remaining immediate family member is suffering from terminal cancer. We spent the past week in Florida making all the final preparations of his estate so when his time on this planet expires all the paperwork has been processed. Thus I have been on the run traveling to Florida from North Carolina and spending 5 days in a hotel running around St. Petersburg doing the above paperwork, meeting with banks, hospitals, long-term care, etc., etc.
My mother passed away in 1985 due to breast cancer, and this Alan Parsons Project song always reminds me of her. I know, kind of a bummer posting today, but shit like this happens, I just try to roll with it.
That’s the problem with getting old, you end up doing things like this way too often 🙁
My father-in-law is the last of the parents and he’s pushing 90 with blood pressure of like 300 over Holy F***!!!
I’m beginning to wonder if he’s going to outlast me the way things are going.
“That’s the problem with getting old, you end up doing things like this way too often”
Amen to that. I’ve buried my dad and two uncles within the last 6 years, not to mention at least half a dozen or so of my parents friends – people I remember as being their age – passing away within the same period
I’m 65 now and I every time someone my age passes away I think “That could have been me.” Death is that part of life we rarely talk about as it effects us all so personally.
I’m generally not this somber, but it was a rough week.
My wife and I have lost both of our parents. The youngest of my three older sisters passed last December and my wife’s sister died in 2001 of cancer. Cancer truly sucks.
Sorry for the downer post. I’ll bring the tone back up next week.
Quite alright, talking about things we hate to talk about is kind of cathartic in a way, especially with complete strangers on the net 🙂
cancer does suck, horribly, all of our parents died of various forms of it and the one still left had it too but that’s not what’s going to do him in 🙁
I’ve had it myself, twice, but supposedly it’s all gone now…we’ll see.
The only sure thing about life is that nobody gets out of it alive.
“Anyway, Bud’s daughter is learning, much like my three sons, not to ask her old man questions about the ’70s as the answer…”
At least it ain’t as bad as the Mosby kids, who had to sit through days of hookup stories before even getting to meeting their mother.
Oddly enough, I’ve never seen a single episode of “How I Met Your Mother” and I even used that line in a comic once between Old Bud and Ivy, unbeknownst to me that it was a TV show.
I never have either but now I’ve got the theme music from ‘My Three Sons’ stuck in my head. Thanks, it finally drove ‘Chinatown Calculation’ from Doug and the Slugs out, it’s been in there for weeks 🙂
I jokingly call myself the Fred MacMurray of the 21st century. I can tell by people’s reactions who old they are. 🙂
So he’s 65 now. Full head of hair and just a little bit of gray. Not doing too bad…
Well, since Bud is my fictional doppelgänger and I still have most of my hair with very little gray at age 65, Bud does as well. My youngest son is 25, so I have some reference of how a younger child with an older parent would react. When my son was in high school, some of his friends thought I was his grandfather. I didn’t like those friends. 🙂
Like most of my family, I started going grey before I was 20…
Still have most of it though but I think lately the ponytail is stretching my forehead back just a little bit 😉
I am thinning out for sure, but the barber that used to cut my hair said I could lose half of my hair and still have more than most men.
Especially now that shaving your head seems to be the fashion…
I looked around at work one day and I was the only one without a shaved head (except for most of the women) and remarked “it looks like a cancer ward in here”…younguns today have no sense of humour, particularly when it’s directed at them 😉
I miss my dad who 2019 (saw him on his last day) and my mother is elderly sweet dear but still has to deal with paper work concerning my dad to this day. It’s gets lonely when beloved family members die. Even their waxing romance about their past gain a greater luster. So past stories are none too boring. Even my big sisters tales of chaos and debauchery are something to be told. In my younger years I had the pleasure of minding eldest sister’s dear little children and sharing my garden with gods little creatures. My dad didn’t see the local bunnies or chipmunks as his little friends but had a good natured laugh as shared my beans and strawberries with them. My sisters used to play rock and new wave late 80s music and I’d played the mating calls of frogs and toads boy did my mom and dad miss the rock music. Ivy should get a record of the mating calls of frogs and toads to teach Bud a lesson doubt if they have the mating call of the mystic frog. But it would be cool if they did then he could tell the fun of being a girl. Ivy assuming she believe something that incredible would be happy. Yet fearful that the mystic frogs would turn all the men into women to punish them for climate change and pollution and Ivy have no one to marry unless she is a lesbian. But I suspect the gang bores her about how dumb cool rocker are they made fun of autism because they were being mean and grumpy.
Yes, I would love to hear my Dad’s stories just once more if I could and hear him complain about my rock music being too loud. We don’t know what we will miss until it’s gone.
Love the album cover Lorraine like hot in a mini skirt, Robyn can pull off daisy dukes it would have been fun if Bud was Buddet in leopard printed mini dress with matching gloves. Even better Jeff was Jaffra in hot pants and halter top on fabulous album cover. But then I watched Archer the one were Cheryl becomes Cherylean country singer with the sexy tour bus. Sterling Archer riding lead in a Burt Trans Am like smoky and the bandit though it was cool so I used something like it my story. With Suzanne the next Wanda Jackson (1950s female guitar player) kind of Susan the teenage frat mom’s doppelganger. Susan collects records goes to concerts as break from studying differential calculus one of the only two women in her class and the top student. Suzanne on the other hand plays the sonic guitar wild cat tamer in halter top, short shorts and heels play it till it smokes or scares the pink ladies out the road house. The hottest act at Frenchies since they allowed beer to be sold again in 1931 better than any of the men who performed. Even the Crying Cowboy and I’m a long distance daddy in reality the Maclean Brothers sing the song “I’m a long distance daddy I ridding my pick up tonight and I’m a 40 year old honky tonk runner with a honky tonk whore for a wife.” The army air force flyboys, their mascot a cute little dog, the staff and everyone but the pink ladies sing to the song in my story. So the pink ladies leave only to see a woman in a corset, stockings and heels armed with a clever chasing a man bleeding from his boxers just leave it to your imagination.
This is why I resent turning 15 in 1980. I’m convinced that the quality of the debauchery, much like the quality of MOST of the music went down hill rapidly at that point. I was THERE in the 70s but by the time I got old enough to have actual FUN and not just get constantly beat up it was over. My biggest memory of 1977 is Star Wars. :/ (The book then the movie) As to cancer, I lost the girl I loved to cancer in 1985. She was 22 (I was 20) and ovarian cancer destroyed her……..
I often say, tongue in cheek, that we folks of the ’70s ruined sex for everyone else to follow. In my day, if you got an STD, you went to a free clinic, got a shot of penicillin, and lived to frolic another day. But thanks to all of the wild sex of the ’70s (I’m sure you’ve seen the stories of the crazy sex stuff going on in Studio 54 and other clubs) that by the time the ’80s rolled around AIDS came into play and that changed everything.
And cancer just sucks. It’s taken the people who meant the most to me in my life.
I wasn’t out yet, but I watched Aids kill off the queer community in my town. It took to decades to really get back up to strength. The most flamboyant and interesting neighborhood became a ghost town.
AIDS was such a tragedy as we come to realize today that the powers-at-be didn’t give a rat’s ass about the queer community and just let them die instead of pushing for a way to treat the disease and save lives. My second son is gay and I’m thankful our world has come as far as it has (and it has much further to go) in accepting him and his partner for who they are. The best people I’ve ever met are lesbians. They rock!