In 1977, Mike Olson, owner & manufacturer of Gnu Snowboards, made his first snowboard in shop class. You’re welcome Shaun White. While the rest of us were making ashtrays or dust pans, Mr. Olson was saying “I’m gonna make a really fat ski…” The rest is history.
Don’t know what a Dilly Bar is? Oh, man, are you missing out on pure joy. Google it and drool.
Now, who is this Grieg guy and what the hell is a Peer Gynt Suite you might ask? Who cares, but today’s comic title is one of the better known classical pieces of all time and one of my personal favorites. I grok the entire Peer Gynt Suite from Morning Mood to Ase’s Death to the this grand finale. It’s title always reminds me of George Carlin’s bit about the word f**k as he states loudly “I am F**k! F**k of the Mountain!” Laugh my ass off every time…
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Discussion (71) ¬
Cool strip today. 🙂
Hmm, Google wasn’t really very helpful. Some sort of not-really-ice-cream bar dipped in not-really-chocolate? I fail to see the appeal. Then again, I detest ice cream and am deathly allergic to chocolate, so no surprise there 😛
Haha! Cute 🙂
Now I’ve learned something new! I didn’t grow up with any Dairy Queen’s so I don’t know much about them. I think I’ve been to a DQ twice in my life. Looks good, but I wonder why it’s a “chocolate FLAVORED” coating and not just chocolate??
I read somewhere that Grieg himself got sick of ItHotMK, calling it “Teutonic bombast.” I like it, though — one of my favorite bits in the original Fantasia was set to this piece. The Who did an electric cover of it that shows up on “The Who Sell Out,” an album I’ve always felt deserves more attention than it gets.
Um, it wasn’t Grieg’s “In the Hall of the Mountain King” that climaxed the original Fantasia. It was Mussorgsky’s “Night on Bald Mountain. But yeah – I can see it getting old to the poor guy. At least he didn’t have to be Beethoven, whose 5th Symphony became the serious contender for being the “Freebird” of European Classic music… and whose 9th Symphony got turned into an ad for Starz TV.
Dammit, you’re right. They say the memory’s the second thing to go… can’t recall what the first thing was supposed to be.
I think that is the same squirrel that terrorizes our cats.
Thanks to Fritz Lang, “Halls of the Mountain King” always brings images of Peter Lorrie to mind.
Cool choice of music today, Byron! Grieg is a fave of mine as well, & I always enjoyed different interpretations of the piece that would show up in people’s works like the Who’s version from the late 60’s, Rick Wakeman’s from “Journey To the Centre of the Earth”, ELO covered it, & one of my guilty favorites was from a British Synth-pop band from the early 70’s called Apollo 100 that had an LP out named “Joy” that was all pop takes on classical pieces including ITHOTMK. I think their version was titled “Mad Mountain King” if I recall right… I grew up with Dairy Queen & Dilly Bars, too! Very big here in the SW – especially with our long hot summers, & the family of one of my best friends from Jr. High (that’s middle school to you young ‘uns) owned one, so we were there allot. Haven’t had one in years tho. Gee, maybe DQ for lunch today & a Dilly Bar?…
I used to love Dilly Bars, We had a Dairy Queen on Pike Street between Huston and Canonsburg in the South Hills of Pittsburgh. It had a walk up window and was closed in the winter. We went there after baseball games and I remember all of the Dennis The Menace posters advertising Dilly Bars, blizzards and Mr. Frosty covering the windows. Alas, on a recent trip home, it was closed and boarded up with tall weeds growing in the parking lot. Many a good time and dates at that place.
One cool thing about “My” Dairy Queen is that it was right by the cemetery where they filmed Night of The Living Dead.
*laughs* I had a D&D dwarf Fighter named “Fuk of the Mountain!!!” Whenever someone would ask him his name, the other party members covered their ears and groaned while Fuk bellowed his proud moniker for everyone within earshot.
I can never read “Hall of the Mountain King” straight. I always, without fail, read it as “Hall of the Mountain Grill” (Hawkwind’s 1974 album) and do a double-take when I realize it wasn’t. Great album, by the way, look it up. And I like the Grieg piece too.
Dude, Dilly Bars. I loved Dilly Bars. I worked at DQ for 3 years, My Junior Year of HS on into Freshman year of College, and we used to make some super large dilly bars after hours, freeze them while we were cleaning up, then chomp ’em down after work. There’s still nothing better tasting to me than DQ soft server, packed in their chocolate dipping sauce. You talk about burning you though, when you put that can of chocolate sauce in the heater, you better be careful, the hot plate on the bottom of that thing is cooled with water thru out the day, and boy is it ever hot. YOWZA!!! We also used to make some killer blizzards (Pinto Bean, Nacho Cheese, etc.) – weird stuff, most was clearly undedible after the first bite, but some was strangely tasty. Believe it or not the Pinto Bean Blizzard wasn’t actually that bad.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y3Vcoq-QRo4
A little music for you–
and a commentary: I have participated in a stage production of Peer Gynt-even with something ridiculous like 15 scenes cut, it was still 4.5 hours long with a half hour intermission. My dad was a composer who reset the music electronically as there was no way we could do it with an onstage orchestra or solely by recording. It was a phenomenal undertaking for a college drama department, but we pulled it off.
Oh, and i forgot–I grew up in Jacksonville FL and had a DQ only about 4-5 blocks from home(during the 60’s). I think the last time I was there, maybe 8 years ago, it was still in operation.
Nowhere else but in this strip could you go from DQ to Hawkwind, Byron… Hawkwind: one of those perennial British bands like Status Quo or Barclay James Harvest that’s been around forever, but got/gets little or no recognition on this side of the pond. They probably have 30 to 40 albums out, have had about 50 people go thru the band with the only constant being guitar player Dave Brock, (but do have one notable alumnus – Lemmy from Motorhead who was kicked out of the band in the mid 70’s for his amphetamine use…) & were one of the first of the “Space Rock” groups using synths & utilizing fantasy & sci-fi themes in their music. While they could do some bizarre stuff at times, to me they mostly sounded like a cross between early Pink Floyd & Tangerine Dream. I haven’t heard anything post 1995 or so, but definitely worth checking out!
UncleMac — ah, now you’ve made me wish like feck that I still had my copy of Calvert’s ‘Captain Lockheed and the Starfighters’. Along with the Kinks’ ‘A Soap Opera’, that was one of the greatest underrated concept albums of the ’70s…
~exits, cackling ‘G for Germany!’ repeatedly~
I love today’s strip! As soon as I saw the title I grinned, because I have been working on learning this song for the electric bass as well as the trumpet. Such a fun song to play!
not entirely sure why, but your squirrel reminds me of the Grinch.
“the world f**k”? … Not the WORD f**k?
Ah, what the hell. I can justify in my own head.
We have DQ’s up here, but I don’t think I’ve ever had a Dilly Bar. I know what they are though! I have to say I commend that squirrels genius. Also anybody who doesn’t like Grieg and the Peer Gynt Suite is missing out.
Oh yeah! DQ and a good ol Brazier burger. Where I grew up in S. Central Hoosier land you couldn’t swing a dead cat around with out hitting one. Luckily we have a couple here in Memphis.
Byron — just tuned in and found the new page look. It’s MEGA. Much easier to read and follow!
Good on ya! I also notice the current top strip is the famous Jalapeno Dance 😀
Still on my first pass through the archives and noticed you used that title before. Rick Wakeman used some of it on his 1974 release of Journey to the Center of the Earth.
And Dilly Bars…mmmmmmm…
I was surprised to see you re-use a tune, Byron – but on the other hand, I do love this particular one, so it’s all good 😀
Puts me in mind of this – Seventies and extremely pertinent here. Hall of the King, by focus. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4lv8YR68vcA