Luann by Greg Evans and Karen Evans for May 25, 2016

I suppose the only movies that exist in the Luanniverse are those that are at least 50 years old.

This is going to backfire spectacularly.

oh boy

Instead of that, show Galaxina, a movie from 1980.

I guess trying to talk to Piro directly is too complicated for Bernice. Instead, she now has to find a silent movie which would be of interest to Piro but which is also of less interest for everyone else in the dorm compared to “Barbarella.”

What could possibly go wrong?

While Des is showing her movie and Bern is showing hers, Piro will be sleeping on Hair’s couch. Really, has he shown any interest in her at all other than as an enabler for his freeloading?

I remember seeing a rhyme about Jane Fonda’s performance in Barbarella in Mad Magazine. In part it went:Jane big nothingJane big boreJane put your clothes onOnce more

Somewhere I still have my G.A.F. ViewMaster stereo-optic reels from “Barbarella” (or at least “in my mind” I do, anyway).

Barbarella is positively an all-time great. It’s terrific today, even if it is a few decades old. It’s one of my favorite, in my collection. But I’ll admit that I also watched it in the theater when it first came out.

Mel Brooks’ “Silent Movie” isn’t too terribly old……

I wonder whether art student and aspiring cartoonist Greg Evans ever used to study the French Barbarella comic strips on which the movie was based.

I have never heard of Barbarella….

Bern is gonna find Piro totally into the movie – a long two hours…

Who else see’s Piro being gay?

Barbarella? I’m in!

Gunther likes silent movies….

I’d suggest Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans, Bernie. The Hero resists the wicked painted up woman and ends up with the more plain, but kinder hearted girl. Of course, the hero contemplated drowning the heroine for a while.

And the hero and the girl were married, but that doesn’t fit my parallel plot line…

Odd, that movie is a favorite of Fonda. Both are in my collection.

Are not most of the universities out for he semester now? Should these students not be in internships or working summer jobs?

“The best laid schemes o’ mice an’ men / Gang aft a-gley.”—————————-Robert Burns

Barbarella – starring flag burning – nosupporting vet – radical Jane Fonda. How soon we forget. Do you remember the end? What she stapps on? As bad as socialist Bernie Sanders. I wonder how many young people know what a socialist is?

FINE, Dezzo.

Just don’t Mess up and ‘accidentally’ Show the uncensored version of ‘Blazing Saddles’ instead….,

He probably likes silent movies because being homeless – it means he can sleep in the theater sometimes.

Just don’t get Les involved. That would be a tragedy unless Ox was nearby.

something tells me it will be anything but silent!

I can hear those little mice singing now : “Barbarella, Barbarella, all I hear is Barbarella!” …huh? what? oh. OK, wrong movie …never mind!

Barbarella, currently available on netflix

What’s up with the somber static visuals in this arc?

There will be a third person who likes silents— perhaps Tiff, perhaps G-man, perhaps the unknown.

… or perhaps the Dean!

You are correct regarding vets of the Viet Nam era. We despise Hanoi Jane.

Piro has said he likes silent films; he also likes silence. So it would be difficult for Bern to just chat him up.

Avatar, or nickname? The avatar is just some silly gif I found some years ago. Groovin’ cat, loves music, plays music. Kind of an exaggerated reflection of me. ae2 is my initials, and the 2 is “the second.” My first name’s Al. You’re right about the English, though. I was an English major for a while, but switched gears and never finished that.

I think if Piro is a vet, he is a veteran of more recent wars (Iraq, Afghanistan). He is too young to have served in ’Nam…

If Piro has half a brain he’ll run from this trap

Instead of Barbarella she should have a Lexx marathon.

Bernice hasen’t heard of ‘Bararella’? I realize she hasn’t been with it much but that suprises me. As a Viet Nam Veteran I’m not a Jane Fonda fan duye to her Viet Nam sympathy during the war. Even though she now says it was a mistake!

This is a terrible idea. Mainly because it’s an open invite, so Tiffany will foil Bern’s plan and Gunther will make it awkward. What happened to asking him to coffee?

Sigh.

We don’t know enough about Piro to know for a fact that he only would be interested in silent movies. So it is entirely possible that he might also be interested in “Barbarella”…

Maybe it will turn out that Piro’s favorite things in life are silent movies, cheesy sci-fi films, and naked yoga meditation sessions beside a waterfall. And a free place to spend the night.

Barbarella?!?!?!!!?

Jane Fonda is a great actress.

Barbarella was not a great movie.or goodor passableor a better way to spend the most boring day of your life.

And what could possibly go wrong with Dez’s plan?

I like this plan.

and she was not wrong that the government of the USA was lying to the public.

Were I to boycott every movie featuring actors whose views are contrary to my own, well, I might be reduced to Muppet reruns. First though, I need to check out the late Jim Henson’s politics … . .

this is exactly how i remember my college experience

Before Bernice gets too deeply involved in this elaborate movie-watching scheme to win Piro’s attention, maybe it would behooves her first to learn a bit more about Piro’s cinematic preferences.

“Do you like gladiator movies, Piro?”

Why not a date? Is she afraid he’s going to “get the wrong idea”? If they’re alone with the silent movies he may do that anyway. She wants to play it safe with a possible “bad boy.” You can’t have it both ways. As for Barbarella, who wants to see Jane Fonda as she was over 50 years ago? I’d rather see a classic silent film any day. They can’t be the only 2 silent film fans on campus.

Is there any hope that this strip will ever return to being about Luanne? And Quill?

Oh yeah…Barbarella. Can’t say no to that.

At least a few years ago, Barbarella was considered camp fun by my local gay community rather than a turn-on by straight young people. I’d guess modern college students could find a lot more sophisticated (and revealing) films to watch. Actually, what struck me about Barbarella when I saw it long ago was how much latent hostility Roger Vadim seemed to have towards his wife/star. He kept coming up with all sorts of sadistic ways to attempt to kill Barbarella (remember all of the birds about to peck her to death and the army of dolls with metal teeth?).

As for the sure-to-backfire plan, this really doesn’t sound like the kind of idea Dez would come up with. It sounds more like something Luann or Tiff or T.J. would think of. I think Dez would be more direct, or at least less manipulative.

Kind of left you one late yesterday

Noted, and thank you for the kind words. :)

Ha-ha, I remember that one! The poem was patterned after “Jack, Be Nimble”. I think Frank Jacobs wrote the article.=Thanks for remembering that. I was hoping that someone remembered the rest of the rhyme. Leave it to me to just remember the punch line.

I really like some movies she has done, especially Cat Ballou and Nine to Five. Personally, i forgave her some time ago but i can not hold it against people who went through terrible losses in or due to combat who can not forgive her, because it was far too painful for some at the time for reasons i doubt she even began to fathom and for some of them it might forever be. The best i can hope is for their pain to be less. Their choices and what they can or can’t forgive and when (if they can) is their business and not mine.

Gunther also will come. He’ll see (or thinks he sses) Piro be rude to Bern. He will leap to Bern’s defense and take Piro down with his backpack. Bern will be reminded that G-man is her her.*Or not.*What do I know, I’ve never plotted a romance.

For the heck of it i then looked up the year of the event: 1972, so she was 35, no kid.That said, i suspect that she does realize she was horribly wrong.

But when she did that, it was because she was trying to pump him for info about Piro and whether Piro and Tiffany were together. Gunther soon realized that things were not going as he had hoped, so it is to be hoped that he isn’t still convinced that she is the person he needs to be with….

remember when Tiffany devised her plan to show Gunther how she would ‘successfully’ put the moves on Piro to distract him from Bernice…….cooking up a scheme is almost always a red flag…. like when Bern started walking around wearing Piro’s scarf… that backfired big time.

Yeah, what happened to Jay? He hasn’t been around in a while?

what Bernie should really do is ask Piro for his advice and assistance in planning the event… not just do it herself.

This kind of binary opposition plotting inevitably ends up going wrong. This is not destined (by cards or otherwise) to be Bernie’s shining moment with reluctant Piro. I’d bet a bag of popcorn on it!

If Piro served in Vietnam, or in the Gulf War, he might not be eager to see that movie since it stars the actress many veterans have come to refer to as “Hanoi Jane”.

The U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War ended in 1973. For Piro to have served there, he probably would have had to be born no later than 1955, in order to be 18 years old and serve in the Vietnam War. That would make him at least 61 years old now. How old does Piro look to you?

So included in the “everyone” would be Hair. Ug, I hope he washes it.

“Study the history of Vietnam to find out all those times the US could have helped Vietnam and Communism would never have taken root.”. Seeds grow where they’re planted.They only grow if they’re healthy and well tended.It would not matter that the USSR planted the seeds.The reality was abandoned when it didn’t match the silly promises.It should not and does not depend on us to stop it,In fact, the failure under Castro was blamed on our lack of support despite having most of the rest of the world to draw upon, including Mexico and Canada.Our opposition propped them up.

As i said, i think her apology was sincere, though i also think she was way beyond the age where she shoukd have known better in the first place and instead become involved in one of the options which actually benefited those who were serving. After all, they were in the hardest spot and there were multiple ways to help them while still being opposed to the war itself. That said, i am not going to fault those who can not forgive her. I knew too many who witnessed losses they never shoukd have had at actual young ages, too many stateside with tough news, too many who returned with severe injuries. I was not even over there; i just listened when some wanted to talk and for me there are still raw points, so i am not going to fault those who got put into such hard circumstances so young when they are still raw. I respect them too much to do so.

-SPOILER TWO

Part one seems to have worked.

Wow, this has turned into a Jane Fonda, Vietnam War thread today with the mention of Barbarella. Let me weigh in. First I was a young, urban male African-American, and we were cannon fodder as the Vietnam War ground on. I was in college at night, and was the only surviving male in my family, living with my grandmother. I had an Italian-American draft board (a lot of politicians, “outfit” mobsters, and really great Italians and other ethnics, including Chinese Americans, as well as a high percentage of project living blacks like myself came out of that draft board), and they would not send me to the war. Just as I started law school, again at night, my sainted grandmother died, and besides never forgetting her as a saint, suddenly I got my pre-draft notice, and was ordered to take the physical exam. I was sure I would need to go to Canada, or try CO status (I would have gone to prison rather than fight in that war if it came to that) but Lord be thanked!! I didn’t pass the physical, and got a 1Y. I truly think the young doc was doing his part to stop the conveyer belt of death for young American cannon fodder. Anyway, somewhere along in those 70’s, and in late 60’s Jane Fonda, who was a major Babe, did Barbarella. Why? I have no idea, I suppose being a child of Hollywood aristocracy, and being kind of rich, and spoiled, and a bit promiscuous at a young age (after all her first husband was a talented French letch filmmaker, Roger Vadim) some agent suggested it was a good career move to show all that babeness in a science fiction supergirl send-up. Total dumb movie, but that makes it a Baby Boomer classic. You Millinnials and Gen X should check it out. Not too many years later, about the time I was about to go to prison to avoid being cannon fodder, Jane went to Hanoi, and man was she criticized. It turns out that she was right, but the problem was she was going against her country when many felt that was traitorous. Keep in mind before the right wingnuts attack, that President Obama has just declared the Vietnamese friends, they trade in the billions with us, you can stay at a many story Hyatt in Hanoi, Vietnam is now rapidly becoming a middle-class country, they love us also because they have big Panda next door (China to those who don’t know) and all they really ever wanted was their own cotton-picking country, just like a certain other country with the initials USA did 200 or so years before. Oh wait they were Commies!! Oh my God! We had to engage in a brutal, mean, stupid war killing nearly 60,000 Americans and 3 million Vietnamese, and other Southeast Asians, only to lose the stupid thing. We could beat the Axis powers in WWII, and hold off the Russians after the war, but we lost all those soldiers in a stupid, crazy, dumb cause, that we could have settled diplomatically. Well at least the Vietnamese are friends, and our country tends to treat people we have been at war with well, even as it happens we get our asses handed to us. People still loves us in this world. Amazing!!

So getting to something not that serious, although culturally important in its own way I would argue, Barbarella has I am sure some very interesting cult perspective to Millinnials for which all of what I ranted about above is ancient history. I know since I teach them and trust me before 1982 or so they have no idea. Jane Fonda is still hot, still liberal, and did apologize for going against her country at a sensitive time, although personally I will go to my grave saying Jane you were brave and right to do it. You were a brave American speaking your mind and taking a position against the politicians who were using our military and the soldiers as an instrument of ideology, stupid ideology as it turned out. Also you don’t need to apologize for Barbarella either. I bet all the horny young men, and amused young women today will enjoy the movie, and might get things out of it that us old Baby Boomers missed. I mean look at Hollywood today!!

Jeez see what Luannverse can do to a dude?

Oh dear. Methinks a major slip-up is in the works.