Gasoline Alley by Jim Scancarelli for December 17, 2023

I love Ravel’s “Bolero”—how the crescendo keeps rising with every repeat of its single movement until it comes crashing to the exciting final climax.

To paraphrase the wonderful (and still extant) Jo Anne Worley… is this another Ravel’s Bolero joke?

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It’s a full flush of an update for the 17th, 1930 left me a fairly ‘clean’ Sunday page for a change. Suspicious… or SUPERstitious??

Shady Lane shows up with the first monthly allotment of beef, well… the allotment less what the agent is skimming off the top. Bob Wyer is creeping closer to the wrong side of the legal line by sending the “B” team of cattle.

Brenda is launching anything she can get her hands on to get the intruder(s) out of her apartment. An apartment building with a dumbwaiter? Maybe it’s a converted hotel.

Adam and Eve get entreprenurial and are just trying to make a few bucks. Maybe their inventory combines the wit of Larry “Bud” Melman with the artistic skills of xkcd.

Walt watches astonished as a mad man waves, gyrates and twirls with depraved abandon.

Later on while driving through a storm, the man was struck by a lightning bolt, alas he was a very good conductor!

I don’t agree with Skeezix. People don’t fight any more than they used to.

Today in the Facebook group: Gasoline Alley “years ago today” for December 17:

100 (1923) – Walt reads some great news

80 (1943) – Skeezix and Sarge escort Sunshine to their quarters; also, war news from this date

75 (1948) – Father Clock has a proposition for Skeezix

60 (1963) – Grandfather Clock has a proposition for Nina

45 (1978) – A recap of the Miss Elva story and Walt’s money-saving idea

Reminds me of “10”

We have some works where they have to towel off the timpani player and bring him water and a fresh shirt.

Ricard Strauss once advised a young, up-and-coming conductor, “Don’t look at the trombones – it just encourages them.”

Years ago, Radio Lab had a segment about neurological disorders that can cause obsession with repetition. There is speculation that Ravel had that when he composed Bolero .

Ravel said of Bolero that it was 15 minutes of orchestration with no music.

Minnesota Public Radio teamed up with Interlake Steamship Company to create a YouTube video of a view from the pilot house of the Paul R. Tregurtha as she departs Twin Ports via the Duluth Canal as Ravel’s Bolero plays.

Young Walt was a troll, decades before the Internet.

Can anybody explain the joke? I just don’t get it. Why would anybody fight over Walt’s silly comment?

Anybody familiar with this strip knows that Walt never took a bus ride, short or long, in his life. Cars all the way, all the time, with a few exceptions of taking a train. He’s shown here as a young man but those kind of bus seats sure weren’t around in the 1910s.

I’ve been waiting for someone more knowledgeable than I am to comment on the “score,” supposedly of Ravel’s Bolero. OK, the key of C is correct. But this is a two staff version as you would see if scored for piano. The ubiquitous Bolero rhythm is missing. And nothing about the notes shown suggest the tune or harmonization of “Bolero.”