Help me find a Doonesbury!
May 17, 2018 9:49 AM   Subscribe

I'm looking for what I believe is an old Doonesbury comic. In it, a character who is a radio DJ is shown playing tennis. He explains to his partner that, since he's started playing classical records, he can just leave the station to take tennis breaks. In the final panel, he is shown in-studio announcing the classical piece he's just played.

I think I saw this pinned to a professor's door perhaps 15 years ago, but the comic could be older than that. There are too many Doonesbury's and I haven't been able to search efficiently. As far as I can tell, there is no text search. I'm hoping to show it to a radio DJ friend.
posted by grobstein to Computers & Internet (9 answers total) 3 users marked this as a favorite
 
That is a hard one, and I am not finding anything online. In case it helps, the DJ character to which you refer is Mark Slackmeyer .

This joke has been done in other places. The long running joke for DJs in the 70s was that you put on Iron Butterfly's In Da Gadda Da Vida (17+ mins long) when you needed an extended bathroom break. I think Jim Ladd of KLOS in LA used to say DJs he knew used that song so they could go outside and smoke a joint too.

Good luck!
posted by terrapin at 9:59 AM on May 17, 2018 [1 favorite]


The joke lives on in Regina Spektor's "On the Radio" ("on the radio, you'll hear 'November Rain'/the solo's awful long/but it's a good refrain/you'll listen to it twice, 'cause the DJ is asleep...").

I thought I had read just about all those early Doonesburys, but this isn't ringing a bell at all. So it's probably not collected in Still a Few Bugs in the System; Guilty, Guilty, Guilty!; Ask for May, Settle for June; The President is a Lot Smarter than You Think; But This War Had Such Promise; 'What Do We Have for the Witnesses, Johnnie?' or Dare to Be Great, Ms. Caucus.
posted by praemunire at 10:15 AM on May 17, 2018 [1 favorite]


I do remember the reading the comic in question, so you're not mis-remembering. The characters didn't have jobs until after Trudeau's 1983-1984 hiatus, and I'm pretty sure the art style was his "post-hiatus" style as well. If that's correct, that puts a limit on how far back you need to go.
posted by Johnny Assay at 11:14 AM on May 17, 2018 [1 favorite]


Best answer: April 14, 1996. You're welcome.
posted by O9scar at 12:02 PM on May 17, 2018 [13 favorites]


Response by poster: Wow! You did fantastic! Thank you!
posted by grobstein at 12:19 PM on May 17, 2018


Response by poster: I Love This Web Site
posted by grobstein at 12:20 PM on May 17, 2018 [1 favorite]


And the O9scar goes to..... :D
posted by zarq at 12:20 PM on May 17, 2018 [2 favorites]


Response by poster: But how did he do it????
posted by grobstein at 12:22 PM on May 17, 2018


I remembered the strip circa 1995 and just made my way through the Sundays starting in 92, which is when I would have had a newspaper subscription. Pretty tedious, but there you go. I wish I'd gone with my gut and started in 95.
posted by O9scar at 12:26 PM on May 17, 2018 [7 favorites]


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