Jeanie Bottle 664
Nov23
on November 23, 2021
at 12:00 am
and modified on December 27, 2022. at 12:33 am
Hoo boy. This Danny dude is skeezing me out. “King of the chess club”? Ugh.
Welcome to
Normally Updates Weekly
Usually Tuesday or Thursday
Hoo boy. This Danny dude is skeezing me out. “King of the chess club”? Ugh.
Natalie vs Danny chess battle for the crown. While Neil can talk to Zoey great idea Natalie distracts Danny is more likely.
Hah, would be fun!
Final panel… “knows more about chess THAN I”
Danny should know better than to call a HS girl “ma’am” too… but that’s on him, and not CD. 😉
Whoops. Will fix.
I thought it showed that Natalie was coming across as the adult in the room. Which she is. 🙂
If JT was calling out “than me” (I didn’t see this until after it was fixed), it’s one of the most common errors in English grammar. Possibly the most common if you are only counting spoken English. Common enough that I can see an author telling the proof reader “It stays as written.”
OTOH, Danny just might be the sort of person who never knowingly makes a grammar error…
Ending a sentence with “me” instead of “I” is not an error, it is dialect. It also happens to be part of the prevailing dialect in the American Midwest. The whole “I” instead of “me” thing is a matter of pretension, not correction. There’s nothing adult about it. It’s an idiom based on class and not grammar.
However, it strikes me that pretentiousness would suit the character, who seems to have forgotten the king in chess is essentially powerless.
The adult part was Danny calling Natalie ma’am. 🙂
The original was “then I” … I agree that the incorrect use of I/me — in multiple contexts — has become dialect rather than being “wrong,” and wouldn’t have called out for that to be corrected.
Yes, the original spelling was “then I”. I corrected to to “than I”, since that seems like the vibe Danny is going for, with his use of “ma’am” to address a teenage girl.
The me/I thing isn’t dialect nor pretense. English lacks the indicators other languages have (like articles which change for subjects or objects, or strict order) to help you figure out what’s the subject and what’s the object. So you have to be careful to use the proper pronoun to avoid creating an ambiguous sentence. In this case, the full version is “than I know (about chess)”, with “I” as the subject. But the “know” is dropped, which causes some people to mistakenly use “me”. If you say “than me”, that indicates the “me” is an object along with “chess”. And the correct interpretation of the sentence is that everyone there knows more about his personal life than they know about chess. i.e. The sentence is a shortened version of “No one here knows more about chess than they know about me.”
This is a braggart. _Of course_ he’s going to be a bit pretentious. And the “Madame, I…” is a classic braggart opening. And a chessman is going to know the difference between the objective & nominative cases & will _never_ mess them up. But it’s not a matter of pretension for those how actually learned how the language worked to use it properly.
if i was there, I’d tell Danny.. “Then I’ll Crown Ya!” *WHAM!!!!!* and give him a big bump on the noggin.
I like the ‘turkey’ at the top of the page.
Gobble gobble. 😉
I’d definitely gobble that turkey, all right! 🙂
Me too. It looks like Jean is saying “My turkey! Get your own!”
Or maybe… “I will hug him and squeeze him and pet him and love him and call him George!”
Chester the Turkey looks so happy!
Chester? Take ten minutes and listen to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E9-pGO5i5eA . Prime humor from 1946!
Purely by coincidence, Lum was voiced by Chester Lauck…
Interesting. Natalie seems to have set up a way for young Neil to be alone with Zoey. Whether it’s intentional or not we’ll have to wait and see I guess. But a return to the future where Neil now has both Jean, Araceli and Zoey in a sort of harem trope situation…. would completely make sense.
Pretty sure it’s intentional. The way I read it, Panel 2 is Natalie watching Zoey eyeing Neil as he goes, confirming Zoey still prefers Neil. Panel 3, Natalie is rolling her eyes at Zoey not getting the hint about why she sent Neil off. Zoey sees the eye roll, then in Panel 4, she finally clues in as to what it all means with a little “Oh!”
I love the non-verbal cueing in this one!
That was my own interpretation, as well.
Yes, that non verbal communication here is key here. At both end we have young Neil clueless in panel one as to what Natalie is doing and in panel five, we have Danny being completely clueless as to what Natalie is doing too. In panel 2, 3 and 4, Natalie is directing Zoey away from Danny and to Neil without words and so she can talk to Danny without those other two people there also. There is also the non verbal communication between Zoey Natalie that she would still prefer Neil over Danny even now.
It might be that Natalie six or seven year older than these other three people, but, she appears to be using a certain amount of fineness to do what she doing right now.
I would say Natalie knows practical chess far better than Danny.
The Queen of a chess club would be more powerful than the king…
Danny is the other “King of dorks”
https://sailorsun.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/1155_CMX.jpg
Yeah, but Robin’s brother Jeeves became a super buff athletic gym rat later on.
Hey, maybe that’s foreshadowing for what Danny becomes in our protagonist’s “present”?! Cross-comic foreshadowing! hehe
Or maybe not. I have no idea.
Most famous chess game in history-The Tommy Crown Affair with Steve McQueen and Fay Dunery.
I think I might also see a chess match against Danny and Natalie too, with Natalie beating him hands down and humiliating Danny in the process too. I think this might be a side track to what Jean want to do with Jeanie after the prom.
Chess. When it gets down to the end, they resign. Pfft.
Panels 1 and 5, Natalie is in a pose of feminine aggression. 🙂 Where did she learn that? 😀 I think Neil’s mom might be an interesting lady.
Last page I suggested that Jeanie’s power may have done more than transform Neil into Natalie at more than a superficial level… hormonally and neurologically. Women are wired differently than men and some of Natalie’s mannerisms may result from a prolonged transformation into a teenager. Yes, she’s resisting (the shopping spree and the spa), but she seems to have intuitively deduced that Zoey should be with teen-Neil and that’s something that adult-Neil probably would not of have concluded (being basically clueless, as previously noted).
Zoey realizes that Natalie sent her off after Neil. She also, likely, knows that there are two possible reasons for that. First, Natalie, for some reason, wants Neil and Zoey to be together, which makes her a potential ally. The second, though, is that Natalie is after Jean, which would leave Zoey alone and embarrassed at the prom, and which would make Natalie a potential enemy.
On prom, Natalie can’t have both. If she will take Danny, Zoey won’t end up alone, she can still take Neil.
Also, see page #637: Zoey saw Neil getting railroaded into a blind date here. I think she’s smart enough to realize that Natalie isn’t as invested in any of this as she is, and therefore might be willing to bow out honourably when it comes to Neil. (Zoey and Neil weren’t exactly being subtle on the previous page!)
It is one regret of mine that I wish I was good at chess. I do respect anyone who has that skill
chess match fight- picture classic 80s video fight game pose
So I’m the only one thinking that Natalie needs to give herself the lecture she gave Jeannie a few hours ago? This looks like a set-up to massively humiliate a man that is obviously a thorn in Neil’s side. Such an event will likely have substantial repercussions…
Yes, I agree with you, but, will she do it, is the point now. Not only is Danny a thorn in Neil side, he also a thorn in Natalie side too and will that cloud her judgement when it come to staying out of it. Remember that she had 6 to 7 years of brooding over what Danny did to her and Zoey to serve his own selfish agenda and now she got a chance to do a do over, which she shouldn’t do. If she does do it and massively humiliates him, which he rightfully deserve to have, yes, it will have substantial repercussions in the future also. We may end up with Zoey in Neil future when he goes back to that future and a future that Zoey wasn’t in the one that he left.
Whoops!
I hope this isn’t messing with the timeline – we know that Jean is naturally a part of whatever is supposed to happen, but Neil’s a normal human – EVERYONE knows that things go wrong when you involve normal humans
I think it really funny, just about everybody here is afraid of messing up the current timeline. This is a science fiction series, messing up timelines and changing history is what we do best here. The only thing that we have already established here is that Jeanie did some time travel here to get a burger and that she went to the school prom with Jean and all indication were that she was by herself when she did it too and that what generated the time line that both Jeanie and Neil came from too. In that time line, Danny took Zoey to the prom and Neil didn’t have a date for the school prom and that why he didn’t remember going to the school prom, because, he didn’t go to the school.
In the original time line neither Jean nor Neil went to the school prom, because, there was no Jeanie going into the past to be Jean date for the prom.
In this time line, Jeanie has Neil in tow when she get those burger from the restaurant they eat at and then Jeanie take Neil to the school prom as Natalie, which will change the time line that they remembered it being too. We are generating a whole new series of events that didn’t happen in the history that they remembered it being. So if you want Zoey or Danny or Rita as witch bitch or all three of them in the future, fell free to include into the new future that Jeanie and Neil will be in, in the future and where those two only know that the past was changed too, which will make it more interesting, because, they will have to keep it a secrete that it was changed in the past and they are the ones that changed it too. How can I tell you this, but, to say that we are already in the Kelvin time line, which is an alternate time line to the original Star Trek series and this is probably an alternate time line into the Jeanie Bottle series too.
Like Whoopee!! Everything an unknown here and anything can happen here too and it can and will change the future too.
I think it’s clear that Jeannie was always Jean’s prom date. However, in the future Natalie comes from, Neil is not together with Zoey. So if Natalie’s ploy to get Neil alone with Zoey leads to them to get together and stay together, Natalie has made exactly the kind of twisty timey-wimey change to history that she’s warned Jeannie not to make again and again.
Not necessarily. How many people form a permanent bond with their prom companion?
In the future, Neil and Zoey have moved with their lives yet they still keep fond memories of that night.
We have all been concentrating on the fact that Jeanie was Jean’s prom date and how that fit into history, but we have been neglecting Natalie’s role in all this. The fact that she’s present at the prom is a fact that must have actually happened, sidekick to the blond transfer student. Natalie obviously went to prom with Neil. Zoey obviously went to prom with Danny because Jean set Neil up. What happened on the side lines has never been discussed be either of our protagonists. Perhaps Natalie DID humiliate Danny in a pickup chess game (followed by another because he believes it was just beginner’s luck, and maybe a third… losing all of them) and Zoey hooked up with Neil for the remainder of the evening.
There doesn’t have to be an ongoing relationship, but as mentioned previously Zoey may possibly have entered into some form of engineering and eventually meets up with Neil (in the present) and remembers that night. The interest they shared may reignite with Jeanie on the sidelines. This might create some interesting encounters as Neil tries to conceal Jeanie’s nature.
In panel 4 it shows that Zoey’s dress is a two piece. A strapless mini dress- Oh that girl is going to be deadly.
Well, adding a bolero to a strapless minidress does add to the “classiness”, so I imagine that’s how she’s getting away with it. heh
Why is my other comment stuck in Moderation Jail?
Was there a link? I had one in limbo for nearly a week.
Yes- a link to a funny YT video of a 1946 Thanksgiving episode of my favorite OTR show. Harmless, a whole 10 minutes long…
Sorry about that, it’s an anti-spam feature that helps a lot, but isn’t super easy to notice when it happens to a legit comment. I’ll take your comment out of mod jail.
Thanks for giving.
A chess duel. It gives neil and Zoey a chance to be together. Natalie already knows all of Danny’s favorite moves. Danny, if you are going to play a game of chest-I mean chess-with Natalie you are going down in flames.
In a game of Chest, Natalie would normally be the clear winner. But as a teenager, she’s a bit less well-equipped.
A reporter asked Mae West about chest size one time. She replied,”Honey, it isn’t how much you’ve got as much as knowing what to do with it.” I am pretty Zoey knows what to do with it.
Sorry, I forgot we were talking about Natalie.
@Gary: We don’t have enough background on Zoey to make that assumption, after all she’s only appeared on 4 pages. She seemed rather shy on the first page and Natalie had to work at getting her to take the hint on this page. Now Natalie, on the other hand, has had some experience using her feminine wiles on a guy… albeit a hormone induced episode caused by Jeanie poofing her neurotransmitters.
@Mike: you are totally correct about Natalie. But any girl as super cute as Zoey knows it. I want to see the chess match between Natalie and Danny.
@Gary: It’s entirely possible that someplace between Natalie denying any enjoyment over their spa session and arriving at prom, Jeanie poofed another neurotransmitter boost without Natalie knowing anything about it so that she can actually enjoy the evening.
Either way from the look Neil gave Danny in #663 this is going to be a grudge match. Danny just doesn’t know it.
If it is going to be a grudge match between these two, it going to be Natalie that does it and not teen Neil. Teen Neil is too laid back and he will not go on the attack until it to late for him to act. Danny probably know this and he chooses to take unfair advantage of Neil. That cocky son of a B###. What he doesn’t know is that Natalie is Teen Neil six or seven years older and in female form. Like surprise Danny and the chess match between him and Natalie.
I was just thinking, for Neil to become and engineer and get hired at the job that he is currently employed at, he had to go to college for four or five years to get the training to become that engineer. Let say that when he was at that college, he joined the chess club there and played with people that were a whole lot better than Danny ever thought of being as a chess player and Neil was doing that for four or five straight. If Natalie get into a dual with Danny, poor Danny won’t know what hit him!
I hate to say this (well, no, I don’t) but right now Natalie is a whole lot more interesting than our girl Jeanie.
Robert: Uh, in a game of Chest, Jeannie is the clear grandmaster.
Mike: Neil was always more interesting than Jean/Jeannie. For that matter, Major Nelson was always more interesting than Jeannie in the original show. Barbara Eden was playing the part of a good-hearted bubble-headed blonde and very well, thank you, but there were a few times the actress did let her real nature show.
@tom: The original premise was Natalie vs. Danny. Makes the winner very clear. 🙂
Nat and King should leave Neil and Zoey alone.