Rolling our another barrel of fun from that bubbly brewery twosome!

There's something manic in Milwaukee!
The Brewery Duo

Laverne andShirley
are smack in the middle of another brouhaha.

So you thinklife in a brewery is bottlemania? You're right, particularly if the bottle cappers are that dreamy doll Shirley and her realistic roomie Laverne. With stars in her eyes, Shirley sees each new man as a possible "intended." With her feet on the ground, Laverne takes a stand against the matey men whose intentions seem all too clear to her.

They're here again, as kookie as they are on TV.
These belles of the bewery will have
you pealing with laughter.

Shirley's got
A DATE WITH A DREAM!

He's Rip Roarer, the singer who's got girls' hearts beating in rock 'n roll rythm across the nation. But Shirley knew him way back when he was acne king od her high school. "He was nice, quiet and kind of cure when he was Andy Donelli," Shirley recalls, "wonder what he's like now..."

Well, she's going to find out when he takesher to an island in nearby Lake Watanabe. If she doesn't shudder when she hears it's called Bonecrack Island, it's because she doesn't realize that beer isn't the only thing around that's brewing. There's also Trouble with a capital "T" - the kind that can only be solved by Luck with a capital "L" - which also stands for laughter, lunacy and Laverne.

After a disasterous (and extra slap-sticky) time at the Beer Trucker's Ball, Shirley is spending the morning moping away when Rip Roarer, Milwaukee native and former member of Filmore High's algebra class, and new nationwide rock and roll sensation, calls to ask her out for dinner. Rip's extra sensitive - his backing band, the Rock and Roll Commandos - won't give him any alone time. They ruin his date with Shirley, but she sees a way out of the bottlecapping line in Rip and a possible romantic spark. On their second date, a tipped-off Carmine follows them and gets slugged for his trouble. Rip proposes a third date - a trip to Bonecrack Island - and despite ominous crank calls, Shirley is determined to see this one through. She takes Laverne along for moral support and that's where the trouble starts...

Isn't it sad when the best volume is also the last volume? It's a trueism with this one. By the third edition, Conn has figued out how to write these people: ALL of the characters are much like themselves, and he's finally gotten the hang of writing Squiggy.

Rip Roarer is the best new character introduced in the series (outside of Genius Jones). He doesn't feel like a roman a clef for any particular person (perhaps Frankie Valli or Paul Revere?), but works on his own as a decent OC. There are echoes of the two previous books; while the girls go hunting for treasure while stuck on a possibly haunted island, Lenny and Squiggy try to track them down through another road trip, but the plot works well and feels organically like an episode of the show.

There are a few gaffes, the strangest among them being the inclusion of Edna Babbish. In a part clearly re-written from a Mrs. Havenwurst appearence, she shows up as a redheaded psychic. Mrs. Havenwurst revealed her ability to see into the future in the Season 1 finale, just before she was replaced by The Babbish character.

Sadly, Conn never works in a door gag, and the boys overuse the word "pansy", and Lenny actually says "Don't rumple my threads, clod!". However, this is your best bet, and if you want to read an LAS tie-in, start here.

There are lots, but my favorite is: Everything went very well until the headwaiter fell over.