92: Sunrise

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Sunrise

Title text: Sometimes, I sit on top of parking decks and watch the sun rise. I feel like I should have a guitar or something.

Explanation

This comic is about the desire for an intimate connection with another, and the compromises we make to not be alone.

Hairy finds a certain beauty in the way the world looks without billions of humans crawling around on it. He thinks of this as a secret place that thrills him. He is excited about the remote chance of finding someone like him who appreciates its beauty. But he realizes that it's the very thing that makes this time beautiful to him that makes his imagined chance encounter exceedingly unlikely. Reconciled to the fact that he will not find a kindred spirit outside this morning, he heads back home.

At the house, he gets ready and drives to a club to meet people. The club is drawn using an inverted color scheme (white people, black background) to emphasize that it is the opposite of the 4am outside world. The club is dark and full of people, who are the lightest things present, where outside, the natural beauty shines without interruption by human forms. Hairy is seen alone in the middle of the crowd.

The title text is a reference to a common music video scene (sometimes country music videos) where people play the guitar on parking garages as the sun rises.

Transcript

[Hairy is on the street. Behind him is a house with a lawn.]

Hairy (thinking): I love the time just before sunrise. It's quiet; no one is ever just walking about.

Hairy (thinking): It's like a secret

Hairy (thinking): I always hope that I'll find someone else quietly hiding from sleep, and we'll see each other and sit and talk.

Hairy (thinking): I guess this is a bad place to meet people.

Hairy (thinking): I wish it weren't.

[Hairy goes into the house, brushes his teeth, shaves his head (?), and leaves the house again.]

[Hairy is at a club, disco balls in the ceiling and a giant woofer. Many people are dancing around him.]

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Discussion

Doesn't look like Cueball to me, he has hair. Caagr98 (talk) 17:22, 17 April 2013 (UTC)

It's interesting that he appears to shave his head/cut his hair before going to the party, becoming a "Cueball" for the last two panels. -Pennpenn 108.162.250.162 03:55, 22 January 2016 (UTC)

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The title text seems wrong. It reads 'Sometimes, I sit on top of parking decks and watch the sun rise. I feel like I should have a guitar or something.' in my Android xkcd reader. --92.249.196.108 07:32, 27 April 2013 (UTC)

Fixed. According to the Wayback Machine this was the title text at the start: [1] --Mark Hurd (talk) 13:01, 27 April 2013 (UTC)

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Hmmm, should we note that the last panel is probably a pencil drawing with colors inverted? 103.22.201.168 13:00, 16 September 2014 (UTC)

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Explanation said that the character realised that 4am is a bad time to meet people "other than troublemakers and the police". Removed as this is pure speculation as there is no mention of troublemakers or the police. --Pudder (talk) 15:21, 29 September 2014 (UTC)

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Possible title text explanation: Sitting on a tall structure and watching the sun rise while playing the guitar sounds like a romanticized/idealized scene; the likes of which might be seen in a movie. Smperron (talk) 08:07, 10 November 2014 (UTC)

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The second panel, second image may be a reference to that music video about "brushing your teeth with a bottle of jack" before going to a party. Kirdneh (talk) 01:45, 15 December 2014 (UTC)

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The 4am Project has shut down, and the site directs only to a single text line that says "This site doesn't exist here". Maybe an explanation is needed as to what the 4am Project was, or that section needs to be rewritten. Zazathebot (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

Thanks for your information. Since that dead link didn't explain much I've just removed it because we don't want to explain historical websites not mentioned in the comic. --Dgbrt (talk) 18:24, 28 June 2017 (UTC)

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I interpreted it as a juxtaposition rather than cueball himself going to the party (i.e. no one is awake at this beautiful time and it cuts to a bunch of people in a club).Epicradman123 (talk) 18:24, 15 August 2024 (UTC)