Look on the Far Side
I went through a period a while ago of only buying friends and family Far Side greetings cards when it was their birthday. Or even using them for somewhat inappropriate situations, like the card about domestic violence in plants that I bought for my friend’s wedding day! I didn’t really care what message I was sending with the cartoon that featured on the front, as long as it made me laugh. It could have been a picture of a carte r4 or something equally uninspiring, but if Gary Larsen had done something funny with it, then into the envelope it went.
For those of you who haven’t seen a Far Side cartoon, my obsession probably seems a bit weird, but trust me; these were funny, entertaining and very, very quirky cartoons. They usually involved animals, plants or inanimate objects in curiously human situations and he had a particular love of drawing dinosaurs. Even if you’re not a Far Side fan you must have raised a smile at the cartoon and card showing a bunch of T-Rex’s smuggling cigarettes with the caption “The real reason dinosaurs became extinct”.
Every now and then there would the odd cartoon that just didn’t quite hit the spot – such as the penguin in a crowd of identical penguins singing”I just got to be me” but who was painted yellow so he did stand out from the crowd. Years later when I bought Larsen’s autobiography I found out that the penguin was always supposed to be just like his chums in the cartoon, but that the greetings card company had decided black and white was “too dull” thereby changing the whole tone of the joke. At least that explains why I didn’t get that one!
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