HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Citizen, 2007-10-18, Page 5THE CITIZEN, THURSDAY, OCTOBER 18, 2007. PAGE 5.
Bonnie
Gropp
TThhee sshhoorrtt ooff iitt
On being a woman
He haunts us still. Larson, I’m talking
about. Gary Larson. The most
hilarious cartoonist ever to pick up a
Sharpie and skewer the world around him
It’s been 12 long, deeply unfunny years
since his quirky, warped, one-panel cartoons
appeared in your newspaper and mine. At its
peak, The Far Side was translated into 17
languages and appeared in newspapers from
Seattle to Singapore; from Montreal to
Manchester.
Far Side cartoons were like no newspaper
cartoons before or since. They were not only
off the wall, they were out the door, down the
street and out in the ozone.
Two polar bears hunched over an igloo, the
top crunched in. One says, “Oh, hey! I just
love these things! Crunchy on the outside and
a soft, chewy centre!”
A family of squid driving in a sedan. A
talking, cross-dressing snake who answers to
‘Frank’.
A gaggle of grizzlies huddled around one of
their confreres who sports a series of
concentric circles, like a bulls-eye, on his
chest.
“Bummer of a birthmark, Hal,” another
grizzly mutters.
Gary Larson didn’t hail from an artistic
background. Back in the late ’60s, he was a
biology major at Washington State University.
One day it dawned on him that he had no idea
what he would do with a biology degree, so he
switched to communications, found that
equally unfruitful, and wound up working as a
clerk in a music store and spending his
summers strumming banjo in a going-nowhere
garage band duo called Tom and Gary.
In 1976 he realized he basically hated the
so-called professional side of his life.
Unaccountably and apropos of nothing, he
drew a series of six single-pane cartoons
featuring weird animals and geeky guys in lab
coats. He submitted them to a local science
magazine which bought them on the spot. On
the strength of the double-digit cheque he
received, Larson quit his day job and started
drawing cartoons full-time.
His timing couldn’t have been better. Our
newspapers were full of vapid, insipid cartoon
strips like Mary Worth, Hi and Lois, and that
most execrable of newspaper staples, The
Family Circus.
Into this world of vacuity and brain death
came The Far Side – cartoons about talking
cows, licentious apes…and a caveman
conducting a PowerPoint seminar for his
colleagues. The ‘screen’ shows a close up of
the spiked tail of a Stegosaurus dinosaur. The
presenter, dressed only in a leopard skin,
points to the tail and says: “Now, this end is
called the Thagomizer….after the late Thag
Simmons.”
Oh, hell. It’s impossible to convey the
intrinsic goofiness and breath-catching delight
of a Far Side Cartoon in words. You have to
see them in all their black and white, one-
panel glory.
And alas, we can’t. Larson hit his peak in
the mid-90s with nearly 2,000 newspapers
carrying his strip around the world.
So what does a world-famous, impossibly
successful cartoonist do when he’s got the
world by the gonads?
If he’s Gary Larson, he quits, of course. In
1995, at the height of his fame, Larson
announced that he was done.
Not for a couple of months. Not for a
‘sabbatical’. Not for a rest, to recharge the
batteries.
For good.
He was only 44 but he could sense
impending burnout. “I didn’t want to wind up
in the Graveyard of Mediocre Cartoons” he
told a reporter.
So what’s Larson up to now? Mostly
traveling the world with his sweetie (an
anthropologist, fittingly enough) and studying
jazz guitar.
He hasn’t left us completely Farsideless.
Every few years it seems, another collection of
old Far Side cartoons comes out. They keep us
laughing – and remind us how hopelessly
bland and toothless most other newspaper
cartoons have become.
When’s the last time you laughed out loud at
the moribund antics of Dagwood? Or Dennis
the Menace? Or Canada’s own once-brilliant,
now soap-opera-mediocre For Better or
Worse?
Far Side cartoons – even recycled ones – are
infinitely better than that.
And even if the random ‘collections’ stop
coming out, Larson will be remembered – at
least in the annals of science – for all time. He
has been immortalized by The Committee on
Evolutionary Biology at the University of
Chicago. They’ve named a newly discovered
species – the Strigiphilus garylarsoni – in his
honour.
It’s a louse found only on certain species of
owls.
That’s good enough to be a Far Side cartoon
on its own.
Arthur
Black
McGuinty getting no respect
Oh, what a wonderful age we’re in.
Middle that is. Particularly if you’re a
woman.
And the only thing I can say is that
sometimes you just have to laugh.
Being a female at this time of life is an
adventure to say the least. It’s a safari into the
jungle, a climb up Kilimanjaro, with the odd
leap into the heat of its volcano. It’s a cruise
on rolling seas, a day on the beach, complete
with a frolic in the surf, and again that
burning heat.
It is the strength of knowledge and the
worry of knowing. It is power and weakness,
calm and confusion, satisfaction and
discontent.
Dr. Christiane Northrup wrote that at this
time in her life, a woman’s brain ‘rewires’.
This is why many years of marital bliss
suddenly come to an end, as the wife begins
to see that the status quo is no longer
acceptable. Or she may decide a career
change is in order. Her health, both mental
and physical, demand that she recognizes her
needs and fulfills them.
After years of caring for everyone else it is
time, and her brain knows it, for a woman to
take care of herself.
And taking into consideration the other side
of the story it seems only fair. Not only do we
deserve, but it’s essential. The morass of
emotions, stresses and changes that a middle-
aged woman finds herself facing can be an
intimidating muddle. The rewiring of our
brain doesn’t come without the odd short
circuit.
It was about five years ago when I first
noticed something amiss. My memory, which
had always served me well, seemed less
sharp. I would run home with an amusing
story to tell, but couldn’t quite recall the
details.
As well, there was the disturbing disruption
of sleep. I’m a greedy little sleeper, hoarding
as many hours as I possibly can. But suddenly
I found nights where rest and relaxation had
been stolen from me.
My mind was enlivened by worry and
stress. Always attuned to tensions around me,
I suddenly felt over-burdened by not just my
concerns, but of those around me.
There was moodiness, loneliness and
confusion. It only took an instant for a cloud
to cover a sunny state of mind. The quiet of
my empty nest had me in misery, the peace
left me elated. And the thoughts that formed
in my mind, often found a whole new
structure when verbalized.
It was, I admit, a difficult time. Until I
accepted and embraced it. It was time to
celebrate this stage and recognize its
positives. So, I read and learned. I absorbed
the information and adapted it to suit my
requirements. As a result, I feel I am wiser. I
have learned what is important. I strive for
balance and in doing so have achieved some
inner peace. I’ve been told to nurture myself
for my well-being and have gladly paid heed.
And I have learned, as I said before, that
sometimes you just have to laugh. When my
mords wix, when a sentence begins and fades
off to no logical conclusion, I shake my head
and chuckle. When a sensible middle-aged
friend spouts nonsense, we enjoy the laughter
her gaffe illicits. When a 50-ish clerk in a
woman’s clothing store, suddenly gets that
look and asks if someone turned the furnace
on, you smile. When she sees and smiles back
you feel a kinship, sacred to being a woman,
to knowing, to the power and secrets only we
understand.
Other Views Far side, where are you?
Premier Dalton McGuinty has won
everything anyone can win in an
election but respect.
The Liberal premier has a second
successive majority government, which is rare
in Ontario, and vanquished the leaders of the
opposition parties so they are as good as gone.
Progressive Conservative John Tory wants
to stay, but is handicapped by being without a
seat in the legislature for the second time in
three years and having a new reputation for
faulty judgement that opponents will always
bring up against him.
New Democrat Howard Hampton has led in
three elections and lost. His party will feel it
cannot do worse trying a different leader.
Hampton also may feel he has battered his
head against a brick wall enough.
McGuinty seems to be master of all he
surveys, but the truth is, and most people know
it, he won not because of anything he did, but
because the Conservatives handed him victory
by promising to fund private faith-based
schools, which the public overwhelmingly
would not accept.
McGuinty’s only contribution was to react
effectively by saying children of different
faiths learn to understand each other when
they are educated together and should not be
divided more than they already are.
Since the election, McGuinty’s back-room
advisers have claimed jealously he would have
won without the religious schools issue and it
was only one factor in his victory.
They argue voters already were starting to
recognize McGuinty has matured as a
politician, but this is at odds with polls that
showed voters to the end of the campaign felt
Tory would make a better premier than
McGuinty.
The backroom experts contend also
McGuinty helped himself win by promising
attractive new policies such as an extra
statutory holiday workers will get with pay,
but this has not earned McGuinty respect.
It was the most blatant bribe with others’
money in an election in decades and avoided
being seen as this only because the
Conservatives, who normally protect business,
were preoccupied with disputes and reluctant
to get in more. The NDP would never oppose
any bone tossed to workers and would give
them an extra month off with pay if it had the
chance.
McGuinty’s back-roomers included public
relations executives who worked free for his
party so they could increase their knowledge
of government and sell it to business and are
anxious to prove they performed well enough
for the politicians to call them back.
But the bottom line to this dispute over what
won for McGuinty is the Liberals held only a
slight lead in polls over the Conservatives and
certainly were not within reach of a majority
until Tory dropped the bombshell he would
fund faith-based schools – another indication
the Liberals did not win and the Conservatives
threw it away.
McGuinty also should have lost respect
because of his shifty footwork that ensured in
his travels he met only people who were
Liberal sympathizers.
The premier was not forced to the indignity
of meeting ordinary voters, who might have
the bad manners to ask difficult questions,
which would have been reported in
newspapers and seen on TV and shown
everyone is not enraptured by him.
There was one notable exception, when his
security screen slipped and he came across a
patient dissatisfied with healthcare who gave
him an earful.
Tory naively talked to anyone he bumped
into and McGuinty’s back-room gurus
chortled he ran a poorly-organized campaign
in which he encountered many hostile voters.
What sort of campaign allows a leader to talk
to average voters?
McGuinty in his first term as premier was
not shown much respect and called a Fiberal
because he made promises he could not keep.
Now he is a premier seen to have won an
election because an opposition party made a
mistake.
Comedian Rodney Dangerfield used to
complain he “got no respect” and Dalton
McGuinty is on a path to becoming the
Rodney Dangerfield of politics. Sometimes he
deserves it.
Eric
Dowd
FFrroomm
QQuueeeenn’’ss PPaarrkk
“That which seems the height of absurdity
in one generation often becomes the height
of wisdom in the next.”
- John Stuart Mill
Final Thought