The First Hybrid
A couple of days ago Lee, a fiercely loyal participant here at the "journey" for which I'm ever grateful, quite astutely asked what the cardinal in my cartoon was doing driving his own car. She might also have wondered what he was doing riding around town in his robes and miter. I have no excuse for my apparent lapse in logic, except to say that even when I was drawing the cartoon in question I considered the anomaly. But that's one of the joys of cartooning, the anarchy of it, the ability to throw anything that makes sense to the winds in the pursuit of the gag. One always hopes that beneath the surface disunity lurks the seeds of a deeper truth about human folly, but I won't pursue that any further lest it seem prententious and self-serving. Suffice it to say I have it on good authority Neanderthal Man didn't speak English. I'm not even sure he came up with the wheel, let alone roller skates.
posted by John M Crowther @ 7:17 AM
7 Comments:
Very funny cartoon John!
Re the freudian slip... perhaps thats what happened to me when I portrayed Theo Van Gogh without ears... was it a sign of things to come? LOL
Jean, if you're referring to my having the cardinal driving his own car wearing clerical garb, it was no slip, it was entirely deliberate. I needed strong visual cues about who he was. I was aware of the illogic, but was untroubled by it. As you know, part of the fun of cartooning is that you can take whatever madcap liberties you want.
I can imagine Vincent saying to Theo something along the lines of, "aren't you going un peu too far with this brotherly bonding thing?"
Why would Theo speak French to Vincent?
Wouldn't he have spoken Dutch?
And Jean, how would anyone recognize Theo?
I'm really confused by your conversation!
Kate... Theo and Vincent were in Arles, France...so I guess... whilst one is in Rome one must do as the Romans do! (does that make any sense?) (((chuckles)))
As for "how would anyone recognise Theo?"... well you got me there... but I guess you could safely say he was the only one talking to Vincent at the time... so it would be a fair guess that anyone standing withing spitting distance would have to be Theo.
Sorry Kate... the madcap responses were prompted by a cartoon I did a while back on my blog at jeanburman.com where I FORGOT to give the man (in this case Theo) ears. It was a freudian slip... as we all know what subsequently happened to Vincent's ears or should that be"ear"?.
Sorry John... I should have known it was not accidental! :-)
Oh. I didn't know you were a cartoonist.
I went to your page and looked for the cartoon, and the two addressed each other as "Vincent" and "Theo", so that makes it a no brainer.
I've spent many hours at the Van Gogh Museum in The Netherlands. It's my favorite thing to do when I go there. Well, first would be to drink Dutch beer, but the museum comes in a close second.
Love all these comments from everyone. If I were on my toes, might be witty but was up all night with sick horse so rather dense. How do you know that the Neanderthal Man did not speak English? As a good Scot who turned American from Mother's side, I say that English was the first language. (grin). Never mind that French was spoken in most of the courts of Europe in the early years.
This is a great cartoon, John C. Love the skates.
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