More Cartoon Themes

I'm now up to 1981 in my complete history of the New Yorker cartoon, and some additional primal themes have emerged. Gone, almost completely, are the Arab-on-Flying-Carpet gags, the gypsy fortune tellers, and the sandwich board humor. Since the seventies, the rise of soi-disant jokes about guys in suits, living the corporate life and being either smug or disillusioned about it (depending on which recession was going on) are far in the majority. The idea that goings-on in board rooms are somehow funny was rife. The desert island castaways continue, arguably alive to this day in television guise, as is in reduced quantity the "go and never darken my door again" unwed-mother bit. But also hidden among the three-piece-suit paradigms were some of these constants:

Rats deserting a sinking ship
Workers picketing an establishment (40's and 50's, mostly)
The tunnel of love (dying out by the 80's)
The safari leader with a team of natives carrying things on their heads
Floods
Nude artist's models
Insomniacs counting sheep (or something)
Indians sending smoke signals
Criminals being questioned
The Ladies' club meeting (gone by the 70's)
Nudists
Workmen down in a manhole, saying something ironic
Diogenes and his quest for an honest man
The smiley face (first shows up in 1971)
Mirror, mirror, on the wall ...
Snake charmers and snakes
People kicking the tires on cars
IRS audits
Cave men who court cave women by hitting them on the head
People (or something) being announced on entering a party

With the late 60's and 70's, a thread appears about people who are or aren't having a good time at cocktail parties, with some kind of incongruous or ironic reason why or why not. Little or nothing of the drug culture shows up, only a few bits mention Vietnam, nothing at all about the Kennedy assassinations, and there are but a couple of guess-who's-coming-to-dinner race relation ideas. Unsurprisingly, the 70's cartoons are largely a bore, with a lot of William Steig's crap and the execrable Roz Chast. But we do see many wonderful drawings by George Booth, with his dogs that are the heirs of Thurber's.

I'll let you know how things turn out when Reagan's out of office.

The most fun you can have in bare feet

Well, perhaps not. But GelPro kitchen mats are pretty good on bare feet. Tossed the beat-up old rug that was in the prep area in favor of the smallest of GelPro's line, and the early returns are in favor. My fellow cooks are welcome to drop by and try a stand on it. The dog is unimpressed, but the bipeds in the house are in favor of it.