Years ago, a secretary asked me if I read The Far Side. I told her yes.
She asked me if I could explain it.
I said no.
Who could explain Gary Larson’s madness?
For example, one of his cartoons was titled ‘They call the wind Murray’.
They call the wind Murray? Murray? No, no you say, you’ve screwed it up.
Yes, it was actually ‘They call the wind Mariah’, a beautifully romantic, poignant song of loneliness and lost
love from Paint Your Wagon’, a fifties era Broadway show.
While listening to it, you might dream of lovers now far away in time or distance. You might want to post a Do Not Disturb sign outside your brain.
But the Far Side’s Larson would have none of that-by changing the name from Mariah to Murray, Larson reached into our brain and said, “Oh, noooooo, do not think of a gorgeous woman staring dreamily across a windswept plain. Think instead of a paunchy, flatulent, Jewish retailer strap hanging on a subway car.”
Larson did this to us because he could. He was the unmatched master of ripping out traditional thoughts from our brain and replacing them with incredibly twisted, abnormal imagery. No one else had his ability to take a conventional idea and flip it 180 degrees.
And he did it every day, and we begged for more. Larson held the needle full of heroin, and we stuck out our arms.
He retired in 1995, at the top of his game. The withdrawal was instantaneous, painful, and long lasting.
And their are no successors (Kliban’s cats were a bit close).
If you are new to The Far Side, go to Amazon and order a few. You’ll get hooked.
cuddly but dangerous 
I know a guy, his last name is Muray, it is pronounced Meur-eye, he lives in Utah, after not seeing him for years and years. at all or even thinking about him too much, I saw that FarSide. People always called him Murray, just like the FS “song”. He brushed it aside.
When I saw that FarSide, after 17 years….I called people, everywhere, I found someone who knew the number for his sister, I called her, we had met, she gave me Her brothers phone and address. I cut and mailed to him that cartoon, after all those years. We had been pretty close.
I saw him again last summer for a quick visit, there on his fridge, on my mother’s grave, I swear, the cartoon is still there.
Larson was his own deal!!? Excellent, even in sleep. We had the caveman vegitarians marching out of the forest carrying on their shoulders the HUGE killed CARROT. ….forever. Some of them just get to you like nothing else, he speaks to our middle, to our hearts, without even asking if we mind.
Thank you, thank you, any time I get a second to remember happy times.
Geo. K. Weissler
1422 Elmwood Ave.
Evanston, I’ll 60201
Geocarves@icloud.com
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