Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck.
Speaker 2: Jerry's here too. She has had to step away for
Speaker 2: a second, but she'll be back, we imagined, and when
Speaker 2: she gets here, it'll really be stuff you should Know.
Speaker 1: That's right. I'm excited about this one because this is
Speaker 1: sort of filed under our tribute series the Things We.
Speaker 2: Love Tribute to your Taste.
Speaker 1: I don't know how you feel because we didn't even
Speaker 1: talk about this, but the cartoon from the Funny Pages
Speaker 1: and the books and more, The Far Side by Gary Larson. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it spanned from like fifth or sixth grade to me
Speaker 1: through the end of college, which is just kind of
Speaker 1: crystallizes to me the perfect time to be awakened to
Speaker 1: something like Gary Larson's sense of humor.
Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure. He definitely The Far Side, I should say,
Speaker 2: definitely helps shape my sense of humor, just from being
Speaker 2: exposed to that and finding it funny. You have to
Speaker 2: kind of find it funny to begin with, but once
Speaker 2: you do, it definitely can especially during formative your help
Speaker 2: shape your humor. And if you go back and look
Speaker 2: at them now, they're still great, but there's something that's
Speaker 2: just it just had something before that. It's not like
Speaker 2: it lost it now, but it's just diluted now. And
Speaker 2: I was looking around and trying to figure out what
Speaker 2: the deal is, and the best explanation I could come
Speaker 2: up with is that it had such an impact on
Speaker 2: culture that it actually normalized and spread that sort of
Speaker 2: humor so far and wide that it became less I guess,
Speaker 2: humorous in and of itself, because it made it well
Speaker 2: normal to be funny in that way that people weren't.
Speaker 2: Really nobody was doing anything like Gary Larson was when
Speaker 2: The Far Side came out, but it was so popular
Speaker 2: he made it a thing.
Speaker 1: Yeah. The only thing you need to add about that
Speaker 1: statement is to me, because I still think it's amazing,
Speaker 1: and I have had the best time of the past
Speaker 1: couple of days just reading these over and over.
Speaker 2: Oh good, Yes, No, I like them too. But yeah,
Speaker 2: there's just something I guess it's I don't know what
Speaker 2: it is. I think I already said it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but we're talking about one of the best cartoons ever.
Speaker 1: The difference between a cartoon and a comic generally, I mean,
Speaker 1: they're kind of interchangeable in a way, but a comic
Speaker 1: is generally a strip of several panels that tell a
Speaker 1: story and have a bit of an arc. A cartoon
Speaker 1: is a single panel thing that tells all you need
Speaker 1: to know in one picture, sometimes with words, sometimes without words.
Speaker 2: It's kind of like comparing a book to a poem,
Speaker 2: Like a good poem is really really hard to write
Speaker 2: compared to pros because it has to be more efficient
Speaker 2: and economical, and so a one panel cartoon has to
Speaker 2: have the same impact, or in the case of Farsight,
Speaker 2: a far far greater impact than a strip, because you
Speaker 2: have to figure out how to get things across, like
Speaker 2: the movement of time or what's like cause and effect
Speaker 2: in just one single image. So when you take that
Speaker 2: into account too, it just makes it even more impressive.
Speaker 1: What he did, I think, Yeah, for sure, it's a
Speaker 1: cartoon that ran for fifteen years. It's been gone for
Speaker 1: about thirty years, but it is still one of the
Speaker 1: most Like just his style is so instantly recognizable as
Speaker 1: Gary Larson. He's not a guy that used you know, characters,
Speaker 1: that wasn't like family circus where you know, you knew
Speaker 1: these people. But he had certain a certain way of
Speaker 1: drawing and he had certain sort of stock characters he
Speaker 1: would bring in, like the beehive lady with the cat
Speaker 1: eye glasses and the little freckle faced glasses kid with
Speaker 1: the crew cut. Lots of animals, So he would kind
Speaker 1: of bring in these, you know, kind of characters in
Speaker 1: and out. But they were never like named characters with
Speaker 1: any kind of story.
Speaker 2: No, And sometimes they would have names, but it was
Speaker 2: totally inconsequential. It would be somebody addressing them and just
Speaker 2: using a right like you wouldn't point to that person
Speaker 2: be like, oh, there's Barry or something like that. Like
Speaker 2: they were just interchangeable archetypes that he created.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and as we'll see, you know, toward the end,
Speaker 1: a great intersection of comedy and art and science because
Speaker 1: Gary Larson was a bit of a science nerd. He
Speaker 1: was born in nineteen fifty and raised in Tacoma, Washington,
Speaker 1: and got his sense of humor apparently from his family.
Speaker 1: He said, my older brother and his parents, whose dad
Speaker 1: was a car salesman, his mother was a secretary, and
Speaker 1: they just had a really wacky sense of humor. But
Speaker 1: he's he hasn't done a ton of interviews over the years,
Speaker 1: but in the interviews he's given. He said, I just
Speaker 1: that was just my family sense of humor, and I
Speaker 1: didn't hear things like wacky and left of center until
Speaker 1: much later.
Speaker 2: Right yeah, like people would describe as family like that.
Speaker 2: It's not like the family was like, look at how
Speaker 2: wacky we are, right yeah. Yeah. So one of those
Speaker 2: big influences, in addition to like his just his mom
Speaker 2: and his dad, was his older brother. I think he
Speaker 2: called out, but I saw that one of the things
Speaker 2: his older brother did was introduce him to like a
Speaker 2: love of nature. They would go around the beaches of
Speaker 2: Puget Sound and collect live animals when they could, and
Speaker 2: then bring them home and put them in cages or
Speaker 2: terrariums or aquariums, And later on he was like, I
Speaker 2: don't think you're supposed to do that. I don't think
Speaker 2: you should keep animals captive. But growing up as a kid,
Speaker 2: he had a real interest in animals and developed a
Speaker 2: real love of biology. But his brother had a dual
Speaker 2: influence on him. I saw a quote where he said
Speaker 2: his brother introduced him to like the beauty of a jellyfish,
Speaker 2: and then also used that same jellyfish to smack me
Speaker 2: in the face with which I think it's a that's
Speaker 2: a good big brother right there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he sounded like kind of the classic tormenting big brother,
Speaker 1: but in a loving way, is what I gathered at least. Yeah,
Speaker 1: But yeah, he's always he's been in animals. He's very
Speaker 1: much into nature and animal the treatment of animals in conservation.
Speaker 1: Now since his retirement, he's gotten really into that. But
Speaker 1: he went to school at Washington State in nineteen seventy
Speaker 1: two Cougars and was initially a biology student. But he
Speaker 1: realized he didn't want to go to school for more
Speaker 1: than four years and he wasn't sure what he could
Speaker 1: do with a biology degree, so he switched to communications.
Speaker 1: But apparently always regretted that switch and feels like he
Speaker 1: should have stayed a biology major.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he said, it's one of the most idiotic things
Speaker 2: I ever did. Yeah, we should all be pretty grateful though,
Speaker 2: that he did switch, because it's not clear that he
Speaker 2: would have still made the far Side. One of the
Speaker 2: reasons he did make far Sites because he had a
Speaker 2: lot of time on his hands. So after he graduated
Speaker 2: with a communications degree, he got jobs like playing banjo
Speaker 2: or working in a music store. I think, very coolly,
Speaker 2: he became a Humane Society investigator, and that's what he
Speaker 2: was doing when he created a strip called Nature's Way,
Speaker 2: which if you look at the original Nature's Way cartoons,
Speaker 2: it's just early Farside without with a different name.
Speaker 1: Essentially, Yeah, it was the far Side. The San Francisco
Speaker 1: Chronicle changed the name, which you know that they've asked
Speaker 1: him about that, because I remember Charles Schultz was very
Speaker 1: particular about naming it Peanuts and keeping it that, and
Speaker 1: Gary Larson did not mind the name change, but he sold.
Speaker 1: He got a few days off from work apparently and realized, like, boy,
Speaker 1: I don't like my job, so I'm gonna try something else.
Speaker 1: And he didn't have any formal art training at all.
Speaker 1: And I love his his his style, but none of
Speaker 1: that was like from art class or anything like that, right,
Speaker 1: And in nineteen seventy six, sold six cartoons to Pacific Search,
Speaker 1: a regional science magazine, for ninety bucks, sold another handful
Speaker 1: to another local magazine for you know, three to five
Speaker 1: bucks each, and then eventually got in nineteen seventy nine,
Speaker 1: got a weekly gig at the Seattle Times for Nature's
Speaker 1: Way at fifteen dollars.
Speaker 2: A week, right, which is I think eighty five bucks
Speaker 2: something like that.
Speaker 1: Now, yeah, so not money to live on, but he
Speaker 1: did have.
Speaker 2: A place in the local paper. I mean, Seattle Times
Speaker 2: is big time, right, yeah, I think that same year
Speaker 2: in nineteen seventy nine, he said, I think I can
Speaker 2: do bigger, I can do better, and he took a
Speaker 2: trip to San Francisco and he took his portfolio with him,
Speaker 2: just one copy of his portfolio. He managed to get
Speaker 2: it to the right people at the San Francisco Chronicle
Speaker 2: and they said, hey, we really love your stuff. Apparently
Speaker 2: the same day they got in touch with him and said, hey,
Speaker 2: come in here, we want to talk to you. And
Speaker 2: they said, not only do we want to run Nature's Way,
Speaker 2: which we're going to change to the far side, we
Speaker 2: have a syndication company so we can get you in
Speaker 2: thirty different papers across the country automatically. This is like
Speaker 2: beyond life change. And Laura Clauston helped us with this,
Speaker 2: and she went on to really kind of, I think,
Speaker 2: point out just how nuts it was that this happened
Speaker 2: to him, not just because he had no experience, no
Speaker 2: art training, that he'd only made, you know, a handful
Speaker 2: of cartoons. To this point, but just the way that
Speaker 2: comics pages are and how stodgy and rooted in non
Speaker 2: change they tend to be. That that really it's just
Speaker 2: crazy that he got this chance. It just all fell
Speaker 2: together for him like this.
Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely it was. And it's still an industry where
Speaker 1: it's hard to get in, you know that the comics
Speaker 1: section is only so big. It's like it's real estate,
Speaker 1: you know, and there's just not room and the classics
Speaker 1: just don't go away seemingly. There's an artist, a cartoonist
Speaker 1: named Georgia Dunn who does breaking cat news. She and
Speaker 1: this is you know, sort of a point about women
Speaker 1: in the industry, but she said there are more dead
Speaker 1: men than live women in the funny pages, but also
Speaker 1: just sort of illustrates how how hard it is to
Speaker 1: break in to the funny pages. So the fact that
Speaker 1: he got his chance with such a weird cartoon, like
Speaker 1: the person that would take it out to the different
Speaker 1: newspapers to syndicate it and try and you know, sell
Speaker 1: it to him has some pretty great stories on like
Speaker 1: the re actions he got because Farside is one of
Speaker 1: the things that you kind of get or you don't.
Speaker 1: Earlier said, you know, you have to to really grow
Speaker 1: to love, you know, love it, but some people never do.
Speaker 1: Some people hate the Far Side still.
Speaker 2: Yeah. One of the comments that the salesman got when
Speaker 2: he was out beating the pavement was this is not
Speaker 2: a Buffalo product. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I could just see that scene, like the whatever the
Speaker 1: Buffalo newspaper is the guy, it's just like, this is
Speaker 1: not a Buffalo product, like, very sternly, please leave, sir.
Speaker 1: And apparently he said the initial response has been quite
Speaker 1: funny and uneditor like, and he was basically like the
Speaker 1: they were so diverse and unpredictable, like he even from
Speaker 1: people he knew really well, from editors, he really knew.
Speaker 1: He's like, I never knew if they were going to
Speaker 1: offer me, like to stay and have a cup of coffee,
Speaker 1: or did like say get out of my office.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because people would have a visceral response to it.
Speaker 2: Either they thought it was great, they didn't like it.
Speaker 2: The idea that the Far Side was ever divisive is
Speaker 2: just hilarious to me. But it just really kind of
Speaker 2: goes to show how much Gary Larson changed the culture
Speaker 2: with the Far Side, that it was just totally far
Speaker 2: out off the wall offensive to some people. And now
Speaker 2: because he kind of laid the groundwork and launched that
Speaker 2: kind of humor and made it far and wide in
Speaker 2: the United States especially. It's just it's that much funnier
Speaker 2: now when you look back and think, like people were
Speaker 2: offended by the Far Side.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's another good quote here from one of the editors.
Speaker 1: I don't know what this is, but it's not for us.
Speaker 2: But other people say, like, what a mind this man has. Yeah,
Speaker 2: he's brilliant.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, again, it's just one of those things. It's
Speaker 1: very divisive cartoon. Should we take a break, Yeah, all right,
Speaker 1: we'll be right back with more on the brilliant Gary Larson.
Speaker 3: Stoftly jawsh so.
Speaker 2: So one other thing happened to Gary Larson that week
Speaker 2: that he went down to the Chronicle. He got news
Speaker 2: from the Seattle Times that they were dropping him. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and he went on to blame the placement in the paper.
Speaker 2: Apparently they put it next to a kid's crossword puzz
Speaker 2: that's not the place for the Far Side. Of course
Speaker 2: you're gonna get complaints, right, But he also said that
Speaker 2: had the Seattle Times fired him a week before, he
Speaker 2: never would have gone to San Francisco or to the Chronicle.
Speaker 2: It would have just completely deflated his any self confidence
Speaker 2: he had. So the timing of it was just amazing
Speaker 2: when you put it all together. One other thing too,
Speaker 2: Apparently one of the Chronicle syndication heads tried to talk
Speaker 2: him into turning it into a comic strip with recurring characters. No,
Speaker 2: and he was like, I think I'm just gonna hold
Speaker 2: with this. So if you put all the components together,
Speaker 2: the fact that we even have the far side is significant.
Speaker 2: It also makes it seem like we're probably the only
Speaker 2: version of the universe that has the far side. All
Speaker 2: the other multiverses didn't get it because nothing fell into
Speaker 2: place quite.
Speaker 1: Right multiverse h M.
Speaker 2: All right.
Speaker 1: So, because it was so divisive, it wasn't like wildfire
Speaker 1: out of the gate. It was in thirty papers initially,
Speaker 1: I think three years later it was up to eighty.
Speaker 1: And you might be thinking, like, hey, eighty newspapers is
Speaker 1: pretty great, but for syndication's that's small beans. It really
Speaker 1: just sort of took a very natural path to growing
Speaker 1: in three years and went from thirty to eighty. Then
Speaker 1: a couple of years later it was up to two
Speaker 1: hundred and really kind of launched after that, and at
Speaker 1: its peak was in nineteen hundred newspapers, which made Gary
Speaker 1: Larson a very very rich guy because he started putting
Speaker 1: out books and calendars. In eighty three, eighty four, and
Speaker 1: eighty five, he had books on the New York Times
Speaker 1: bestseller list, and eventually I believe all but one of
Speaker 1: his twenty three books was on the New York Times
Speaker 1: bestseller list and sold the combined forty one million copies
Speaker 1: and almost eighty million calendars.
Speaker 2: Yeah, those books were like when you had that book
Speaker 2: in your hands at the time. Oh yeah, the greatest
Speaker 2: thing in the world.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and those books were coming out. I was like
Speaker 1: twelve and thirteen, so it was just Christmas morning at
Speaker 1: the Brian House was I would just grab that thing
Speaker 1: and basically run to my room.
Speaker 2: Nice.
Speaker 1: And it was also in seventeen different languages, which I
Speaker 1: just I know, it's not even a terribly American thing,
Speaker 1: but I'm just trying to imagine the far sides, weird
Speaker 1: sensibilities going over in a foreign language country. I don't know,
Speaker 1: it just sort of surprised me.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you'd think way way more languages, right.
Speaker 1: No, I'm just surprised it went over at all in
Speaker 1: other countries.
Speaker 2: So yeah, I gotcha. Yeah, I know, I could see
Speaker 2: there being seventeen different languages that could find it humorous.
Speaker 1: Oh you could, all right, yeah, because there's like two or.
Speaker 2: Three million languages, you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So he was also very unsurprisingly an award winning artists
Speaker 2: and cartoonists from the beginning of his peak. I think
Speaker 2: around nineteen eighty five he won the first award for
Speaker 2: Best Newspaper Panel all the way up till the end
Speaker 2: in nineteen ninety four winning for our Outstanding Cartoonists of
Speaker 2: the Year. And like you said, he was like the calendars,
Speaker 2: the books, like he was making mad Bank, as he
Speaker 2: puts it every time he's interviewed about it. But he
Speaker 2: really kind of drew the line a lot of merchandising,
Speaker 2: like they wanted to do everything, and he was like,
Speaker 2: one of my rules is you can't take these things
Speaker 2: out of context. Like you're never going to see a
Speaker 2: T shirt with just a picture of the beehive Lady,
Speaker 2: beehive hard Lady with Cadie glasses, Like that's out of context.
Speaker 2: Doesn't make sense. I don't want to do that. No dolls,
Speaker 2: nothing like that. But just as much as like kind
Speaker 2: of protecting what he created, he also didn't want to
Speaker 2: seem like he was making any kind of cash grab
Speaker 2: to the fans of the Far Side. He was a
Speaker 2: very sensitive person who was really probably from what I
Speaker 2: can tell, overly aware of what people thought of him
Speaker 2: or how they took his work.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, you could have a T shirt or
Speaker 1: a mug or something, but it was just like a cartoon, right,
Speaker 1: like a Far Side panel, which was pretty brilliant because
Speaker 1: I mean that's where the humor is. And also since
Speaker 1: they weren't characters, I think that kind of helped that
Speaker 1: decision along, right, Although I got to say, like a,
Speaker 1: if I had the doll of the little crew cut kid,
Speaker 1: I wouldn't mind that, I'm sure, as he might be
Speaker 1: ripping them off and doing something like that. So I'm
Speaker 1: not sure.
Speaker 2: I'll bet you're right, actually, and I know somebody's got
Speaker 2: a Christmas coming up.
Speaker 1: He was also very sensitive to offending people. Even though
Speaker 1: he did that all the time, It's not something he
Speaker 1: ever set out to do. You know. He very famously
Speaker 1: always would feature God as a character. And it wasn't
Speaker 1: even you know, like, oh let me make God some
Speaker 1: like sort of wimpy weirdo like. It was this like
Speaker 1: sort of big, all powerful god with long flowing hair,
Speaker 1: and but religious people didn't like that. I guess, still
Speaker 1: sort of some sort of craven image. Cat people definitely
Speaker 1: didn't like them, because there was a lot of a
Speaker 1: lot of dogs preying on cats in various ways. But
Speaker 1: he just didn't want to ruffle feathers, he said, I
Speaker 1: just ended up doing it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he was just being humorous. And one of the great, great,
Speaker 2: great things about the Far Side is it's not making
Speaker 2: a comment on anything. Yeah, it's just dropping in on
Speaker 2: an absurd moment in life, somewhere in the universe or
Speaker 2: somewhere on Earth, which is why those characters are all interchangeable.
Speaker 2: They're not specific someone. It could be anyone who's having
Speaker 2: an absurd moment, right. And the best description I saw
Speaker 2: came from Carrie Soper, who's the biographer of not just
Speaker 2: Gary Larson, but The Far Side. He said that the
Speaker 2: point of Farside is that we're all just fools flailing
Speaker 2: against the universe, and that the Far Side is just
Speaker 2: basically a camera dropping in on those moments where it's
Speaker 2: most pronounced.
Speaker 1: I guess, yeah, that's brilliant. Actually, that kind of says
Speaker 1: it best. We should probably illustrate a couple of verbally
Speaker 1: illustrate a couple of cartoons, just if you haven't seen
Speaker 1: the Far Side so you kind of know we're going
Speaker 1: for here. You should definitely look these up because these
Speaker 1: are some classics. But one that really kind of crystallizes
Speaker 1: what he does is Early Experiments and Transportation, and that
Speaker 1: is a panel and at the bottom that's all it says,
Speaker 1: Early Experiments and Transportation, and it features these cave dudes,
Speaker 1: these three cave guys holding an early kind of stone
Speaker 1: wheel with another cave guy strapped to the top of it,
Speaker 1: just sort of sitting there with his legs out with Obviously,
Speaker 1: the idea is it's going to be pushed down the
Speaker 1: hill and they haven't thought it through, and this guy
Speaker 1: is going to be rolled over, you know, with this
Speaker 1: wheel crushing him. And that's sort of the brilliance of
Speaker 1: the Far Side. It's just a single panel. He doesn't
Speaker 1: have the next one showing the wheel rolling and the
Speaker 1: guy going oh my bones, like you have to. It's
Speaker 1: up to the viewer and the reader to put all
Speaker 1: this together in your head and imagine what comes next.
Speaker 1: And that was sort of the brilliance of it was
Speaker 1: he tapped into your imagination. The other thing I think
Speaker 1: was very larcen Esque is it could have just been
Speaker 1: that these guys on the hill, but then about halfway
Speaker 1: down the hill he adds a guy, a cave guy
Speaker 1: looking up with a little stone tablet to record the results.
Speaker 1: And it was those extra little bits in the frame
Speaker 1: for me that just took farside over the top.
Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure. Another good one is the Midvale School
Speaker 2: for the Gifted, probably my favorite all time, the best known. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it's just amazing. There's no quote, there's no anything, there's
Speaker 2: no cut line or caption or anything like that. It's
Speaker 2: just that little glasses, crew cut kid with freckles pushing
Speaker 2: on a door to get into the Midvale School of
Speaker 2: the Gifted where he ostensibly goes to school, and it
Speaker 2: clearly on the door pull.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, And if I may comment on this one,
Speaker 1: the brilliance of that one to me like you could
Speaker 1: do that. You could have a kid's hand on the
Speaker 1: door pushing that says pull. But it's the way that
Speaker 1: he's leaning in his whole body, right, and you get
Speaker 1: just when you see it. I remember when I was
Speaker 1: a kid seeing that, thinking it looks like that kid
Speaker 1: has been standing there for an hour right with his
Speaker 1: hand against that door, expecting it to open, right, And
Speaker 1: how he conveys that with just the way he drew
Speaker 1: that kid leaning in, I don't know. That's the magic
Speaker 1: of the Far Side, agreed.
Speaker 2: Man. I'm glad you're interpreting these for us, because you're
Speaker 2: doing a fantastic job.
Speaker 1: No. Great.
Speaker 2: Uh. There's another one that was pretty famous too, but
Speaker 2: not necessarily everyone's seen, but you might have heard of
Speaker 2: the one called cow Tools that came out in nineteen
Speaker 2: eighty two. Yeah, and apparently this is the panel that
Speaker 2: taught Gary Larson that there's a lot of people out
Speaker 2: there reading the Far Side because cow Tools came out
Speaker 2: and it just baffled people to the point where they
Speaker 2: were starting to get agitated because they didn't understand the cartoon.
Speaker 2: It was a pop culture phenomenon, people trying to figure
Speaker 2: out what this cartoon meant, and the problem was everybody
Speaker 2: was looking way too deeply into it and you had
Speaker 2: to take it at face value. And it got so
Speaker 2: I don't want to say out of hand, but just
Speaker 2: such a just so widespread that the syndicate asked him
Speaker 2: to write a letter explaining it that got published in
Speaker 2: the papers that also published The Far Side.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's definitely the most divisive panel he did, and
Speaker 1: I don't think i've ever seen that he regrets it
Speaker 1: or anything. I think what he didn't like was that
Speaker 1: people I don't know if he didn't like it, but
Speaker 1: people just didn't get it. And it's even one that
Speaker 1: I looked at for the first time when I was
Speaker 1: a kid, and I didn't fully get. But I don't
Speaker 1: think there was a lot of subtext. He came out
Speaker 1: and he said, I've never met a cow who could
Speaker 1: make tools, so I felt sure that if I did that,
Speaker 1: the tools would lack something in sophistication and resemble the
Speaker 1: sorry specimens that I showed in the cartoon, And I
Speaker 1: think people thought it was something more than that, right,
Speaker 1: and to him it was just that as just these
Speaker 1: dumb root of entry tools that a cow would make.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's all it showed. It was a cow standing
Speaker 2: maybe a little proudly behind a table with their tools
Speaker 2: spread out. There's a barn in the background. He's on
Speaker 2: a farm, and one of the tools you can identify
Speaker 2: as a saw, but the other like three You're like,
Speaker 2: I have no idea what that does, and that's it.
Speaker 2: That's all it is. It's like the cow made terrible tools,
Speaker 2: but he's still proud that he made some tools. And
Speaker 2: these are cow tools. That's it. That's all there is
Speaker 2: to it. And if you take it on its face,
Speaker 2: it's hilarious.
Speaker 1: But yeah, if you start.
Speaker 2: Trying to figure out what this tool means or what
Speaker 2: he's saying with this, it just completely loses it.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean there were definitely cartoons I didn't get
Speaker 1: when I was a kid. I remember looking at some
Speaker 1: of them not fully getting it and thinking like, oh,
Speaker 1: this must be like something you might get as an adult,
Speaker 1: but you know, maybe not, because in the Simpsons and
Speaker 1: Cheers there were definitely pop culture references where people like
Speaker 1: Woody and Cheers wouldn't get a far side or or
Speaker 1: Homer wouldn't get a far side. So it became a
Speaker 1: thing to not understand the panels.
Speaker 2: Right, I wanted to talk about one more. There's that
Speaker 2: Carrie Soaper author was asked what panel would you pick
Speaker 2: out as the quintessential far side wow, and he said,
Speaker 2: the one lupis slip of phobia, which is.
Speaker 1: Remember it.
Speaker 2: Like the caption says lupus slip a phobia fear of
Speaker 2: being chased in your kitchen by timber wolves while wearing
Speaker 2: socks on a newly waxed floor, And that's exactly what's
Speaker 2: going on. There's this kid who's being chased around the
Speaker 2: table by two timber wolves and he's wearing socks, and
Speaker 2: his floor is nice and shiny, and he's kind of
Speaker 2: hanging on to the table like he's about to fall over,
Speaker 2: so like his his. The other funny thing about it, too,
Speaker 2: is like this person's really arcane phobia is coming true,
Speaker 2: like the nightmares happening. Yeah, that's what it is. That's
Speaker 2: a great one.
Speaker 1: That's so good. I also love Dog Threat Letter. That's
Speaker 1: what he has a regret about. He was a perfectionist
Speaker 1: and would sometimes agonize over like I should have done
Speaker 1: this or that, which is just I don't know. It's
Speaker 1: hard if you're wired that way. But as any kind
Speaker 1: of creator, my advice is to just go with it
Speaker 1: and don't look back on your work and regret something
Speaker 1: that you didn't draw perfectly. But in Dog Threat Letter,
Speaker 1: it was it's a it's a panel of these cats,
Speaker 1: one cat sitting down in a in a fat chair,
Speaker 1: and another one standing there, and there's a broken window,
Speaker 1: there's a letter that the cat is reading. There's glass
Speaker 1: on the floor, there's a dog bone on the floor,
Speaker 1: which is so perfect to me because clearly this this
Speaker 1: dog threat letter was wrapped in this bone and thrown
Speaker 1: through the window, right. And it's the little cutout letters
Speaker 1: like a like a you know, a kidnappers letter would
Speaker 1: be cut and pasted, and it just says arm and
Speaker 1: the cats aren't reacting, in fact, it's the backs of
Speaker 1: their heads. There's a portrait of a framed cat on
Speaker 1: the wall, which is a nice touch. And he regrets
Speaker 1: showing the dog running away through the hole in the
Speaker 1: window as if he had just thrown it. He wishes
Speaker 1: he had just not had the dog. But I think
Speaker 1: it's great as is.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't think it detracted from it at all.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but I'm not Gary Larson.
Speaker 2: No, it's true. He also he got even more obsessive
Speaker 2: than that with a regret which was Harry Houdini's final undoing,
Speaker 2: which was that Houdini died because his fingers got caught
Speaker 2: in Chinese finger traps, and that that was the thing
Speaker 2: that he couldn't get out of. So now his dead
Speaker 2: body is on the ground, leaning up against the wall,
Speaker 2: and he's a skeleton and it's hilarious. But the thing
Speaker 2: that Gary Larson was upset about was that the tilt
Speaker 2: of Harry Houdini School should have been looking downward a
Speaker 2: little more. I'm like, dude, it's fine, Yeah, it's great.
Speaker 2: Like no one else except you thought that what you
Speaker 2: just said.
Speaker 1: Yeah, totally agree. Should we take another break? Yeah, all right,
Speaker 1: we'll be back and we're going to finish up at
Speaker 1: the Midvale School for the Gifted right after this.
Speaker 3: Soft we jowsh.
Speaker 1: Soft all right? So drawing seven of these a week,
Speaker 1: you know, he put one out every day. That's that's
Speaker 1: the work of a cartoonist and a comics It's crazy.
Speaker 1: It's hard, you know, even though it's a single panel.
Speaker 1: You got to come up with something that great every
Speaker 1: day because he wanted to be great, and everyone who
Speaker 1: does that kind of stuff wants to be great. So
Speaker 1: that's a lot. He took a fourteen month sabbatical in
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty eight. By this time he was married to
Speaker 1: an anthropologist, no surprise, named Tony Carmichael. They traveled all
Speaker 1: over the world. They went to the Amazon they went
Speaker 1: to Africa. He lived in New York for a few months,
Speaker 1: taking jazz guitar lessons from the great Jim Hall. Apparently
Speaker 1: the story goes that he drew one of Jim Hall's
Speaker 1: album covers, and I don't know if it's true or not.
Speaker 1: It might be apocryphal, but he initially said I'll do
Speaker 1: it for a million bucks and then said, how about this.
Speaker 1: You give me jazz guitar lessons in exchange. So he
Speaker 1: was living his best life in retirement, you know, enjoying himself.
Speaker 1: He came back and said, all right, I can give
Speaker 1: you five a week instead of the seven.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so that was eighty eight to I think eighty
Speaker 2: nine or early ninety and I guess eighty nine. And
Speaker 2: so even drop two cartoons a week, he was clearly
Speaker 2: getting tired. He was more than that. I don't know
Speaker 2: if more, but at least tied with it. In addition
Speaker 2: to fatigue, he was really worried that he was his
Speaker 2: creativity was gonna go downhill, and that he was going
Speaker 2: to start making mediocre cartoons. And that is that is
Speaker 2: the mark of a creative genius, I guess, or at
Speaker 2: the very least a deeply creative person. Yes that they're like,
Speaker 2: I have to walk away because I don't want to
Speaker 2: start making something mediocre, not even bad mediocre. Mediocre is
Speaker 2: actually worse than bad in situations like that.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So the fact that he cited that, in addition to fatigue,
Speaker 2: I thought was really telling about you know who he is.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Absolutely. He also was never super comfortable in the spotlight.
Speaker 1: If you look up Gary Larson in an image search,
Speaker 1: you're going to see a couple of old black and
Speaker 1: whites back in the day. If you specify like Gary
Speaker 1: Larson today, I saw like one or two pictures of
Speaker 1: him now. So he didn't give a lot of interviews.
Speaker 1: He never was comfortable being in the limelight. When he
Speaker 1: did do interviews, he felt like he screwed him up.
Speaker 1: There was one particular interview where he got tripped up
Speaker 1: by a question and later on said, I couldn't think
Speaker 1: of anything to say. I was rooted to the spot
Speaker 1: like the proverbial rabbit caught in the headlights, which may
Speaker 1: have been the problem because I think it's a deer.
Speaker 2: Yeah. The question was also like where is the far
Speaker 2: side and how do we get there? Yeah, Like this
Speaker 2: is like your first questionable man. Yeah, so on January.
Speaker 2: I don't remember the date, but let's just say January
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety five, the very final far side. We should
Speaker 2: save the original run the final far Side ran, and
Speaker 2: it is. It's perfect, as perfect as the ending of
Speaker 2: the original Bob Newhart Show.
Speaker 1: Yeah agreed, where he.
Speaker 2: A man named Gary who looks vaguely like Gary Larson
Speaker 2: is standing with Glinda the Goodwitch, and he's surrounded by
Speaker 2: every character in the far side of the cows, the cats,
Speaker 2: the beehive hairdo lady, the nerdy kid with.
Speaker 1: The glasses Yeah, ten, Gallahat guy.
Speaker 2: Yeah ten, gallon hack guy. Everybody is surrounding him, just
Speaker 2: kind of watching him talk with Glenda the Goodwitch, and
Speaker 2: she says something like, well, basically what Dorothy was told
Speaker 2: in the end of Wizard of Oz.
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, should I read it?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Definitely.
Speaker 1: She says, why Gary, you've always and that's underlined, You've
Speaker 1: always had the power to go home. Just close your
Speaker 1: eyes quack three times and think to yourself. There's no
Speaker 1: place like home. There's no place like home.
Speaker 2: Right, Okay, So that's panel one. It's in color. The
Speaker 2: second panel, and this is very rare. He usually only
Speaker 2: did one panel. The second panels in black and white,
Speaker 2: and now Gary is in bed waking up, ostensibly in Kansas,
Speaker 2: and he's surrounded by his family and friends, and they
Speaker 2: all resemble the cow and the cat and the nerdy kid,
Speaker 2: and he says, he explains to them that he just
Speaker 2: had this crazy dream and all the people in the
Speaker 2: dream looked like them, just like the end of Wizard
Speaker 2: of Oz. It was just beautiful.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was, I mean, the perfect way to go out.
Speaker 1: I kind of wonder if he the story behind that,
Speaker 1: if he came up with it just sort of when
Speaker 1: he went to do the last one, if he always
Speaker 1: sort of had something in mind. Yeah. I always wonder
Speaker 1: that about TV shows too, if they sort of had
Speaker 1: the final shot or the final episode in their brain
Speaker 1: when they're doing it. But yeah, it was a beautiful
Speaker 1: way to go out. He had in ninety four to
Speaker 1: ninety seven animated films Tales from the Far Side and
Speaker 1: Tales from the Far Side too.
Speaker 2: Did you see those?
Speaker 1: I did not? Surprisingly Are they good?
Speaker 2: I don't know. The only place I can find it
Speaker 2: is a Russian website and I no, okay, our work
Speaker 2: computers won't let us go there.
Speaker 1: Did it say?
Speaker 2: Yet right, but they look awesome. I did see a
Speaker 2: clip and it's the cow, but a real life version,
Speaker 2: a real life animated version. You know what I'm talking about. Yeah,
Speaker 2: of a cow is just their hoof playing a video game.
Speaker 2: And the video game I think it's called Stampede and
Speaker 2: in the video game, the cows from the far side
Speaker 2: are stampeding and it's just weird because you hear the
Speaker 2: cow breathing and that's it. Like they're just playing the game,
Speaker 2: but they're breathing as they're playing it, and that's all
Speaker 2: you just see. They're hoof playing with the joystick. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I made an intentional decision to not see those, and
Speaker 1: I still don't want to see them.
Speaker 2: Okay, I'll see him for us and then I'll be
Speaker 2: like yay or niet.
Speaker 1: Yeah, let me know, because I just I don't know.
Speaker 1: There's something, you know how it is when something exists
Speaker 1: in your mind as a certain thing and it's just
Speaker 1: kind of a perfect memory and thing for me still,
Speaker 1: and I don't want to take the chance of not
Speaker 1: liking it, so I'm not going to do it. He
Speaker 1: also had a kid's book in nineteen ninety nine. I
Speaker 1: feel bad that I didn't know about this. I would
Speaker 1: have gotten it when Ruby was littler. There's a hair
Speaker 1: in my dirt. She'd probably still like this. Actually, yeah,
Speaker 1: Colon a worm story, a book about a princess from
Speaker 1: the worm's point of view, which is very Gary Larson.
Speaker 2: Speaking of kids' books, there was something that he cited.
Speaker 2: A screen rant has like five hundred articles on Gary
Speaker 2: Larson in the far Side. Apparently somebody there really likes him.
Speaker 2: But they turned up that he cited a children's book
Speaker 2: from nineteen fifty, the year he was born, as just
Speaker 2: kind of helping him develop, like his sense of humor.
Speaker 2: But it's called mister Bear, Squash you flat, Like that's
Speaker 2: mister Bear's name. And it's this bear who goes around
Speaker 2: the woods and sits on the other animals houses and
Speaker 2: squashes them and basically just makes all sorts of enemies
Speaker 2: and then finally gets his come up and s at
Speaker 2: the end. And it's really bizarre, Like just the sample
Speaker 2: I saw, it's like illustrated like in nineteen fifties children's book,
Speaker 2: but the storyline is really weird, and the title itself
Speaker 2: is incredibly weird too. That apparently just stayed with Gary Larson.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they almost they someone tried to develop at some
Speaker 1: point a live action far Side movie, and I just
Speaker 1: thank god that that never happened, because there's no way
Speaker 1: that would have been good.
Speaker 2: No way, no.
Speaker 1: How so we mentioned talk of science. This is kind
Speaker 1: of one of the most fun things about Gary Larson
Speaker 1: to me now that I'm an adult who is sort
Speaker 1: of more into science than I was when I was twelve,
Speaker 1: but he very much had an interest in science. It
Speaker 1: was pervasive through the series run, whether it was animals
Speaker 1: or weird nature things, and there's a it was its
Speaker 1: Tentdrils kind of reached through the science world at the time.
Speaker 1: In nineteen ninety eight, the head of the National Institutes
Speaker 1: of Health, doctor Harold Varmus, said, boy, doctor Harold Barmas,
Speaker 1: has there ever been a more app name to lead
Speaker 1: the National Institute of Help?
Speaker 2: Right, it's also a far side name too.
Speaker 1: Oh really did he use that?
Speaker 2: No? I'm just saying like that's a pot oh yeah name.
Speaker 1: No, I totally agree. It wouldn't have surprised me though,
Speaker 1: because as we'll see, they sort of overlapped here and there.
Speaker 1: But he said his influence is pervasive. I can't tell
Speaker 1: you how many seminars been to that had a Gary
Speaker 1: Larson slide in them, and he ended up getting like
Speaker 1: real animals named after him.
Speaker 2: Right, well, a chewing lause at least. Yeah, there's a
Speaker 2: type of louse that's found on the feathers of the
Speaker 2: South African white faced owl, and the parasitologist Dale Clayton
Speaker 2: named it after Gary Larson Strigaphyllis Gary Larson i. And
Speaker 2: he said he wrote to ask permission that it's simply
Speaker 2: meant to honor the enormous contribution that my colleagues and
Speaker 2: I feel you have made to biology through your cartoon, and.
Speaker 1: Like not saying you're a lause, right exactly.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And so Gary Larson was quite honored, he said.
Speaker 2: He wrote that he was honored. In the Prehistory of
Speaker 2: the Far Side. He mentions it, what's funny is that
Speaker 2: the Prehistory of the Far Side came out before the
Speaker 2: paper naming that chewing lause Strigophyllis Gary larsoni. So that
Speaker 2: the paper actually cites the book The Prehistory of the
Speaker 2: Far Side in it to basically prove that it's actually
Speaker 2: a thing.
Speaker 1: It's pretty good. He had also had a butterfly name
Speaker 1: for him in nineteen ninety, but sadly, fourteen years later
Speaker 1: the sarah Totega Larson i was found to not be
Speaker 1: a distinct species, so it was removed. So for a while,
Speaker 1: I guess fourteen years he had a butterfly named after
Speaker 1: him as well, and then I love the story of
Speaker 1: the thagamizer.
Speaker 2: We'll take it.
Speaker 3: There was.
Speaker 1: A scientific term that is kind of caught on from
Speaker 1: one of his cartoons, and that is the thagamizer. A
Speaker 1: thhag o miser i was from a nineteen eighty two
Speaker 1: panel where there's a caveman teaching a class about the
Speaker 1: end of the stegosaurus tale the little spikes on the
Speaker 1: end of his stegosaurus. The caption was, now, this end
Speaker 1: is called the thagamizer after the late thag Simmons, right,
Speaker 1: which is so such a Gary Larson sort of sense
Speaker 1: of humor, sensibility in and of itself. And apparently paleontologists
Speaker 1: sort of started using that such that it became a
Speaker 1: semi formal name and ended up in the Dinosaur National
Speaker 1: Monument at the Smithsonian.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like there displays as a stegosaurus mentioned it stagamizer.
Speaker 1: That's amazing.
Speaker 2: So yeah, I think one of the reasons that scientists
Speaker 2: really appreciated him is this was a time when nerd
Speaker 2: was a genuine put down. It was not a hip
Speaker 2: term at all, Like right, if you called someone a nerd,
Speaker 2: you were being mean to them. And he was celebrating them,
Speaker 2: even while also making fun of them to some extent,
Speaker 2: but no more than any other humans he was making
Speaker 2: fun of. He just had a really deep interest in
Speaker 2: science and biology and it just happened to kind of
Speaker 2: cross paths. So I thought that was worth mentioning that,
Speaker 2: like he was, he was glorifying nerds at a time
Speaker 2: when nerds were not super well.
Speaker 1: Yeah, man, that's very astute. I never really thought about that,
Speaker 1: but that's absolutely what he was doing. He was making
Speaker 1: fun of himself and also shining a light on nerdom
Speaker 1: at the same time. Yeah. In nineteen eighty seven, the
Speaker 1: Californa the Academy of Sciences did an exhibit that ended
Speaker 1: up touring all around the country, including the National Museum
Speaker 1: of History of Science. Related far side comics and evolutionary
Speaker 1: biologist E. O. Wilson wrote he had a couple of
Speaker 1: bi or scientists write forwards in his books.
Speaker 2: EO.
Speaker 1: Wilson wrote the Ford for the children's book There's a
Speaker 1: Hair in My Dirt, and a paleontologist and evolutionary biologist
Speaker 1: named Stephen J. Gould, I believe we've talked about before
Speaker 1: wrote the forward for The Far Side Gallery three and
Speaker 1: called him the national humorist of natural history.
Speaker 2: And then there's a story we talked about in the
Speaker 2: Jing Goodall episode. I think it's worth mentioning.
Speaker 1: Again, Yeah, I thought we did. Yeah.
Speaker 2: So in nineteen eighty seven, Gary Larson had a cartoon
Speaker 2: showing an ape that's grooming another ape, and it seems
Speaker 2: very clear that they're married, and the one ape with
Speaker 2: glasses I think is the wife says, well, well, another
Speaker 2: blonde hair. Conducting a little more research with that Jing
Speaker 2: Goodall tramp. And of course you meant nothing by it,
Speaker 2: Like if you start to read too deeply into it,
Speaker 2: you're like, wow, this is what's it got against Jane Goodall.
Speaker 2: That's all superficial, just hilarious, right, that's not at all
Speaker 2: how Sue Engel, the executive director of the Jane Goodall Institute,
Speaker 2: apparently she read way too deeply into it, and she
Speaker 2: wrote a truly angry letter to the cartoon editors that
Speaker 2: I guess by then he was at Universal Syndicate, basically
Speaker 2: just lambbassing them for even running it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, she said, it's incredibly offensive and in such poor
Speaker 1: tastes that readers might well question the editorial judgment of
Speaker 1: running such an atrocity in a newspaper that reputes to
Speaker 1: be supplying the news to persons with a better than
Speaker 1: average intelligence.
Speaker 2: Right, So she was mad.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: It turns out that Jane Goodall was in the field
Speaker 2: when all this happened. She hadn't seen the cartoon, and
Speaker 2: when she got back and did see the cartoon, she's like, actually,
Speaker 2: this is funny, Sue. I think you may have overreacted.
Speaker 2: She ended up writing forward to one of the Far
Speaker 2: Side books, and then that cartoon was licensed for the
Speaker 2: Jane Goodall Institute. I'm quite sure on very favorable terms,
Speaker 2: because Gary Larson is a genuine conservationist, and in fact,
Speaker 2: I think he gave all the proceeds from his two
Speaker 2: thousand and seven Far Side a Day calendar to Conservation International,
Speaker 2: so he's the real deal.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And then I think Sue ran to the bathroom
Speaker 1: and cried, I'll bet dude, nothing's ever good enough for Jo.
Speaker 2: And also I want to say, I keep using was
Speaker 2: Gary Larson is still very much alive, So I'm not
Speaker 2: sure why I keep referring to him in past tense.
Speaker 2: I don't know anything that he doesn't know, So don't
Speaker 2: worry if you're listening to this Gary Larson.
Speaker 1: Yeah, God, how great would that be? I'll just retire
Speaker 1: tomorrow if I found out he like listened in like this.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, not that he was about to die.
Speaker 1: No, no, no, no, okay, he'd probably find that funny though.
Speaker 2: Probably.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he's got a website he finally put up, and
Speaker 1: apparently we'll occasionally put out a new thing or two
Speaker 1: here and there. Definitely will put out some like lost
Speaker 1: archival stuff for you know, stuff like that. But I
Speaker 1: think you got like a sort of digital drawing thing,
Speaker 1: and I was like, hey, I found that. I'm sort
Speaker 1: of enjoying this again. And everybody I remember when that happened,
Speaker 1: and everyone was like, oh my god, is it happening.
Speaker 1: And he's like, no, it's not really happening, but you know,
Speaker 1: here's here's my website.
Speaker 2: That's right, You got anything else?
Speaker 1: Got nothing else? That was a fun one.
Speaker 2: Just to thank you, Gary Larson, Thank you for doing
Speaker 2: what you did and being here. That's right, And since
Speaker 2: we just thank Gary Larson everybody has for told in
Speaker 2: two thousand and eight, we've just unlocked a listener mail.
Speaker 1: That's right. I'm gonna call this a short and sweet correction.
Speaker 1: Hey guys, longtime listener, love the podcast, et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker 1: That's actually what Josh of the letter writer Josh says. Guys,
Speaker 1: I'm sure you're getting millions of emails about this, but
Speaker 1: while orc is are dolphins, I think you guys said
Speaker 1: that this means they aren't real whales. In reality, all
Speaker 1: dolphins are whales and philogenetics, dolphin is a type of whale. Okay, thanks,
Speaker 1: love you bye, Josh.
Speaker 2: Josh, you just come along and razzle dazzle us with
Speaker 2: the word like phylogenetics and expect us to believe you.
Speaker 1: I don't know, yeah exactly.
Speaker 2: We're gonna have to look that one up before I
Speaker 2: formally thank Josh.
Speaker 1: I looked it up. Yeah, all dolphins are whales.
Speaker 2: All right, Well, thank you, Josh. We appreciate that correction.
Speaker 2: That was actually a pretty good one. Yeah. If you
Speaker 2: want to be like Josh and get in touch with us,
Speaker 2: please do send us an email, send it off to
Speaker 2: stuff Podcasts at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 1: Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio.
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