This is a drawing I did last week after I saw an article about chickpeas.
When I showed this to my husband, who is also a New Yorker cartoonist, he suggested I use the words “garbanzo beans” instead of chickpeas. I did weigh the choice before doing the drawing last week, and decided chickpea is funnier. But I’m not sure. The New Yorker already rejected it, sadly, and not sure that simple change would help! Maybe there’s something in the strangeness of a bean (or is it a pea?) having two names.
Knowing if a word is funny or not is a subjective thing, and hard to pin down. For example, “table” is not a funny word, but “ottoman” is. The word “chair” is not funny, but to me the idea of chairs and stools are. I love drawing stools—I really should do a stool drawing. Why haven’t I???
I drew a version of this many years ago for The New Yorker. Radicchio was a very new thing to Americans in the 1980’s. To me, not only is the word funny, but the phrase “fooling around with” is humorous. These are the important, nuanced considerations of a cartoonist.
Happy Saturday!
With the shortening of words these days (Convo for conversation, fam for family, etc) I vote for 'gonzo beans. We can always make up our own words now! I was driving thru my hood (Silver Lake) in LA this week and spotted a very colorful man wearing weird clothes that actually worked for him. My first response was - Liza would draw that guy! I remember and love your Radicchio cartoon! PS - I, too, vote for Chickpeas!
What if she were reading the paper and he wanted to fool around...with radicwhatever?