surely there was no one to guide us
Here is a coaster. It is from the distant past (and also from the antique mall on Lincoln).
I like art. I get pretty quiet in front of art that I like. I got pretty quiet in front of this but not for art reasons, but because I just didn’t get it for a bit. It is a weird (and kind of lovely) dissonance to not get something that is obviously pop-culture, kind of lowbrow, kind of a Family-Circus level joke. Like reading old WWI cartoons with “Jerry” and “Fritz” and it takes you a minute. Like oh yeah I knew that.
Besides the beatnik (Sandals! Cigarette holder! Pants held up with rope!), who just rocked up on the unsuspecting homeowner to give him some advice, there wasn’t too much obviously anachronistic in this drawing. But then there’s the caption. The caption reads, “I hate to bug ya, dad—but your music’s stopped and your monkey’s on fire!”
This stopped me dead. There is a lot to love here. “Bug ya” and “dad” (is it literally Dad or is this in the sense of “daddy-o”?) The jarring reference to a dead monkey as the punch line! The unsettling way your eye reads “dead monkey” and heads right to the animal rotisserie-ing on the grill! It feels too early (beatnik, not hippie) to be a drug joke, like he’s so high he thought it was a monkey on the grill.
So I stared and stared, and I took this picture, and I stared some more, and while I am always in favor of cartoon pictures of beatniks I honestly did not get it at all. It felt like forever although it was probably about 30 seconds (which does feel like forever in your brain! Imagine having a cog turning and catching on NOTHING for 30 seconds, it’s a little preview of dementia and I did not really enjoy it!) Then it slipped into place that this coaster is an organ grinder reference! DUH!
As the linked article will tell you, the NYC organ grinder/monkey situation stopped in 1936 on a decree from my countryman:
But in 1936, they were outlawed. What happened? Blame the city’s recently elected Italian-American mayor, Fiorello La Guardia.
“He refused to renew the grinders’ licenses in 1936, saying that the radio and outdoor concerts had made them superfluous and that the city should discourage street begging,” wrote the New York Times‘ Michael Pollack in 2006.
“By mayoral fiat he declared them public nuisances, ordered the police to roust them on sight and refused to relent, despite pleas from citizens.”
PLEAS! FROM CITIZENS! WE BEG YOU, BRING BACK OUR LOUD DUMB STREET MUSIC WITH A LIVE MONKEY INVOLVED! NEW YORK IS NOT THE SAME WITHOUT IT!
Although “Beat Generation” came along as a term in 1948, I don’t think we had the stereotypical image of a beatnik to screenprint onto household items until at least the late 1950s, which means that this beatnik is referencing something that would have been over when he was an infant, if he saw it at all. This coaster joke is becoming a real weird between-generations thing.
On the other hand, lots of long-gone stuff shows up in old cartoons that kids see way out of their own timespan. When was the last time the average cartoon-watching kid saw an actual anvil,* a gramophone, a fireplace bellows, a stick of dynamite? Those things linger on in cartoon form. As far as I know Lacan did not watch cartoons, but he would have gone a lot further and said it is not possible for a signifier to refer to an object in reality. The cartoon tobacco pipe is literally not the same object as a real tobacco pipe, etc. (I digress and I’m also not really qualified to go further with this, so let’s stop.)
*We have one in our garage, but that’s different because of my blacksmithing man.
So it’s possible that beatnik and (dad?) have the shared image of an organ grinder and monkey, through real memories on the dad’s part and cartoon memory on the beatnik’s part. It still doesn’t make it any less weird to walk up to your dad (or worse, a stranger) grilling and say “YO, THE MUSIC’S STOPPED AND THE MONKEY’S DEAD!” Yeah man…you okay? Are you trying to MK Ultra me into doing an assassination right now? Can I get the chicken off the grill first? Is there any family I could call for you? (If this is the actual son, I guess tell him to chill out somewhere and get a little less high before dinner’s ready, and that you don’t want to hear another word about dead monkeys. For crying out loud. Trying to have a nice cookout here.)
Anyway, this image and this joke was deemed funny enough for a coaster, maybe as part of a set** but I only saw the one for sale. And it broke my brain and I talked to my voice recorder about it and then decided to share further thoughts. Lucky you.
**My parents and their party-crowd friends had lots of party-time accoutrements that I remember from growing up, graphic-design-wise, that referenced drugs and flowers and being freeeeeee—pink elephant swizzle sticks, ambiguously naked blobby homunculi (like knockoff Ziggys) with bluebirds dancing around their intoxicated heads, Alice in Wonderland-themed tapestries, etc. In a way this beatnik coaster is a precursor to that graphic tradition, I guess, and involves two of my favorite things, cartoon beatniks and dead monkeys. THERE ARE SUCH AMAZING THINGS IN THE WORLD.
—mimi smartypants wants you to kiss them for her; she may be delayed.