Mistakeville
If you’re one of the people who give Loose Parts a real close inspection, what you’ll notice (apart from the occasional subliminal suggestion that I hide in there to make you think you’re a chicken) is that occasionally I’ll make a mistake.
This week there was a doozy. Or is is it a doozie?
Take a look above there. Funny little box of humor. Except that I screwed up the sign. First off, I forgot the closing exclamation point. Second off, I’m thinkin’ putter-uppers should’ve been hyphenated. I probably should have caught both. Heck, I have a Journalism degree. (I do. I do. Please, stop laughing and get yourself up off the floor.)
Now, I’m not above making mistakes. I’m the guy who tried to recharge my car battery by popping it in the microwave for an hour.) And the mistake per se doesn’t bother me. It’s how it distracts from the joke that gnaws at me.
In the example above, a town that thinks well enough of its kids and populus probably would be nitpickers about grammar and punctuation. They wouldn’t have made that mistake. And so, instead of readers just looking at the toon and letting the cleverness wash over them, readers say, “Hey, there’s a mistake.”
I do try to put each Loose Parts cartoon through a rigorous one-point inspection. And I do have a wonderful editor: the great Dave Mulcahey who calls several times a year to argue the finer details of greek history or 18th century psychoanalysis. (Of course, he never questions why I draw ancient greeks wearing eyeglasses but I better damn well get the facts right.) But there are these things called deadlines and I have to run the humor pumps on full to deliver the goods.
So, I hope that explains things even as I admit it doesn’t excuse them. And I love when you catch them. Feel free to let me know. I try to be accurate, not just for accuracy’s sake ... but for humor’s sake as well.
Till next time, stay Loose.
dave
Blogged Arteries
Sunday, December 5, 2010
