Inquiring minds want to know.  What was the piece Edda and Amos played at the Concours Forrestier International in Brussels?  I have to admit, all the way through illustrating the actual performance, I heard the cello version of César Franck's Violin Sonata (which Franck offered as an alternative to the violin).  It wasn't deliberate.  I just couldn't get it out of my head.

I have drawn cartoons during which I couldn't expel "The Ballad of Gilligan's Island" from my mind, so I consider myself lucky.

Anyway, that's the poop.  In the drawing to the left, Edda and Amos are playing the final A.

THE UNCORRUPTED

A reader wrote to alert me that two Chickweed cartoons are corrupted online, one in the Houston Chroinicle archive, the other at comics.com. I exhumed the originals from my own cache, and post them here.

From 1998, the December 5 daily.

And from 2004, the number for December 24th.

THE KREUTZER SONATA

In today's cartoon (12/5), I pay homage to what I knew in my formative years as "The Tabu Ad," in the New Yorker (among other publications). It is, of course, not just a Tabu ad. The artist's name is René François Xavier Prinet.  He painted the work in 1901, and it went on to an illustrious career of shilling musk-laced scent.

Ignoring the fact that the gentleman with the fiddle is standing around the end of the piano, leaning over precariously to plant a smooch on his accompanist's scarlet wound of a mouth, while she begins to topple backwards, promising a scene but two seconds hence of both sprawled upon the floor amidst shards of violin and broken teeth – a moment worthy of Mack Sennett – there's still some mighty heavy breathing available in the image. I couldn't resist invoking it.

Really, to make it perfect, we just need the Keystone Cops, Stan and Ollie, and Ben Turpin waiting offstage, but, perhaps, another day.

Meanwhile, the question has been posed: Is the piano lid open in the last panel of the cartoon? Yes it is. It wasn't in Prinet's work, but I reached in and opened it. It may not be quite as open as it was in the first panel, but it's open.

THAT BALLOON IN BRUSSELS

PIBGORN REP: A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM

Starting to think about Christmas?

Write to Pibpress@verizon.net

(with zip or location, number of books, which books)

OFFICIAL PIBGORN and THE SNARK

Just as a reminder, I reflect and comment on all things Pibgorn at officialpibgorn.livejournal.com, the link to which you can see on the left.  Chickweed is the business and pleasure of this site.

Meanwhile, THE SNARK IS BACK, scrawling on the walls of her cave and howling at the moon at snarkascending.livejournal.com.  And, when necessary, I'm providing illustrations, one of which, a portrait of Ephram M. Cloaca, you can see there at this very moment.

Ahem.....what are you waiting for?

THE WITCHES' SABBATH

CR-U-U-U-U-D

Readers have inquired after the Sunday cartoon for August 17th, asking for a link.  Going one better, here is the cartoon.  If you click it, it ought to enlarge.  I hope it does, anyway.