In the 9/6 New Yorker, Edward Steed offers his own Desert Island cartoon, in which the DIslanders are ready for guests — party hats! a table set for eight! with candelabra! — but none are on the horizon:
There is now a Page devoted to Steed postings on this blog.
Steed’s characters tend to scowl, and the situations they find themselves are often grotesque, sometimes threatening.
Here he’s stretched the DI cartoon meme very far. Desert Islands are well removed from realism, but those chairs, table settings, and party hats could scarcely have come from this world, even as jetsam (NOAD: ‘unwanted material or goods that have been thrown overboard [jettisoned] from a ship and washed ashore, especially material that has been discarded to lighten the vessel’) — not a trace of damage from the sea!
Perhaps the cartoon is evidence of alien visitations. They come, dust the palm tree, and leave their candelabra.
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