The Mad Cartoonist of University Park
He was 6' 16" with ink stained fingers and fire in his eyes. Sometimes
he kept smoldering cords of hemp in his beard to scare his enemies in
the heat of battle. Other times he was as clean-shaven as an
eleven-year-old Mormon missionary. His teeth where either gnarled or
straight, and they were either white as pearls or stained a rusty tan.
Some say he was once a tenured Professor of fine arts who snapped after
losing his professorship. Others say he was a refugee from one of the
Warsaw nations who fled the Soviet block in the dark of night to escape
persecution due to his unique art. Still others maintain he was just
stark raving mad.
But I get ahead of myself. University Park was a godforsaken stretch of grass, flowers, and trees where the battle for America's future was truly waged. Will the Atheist convert the member of Campus Crusade for Christ? Will the age-old battle for supremacy between Mathematicians and Physicists finally be decided once and for all? Will the frat-brother be sleeping alone tonight? What's with the dude with the python? Important questions all, and all were answered upon that windswept and meticulously landscaped battlefield. Naturally, such a plot and its concentration of the youth of America attracted purveyors of everything from hemp clothing to more surreptitious products/substances (some also in the hemp family). Indeed, the parcel of land in question often took on the character of a carnival, albeit an over educated carnival that subsists largely on ramen and booze. And it was in this atmosphere he surfaced to do his best work.
Caricatures. It was either his stock in trade or his camouflage, or perhaps a little of both. No one really has a good physical description of the man, or rather everyone has a rather detailed description of him, no two the same. That could very well have occurred by design. However, everyone agrees on the behavior that made him legendary: They would approach his easel, lured by a combination of nearly photographic portraits or equally skillful caricatures tacked to the easel's frame. The price would be discussed and paid in front, and the particular wants of the subject would be discussed beforehand. In retrospect the absence of any form of stool or seating should have tipped them off, however foresight is rarely that clear. Besides, It never became a problem as he worked at a lightning pace with a swift medium: charcoal, chalk, or a combination of the two. He had the hands fate bestows on either great artists or great surgeons, and he had the conversation skills of a hardened veteran of countless cocktail parties. "Have any hobbies?" "What do you do for fun?" "What type of pet do you have?" Before his subjects even thought of tiring he was finished. He would present his artwork with great pageantry, never allowing anyone to see the final product until the very last moment.By then it was too late.
Everyone received, regardless of what they had asked for, an unmistakable likeness of themselves having carnal knowledge of a horse. Now, it wasn't always a horse, I've heard everything from giraffe to platypus with all shades of barn and zoo animal in between, however the horse is the most frequently mentioned animal. General consensus seems to be that the horse was a matter of artistic pragmatism: There are apparently a great number of lewd and preternatural acts one can perform on a horse that are hard to perform with a duck or a trout. Or he was just really good at drawing ponies. Either way.
Of course no one really had an opportunity to question him on the particulars of his fixations. By the time they looked up from the drawings they had commissioned all they saw was the mad cartoonist, with his easel tucked under his arm, bounding over flowerbeds and hedges like Spring-heeled Jack while howling nonsensical gibberish over his shoulder. "ARRGGH, I'm drunk as a Swede and half as sober!", and then he was gone.
Regrettably, there are only so many times an individual can draw an obscene picture and dash off screaming like a madman before people are able to pick him out of a lineup. The sheer number of variations on his description could have been the result of a concerted effort on his part to remain unarrested, but police custody would have been a far, far kinder fate than what eventually befell him.
You see, college folk like insane people as long as they are neither physically or olfactorally abrasive, and the mad cartoonist was just one of those delightful nutjobs who was neither going to snap and stab you in the face nor reek of turnips and ass. One day someone requested one of his obscene caricatures, and it's said that be just sprinted out of the park not even bothering to hide the tears streaming down his suddenly ashen face. It was like a physical blow to him -- like they had ripped out his still beating heart and smashed it beneath their boot.
What happened to him after that fateful day is a source of endless speculation. Some people say during the next snowstorm he froze to death in his beloved University Park. They say you can still hear his mad cries carried on the sweet spring winds from the general direction of the park. But those people are idiots. University park was paved over into a parking lot in the early eighties, and then they destroyed the parking lot to build a parking complex on top of that. If you take the time to hunt down and ask the withered Jewish gnome who runs and maintains the University's art holdings (this usually involves answering the three riddles of the marble cougar and a three hour dungeon crawl) you'll find the mad cartoonist simply moved on to more easily affronted pastures. He headed into the sunrise with an old canvas rucksack over his shoulder, an easel under his arm, and a cardboard sign that said "Asheville or bust." You see, to a man like the mad cartoonist the bible belt is the land of milk and honey in which his art could flourish. Assuming, of course, the lynch mob never catches him.
But I get ahead of myself. University Park was a godforsaken stretch of grass, flowers, and trees where the battle for America's future was truly waged. Will the Atheist convert the member of Campus Crusade for Christ? Will the age-old battle for supremacy between Mathematicians and Physicists finally be decided once and for all? Will the frat-brother be sleeping alone tonight? What's with the dude with the python? Important questions all, and all were answered upon that windswept and meticulously landscaped battlefield. Naturally, such a plot and its concentration of the youth of America attracted purveyors of everything from hemp clothing to more surreptitious products/substances (some also in the hemp family). Indeed, the parcel of land in question often took on the character of a carnival, albeit an over educated carnival that subsists largely on ramen and booze. And it was in this atmosphere he surfaced to do his best work.
Caricatures. It was either his stock in trade or his camouflage, or perhaps a little of both. No one really has a good physical description of the man, or rather everyone has a rather detailed description of him, no two the same. That could very well have occurred by design. However, everyone agrees on the behavior that made him legendary: They would approach his easel, lured by a combination of nearly photographic portraits or equally skillful caricatures tacked to the easel's frame. The price would be discussed and paid in front, and the particular wants of the subject would be discussed beforehand. In retrospect the absence of any form of stool or seating should have tipped them off, however foresight is rarely that clear. Besides, It never became a problem as he worked at a lightning pace with a swift medium: charcoal, chalk, or a combination of the two. He had the hands fate bestows on either great artists or great surgeons, and he had the conversation skills of a hardened veteran of countless cocktail parties. "Have any hobbies?" "What do you do for fun?" "What type of pet do you have?" Before his subjects even thought of tiring he was finished. He would present his artwork with great pageantry, never allowing anyone to see the final product until the very last moment.By then it was too late.
Everyone received, regardless of what they had asked for, an unmistakable likeness of themselves having carnal knowledge of a horse. Now, it wasn't always a horse, I've heard everything from giraffe to platypus with all shades of barn and zoo animal in between, however the horse is the most frequently mentioned animal. General consensus seems to be that the horse was a matter of artistic pragmatism: There are apparently a great number of lewd and preternatural acts one can perform on a horse that are hard to perform with a duck or a trout. Or he was just really good at drawing ponies. Either way.
Of course no one really had an opportunity to question him on the particulars of his fixations. By the time they looked up from the drawings they had commissioned all they saw was the mad cartoonist, with his easel tucked under his arm, bounding over flowerbeds and hedges like Spring-heeled Jack while howling nonsensical gibberish over his shoulder. "ARRGGH, I'm drunk as a Swede and half as sober!", and then he was gone.
Regrettably, there are only so many times an individual can draw an obscene picture and dash off screaming like a madman before people are able to pick him out of a lineup. The sheer number of variations on his description could have been the result of a concerted effort on his part to remain unarrested, but police custody would have been a far, far kinder fate than what eventually befell him.
You see, college folk like insane people as long as they are neither physically or olfactorally abrasive, and the mad cartoonist was just one of those delightful nutjobs who was neither going to snap and stab you in the face nor reek of turnips and ass. One day someone requested one of his obscene caricatures, and it's said that be just sprinted out of the park not even bothering to hide the tears streaming down his suddenly ashen face. It was like a physical blow to him -- like they had ripped out his still beating heart and smashed it beneath their boot.
What happened to him after that fateful day is a source of endless speculation. Some people say during the next snowstorm he froze to death in his beloved University Park. They say you can still hear his mad cries carried on the sweet spring winds from the general direction of the park. But those people are idiots. University park was paved over into a parking lot in the early eighties, and then they destroyed the parking lot to build a parking complex on top of that. If you take the time to hunt down and ask the withered Jewish gnome who runs and maintains the University's art holdings (this usually involves answering the three riddles of the marble cougar and a three hour dungeon crawl) you'll find the mad cartoonist simply moved on to more easily affronted pastures. He headed into the sunrise with an old canvas rucksack over his shoulder, an easel under his arm, and a cardboard sign that said "Asheville or bust." You see, to a man like the mad cartoonist the bible belt is the land of milk and honey in which his art could flourish. Assuming, of course, the lynch mob never catches him.