Gary Larson and Pink Floyd

As I mentioned in a previous post, I’m a huge fan of Gary Larson’s The Far Side. Here’s another one of my favorite of his cartoons. An old guy is sitting on a park bench, holding a duck, and giving it a “dutch rub” (which if you don’t know, is like a “noogie”). There’s a sign on the grass right in front of him that says “Please Do Not Give the Ducks Dutch Rubs.” And there’s a policeman walking by, and he’s looking at the guy on the bench and pointing to the sign and saying “hey you.” It really is a great cartoon – better than my description of it.

Well, I’m also a big fan of Pink Floyd, and they wrote a song about the cartoon, titled, appropriately enough, Hey You. And it’s a very good song. But I’ve spent literally hours dissecting the song, and frankly I think they did a very poor job of capturing the essence of the cartoon. I mean, it starts out good – the first line is Hey you, out there in the cold, getting lonely, getting old. But from that great start, they just seem to go off in a different direction. There’s no reference to ducks, or dutch rubs, or even, as far as I can tell, the existential plight of the policeman trying to enforce meaningless regulations. What the hell?

Well I’m going to go with that song for Our Duncan Funk Song of the Day anyway. Give it a listen, and if I’m missing something, let me know. Click on the title to see the video, which includes the lyrics.

Title: Hey You
Artist: Pink Floyd
Album: The Wall