Little cherubs - hell's angels...

Mikey: “I spy with my little eye something
beginning with ‘C’.”

Tony: “God, heaven’s so f**king dull.”

Cherubs confuse me. You see I have no idea what they really are. Are they small angels who grow up to become large angels, or are they stuck in chubby child mode for all eternity?

And another thing - just what is Cupid? Is Cupid a cherub? He certainly looks like one, but wasn’t he Roman and do all cherubs have the option of a bow and arrow instead of a lyre or trumpet?

And just how can they fly with those tiny wings? Maybe they are the bumblebees of heaven and like bumblebees shouldn’t be able to fly - but just do. 

Otto: “You don’t need to be cute to wield a whip…
Louder my pretty little pigs!”

Yes, cherubs are a bit of a mystery to me. They crop up a lot in Renaissance paintings and adorn swirly Baroque mirrors and chairs, but who decided that they should look that way - horrible, petulant, chubby, children. You know the ones, the ones with the pathetic parents who give in when they cry for yet another ice cream. “I’ll scream and scream until I’m sick.” Go ahead be sick then.

Angels? Nasty little devils more like.

Marge: “Smile you bitch or I’ll chop
off your other hand too.” 

To confuse things even more I guess what we think of as cherubs aren’t cherubs at all. They’re actually putti, putto in the plural - a figure in a work of art depicted as a chubby male child, usually nude and sometimes (often, usually) winged. Putti, putto… what terrible words. Reminds me of play-doh.

So there are no female cherubs, sorry putto, then? They are all male. Well, somebody should have mentioned that to the Victorians. The Victorians made these creatures even worse, wrapping them up with sentimentality and prettiness and bringing them out whatever the occasion. Birthday, weddings, funerals – no holiday celebration complete without a cherub or two. Christmas cards, gravestones, wedding cakes, Valentines… or was that Cupid again?

Stan: “So I ain’t gonna make it as a
porn star…floristry it is then.”

And what is the attraction with a chubby male child without any clothes on got to do with religion anyway? No, don’t answer that – I don’t even want to open the map, let alone go there.

I can just imagine God can’t you? “What shall I do today? I know I’ll create a second grade angel. One that looks like a boy (no girls allowed, not after that apple thing), carries too much weight in all the wrong places, doesn’t much bother with clothes, and although he shouldn’t be able to fly – can. Now what should I call him? A cherub? A putti? Cupid?”

Cherub, Schmerub. I’ll stick to fairies I think.