|
|
 |
 |
|
Friday, March 10, 2006
Area Man Drones On and On About Funny Paper He's Nostalgic For
Oh Aspecialthing.com, how I love you. You have given me yet more internet gold, this time on the subject of The Onion.
On a thread dedicated to the production problems of The Onion film, former Onion writer/tech person Jack Szergold describes the changes he sees between The Onion of 1996 and The Onion of 2006. It's a great behind-the-scenes look at the publication.
In my senior year of a very small high school (which was 2000/2001) all the students were captivated by The Onion. We lorded over Our Dumb Century (which some students thought meant that The Onion had actually been around for 100 years), the reprint collections and the Red Meat comic collections. I have fond memories of hanging out at my friend Eli's house late at night laughing myself to death reading of how Man With Complete Mama's Family Video Library Never Going On eBay Drunk Again.
After graduation I got less and less interested in the parody newspaper. The best laugh I got from The Onion was in a MAD parody that said something to the effect of "Area Man Checks The Onion, Only One Headline Sort of Makes Him Chuckle." That was certainly how I felt. Szwergold lists one of the problems as "delusions of grandeur" after 9/11 where the writers thought they were real political commentators. This leads to another problems listed, "not enough wacky."
I still love The A.V. Club and await new editions of that every week. Tasha Robinson and Noel Murray are great writers and the interviews they get are usually insightful. "Commentary Tracks of the Damned" is one of my favorite things to read. But the front page of The Onion is only of passing interest and it's rare that I'll ever read a whole article. Oddly enough, now the physical version of The Onion is useful to me know as a city dweller by informing of so many great arts and entertainment events going on in the Bay Area. Reading the paper on the bus is when I'm most likely to read any of the comedy articles.
Szwergold also praises The Daily Show and The Colbert Report and the work ex-Onion staffers are doing there. I agree with him and feel that America: The Book is better than anything The Onion has done in years.
I suppose every generation needs their publication that was once so great that people praise it to the sky only to see it fall in quality. Older people can tell me how "I should've been there" for National Lampoon and SPY (other publications mentioned in the thread) and now I can tell my little brother and his friends how they "should have been there" for the glory days of picking up a paper at the Thousand Oaks Borders and reading "Dildo Washed" in the blurbs section.
Permanent Link: 10:25 AM |
0 comments
Comments:
-- Home
|
|
