» Posts from March, 2010
March 18, 2010
The Onion has done it again. Just when it seemed the well of inspiration had dried up, the satirical newspaper’s ever-resourceful writing staff has delivered another biting expose of the stoner community. In an article titled Marijuana Use Triples Among Gary, the Onion mercilessly attacks the laziness and lack of career aspirations personified by the 20-something marijuana enthusiast. It is a raspberry from which few pot-smokers will recover.
“Dude, that [expletive] was hilarious,” says local stoner and avid Onion reader Tad Gunnerson, “but it was also crazy dark, kid. It really hit home. That paper has got my number and [expletive].”
All the hallmarks of an award-winning Onion article were featured – a messy Midwestern apartment, a reference to Pop-Tarts, a job as a pizza-delivery person – and in one fell swoop, the crack team of humorists had lampooned a community that only fifteen years ago seemed impossible to satirize.
“Stoners are like crippled orphans,” says veteran humorist P.J. O’Rourke. “They’re untouchable. Nothing funny about them. Okay, so I’ve heard stoners sometimes eat a lot of junk-food and wake up in strange places, but come on, give me a thousand words on that and I’ll give you a book deal.” A book deal is something the writers at the Onion know a thing or two about. Next year will see the publication of no less than three Onion-sanctioned titles, including the anthology This Book is Cashed: Reports from the Honey Bear.
“This is just the beginning,” promises the Onion’s head writer Dan Guterman. “We’ve done a lot to expose the various foibles of the pot-smoker, but we’ve only scratched the surface. We’ve hardly touched the “hash vs. grass” issue or the various movies these degenerates try to synch up with Pink Floyd albums. There are plenty more pegs we can take the SOBs down. We could do an entire book on patchouli for Christ’s sake.”
With such scathing satire, it would seem the Onion risks alienating a large part of its readership, a full 85% of which admit to “occasionally pulling a tube.” The contrary seems to be true. Asked if he would purchase the upcoming This Book is Cashed, Gunnerson responds, “I don’t know, kid. If I get this Umphrey’s Mcgee cover band together and if Staples will hire me back and if I get someone to buy a couple dimes of this skunk I got stashed away in the glove-box of my ’95 Prism, I might throw down twenty bucks for it at B. Dalton. I mean if they got Anchower in there, the [expletive] is gonna be almost as funny as Nice Dreams.”
No Comments | Posted by Aaron under Internet, Parody | Bookmark or Share
March 17, 2010
I’m a little bit Irish, and not just today. I’ve been told that my last name is of Irish decent. Some say it was originally Stormer, which sounds all thundery and tough. Until, that is, you find out that “Stormers” were the dimwits they sent to storm English castles. Hot oil burns and arrow wounds can’t keep my people from reproducing, though, and for that I can be proud. As it happens, the internet thinks my name is actually English, but the internet is a known liar, and I prefer to live under the assumption that none of my ancestors came up with the idea for Marmite.
Yes, today is the holiday beloved by all fair-weather O’Flanagans: St. Patrick’s Day. It’s also the eve of the NCAA men’s basketball tournament. So in honor of both, I am going to use my Irish intuition and knowlege of Celtic history to pick my Final Four. Feel free to take notes.
MIDWEST
I was tempted to go with Kansas, mostly because Don Johnson is an alumnus, and as every educated Irishman knows, Stephen Dedalus was not the name James Joyce first chose when he first thought up a protagonist for Portrait Of An Artist As a Young Man. It was Sonny Crockett. Joyce shelved the name Sonny, however, when he thought it might work better in a TV pilot he was writing. The name of that pilot? Nash Bridges. Sure, Kansas would be a solid pick, if Georgetown didn’t have Ryan Dougherty on the roster. He’s only shooting 0-3 for the year, but he’s a good lad. Georgetown it is.
WEST
Philip Michael Thomas had his college application rejected by both Syracuse and Kansas State, so I can count both those schools out (personal reasons). Cheech Marin holds honorary doctorates from both BYU and Vermont. So scratch those too (ask Cheech, he’ll explain). Which leaves Murray State. Tucked in the hills of County Clare, there’s a delightful pub called Silversteins. The borscht is to die for and on Tuesdays from 7-9 they have live klezmer music. The owner is a guy named Murray and rumor has it, if you blow out the candelabra he lights every year at Christmas time, he will punch you square in the nose. You’ve got to love that indomitable Irish spirit. A vote for Murray State.
EAST
The East is tough this year. It is every year. But I go with my gut every time. Cleveland Cavaliers (I’m sorry, Beantown, but Garnett is struggling and LeBron is due).
SOUTH
Notre Dame would seem the easy choice here, but did you know that the original Notre Dame is in France? And it has gargoyles? I’m betting they don’t tell you that until freshman orientation. I can’t support such deception, so they’re booted. I assume most people think that Duke likes Irish fellows too, but the fact is, they don’t. They prefer the Welsh. Half their team graduated from Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch Prep, for crying out loud. Which means I’m going to have to go with St. Mary’s. If you believe some other college could have pulled off the virgin birth of our lord and savior, feel free to ignore my advice. For me, it’s St. Mary’s.
SO WHO WINS IT ALL?
This may seem like a surprise, since I don’t even have them in the Final Four, but I’m picking Kentucky to win it all. John Calipari will bribe and cheat his way to the championship without even winning a game. And if the referees are Irish, chances are they’ll be too drunk, bloated on cabbage and potatoes and deaf from a night of bagpiping to even notice. Oh, and they’ll probably blow up London Bridge or something. In the name of Bono. Kentucky.
No Comments | Posted by Aaron under Sports | Bookmark or Share
March 16, 2010
As a boy, I really liked the smell of gasoline. I told my mother this, and I seem to remember her launching into a lecture that touched on the evils of speedballs and the career choices of Chevy Chase. She had little to worry about. I was too much of a prude to end up behind a Mobil station with a paper bag and Ruth Stoops. And no, I was never going to hit up my man Sherwin Williams for the Burnt Sienna and then move on to the darker stuff.
Kids these days (and of days past) are gutsier than I was. Or stupider. Or both. In any case, they huff. Proof: The New York Daily News ran a story about “Sudden Sniffing Death Syndrome” a few days back.
What bugs me about this story isn’t that I don’t think huffing is a problem. I do. Not a huge one, but still a problem. It’s the word syndrome that gets me. How is this a syndrome? Now I understand that they’re making a case for the fact that adolescents’ lungs are more susceptible to the dangers of inhalants. But kids are susceptible to all sorts of dangers and it’s not just because of their delicate lungs. It’s because of their junior varsity brains.
In my formative years, my friends and I could have suffered from any of the following:
- Backfired Bottle Rocket Syndrome
- Ill-Advised Construction Site Trespassing Syndrome
- Helmetless Bicycle Stunts in Traffic Syndrome
- “I Can Definitely Jump Off Of That” Syndrome
By calling these things syndromes, it gives us all a laugh, but it also distracts from what they really are. They are stupid decisions. It would be naive of me to say that you can stop kids from making stupid decisions. And I’m not a parent. So I won’t offer parenting advice. But I will ask the powers that be (or the Daily News, at least) to stop pathologizing stupid decisions. That way, when I do become a parent, I don’t have to sit in a pediatrician’s office, thumbing through a pamphlet that says: So Your Kid Tried Sniffing Glue? There’s A Pill For That!
No Comments | Posted by Aaron under Death | Bookmark or Share
March 13, 2010
I only have a few pet peeves. Now you’re sure to hear about them all on the pages of this blog, and you’ll inevitably send me angry missives that start, “Dear sir, contrary to your assertion, I have found at least 512 instances where you were a cane-wagging Andy Rooney of a bastard.” Really, though, I poke fun, but I don’t exactly get worked up.
Take some common usage errors. Its or It’s? Than vs. Then? There, They’re or Their? Affect vs. Effect? These are apparently the sorts of things that send defenders of the King’s English to the top of bell towers with rifles slung over their shoulders. To me, it’s all just a symptom of the ineffectiveness of spellcheckers. Doesn’t bother me much. If the meaning is intact and the rest of the writing is lucent, then I tip my hat and move on.
The misuse of the word irony is another story. One of those few pet peeves? Most definitely.
You could blame it on Alanis Morissette, as I do many of the world’s problems. In my philosophical years, my pals and I would often discuss how the only ironic thing about her song Ironic was that none of it was ironic. Comedian Ed Byrne must have had a bug in our bottle opener, because he did a mighty funny bit about the exact same thing.
It’s well-worn ground to say the least, so I won’t dwell on Morissette’s reckless cutlery purchasing habits or her possible po-mo genius. I will, however, say that while the song doesn’t mark the beginning of the problem, it marks the tipping point. These days, irony and its derivatives have become the alohas of circumstance—ubiquitous catchall words for anything unexpected, coincidental, or contrary.
“So Phyllis, I’m at the grocery store the other day to buy some chipped beef and wouldn’t you know it, I ironically bought some corned beef instead!”
“I had just buried the body in the backyard. Then I turned on the TV and the latest episode of Ghost Whisperer was on. Ironic, huh?
“My new album is filled with irony. It’s mostly country music and hip hop…which I despise.”
If you’re keeping score, none of the above are proper uses of irony. Ironically, they are all snippets of dialogue from a little-known, late-era O. Henry collection, titled Bet You Didn’t See That One Coming, Did Ya Charlie?
In an effort to staunch the cultural bleeding, I’m asking that like-minded folks send me any examples of the misusage of irony they can find (in films, on news broadcasts, anywhere). I will include the blasphemy in a recurring column known as That Ain’t Irony, Son. Hopefully, we can put an end to the nonsense. Or laugh at it at least.
No Comments | Posted by Aaron under That Ain't Irony Son | Bookmark or Share
March 12, 2010
A bit of cheery news to take you into the weekend. I’m still at it. Another novel is on the way. I don’t doubt many of you canceled your subscription to Publisher’s Marketplace after their ill-advised, NSFW “Softer Side of Norman Mailer” pictorial. So you probably missed the following book deal announcement from a few days back:
DWEEB author Aaron Starmer’s THE LONELY ONES, a whimsical, apocalyptic fable about the last innocent boy in the world and his journey to a village of oddball children who see either salvation or doom in the giant machine he asks them to build out of the scraps of an amusement park, to Michelle Poploff at Delacorte, by Elisabeth Weed at Weed Literary.
My marketing savvy is matched only by my laziness, so I will withhold any additional information for the time being. I’ll entice y’all in the future with some trailers and other teasers. For now, I extend my heartfelt gratitude to Elisabeth, to Michelle and the fine folks at Delacorte, and to my wife Cate, who supported me when I said to her, “you know, the apocalypse is great and all, but it could use a few laughs.”
No Comments | Posted by Aaron under Books, News and Events, The Only Ones | Bookmark or Share
