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Get Breaking News on your cellPeeling The Onion's "Our Dumb World: Atlas of the Planet Earth"
9:31 PM Fri, Nov 30, 2007 | Permalink
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I enjoyed getting to write about The Onion's "Our Dumb World" in today's paper. Sadly, I was unable to find a single page from the book that the more responsible editors I work for thought would be fit to reprint in The Dallas Morning News. It's a pity, because if you like The Onion's dark, scathing style of satire, the book is viciously, milk-through-the-nose funny. On the other hand, that kind of satire goes completely over the heads of some people. So maybe it's for the best. It can be bad enough when mobs of angry people storm your office, but when they are humorless as well -- man, that's the worst. All is not lost, though. The Onion itself has posted a few samples on its own. If you are highly technoliterate, you can even get some entires to appear in the Google Earth program. But you need to see the book -- it's funnier in its true format. In contrast to the wicked edge their book carries, head writers Mike DiCenzo and Dan Guterman were unfailingly polite in our interview. A few tidbits about The Onion and the book that did not make it into the story -- Those joke-dense maps that fill "Our Dumb World" were created by having the entire Onion staff pass around a blank map of each nation. Each staffer wrote a joke until the page was filled. (Or lost, but that's another story.) The best ones are what you see in the book. Some of the rage that comes through on the pages -- such as the screed against San Marino ("These a--holes don't belong in an atlas") were indeed the product of the 7-day-a-week, 14-hour days that a project like this requires. As I wrote in another recent review about comedy, good laughs don't come cheap. |
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Comments
Posted by Michael Merschel @ 3:03 PM Sun, Dec 02, 2007
OK, I should add (not under pressure, mind you) that one reason I couldn't print any of the maps was that most of them DID contain language that would make Tony Soprano blush. It's all funny, but it's also not exactly family friendly.
Posted by Michael Merschel @ 12:53 PM Thu, Dec 06, 2007
Onion fans can find an interview with a different pair of atlas writers at the BBC's Web site -- http://www.theworld.org/?q=node/14487&answer=true.