The Onion’s regular features are so unfunny in general that I only read two things regularly: What Do You Think (now called American Voices) and the Infographic.
Oh, look, it’s another “Social Outcast Proclaims Banal Activity to be Newsworthy As If This Has Never Been Parodied Before” article.
Oh, look, it’s another “Thinly Veiled Political Jab at Bush as if You Can’t Get This On Any Other Site” article.
The Onion needs to start hiring better writers and/or just drop the main features. Oh, and it needs to lose the Japanese sex toy ads as well. What the fuck? I don’t want a Japanese schoolgirl-shaped anal plug, and neither does anyone else who shows a modicum of interest on the site.
The only article worth reading in the past 3 years: “Blowjoblessness at all-time high”
Well, sure…but JFTR, Esprix is more than three letters, so people can always search that…if they don’t confuse him with matt_mcl, that is.
[sub]I wonder if Esprix ever thought about that “can’t search on three letter words” thing? Surely (and I haven’t tried this) putting the full “Ask the Gay Guy” title in quotes would get around that, wouldn’t it?[/sub]
This popped into my mind instantly when I read the OP. I read it when it was new, in 1997. I completely lost it. I thought that because the concept has been beaten to death when I went back I would not find it that funny, but I was wrong. I am a sick, sick woman and it cracks me up completely. It’s all about the language…the descriptions go further and further over the top. “Hot ashes that were once our neighbors fall from the air like a grisly snow!” is a particular favorite. For full appreciation, you need to read it all. I loved it then, I love it today.
Another all-time fave also dates from 97, and is also completely sick and all about the language:
I hope nobody is ever too old to laugh at “The sizzling, oh God, the sizzling,” “An abomination of science gone awry has brought Hell to our fairgrounds!” and “The roar of flaming gas can’t drown out the tortured cries of the roasted!”
Perhaps he should have titled the thread “interrogate the homosexual fellow.”
And I completely agree with the OP. I don’t even bother to click on the ‘ask the’ articles anymore.
I can’t decide whether my favorite article is ‘Area Homosexual Saves Four in Fire’ (especially the part about how he “collapsed on the lawn, exhausted and gay”) or the Point-Counterpoint (which I can’t find) where a 16 year-old girl goes on and on about how “I will die if we don’t eat dinner soon” and then you scroll down and the counterpoint is an actual starving African kid.
You know, another trick is just to stop reading when it stops being funny to you. A lot of the stuff in The Onion is a brilliant concept that they just take on too long.
To wit: One of the all-time funniest things ever on The Onion is only funny in the headline, but the format made them write a whole article to go with it.
“From what I’ve heard, all this happened because I was digging in the plants. Just for the record, it wasn’t me. I do happen to recall a certain member of the household making a racetrack for his Matchbox cars in the philodendrons, though. But what good would it do to name names now? I’m history.”
‘What Do You Think’/‘American Voices’ is one of the few virtually guaranteed laughs I can look forward to in my life. There was one about the economy that had me laughing nearly until I pissed myself, during the lowest time of my life. I forget the question exactly, but one person (I think the Indian guy) said “I was just laid off from Baskin Robbins. That may not be a bellwether of the economy, but it’s a bellwhether of me dipping my wang in the butterscotch.”
