The current Jean Teasdale column. It’s the first one I can remember where what happened to her was too horrible to laugh about. Maybe it’s because this is the first time she hurt someone else, or maybe because she couldn’t find a “bright side”, as she usually does.
Not saying I don’t like the column; I do. I think that’s why JT is my favorite Onion columnist: because she always causes these train-wrecks. I like the perspective of someone telling how they f’d up, rationalizing it all the while, instead of someone else telling the anecdote and giving a lot of “Now this person’s really stupid” commentary. If you heard about a woman who got loaded and terrorized a male stripper at someone else’s bachelorette party in a bowling alley, you’d ask “What was she thinking?” The humor is as much in what, exactly, she was thinking, as in what she does.
In that light, I’d say this column is one of the best. Keep smilin’, Jean!
I know what you mean-I actually feel BAD!
LOL
BTW, does anyone else think that Jean’s desserts sound rich enough to put one in the top tax bracket?
I think that’s part of the irony: she has the baking skills to open her own shop, but she’d never be able to get it together.
I thought the whole point of Jean Teasdale was that she was a dull-witted trailer-trash loser. Like a female version of Jim Anchower.
Jim Anchower isn’t trailer trash. He’s that guy everyone knows who never really outgrew college, kept drinking and smoking weed and working part time jobs. Decent guy but frozen forever in a time warp. Everyone knows one of them.
I found the column before this one about her getting naked and rolling in rose petals to be rather disturbing.
She’s not trailer trash-she’s every person who collects Beanie Babies, who reads Chicken Soup for the Soul and watches Touched by an Angel and Oprah. She’s every person who still thinks Fabio is sexy, who loves glurge and actually thinks it’s profound.
She likes everything cute and fluffy and silly.
Hubby Rick, on the other hand, IS redneck trailer trash.
Oh, Guin, I spent so much time on this I didn’t realize you’d beaten me to it. Here goes, anyway.
That is the point, tracer. She’s like the subject of one of those my-neighbor-never-takes-out-the-trash-but-he’s-always-washing-his-boat anecdotes, but we get to see things from her POV. This column explains it pretty well. I love the one where she decided she was going to be a full-time housewife, even though they couldn’t afford for her not to work, and thought she could accomplish this by spending $100 on Martha Stewart wreath kits. I wished I could have heard the details of her arrest at Pamida, though!
Kyomara, I don’t remember her rolling in rose petals. It certainly wasn’t the last column; that was about her boss doing standup comedy and rejecting her “jokes”, such as “‘One-size-fits-all’ is the great lie of our time!”. Now, what I find disturbing is this.
There are times when she really doesn’t deserve what she gets (another Pamida incident). But there are also times when she just charms my lycra doubleknit socks off. I almost wish I could see what she sees in those Precious Moments figurines. Heck, I could go bankrupt buying stuffed animals and Peanuts knickknacks…but I don’t. Jean is like, my id. Or is it ego? Anyway, she’s what I could be if I just gave in to my impulses without thinking. And I like her idea for hubby Rick’s Christmas gift! You’re right about him, Guin!
Sorry, apparently it wasn’t rose petals; it was worse.
Echh. I must have blocked that out.