BOOK: How to Make Your Baby an Internet Celebrity (2014)

How to Make Your Baby an Internet Celebrity Year: 2014 Author: Rick Chillot Length: 128 pages I'm starting to think that these satirical "how-to" books genuinely only have one joke. If you've read the title and a few pages, you get the joke. Books like How to Talk to Your Cat About Gun Safety or How to Traumatize Your Children wear out their singular joke much too fast. While How to Make Your Baby an Internet Celebrity doesn't have a lot of depth, at least it has cute pictures and diagrams of babies. Humor books with a "bit" like the ones mentioned above are usually better when they fully commit. That's why I prefer The Baby Owner's Manual for its ability to translate raising a baby into car mechanic terms. How to Make Your Baby an Internet Celebrity isn't quite that clever, since you might read it not knowing it's satire and try these techniques on your own baby. And perhaps my appreciation of satirical...
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MOVIE: Triangle of Sadness (2022)

Triangle of Sadness Year: 2022 Rating: R Length: 147 minutes / 2.45 hours It speaks to the state of current society when 2022 churned out not one, but three films that focus on the absurdity of the rich. While The Menu (2022) focused on the "foodie" culture that surrounds so many wealthy individuals, Glass Onion (2022) highlighted those "influencers" who try to disrupt industries. The one film I feel best captured the satire of the ultra-wealthy was definitely Triangle of Sadness (2022). The humor was the darkest of all three, but it went further than the other two in exposing the uselessness of the rich. The first act sets up all the ridiculous things that rich people do. From absurd reasons to dump a romantic interest to how little money they actually have on hand, the audience gets a glimpse into their absurd world of opulence. Once the yacht enters the picture in the second act, we see all the different varieties of rich and...
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MOVIE: The Menu (2022)

The Menu Year: 2022 Rating: R Length: 107 minutes / 1.78 hours I want to chastise the advertisers of The Menu (2022) for making me almost miss this gem of a movie. I usually pass on horror films, so the ads for this one made me think that the “twist” would be something more like Soylent Green (1973). Instead, I was given the treat of a wildly dark comedy that plays off all the prestige and pompousness of foodies and high-concept restaurants. Sure, some moments are horrific during their brief appearances, but I would hardly put this movie in the horror category. The Menu has something to say and is actually quite funny about how it does it. What makes The Menu work is definitely because of the performances of its top-billed actors. Ralph Fiennes, Anya Taylor-Joy, and Nicholas Hoult all act their hearts out, likely adding to how funny this satirical take on foodie culture ended up being. Almost as a bonus, this film...
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BOOK: How to Talk to Your Cat About Gun Safety (2016)

How to Talk to Your Cat About Gun SafetyYear: 2016Author: Zachary AuburnLength: 144 pages I had seen this book cover on the internet a few years ago and found it to be an amusing concept. When I ran across the paperback version of this book at a thrift store, I bought it and gave it a read. Presented by the fictional "American Association of Patriots," How to Talk to Your Cat About Gun Safety is a satire parody of right-wing and evangelical pamphlets that seek to inform readers of the "right" way to do something. In this case, talk to your cat about gun safety. This book is actually a collection of a few different pamphlets that cover a variety of topics, including safety for guns, sex, online, and the apocalypse. To its credit, if you didn't realize this was satire, you'd think this book was being serious. Perhaps this is more an indictment of how crazy some people have become since...
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BOOK: The Man Who Was Thursday (1908)

The Man Who Was ThursdayYear: 1908Author: G.K. ChestertonLength: 355 minutes / 5.92 hours On the surface, The Man Who Was Thursday has all the markings of a witty thriller satire. Unfortunately, as the subtitle of this work is “A Nightmare,” things don’t necessarily stay coherent to the end. It’s not that The Man Who Was Thursday is terrible, but rather that it loses focus and becomes absurd the longer it continues. And perhaps that’s the greatest tragedy of this book: that it could have been a solid story if it didn’t devolve into a nightmare at the end. I certainly liked plenty of aspects of the early parts of this book. Infiltrating an anarchist society with day-of-the-week codenames. The revelation that few members of said society were actually who they said they were. The conspiracy and twists as the protagonists and antagonists get flipped on their heads. Of course, this last bit is when things started going downhill. Perhaps it’s that odd...
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MOVIE: Knives Out (2019)

Knives OutYear: 2019Rating: PG-13Length: 130 minutes / 2.17 hours One of the most under-utilized genres to date, a good mystery movie is hard to find these days. This is partly why Knives Out (2019) is such a joy to watch. With plenty of twists and turns—and a murderer that subverts all the numerous tropes of the genre—this film is almost on the edge of self-aware satire of mysteries on the whole. This is partly why I found Knives Out to be delightfully amusing: the absurd nature of some of the genre’s most tightly-held motifs were playfully subverted for a couple of genuine laughs. Of course, part of the problem of Knives Out being so self-aware is that it is inevitably predictable at several key moments. Depending on how far ahead a viewer can deduce the solution to a critical piece of evidence might determine how predictable it is for them. I did appreciate that there was always one piece of the puzzle...
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MOVIE: Zombieland – Double Tap (2019)

Zombieland: Double Tap Year: 2019 Rating: R Length: 99 minutes / 1.65 hours It's a little weird to me that it's been a full decade since Zombieland (2009) came out. While I thought the original film was goofy and fun, it has since gained a bit of a cult following. What's weirder to me is how—in the years since the original—many of the cast of this franchise have gone on to be nominated for (and in some cases won) Oscars for their acting talent. It's no wonder the advertisements for Zombieland: Double Tap (2019) have picked up on this fact and used it to promote another ridiculous foray into the self-aware satire of zombie films. While I do admit that Zombieland: Double Tap does require having seen the first film to pick up on its numerous references, I also knew that its comedy would be as smart as its predecessor. I appreciated this wit, especially with a few literary references thrown in (like to Of...
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BOOK: How to Traumatize Your Children (2007)

How to Traumatize Your Children: 7 Proven Methods to Help You Screw Up Your Kids Deliberately and with Skill Year: 2007 Author: Knock Knock Length: 144 pages A friend of mine loaned me this book to help prepare me for the joys of parenting by using a slightly humorous slant on the standard parenting books that hand out helpful advice for parents to be. While I chuckled at some of the pages as I flipped through the book, once I sat down to read it, I almost immediately became depressed. Sure, How to Traumatize Your Children is tongue-in-cheek, but that only lasts through the first few chapters. Overall, it’s virtually a traumatizing look into actual bad parenting instead of a comedic take on it. The moment that it hit me how real these “methods” are was when I started to realize many parents inadvertently use them to their children’s disadvantage. From my own experience, and observing the experiences of others, this book presents each one of these methods in...
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BOOK: The Screwtape Letters (1942)

The Screwtape Letters Year: 1942 Author: C.S. Lewis Length: 216 minutes / 3.60 hours Perhaps the first documented fictional exploration of spiritual warfare, The Screwtape Letters is an expertly crafted examination of what the enemy of our souls is plotting. The reader is given insight into one side of a correspondence between two demons of differing influence and rank, thus providing a “behind the scenes” look at what the enemy is plotting and what they consider to be a victory for them. At moments, it can be difficult to follow along since the context of Screwtape’s “enemy” is really the “good” side of the spiritual battle. Either way, C.S. Lewis has crafted a brilliant satire about how little humans understand of their spiritual lives. While I wouldn’t necessarily ascribe The Screwtape Letters to pure theology, there are plenty of eye-opening and thought-provoking statements in Screwtape’s letters to his nephew. From the demons’ acknowledgment that pleasure is of God’s design but overindulgence in pleasure is in their realm to the...
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BOOK: Fake Science 101 (2012)

Fake Science 101: A Less-Than-Factual Guide to Our Amazing World Year: 2012 Author: Phil Edwards Length: 272 pages One of the challenges of creating content on the internet is that it is usually quickly and readily consumed and forgotten by the web-browsing public. Monetizing this content is even more difficult because of the aforementioned reasons. That being said, there are many ways the creators of internet content can make some money off of their product. Sometimes this takes the form of T-shirts or other, physical items, but oftentimes the choice of internet creators is a book. For Fake Science, which uses Tumblr for its regular posts, publishing a fake science textbook seemed like a good choice. Unfortunately, since a lot of internet content is quickly consumed, an almost 300 page book seems a little tedious to read once the initial novelty of the idea wears off. There are certainly a lot of amusing bits in this book, but they tend to be lost in the noise of...
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