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10.06.2003 posted by William 20:54 link |
This evening I went over to the Barnes & Noble on 17th to browse and sit and read a bit, plus I wanted to see if I could get wifi in the cafe and achieve the next plateau of nerdster-dom. No wifi, but the writers of the Onion were having a panel discussion on the fourth floor. Too bad I haven't read it for a couple years and the last time I remember really laughing at it was the post-Sept. 11 issue, but I thought I'd check it out anyway and see what kind of people are behind the laughs, whether they'd say anything about it not being funny anymore (not in so many words...), and maybe ask questions of the AV Club writers, like what their backgrounds are, whether they do most of their interviews live or via phone/email, whose idea was/what happened to Critical Beatdown, etc.
The twelve writers of the panel filed in: a varied bunch, spanning the ages of 22 to 30 and the ethnicities of Caucasian to Jewish. Someone asked a question about the AV Club straight away and they said that it's run by a separate group headed by Stephen Thompson from the Onion's original publishing location of Madison, Wisconsin, and no members of that group were present. They took maybe 10 more questions over the course of an hour, none of which were too interesting. In person, the writers were not especially witty, which is probably to be expected. One funny moment came after a question about whether anyone had a journalistic background, and the panel elected to one by one say what each did before joining the Onion. So the first guy says, "I was a cashier at a convenience store," the second guy says, "I worked in a liquor store," and on they go, each talking about the pathetic job they had. Then one guy says, "I just graduated from an Ivy League school," and as I chuckle I realize he looks familiar -- he was in my Lit Hum class! I would have gone up to him afterwards and said "Remember me? I was the guy who never spoke?" but there was a big line of fanboys waiting to get their books signed between me and him, and I wasn't up for waiting. So the panel wasn't all that illuminating, but it made me wonder how often B&N does this type of thing, and the answer, it turns out, is quite often. David Foster Wallace in a couple of weeks -- the pretentiometer should reach a new peak that night! |