While everybody seems to find time once in a while to flip through the Onion's humor pages, the entertainment section of the paper, dubbed the \A.V. Club,"" is even more of an outlet for offbeat entertainment. Each issue offers a feature interview, and they have now been compiled in ""The Tenacity of the Cockroach.""
As the book's introduction says, the Onion managed to cultivate a reputation as the place to go for oddball interview choices, because mainstream entertainers simply wouldn't give them the time of day. In this new collection, the Onion A.V. Club gives an accurate big-picture representation of their weekly offerings, which is a mixed blessing, to be generous.
The problem with the Onion's A.V. Club interviews, which comes across very clearly in this volume, is its overriding tone of bitterness and pretense. Because it so actively covers entertainers who are just outside of the mainstream, whether it is because they are unmarketable or past their prime, a lot of space is dedicated to bashing the mainstream system.
The tone of the interviews and the selection of interview subjects create an open forum for cranky, irritating hypocrites and they sometimes prod lovable people into annoying rants. Berke Breathed, creator of ""Bloom County"" and ""Outland,"" was responsible for possibly the most derisive comic strip of the last half-century, one that frequently slipped into pure silliness. Do we really need to read his rants about being a serious writer whose art isn't treated with the proper respect, while he takes backhanded shots at other flawed but successful cartoonists? And do we need to hear George Carlin's views on the world in a way that's like hearing his standup routine, only with double the bitterness and absent the humor?
At the same time, there are some interviews in the collection that are really worthwhile. Andrew WK, as a likeable and remarkably unpretentious figure, comes through that way, thanks to a straightforward interview that gets to the heart of what makes him cool. The same is true of William H. Macy, who has some really interesting perspectives on acting and movies.
But interviews like these are bright spots in a mostly annoying journalistic landscape. For all the humor and honesty of Alice Cooper, the reader must then deal with the
publishers ironically deeming Vanilla Ice or the Unknown Comic as worth our time. As innocently charming as Chuck Jones is, his pleasant interview doesn't outweigh the self-congratulatory nonsense of a studio-created star from the 60s like Ronnie Spector bitching that rock and roll has become too much a studio creation.
""The Tenacity of the Cockroach"" might be a decent collection of interviews for someone who consistently enjoys the weekly pieces it features, but for most readers, it will only irritate.
Some of the interesting subjects, like Henry Rollins, are at their worst here. Some, like David Lee Roth or Mr. T, seem to simply be there to make the table of contents more bizarre. People like Roger Corman are much better showcased elsewhere, like Corman's autobiography. What's left here is a disjointed sample of interviews, where the highlights don't outweigh the obnoxiousness.
To really dig this book, you have to believe that the only worthwhile entertainers are the ones who never made a dime, that music and movies have gotten substantially worse every year since 1977 and that every bitter complaint about successful people is a useful piece of social commentary. But for most people, it's hard to imagine shelling out sixteen dollars for this book.
""The Tenacity of the Cockroach"" is published by Crown Publishing.
