Occupy the North Pole: Stand Athwart the Jolly One Percent!

I did everything a diminutive mythical creature was supposed to do. I grew up in a suburban forest in a modest but clean two-limb tree. I was raised by my mother, a wood sprite and former model for the original D&D board game, and by my father, a Keebler clock-puncher for more than 30 years (Fudge Shoppe division). My parents wanted a better elf life for me than the one they had. So they scrimped and they saved, eventually sending me to the best post-secondary toy-making school they could.

Still, I had to take out significant student loans to attend Middle-Earth Community College. I majored in the practical field of conjoining blocks, with a minor in jacks. After writing a thesis titled “Leg(g)o My Lego: The Architectonic Ethic in 20th-Century Children’s Recreational Objects,” I graduated summa cum laude, and eagerly entered the workforce—only to find all the toy-making jobs had vanished, thanks to the newly digitized economy.

As the interest on my loans piled up like Lincoln Logs, I hoped to put my skills to use in expressing my impish creativity. I wanted to be the next Fisher, or perhaps Price. Instead, I had to make do with an unpaid internship at Baby Einstein. After months of toiling, one day I heard about an opening at Santa’s Workshop. The listing was for a senior wooden-toy-maker—all in all, my dream job. My wife, Nancy, and I relocated, deciding that since we’d be out there for the long haul, it made sense to buy a brand-new igloo rather than rent. This was 2006. It was the height of the igloo-market bubble.

On my very first day at the gig, management had news for me. I was told the Workshop was restructuring, and that I would no longer be providing design input on the new line of wooden toys. Instead, I’d be an assembly-line toy-maker. I was devastated—but I took it, as Nancy was 24 days’ pregnant, ready to burst at any moment. My “job” was—and is, five years later—inserting a dowel into whatever wooden toy we’re cranking out that week. Let me tell you, it’s real stimulating stuff. We routinely put in 14-hour days, and are permitted only one bed-of-hay break. My hands have crippling arthritis from the nonstop demand, at the age of nine; I hate to think what they’ll be like when I’m in my teens. Attempts to join the Tinkerers’ Union have been met with threats of being “naughty”-listed. To top it off, we’re all forced to wear demeaning green outfits, with ugly red safety goggles, and standard-issue, extremely narrow-toed work booties that painfully pinch our taloned feet. If we complain to management, they simply mince around and mock our high-pitched voices.

Having now been here a while, I can report that the Workshop is not like what you read about in the fables. Had I known this beforehand, I never would have moved out of that quaint, paid-off coniferous shrub in a leafy neighborhood. I feel trapped, destined to stay forever in our McIgloo located on half a million acres of property. I could go on—about how the security on our ice-floe development does nothing concerning the ever-present threat of polar bears, the lack of health insurance in a climate where I get pneumonia constantly, my 401(k) that’s been virtually wiped out by the carelessly overhung stockings market.

But the Scrooge here is the one percent.

While I’m barely able to put gingerbread on the table for my family, my C.E.O. is happily obese from ham and candy canes—some might even say jolly. Each morning, I squeeze into a crowded commuter snowmobile, while my boss, usually blotto from spiked eggnog, swans around in a nine-reindeer sports sled with a booming mega-jingle sound system. I get 18 days off a year, none during the holidays. He works for one night. In 1960, he made about 10 times the salary of the average Workshop elf, and now it’s 475 times the amount—not including milk-and-cookie bonuses related to toys delivered. Or, you know, not delivered. Doesn’t matter anymore. Because of his bookkeeping records, opaque as chimney soot, he’s known around the office as “Secret Santa.”

I’m not asking for much: just an igloo that’s worth more than its weight in shaved ice, and an occupation that takes advantage of my artisanal training—not belittles it. Does a hardworking, two-foot-tall ethereal being dressed from head to toe in Yuletide colors no longer command respect in today’s world? Must a quasi-magical entity of proud Norse heritage take on a mortifying second job dressing up for kids’ parties as Crackle? Or moonlighting at Vegas conventions as “Elvish” Presley? I demand answers.

And so, as I bang on this toy drum day and night, I ask you to think about me every time your child squeals with delight from his brand-new wooden plaything that contains a dowel—bought for $79.95, of which I see but chocolate coins. I am an elf, and I’m just a very small part of the 99 percent. Keep heading north and you’ll find me. I’ll be the one chained in protest to this plastic evergreen, fighting for myself—and for all the other little guys.

–Co-written with Teddy Wayne

Mike Sacks’ one-man war against the zeitgeist: The American humourist doesn’t bother with predictable targets like Palin or hicks. He prefers gerbils, the Holocaust, girls’ lockerrooms…

By Tim Black

Is it funny to mock sad-sack thirtysomething writers who desperately try to write like the kidz? Is it funny to imagine Anne Frank trying to get a film deal and being told that her diaries could be a PG-13 action movie if she just threw in a few shower scenes? And in a list of Worst Places to Die, is it really so humdingingly hilarious to write: ‘Crouched in the rafters above the high-school girls’ locker room, your janitorial uniform bunched around your ankles’? Come on, is that funny?

Well yes, I think it probably is. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that Your Wildest Dreams Within Reason, a collection of American humourist Mike Sacks’ assorted writings, is one of the funniest books I’ve read in a long time. And that includes Wikileaks: Inside Julian Assange’s War On Secrecy.

What is remarkable is the sheer range of the man. The pastiche, the parody, the absurd vignette, the comic list – Sacks can do it all. To praise it as the Perfect Toilet Book, as some reviewers have, is to do an injustice to Sack’s wordsmithery, his ability to subvert, invert and juxtapose at will and in a variety of forms. All of which serves his simple comedic objective – to have you guffawing.

This is one of the most refreshing aspects of Sacks’ pieces. His sole criteria, it seems, is what will make you laugh; what, with a sudden twist of phrase, a shocking reversal, will draw you up short, snorting approval. He’s not interested in saying the right things or flaying the right targets. He doesn’t massage his audience’s prejudices, as too many comics do today; he just ignores your prejudices. He doesn’t subscribe to the Approved List of Things It Is Right to Mock: Sarah Palin, the Tea Party, hicks, the working classes (white), Big Pharma, Big Oil, bankers, people who don’t recycle… He just mocks everything and anyone, whether it’s retired porn stars, possessed dogs or the guidelines for a very difficult man’s bachelor party: ‘You might not want to ask my brother about the bride, Mary. Even if he does answer, he offers very few details other than “she’s a good speller”, and “It’s hard to tell from a photo, but she seems to be about my height and girth”.’

Sacks’ take on old writers trying to write young – ‘A Short Story Geared to College Students, Written by a Thirtysomething Author’ – illustrates his talent for writing so well that he knows how to write badly. The tone is hilariously jarring, complete with a decidedly thirtysomething interest in Bose HiFi equipment erupting into desperately hip-hopped dialogue. Or while peppering his prose with try-hard slang and ‘motherfucking’ expletives, he splices it with wholly inappropriate phrases like ‘The Internet’ or ‘The World Wide Web’ – no 19-year-old outside of the Amish community uses phrases like that.

Take this paragraph: ‘Larry and Charles had been best buds for three years now. And Charles knew absolutely everything about Larry, including Larry’s intense hunger for “vagina”.’ Everything about those two sentences is almost spot-on. The wannabe with-it authorial voice is almost convincing right down to ‘best buds’. And then, that final word. It should probably be ‘pussy’ or something suitably porno-ese. But no, Sacks uses the one word which no one would use in that context apart from an achingly unhip oldster who, try as they might, sounds like nothing so much as a rather creepy gynaecologist.

Writers are often the object of Sacks’ disdain especially when recurring character Rhon Penny (silent h) writes one of his letters to a famous literary figure. So in the course of suggesting some ideas for a novel that could be written under the John Updike brand, Rhon Penny (silent h) makes a suggestion: ‘Has anyone written – I mean really written – about the Holocaust? Oh, sure, there have been books and movies and perhaps even a rap song, but has anyone penned a thought-provoking book about the subject? My answer: I’m not sure. Here’s my idea: a novel set in Nazi Germany, about an adorable, wisecracking gerbil who lives inside a Jewish person’s skull-cap (without that Jewish person’s knowledge or consent). The gerbil’s name will be Rosco.’

If anything is ripe (perhaps even overripe) for satire, it’s the unrelenting tide of novels and movies about the Holocaust. That Sacks satirises this trend through the deluded, pompous, and ironising voice of Rhon Penny (silent h), only adds to the gentle humiliation of a wreathed and laurelled literary genius like Martin Amis who decided with Time’s Arrow to use the Holocaust as a subject for a time-travelling romp.

Like a conceptual Turner Prize-winning artist who can ‘do hands’, Sacks can do jokes, too, as he showcases in ‘FW: Loved The Following Jokes And Thought You’d Love Them As Well!!! (Pass Them On)’. At first, his attempts do read like those interminable forwarded emails crammed full of timeless classics guaranteed to leave your sides unsplit. For example, a young boy spies his grandpa sitting out on the porch with no trousers on and asks him why. ‘Without missing a beat, the old man retorts: “Well last week I sat out here with no shirt on and I got a stiff neck. So, this is your grandma’s idea!”’

Ha. Boom. Tsch. Lol. Etc. But Sacks doesn’t leave it at the punchline. He continues: ‘The air is still, and in the distance, a car horn can be heard. The boy, not saying anything, just stares at his grandfather’s aged, sickeningly white penis. After a few moments, the boy takes a bite out of his peanut-butter sandwich, waves goodbye, and leaves for his friend Jeffrey’s house.’ There Sacks was, a perfect joke to be forwarded to all and sundry on his hands, and he has to go and turn it into something interesting with a solemn, mock-poignant epilogue.

There are no all-too-recognisable sallies against the same old targets here, no mocking of stupid Americans or Daily Mail readers or climate-change deniers to please the ears of right-thinking liberals. Instead, Sacks is happy to plough his own list-filled, satire-driven, parody-pulled furrow. And he does so with aplomb.

I can utter no higher praise that this: I have loved every one of the 786 minutes I have so far spent on the toilet reading it.

Wow! I love me some Kanye West! All right, ladies and gentlemen, right about now, I need all of you on the dance floor. I know every single one of you has a booty, which means every single one of you has got something you can shake. Come on now, there must be two hundred of you out there and plenty of nasty moves to go around. I know I’m new at this, I know my voice has a rodent-like quality to it, but that’s absolutely no reason for you to leave these grooves hanging!

I’m not making crazy demands here. All I ask is that you give my beats the benefit of the doubt. It’s that simple.

I realize this place is right on the pier and that the briny smell is a little overwhelming and that most of you arrived here straight from our bottomless crab cake bar. I’m not at all trying to be critical. It’s just a bit unusual that you’re all crowded around the perimeter of the dance floor the way you are, especially since much of the stimulation—the speakers, the LED stuff—is focused on the very area you’re not occupying. And most of you have been drinking for hours. I guess I’m a little surprised that your inhibitions are as intact as they seem to be.

All it’s gonna take is just one of you, a single party person, to make that first move. Others will rush to follow, I guarantee it. They will fill that funky vacuum. You did come here to dance, correct? How are you all contending with the cognitive dissonance? I promise you, the dance floor is definitely not quicksand. None of you will drown.

Drown. Jesus, there’s a word you should never hear out of a DJ’s mouth. Honestly, how do you people think I’m doing so far? Is it just a matter of experience, of which I have little? Or is it a lack of charisma, which one either has or doesn’t have? I don’t think it’s that. These are just natural growing pains. I bet it’d be pretty weird if I wasn’t this unsure of myself, right?

Okay. Starting over: LET’S DO IT! Throw your hands up in the air, and wave ’em like you just don’t care!

Like I’m really going to get you moving with a line out of the Stone Age like that! Sorry. I’ll try to do better. Besides, I know you all do care, very deeply. If you didn’t, you wouldn’t be here tonight! This is Ocean City, Maryland, for crying out loud! Partytown, U.S.A.! Look, I swear to God that nothing harmful will occur if you come forward. I just want you to give me a chance. Help me to help you shake that ass.

All right, I’m gonna take the tempo down, down, down. That’s it. Yeeeeeah. If Usher’s not doing it for you then you just don’t know what sex is. Nice and eeeeeasy. Holy Toledo! I haven’t heard this tune since I was working as a busboy at Benny’s Crab Shack on 23rd. Put your hands up if you’ve eaten there! Now let me see your hands if you were hospitalized by the bisque. Can you see my hand? I should’ve sued that place.

Folks, this is not Guantanamo Bay, and this is no way an interrogation. This is Saturday night at Seacrets! This is your once-a-week escape! From the bills! From the hassles! From your boss and your horrible blue-collar job where you might get your fingers sheared off at any moment.

I’m sorry! I have all the respect in the world for the blue-collar types and their hard-working families. Workplace accidents are never a fun thing.

Hold up, I just got handed a note. Beth Williamson’s turning 21 years old tonight! And what do her friends do but throw her a kickin’ party at Seacrets! Is there anything better! All right, I want every one of you on that dance floor, especially Beth and her gals! If you won’t do it for me, that’s fine, I accept that. But whatever you think of the job I’m doing tonight, would you just please put it aside for the moment? And move your body for Beth’s sake? I thank you.

Okay, I have an idea. What do you say that we just start afresh? As if we’ve never met before, as if you’re walking into the club and seeing me up here for the first time. In other words, it is my job to entertain, and it is your job to get freaky. You wanna have fun, you wanna get lucky. But is hooking up really getting lucky? What are the chances you’re really meeting the “one”? Statistically, you’re nothing more than two desperate souls clutching at each other, as you head over the metaphorical falls together. There ain’t nothing lucky about that, is my thinking.

And since it’s well past midnight, let’s think of this as a new day, a new beginning, for all of us. I’m gonna slow things down again with a personal favorite of mine, “Cat’s in the Cradle” by the late Harry Chapin—a man who never saw the success he deserved, a man who died an unbearably needless death in a fiery car accident. Not his fault! So young.

C’mon, y’all! Last funky time, I promise! . . .

–With Jason Roeder

Memorable Senior Pranks

Hey, high school seniors—it’s that time of the year to pull off one final prank before you graduate! Here are a few classics that will produce lasting memories:

Toilet Paper:

Show up at your least favorite teacher’s house with ten rolls of toilet paper. Wrap the paper around trees, the mailbox, and the house itself. When the teacher steps out in his bathrobe and tiredly asks what you’re doing, respond, “I thought it’d be fun to paper your house.” He’ll question if you know anything about the challenges American homeowners face nowadays. You shake your head, having seen the headlines but not fully paid attention, because the notion of owning a house at your age is too abstract. The teacher explains how real estate has historically been a fail-safe investment, and so, like many members of the aspirational middle class, he took out a mortgage on his home a few years ago. “But hasn’t the value appreciated since then?” you wonder. Unfortunately not, he says; what’s more, he was lured into a subprime mortgage with low interest rates that soon became usurious. “It’s not clear who’s to blame,” he points out. “The deceitful ratings agencies, the predatory lenders, or, yes, even people like me who recklessly rushed into buying.” You both agree that the systemic roots of the problem lie in consumer addiction to easy credit and the U.S.’s diminished manufacturing sector. Clean up the toilet paper with him and resolve to remain a renter when you’re older, except if you can somehow buy a sweet one-bedroom off-campus next year, which is totally doable if you ramp up your student loans just a touch.

Skirt Day:

Get all your teammates on the football team to wear skirts to school, and no matter what anyone says, act like nothing’s out of the ordinary. People will be so shocked! At the end of the day, in your bedroom adorned with posters of LeBron James and Peyton Manning, contemplate why, exactly, is it so bizarre for men to wear skirts? For the rest of the school year, silently question normative gender roles. Graduate and attend a small, Northeastern liberal arts college on a football scholarship. Freed from your restrictive high school identity, become the one male majoring in Women’s Studies. Quit the team sophomore year when you can no longer stomach your teammates’ sexual politics, and delve deeply into an independent study on poststructural feminist theory with a radical professor who becomes very encouraging of your senior thesis on Helene Cixous’s critique of Derridean phallogocentrism. Then enter the “real world,” where your outspoken third-wave feminism is met with more derision than acceptance. Gradually allow it to recede from your thoughts and practices until, one day, while watching a Kate Hudson romantic comedy on Valentine’s Day with your drug-rep wife from Scarsdale, remember how you pulled a fast one on your high school bros!

Dye in the Pool:

With your pals, sneak into the school’s swimming pool with several gallons of red dye. Empty the dye into the pool; it will turn the water into a brilliant crimson, making the pool look more like a “bloodbath.” Engage in horseplay. Your best friend, Billy, falls into the shallow end. He doesn’t come up, and you notice a new, darker-red plume rising from his motionless body. “What the hell is going on here?” the school janitor yells, having just stepped in with his bucket and mop. “Billy fell in!” you cry, your voice frantically reverberating off the tiled walls. “He’s just playing,” the janitor says, as Billy surfaces with a mischievous grin. “Look, he was hiding another tube of extra-dark red dye. But do you have any idea how long this’ll take to clean? You little bastards treat this school like a garbage can. This is where I work!” When you run into Billy at your twenty-fifth high school reunion, you bond over the swimming-pool prank, forgetting the janitor’s remarks. Then the janitor, pushing seventy, makes a surprise appearance at the reunion, and you both privately think of what he said, and how it’s starting to make more and more sense, as you and Billy are working relatively low-paying jobs in marketing and sales, respectively, while earning little respect from friends and relatives. Stare into your cups of cheap champagne, wracked with guilt and class consciousness.

Steal the Rival’s Mascot:

When no one’s looking at the championship soccer game, grab the archrival’s mascot, a cow, and lead the terrified animal by its leash around the field to the delight of the home crowd. Before you release him, stare into the animal’s eyes and register its adrenal fear. Weeks later, convert to vegetarianism. At Berkeley, join a vegan anarchist group. Despite its stated goal of subverting hierarchy, the group’s efforts will be hamstrung by infighting and power struggles. Moreover, you begin to recognize the futility of effecting change when working so far outside the mainstream. Wind up in animal-rights nonprofits, toiling for years as a glorified copy editor of press releases that no one reads. One night, when you’re stuck working late alone, order a burger, rare, and let its succulent juices stream down your chin. How could you have let your body’s natural desire for this delicious source of protein go unmet all these years? And why kill yourself at a thankless job for $28,000 a year? Leave nonprofits and go into I-banking, where you dine out nightly on steak, and die at fifty-three of a coronary event.

Ask the Homely Girl to Prom:

As the Homecoming King, make a bet with your friends: If you take the most unattractive girl in school to the prom and spend the whole night with her, they each have to pay you a hundred bucks. Okay, they agree, only we get to choose the girl. They select Amanda Walser, and you instantly want to back out. Not Amanda Walser—the quiet bookworm with Coke-bottle glasses whose frizzy hair is always in a tight bun? Your cool friends laugh—you’re trapped! With your buddies snickering from a distance, you ask Amanda, and she stammers yes while fiddling with her Bunsen burner. But when you pick her up on prom night, you hardly recognize her. She’s wearing contacts, her hair is down and straightened; she looks stunning! All these years of her scribbling away in her notebook at the back of the class, and you’ve completely overlooked her beauty—just because of her glasses and bun. You can’t wait to show her off. But she quickly begins complaining about the limo and her corsage, and by the time you arrive at the prom, you’ve discovered that Amanda is actually a horrible person. She’s judgmental, humorless, and, worst of all, prone to sweeping generalizations about various nationalities. No wonder she sits alone. The six hours you’re forced to spend with her are agonizing. At the end of the night, Amanda spots you accepting your money and figures out she was the victim of a prank. She marches up to your group and, addressing each of you in turn, unleashes a hail of ethnic slurs. You can’t bring this up to the school administration, because then you’ll also have to cop to the prank, but in the future, whenever you detect the faintest whiff of stereotyping or racial tension, it makes you deeply uneasy—just like with any hilarious prank!

–With Teddy Wayne

Full story here

Mike Sacks is a prolific writer, refining the art and craft of humor for publications including Esquire, GQ, McSweeney’s, The New Yorker, and Vanity Fair.

I had the pleasure of reviewing Sacks’ prior books, and Your Wildest Dreams, Within Reason, from Tin House Books, does not disappoint. Clearly, there is no danger of Sacks growing up any time soon. He delights in imagining the world much funnier than most of us. His playful approach to reality could fill a thousand pages and still be fresh and funny.

From satire to silly, Your Wildest Dreams, Within Reason might make you think: “I’d be so cool if I was as funny as Mike.” But you’re not, so be satisfied with his rich topical humor and his view of contemporary society, not to mention his creative ideas for sex positions.

We often think writing is difficult, but Sacks doesn’t seem to work too hard at these clever pieces, and apparently doesn’t need much inspiration. The laughs roll off the page, with his distinctive style, even on the pieces co-written with help from his equally funny friends. Sacks and Scott Rothman co-wrote the “Shared Beach House for Rent” Craigslist ad and the hilarious transcription of a guy tweeting his wedding and honeymoon.

Sacks clearly has more fun as a writer than most grownups when it comes to list-making, such as his list of the worst places to die. Sacks and a fellow writer, Ted Travelstead created over thirty possibilities, including dying “In line for a funnel cake,” and “Dying in a puddle of urine, not your own.”

So, before you die, pick up a copy of Your Wildest Dreams, Within Reason to take along with you. Read the hilarious author rejection letter, or the funniest office FAQ “What the Hell is That Thing,” by Andrew in Reception. If you’re trapped in a bureaucratic office, lean back and read this tragically funny essay, but keep an eye on the office temp.

Read more: http://blogcritics.org/books/article/book-review-your-wildest-dreams-within/#ixzz1FeQwqidk

Your Wildest Dreams, Within Reason

Mike Sacks, illus. by Tae Won Yu and Julian Sancton, Tin House, $13.95 trade paper (272p) ISBN 978-1-935639-02-2

Sacks (coauthor of Sex: Our Bodies, Our Junk) offers 54 short humor pieces, including 25 written in collaboration with fellow humor writers Todd Levin, Scott Jacobson, Bob Powers, Jason Roeder, Scott Rothman, Will Tracy, Ted Travelstead, and Teddy Wayne. The essays, many of which were published in McSweeney’s and the New Yorker, is a selection of contemporary social satires, such as signs a college is not very prestigious (”Marching band uses only handclaps”) and a bridegroom on Twitter (”Attempting to fist-bump rabbi”). The essays include icebreakers to avoid (”This party reminds me of 9/11″); a director’s commentary on the DVD rerelease of a 1990 bar mitzvah video; and a rejection letter to Anne Frank: “Unfortunately, we receive so many unsolicited teenage diaries composed in European attics that it is impossible to publish each one.” Highlighting this often hilarious book are Yu’s many illustrations, such as the inclusion of Pynchon’s muted post horn, and Sancton’s 10 drawings depicting “Everyday Tantric Positions” as well as an eight-page pantomime comic strip from Esquire about frustrating Ikea assembly instructions. (Mar. 15)

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