Soaring Satire
By Michael Leaverton
The SkyMall catalog, which sells essential products like motorized CD towers, electronic mouth-herpes inhibitors, and personal counterfeit-currency detectors ($499!), is no longer the fertile comedy ground it was last month. Similar to the way The Onion locked up the fake news article, comedy troupe Kasper Hauser has now given us the definitive airborne catalog parody, SkyMaul: Happy Crap You Can Buy From a Plane, much to everyone’s jealous rage. The excellent humor runs from cover-your-eyes funny to give-yourself-a-bruise funny, but I also suspect it might be, depending on the health of your colon, shit-yourself funny. It’s the kind of book to read slowly and cautiously, as items like Divorced Dad “Pancake Time” Trumpet — “Tell them to rise and shine by blowing some bullshit on this Austrian parade trumpet” — prompt explosive belly laughs that could dislodge your liver. Although you can’t actually purchase Christian Over-the-Clothes Massage Lotion, Our Worst-Selling Motocross Boots, and a Real Dolphin (“Tell all the naysayers to suck it!”), the book comes with large, colorful, fucked-up photos that’ll make old people think they can. Tonight’s book-release event features a sketch performance from Kasper Hauser (James and John Reichmuth, Dan Klein, and Rob Baedeker) and the troupe in conversation with McSweeney’s editor Eli Horowitz.
Date/Time: Tue., Nov. 14, 8 p.m.
Price: $15