I can't complain but sometimes I still do
My national exposure from The Onion thus far has been limited to penning News Item pieces, but today I finally landed my first big interview story. It's with Paul Stanley from Kiss, and it originally ran in the Milwaukee Onion last week. Hope ya like it!
posted by Steve Hyden @ 10:56 AM
2 comments
Dear People Of 2056:
By the time you read this, I will be dead. By dead, I mean in my late 70s with little or no bladder control. And I’ll probably be bald, too. Great. Anyway, by that time I won’t care what you think of me. But I care now. Desperately care. Because my state just passed a constitutional amendment that bans gay marriage.
I find this embarrassing and ridiculous in 2006, so I imagine you must be having a real field day with it in 2056. Progress being, well, progress, gays surely can marry in your society. Overturning the amendment will have been tough, but you can’t stop history. Minority groups always attain more rights over time, not less. It’s what allows future generations to look back and feel superior to the yahoos who came before. Unfortunately, I am now one of those yahoos.
Except I’m not. I voted against that stupid amendment. So did about 860,000 other Wisconsin residents. That means we were part of the progress you currently enjoy the fruits of. So don’t judge us too harshly. Remember that some of us had a vision of a better, more enlightened society where religion isn’t used as an excuse to put part of the population on a lower plane. Trust me, we are nothing compared to those ding-dongs from 1996, or 1986. (You don’t even want to know about 1976.)
We weren’t all yahoos in 2006, people of 2056. Now please, change my diaper.
Your pal,
Steven Hyden
posted by Steve Hyden @ 10:21 AM
4 comments
I was going to post something about how annoying those new John Mellencamp car commercials are when the humor section of my newspaper beat me to the punch ...
Impressive New Honda Inspires John Mellencamp To Write Song About Japan
INDIANAPOLIS—The high quality and enduring value of the new 2007 Honda Accord has inspired roots-rock veteran John Mellencamp to write a stirring hymn about the working-class nation of Japan. "Oh, you noble land of the rising sun/Where discipline and duty are still number one," Mellencamp sings in the video for "Buddha On The Highway," in which he is seen playing his guitar on the hood of a bright orange Accord parked in a terraced rice paddy. "There's a place in Nihon for me and you/I was born in Hokkaido and I'll die there, too." Mellencamp has reportedly begun work on a follow-up song telling the story of Hideo and Mariko, two Okinawan kids doing the best they can, who lose their jobs when Honda closes down the local plant and moves operations to Marysville, OH.
posted by Steve Hyden @ 10:23 AM
1 comments
I can't complain but sometimes I still do
My name is Steve and I'm a newspaper reporter and writer living in northeast Wisconsin, which is just below the armpit created by the bulk of the state and the peninsula. I don't live in the actual armpit, which is Green Bay, which is a place where fat people sit on their porches and watch traffic go by when the Packers aren't in season. I live in Appleton, a place where slightly less fat people do slightly more interesting things, like watch NASCAR, which is traffic with better camera work. I like living here 79 percent of the time. I fancy myself a deep thinker, an iconoclast, a man who can enjoy both high and low culture. Think Chuck Klosterman with a dose of Jack Nicholson from "Five Easy Pieces." However, I suspect I am not nearly as cool as I think I am. I may in fact be a dork. For example, look at how I described myself a few sentences earlier. What can I say? I'm the guy who started listening to the Clash when he was 13 not because he was reacting against the repressive Republican regime he had lived under most of his life, but because John Cusack wore a Clash T-shirt in "Say Anything..."
