Two Designers Walk Into A Bar

Episode 21: The Onion, Batman and the Joy of Well-Designed Books

Released September 15, 2021
© 2021 Two Designers Media, LLC

Speaker 0: Elliot, this reminds me, do you still have my copy of podcasting for Dummies? No, Elliott. I gave it Sorry. Just just just call me as funny. Hey. 
I hope

Speaker 1: so. It is funny.

Speaker 0: No Elliot. I gave it to that mind when we met who said we wanted to get a podcast shit. Damn, I tripped all over that. Alright. I'm a start from the beginning. 
Of them. The two designers walk them to a wall, a place where a pop culture creates, to stow her design icon. Make us do, and we share a few cocktails in the process. Today, we're digging into our inner book worms.

Speaker 1: We'll be looking at books with both great design and great content. And, boy, our shelves are loaded.

Speaker 0: Speaking of, get the bartender's attention and order another round of smokey low balls and join us. Back in the bar.

Speaker 1: Smokey low balls. Not. Isn't that your screen name in some online chat rooms?

Speaker 0: Hey. You you have said, don't give away all of our secrets. Alright, Elliot. Let's get into race a little. That's right. 
Alright. Look look look look. What the bars and libraries haven't come in?

Speaker 1: Drunk people having sex?

Speaker 0: Well, I was gonna go with nothing really, but I I can't answer better. So, you know, which reminds me, we're here in the bar and we're talking about things you talk about in bars like books. Would be in book worms today. And I think we we both are bringing something to the table here, some interesting literary pieces that are both beautifully designed and written. Right?

Speaker 1: Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. 
And I'm so excited about this topic because I will freely admit I get to talk about one of my all time favorite books. Alright? And do you wanna try to guess? Do you wanna do a little bit of a guessing game? I'm not

Speaker 0: If it does Dallas. They

Speaker 1: met they met a book about that.

Speaker 0: I thought the book would come before the moon.

Speaker 1: Oh, I I let the sub title of that book would be insert tab a and the slot b.

Speaker 0: Oh, yeah. Okay. That that's sort of the instructional guide. Okay. Yeah. 
I don't know, man. There's a bunch of great books out there.

Speaker 1: Alright. Well, I'll tell you what, this one one is named after a vegetable. Well, the publishing arm of it is named after a vet and this should be a big hint.

Speaker 0: Yeah. Okay. And knowing your taste, I guess, that that rutabaga publishing company never did quite take off. So it has to be something from the Union. Right?

Speaker 1: Absolutely. Absolutely. I love the onion.

Speaker 0: Okay. Alright. Alright. Well, fill me in on that.

Speaker 1: Okay. Do you remember back in the late nineties, a little book that came out called Art Dums century?

Speaker 0: I've heard you talk about it, but I I don't know much about it. Okay. Well I I mean, I know it's from the onion and and I've heard you talk about how good it is, but yeah, other than that, not much.

Speaker 1: Well, by the end of this podcast episode, you will be a subject matter expert on our

Speaker 0: I can't wait to listen to this then.

Speaker 1: Yes. Yes. This is this is the history of the history of our history because I'm talking about out this book.

Speaker 0: Alright. I'm gonna subscribe to this podcast. Well,

Speaker 1: that means we'll have at least one subscriber.

Speaker 0: Alright. Well, tell me about our dumb century from the onion.

Speaker 1: Yes. Well, I feel for those listeners who may be familiar with the onion or may even only know about the onion in its current form. I feel like I need to do a little bit of a history lesson prior to my history lesson, which is really what our dumb century is, to talk about the onion and to understand where this book came from. Okay. Okay.

Speaker 0: Please did.

Speaker 1: So the onion, as a lot of people may know, is an American, satirical, media news company, publishes articles on international, national, and local news. So you go to the onion dot com, you can see a lot of this stuff. And they've ranched off over the years in the videos, and they have a number of other properties, but I wanna talk about when I consider the onion of sort of been at its zenith. Which is in the late nineties early odds. Okay? 
So the company is based in Chicago today. But it originated as a weekly print publication out of Madison, Wisconsin at the University of Wisconsin and Madison in nineteen eighty eight. And it kept printing as a tabloid up through two thousand and thirteen. So while this was happening, of course, as the Internet took off, they began publishing online in early nineteen ninety six And most of their editorial content aside from the one off books now lives on the web. So you can go back and you can just go into, as I mentioned, earlier, the onion dot com, you can find years and years and years of funny stuff that the onion wrote about. 
It's all searchable. It's all free. And it's really great. I actually still send articles to people all the time when a subject comes up and I I remember it. So that's actually good that it's online for that and because it's a wonderful memory jouger. 
But the genius of the onion has always been the combination of its spot on satire of journalistic tropes like infographics, man on the street interviews views. And of course, articles written in AP style. Right?

Speaker 0: Which is how most news

Speaker 1: articles are written.

Speaker 0: Yeah. It's so it's so real it it it is so believable because it is so real at at the way it's imitating the the journalist.

Speaker 1: Yeah. These guys will again take real topics, celebrities, news events, politicians, all this sort of stuff. And and they'll commingle it, of course, with local infographics that are nonsense based or man on the read interviews that are nonsense based. Mhmm. But it's kind of, you know, making fun of of all these different things you find in newspapers and news magazines, you know, this sort of fodder to to fill the space. 
And so this has led to several groups that are being made fun of either directly or indirectly taking the articles that face value because, of course, there's usually like semi shoddy photoshop work that accompanies the article and and they'll repost these articles often without attribution and unknowingly duping their readers. So this again was one of the best things about the onion going online is you could link directly these articles. And because it looked enough like a real newspaper, foreign government and and all these other folks. Like, I remember years ago, China that basically, that that, you know, China runs its own news agency and the Chinese government run news agency linked to some article in the onion off the top of my head now. I don't even remember what it was out, but it was over the top hilarious. 
But the the Chinese saw it as evidence of democracy courtesy being inherently unstable. And so they link to it as proof for their their readers, you know, their billion readers or whatever it was in the time. And and so the onion, if I remember correctly, basically, said, first of all, this is a, you know, copyrighted content. You're not giving us any credit for so that's a problem. But on top of that, it's totally untrue and this is fake. 
So you need to take it down and the Chinese admitted it. That they they had gotten fooled and they they took it down from what I remember, but they never, like, to their readers admitted that they had been fooled, so that it just kinda magically disappeared. So but this has happened with with other things over the years as well. But the book itself, so let's get into our dumb century enough about the onion. Plenty of plenty of listeners can can do their homework on the onion. 
But this book, I know you can get it today. You know, it's twenty one, twenty two years old at this point. Came out in the late nineties. Mhmm. And I think there was a special edition maybe that came out like a hardcover edition, but I'm talking about the OG. 
I'm talking about the original old r dum century book. So in March of nineteen ninety nine, this was the onions first book. They had never come out with a book before. And so this was their first original book. So the book featured mock picked up newspaper front pages from the entire twentieth century, so basically a page a year give or take presented under the premise that the publication had been continuously in print since before nineteen hundred. 
Okay. Okay. And and just to just to give you an idea the introduction to the book. Okay? Include a reproduction of the original issue of the Mercantile Union from seventeen sixty five. 
Okay. And it's brilliant. I mean, it it looks like the Photoshop work they did is perfect, the typography, everything about it makes it feel authentic. So the book is in short a work of genius. And by that, I mean, if my house were to catch on fire, this is one of the things I'm and with me.

Speaker 0: Damn. Yeah. That's that's that's quite the endorsement there.

Speaker 1: It is. It is. So you're probably wondering what makes this book so great.

Speaker 0: Yeah. Why?

Speaker 1: Well, I've thought a lot about this, and I can narrow it down to really three reasons. There's probably actually a million reasons, but for the mercy of both you and our listeners, I'll narrow it down to only three. Okay? So the design throughout this book is spot on. So they did an amazing amazing job of mimicking the look of newspapers, like the New York Times and USA Today. 
So depending upon the era, you know, the newspaper is of that time and it is brilliant. And also the writing is brilliant, not only the subject matter which, of course, has to be spot on for the period. Right? So -- Right. -- they're lampooning different current events for each of the years, their their profiling. 
And we'll get into some of the specifics on that in just a little bit. But also as we talked about earlier with AP style, the editorial style here is amazingly accurate. And then the third thing is the humor. So good humor is incredibly challenging. Because it really needs to walk that tight rope of believability and parody as we've talked about earlier. 
Mhmm. There's gotta be some level of plausibility. Okay. I feel, you know, in the interest of doing justice to Ardome Century. I'm gonna give you I'm gonna wet your appetite here

Speaker 0: time. Okay. Okay. Yeah.

Speaker 1: But I was so

Speaker 0: asked. Could you tell me more about this? Yes. I'm

Speaker 1: gonna give you an example. But then I wanna jump in to your book a little bit. Okay? Okay. Alright. 
So cast your mind back to the year nineteen o three. That year's pretty famous, isn't it? And it's actually very very famous to North Carolinians such as yourself. Right? Right. 
Right. So what happened in nineteen o three?

Speaker 0: The biggest thing I can think of happened in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina

Speaker 1: -- Exactly.

Speaker 0: -- the flying machine, by the right, brother's first heavier than air flight.

Speaker 1: Exact Exactly. So naturally, the onion, that's a that's a newsworthy event. Wouldn't you say?

Speaker 0: Yeah. Huge newsworthy event. So

Speaker 1: for the year nineteen o three, the front page has a photo of the Wright Brothers flyer. Okay? Mhmm. And it's the the photo you always see, they didn't retouch that, you know, that's in the public domain or whatever.

Speaker 0: Right.

Speaker 1: Underneath that photo, the headline reads, railroad scientists say Kitty Hawk flying apparatus a hoax. With the subhead locomotive experts not

Speaker 0: fooled.

Speaker 1: And there is a whole article that unpacks this, and it is amazing. And the body of the article is one of my favorite quotes that basically says a locomotive, the most powerful machine known to man, was essentially launched off a ramp and it crashed back to the earth immediately. And if the most powerful machine known to man can't fly, How can some flimsy airplane stay off the ground? Like, it was so great because it was so plausible, and again, it came from locomotive scientists. Right? 
So it's this idea of, uh-oh, this threatens our industry. We'd better shut it down. Right. It was so so brilliant and so spot on.

Speaker 0: I love the word apparatus in that headline too. Oh, yeah. An apparatus.

Speaker 1: Oh, yeah. I mean, yeah, the language of the time, they they nail it. I mean, they must have poured over newspapers from this era get the language just right as well as the visualize. But I could keep talking, as I mentioned earlier, and as I warned you, warned our listeners about Ardent Century for hours. Now that I think about it, I think this might actually be an audiobook you can buy which I've never listened to. 
Yeah. So that would be pretty amazing. Todd, this reminds me. Do you still have my copy of podcasting for dummies.

Speaker 0: No, Elliot. I gave it to that mine we met who said he wanted to get a podcast started. At least that's what he was saying.

Speaker 1: Well, while we fumble our way through the second half of this episode, grab three fingers at your favorite scotch and meet us back here in the bar in just a minute.

Speaker 0: Hi. While we have your pension. If you wanna learn more about us and the podcast, there are a few ways to do it.

Speaker 1: Visit our website at two designer walk into a bar dot com. All of that is spelled out. No numbers.

Speaker 0: Kind of a long URL. So do yourself a favor and bookmark it. Once you're there, you can find links to more information about the subjects in this episode, our episode archive, and information about both of us. Wait. We do want people to visit. 
Right? Oh, and look for us on social media you. You can find those links on our website as well. And

Speaker 1: while we're at it, if you have a friend who you feel will dig on our rambling, tell him or her what we're up to. While we can't give guarantee that they will remain your friend, we can guarantee that they will listen to at least thirty seconds of whatever episode you send them the link to.

Speaker 0: That's being a little shameless.

Speaker 1: And speaking of being shameless, it wouldn't be a proper ask. If we didn't mention that if you like what you hear, you can also make a donation via our website, we have a Nigerian prince handling all transactions for us.

Speaker 0: In fact, he told us to mention that we have stickers to mail to anyone who donate ten dollars or more. Are we done? We're done. We're done.

Speaker 1: But I want to talk a little bit about the book that you're bringing to the table because if it's half as good as our dumb center, we're gonna have a great time today.

Speaker 0: Alright. Well, thank you, and I can't wait to hear more about that. And you've done a great sales job. I am gonna have to pick it up now. There are some commonalities of mine deals with pop culture phenomena, but it's in a different vein, if you will, and this is really personal to me, and I'll explain why. 
So, Elliot, you know, I'm kind of a little bit obsessive about collecting a particular superhero?

Speaker 1: Yes.

Speaker 0: Yes. Alright. So that's that's pretty obvious. Right?

Speaker 1: Mhmm. I believe it's a superhero who makes his home in Gotham City if I'm not mistaken.

Speaker 0: He does. That's right. The Batman. And I'm not the only one. Obviously, there's plenty of people that love this. 
And one of those people is a wonderful book designer named Chip Kid, very well known art director and book designer. For NAF Publishing. He's been there for about a decade. And I've had the pleasure of hearing Chip talk and present his work. And he's a great speaker. 
He's a great personality. He's a great person to hang out with. And I said, he's a huge Batman fan as well. So he actually wrote and designed a book named Batman collected. And it was published in nineteen ninety six by DC Comics. 
And you think about this is a dream project, and what it did is it featured collectibles that were themed around the dynamic do of. No. Batman has been around since nineteen thirty nine, and it has been one of, if not the, most collected. Superheroes, even today, like it's been through so many iterations and Chip being a major collect used a lot of his own collection for the photos and illustrations in this book. As well as items that were lent to him from the d c archive. 
And the cool thing about this is it's not it's not a collectibles book, like a catalog where it shows, like, oh, Batman Toy Radio from nineteen seventy two. They're shot like objects of art. They're beautiful. They're shot by a photographer named Jeff Spears. They're close-up. 
You get to see the texture of these things. You get to see this this kind of wornness up there and it's it's just captivating. It's you look at this and you just see these these things that have a life of their own And Chip Kid being an amazing designer plays off of these big bold images perfectly as works of art with also sort of some calmness, some blank pages that are have little bits of copy or pattern or texture. But a cool thing is the book starts with a phone call between a passionate collector and kind of a disinterested seller. Who is advertising a floppy thing.

Speaker 1: A floppy

Speaker 0: thing. A floppy thing. Yeah. And I'll I'll read this is how the book opens.

Speaker 1: Okay.

Speaker 0: Hello? Hi. I saw your ad. Yeah. I'm interested in number eighty eight. 
Yeah. Is it sold yet? Let me check. No. Could you tell me more about it? 
It's a floppy thing from the sixties. Without the stick. I see, could you be a little more specific? What do you mean? Well, What was it for? 
You know, it was a floppy thing like from Carnival. It was on a stick and you wave it around. Floppy. Nice piece. Scares. 
In good condition? Oh, yeah. Great shape. A little repair on the wing. Can't tell though. 
Great display piece. Can you do any better on the price? No, not really. Oh, will you take a check? So that's how the book starts and then you turn the page and there's just a small, like, twelve point type on the next page that says, sure. 
And then across from that is a picture of a close-up of the floppy thing that the the collector was calling about So it really does capture how collectors are. They're passionate about what they're looking for. There's a little bit of that that humility that comes in because you're talking to someone who may know a whole lot more about this stuff than you do. In this particular case, the person didn't. But, you know, you may be either talking to someone who is like, yeah, dude, you don't really know what you are asking about or disinterested in you kinda sound like you're a cooke who wants to buy a floppy thing. 
So that part is really cool. And the way that Chip Kid writes about stuff, it's a love letter. It's a love letter to his childhood starting way back in the nineteen sixties. Now he is he's about my age. Okay. 
And yeah. He's he's about my age. I I think he's a few months younger than I am, but Just like me, his interest in Batman started with the nineteen sixties Adam West Batman. Now, at the time he and I would have been really young when the TV show came on. So we we probably enjoyed it We probably pestered our parents to buy us some stuff, but, you know, we really didn't know this was the first exposure to this character, so we didn't know that it had a long history before that. 
And luckily, Batman as a character has been heavily merchandised forever. Ever since it it came out. And it's easy to get stuff with the Batman image on it, particularly when it was on television starting in nineteen sixty six. It was really easy, but typically in the sixties, early seventies to get Batman stuff because there were tons of tie ins with the TV show. The TV show was hugely popular. 
From what I understand, again, I was a, you know, little kid then, but of course, then it was shown in reruns. So what's cool is in the beginning of this book, Chip tells a story that could have been any one of us. When he was stuck in bed with chicken pox at age four. And his dad brought him a Batman nightlife. And he says, you know, it was sort of the perfect companion for a feverish child, possibly a child who was afraid of the dark. 
To have this protector who lives in the dark, you know, that lit up the dark and it made him feel better. Obviously, that started his interest. In collecting Batman memorabilia. And I just love this book. I just love it. 
As I said, the images are blown up, really huge, you see where, you see the texture, you see love, you see these things have been -- Mhmm. -- handled and played with for ever. And as I said a little before, it contrasts these giant super graphics, these beautiful moody lit photos with patterns of old ads or membership cards. You name it. It's just tons of Batman Afemra. 
And it is pretty heavy, I would say, on the sixties and seventies when the idea of a Batman, the character was introduced in a more camp way. So there were lots of tie ins for for little kids like me at the time.

Speaker 1: Yeah. Pre pre Tim Burton Batman eighties Batman.

Speaker 0: Right. Right. Which is great also. It's just a different swing at it. Right? 
And Christian Bill, Heath Ledger, you know, all of those guys, you know, great, great flicks. But this was a time when it was on television and accessible to families and and little kids and tons of tie in. Now, one of the reasons that I I love this book so much. The content reminds me of when I was younger, It's obviously about collecting stuff, which is near and dear to my heart. And I love chip kids' work. 
I love it because he's passionate. He's articulate. He he surprises us. He's he's not always doing the same thing. He is he's creating work to represent the narrative of the book. 
And his work is highly conceptual too, which is great. In this case, like, you can tell a bit of the story of the book by its cover. Mhmm. And what I love is, again, his work is a little unpredictable and he balances that idea of what we know about something with the curiosity gap of what we hope to know. And we'll post a link to his website with his portfolio, and you'll just see literally hundreds of books that you recognize that he's he's created Oh,

Speaker 1: he's incredible writers for. Prolific. Yeah. Hundred percent.

Speaker 0: Oh, yeah.

Speaker 1: And he's he's he's

Speaker 0: written

Speaker 1: other books too in addition

Speaker 0: to that. That's

Speaker 1: right. Yeah.

Speaker 0: That's right. Yeah. I was gonna say not only just as a as a full time designer for Knauf, he's freelance for a number of other publications. He's written other books, of course. He has been working with animation, on some Batman animation. 
And I just learned he actually is a musician and has started like a new wave band where he writes songs, plays drums, and sings in a in a band in New York City. So guy is super uber talented. He is he's one of those creatives that again you look at he has so much talent. He's so varied. He's so clever in everything he does. 
It's just great inspiration. And he keeps us the readers and the viewers of his work keeps us on our toes because, again, he's kind of always surprising us with things that we may not expect for for covers or for other design pieces. So my love letter for chip kid there. And I know you're a fan as well.

Speaker 1: I am. I am. So I do have one question. You mentioned the curiosity app. Right. 
I, myself, am curious, and I'm sure listeners are as well. Are you willing to share what, in fact, the quote unquote, flop anything was?

Speaker 0: It's yeah. I mean, we'll share a picture of it because that's probably the best way to describe it, but it's basically a puppet. It's a Batman --

Speaker 1: Oh,

Speaker 0: okay.

Speaker 1: --

Speaker 0: you know. It's like a hand puppet, you know, that had a stick or something to it, but that that was the floppy thing.

Speaker 1: Okay. I was thinking it was a kite or a pennant or something like that. Okay.

Speaker 0: Yeah. That's why that's why the yeah. It's a great it's a great question, but that's why the that exchange is so funny because it's like they're speaking and code, like, maybe the phones were being tapped. They didn't wanna tell anybody what the floppy thing was.

Speaker 1: Right. Yeah. Maybe the commissioner was coming in. Or

Speaker 0: the joker. Yeah. Or the joker. Yeah. Definitely the joker.

Speaker 1: Actually, it was really really more the riddler, I think.

Speaker 0: Maybe the guy was talking to the riddler. That could be He was like, it's a floppy thing. Can you give me more of a head? Looks red and blue and fly in the air. Oh. 
Yeah. Okay. So I kinda look at, like, my book is both of ours are love letters to pop culture.

Speaker 1: Oh, yeah. Without a doubt.

Speaker 0: Yours yours is a little I was a little more eyebrow. And I know, you know, that's that's odd to say for the parents. I mean, it takes a higher level of intelligence to to sort of get into that. Right?

Speaker 1: Yeah. There's I I you know, it's almost like a I regard the book as sort of a a written version of the golden corral buffet. There's a little something for everyone in it. Right? Because it does stand hundred years. 
So that's three or four generations. So and, you know, you and I both loving pop culture, growing up in seventies and the eighties. Trust me. The seventies and the eighties are very well represented.

Speaker 0: Okay. Alright. Good. Well, again, you have sold this many times over now. So

Speaker 1: Oh, trust me. If I trust me, if I had all the money, if I'd commissioned from each book I've sold from this, I wouldn't be talking to you right now, man. I'd be I'd be on well, I'd be on podcast Island. Although, it wouldn't be called podcast Island. I'm not sure what it'd be called we called Bookbook Residual Island. 
No. No.

Speaker 0: Book Residual. Elliott's Book Residual.

Speaker 1: Right. That's right. Anyway, so getting back to our dumb century Okay. So I teased out earlier that I would share some of my favorite headlines from this book. Okay. 
So pop culture, of course, there are a variety of events. And so I'm gonna list some. And then I will list the way the onion reported those that's happening. Okay? Alright. 
Okay. So that's Titanic sinking. Right? So it's around nineteen twelve. World's largest metaphor hits iceberg. 
Alright. Perfect. So during the depression, you know, of course, there was the new deal in reality. But the headline was president confront depression with his big deal plan. So the subhead is big deal. 
I'm rich. Roosevelt says, which I thought was

Speaker 0: great.

Speaker 1: So the Hindenburg explosion, everybody is very familiar with that footage. So the headline is awesome nation wowed by tremendous Hindenburg explosion, but it was like awesome. Like, boy, that was cool to see. Okay. World War two, so war breaking out in in, you know, in Europe. 
It was such big news The headline was, what with a how you felt? They couldn't fit the r in there to be continued on the inside.

Speaker 0: Okay. So that was a visual joke then.

Speaker 1: Yes. Yes. Which which I'll I'll we'll put that we'll put that page on the website, and people can see it in all its glory. Okay.

Speaker 0: Okay. Alright. Good.

Speaker 1: Okay. Civil rights. Right? Mhmm. Rosa Parks to take cab. 
And the subhead, screw this bus shit. This is Montgomery Alabama commuter. And I think the most appropriate one to really put in the print what everyone I am sure at the time when thinking.

Speaker 0: At one small crab per man, pardon? I am pleased for me.

Speaker 1: So this is the moon landing, nineteen sixty nine. Holy shit. Man walks on fucking moon and of course as an alarm strong walking on the moon. And I I just lost my mind when saw that because it was brilliant. But then another one of my favorite ones bringing it back down to Earth. 
See what I did there with that pantone.

Speaker 0: Oh, yeah. Clever.

Speaker 1: Yeah. So So pop culture reference here. So Jones town. We all remember the Jones town, the phrase drinking the kool

Speaker 0: Aid. Drinking the cool lady.

Speaker 1: Anthropomorphic juice pitcher among dead in Jonestown cult suicide. And again, the brilliant thing about this is, you know, they have the picture in in French Guyana of of all the people, but about two thirds of the way back in the distance, you see the the glass pot belly of the kool Aid man. Why monks the

Speaker 0: dead. It's it's

Speaker 1: it's horribly fun. Okay. So I don't know if you find it to be more horrible or more fun, but in terms of gallows humor, it's it's right across the ears. Yeah. Okay. 
So it's such an accurate reflection of our culture as a whole. So another thing of course is political cartoons. Right? You think about political cartoons in the newspaper. So a running gag throughout this book of an ongoing series of political cartoons where Lady Liberty is basically being assaulted in different ways by the personification of whoever the US's biggest enemy is at that time. 
So I'm gonna give you a a list of miscreants and the year in which they were showcased. Okay.

Speaker 0: Okay. Okay. So

Speaker 1: in nineteen o two, it was the Wretched Span ignored. Okay? In nineteen seventeen, it was the huns. In nineteen thirty three, it was the capitalist Pluto rat bastard. In nineteen forty three, it was the Axis leaders. 
In nineteen fifty five, it was the Red Leader. So of course, communism. And in nineteen sixty six, not to be outdone, it was those damned freedom loving hippies. So, I mean, just this is such a fun, fun, fun snapshot of so much. If if you cannot go through this book and does not have tears pouring down your face, I'll be honest. 
Don't think I wanna be your friend.

Speaker 0: Yeah. You you don't have a pulse. It sounds like if you can't do this anymore.

Speaker 1: Or at least a funny bone,

Speaker 0: you

Speaker 1: know.

Speaker 0: Yeah. I Yeah. I I I certainly have to get this book, man.

Speaker 1: Okay. So a few additional details as we as we start to wrap up. In case you're still not convinced, Todd. Okay? Okay. 
So regardless of the nearly two years of work spent on conceiving and producing this book. The writers, the people who did all the heavy lifting, only received bonuses of a few thousand bucks. Despite the fact that the two book publishing deal netted the onion four hundred and fifty k. Oh,

Speaker 0: wow.

Speaker 1: Yeah. So it's like, yeah, here's your jelly of the month club membership. In the wake of the book's success, networks such as HBO and NBC were in talks to bring the onion to television with a special that was based on art artistry.

Speaker 0: Uh-huh.

Speaker 1: Never happened. To be honest with you, just thinking about it and and even just reading, you know, to scratching the surface with some of the the things that

Speaker 0: we're not gonna see.

Speaker 1: Yeah. I'm not exactly sure how NBC would have even been able to pull it off. Like, when I think about HBO and, you know, Todd, you and I think remember things were all for you remember, like, not necessarily the news and

Speaker 0: -- Yeah. -- some of

Speaker 1: this other stuff that's sort of lampoon popular media, I could see some of a mindset HBO doing it. But but it just it never happened. Just just I don't know. But I have so much appreciation for this book. And

Speaker 0: Part of

Speaker 1: the reason, as I mentioned, it came out in the late nineties. Alright? So I just need to frame this for people listening. Today. Right? 
Because this was written before a lot of these online research tools that we use every day existed like we take for granted that we can hop on to Google. Well, Google was just getting going at the end of nineteen ninety eight. There really wasn't a ton of stuff that was even existing to be indexed at that time. Mhmm.

Speaker 0: And and

Speaker 1: Wikipedia, which as we know, is something that we both love and use all the time, that didn't even start until two thousand one. So these guys were pouring over microfiche and back issues of, you know, the New York Times and the Washington Post. And so this this was, to your point, you said Batman, the Batman book, chip kids book was a love letter to Batman, and specifically sixties Batman. This was really a love letter to not just contemporary pop culture, but also historic pop culture. And

Speaker 0: I think that's

Speaker 1: just just knowing what went into this book. I think that's one of the reasons I have such appreciation for it. Because it's just an amazing amazing hit history of pop culture and it's executed so brilliantly.

Speaker 0: Yeah. Well said. Well said Elliott. Yeah. Okay. 
Well, you know, I've said a couple times you've convinced me and you probably convinced a bunch of other folks out there to check out our dumb sentry from the onion.

Speaker 1: Hey. You know, if they check out our dumb web site, we'll post a link to our demo

Speaker 0: center. Yeah. That'd be great. That that would be great. And now if we could just convince the bartender to give us some attention over here would be great.

Speaker 1: That's right. Maybe we can find a secret house cocktail that involves per ole onions. How about that?

Speaker 0: Oh, okay. I like I like the way you think there.

Speaker 1: Thank you.

Speaker 0: Alright. So we will gather again around the the pub table here and talk about some more interesting stuff soon.

Speaker 1: That's right. And if you see the two designers signal on the horizon, understand we're out late at night. We've tumbled out of the bar and we're off somewhere fighting crime.

Speaker 0: And we've lost somewhere and you need to find us.

Speaker 1: Oh, that's what that

Speaker 0: means? Alright. See you.