Wow, the past was a different country. Especially this genre of humor.
As I said when I bought this book last month, this book is akin to 101 Uses For A Dead Cat. I mean, a direct inspiration. Both are single panel comics with a simple caption of what the use is. In this book, the captions are in alphabetical order from “10 Pin Bowling” (politicians’ heads as the pins) to “Wood chips” (politicians run through a wood chipper). The final panel is a gag that says there are really only 166 cartoons, but what do you expect except lies when dealing with politicians.
Definitely reminiscient of the underground comics photocopied and photocopied and passed around to tack or tape to workplace walls. I’m pretty sure I still have a collection of the things my mother retained from the era. This book, from 1993, was about the end of it. Soon after, Dilbert and the Internet made passing around memes a whole lot simpler. I’m not saying our modern humor or memes are funnier than what you find in these books, but it’s hard to do worse.
You know what it made me long for, though? When I was in elementary school, the funniest thing going was A Comic Book of Sports by Arnold Roth. When someone got this from the book order, we’d all crowd around it. Eventually, I got my own copy which is sadly lost in the intervening decades–and probably shortly after I thought it was the height of humor. Ah, well. Better than this book, surely.
