Mountain Man Dance Moves: The McSweeney’s Book of Lists
It’s the question on everyone’s mind — how can you tell if a unicorn is cheating on you?
Taxing issues like this require “Mountain Man Dance Moves: The McSweeney’s Book of Lists,” a collection of some of the wittiest writers going.
Greeted with an illustration of a unicorn posing on a cliff, readers will read one list, respond with varying degrees of humor and flip to another list. “Reasons to Fear Canada” leads to “Things That Did Stay in Vegas,” giving way to “Amended Taglines to Arby’s” and “Discarded Titles for Toni Braxton’s 1996 Hit ‘Un-Break My Heart.’”
The list titles are hooks while the list items are the line and sinker. The book reads like a parody of the 6,822,475 lists created everyday in magazines and Web sites.
One witty contributor is Bootleg’s own Trevor Siegler.
When not waxing pop poetic in the Pop Gun column every week, Trevor contributes to McSweeney’s, a publishing house of books and magazines, among other materials of pizzazz.
“I’d been sending stuff since about the fall of 2003, mostly seeing if anything would pass muster,” Trevor said. “A lot of it wasn’t so great, but the editor (John Warner) was always encouraging in his rejection notices. So I finally started to submit material that they could use a few years ago, and every now and then I try to slip something by them for publication.”
Of Trevor’s contributions, “You Might Be a Redneck…” made the book.
“I think it was born of seeing ‘Blue Comedy Collar Tour’ one night and realizing that Jeff Foxworthy was suddenly popular again,” Trevor said of his list. “So I figured why not mess with the expectations and say how you could literally be a redneck?”
List items include, “If you stay out in the sun so long that you contract skin cancer and die, you might be a redneck.” He hopes readers know that he’s poking more fun toward Foxworthy than his audience.
I’ve laughed occasionally at a few of his you-might-be-a-redneck jokes, but it’s just a lame catchphrase (not as bad as Larry the Cable Guy’s “Git R Dun”).
As indicated by the cover, unicorn lovers will cherish this book, with lists like “You Might Be a Unicorn If,” “Highlights of the First 100 Days of a Unicorn President,” “Places You’re Likely to Find a Unicorn,” “How to Tell if a Unicorn is Just Not That Into You,” “Things Almost as Magical as a Unicorn,” and “Facts From the Dungeons and Dragons Third Edition Monster Manual’s Chapter on Unicorns That are Equally Applicable to Shakira.”
