Friday, January 30, 2009

Review: Grandma's Dead: Breaking Bad News with Baby Animals

You have some bad news to tell someone? Why not say it with cute baby animal? Written by Amanda McCall, and Ben Schwartz, and taking the Internet meme of cute pictures of baby animals, adding them to postcards and adding text denoting bad news.



Now I'm not sure if this is pure genius that McCall and Schwatz are taking advantage of what is popular on the net and bringing it to a different media or it's disturbing that they are using cute pictures of baby animals to communicate bad news. It would not be so bad if they were just giving uncomfortable news like telling a coworker that they have bad breath.


(This is not from the book. Only used as an example)

Instead there are some telling your kids that there is no college money because mom blew it all on drugs, or "Daddy's never coming home". These two are horrible. I find nothing cute or charming on these two subjects. These are just mean and are probably something that a just divorced couple would send to there older kids as a way to get back at the other parent. That's not cute it's cold hearted, evil and mean spirited, even if it's punctuated by a cute picture of a baby animal.

There are others like "You don't matter!" or "I'm banging your wife." The first is almost as mean spirited as the last two and I hope the second is sent anonymously. Hell there is one that says "Your baby is ugly". I can see where these would be funny in one situation but mostly they are just rude and hurtful. If your well adjusted I suggest sticking to the Internet for baby animal pictures and leave this book alone.

2 comments:

  1. Yeah, sounds too mean spirited to even be funny.

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  2. You betcha, I do have to admit that Ben Schwartz was freelance writer for David Letterman's monologues, SNL's Weekend update and writes for Robot Chicken so I'm sure it was mostly put together as a joke but there are people out there who will use them as they seem to be intended to be used.

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