2007-Eleven: and Other American Comedies

by Frank Cammuso, Hart Seely, Frank Cammuso

From the pages of The New Yorker, The New York Times, and Slate stagger Frank Cammuso and Hart Seely, restoring a cheerful sanity to our deranged lives and times.

Every now and then, funny writing somehow manages to retain full possession of literary quality. Please see Twain, Heller, Benchley, Parker, Frazier, Geng. And now please see Cammuso and Seely. If you're not some famous person in our hyped, commodified, three-screen (movie, TV, computer), celeb-ridden society, count your blessings. Because if you are, Cammuso and Seely will probably get you sooner or later. They got Martha Stewart--they have her planning gracious plans for her version of the Son of God's final "Jesus has indicated--against my better wishes--that He intends to gird Himself with a towel and wash everybody's feet. So be it. But beforehand, I'll run his terry cloth for five minutes in the dryer, making it toasty and soft." They (fondly) postu-late how Phil Rizzuto might have written a characteristically fractionated version of "Casey at the Bat": "'Fraud!' cried the maddened thousands, and the echo murmured 'Fraud.' / Hey, Murcer! Look! Bea Arthur! Didn't she play Maude?" The Flintstones become the Clintstones, Quentin Tarantino directs The Three Little Pigs, and Dr. Seuss collaborates poetically with Rod Serling.

Even when the targets of these pieces are of the moment, Cammuso and Seely's humor will endure. What's more evanescent than pop-music stardom? Sex, maybe, but not much else. But who won't laugh, even years from now, as Cammuso and Seely--in "Six Degrees of Chuck Berry"--introduce some of the record industry's often interchangeable personages to each "Tanya, Enya. Enya, Shania. Shania, Mariah. Mariah, Wynonna. Wynonna, Fiona . . . " Nobody.

176 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2000

About the author

Frank Cammuso is the author/illustrator of the graphic novel series The Misadventures of Salem Hyde from Amulet Books. He also created the graphic novel series Knights of the Lunch Table from Graphix/Scholastic. Frank drew the comic Otto’s Orange Day and Otto’s Backwards Day for Toon-Books. He also wrote and drew his self-published graphic novel Max Hamm Fairy Tale Detective, for which he received an Eisner nomination.


Frank is the former award-winning political cartoonist for The Post-Standard newspaper in Syracuse, NY. His cartoons have been reprinted in The New York Times, The Washington Post, USA Today and Newsweek.

He has written fiction and satire with his good friend Hart Seely. Their work has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Village Voice, Slate, and on National Public Radio. He’s the co-author of 2007-Eleven and Other American Comedies.


Cammuso currently teaches Sequential Illustration part-time at his alma mater, Syracuse University. He lives with his family in frosty Syracuse, NY, where they enjoy all things comics!

Reviews

[Kevin · Rating 4 out of 5]

I discovered this book after having a discussion with a friend about Frank Cammuso's hilarious MAX HAMM, FAIRY TALE DETECTIVE (I need to find the complete series and re-read those stories). The only problem I had with this book, however, is that much of the humor was topical in 2000 or before and I had to remember just what it was authors Frank Cammuso and Hart Seely were skewering (not that hard, for the most part).

[Donna · Rating 2 out of 5]

It's punny. Sometimes funny.