fine whine

I've been disappointed by two books recently, and oddly enough they're both connected in some form to Comedy Central's Daily show. The first was Jon Stewart's Naked pictures of famous people, and the second was the much older book of sets of five questions asked every guest when Craig Killborn hosted the show.

Both books were, well, not funny. The latter one was a slapdash affair, padding out perhaps ten pages worth of material with bad television screen captures and other feats of bad layout. Moreover, most of it isn't really funny. The interviews on television might've been amusing, but they don't translate well to the written word. These, unlike a book of Dave Letterman's Top Ten lists, do not work in print. What a waste of paper.

Jon Stewart's book is connected to the Show only because he hosts it; it might've been published anyway but not nearly as widely. You see, it's not all that funny either. Jon's a funny guy with a great breadth of knowledge upon which to draw to make jokes, but he's pulling at straws here while I think he's shooting at fish in a barrel.

There's a chance that Dennis Miller would read this and roll on the floor laughing, but it sure didn't work for me. Far too many pages were spent on intricate but laborious jokes (such as the opening diary of a kennedy houseguest) that become tedious before getting a chuckle. Skip these books.