Some of you may be asking yourselves just who the hell is John Callahan, anyway? Well, I'm glad you asked. Callahan is a quadriplegic. He's also a cartoonist. What's more, he has zero tolerance for anything even vaguely PC, and he does everything he can to fight those folks. Callahan rulez.
He's been around for quite awhile. He's had his work published in the San Francisco Examiner, Newsday, Harper's, and a ton of other magazines and papers across the country. He has been the center of much controversy over the years too. You see, he speaks what he feels and doesn't give one whit if Aunt Ethel is going to be offended or not. Screw em, he says, and this is why I like his stuff so much. Damn the man! Speak your mind!
Will The Real John Callahan Please Stand Up? is, then, a collection of letters to the Editor about his work in various mediums, a few short stories he's written, and a ton of his cartoons interspersed. It's funny as hell.
Mother: Julia, the time has come for us to talk. When a girl becomes a woman there's a pill she takes to keep herself protected.
Daughter: What's the name of this pill, mother?
Mother: Prozac
Quite a few of his cartoons center on the handicapped population, such as one depicting a home for the paralyzed next to a church full of folks singing you'll never walk alone. This is followed by copies of letters written in protesting this horrible, tasteless humor and, by gawd, "how dare he make fun of something he never experienced..." eh. yeah. Remember what I said earlier? Callahan is a quad. He understands perfectly, thank you very much. One thing that irks him (and we are kindred in this) is the folks without any handicaps acting all indignant when a handicapped joke is made. Get over yourselves.Callahan doesn't stop at his own demographic though. Oh no. Nobody is off limits to him. He has a section of dick jokes, Nun jokes, Humpty Dumpty, Sally Struthers, and even his own Grampa Otto takes a hit. It's all mostly worth a slow groan that builds into a gut busting laugh complete with tears if you dare take in the whole 209 pages in one sitting. I did. I may do it again! HA!
Its just page after page of his jokes with the resulting letter wars from folks who are clueless as hell. The real jokes in this book are the folks who wrote those letters. Talk about funny! Oh yes, John Callahan clearly does get this world of ours, the authors of these letters do not.
In the midst of all the humor flying around from everywhere, we do get a glimpse of the real John Callahan in the form of little short stories and never-run comic strips. While he makes those humorous as well, they are brief glimpses into his pain, into the real man behind the humor.
In the strip The Lighter Side of Being we get the funny version of how Callahan became paralyzed. The second frame shows a car crashed into a billboard and is accompanied by the blurb: We ended the evening by driving his Volkswagen into a billboard at 90 MPH (looking back on it, I kind of wish we hadn't done that...)
If you aren't familiar with the humor of John Callahan, this is a very good book to start with. That way you won't make the mistake of thinking he just likes to rag on the handicapped... oh no... He’s making very astute observations most of the time, you just have to be smart enough to catch them.
http://www.callahanonline.com/
Remember, it's only sexual harassment if they're not datable!
rate
email
print
link to this page
Comments: 14
My work here is done.