2007-Eleven: And Other American Comedies

Reporter Seely and editorial cartoonist Cammuso (both of whom work for the Syracuse Post-Standard) regularly team up to bring their unusual brand of literary humor to the airwaves of NPR and the pages of the New York Times. This slim volume collects 29 of their lampoons, most of which involve a far-fetched premise--radio therapist Dr. Laura Dolittle talking to animals, James Bond confronting a sexual harassment suit, a clothing catalogue penned by David Mamet. In one hilarious essay, the pair imagines Martha Stewart planning the Last Supper: ""Whether it's a plague of locusts or a hollandaise that has curdled, you can always expect some last-minute crisis."" In another, they cleverly invent a collaboration between The Twilight Zone's Rod Serling and Dr. Seuss, a poem called ""And to Think That They Landed on Mulberry Street."" (Try reading it aloud.) Their parody of The X-Files (the ""Xmas Files"")--in which Mulder and Scully investigate the existence of Santa Claus--has already become a cult classic. (X-Files fans have pirated, e-mailed and posted it online, often without giving proper credit to Cammuso and Seely). Perhaps, then, the only flaw in this entertaining collection is in its title: whereas these same X-Files fans would have waited in line for a book titled The Xmas Files, nobody's likely to know what to do with the idea of a 2007-Eleven. (May)