“Your Wildest Dreams, Within Reason”

“Mike Sacks is a funny guy, and if you’re into stuff like McSweeney’s online whatever-the-hell-they-call-it, you’ll enjoy this book.

The book does suffer a bit from a couple of comedy diseases that are really prevalent.

The first, Onion Fatigue Syndrome, a disease commonly found within the pages of joke newspaper the Onion, is all about how you read comedy. The Onion, like this book, is absolutely hilarious in small-to-medium doses. But if you read the entirety of the Onion front-to-back, you don’t even give a shit about the last couple articles, no matter how hilarious the headlines may be. So if you’re interested in this book, pace yourself.

The second, SSNL (Syndrome Saturday Night Live) is all about taking a hilarious premise and running with it long enough that it’s just not funny anymore. Schweddy Balls is a funny thing to hear Alec Baldwin say, but after a couple go-arounds of “your balls are so sweet” and “your balls would really please my toddler” you get the joke. Then you get it again. And then you start yelling at the TV that you get it in the vain hope that someone will hear you and move on to the next sketch. This book can go down that road in places too. Good premises all around, but occasionally you’re ready to skip to the next piece quite a bit before the end.

But hey, for one guy to have a collection this funny is pretty rare.