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Inventory: 16 Films Featuring Manic Pixie Dream Girls, 10 Great Songs Nearly Ruined by Saxophone, and 100 More Obsessively Specific Pop-Culture Lists |  | Author: A.V. Club
Creator: Chuck Klosterman
Publisher: Scribner
Category: Book
List Price: $18.00
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Rating:  13 reviews
Sales Rank: 103684
Media: Paperback
Edition: Original
Pages: 256
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.2
Dimensions (in): 9 x 8 x 0.7
ISBN: 1416594736
Dewey Decimal Number: 306.0973
EAN: 9781416594734
ASIN: 1416594736
Publication Date: October 13, 2009
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
Each week, the writers of The A.V. Club issue a slightly slanted pop-culture list filled with challenging opinions (Is David Bowie's "Young Americans" nearly ruined by saxophone?) and fascinating facts. Exploring 24 great films too painful to watch twice, 14 tragic movie-masturbation scenes, 18 songs about crappy cities, and much more, Inventory combines a massive helping of new lists created especially for the book with a few favorites first seen at avclub.com and in the pages of The A.V. Club's sister publication, The Onion.But wait! There's more: John Hodgman offers a set of minutely detailed (and probably fictional) character actors. Patton Oswalt waxes ecstatic about the "quiet film revolutions" that changed cinema in small but exciting ways. Amy Sedaris lists 50 things that make her laugh. "Weird Al" Yankovic examines the noises of Mad magazine's Don Martin. Plus lists from Paul Thomas Anderson, Robert Ben Garant, Tom Lennon, Andrew W.K., Tim and Eric, Daniel Handler, and Zach Galifianakis -- and an epic foreword from essayist Chuck Klosterman.
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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 13
 The perfect table book!!! May 23, 2010
William S. Spencer (Nevada City, CA)
If yo have to have something on your table for people to look at and thumb through, this is a must!!!
 A mostly fun read from The Onion's A.V. Club April 24, 2010
Beth Cholette (Upstate NY USA)
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
I am a huge fan of the online publication The Onion. The A.V. Club is the section of The Onion devoted to entertainment--namely film, television, music, and books. It commonly features pop-culture lists, or inventories. But these aren't just any lists: with titles like "Ask a Movie Question, Get a Movie Answer: 30 Film-Title Queries, and The Answers That the Films Give" and "Shoot Your Own Feet: 15 Really Good Bands with Really Bad Names," you know that these lists are going to be a bit different. Some of the lists have been taken from The Onion web site, but some were created brand new for this book. Inventory also offers a few other nice little features. First, there are a series of "Guest Lists" from entertainers such as John Hodgman, "Weird Al" Yankovic, and Amy Sedaris. Second, the entire book contains a Heaven/Hell header/footer that is a list in and of itself--that is, an inventory of what the editors especially like/don't like. For example, opening randomly to Page 84, in Heaven, we find Doctor Who, Crash (1996), and Locked Up Abroad, whereas "down there" we have Dr. Drew, Crash (2005), and "being locked up anywhere."
The quality of the lists themselves varies wildly. Some are not only laugh-out-loud funny but also amazing in their ability to encompass a wide selection of generations and genres. For example, the list "16 Film and TV Characters Who Know Exactly What They'd Like to Eat" manages to include Seinfeld, The Simpsons (a huge favorite of The A.V. Club), The Blues Brothers, The Marx Brothers, Jack Nicholson, and Barbra Streisand. Some of the lists offer thorough, compelling analyses, such as "20 Not-So-Good Movies Based on Good Books." And there are those that are simply straightforward, like "TV Guides: 5 Essential Books About Television." Many of the lists, however, are just silly, senseless, or both. Who came up with "6 Live Albums that Definitely Sum Up the Artists Who Made Them"? And the list "16 Films Featuring Manic Pixie Dream Girls" was truly bizarre, as the supposed archetype of the MPDG, as they called it, seemed to change from one movie to the next.
The other issue with this book is that the editors are unquestionably opinionated and biased. Now, this is not always a bad thing. For example, I mentioned above that they LOVE The Simpsons; I like The Simpsons too, and I thought that "35 Things We'll Forever Associate With The Simpsons" was one of the best lists in the book. On the other hand, the editors really seemed to have a bone to pick with M. Night Shaymalan. In this case, I am the who is biased; I don't hesitate to admit my love for Shaymalan. However, while I readily agreed with their decision to include his awful movie The Happening in their list of "22 Ridiculous Horror-Movie Adversaries," it seemed over-the-top to me that the editors felt the need to put Shyamalan himself in the "hell" footer not once but TWICE, especially given that one of their own guest listers, Patton Oswald, actually praises Shyamalan's The Sixth Sense as having been revolutionary.
So, in the end, although I found some of the lists to be hit or miss and didn't agree with all of them, overall, I did enjoy this book. If you are a fan of The Onion in general or a follower of The A.V. Club in particular, Inventory would likely appeal to you as well, and I would recommend it.
 Intermittent Genius Surrounded By Soporific Pabulum March 29, 2010
Robert I. Hedges
2 out of 5 found this review helpful
I purchased "Inventory" because I enjoy the A. V. Club web site and am intrigued by humorously presented minutiae. Indeed the book is long on highly opinionated trivia, so long, in fact, that often the writers drone on long after an initially promising idea wore out its welcome. Do we really need "100 Killer Songs Clocking In At Two Minutes Or Less?" Really? 100? Understand that to get to the magic number 100 they had to go far out of any one person's musical lexicon and delve deeply into obscurities (e.g. "The Fall, 'Prole Art Threat'"). That's but one example of the lack of editing present here; other prime examples are the seven page dissertation "28-Plus Films That Failed To Make Movie Stars Out Of TV Stars," and my least favorite of all lists "17 Great Songs Unafraid of the Apocalypse," which examines the works of "Young Marble Giants," "Constantines," and "The Handsome Family" among many other more-accessible acts to reach the magic number of 17. I could go on, but you get the point. It's as if any idea that anyone in the room had made it to the final draft. Shakespeare was right when he had Polonius remind us all that "brevity is the soul of wit."
Amid the droning there are bits of genius such as "12 Ridiculous Lies Perpetuated by John Hughes Movies" (Amen!) and the premier cinematic list in the book "15 Common Types you Meet On DVD Audio Commentaries" (although I would argue that Ray Dennis Steckler is the ultimate narrator, not R. Kelly.) It probably goes without saying that the literary lists are a mixed bag. The best literary list is "16-Plus Books Based Around Odd Literary Conceits," while the painful, if expected, hero worship of Kurt Vonnegut is front and center, as is the aggressive adulation of "The Simpsons." One of best pieces of writing in the book is "24 Inventions For Lazy Americans" (the commentary on the "Flowbee" is brilliant); the list "22 Ridiculous Horror-Movie Adversaries" was likewise excellent.
Of all the lists in the book though, my hands-down favorite was the final list: "50 List Ideas We Rejected For This Book," which included numerous ideas actually superior to many of the actual lists in this book (e.g. "15 Cinematic Replacements For The Brassiere" and "11 Badly Executed Appropriations of Hip-Hop Culture by Country Singers.") The editorial tone of "Inventory" is clear (it could have easily been titled "Laughter For Leftists") and clearly biased. That's their editorial prerogative, of course, but it's equally fair to point it out. Examples abound throughout the book. Anton LaVey, founder of The Church of Satan is described thusly: "His strident advocacy of selfishness, hierarchy, and the superiority of the strong over the weak reads more like a playbook for today's neocon movement." John Lennon's "Imagine" gets a treatment John would no doubt love: "Imagine a world in which John Lennon's 'Imagine' is only covered by people who actually understand and embrace its message about how religion, nationalism, and capitalism are essentially insane." Obviously being an atheist communist anarchist is preferable to the writers.
Throughout the book there are things that are, in the minds of the editors, destined for either "Heaven" or "Hell" running in a ribbon across the top and bottom of the pages. Their judgement initially seemed sound with "Schizopolis" being selected for "Heaven", but later that column also boasted "Freddy Got Fingered," "Justin Timberlake, pop star", "Steve Perry," and of course the holy grail of the left "The New Deal." Meanwhile the "Hell" side of the house received, to the editors credit, "The Five-Year Plan" (odd that they were the ones arguing against a religious, capitalist society,) and of course, "David Zucker, right-wing nutjob." Yes, the essentially libertarian environmentalist filmmaker Zucker is a "right-wing nutjob" because he thinks Obama is too liberal. The clear message here is that if you are anything to the right of Marx, you are an idiot, and possibly insane. Again the writers have every right to state their opinions, but it would be an incomplete critique of the book if these positions weren't made clear.
The book features several "Guest Lists" from various people. Excepting the entry by "Weird Al" Yankovic they were all uniformly disappointing, and I would recommend that in future ventures these be curtailed. "Inventory" is an extremely uneven book. The parts that are good are very good, but it is a bloated effort that would have been better with many of the categories truncated, and some eliminated. The format is tiring to read (three columns per page with small text, lots of white space, and numerous text boxes) and the book has large swaths that are just plain boring. While I like the A. V. Club web site (likely because I can focus more on things of interest to me rather than reading a book of which maybe half was of interest,) the web site is better than the book. I wouldn't buy this book again, but can recommend it with certain reservations to those who enjoy trivial pursuits and books about them.
Worth it for the Heaven and Hell lists alone! March 15, 2010
KimP (Boston,MA,USA)
Picked this up for my son - but I've really enjoyed this as well.
A great depiction of recent pop culture.
Trivia With a Twist! January 28, 2010
Michael OConnor (Wausau, WI USA)
I must confess that until I paged through INVENTORY, I had never heard of the A. V. Club. I guess that makes me one of those "living in a cave for the last 300 years" reprobates of legend. In any case, I happened across INVENTORY at the local Bungling & Noble and, being a trivia/pop culture lover, immmediately scooped it up. It's a hoot!
INVENTORY'S 238 pages are crammed with lists, lists and more lists, some 100+ "obsessively specific pop-culture lists" in all. TV/movie/music/pop culture lovers will find lists of six Keanu Reeves movies not ruined by Keanu Reeves, 22 movies with post-credit surprises, 26 songs that work as short stories, six alternate movie endings that were - happily for audiences - discarded, five alternate endings that - unfortunately - were dropped, 21 kiddie TV shows that found adult audiences, eight great films made by directors over 70, five essential books on TV, 100 great songs two minutes or under in length, 24 great films too painful to watch twice, 25 sure signs a sitcom sucks, 12 films that defined their decades, 12 disgusting movie meals, 22 really stupid movie adversaries, 24 stupid inventions for lazy Americans, 13 really awful fast-food innovations and so on.
The commentaries are witty, informed and a little bent. The various opinions expressed about films, TV, music, books and pop culture are an enjoyable combination of reverence and snarkiness. INVENTORY is definitely not an UNCLE JOHN clone. One of the sections I enjoyed most was 'Whittling a Spoon from a Bigger Spoon' that listed 50 ideas the editors rejected(!) for the book. One hopes they reconsider some of those gems for a follow-up.
If you enjoy your trivia with a snarky twist, INVENTORY will fill the bill. Recommended.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 13
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