Jim Emerson's Scanners Blog

World's most Kafkaesque airport
no longer located in Dallas-Fort Worth

| | Comments (8)

It has taken off, making an unscheduled arrival in Prague as its final destination.


All world flights continue to make unnecessary layovers in Dallas-Fort Worth anyway. No departures reported.

8 Comments

That's one of the best ones yet!! Had to watch if twice to pick up all the background details. I loved the timetables and the questionnaire. Man, these guys have a good budget for these segments.

Beautiful. Loved the Elisha Cook, Jr. cameo.

Saw this a few days ago, and loved it. Those guys at the Onion have been on a streak for a while. These 2 are classics already, and the first one is safe for work, but put headphones on:

http://www.theonion.com/content/video/sony_releases_new_stupid_piece_of

http://www.theonion.com/content/video/apple_introduces_revolutionary

These guys are hilarious!

By on March 26, 2009 8:10 AM | Reply

I've been watching these Onion videos since they began, I guess a couple of years ago. They're very often small miracles of satire, even strangely poignant at times (the artificially inseminated zoo panda demanding an abortion), but I felt this one was transcendent, like the NASA Larry King simulator on a Today Now! Segment.

Plainly the filmmakers were giggling and nudging each other on the Franz Kafka International Airport segment...the concept is bold and the little details everywhere around the frame are so inspired.

The Onion videos with their high octane venom and sheer guts have ruined me for most TV satire. I sort of enjoy the Daily Show and the Colbert Report (I haven't watched them very much though) but they don't shock and amaze me like the Onion does. Granted the Onion has a fearsome advantage...they do two roughly three minute shows a week with seemingly enormous resources behind them.

It's an old Monthy Python trick. The cultural references you use (Kafka, Dostoyevsky) make the humor seem more sophisticated than it actually is.

JE: And it's a satire of nightmarish airports. Python liked to use intellectual and high culture references in deliberately lowbrow contexts: the philosophers' drinking song, the braying ladies discussing Sartre... It was the absurd contrast that made the bits funny.

Would you believe there actually IS a Dostoevsky hotel? It's in St. Petersburg. http://www.dostoevsky-hotel.ru/about.en.html

I've enjoyed some of the Onion's other bits, but this one is just plain sublime.

By on March 30, 2009 6:53 PM | Reply

I think every airport should employ a Manager of Conscious Perceptions.

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