If you’ve ever been to a dinner party
with me, you know my goal of working “Oh, I work at The Onion”
into the conversation within the first 2.5 seconds. And then I attempt to make
it seem like I’m connected in some way to the
actual writing. Which I’m not. At all.
But it’s still fun to even be
tangentially linked to arguably the greatest comedy publication of all time.
And it even gives me the chance to whore out my sons to be
in Onion Inc. videos.
A few weeks ago, our neighbor Callie got to be in an Onion
video. She got the gig because our friend Marisa is the Onion’s
casting director. Technically, she was in a video for one of our sister sites,
but let’s not overcomplicate things, shall we?
Almost immediately, Elijah confronted me with why he had not
been cast in an Onion video. Um, because I had no idea you wanted to be in one.
And I’m not the casting director.
He said, “Yeah, but aren’t
you really important at The Onion?”
“Well, I’m
really just dinner party important. Not important important.”
Elijah looked at me like a son who just discovered his dad
was in middle management. In an effort to delay this Freudian disaster, I
emailed Marisa to see if she could shove Eli into any upcoming videos.
Sure enough, a few days later I got a message from one of
the Onion producers who clearly had been told some jerk from middle management
wants his kid in a video, so do it. He had a part for Eli and wanted to shoot
in our house.
Eli was extremely excited. As was Diana, who harbors secret
desires to make Eli the next Corey Feldman.
Eli’s role was to be a bratty kid. I
won’t give away the joke because I need you to visit the
site so my audience numbers stay high.
After a few takes, the director realized he had a problem: Eli is too
nice. Every time he asked Eli to shout “This food tastes like
vomit,” Eli would smile into camera. I wanted to ask Eli to
channel his rage when I hold him down to clip his toenails, but there’s
no fighting sweetness.
In the end I think the video team got what they needed and
we’ll see the results in a few weeks.
However, a couple days ago, Eli asked, “Dad,
when am I going to get my money?”
Apparently, Callie got a few bucks for her video and Eli
wanted his dough. I told him I didn’t think he gets paid for
this because he’s my kid and I work for The
Onion.
He suggested I pay him out of my pocket then. I realized he was in this just for the money. He’s
well on his way to being the next Corey Feldman.
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