20 years ago, an Area Man stayed up all night procrastinating

Also, the Democrats lose the Democratic primaries, a hated coworker is about to be fired, and Michael Jackson hires a giraffe lawyer.

Welcome back to The Onion: 20 Years Later, where we review the print issue from 20 years ago, find out what’s still funny and examine the cultural impact. Today, we revisit Feb. 4, 2004.

I wrote this newsletter on an airplane because I didn’t plan my time wisely. This is ironic because this issue features “Man Stays Up All Night Procrastinating.” So, thank you for bearing with me!

This week, we revisit the 2004 primaries, drugs like Ephedra and Quaaludes, and celebrities like Michael Jackson and Elizabeth Taylor.

If you’re new here, please sign up below. We publish most Sundays. View the archives here.

What issue is this?

This was Vol. 40, Issue 05, the 178th new Onion issue of the 2000s. Here is what the website looked like in 2004, 2014 and today.

The front-page headline “Vibrator Left On All Night” is no longer online.

What was the top story, and other impressions?

Democratic Candidates

“Democrats Somehow Lose Primaries” is perfectly fine Will Rogers-esque satire, perhaps foreshadowing the actual 2004 election outcome, in which Sen. John Kerry neither won the popular nor the electoral vote.

This list of candidates is interesting to look back on. It doesn’t include any of the 3 most recent Democratic nominees. Meanwhile, then-Sen. Joe Lieberman and then-Rep. Dennis Kucinich are no longer Democrats:¹

"While it's true that the Democratic Party has been struggling to find a strong voice, you can imagine our surprise when results indicated that John Kerry, Howard Dean, Wesley Clark, Joe Lieberman, and John Edwards all failed to carry a single primary," American Research Group political analyst Dick Bennett said late Tuesday. "Oh, and Al Sharpton and Dennis Kucinich, too."

President Bush watches the results of Tuesday's primaries on television.

Kerry defeated all the other Democrats but only ended up a strong 2nd:

"We're going to keep fighting," Kerry said. "I'm not going to throw in the towel just because I have no idea how it is even remotely possible for all of us to lose our own primary."

"I didn't give up in Vietnam, and I won't give up here," Kerry added.

I love that The Onion acknowledges the mathematical and logical inconsistencies but refuses to address them. It’s not like there was a “none of the above” ballot option, after all!

We also hear from real-life political commentators like Dick Bennett and Larry Sabato, plus Kerry campaign manager Mary Beth Cahill and DNC Chairman Terry McAuliffe.

The Onion had a couple of topical stories related to federal law and regulations on Feb. 4, 2004.

“FDA To Ban Ephedra” was a big deal, as this stimulant used in weight-loss products was both popular and dangerous. The Onion asked people on the street what they thought. This is a good collection of jokes, but my favorite is this:

"You can ban the drug ephedra, but you'll never be able to ban what ephedra stands for."

Angela Hall • Teacher

The FDA is still enforcing this ban, as a 2022 warning letter illustrates. And with the new wave of weight-loss drugs, I wonder whether we’ll be back here in a few years with more bans.

“The Patriot Act's Problem Parts” reacts to a federal judge nullifying part of the Patriot Act in 2004. I’ve written before about how The Onion essentially ignored the Patriot Act until 2003, so this is a notable re-emphasis.

I like these jokes, some of which imply the Patriot Act is a super-law capable of repealing constitutional amendments (the 1st, 3rd and 19th) and, well, the entire Constitution! I like that “terrorism,” “terrycloth” and “tea” are all equally bad words. And hello to Sen. Russ Feingold. I hope he was let out of the broom closet.

What’s going on with celebrities?

“Michael Jackson Hires Magical Anthropomorphic Giraffe As Defense Lawyer” is a great visual, and the further we move away from Jackson’s trials and death, the more plausible this seems to me.

Jackson’s longtime friend Elizabeth Taylor also shows us in “Celebrity Saddened By Death Of Other Celebrity,” which is a great joke. Even when the remembrances are sweet, like Adam Sandler recalling Carl Weathers this week, it’s still a celebrity talking about a fellow celebrity.

Taylor is sad about Bob "Captain Kangaroo" Keeshan, who I only know by name, and Ann Miller, who is not Penelope Ann Miller.²

Area People doing Area Things

The Chevrolet Tantrum, one of the new road-rage-fueled vehicles.

“New Anger-Powered Cars May Revolutionize The Way We Drive” opens with the terrible news that gas prices are approaching $2 a gallon. $2!

I love that this is the automaker version of “going green” — powering cars off America’s most renewable resource: anger. Or, as they call them, “fury fuels”:

"By drawing a significant percentage of its motive power from the unbridled temper of the American motorist, the new anger-powered car will change, or at least take mechanical advantage of, the way Americans drive," General Motors vice-chairman Robert A. Lutz said. "We plan to have these furiously efficient machines careening down America's highways, byways, and sidewalks within two years."

This reads like early news articles about the engineering complexities of electric cars. Except, you know, it’s demented:

"The average motorist traveling a clogged American highway produces hundreds of kilowatt-hours of negative energy per infuriating drive. The Instigator motor converts this emotional energy into kinetic energy by a process most drivers—people too goddamn stupid to use their goddamn blinkers when they change goddamn lanes—will never be able to understand. Just trust me, dumbasses, it works."

That quote is from a former engineer at General Motors’ “Instigator” project. Why is he no longer there? Well, he’s “serving a seven-year prison sentence for vehicular manslaughter and high-efficiency battery.” Thank you to The Onion for sneaking another joke in that sentence.

The Onion put a lot of love into the vehicle names — the Umbrage, the Acrimony, the Tantrum, the Lincoln Frown Car. Even the Plymouth is back!³

I found this last passage interesting. Automakers (mostly Tesla?) have done a lot to overcome the hippie stereotype that The Onion pushes here:

If successful, the venture may vindicate the auto engineers still smarting over their brief and disastrous flirtation with love-and-happiness power, a trend that failed commercially and eventually petered out during the positive-energy crisis of the 1970s.

Tendulkar (front) and coworkers.

“Coworkers Dying To Tell Man He's Going To Be Fired” doesn’t feel like a story The Onion would write today, if only because its union has been battling ownership and nearly went on strike!

Firings always mean something went wrong. Yet, when someone is incompetent and a jerk, you might not feel as bad about their departure. At Reynolds Business Machines, that employee is Mark Tendulkar, who sells Canon printer products:

"He's totally unaware he's about to be thrown over!" Fontaine added. "I even heard him talking about needing a bigger desk yesterday. I'm dying!"

Since word of the firing spread, a sense of excitement has filled the office.

"I don't even want to go meet a client, in case the shit goes down while I'm out," Fontaine said. "It's all I can do to not tell him myself. Still, though, a small part of me wants it to be a total surprise when the ax comes down. The look on his face will be priceless!"

It’s worth the reminder in 2024 that this is not some riff on “The Office.” It’s simply another Onion story about regular people’s office lives.

Tendulkar does not help his cause, nicknaming himself “the Marksman” and bragging about selling one MultiPASS MP360:

Sitting in the sales pit, surrounded by his busy coworkers Tuesday, Tendulkar casually shelled pistachios as he circled loungewear items in a J. Crew catalog and browsed vacation packages on Orbitz.com.

Tendulkar is not amazing. But his coworkers are brutal. I don’t love this workplace.

Bogen's uncompleted presentation weighs heavy on his mind.

Ah, “Man Stays Up All Night Procrastinating.” To be fair, I’ve worked a ton of hours lately. My procrastinating for this week’s issue occured in early January when I could have written 3 or 4 issues ahead but did not. For added insult, this story is set in Arizona, which is where I’m traveling!

Funny enough, I remembered that picture of the guy cleaning his refrigerator much more than the actual story.

Of course, as a college student 20 years ago, I didn’t relate to a bank manager giving a speech at an industry function. After many years in B2B media and content marketing, however — wow, this hits home:

Bank manager Ron Bogen, 29, worked into the wee hours of the morning not writing his speech for the semi-annual Compass Bank⁴ Best Practices Conference Tuesday.

"If I'm a bit slow today, it's because I was up all night working on that presentation," Bogen told his coworkers over lunch Tuesday. "It was a lot slower going than I thought it would be, and a bunch of other stuff came up while I was working on it. All in all, it took me, like, 10 hours."

Bogen gets so much done that’s not writing his speech — he’s cleaning the bathoom, picking up dirty clothes, calling everyone in his family, applying Windows XP security patches. organizing his DVDs and downloading a single from Jay-Z’s Black Album (possibly “Change Clothes,” the lead single).

This is a beautifully written article. I’m guessing many of us have been in Bogen’s shoes. If you never procrastinate, please comment and share your secrets.

Other Area People items include:

• “Parent Takes Out $100 Bill In Front Of Wide-Eyed 7-Year-Old” is a great visual. But does the boy look more frightened than amazed?

• “Quaaludes Are Back, Reports Quaalude-Taking Journalist”: My time in journalism came too late for this. I do love this as a throwback joke. Would it be like talking about the original Four Loko in 2024?

• “Boy, Dolphin No Longer On Speaking Terms”: Some kids don’t appreciate a dolphin keeping them safe. I love that “Skippy refused to comment.”

• “10th-Grade Class Watches Ben-Hur For Two Weeks”: I was in a high-school English class that watched the 1960s and 1990s “Romeo and Juliet” movies, but I honestly couldn’t tell you if we read the play. I’ve also never seen “Ben-Hur,” but 211 minutes!

• “Pep Talk Laced With Personal Threats”: This approach will either work 100% or 0%: "Either you get up off of this couch and allow the healing process to begin, or I'll open up a wound so deep, it'll leave more than just an emotional scar."

• “Man Finds Self Back At Porn Store Again”: What a quaint idea of the “porn store.” Also, Jasper doesn’t appear to be a real place in Wyoming.

Were the infographics good?

“Top Notes Left By Roommates” still amuses me, but I’m sure I had stronger feelings 20 years ago when I had 4 roommates, 2 of whom had girlfriends practically living with us. “Your parents stopped by to take me out to dinner” makes me laugh.

What columnists ran?

“I Happened To Be In The Neighborhood And Horny” is a great reminder that some themes are timeless; it’s just the delivery vehicle that’s changed. This article would be a text today, I guess? Certainly not a “let me ring your doorbell”!

This quote is so precise in summing up exactly why this guy didn’t want to have sex for a while but suddenly does:

Boy, it must have been at least nine months since the last time we talked. Can you believe it? I know I can't. I would have come by sooner, but I've been busy at work, and I was getting laid pretty regularly there for a while. I was in this area a few weeks ago, but I didn't see your light on, and I wasn't in the mood. But tonight, well, that's a different story.

He also says, a la Smoove B. but much less suave, “I like your hair like that. It's very grab-able.”

I’ll spoil the ending. Sex does not occur.

Our other column is “I Totally Called Yesterday's Surge In Tech Stocks!” which, my God, can’t we take this conversation back to SeekingAlpha, Reddit or private newsletters where it belongs?

Geoffrey Fox embodies the stockbroker stereotype — loud, braggy, loves to make jokes that are more crude than clever (“You chumps put the "anal" back in analyst") and also has a last name he can pun off of:

Do you hear the footsteps? Can you feel the hot breath on the back of your neck? Taste my exhaust, motherfucker. You've been Foxed!

This is a very Rob Corddry character, and I mean that as a compliment to Rob Corddry, not Geoffrey Fox.

There’s an extended riff on how the NASDAQ is like a sexual conquest that I won’t share here. To be fair, Fox appears to understand stock market fundamentals:

The stock market is a feeling. It's a state of mind. If I even have to explain why, after several days of stock devaluation and bearish news from market leaders like Intel and Cisco, there would be a significant Tuesday-afternoon rally pushing many mid-level properties to 52-week highs—well, you're in the wrong fucking business. Sorry. Take the elevator down 20 flights, get in your car, and drive to the mall, because I hear there's an opening at Radio Shack.

What was the best horoscope?

My favorite horoscope this week is Pisces. For whatever reason, this one reminds me of my friend and old co-worker Jesse’s Micro Flash Fiction account, which is a delightful read:

Pisces | Feb. 19 to March 20

Most people are either part of the solution or part of the problem, but you're one of the red herrings thrown into the answer set to mislead test-takers.

I also enjoyed the horoscopes about Pam Grier and Van Halen.

What holds up best?

I’m biased toward “Man Stays Up All Night Procrastinating,” although y’all let me know if “Vibrator Left On All Night” and/or “10th-Grade Class Watches Ben-Hur For Two Weeks” are still relatable.

What holds up worst?

I don’t think The Onion would casually throw around phrases like “deaf mute” as it does in “Coworkers Dying To Tell Man He's Going To Be Fired.” Especially when there are a million ways to insult a clueless, incompetent co-worker!

"Mark ought to know it's coming," sales representative Cory Fontaine said. "You'd have to be a deaf mute to have trouble selling a Canon 3200 after the price reduction, but he hasn't closed on one. Not one."

What would be done differently today?

As always, more politics, more celebrities, more slideshows. I don’t mean this as a criticism — I think The Onion has done a remarkable job adapting to the digital-only era when many publications would havev gone out of business.

As I wrote in 2013 in the essay that eventually sparked this newsletter:

The old Onion was in many ways the world’s most precisely crafted, warped replica of the stereotypical local newspaper, and therefore must change.

…

Well, as you may have heard, newspapers are dead, culturally if not otherwise. And so while that doesn’t make The Onion irrelevant, I would argue that it removed much of the structure underpinning its humor. Parody on the Web can be smart and rooted in something, but it doesn’t have to be. And it’s unclear if The Onion knows, especially given its recent turnover and move, what that “something” is.

Just surviving is an achievement, but The Onion still does funny things — and created a remarkable spin-off in Clickhole.

Thank you

Thank you for being here! Please share this newsletter with anyone you think might enjoy it.

Next week, we check in on Saddam Hussein, civics class, flying helicopters and planes, moonbases and a West Point prank gone wrong.

1. The Kucinich news is very recent, although brewing for a while

2. I’ve actually seen multiple movies with Ann Miller (“You Can’t Take It With You,” “On The Town,” “Mulholland Drive”) but didn’t recognize the name.

3. Our minivan growing up was a Plymouth Voyager. That car somehow lasted 203,000 miles and almost 20 years.

4. As best I can tell, Compass Bank was part of BBVA USA and stopped using this branding in 2008.