Onion Staff to Speak

Writer Joe Garden and photographer Chad Knackers from satirical newspaper The Onion  will speak about their lives and careers on Tuesday, April 1 from 7 p.m. - 9 p.m. in Hogan Suites B and C. The following satirical biography is courtesy of The Onion

Joe Garden is a Pisces and a child of divorce who was born above a bar on Chicago's near south side in 1970. Shortly thereafter, his main forms of entertainment were watching Sesame Street (where he learned to count to 10 in Spanish) and having his mom hold him over the fence so he could watch the rats.

As rats and the nearby juvenile detention center were not thought of as traditionally healthy distractions for a child, his family moved to Richland Center, Wisconsin, birthplace of both architect Frank Lloyd Wright and super awesome cartoonist Lynda Barry. Here, he was exposed to the worst of all possible worlds: crappy TV reception, back-to-the-land hippies and outdoor toilets.

At 18, he went as far as his meager dreams could take him, 60 miles away to the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Here, he learned about how to take drugs and have sex and fall in love repeatedly and fruitlessly. He also learned how to wash dishes, avoid management, sell liquor, and make people like him through force of will and a willingness to do the stupidest things for a cheap laugh.

It was in the course of selling liquor that he made the acquaintance of several members of The Onion writing staff. In 1993, then assistant editor now Futurama fancy pants Dan Vebber, amused by Garden's signs created only superficially to sell liquor, asked him to come to an Onion meeting with ten ideas. He still remembers some of those ideas, and is not ashamed to say that they were mediocre.

Since that time, he created two of The Onion's "popular" recurring characters, Jim Anchower and Jackie Harvey. He has also moved back to Chicago, then away from the city that spawned him in order to rejoin the writers, full-time, in New York City. He deeply resents the notion that a geographic move to New York constitutes a sellout, and wonders how long he would have lasted as an office temp before killing himself.

In his spare time, he attends burlesque shows, screens monkey movies and sells stuff on eBay, including DNA, free postcards that you find in bars, CDs, sandwiches, and original haiku.

For additional information visit The Onion's Web site.

The above information is courtesy of The Onion.