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Fifteen Minutes of Fame: Using Ithaca as Grounds for Satire

By Dan Greenman

Cornell University has announced plans to dump chemicals into Cayuga Lake to keep the lake heated during the winter. “Lake Source Heating” is similar to Cornell's controversial Lake Source Cooling project, although it has a different effect. Also, Wal-Mart will be moving inside local independent bookstore Autumn Leaves.

So says the Fifteen Minute Special.

The four-page publication, which looks like a newsletter and resembles the popular, satirical news source The Onion, first hit the streets of Ithaca in early March. Designed to give Ithacans a laugh, the Fifteen Minute Special has also reported that Green Star Co-op market has installed showers for “its more naturally fragrant customers,” and that a broken condom machine in the men's room of Micawber's Tavern is “decidedly pro-life.”

“Ithaca takes itself really seriously sometimes,” says Eric Klein, the publication's founder and main writer. “Look, if you can't laugh at yourself, you've got to move on. Even the hardest working activist has to laugh at Lake Source Heating.”

Aside from the joke news, the Fifteen Minute Special also contains mock classified ads where readers can find their stolen clothes for sale, a comic strip, tomorrow's winning lottery numbers and horoscopes written by “Ithaca's Sassiest Streetwalker.”

Sometimes a story idea pops into Klein's head while he's in the shower. More commonly though, the ideas come up in social atmospheres - often local bars where a few drinks can lead to some pretty creative thoughts.

“The classifieds,” he says, “you get three people and a bunch of Guinness together, and they come out.” Klein carries around a stack of papers, the edges stained with beer, in his pocket. They have headline ideas and the beginnings of pieces typed and scribbled all over. “Especially when you've had four or five cocktails – that's when you can really come up with something. That's why the pen and paper are key.”

It is fitting that most of the publication's content is thought up in bars, because that's where it was born.

While Klein attended Ithaca College almost 10 years ago, he and his friends spent many nights playing pinball at bars like Chapter House and Chanticleer Tavern, creating alter-egos for themselves, which turned into long-running inside jokes.

After Klein graduated in 1996 and moved to Florida, he joined an email list for the 20-plus pinball players. They would write satirical, humorous stories to one another, often incorporating their pinball characters. (His alter-ego was Whiskeycyclone because, “You should see me on four shots of whiskey; it's a thing of beauty.”) “The problem was that the whole thing was only applicable to a dozen people on the planet,” Klein says.

When Klein moved back to Ithaca from Florida, he wanted to continue writing humorously, so he started Fifteen Minute Special with the help of about six friends, several of them from the pinball days.

“Most, if not all, of us are Onion readers,” Klein says. “A lot of the style I have is Onion-ish, because I've been reading that for years.”

Similar to Fifteen Minute Special, which uses Ithaca as its grounds for topics, The Onion started out as a local paper in Madison, Wis. and mainly joked about its own community, before it moved to New York to serve a national audience.

“Ithaca is a great place for satirical humor,” he says. “There is an anticipated negative response because people are really sensitive.”

Klein says he is trying to put out a new issue every month. The circulation for the first issue was 250, and was distributed to coffeehouses, Ithaca College and Cornell.

The trick, he says, is finding topics that make fun of ideas without taking sides in an argument.

“I know Ithaca well enough that I can take a moderate stance,” Klein says. “I'm writing to offend people that are my friends and people that I've never met. I want people to talk about things and think about things. People get bound up into that sense that, ‘I can't talk about that,’ or ‘I don't want to offend anybody.’”

For more informaiton on Fifteen Minute Special, email fifteenminutespecial@wownetcafe.com.

Dan Greenman is a senior journalism major, and Ithaca College is glad to be rid of him. Email him at dgreenm1@ithaca.edu