Cracker Ingenuity

PUBLISHERS WEEKLY MAR 1, 2003

Couched as a how-to guide for today's belt-tightening times, this book ostensibly celebrates the all-American resourcefulness that has turned used refrigerators into beer keg coolers and old bathtubs into lawn shrines. But practicalities aside, this is, of course, meant to be a satire, taking the idea of"making do with what you have" to ridiculous extremes. Thus readers get tips for turning old televisions into fish tanks, converting broken down pick-up trucks into backyard pools and using Kool-Aid as hair dye. All this is supposed to have readers laughing down their noses at redneck know-how. If only it were that funny. Though the authors obviously have an eye for tackiness, they fail to turn their material into the stuff of a successful mock handbook. There's no evident irony in their suggestions for how to rig your meter to rip off the power company or how not to pass a drug test, nor in their recipes for such trailer trash delicacies as"Velveeta Fudge" or"Tater-Tot Casserole." Like too much of the book, these recipes are only raw material, still waiting to be shaped into jokes. For all their condescension, filmmaker Elliott and English teacher Lowry have achieved the opposite of the"crackers" they ridicule: instead of making something out of nothing, they've made nothing out of something. B&w photos, 20 illus.