Great writing tied into human experience

This is the opening to an Onion AV Club article that is just fantastic:

"During a recent vacation, I became strangely addicted to the slow-motion train wreck that is A&E's The Two Coreys. In my favorite episode, Corey Feldman, concerned that his tragicomic bud Corey Haim has become a hopeless pill-popper, convinces Todd Bridges and Pauly Shore to confront the lesser Corey about his substance abuse. As Bridges and Shore contemplate the task at hand, they're overcome with a profound sense of life's ridiculousness. How on Earth did they get there? What unspeakable crime did they commit in a past life to merit this karmic mind-fuck? I'm pretty sure at least one of them was Hitler, or at least a high-level Nazi. Even Pauly Shore, Todd Bridges, and Corey Feldman found the prospect of a semi-intervention featuring Pauly Shore, Todd Bridges, and Corey Feldman mind-boggingly insane. You know your life has spun out of control when Pauly fucking Shore is lecturing you about responsibility.

I know the feeling. There are times in everyone's life when the randomness of fate smacks you dead in the face. Don DeLillo, Kurt Vonnegut, and David Foster Wallace are/were masters at chronicling the often ugly, sometimes sublime preposterousness of the way we live. They allow readers to take a step back and see the things we all take for granted in a new, disorientingly foreign light, to see the bizarre in the familiar and the familiar in the bizarre."

To me, this is a truly interesting point and a connection that I find absolutely fabulous. Truly great writers (DeLillo, Vonnegut, and Palahnuik, who was not mentioned here but without a doubt belongs) can make the bizarre seem familiar and the familiar seem bizarre.

However, he goes about reaching this conclusion by watching a very unfamiliar scene unfold (albeit on TV). It's really really interesting to think about how people with such different interests and experiences live a totally different reality than us and it can be jarring to be a guest to view human experience from a totally different lense.

Two examples really pop up in my mind where this exact thought has popped in my head:

1) Way back in high school, at a Five Iron Frenzy (very very talented and amazing but ultra-Christian ska band) show, the opener got in a really terrible car accident on the way over. They had a fill-in opener and the show went on smoothly, but when Five Iron Frenzy got on, they asked the audience to pray and take a moment of silence for the band and their families. I'm far from religious, but the power in that room was intense and felt palpable. Essentially the black sheep in a room full of white lambs, it was really amazing to watch people engage their God and to charge the room with emotion and hope. I understood why religion has played such a formidable role in history and could see why it was such a vital part in people's lives.

2) Concert last weekend. I went to see Counting Crows (who rocked the house) open for Maroon 5 (who inexplicably closed). Counting Crows were fantastic but the crowd was not into at all, they didn't know the songs, and they were rudely talking over the quiet songs. I don't know how many times I heard Adam Durlitz called Sideshow Bob (from the Simpsons). That's all fine and well, but the thing that rocked me was when Counting Crows were over and I was forced to stay a few Maroon 5 songs to see how bad they could really be live. Well the answer is that bad, but that's not what I' m writing about. The audience, which was 95% young girls and couples, really really loved Maroon 5 and knew every word to every song. Not just the big ones. It was amazing to behold. I was struck by how different (See: had bad taste) these people were from the people I encountered on a daily basis and chose to associate with. It wasn't as profound or jarring, but I was struck by the self-selection and asburdity of the situation. I felt like an outsider, like I didn't belong there...

Anyways, that's all I got. Interesting stuff.