Me Talk Pretty One Day: Book Review

Go take a walk. Seriously. Walk around your house, around your hometown, around your neighborhood, around a city you've never been to before. Now tell me your thoughts and observations.  

It still won’t be as biting and critical as David Sedaris’ notes would be.

I picked up Me Talk Pretty One Day because I mistakenly thought that it was a funny story about a guy trying to learn French. There is a small piece about that, but really the book is a series of observations about his family, the French, Americans (and a sub-category of that: New Yorkers), meth-fueled art, and speech therapy coaches. It wasn’t a bad thing, it’s just that… I realized that I’m not overly fond of David Sedaris. Everyone called his work “hilarious”, “laugh out loud funny” and “sarcastic.” Fantastic, I thought. I like sarcasm and funny books. This should be good. The only part that I actually liked was the French teacher and her insults to the students. The rest of the book seemed like a self-indulgent pity party for Mr. Sedaris without trying to make it a pity party.

David Sedaris hates most things, most people, and wants everyone to love and adore him so that he can shove his success in their faces, turn them down or scoff at them. It’s like he wants to hate to want to be loved. Now there’s a psych case waiting to happen.

I didn’t like the period of his life that involved a lot of illegal drug-taking and so-called “art”, which is just post-modernist weird crap. I thought his family odd- past the point of funny and more into dysfunctional. I disliked his strange interests in things, choosing to learn “bottleneck”, “ash tray” and “lobotomy” in French over more practical phrases. Mostly, I disliked his overall personality. He is the type of person who would watch someone on the verge of a grisly death and memorize the details so that he knew how to tell the story to his friends later. Call me old-fashioned, but I call that morbid and crass.

However, there has to be a reason he is still writing books and people are giving these books good ratings: taste. There is clearly a market for snarky, bitter people who love themselves and love to hate to be loved. Ugh.

Basically, know your taste. Sure, it’s good to reach outside of your comfort zone and try something new (and this was quite outside of my comfort zone), but there’s no need to push yourself to continue something you dislike. For instance, I won’t be picking up another David Sedaris book anytime soon, though I will concede that I was oddly transfixed by a life so different from mine. It’s kind of like the feeling you get when you can’t look away from a car accident scene.

Rating: 2.5 stars out of 5

You would probably like Larry David, Steve Martin, maybe Dennis Leary or Bill Burr. I’m not sure. Basically, any comedian who whines about how the world owes them something is a good bet for people with those “tastes.” You might also like Chuck Palahniuk if you enjoyed the morbidity and peculiarity, but would’ve liked it to be grittier. 

Dad Is Fat: Observations From a Pale, Balding Man

Hot pockets. Paleness. Laziness. Cinnabons. What do these things have in common? Technically, America would have been an acceptable answer, but the real answer I was looking for was Jim Gaffigan. I suppose he would be a good spokesperson for America. I certainly wouldn’t mind.

Recently he released a book to cover almost all the bases of comedy- TV, movies and books. He just needs a podcast and he’s set! Although that may be a little difficult seeing as how he already does shows and has five kids. As someone who grew up in a house of seven kids, two parents and after I turned 14, a dog, I understand the chaos of living in a big family. Yes, like Gaffigan, I am Catholic. I am the fifth child, so I don’t remember spending much time with younger children. I was one of them at a time! I couldn’t observe them with the mind of an adult.  

Jim Gaffigan’s nonfictional semi-autobiography about parenting is only one of…well… about 20. Maybe less. I know Dave Barry wrote one (or four) funny books about kids and parenting. He is a comedy columnist, after all. Bill Cosby is probably known for one of the best, and he has even worked it into his stand up. It is hilarious. But then again, it’s Bill Cosby. Of course it’s hilarious.

The book itself was easy to read, the chapters were short, and some well-placed pictures added to the humor and sentimentality. It was written with a lot of voice and personality, and if you close your eyes, you can practically see Jim Gaffigan saying it into a microphone in front of thousands of people. Actually, he has even written in some jokes that I recognized from his stand up, but that doesn’t make then any less funny. Jim Gaffigan is also quite self-aware, which makes it nice when he calls himself out on an obvious joke. Take this one: “It’s not just leaving; it’s leaving with stuff. There is just so much stuff to bring when you have young children. When you’re headed to the park, you must pack diapers, wipes, juice boxes, and sunscreen. And then there is the stuff for the kids. (Thank you, I’m here all book.)”

This is what you're supposed to do with books, right?

He knows the joke is easy and a little groan-worthy, yet he couldn’t help himself. Instead of trying to pass it off as something he labored over, he made a joke about his joke. (Jokeception) He knows what he did and he turned a potentially eye-rolling reaction into a wry smile, if not an outright laugh or chuckle. I’ve known a few shows to do that, when a character isn’t really in an episode and instead of trying to work it in, they make a joke out of it. In a brilliant UK series called The IT Crowd, they reference that sort of thing multiple times: once, when actor Richard Ayoade wasn’t in the episode much, they turn his return into a joke. The writers know the audience knows, the audience knows the writers know they know, and so on.

The best part about the book is that even though Gaffigan balances his slightly sarcastic, self-deprecating, dry humor with genuine sincerity and gratefulness for his family. He may make jokes about how hard parenting is and how little sleep he gets (he’s down to three naps a day! Oh the inhumanity!), but he counters with a sentence or two about how amazing his wife is and how much he loves his kids. There is no doubt that he means them with all his heart. To keep from getting too sentimental, he comes back with another joke. It is supposed to be a funny book, after all. A classic example: “I am undeniably lucky to have married a woman like Jeannie. She is energetic, hardworking, and takes incredible care of the kids and me. However, during our marriage there have been periods when she has become rather lazy. Jeannie describes these periods as “pregnancy.” My view has always been, pregnant or not, that does not mean she can’t move some cinder blocks. We are a team, and I have to take a second nap today.

Of course, pregnant women are not lazy. In fact, they are the opposite of lazy. Whatever they are doing, they are also always growing a baby. Even when they are sleeping, they are growing a baby. They are constantly multitasking. I’m often not even tasking.”

Boy, talking about naps sure is-zzzzzzz..... 

Obviously, this book is best suited for people who are parents or have spent a fair amount of time with children between the ages of one and seven, but don’t worry if you’re not in that demographic. The jokes are still funny, but you might not get as much out of them or connect as well. It does help to have knowledge of kids and large family behavior, though. I know one child can be a handful, but bump that number up to five and have the older ones old enough to conspire against you and you’ve got yourself a real disaster zone. If you’re curious, you should inform Jim Gaffigan know that you’re interested in babysitting for him. He’ll call you back tomorrow. 

Bossypants: A Review

      Upon the shocking revelation that I will be reviewing books (Whoa! Your like totes the first person ever to review books online or in general!!! OMGZ lolololol you shuld b an editor!) Yes, that was poor grammar and spelling ON PURPOSE.

            Here goes nothing!

            Anyone who has any sense of humor or has any respect for American sketch comedy has heard of Tina Fey. If you haven’t, and I highly doubt that, I would suggest holing up in your room, locking the door, popping some popcorn and watching several straight hours of the best of SNL. The nineties edition. And then watching all 7 seasons of 30 Rock, because that show is amazing. She says in her book that they didn’t have many viewers, and that honestly shocked me. I love that show, and I can’t imagine why more people didn’t watch it! Probably off watching The Big Bang Theory. Losers. (Now, it’s not like The Big Bang Theory hasn’t made me laugh, but just because it’s about three scientists and an engineer does NOT make it a smart comedy. Plenty of people have written about this, and I do not have the energy to get into an argument about this. You can read some other people's extensive rants about it here and here.  

            But I digress. The point is that if you love comedy or have a sense of humor, you would love Tina Fey’s book! She’s funny, fresh, funky, fantastic and all other words beginning with “f”! Okay, not all words, but you get my point. The book chronicles important moments (i.e. hilarious things that happened to her and not so much the sentimental ones) from her childhood to current day, but not so much that you have to take a break.

            If you like reading and learning about how it is that she went from awkward child in Pennsylvania to an awkward adult in New York, and along the way worked in sketch comedy and became a writer for SNL. I adore SNL, so I was extremely curious how one goes from just an average person to someone working for a major network, especially on a big hit show like SNL.

            I know a lot of you are thinking that you already don’t have enough time to read, let alone waste your time actually reading nonfiction, but I can assure you, it’s still entertainment, and you get to pick up little funny Fey tidbits along the way!

            Just buy it, alright? Or get it from your local library! Because everyone knows I hate paying for stuff, so I prefer the library.

Next week: I review the third Percy Jackson Heroes of Olympus, Mark of Athena. See ya then!