Lately there's been a big publication surge in memoirs by youngish, attractive-ish women who write comedy. The prototypical example is, of course, Chelsea Handler, or possibly Sarah Silverman, both of whom had books on the bestseller lists recently.I have to say, after trying to read one of Handler's books, I wasn't super-impressed. The writing is fine, but I'm just not amused when a woman says dirty shit that is traditionally the field of men. That in itself isn't enough to make a book hilarious. As knee-slappers go, my knee wasn't sore in the least, or as she would probably say, Not nearly as sore as a cheerleader's outer labia after prom.
See, it's not that hard.
But the real crime of this whole situation is that, as much as I am not a big Handler fan, publishers start scrambling to publish shit imitations of books that are bringing in big money.
That brings us to You'll Never Blue Ball in This Town Again by Heather McDonald. Please allow me to share a bit of the summary:
You'll Never Blue Ball in This Town Again is the laugh-out-loud story of an attractive Los Angeles woman who found herself in the predicament of being an unwilling virgin. As an actress, writer, and stand-up comedienne, Heather McDonald passed up ample opportunities to have her V-card revoked by handsome, rich, and sometimes even fabulously famous men, but she could not bring herself to do "it" until well after her friends had been deflowered.
Okay, let's take a minute here.
First off, how bad do you feel for this person? Let's see: hot, good career, pursued by desirable members of the opposite sex...yeah, I think she'll be just fine.
Where is the conflict in this story? My understanding here is that she was doing fine, wanted to get rid of her virginity, and had the opportunity to do so. What the fuck is the problem?
And for a laugh-out-loud book, there wasn't one fucking joke in that whole paragraph, the first paragraph that people are likely to read. Why wouldn't you throw them a bone? She's supposedly a writer AND comedienne, so how about a little punch-up on the script here? Watch:
"...passed up ample opportunities to have her V-card revoked by handsome, rich, and sometimes even fabulously famous men..."
Becomes
"...passed up ample opportunities to have her V-card revoked by handsome, rich, and sometimes even fabulously rich men..."
Okay, it's not solid gold or anything, but changing one word turned an unimportant plot point into at least some semblance of comedy. It took all of two seconds.
Next we get a quote from Handler herself, which is fine, but begs this question: Why would you bury the Handler quote in the middle of this thick summary, meanwhile a quote attributed to all three Kardashian sisters (somehow, as if they were speaking in unison) is highlighted in its own offset bubble? Since when did we ever give a fuck about the Kardashians opinion on BOOKS. If you want to talk eye makeup and how easy it is to bounce back physically from having a baby when you're 24, that's one thing, but I'd rather leave the literature to someone who isn't famous for starring in a sex tape. Why not highlight the quote by Handler, someone who is respected in this particular field, and bury the Kardashian quote in the text, or off in a quarry somewhere?
Finally, we get to the author bio. Pardon the length, I had nothing to do with it:
Heather McDonald is a stand-up comic, and full-time writer and producer on E!'s top-rated show, Chelsea Lately. She appeared in the Wayans Brothers' White Chicks and Dance Flick, was a regular on MTV's Lyricist Lounge, and had guest roles on hit television shows like Frasier, Malcom in the Middle, and Reno 911. Heather and her husband, Peter, have been married for nine years and have three children. Follow her at [twitter and facebook URL's removed because fuck that shit]
Okay, long. Too fucking long. It's an author bio, not a fucking resume. Jesus christ, I wouldn't have a bio that said, "Pete worked at McDonald's, Target, Wal-Mart..." and so on. Maybe you're trying to convince me that you must be funny, but if everyone from a Wayans movie was funny...well, no one from a Wayans movie is funny.
And what the fuck, you killed all the suspense of the book. You've been married NINE years? So we can assume that this dry spell ended with your marriage, and has been over for nine years?
According to my sources over at the google, that would have made you 27 when you lost your virginity, assuming that you didn't bang anyone, including your husband, before marriage. Is that terribly shocking? Is that blowing someone's mind? It's outside the norm, sure, but not so much so that I'm curious as to your insights about it. And getting married at 25 probably puts you on the other side of that particular curve. Losing your virginity at 25 is a little on the late side, but getting married at 25 is a little on the early side, so do the math and decide whether or not it's super bizarre.
Not to get too far off track here, but this feels like that book Nickeled and Dimed by Barbara Ehrenreich in which Barb takes on a number of America's shittiest jobs in order to see how the other half lives. The fundamental problem with this book that Barb doesn't understand is that the shitty part of working at Wal-Mart isn't working at Wal-Mart. The shitty part of working at Wal-Mart is depending on it to survive, knowing that this is about the best you're going to do, and taking massive amounts of shit from your boss because you NEED this job. Need it. Corralling carts isn't a means to an end for book writing. It's your career.
Here's the shitty thing about having your virginity: Wanting to get rid of it and not having the opportunity. Not having any possible chance is very different from having the chance and waiting for the right thing to come along. Ask any 16 year-old boy.
McDonald was being picky, not unbangable, and that's okay. That's great. Anyone besides someone trying to get in her pants would support that decision because what the hell is the difference? Nobody is begrudging your ability to make that choice, but that choice doesn't interest me.
I'd much rather read a book by someone who was a 25 year-old virgin who had no real possibility to lose it, where you look at a picture and think, Good luck, motherfucker. That's some compelling shit.
As a book, totally uninteresting. I'm just not interested. I didn't even bother to come up for two different words for "uninterested," that's how bored I am. We all got relationship issues, and a lot of them are more fascinating to me than the decision to not fuck.
The book could be great. Maybe there's some angle on this whole thing that would really help it make sense, but shouldn't that be included in the summary? And shouldn't the summary have some fucking jokes in it? It's like having a trailer for a comedy movie that only shows the stupid last thirty fucking minutes where we win the big game and learn a little bit about ourselves. Fuck you, Dodgeball! Everyone talks about how hilarious that fucking movie is, but what about the last half hour where we have some dumb fucking uplifting story where there are almost no jokes, they win the big game, get the girl, and you might as well have a voice-over that says, "Well, things turned out pretty okay"?
Anyway, back to the book.
Here's what you're selling me: An attractive woman, dressed nicely on the front, and an explanation that she lost her virginity somewhat later than most because of choices she made, although what those choices are is unclear. Whoop de shit.
To conclude, the magic number for this book is
57
which is the number of dollars someone would have to pay me to make me read it.
By the way, if you check the Amazon reviews, you'll see a lot of 1-star reviews that cite the same problems almost universally, which is that the book is not funny, not interesting, and spends a good portion talking about sorority life.
If you also check the 5-star reviews, you'll also notice that most of them are brief, and that somehow this book was so compelling that it was the only review many of these people had written. Fascinating...
No comments:
Post a Comment