Category Archives for Book Reviews

My Wife’s In Love With Michael Ian Black

I should never have introduced them. “Whatchoo watching?” “Stella.” Damn it. Why didn’t I stick with my usual response? “Porn.”

Ever since then she’s become obsessed with him. It’s all Michael Ian Black this, and Ryan Gosling that. But now, having just read his book, I understand why.

MIB and I have a lot in common. He likes the idea of banging a lot of chicks, but realizes he’s a relationship guy. Check. He wasn’t overly close with his unaffectionate dad. Check. He hates his kids. Check, sort of. I don’t like kids. But I don’t have them. I guess I just didn’t have the balls. I mean, technically I have the balls to produce the sperm necessary to have kids, just not the courage.

Yeah, reading his bio has been a real pleasure. Pleasure in the way people like reading about themselves kind of pleasure, a.k.a. the best kind. After sex. I assume. As I said, I’m married. To the most wonderful woman in the world. So it only stands to reason she be in love with the two most wonderful men.

© Comedy Central



Book Review: You’re Not Doing It Right by Michael Ian Black

“The thing about Nicki Minaj is shut up.” – Michael Ian Black 

If I live to be 200 (and I really hope I don’t), I will never write something that witty. Michael Ian Black, meanwhile, probably found it in his morning dump.

It’s not just his thoughtful social commentary that made me a fan. It’s also his snazzy dress sense, and the fact that he has three names. (Jennifer Love Hewitt and Haley Joel Osment fans know what I’m talkin’ bout.)

I first heard of MIB when Cameron started watching a show called Stella. Unfortunately it got cancelled soon after, though I can only assume the two events were unrelated.

The show was so good, I insisted on paying full price for the DVD. In hindsight it was cruel of Comedy Central to call it “Season One,” but maybe that was their idea of a joke.

Fortunately I discovered MIB’s blog and his book, My Custom Van, both of which made me laugh in a way I haven’t since my psycho ex died. 

Like many comedians, MIB alternates between faux bravado and vrai self-doubt. But instead of just sitting around feeling like an impostor, he put his anxieties about feeling like one into book form for the rest of us to judge. The result is You’re Not Doing It Right: Tales Of Marriage, Sex, Death And Other Humiliations.

If you liked Couplehood by Paul Reiser, you should probably stop reading this now. Seriously, find another blog. But if you like your humour honest and unfiltered like old Simpsons episodes or Santorum’s speeches, you’ll love You’re Not Doing It Right.

Black writes about childhood, marriage, fatherhood, feeling like a failure, and Kevin Federline in a way that makes you believe, if only for a second, that maybe your own life isn’t so pathetic.

He’s also one of the few people who can use the word “cunty” and still somehow come across as charming.

Maybe he should call himself “The straight David Sedaris.” He’d probably sell a lot more books that way. It could catapult him to the top of the bestseller list, and then who knows? He might just believe he did finally something right.

But I doubt it.

You can buy the book here, here and here. Also here.

Book Excerpt: from An Autobiography of Cameron Algie (after having read The Secret)

I was almost embarrassed when they called my name.

De Niro had given arguably the greatest performance of his life. Ralph Fiennes certainly deserved it, and was still due from Schindler’s List. Brad Pitt I didn’t mind beating. He’s just a pretty face anyway. (You know I’m kidding, Braddy.) But it was my night at the Oscars. Again.

I got up for the twelfth time of the night. I would, of course, have to go up again to collect Best Picture. The newspapers would have to fight over the headline, “Best Movie Ever lives up to name.”

I joked about running out of speeches, and did this make me the “Best Actor Ever,” for which I got a standing ovation. I brought Sally with me to share the moment, knowing there would be too many people on stage for Best Picture.

At the after-party, I turned away from Ricky Gervais – with a joke, of course – and turned to Sally with a smile. We kissed long after Kanye was done singing Power (a song he admitted he’d written with me in mind). I looked into her eyes.

“How am I supposed to improve on 2011? Best Movie Ever is number one at the box office, grossing $763 million its first weekend.”

“I know.”

“The Only Show is the number one show on TV, and my youtube channel has more hits than Gaga and Bieber combined.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Our book is a New York Times bestseller. And George Clooney just told me I’ve been named Sexiest Man Alive. Though that could be him flirting. He’s always had a thing for me. Dirty old man.”

That’s when Sally told me the five most important words I would ever hear.

“I don’t know about sexiest. Top five, maybe.”

Those weren’t the words. I forgot she said those words. Ignore them. But then she smiled and said, “Just remember: Now is all there is.”

I didn’t need to worry about what I was going to do with the rest of my life. Or how I would top my monumental successes. I would just live in the moment.

People probably remember that party as the one where Stephen Colbert and I went skinny dipping in the infinity pool. But I’ll always remember it for that moment with Sally.

It’s funny to sit down and write about the past. To look back on what you thought were successes at the time, not knowing you would eclipse them with even bigger achievements so soon after. But it’s those little steps I needed to take, to become who I am today.

 

Book Review: Born On A Blue Day

Born On A Blue Day: Inside The Extraordinary Mind of an Autistic Savant is the story Daniel Tammet.

The Raleigh News & Observer calls it ”Remarkable, revealing, and nearly flawless.”
“Honest, eloquent” raves The Cleveland Plain Dealer.
“Yawn.” – Me

Turns out his autism is plain old Asperger’s syndrome.

Big whoop.

Try growing up with four siblings, four of whom have Asperger’s. Only no one’s heard of Asperger’s yet, so you think that you’re the freak.

With my steady job, ability to make eye contact, and lack of criminal record, I’ve been the object of ridicule in my family for years.

My sister Janet was the Acid Queen of Yorkville in the ’60s. She and her husband made LSD in their bathtub, and kept $100 bills stacked in the freezer.

At least it wasn’t body parts.

She got busted eventually, of course. When the RCMP arrested her, she demanded to go to the washroom – alone – and calmly flushed the evidence down the toilet.

(I, on the other hand, couldn’t bring home stickers I found at school without tearfully confessing to my parents.)

Twenty years later she was busted again, this time for bilking the Old Age Pension.

Apparently she took the names of dead people from gravestones and used their I.D. I say “apparently” because we’ve never discussed it; I found out from co-workers who saw it on the news.

Janet’s disdain for the law is balanced by a bizarre reverence for etiquette. Talking too loud, saying “can” instead of “may,” and chewing gum are all serious offenses. So it’s only natural that next in line would be our loud, slang-talking, gum-chewing sister, Marion.

For as long as I can remember, Marion’s been a magnet for chaos. From losing her wallet on Christmas Eve, to contracting Legionnaire’s Disease, to getting evicted when her roommate turned their home into a crack den, if something can go wrong, it will, usually in spectacular fashion.

Like most people with Asperger’s, Marion chose a solitary career in writing. Compared to Janet she seems pretty normal, until you look at her circle of friends: astrologers, compulsive gamblers, schizophrenics, professional lab rats, and nuttiest of all, other writers. But where Marion is into the occult (she was married to a palm reader), our brother Lloyd is a card-carrying atheist.

Like many people with Asperger’s, he has a limited range of interests. Or should I say, interest. He’s spent the last 40 years in his basement, building and communing with computers.

Whether from the isolation, the Asperger’s, or both, his social skills are pretty sketchy. Dinners at his place involve me smiling awkwardly at his wife while Lloyd sits, eyes closed, and complains about the “terrible food.”

What he lacks in diplomacy, he makes up for with deadpan humour. I’ve cried more than once for taking his jokes seriously.

SFX: (phone ringing)

“Hello?”

“Hey, I’ve got a great idea for making a lot of money. It’s simple. I just hack in to the banks’ computers and take a penny from every account electronically. They’ll never know.”

“You’re kidding, right?”

“No.” (long pause) “You’re an accomplice now, by the way.”

“WHAT?! Why?”

“Because you listened.”

I might’ve laughed if our sister wasn’t Janet.

Then there’s Sitara, a.k.a. Astrid, a.k.a. Batul, Samantha, Lynn, Judith, Barbara and Derede. The last time I saw her, she was standing on the corner in a Muslim robe, clutching a Fendi handbag.

“Hey Sitara, how’re things?”

She smiled. “I’d be fine if I could just assassinate George Bush!”

“Great. Well, see you around.”

Sitara is closest to me in age, but we couldn’t be further apart otherwise. When I was obsessed with Snoopy and Woodstock, she was reading Chaucer and writing in iambic pentameter. She also talked to fences.

Before Sitara was diagnosed with Asperger’s, I blamed her eccentricity in part on her birth name. I mean, who wouldn’t be fucked up with a name like Derede?

“It’s Greek for Dorothy,” our Mom would explain when people asked.

Why she didn’t just name her Dorothy is a mystery best explained by the fact that our mother also has Asperger’s.

*          *          *          *          *          *

Smart but not a genius, creative but unfocused, I spent years trying to win my family’s approval. Then one night as I was channel surfing, I saw John Bradshaw.

He looked and sounded like a TV evangelist. I’d always been fascinated with Jim and Tammy Bakker, so I stopped to listen.

“Watch out for the black sheep of the family,” he said. “Chances are they said, ‘I’m getting out of here, these people are crazy!’”

The words hit me like a lightning bolt. You mean it’s OK to not be like the rest of my family?

From that moment on, everything changed. Now I accept myself and my family as individuals who just happen to be related. And have ungodly-wide feet.

As for Tammet, no question, he has an amazing mind. Thanks to a condition called synesthesia, he sees numbers as physical landscapes, and in 2004 he memorised Pi to 22,500 decimal places. He also speaks ten languages, including Esperanto.

All in all, Born On A Blue Day is an interesting read if you want to know more about Asperger’s.

Or you can just visit my family.

 

Book Review: On Writing by Stephen King

I hate Stephen King.

Not the man; I’m sure he’s nice. Boring and long-winded and weird-looking, but nice.

Just because he’s a world famous author who could buy the state of New York if he wanted, doesn’t mean he should stop dressing like a truck driver or shave his unibrow or learn how to fucking smile once in a while.

My problem isn’t that he looks like a freegan who cuts his own hair. Nor is the fact that he uses words like “pussy plugs.”

No, my beef with Stephen King has always been that I find his work, well, workmanlike.

Phrases like “She had begun to be tired” irk the shit out of me.  Either she’s tired or she isn’t, goddammit.

After suffering through Pet Sematary, Thinner, and the aptly-named Misery, I decided never to waste my life’s energy reading his crap again.

So when I typed in “books on writing” on Amazon, I laughed when On Writing came up. I chuckled some more as I clicked on the title, and chortled heartily at the five-star reviews.

By the time I clicked “Place My Order” I was falling off my exercise ball, mainly because my abs had given out.

When the book arrived I stuck it on a shelf and ignored it. For years I read dozens of other titles, and sometimes even the books themselves.

It was only when I’d read everything else and had to choose between On Writing and The Digital Video Handbook that I finally relented.

On Writing is divided into two sections: King’s memoirs, followed by a style guide.

I got to page three before I stopped.

It wasn’t King’s writing style so much as an anecdote about getting his eardrums punctured repeatedly with syringes. That scared me more than his axe-wielding caretakers, Satanic cars and AIDS-spreading vampires combined.

Skipping ahead to the second half, I was greeted by phrases like “bust your beak” and “country cornpone.” And yet, I grudgingly had to admit he had some good advice. I even learned a thing or two about editing.

That’s right, I learned about editing from a guy who’s written three 1,000-page behemoths.

I still wouldn’t give it five stars though.