Customer Reviews

Kick Me: Adventures in Adolescence

5 star:		(29)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Remember those times in grade school when you were picked on or laughed at? The gym class you couldn't wait to end? That awkward first encounter with the opposite sex? Those tense moments performing in front of your classmates? Paul Feig's adolescent angst will make yours seem trivial in comparison. These essays about his experiences as an insecure, picked-on, but yet ever-hopeful kid from the wrong side of the popularity tracks will have you laughing and nodding as you recognize some of those same scenes from your own childhood.

Paul was a quiet and fearful boy obsessed with germs, undressing in the boy's locker room, and dealing with girls. He alternately either tried to gain acceptance from, or avoided the attention of, the other kids... all of which, of course, made him the target of ridicule or worse. He describes every anxious moment in his childhood from his unusual homemade elf costume in his first grade class play to his misgivings about his date at the senior prom. I suffered along with him on horrendous school bus trips. I felt sympathy for him when his teacher mispronounced his last name, prompting his classmates to dub him with an unfortunate permanent nickname. I cringed at his Little League and football announcer fiascos. I rooted for him when he performed in the school talent show. I worried about his decision to dress in his Mom's clothing for Halloween. And above all else, I laughed.

These stories are not just funny, however. They are masterpieces of observation about the social interactions among kids, or between kids and their parents and teachers. The anecdotes are undoubtedly exaggerated for effect, yet they ring true because they describe every adolescent's fears of fitting in. I recommend this well written and highly entertaining book.

Eileen Rieback

I picked up this book because I loved the show Freaks & Geeks. You see, Paul Feig, author of this book, also created the show. This book definetly fits right along, side by side, with Freaks & Geeks.

Paul Feig tells of his geeky and embarrasing adventure throughout school. Never have I laughed so much from reading a book. From his showering in gym escapade to the first time he discovered, erm, self love.

This is a must read for anyone who ever felt left out or completely embarrased during their school days. In fact this should be part of the required reading for school kids so they can see it could always be worse.

All jocks and cheerleader should pass, as they'll probably laughing at instead of with.

Paul Feig is a gifted writer and director. As a fan of his work on Freaks and Geeks and Undeclared, I was excited to read his memoir. His book is actually better than most of his TV work. There is a poignancy to the writing that really stands out (and could be found in some of his TV work too), but the book is always better than the movie anyway. The book is hilariously blunt. Most of us had one or two of these embarrassing events happen to us as children, but how many of us had 278 pages worth? You will indeed laugh so hard that you will cry and perhaps even want to cry. Feig is clearly one of the good guys. He remembers a time that was indeed simpler--but not one that has gone away. Every kid has his traumas reading about his make your own more endurable. I'm recommending this extraordinary book to everyone I know. If only more people had his honesty and insights, the young adult world would be a better place. Nevertheless, kids like Feig make super adults.

Without a doubt, if Paul Feig's KICK ME: ADVENTURES IN ADOLESCENCE were to suddenly become the next zeitgeist in comedic culture, it would be a totally justifiable harmonic convergence- all the evidence and reasoning behind such justification would be manifest within its pages. KICK ME will challenge the gut with all of its laughter-inducing anecdotes, all suffered by the hapless Mr. Feig- in a sense, the tome is like a literary version of a happy form of ipecac syrup, where guffaws are brought up instead of bile. So if you're feeling a bit disgruntled or are having a bad day, simply pluck this book from the shelf and use it to get rid of the agent which is poisoning your system.

KICK ME is a collection of stories which chronicle the abject youthful misadventures- forget what the title refers to them as, you definitely have to preface that third word with a mis- of Paul Feig, whose genius mind somehow extracted the quality-show to end all quality-shows, the unfortunately ephemeral FREAKS AND GEEKS, from the chaotic ether of unformed ideas and concepts (wherever/whatever the [heck] that is). Actually, I should take that back; forget this nonsense of a fantastical land that a Muse travels to for the benefit of its Master, bringing back raw, shapeless notions; in Mr. Feig's case, the lightbulbs were already there in his experiences, and his memoir is the proof, the explanation even, behind the eighteen episodes defining the socioecological parameters of circa-1980 high school fauna (which probably smoked a lot of flora in its time, to be sure). That show is not to be missed, and neither is this book. What KICK ME represents is a bible of commonalties in many ways; everything you read never seems strange or alien- you can relate, you swear you've been there before, the deja vu spontaneously transmogrifies into instant recollections of similar events from your own days gone by, the so-called "best time of your life", and you find the substitution of Mr. Feig's shoes in place of your own an easily acceptable event. And it becomes like the argument which attempts to rationalize the success of daytime talk shows: people relish the chance to see that they aren't alone. After reading KICK ME, most of us will realize that, although we believed ourselves to be lonely isolated islands surrounded by nothing but cold, cruel seas, each one of us was in fact part of a close-knit archipelago whose longitude and latitude on the social map were determined by the type of clique represented by such a group; in other words, whatever degree of nerdiness you aspired to, there at least were several others around you who were just as nerdy...and after that, well, there indeed was a long reach of shark-infested ocean.

Mr. Feig possesses an incredibly rare talent: he has the ability to convey in words analyses of certain situations that heretofore I have never been able to express with any cursory bit of verbiage, let alone process fully and satisfactorily in my mind. The reader will find many examples of such meritorious instances of this particular gift, but let me supply one stellar representative: the sharp deconstruction of a French kiss between the author and a girl who had just recently regurgitated a session of imbibing fermented spirits. That brings to mind a red flag about the work; one must realize that, since we are talking about a tome which in turn talks about high school experiences from the point of view of the male of the species, it would behoove you to keep in mind that there will be many descriptions of gross-out scenarios which will challenge even the strongest abdominal region (my own abdominal region is not even close to the middle percentile of strong stomachs, which rendered me susceptible to many a gagging bout during the chapter on germs and multiple persons drinking from the same can of beverage).

But it is not just the physical nausea you feel- it is also the emotional, as well. The chapter on the bus rides from ... and the nasty wasp-stinging inclinations of the "freak girls" resurrected the darker side of the public education system; completely fascinating, of course, but no doubt a tad scary as well. The point is, though, that Mr. Feig masterfully dissected each and every pivotal event in his formative years and made sure that every angle of each incident was properly measured and every theorem that could be possibly inferred from such data was indefatigably extracted. It can be seen, therefore, that this isn't really just a funny memoir; no, in the proper hands- read: in the hands of those about to enter the world of junior high- Mr. Feig's reminiscences could easily serve as an instruction manual, maybe even a textbook for survival (then again, as someone once stated, life is just one big continuation of high school anyway, so maybe this book is good for all demos).

One special note: the writing in KICK ME is, with no qualification, truly incomparable. Mr. Feig's stylings are crisp and efficient without being sparse and clipped; indeed, although his sentence structure is complex and at times packed, it nevertheless never came off as being inaccessible or bloated. Although the mere content of the book would have been suffice to carry it along, I believe the superlative execution of the syntax really brought it all together in the end.

KICK ME is, simply put, one of the best books I have ever had the pleasure of reading; about the only criticism I can levy towards it is a belief that it would have really benefited from a proper foreword and afterword. If you like to laugh, you'll love this. And if you think I've been too glowing about it, read the first couple of pages, and then get back to me...

I'm a HUGE fan of the cancelled (Why?!WHY!) series Freaks and Geeks, so of course when I learned the creator had written a series of stories about his own tortured adolescence, I had to have it. So many things that I loved about the tv series were present in Feig's memoirs. The gym class archipegalo rings particularly true for me. How well I remember the endless games of "Killer" (or "Battleball", as it was known in my school), the way even the most innocuous names could be twisted into something humiliating, the frightening "freak girls" who were worse than any male bully ever thought about being. From a former geek: It's obvious that he knows of which he speaks. And, as promised, he's gone on to do great things (please, please bring back Freaks and Geeks, please!), while his former tormentors probably lead dull and unimaginative lives.
For anybody who's survived middle school and looked back to see the humor~

This book perfectly captures growing up as a suburban geek in the late 1970's and early 1980's. A must read for serious fan of Freaks and Geeks - this is very much a prequel to the series. Read this memoir and find the seeds to the fictional series.

I really enjoyed Paul Feig's "Kick Me" -- a laugh-out loud tale of elementary, junior high & high school woes. My favorite chapter was definitely the one on his olive green Elf Costume, patched together from his dad's army/navy surplus store, and the attention it receives at the school's Christmas pageant.

Feig has a great 'voice' -- the events of his childhood in their own right are humorous, but ultimately it's his hilarious descriptions, word choice and literary comic timing that make the text come to life. I was literally laughing out loud (or stifling the laughs) while reading "Kick Me" on my daily subway commute.

What I also appreciated was that the other people who populated his book seemed real...funny, foible but *real.* Though someone else's review compared him to David Sedaris on a lesser scale, I'd disagree. Sedaris sometimes takes creative license (he acknowledges this as a technique used to disguise people) in describing people he's met on his various jobs and adventures, which can ultimately create cartoony caricatures. Feig's book avoids that...and his memories are more heartwarming and fun because of it.

I recommend it as a quick, fun read.

Paul Feig has acquired a real legion of fans as a result of his television show "Freaks and Geeks." And justifiably so. "Freaks and Geeks" was one of the best shows in the last twenty years. Feig's book "Kick Me" is just as enjoyable. As others here have commented the book contains equal doses of cringing and laughter. For most of us adolescence was painful and Paul's was off the scale. But his sense of humour and writing talents make his tales of teenaged angst a pleasure to read.

Well I thought my childhood was miserable, but apparently I've got very little on Mr. Feig. The poor guy really did have a hard time, it's hard to imagine it wouldn't have taken years of therapy to undo the psychological damage of the events described in this book. His description of gym class alone made me want to run for the hills. But Feig reports all of these traumatic incidents with admirable grace, humor and candor. But aside from being an entertaining read, Kick Me is an important book and for the following reasons should be compulsory reading for all children and the people who care for them.:
1) It might stir some sympathy in kids and persuade them to show each other some compassion now and again.
2) It would correct parents laboring under the delusion that childhood represents the best years of one's life, and prevent them from inflicting that myth upon their kids.
3) It would give school nerds evidence that they are not alone and perhaps soothe some of the loneliness and freakishness they often feel.
It's also an important book for Feig in that hopefully the people who made his childhood hell would read this book or at least hear of it and feel some well-deserved shame over what heartless jerks they were. Bravo, Mr. Feig!

Book by the creator of freaks and Geeks.Very funny and grim, I dont know how he survived childhood.I laughed so hard that I cried.Remember your first time being naked in a locker room?Paul does and it's beautifully horrible.