Review
Like Larry David, the late Spaulding Gray, and Seattle's own Matt Smith, Weedman emotionally exposes herself onstage ... This book extends that vulnerability to print. When Weedman writes about her own childhood, the results can be devastatingly funny and poignant. --
Seattle Times, October 4, 2007Sincerely funny stuff from a welcome new original voice on the humor-literature scene.
Best known for her stint as a correspondent on The Daily Show, Weedman is a prolific multimedia performer/comedienne: NPR commentator, playwright, performance artist, regular on Comedy Central's Reno 911! In her debut collection of autobiographical essays, the author proves to be an undeniable charmer and self-deprecator extraordinaire, seemingly proud to depict herself as a goofball and unashamed to walk us though one awkward incident after another. Her attempts to make Daily Show host Jon Stewart her "new boyfriend"--joking with him about African-American male genitalia, faux-seductively pinching her own nipples for his pleasure--are, fortunately for Weedman's then-husband Michael, met with fright and/or confusion. And then there's her trip to the Emmy Awards with her Daily Show pals, the highlight of which was a self-administered enema. Weedman's essays work for the same reason David Sedaris' do: She has heart. Though told with a tinge of comedic self-flagellation, the story of her marriage's end game is filled with sincere pathos, as is the tale of her first post-divorce fling with a warm, turkey jerky-bearing gentleman named David. And though the topic of awkward adolescences is overused, Weedman's depiction of her pot-soaked Indiana high-school years is effective in part because of its brevity. The author made an interesting choice by structuring the book in reverse chronological order, but that turned out to be a canny move--she grabs readers immediately with the stories of her celebrity encounters.
If Sedaris were a heterosexual woman, he might well be Weedman. -- Kirkus Reviews, September 2007
Weedman has an avid following for her gutsy plays and one-woman performances, but her bedrock to fame is her brief stint on The Daily Show. And if her confessions of painful gaffes with host Jon Stewart contain even a molecule of truth, it's a wonder she lasted as long as she did. Weedman is of the hyperactively self-loathing school of comedy, in which women obsess about their bodies and offer audacious details. Need we say more than coffee enema? Weird bad sex? But Weedman isn't going for the merely gauche in her first collection of humorous autobiographical essays. For one thing, she is too fine a writer; for another she has smart things to say about our failures to communicate at home and in the world. In tales about the breakdown of her marriage, her struggle to understand what it means to be adopted, her relationship with a widower and his teenage son, her follies abroad, and a hilarious misadventure in a thrift-store dress at the Emmies, Weedman uses raunchiness as a covert route to the heart. -- Booklist, September 15, 2007
Product Description
Lauren Weedman's hilarious essays read like a compendium of what not to do as a fully-realized, functional adult. Her self-deprecating, confessional, and terribly funny voice finds a special place in the hearts of those who can relate to her - which, for better or worse, includes all of us. From the uproarious account of her time at the Daily Show, where she developed an entirely one-sided infatuation with Jon Stewart, to the time she read her boyfriend's diary with disastrous results, Lauren's work is filled with the wit, honesty, and personality that make for great personal writing.
by Wendy Spero
by Beth Lisick
by Laurie Notaro
by Kate Christensen
by Rebecca Miller
