I was at my wit’s end. I’d had enough of this job, this life, and my relationship had broken up. Should I eat chocolate, or go to India, or fall in love? Then I had a revelation: Why not do all three, in that order? And so it was that I embarked on a journey that was segmented into three parts and was then made into a major motion picture. Later, I woke up on an airplane with a hole in my face and a really bad hangover. I was ushered brusquely off the plane by my parents who took me to a rehab where I tested positive for coke, classic coke, special k (the drug), Special K (the cereal), mushrooms, pepperoni, and Restless Leg Syndrome. It was there that I first began painting with my feet.
But rewind…the year was 1914. I was just a young German soldier serving in the trenches while simultaneously trying to destroy an evil ring with some help from an elf, a troll, and a giant sorcerer, all while cooking every recipe out of a Julia Child cookbook. What I’m trying to say is that there was a secret code hidden in a painting and I was looking for it with this girl who had a tattoo of a dragon! Let me clarify, it was the 1930s and a bunch of us were migrating out of Oklahoma, and I was this teenage wizard/CIA operative, okay? And, um then I floated off into the meta-verse as a ball of invisible energy that had no outer edge…
Ugh, okay. None of this is true. I’m just kind of a normal guy from New Jersey who moved to New York, got into comedy, wrote this book about trying to write this book, and then moved to Alaska, became the mayor of a small town, spent $30,000 on underwear, and now I’m going to rule the world!!!
Mr. Funny Pants is Hysterically Funny What I Can Tell You:There aren’t too many things I can’t live without. My kids, my family and friends, water, air, food and laughter. Personally, I love to laugh and since getting Netflix have looked up every stand up act on there. There aren’t many that make me ROFL and even less that make me ROTFLMAO but I find a few that make me LOL. When it comes to books, I can count on one and a half hands the ones that have made me laugh out loud. This book is one of them.Michael Showalter was one of the creators of The State (1993-1995), a show that was on MTV when MTV was funny. I saw the show live during it’s first year and watched it weekly. My husband and I still quote it; “I’m Doug and I’m Outta Here” and “I Want To Stick My Balls In It” can be heard often in my house. We love watching it now on Netflix (thank you Netflix). When I agreed to review Mr. Funny Pants, I didn’t know that this was Michael from The State.The book is so funny. I love the fact that Michael spends five chapters talking about his process for starting to write the book including reviews for the finished project. The book is a quick read and moves rapidly, showing the genius process of a comedians mind. I can only imagine that Michael just wrote down his every random thought from the moment he started writing THIS book. There are so many random moments that cracked me. I would just be reading along la, la, la…chuckle..haha…funny..than I would literally LOL. My husband would look at me out of the corner of his eye while he read his smart, scientific, educational, engineering books and there I was with Mr. Funny Pants. I can only imagine how much his rolling eyes hurt. Oh well, he has no idea what he is missing. Michael’s book can be educational too, in fact this morning over breakfast with my girlfriends, we spent 15 minutes trying to find the missing $1.00 in Michael’s Games, Puzzles, Brainteasers, Brain Twister section. So…there! Take that you educated muckety-mucks.If you were a fan of The State or if you love laughing or reading about randomness this is the book.My favorite chapter is The Mixed Tapes. It is only 3 pages long but Michael explaining why he loves Christina Aguilers Beautiful is genius.
BookHounds http://maryinhb.blogspot.com Pure Genius! I never knew you could be sarcastic and earnest at the same time. This is one of the funniest celebrity pseudo-memoirs I have read in a long time Anyone who hides their guilty pleasures in music on their iPod by labeling them really cool and hip indie bands, has my vote. I would do the same thing, but I have quite figured out how to do it. Michael Showalter pokes fun at the seriousness of writing by making fun of some of the things “serious” writers do like the preface only he takes his to the third level by having a post-preface. Oh and you can’t forget the afterword, the after-afterword or the just-before-the-afterword.This is really a book that you should leave out on your coffee table since there are so many fun things to do like a fill in the blank romantic-comedy plot and the one minute mysteries. You can easily reread this several times. There are also little bits and pieces of the author’s life and what junior high meant to him. There are some other important things, but I forgot them. I think they had something to do with drinking games, which is probably why I forgot. I received this book at no charge from the publisher in exchange for my honest review.