Feel This Audiobook [Audiobook] [Audio Cassette]

I felt this book. Not just felt it, like holding it, I mean you have to hold a book to read it, but what I mean is I loved this book. It helped me get in touch with my inner comedian, the guy inside of me who wants to host a radio talk show and make $10,000,000 starring in a motion picture. Every chapter is hysterically funny. Well, not every chapter. The one by Ben Stiller having a guardian angel who looked like Hoss Cartwright is kind of like a bad sketch comedy bit that goes no where, but everything else in the book is right on and cool, to quote hip seventies language.
I guess it is kind of wierd to be praising a book five years after it came out and everybody else reviewed it five years ago. Okay, so I'm a little behind, but so what? Maybe this book was ahead of its time, maybe its time is now. Maybe Ben Stiller and Janeane Garafolo, Garofolo, Garofalo's time is now. They seem to be doing pretty well, Janeane is doing that terrific radio talk show and Ben is making a movie every other month, and I see all of them. Well, I didn't see the recent one with Jack Black, but that was in and out of the theater in like two days, but I did see "Meet the Parents" twice in the movies and twice on TV, and I'm waiting for the sequel which I have heard Barbara Streisand is going to be in.
Anyways this book has really helped me. It hasn't helped me to sell any of my thirteen screenplays which nobody has bought, but it has helped me to see being pathetic as a source of humor. That's good and amazing. Well, maybe not amazing, but interesting. And believe it or not I finished it in one afternoon, and I never did finish that book by Ellen Degeneris. Maybe, I'll finish that book today and write a review of it.

I've never really been a fan of Ben Stiller, but I picked this one up for Janeane's writing. Unfortunately, neither one of them delivered. While Janeane's writing was a bit better than Ben's, it was still pretty horrific. Between the two of them, they couldn't even get a mild chuckle out of me. Definitely not worth the time or effort.

The title, a pun on Abbie Hoffman's book, _Steal This Book_ (Garofalo did play Hoffman's wife in the movie, Steal this Movie). And it goes from there. I honestly expected to really like this book. I find Stiller to be hilarious, and Garofalo is funny as well as an excellent 'social conscience' and I might have grown up with a crush on her. The two make an excellent team, and I figured between their wit, intelligence, and what they have to say, that this would be a great book. Alas, that is not the case. It's in the humor section, and the book tries too hard to be funny (unlike Seinfeld's Seinlanguage, which is Jerry writing, and without effort, being interesting and funny). I was a little worried that Garofalo's politics would get in the way, but I figured Stiller would help keep her under control, keep it from being too preachy. But the book tried too hard to be funny (and you can never quite tell if they are being serious or 'funny'--knowing their beliefs and politics). It starts with a false table of contents, which I missed at first, and after I 'discovered' it, I thought it would annoy me, but it did not. Then there is the tounge in cheek Acknowledgements, followed by a Preface by Stiller and a Foreward by Garofalo. Then the book goes downhill. There is a warning about copies the book, based on the FBI warnings on video tapes. This is one of those cases where you aren't quite sure if this duo is being humorous, serious, or some combination of the two. Then you get rotating chapters written by one or the other. They just tried too hard to be funny, and it comes off forced. And you would have hoped that their appendices would have been a little serious, to get an idea of what books, movies, etc really did influence them. But no. I had worried about it being too preachy, but unfortunately, it wasn't serious enough. There is a fine line between parody and mediocre humor. It's tough to stay on the right side of the line.