9/23/2014

You're Not Doing It Right // Michael Ian Black

published: 2012 
isbn#: 978-1-4391-6785-4 
read from 9/12-19/2014
no nail polish. i have given up!

i LOVE Michael Ian Black!!!
do i know any of his work? not a lot, but i do know him as the guy from vh1's best week ever and apparently he also wrote the screenplay for Run, Fatboy, Run. 
i LOVE that movie!!!
this is also i believe his second book and he's written several children's books. pretty awesome. I'm about to look up his first book so i can check it out. 

its been a while since my last read. i went to the library looking for this book but had to wait a bit since they had to get it from another library. 
i found out about this book through Carlee. once i saw she was reading it and who it was, i had to grab it!
i will say i regret not having bought the book because i loved it!

i cant really spoil anything because its just short stories of his life involving the wife and kids but its pretty highlarious.
what i love about this book is how honest, if that's what you want to call it, he keeps it, about life and marriage and kids. 

I'm just going to do bullet points like last time. seems easier that way for these kind of books. (and yes pictures are still missing but I'm working on it!) 

jump on over for more good stuff on this book!

chp 4 // fuck you Alan Alda
-a) who the hell is Alan Alda? M*A*S*H. okay got it. 
he talks about his sister's breathing problem, Santa and the shittiest present (but apparently good baking!), the easy bake oven. 

"how do they taste? I'd be lying if i said they taste anything other than delicious. i hate them and everything they represent, but they are fantastic lightbulb brownies."

chp 7 // you're not doing it right
personally, I'm not a fan of smoking weed because like Michael, i WILL over crazy react under the influence. 
he talks about his wedding trip to Amsterdam and how they end up at a coffee shop. now, i don't know about you but i do know that when it comes to an edible, you take that shiz slow. because it will hit you. in this case it hit him in the head. bahahaha. loved this chapter. 

"my experience with marijuana is limited. i have none. again, this is not because i am afraid to smoke anything. i don't like the idea of inhaling anything in to my lungs and so i have never tried cigarettes or pot. but i am in Amsterdam and resolve that while here i will give it a go."

other gems this chapter: 

"....The Dutch also earn points in my book for hiding Jews during World War II, the most famous of whom was Anne Frank. Although i guess one could argue that they didn't do such a great job with her considering how that turned out." 

"nobody ever died from pot." -relating to him smoking. bahahaha. you have to read this book!!!

chp 8 //  terrified because its terrifying
even a shitty band (his words not mine) like Creed can make you realize that having a baby is an amazing life changing thing. 

chp 12 // a little hard work
"...the idea of marriage is so appealing. you pick somebody out, say your I do's, build a family, then sit on the couch and wait for each other to die. perfect. back when we all died young and beautiful (or at least young), marriage was easier to sustain, by the time you'd grown tired of each other, one of you probably had tuberculosis anyways. now that we're all living long, the idea of looking at the same person every day for fifty or sixty years might be more than our species is equipped to handle." 

self explanatory. 

chp 13 // a perfect date
they talk about going to a therapist to help fix their marriage. i don't know why but when i read the following paragraph, it hit close to the heart. i mean I've never been married but 8 years does something to a person and when you try your hardest to fix something and you cant, well you start to wonder why. 

"how did i end up shrouding my best self in this marriage? when did our definition of ourselves as a couple become about the things we had to do instead of the people we want to be? when did i become afraid to poke fun of her the way i used to, to speak to waiters in funny accents to make her laugh, to buy her huge plastic butterfly key chains with her initial engraved in them just because they were ridiculous? when did that stuff stop? and why?"

see what i mean. 

chp 15 // antivert
my. favorite. chapter. i liked this book and then i read this chapter and i LOVED it. 

Vertigo is a helluva thing!
it hits him while he's having lunch at a friends house. said friend doesn't care. he feels like the world is crashing. he goes home tells Martha. blah. few days past. it happens again. he yells for her but she cant hear him so he wiggles himself down the stairs (another reason to not buy a 2 story house. first reason: I've seen scary movies. if you're going to kill me, lets end the suspense.) anyways, when he finally gets downstairs Martha still doesn't see the emergency. they get an ambulance, he thinks he's dying and it turns out all he has is vertigo. he panics that it could possibly be linked to brain cancer to which the doctor says that its possible but unlikely. 

"...he prescribes a medication called "Antivert," possibly the least cleverly named drugged ever. all drugs should have names as straightforward as this one.  for herpes: "Antiherp." for chicken pox: "Antichicken." " 

i was outside when i was reading  this chapter and i don't know why i found it so funny but this part made me laugh so. freaking. hard. one of the dudes that works in my office found me basically crying. its also on camera. ill ask for that video and post it. haha. maybe that chocolate cake was special. 

and finally....

chp 19 // i hope he's nice
"the thing i want to tell her...the thing i want to tell you, Martha, is that you will never fade for me. in the beginning of this book, i mentioned getting older, how the word forty looks spindly and weird. getting older scares me, too, but i would not trade it for getting younger. time moves in peculiar ways. fast and slow at the same time. when i look at you, i don't see whatever imperfections you see. our faces are just geography. they tell us the story of who we are and who we used to be. i see you as i have always known you: i see you at twenty-five and thirty and now forty-two. i see you as a little girl camping with your brother and sister, a purple bandana tied around your head, looking so much like Ruthie does now. i love the story your face tells me because i love you." 

there's a bit more to that but wow. 
MAN!!! did you just read that? 
i cannot wait to be married myself. yes it takes work. yes its more than happy all the time but gaaah. who doesn't want this!?  


any who, i hope i didn't bore you with the long report. 
if you've made it this far you're awesome! and if ya skipped, well go check the book out because i loved it!!!!
I'm about to go hunt down his first book.
if you've read it let me know what you think!

thanks for reading! (: 

1 comment

  1. So glad you liked the book, I loved it too! He was very honestly and funny.
    Carlee

    ReplyDelete

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