Yearbook: Seth Rogen

Product Information

Funny books, particularly those written by comedians, are often hit-or-miss for me, so I’m glad to say this was mostly a hit. It’s silly but fun, and I certainly can use more of that in my life lately. And I'd bet this would be a fun one to listen to! There are a lot of interesting observations about fame, drugs, coming of age, and the like. The authorial voice is the strongest part of this book. Rogen knows he is a good storyteller and it shows, throughout. When I was younger, Bubby and Zaidy just didn’t seem that into me. I got the impression they liked my older sister, Danya, more than me, mostly because their words and actions made it wildly clear that they did. They were just nicer to her, which didn’t really bug me that much, because I didn’t love spending time with them. Beloved and prolific multi-hyphenate Seth Rogen leads a full cast of more than 80 narrators for the audiobook of his debut collection of hilarious and insightful personal essays, YEARBOOK, from Random House Audio, an imprint of the Penguin Random House Audio Publishing Group (published in hardcover and eBook formats by Crown). The 83 total voices that can be heard on YEARBOOK puts this production in the company of PRH Audio’s Beastie Boys Book (44 voices), Four Hundred Souls (87 voices) and Lincoln in the Bardo (166 voices).

Yearbook is a collection of true stories that I desperately hope are just funny at worst, and life-changingly amazing at best. (I understand that it’s likely the former, which is a fancy “book” way of saying “the first one.”) This would play out for about two hours straight, and as maddening as spending time with them was, I couldn’t help but think they were entertaining. It speaks to Rogen’s storytelling prowess and eventful adolescence that by the time he gets to his Hollywood experience, one almost forgets that this is, in fact, a celebrity story. At the risk of alienating many a megastar, Rogen promptly gets blunt. A loopy conversation with George Lucas, when the Star Wars mastermind seemed to be sincerely preparing for the apocalypse in 2012, is eye opening. The saga of The Green Hornet’s troubled pre-production features a disastrous dinner with Nicolas Cage, who was up for the villain role but purportedly pitched the character as a white Bahamian, then years later asked if James Franco snatched the idea for Spring Breakers. Dealings with Tom Cruise, Kanye West and Steve Wozniak feel similarly on the nose – so much so that they almost play like too-good-to-be-true satire. The workshop was simple enough: You’d spend a day learning the basic concept of stand-up joke writing, write a few jokes, and then, that night, you’d go to the Lotus Club, a local lesbian bar with what in retrospect was a very vaginal flower painted on its awning, and perform your jokes for the lesbians. My mother dropped me off outside; I walked into the class and, not surprisingly, was the only kid—the first of about a thousand rooms that I would walk into over the next decade where that was the case. I’ve been the youngest person in the room a lot of my life. There’s something nice about having aged into my job. But still, I miss those days, because when you’re young, the bar for accomplishment is so low, no matter what you do, it’s pretty impressive. If you’re young enough, just walking is considered a huge deal. My friends are thrilled when their kids don’t shit all over their floors. As an adult, I get little to no praise for doing the same. The night came, and my turn to take the stage was fast approaching. I honestly don’t remember being that nervous, probably because I was twelve f***ing years old and wasn’t even mature enough to be nervous. I’ve definitely gotten more in my head as I’ve gotten older and marvel at how I used to just barrel into these situations without much fear or anxiety. Kids can do that. It’s like those very young Chinese acrobats you see, flinging their little bodies in the air, being thrown around, completely unaware of the stakes. If those kids knew what a torn ACL was, they wouldn’t be letting those motherf***ers toss their little asses around like that. And if I had known the pain and shame that goes along with putting yourself out there creatively and being rejected, I probably wouldn’t have been so excited. But I didn’t, so I was.This book, which is less a memoir than a collection of personal stories, has made me like and admire the actor/writer/director even more. Throughout, he comes across as smart, kind, funny and relatable. And he’s proudly Canadian, which means a big deal to us Canadians. This was fine. If I didn’t enjoy Seth Rogen’s movies and his overall presence, demeanor & humor, this may have proven to be less palatable, but being that I adore him, it was quite easy to get thru. I just imagined it being read in his very distinct voice and accompanied by his even more distinct laugh & that got me through the 1001 stories about being high.

Yearbook, the new book from Seth Rogen, is a funny collection of vignettes/recollections from the comic actor. That it does. As with many books by actor/comics, I alternated between reading a physical copy of the book and listening to the audiobook. And in both cases, it sounds like he’s just sat down with a beer (actually not a beer, since he no longer drinks) or a joint and started telling you some really funny anecdotes. So . . . ​people ask me what the hardest part about being Jewish is. The persecution? The repeated attempts at systematic annihilation? Nope. The hardest part about being Jewish is . . . ​the grandparents.”

Here’s another example of how cool he is. When I tweeted that one of my only problems with the book was the grammatically incorrect use of “Me and X did…” throughout, he replied that he told his editor “not to correct my grammar unless it was confusing,” since he wanted the book to sound “as conversational as possible.”