A Bad Idea I'm About to Do

December 15, 2011
The up-and-coming comedian shares--and occasionally overshares--tales from his nerdy, manic-depressive youth. In the introduction to his debut collection of personal essays, Gethard proclaims that he has "always wanted to charge headlong into outlandish situations at the first sight of them." Outlandish situations are in dispiritingly short supply here, though: Gethard's predicaments are largely of the garden-variety teen and 20-something variety, from awkward sexual experiences to moving violations. Growing up in New Jersey, the author was an introvert whose relatives were prone to violent verbal explosions, and the title story reveals how he inherited some of that barkiness. Alas, too often Gethard oversells moderately irritating experiences as hyper-wacky, emotionally cataclysmic events. When he balances his self-deprecating posture with some genuinely humiliating moments, he can be funny: In "White Magic," he recalls an ill-fated stint playing a pimp for a Z-grade pro-wrestling league, and "The World's Foremost Goat" is an amusing fable-like yarn about how his attempt to get an easy A in college led him to care for a goat in a harder-than-expected agriculture class. The stories run in chronological order, and as Gethard becomes more involved in the New York comedy scene the book acquires something of an arc: Self-hating funny guy comes to terms with his depression. (He breaks down on the phone with his mom more than once.) So he's easy to root for toward the end in "Jiu Jitsu," in which he ties his modest martial-arts success to his hard-won emotional equipoise. But to get to it, readers have to get past the self-explanatory "Colonic," and Gethard isn't funny enough to justify detailed discussions of his bowel movements. The author has a good time laughing at himself, but he needs more interesting stories to tell.

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February 15, 2012
Ah, the foolishness of youth. Haven't we all looked back upon forays in our formative years and cringed? In this all-too-revealing essay collection, actor, comedian, and writer Gethard revisits an adolescence and adulthood that have been by turns awkward, outrageous, and absurd. Though he calls himself a nerd, he seems a magnet for mischief. Among the dubious highlights of his life to date: engaging in a high-speed chase with a New Jersey state trooper, enduring a high-colonic, and emceeing a professional wrestling match clad in top hat and tails. Gethard also details his successes and failures on the romantic front, including a serious heart-to-heart with a former girlfriend about his need for psychiatric help. A longtime performer with the Upright Citizens Brigade Theater, Gethard has suffered many bumps and bruises along the employment road, including a woeful job as a movie-theater concession worker, which he wryly recounts in My Lows at Loews. Through it all, he's kept his wits enough about him to weather the bad times and write some of the wrongs.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2012, American Library Association.)