by Aisha Tyler
10 I was one hundred percent right about that.
1 If you want to see the best distillation of how other cultures view American popular culture, watch Korean pop videos. K-pop has appropriated our shit and done us one thousand times better. And if imitation is truly the sincerest form of flattery, Americans are all ripped-jeans wearing, neon-tank sporting, trend-obsessed teenyboppers who care deeply about casual sex, drinking in nightclubs, and walking provocatively down high school hallways in short skirts while being shot in the face with high-velocity wind (not far from the truth).
Additionally, Koreans are way blacker than our black people could ever hope to be. They are rapping, krumping, stomping, dapping, and generally out-blacking us as if they came to one of our meetings and bought ten copies of the handbook. They are killing it over there.
2 Reading Charlotte’s Web really didn’t help.
3 If only the entire world could taste how fucking awesome this organic granola is! And only four grams of sugar!!!
4 This is scientifically provable. Geese are out to get us.
5 And certainly nothin’ bout birthin’ no baby bunnies.
6 I would argue that idiots with good intentions are more dangerous than any other idiots, as they are so much more aggressive with their dumbness. It’s like they can’t wait to spray their dumb all over you. They’re like dumb-dumb cannons.
1 There is nothing that strains at its moorings more plaintively than a single parent trapped in an apartment with a middle-schooler.
2 Another reckless favorite was turkey potpie followed by a turkey dinner. Turkey twice! What what? Hedonism. Followed by a nap.
3 Who highly resembles a black private dick who’s a sex machine to all the chicks? My dad. You’re damn right.
4 Japanese throwing stars. You know you wanted some when you were a kid. You want some now.
5 I once watched an entire movie in that chair while eating a mixture of sunflower seeds and sour apple Now and Laters out of a plastic grocery bag. No one had the heart to throw the little black girl who had nowhere to go out of the store. I really took advantage of these people.
6 Firestarter. Read it twice. I feel no shame in admitting that.
7 I had no frame of reference for this. I just thought this is what all adult women did. Splash cologne all over their naked bodies, and then run screaming back into the shower stall.
1 You may be thinking, “Hey, your dad threw money at the boy problem you had in grade school.” Of course, the difference here is scale. He was empowering me to be brave, and also buying me stir-fry. That is way different than giving your kid a European sedan to make up for being emotionally remote.
2 Yes, that Oakland. Which is actually not as terrifying as all the rap songs and contorted hand signs would imply.
3 One always being “Master and Servant” by Depeche Mode.
4 Booo! Judge all you want, but this was a tragedy.
5 Parenthood is a metaphorical thicket of terror punctuated by small delights and mercies. I fear it unreservedly.
6 Not really. I ate pretty well in high school. But the man could wield a boss threat.
7 Because I was a teenager. And that’s what teenagers do. Trying to get away with shit is in their nature, along with an innate lack of curiosity, an invincibility complex, and terrible taste in music.
8 As pleasant as any sullen teenager who listens to The Smiths incessantly and cuts her own bangs with kitchen shears can be.
9 Tell that to George W. Bush.
10 This was my fatal mistake. What teenager fucking dusts?
11 With a tip of the hat to The Brady Bunch.
12 Granted it was probably harder to sneak out of the third floor of a Victorian walk-up and into the London night, but easier to sneak out of a Brazilian hut and into the damp and verdant jungle. Each epoch has its triumphs.
13 This was San Francisco in the 1980s. We were lucky to afford something that wasn’t already squatted on by a stony tribe of Burning Man refugees.
14 My father grounded me, of course. For a year. But after a few weeks of confinement, he realized that if I had to stay in the house, he would have to stay in, too, to keep an eye on me. The grounding ended prematurely, after a stern admonition that if I ever tried anything like that again I would be in serious trouble. I was smart enough to take him at his word.
1 But seriously, who loves more wildly than teenagers? Every crush is the end of the fucking world. I once spent three months in the same pair of overalls after a breakup with a boy I was particularly into. I do not miss those times. Or those overalls. They were so disgusting at the end they refused to even burn properly.
2 I really hope none of them reads this book.
3 How would my cool street friends understand my love of classical dancing? And how would my formally trained ballet dancing partner understand that occasionally a sista just needs to get her crump on?
4 I was a whitewater rafting guide for deaf underprivileged teens. Seriously. A black whitewater rafting guide for people who cannot hear but want to experience extreme sports. I was not fucking around on this college application stuff.
5 Massive bullshit.
6 Hold your moralizing horses. There’ll be more on high school drinking and poor decision making later. Wait for it.
1 Ugh. Just . . . ugh.
2 I still snerk when I laugh. This is neither here nor there.
3 Unless you are a lesbian. And then you are powerless against girls who look and act slightly like boys. Either way, boyishness is girl kryptonite.
4 To mutilate Tyler Perry, I can eat ice cream all by myself, thank you very much.
5 And shortly after that, I am sure, everyone in the greater Bay Area.
6 And by “sick,” I mean people would look at me and go, “That poor girl. There is something seriously wrong with her,” right before they rolled their eyes in disgust and walked away, cackling hysterically.
7 We girls have a way of turning a sidelong and totally casual glance into a romantic gaze loaded with emotional portent. Chicks can parse some shit out.
8 I don’t care what you saw in movies or on The Big Bang Theory. This is never a good idea. And also, spare me your moralizing about kids drinking in high school. High school kids drink. It is a bad idea, but it happens. We are not here to judge my sordid past. We are here to dissect, exploit, and mock it. Stay on track.
9 I honestly can’t tell you what it was like. It was a long time ago, and the whole time I was like, “I can’t believe we’re hooking up!” which I’m sure ruined the vibe a bit. I’m assuming it was pretty boring and punctuated by a lot of high-pitched teenage girl squeals from me and eye rolls of annoyance from him.
10 Teenagers get stoked. This is just what they do.
1 Although the Asians do love their Spam. The Hawaiian ones, anyway. And the Filipinos. You haven’t lived until you’ve had Spam sushi. Well, maybe you have, but it’s still delicious.
2 Good lord. When would I learn? Nothing good ever comes after the phrase “and then I met a boy.”
3 Of course, it was all very pedestrian sushi. Thinking back, I can hear the waitress’s eyes rolling in their sockets as she wrote down my California roll order.
4 Both of which are probably about the rudest behavior you can engage in in a sushi restaurant and should have gotten me flung into the street like an unruly hooker.
1 Is this pun intended? I haven’t decided yet.
2 You mock, but everyone had one of these. We do not choose the era we are born into. We assimilate or we die.
3 There was an incident on campus the year before I attended, where students protesting against apartheid (I mean, who purposely comes down on the wrong side of that issue?) had their makeshift shantytown destroyed by sledgehammer-wielding conservative kids—while they were still inside. No one was hurt, but this was mainly luck. The only explanation I can imagine was that everyone was so drunk that the sledgehammer wielders were swinging wide and the kids inside were in that limp
physical twilight where blows don’t cause damage because the body is so malleable and floppy. This is why it is a good idea to always get very, very drunk on a plane. That way if it crashes, your limp body will be least likely to take damage. I read this on the Internet.
4 Who were no doubt profoundly sexually frustrated and so had to pour all that energy into something, and that something became standing around twirling their waxed mustaches while singing in mildly effete four-part harmony.
5 This is pre-Glee, way before teenagers singing pop songs without instruments and dancing around with no sense of irony was even remotely cool.
6 As I had been systematically going through my father’s pockets since grade school, I had a pretty clear grasp of his net worth.
7 Yes, even in winter. I wore wool socks when it got cold, which had the effect of making me look like a Women’s Studies professor, or a vegan bean sprout farmer who lived in a yurt.
8 I think we also hoped, much like the people behind artists like Justin Bieber or KISS, that a distinctive look would distract listeners from the fact that we were a bit flimsy in the art department.
9 Much like Steve Jobs, we recognized early on the functionality and versatility of the mock turtle. Unlike Steve Jobs, we got off that shit quickly. However, if I had known that wearing them might have led to founding a multibillion-dollar technology company, I’d still be rocking that shit now.
10 There were other maudlin and forgettable New Wave songs we performed. Norwegian pop supergroup A-ha, anyone?
11 Or a fraternity basement drenched in beer and urine, which was our usual milieu.
12 I am Mr. Smirking Self-Satisfaction.
13 Nothing particularly complex, however, as I am utterly uncoordinated. Add singing to dancing and you’ve got a quick way for me to poke myself in the eye. Which I have done, unprovoked, on more than one occasion. Ta-dah!
1 It is definitely not getting hot in herre.
2 I can do an excellent Wop, and under pressure I can deliver a serviceable Running Man. Honestly, that’s about it. I’m more of an ideas person.
3 Guitar Hero does. Not. Count.
4 Even using the phrase “funky beat” disqualifies me from ever being able to recognize one. I sound like a character from Yo Gabba Gabba.
5 Using a visibly unwashed hand to stir vodka into fruit juice is not exercise.
6 In retrospect, no one could help us. We were a lost cause.
7 He didn’t believe in us at all. We offered him tears, then booze, and finally money.
8 Although in Michael’s latter days, he resembled her far more than he resembled me.
9 Where did this person grow up, a Russian gulag?
1 Yes, it does get out of hand. No one can organize and structure shit, even binge drinking, like the kids of the Ivy League.
2 Our country is lousy with drunken dummies. We have elevated it to an art form. Witness the popularity of The Hangover.
3 If cold is a problem for you, I suggest the University of Hawaii. You could pass out on a street corner every night at UH and the worse that would happen is someone would tuck a hibiscus bloom behind your ear while you snoozed.
4 By way of context, the man who wrote Animal House attended Dartmouth and was a member of the Alpha Delta fraternity. He based that script on his experiences as an undergraduate. And from what I can tell, he toned them down considerably.
5 No, fraternities and sororities were not invented just to give you someone to hate in movies like Revenge of the Nerds and Van Wilder.
1 Snap.
2 Yes, we call it THE City. Suck on it like a lozenge, New York.
3 I have no idea if this is true. It just really seems like it is.
4 Typical Saturday.
5 Let’s just get one thing out of the way right now. There is no such thing as “spare change.” Spare change is just small pieces of money that you haven’t assembled into bigger pieces of money and spent yet. That being said, if you can spare a quarter, you can probably spare a dollar, so stop being such a selfish prick.
6 I once had a friend tell me that if I gave a homeless guy money he would just spend it on booze. To which I replied, “If I gave YOU money you would just spend it on booze.” He had no retort for that.
7 For the record, I do give to charitable organizations now. But I also still give money to homeless people. It’s nice to see what you give end up in the fingers of the person who will actually get to spend it. On booze, or hamburgers, or whatever. His dollar, his choice.
8 This is pre-Internet, so this was a real feat.
9 I’m spitballing here—buy a giant bottle of Mad Dog, fourteen Filet-O-Fish sandwiches, and a pack of cigarettes, and bury the rest in a hole of undetermined location to be retrieved by their executors when they die and are discovered to have left thousands of dollars to a neighborhood school or local YMCA.
1 Dartmouth was punishingly expensive—my college loans were like a mortgage—and that was a zillion years ago. Nowadays, you’d have to form your own SuperPAC to raise enough money to send a child there.
2 So unflattering. Walking into a corporate office is like stumbling across a team of reanimated cadavers tapping listlessly at keyboards, trying very hard not to seem dead.
3 Who am I hurting, really?
4 To this day, I do not believe in panty hose. I’m not saying I don’t wear them (although I don’t; a few visible scars on a lady’s shins show she’s lived a full life and fears nothing), I’m saying I don’t believe in them. To me they do not exist, much like Santa, unicorns or black water polo players.
5 This philosophy persists to this day. If you aren’t going to put everything you have into something, dude, don’t bother. You can always kill it at sitting on the couch fucking up some Hot Pockets. For guaranteed success, aim for the middle.
6 This is why they always say: “Find something you love, then find a way to make money at it.” That way, the excellence of your own work will be its own reward. Of course, if what you’re good at is smoking pot in the morning in front of your Xbox, it’s gonna be pretty hard to translate that into gainful employment. Put down the bong. What are you, twelve?
7 They talked about science on that show, right?
8 Comedy, even comedy done poorly, is like candy. Even butterscotch has a bland yet sticky appeal. If you laugh just once during a show, even if it is at the comedian rather than with them, you have laughed. That is all that matters.
9 Man, if you have to pay to let other people see you naked, you need to reexamine your entire life approach and make some serious changes. Having to make it rain on yourself is a Moebius Strip of sadness.
10 Late and lazy. I’m a keeper.
11 My boyfriend laughed but that didn’t count because he was trying to get laid.
12 Sweet, sweet char siu, how did people ever live without you?
13 He laughed at my jokes, and he bought me dumplings? Come on. Double score.
1 Good luck with that, buddy. You’re a braver man than me. And much more willing to be utterly and completely alone.
2 Metaphorically most of the time, but yes, occasionally, literally.
3 You might think you’d be looking for someone who keeps bombing over and over again, but it’s not as easy as you think. Some baby comedians are preternaturally talented, and are hilarious right from the get-go. Of course, we’ll never tell them that, but it does happen.
4 I am speaking, of course, of the royal you. And by royal you, I mean royal me.
5 Also: I Don’t Use Birth Control and so Deserve My Own Show, I Am Using My Child to Fulfill My Failed Dreams of Being a Beauty Queen, I Am a Self-Involved Asshole Using Television to Find Myself a Date with a Similarly Self-Involved Asshole, and The Apprentice.
6 Just ask the lady with the eight kids. Or that other guy who contributed the sperm. I forgot their names.
7 Although it will get you laid. Being funny is like people catnip, which is why troll-like comedians who would never get play otherwise are al
ways draped in giddy waitresses and swirling clouds of smug.
8 The second coming has already been claimed by like seven hundred people, so it’s pretty much locked up.
9 I will refrain from making a bunch of jokes about Tiger drilling women here, because I am mature and disciplined. He did drill a lot of women, though. Sorry. I couldn’t resist. I am not mature at all.
10 As previously established, this will only happen to you if you are drunk, from New Jersey, impossibly tan, possibly on steroids, and in the middle of a broken-bottle bar fight. Something to aspire to.
