Perpetually waiting on Mistborn: The Final Empire, I picked up I Found This Funny by Judd Apatow to complete my minutes and pass the time. Going into this book knowing very little other than the fact that Judd is the writer of many enormously funny movies I expected a very light and humorous read. After reading through the intro sharing background info and stating how humor is subjective I jumped into the first tale, "A Mother's Tale". This story caught me a bit off guard. A young calf rushes to his mother wonder what happens to the cows who are round up and taken off on a train. "I imagine it's very nice,"(Apatow 16) she falsely explained to comfort her children. Another theory arose from a cow that escaped from where the train took then and he told of a much more horrendous location. The mother comforts them in telling "It's an old old legend... We use it to frighten children with," (Apatow 32). The short story concludes with the youngest calf asking "What's a train?" to keep things in a lighthearted mood and remind us that yes, this is indeed a story about cows.
Expecting a carefree comical relief story to follow "A Mother's Tale" my perception of what this book was about was total thrown off-kilter. I feel this isn't the proper venue to go into details over the subject over the next section titled "No Contact, Ass Hole" (Apatow 33-37)by Jonathan James. The story was very unique and interesting. In retrospect I believe it was placed in the book following a story of a loving mother to throw off the reader on purpose. Somewhere Judd is sitting there laughing at the though of the look on his reader's face.
I'm not able reflect on every short story in detail as this would become a book of my own, however I will present to you my favorite of the bunch. The one that caught my attention the most was actually not a story. A series of sketches by Hugleikur Dagsson (pages 115-121) had me audibly chortling (embarrassingly breaking the amicable silence of study hall). The humor of it is the kind that when asked by Mrs. Rowe what was so funny I had to lie and conjure up some pseudo truth up I'm sure she didn't believe in the slightest, had I told the truth I'd probably be enjoying a detention.
While this book isn't what I expected in the slightest it's very entertaining and most definitely worth the read. Even if I obtain Mistborn prior to completing this book I think I'll delay reading it until finishing this "ultimate bathroom book" (Apatow 10).
You are not the first person to be surprised by your reaction to the collection of stories Apatow pulled together. The strangeness of his choices just makes him more interesting of a person to me--he's not just the same old Hollywood mogul churning out gross-out films; he's kind of well-read, too, which you can't help but like.
ReplyDeleteGreat response posts here, and interesting reading choices.