You probably know H Jon Benjamin from his voice. He voices some of my favorite animated characters and some of my favorite cinematic cans of vegetables.
He’s Archer:
He’s Ben, the disinterested and lazy son of Dr. Katz, Professional Therapist.
He’s also Mitch, the philosophical can of mixed vegetables from the Wet Hot American Summer stuff.
(And yes, I know he’s also Bob Belcher, but I have yet to watch Bob’s Burgers. Please don’t hurt me.)
His voice is a god damned delight, and his dead panned delivery never fails to kill me.
So, now he has a memoir about the many failures in his life. And…I thought it was fine. It was like a 10 hour long episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm, where HJB’s choices made me so uncomfortable, I often had to turn the audiobook off. I didn’t want to know what ended up happening when he let burglars into his neighbors house or when he lost control of his bowels in a rental car. It was just too much and I couldn’t take it sometimes.
But, there were some AMAZING moments in here, including:
*A short tale about why Jews don’t do much farming.
*An excerpt from his post-graduate thesis on the Holocaust, including his take on the Eriq Lasalle movie Biker Boyz and the outlandish ending of St. Elsewhere.
*The story about how he ended up in an amateur porn video with an ex-con and the ex-con’s cousin, which he titled “A Room with a Jew”.
*His dad’s INSISTENCE that PF Chang’s is simply a local “gem in the rough” Chinese restaurant in his neighborhood and refusal to believe it is a mega-chain.
Sadly, the uncomfortable bits outweighed the funny for me. I cringed more than once and his poor decision making skills really made me like him less as a person.
But his voice is still pure gold, so I’m not sorry I listened to this book. I just wish I had enjoyed it more.
Two stars for the book. 5 stars for the making of the porno and the St. Elsewhere rant.
I’m including this review for #CBR10bingo. For those interested, HJB hails from Worcester, MA. I was born and raised in Newton, MA and went to college in Worcester. #Homesomethinghome