“If you’re ever feeling poorly about yourself, about your lack of achievement, your utter inconsequentiality, your ridiculous little life lived in the shadows—take a moment and write some Internet reviews of other people’s work.”

For those who take part in the annual Pajiba 10 voting, you may know me as the person who, year after year, picks nine random people to go on my list behind the great Bob Odenkirk. I’ve been a massive fan since back in the days of The Ben Stiller Show, The Larry Sanders Show, and, of course, Mr. Show.

He’s provided us with some of the greatest comedy sketches ever. I mean, come on.

SNL.

Ben Stiller.

Mr Show

And yes, sure, he’s also a terrific dramatic actor. Who would have thought that Better Call Saul would end up being as good — if not better? — than Breaking Bad?

But I prefer my Odenkirk to be ridiculous. And this audiobook was exactly what I needed last week.

Odenkirk got a bunch of his friends — David Cross, Brian Posehn, Megan Amram, Paul F Tompkins, Jerry Minor, and the great Jay Johnston — to narrate different sections of the book with him, and honestly, most of the short pieces simply read like skits that never made it on to Mr Show.

AND I AM 1000% OK WITH THAT.

My favorites: “The Phil Spector I Knew,” about a guy in Phil’s entourage, who had only been shot by Phil a few times (“Let me testify to his character. Phil has only shot me three times in ten years.”). “The Origin of Blackbird,” in which we see which one of The Beatles was the worst. “Baseball Players’ Poems About Sportwriters and Sportswriting,” which included this gem:

Elegiac

What does the word
“elegiac” mean?
What about “pastoral”?
And “comtemplative”?
Why do you
Keep calling
Baseball all these weird French names?
Stop it.
Douchebag.

Yeah, that killed me.

But my favorite was “Hitler’s Dinner Party: A Play”. I cried laughing when Hitler and Ava walked into the dinner party and the hosts were like, oh, hi, Hitler. I’m sure it was funny on the written page, but listening to it was simply too much.

Is this short book for everyone? Absolutely not. Reading the reviews on Goodreads was kind of funny…I guess a lot of people buy random comedy books without knowing anything about the comedian. And lots of other people like Breaking Bad, so they assumed they knew what Bob Odenkirk’s comedy would be like.

But this book was definitely for me. Thanks to andtheIToldYouSosfor reminding me that it was in my audible queue!

I’ll just leave you with this, another great moment from Mr Show, and I’ll see you again back in July for my 2020 Pajiba 10: