Wednesday, January 18, 2012

UNRELIABLE NARRATOR PROBLEM: Does anyone particularly want to buy the memoir of Josh Radnor's "spiritual awakening" (which naturally involves "drinking an indigenous plant medicine called ayahuasca with a shaman in Brazil")? Anyone?

20 comments:

  1. Watts1:02 PM

    nothappynothankyounomorepleaseno

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  2. Meghan1:02 PM

    No.  I heard Robin Quivers talk about it on Stern.  It sounds awful.  I don't care about anyone's spiritual awakening enough to listen to another ayahuasca story.

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  3. As Atria seems to specialize more in the realm of celebrity holistic touchy-feeliness rather than Hunter S. Thompsonesque tomes on trippin balls, probably not me. But if that's your thing, let us know if it's any good.

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  4. isaac_spaceman1:15 PM

    <span>1.  I'm a douchebag, and I play one on TV.  
    2.  Why publish this?  Atria appears to be an imprint of Simon & Schuster, though Wiki won't confirm for me today.  Did Atria think, "there is a rising clamor for a memoir of the guy who plays the worst character on that one show that people used to like but now watch only out of intertia"?  I assume that publishers reject even decent books nowadays because they only have so many that they can publish and market.  How does annoying Josh Fucking Radnor's memoir bump something else?   
    3.  Having not read it, and knowing nothing of Josh Radnor except what I've seen on TV, allow me to summarize:  
    a.  I took drama in high school and then was a drama major in college.  
    b.  I moved to Los Angeles because I couldn't imagine myself doing anything.  
    c.  It was hard!  I was in this terrible movie, Not Another Teen Movie [ed: most awesome thing Radnor has ever done], but I also waited tables and took acting classes and acted in plays that nobody saw.  
    d.  It was down to me and this other guy for How I Met Your Mother, and OMG I got it!  People on that show are great.  
    e.  As I got richer, I felt empty and doubted my worth.     
    f.  So, as rich empty people do, I found a country where people are poorer/less white than me.  It opened my eyes to poverty and spirituality, the former of which I do not have and the latter of which I now do.  
    g.  So that's 40 pages; I'm going to vamp a bit now. </span>

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  5. bella wilfer1:45 PM

    Every time this guy opens his mouth I hate him more.  He's now a bigger douche than Zach Braff, I think. 

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  6. AbbyG1:55 PM

    This is a guy I'd try to get away from at a party as he was telling the group about how amazing and deep the whole experience was for him. And then I'd promptly make fun of him to my husband.

    Then I'd ask for Jason Segel's number

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  7. At least Braff has pretty good taste in music. 

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  8. Maret3:07 PM

    Celebrities are people too response: While I don't have particular interest in this book and haven't met Radnor myself, I do have a good friend who is friends with him and who has little patience for douchebags, so I tend to think he may not be as pretentious as this book may make him seem.

    Additionally, is Atria publishing this because he's a celeb? No doubt. And frankly, they're not by cup of tea as a reader. But there are memoirs ad nauseum by everyone from your next door neighbor to a celebrity about their quests for spiritual awakening. Maybe Radnor is just one of the kajiliion that think their quest deserves a book. Does it? Probably not, but then neither does your neighbor.

    I can confirm Atria is an imprint of S & S. And Radnor could be a jerk -- I just am offering benefit of the doubt. He's certainly not the only celebirty to take advantage of fame to write a book.

    Also, I have 

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  9. isaac_spaceman3:41 PM

    You pretty much have to be a douchebag to write about your own spiritual awakening, especially one about your spiritual awakening among the indigeneous people.  Even Jesus went the authorized-biography route instead of memoir.  I'm going to go so far as to say that allowing your name to be used in any way with the phrase "spiritual awakening," whether you're my neighbor or Timothy Leary or Saul/Paul himself, is pretty douchey.  It's like saying "I have been called a healer" or "I am an attentive lover" -- just yuck.  Maybe Radnor is a perfectly nice guy, and maybe he doesn't have an ounce of pretension in him, but the evidence is stacking up against him here. 

    Incidentally, this has to be the least self-aware celebrity self-help book since Jennifer Love Hewitt's dating advice one, right? 

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  10. bella wilfer4:01 PM

    I have several good friends who are friends w him who all admit that he's become a total d-bag since he got obsessed with this drug...

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  11. bella wilfer4:02 PM

    Did we ever get a follow-up on Jason Segel's reply to that girl who made the youtube video?

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  12. He took her and her twin sister to an award show.

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  13. Adam C.6:02 PM

    This (the affirmative version of Watts's comment) was the worst movie I saw in 2011.  Or the most depressing and longest episode of HIMYM ever.

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  14. "Achieving spiritual awakening by getting high in South America" is the plot of the novel Indecision by Benjamin Kunkel. If you want to read a well-written story with that plot, go buy that (fictional) book instead.

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  15. bella wilfer6:15 PM

    Nice!

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  16. Joseph Finn7:33 PM

    If I may quote Marshall, "Oh, honey."

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  17. Heather K10:11 PM

    It was around the corner from my house!  The awards show and then he did improv with the second city mainstage show currently running and had very nice things to say about the girls.

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