Chelsea Chelsea Bang Bang

Chelsea Chelsea Bang Bang
by Chelsea Handler
2010
Grand Central/ Hachette

So my love/hate relationship with Chels continues.
She can make me laugh out loud at the most inappropriate comments,. She has moments of comedic brilliance and is totally irreverent and irresponsible. This I love.
And then she can piss me off with the next comment. She can be rude, obnoxious and hurtful. This I hate abut her.
But that is exactly what makes her so funny.
This book of stories show one of the best forms of her comedy to me.....pulling off a prank. No one ....no one can pull off a prank like Chels.......and even though I probably should not......I burst out in laughter. The pranks against her boyfriend, Ted, are just too good. Too good. These stories save show more this book.
Overall, this is not her best collection but worth the read just for chapters of her jokes on her friends and her boyfriend, Ted. show less

I was a fan of hers before I ever read a single word she wrote, and now my appreciation for her style has gone through the roof. She's the funniest female I've ever read and incredibly clever. She is exactly what I hoped David Sedaris would be, as she's just great and Sedaris sucks. My only problem with the book was there was a lot more Chelsea Chelsea and not enough Bang Bang. Fortunately, she has two other books that have more of the former and the latter, respectively. I'm gonna get my hands on 'em right away.

nonfiction - memoir/humor - published 2010 (picked up from a Free Little Library). (Former) stand-up comic/E! TV personality (who is/was alcoholic and anorexic) embarrasses herself and puts down everybody else.

If this was ever funny (she's been successful enough to become a recognizable name, so supposedly it was), it hasn't aged very well - apparently being Black was an acceptable punchline in 2010 (as in, it is ludicrous to even associate yourself with someone that melanated--apart from claiming to have a single token "black friend" that supposedly makes all this ok). You might expect a certain amount of microaggressions and off-color jokes among comedians of a previous era (basic xenophobia but also against fat people and against show more rural people), but I also found it hard to relate to (and even harder to like) someone who has made a living off her looks (hence the anorexia and self-absorption?) and who lives with her older super-rich boyfriend (an exec at the media company that employs her) and is accustomed, accordingly, to flying around in a helicopter and paying for passing acquaintances to tag along with her and said boyfriend on luxury vacations. The book does read pretty quickly, even if I was wincing half the time, and she is very creative with her pranks, if you like pranks, but I had to stop after she made a joke about a turbaned-man's camel (p. 204)--I mean, whoa--saying/thinking something like that in a moment of rashness is one thing, but publishing it in your book is a completely different level of disconnect from the perception (and feelings) of others. She has moments, but you're better off reading something else.

Read instead: Let's Pretend This Never Happened by Jenny Lawson (or any of her books--similar quirky pranks but without the xenophobic jokes); The Last Black Unicorn by Tiffany Haddish; anything by Phoebe Robinson; any audiobook from David Sedaris, especially his earlier stuff before he started just publishing his journal entries; Tina Fey's Bossypants; books by show less

You know that one friend you have who is always drunk, always sarcastic, always getting into trouble and always hilarious? Chelsea Handler is the ultimate version of that friend. Reading this book was like having a drink with her and having her tell you highly embarrassing (and enormously funny (and pretty dirty)) stories about her life.

I've heard so much about Chelsea Handler and her show, and when I had the opportunity to read this book, I thought, why not? This is the first, and probably only book I will read by her.

I was shocked at the first chapter about how she learned to masturbate at age 8 and became a chronic masturbator who just had to fiddle her bean everywhere, even on the playground during recess. I kept thinking to myself, is this real? It can't possibly be. I mean yes I know that children can inadvertently learn how to diddle themselves and how good it can feel, but this chapter was just so over the top that it just had this whole sense of unrealness about it.

Chelsea, as of this date, is no longer with the boyfriend mentioned in this book, and I sure as show more heck can see why. Despite him being her BOSS as well as lover, she is cruel to him and plays all sorts of stupid, horrible jokes on him, including letting him believe that a friend of theirs' dog died. Not sure how much of this is real, just like the chapter about masturbation, but I would NOT take this kind of crap from friends, let alone a lover. She is also pretty nasty to her friends, which made me wonder why she had any friends at all.

The only chapters I really enjoyed were three of them - the one where she wanted a Cabbage Patch doll, the one where her father rented out a crap-house, and her and her family dealing with their father. All the other chapters were pretty lame. I'd have given this book one star, but the virtue of these three funny chapters gave this book an extra star. show less

A friend at work came up to me one day and asked, "Do you watch Chelsea Lately?" When I nodded, she said, "You HAVE to read this book!" and loaned me her copy of Chelsea Chelsea Bang Bang. I was expecting it to be hilarious, light reading. I was disappointed from the very beginning.

For starters, this so-called book is actually a compilation of 11 essays/stories that are unrelated to each other, except that they are all events from Chelsea's life. The first essay describes an 8-year old girl who goes to a slumber party and thereafter becomes obsessed with masturbation. I get that Chelsea Handler is going for shock value, but it wasn't funny to me at all. Instead, it was really disturbing. The other stories are just okay. At least they show more didn't make me cringe by discussing a child's sexuality.

Chelsea Handler is hilarious in person, and afer reading this book I didn't understand why it fell so flat. Watching her show again last night, it hit me. She is very witty, and much of her punch lines have a dead-pan delivery. This makes her an excellent stand-up comic but just does not translate well in print. I won't bother reading anything else she writes, but I continue to be a fan of her show and live performances. show less

This is one of the funniest books I've ever read. Chelsea Handler writes purely for entertainment and she does it so amazingly well. The stories from her childhood are especially hilarious but it's hard to believe they are entirely true. But that's OK, because they are a riot and I want to believe them so bad, SO BAD, that I sort of do.

I would recommend this book in a heartbeat to anyone just looking to laugh and be entertained. This is definitely the book for it.