About book Chocolate, Please: My Adventures In Food, Fat, And Freaks (2009)
Lisa Lampanelli, "Comedy's Lovable Queen of Mean," spouts epithets and slurs with mind-numbing rapidity. Her comedy, standing squarely in the middle of the "insult comic" genre, could be easily offensive if one took things personally (or took things personally on behalf of someone else). But where lesser comics use epithets as they're intended, Lampanelli's use of the language sends up everyone, especially the up-tight squares who can't take a joke. Of course, Lampanelli makes this kind of comedy work by making herself the target as often as she puts the target on someone else's back. A few thoughts: I've really come to like stand-up comedian books, particularly the ones that bridge the gap between comedy essays and memoir. Because comedians spend so much time thinking about the nature of the world, they're remarkably introspective and thus able to articulate their views of the world with both humor and humility. That said, this book had more essays about Lampanelli's treatment for various personality disorders (eating and co-dependency) than I expected it would. In particular, Lampanelli's writing about her two stints in rehab is particularly moving. The time she spends in an extreme rehab facility for people with eating disorders is both moving and interesting, and helps highlight how women of all shapes and sizes faces body image challenges in American society. I'm divided the way she writes about her experiences with black men. In part, Lampanelli is famous for her stage stories about dating black men, but her discussion of them is grounded in the language she uses as an insult comic, and makes it very hard to separate her discussions of particular men of color from all men of color. This becomes more complicated as she writes about the stereotypes that she's decided are more often true than false. It might be easy for an unsophisticated listener to find racist views reinforced, rather than satirized, by Lampanelli's book. (Much of her book reminds me, for example, of Chelsea Handler's writing about dwarfs.) Alas, the book feels a bit padded out with jokes from her act and various specials she's been in. I would actually have preferred to read another essay about her life than a series of jokes about different subjects. A good book for someone who knows Lampanelli's work, but not recommended for people unfamiliar with her comedy style. Be sure you like her work before you read this book. This book is hilarious! LL is funny as crap- so funny I had to change my undees a few times because she made me crap 'em. There are some slow points, but overall Chocolate is a great little memoir. I got the audio book cus stuff like this is always better when read by the author. WARNING: After listening to this book you'll start to forget that constantly telling racist jokes and calling women 'cunts' all the time is, usually, inappropriate. So, watch out for that, bitches.
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