Yearbook: Seth Rogen

Product Information

A collection of funny personal essays from one of the writers of Superbad and Pineapple Express and one of the producers of The Disaster Artist, Neighbors, and The Boys. (All of these words have been added to help this book show up in people’s searches using the wonders of algorithmic technology. Thanks for bearing with us!) Yearbook is a collection of true stories that I desperately hope are just funny at worst, and life-changingly amazing at best. (I understand that it’s likely the former, which is a fancy “book” way of saying “the first one.”) I hope you enjoy the book should you buy it, and if you don't enjoy it, I'm sorry. If you ever see me on the street and explain the situation, I'll do my best to make it up to you. Yearbookis a collection of true stories that I desperately hope are just funny at worst, and life-changingly amazing at best. (I understand that it’s likely the former, which is a fancy “book” way of saying “the first one.”) It speaks to Rogen’s storytelling prowess and eventful adolescence that by the time he gets to his Hollywood experience, one almost forgets that this is, in fact, a celebrity story. At the risk of alienating many a megastar, Rogen promptly gets blunt. A loopy conversation with George Lucas, when the Star Wars mastermind seemed to be sincerely preparing for the apocalypse in 2012, is eye opening. The saga of The Green Hornet’s troubled pre-production features a disastrous dinner with Nicolas Cage, who was up for the villain role but purportedly pitched the character as a white Bahamian, then years later asked if James Franco snatched the idea for Spring Breakers. Dealings with Tom Cruise, Kanye West and Steve Wozniak feel similarly on the nose – so much so that they almost play like too-good-to-be-true satire.

Which makes it even more incredible is that not only did my parents not scoff at the notion of it, they looked in the local paper and found a stand-up comedy workshop to enroll me in. Here’s another example of how cool he is. When I tweeted that one of my only problems with the book was the grammatically incorrect use of “Me and X did…” throughout, he replied that he told his editor “not to correct my grammar unless it was confusing,” since he wanted the book to sound “as conversational as possible.” It’s a real treat when a memoir by a comedian is actually as funny and vital as the work that got them into memoir-writing territory, but Yearbook is just that delightful. . . . Amusing and insightful.” —Vulture Yearbook is a collection of true stories that I desperately hope are just funny at worst, and life-changingly amazing at best. (I understand that it's likely the former, which is a fancy "book" way of saying "the first one.")

Every Friday night would play out the same. I would plant myself on Zaidy’s La-Z-Boy and turn on “TGIF,” ABC’s Friday-night programming, which consisted of Family Matters, Step by Step, and Hangin’ with Mr. Cooper, which are all shows that are, by any definition, f***ing dope as f***. That it does. As with many books by actor/comics, I alternated between reading a physical copy of the book and listening to the audiobook. And in both cases, it sounds like he’s just sat down with a beer (actually not a beer, since he no longer drinks) or a joint and started telling you some really funny anecdotes. Yearbook is a collection of true stories that I desperately hope are just funny at worst, and life-changingly amazing at best. (I understand that it's likely the former, which is a fancy 'book' way of saying 'the first one'.)

The workshop was simple enough: You’d spend a day learning the basic concept of stand-up joke writing, write a few jokes, and then, that night, you’d go to the Lotus Club, a local lesbian bar with what in retrospect was a very vaginal flower painted on its awning, and perform your jokes for the lesbians. My mother dropped me off outside; I walked into the class and, not surprisingly, was the only kid—the first of about a thousand rooms that I would walk into over the next decade where that was the case. I’ve been the youngest person in the room a lot of my life. There’s something nice about having aged into my job. But still, I miss those days, because when you’re young, the bar for accomplishment is so low, no matter what you do, it’s pretty impressive. If you’re young enough, just walking is considered a huge deal. My friends are thrilled when their kids don’t shit all over their floors. As an adult, I get little to no praise for doing the same. I’ve always been a big Seth Rogen fan – ever since discovering Freaks And Geeks at the video store (remember them?) in the early 00s. Yearbook is a collection of true stories that I desperately hope are just funny at worst, and life-changingly amazing at best. (I understand that it’s likely the former, which is a fancy “book” way of saying “the first one.”) What’s your feeling on Seth Rogen? Do you think he’s funny? Are you a fan of him and his movies? I think he’s talented and I’ve enjoyed some of his stuff, but my general feelings toward him definitely depend on my mood. (Then again, I feel that way about everyone, lol.)I liked getting a glimpse into Seth's younger years and some of the behind the scenes stuff from The Interview. I'd have liked to see some more detail and depth to the stories, though. A lot of them just felt like short little anecdotes that you'd see an actor discuss on a talk show or that they'd tell at a party. Most of the stories were told in a pretty emotionally detached way, with the first about his grandparents being the exception. That was really the only one that I felt like we were getting a clear picture of Seth as a person.

My grandfather worked in the engine room of a battleship in the Royal Navy during World War II, and as a result, was more or less deaf. He loved being in the Navy. He talked about it like most guys talked about their fraternity years. They would hang out, smoke cigars, talk shit, all while floating in thousands of tons of metal around the war-torn Horn of Africa. He arrived at Normandy on D-Day Plus One, but his favorite story was about figuring out that if you broke your rationed rum bottle after drinking it, you could say you broke it before and get a double ration. Anyway, he was deaf.This book, which is less a memoir than a collection of personal stories, has made me like and admire the actor/writer/director even more. Throughout, he comes across as smart, kind, funny and relatable. And he’s proudly Canadian, which means a big deal to us Canadians. I didn’t really start spending a lot of time alone with my grandparents until I was ten and my sister was thirteen and getting ready for her Bat Mitzvah. She had to attend services every Friday, and I did not want to do that, so my parents would drop me off at my grandparents’ apartment to hang out for a few hours while they went to synagogue with my sister so she could pretend to pray. Beloved and prolific multi-hyphenate Seth Rogen leads a full cast of more than 80 narrators for the audiobook of his debut collection of hilarious and insightful personal essays, YEARBOOK, from Random House Audio, an imprint of the Penguin Random House Audio Publishing Group (published in hardcover and eBook formats by Crown). The 83 total voices that can be heard on YEARBOOK puts this production in the company of PRH Audio’s Beastie Boys Book (44 voices), Four Hundred Souls (87 voices) and Lincoln in the Bardo (166 voices).