Yearbook: Seth Rogen

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My grandparents were hard to impersonate, so I thought I’d just go with a generic “old Jewish person” voice. It was a safe but ultimately good call. The teacher, a working stand-up comic named Mark Pooley, who looked exactly like Garth from Wayne’s World, took the stage. This would play out for about two hours straight, and as maddening as spending time with them was, I couldn’t help but think they were entertaining. I told my editor not to correct my grammar unless it was confusing as I was trying to make the book sound as conversational as possible.— Seth Rogen (@Sethrogen) October 31, 2021 Early on, there are tales about his family, growing up and trying to date, getting into stand-up comedy at the tender age of 13, learning karate, and many, many, many stories about getting high. (Surprisingly, there’s not a single plug for his weed company – classy.)

I asked lots of people to help me read the book including my mom and wife, and together we talk about grandparents, doing stand-up comedy as a teenager, bar mitzvahs and Jewish summer camp, and tell way more stories about doing drugs than my mother would like. I also talk about some of my adventures in Los Angeles and surely say things about other famous people that will create a wildly awkward conversation for me at a party one day. Another thing I noticed was that my grandmother kind of had a wispy white Afro that, when the light hit it, became see-through, leaving you with a VERY good idea of what my grandmother would look like if she was completely bald. And . . . ​it was horrifying. 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.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. There was a lot of name dropping. A lot of, I hung out with this famous person, and that famous person, and this famous person did this weird thing, and we got high, (insert high story # 1-1000 here) but hey I can’t complain about that, because if I had to have guessed what I should expect from a book titled “Yearbook” by Seth Rogen it probably would’ve been exactly that, & what do we go to Seth for if not stoner humor? And stoner humor he delivered. This was fine. If I didn’t enjoy Seth Rogen’s movies and his overall presence, demeanor & humor, this may have proven to be less palatable, but being that I adore him, it was quite easy to get thru. I just imagined it being read in his very distinct voice and accompanied by his even more distinct laugh & that got me through the 1001 stories about being high. 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.”

When I was younger, Bubby and Zaidy just didn’t seem that into me. I got the impression they liked my older sister, Danya, more than me, mostly because their words and actions made it wildly clear that they did. They were just nicer to her, which didn’t really bug me that much, because I didn’t love spending time with them. Yearbook, the new book from Seth Rogen, is a funny collection of vignettes/recollections from the comic actor. There are a few unforgettable examples of not being able to control bodily functions – I may never look at a Snapple bottle in the same way again. And there are some great stories about meeting famous people, from Steven Spielberg and George Lucas to Nicolas Cage, Tom Cruise and Kanye West. 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***.The stories didn't really feel like Seth Rogen to me, other than all the drugs. There's a good chance that's on me. Seth Rogen usually seems to play variations on the same character, so I've always assumed he was basically playing himself, but maybe there's a bigger difference between movie Seth and real-life Seth than I realized. I talk about my grandparents, doing stand-up comedy as a teenager, bar mitzvahs, and Jewish summer camp, and tell way more stories about doing drugs than my mother would like. I also talk about some of my adventures in Los Angeles, and surely say things about other famous people that will create a wildly awkward conversation for me at a party one day. 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. 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 wrote three jokes about Bubby and Zaidy that followed the basic structure we were taught: Say the premise or the thing you don’t like; say why you don’t like that thing by making a humorous observation; then do an “act out,” an impression of the target of the joke, bringing it all together. I talk about my grandparents, doing stand-up comedy as a teenager, bar mitzvahs and Jewish summer camp, and tell way more stories about doing drugs than my mother would like. I also talk about some of my adventures in Los Angeles, and surely say things about other famous people that will create a wildly awkward conversation for me at a party one day. 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. 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 talk about my grandparents, doing stand-up comedy as a teenager, bar mitzvahs and Jewish summer camp, and tell way more stories about doing drugs than my mother would like. I also talk about some of my adventures in Los Angeles, and surely say things about other famous people that will create a wildly awkward conversation for me at a party one day.To preface, I usually go into autobiographical books knowing I am going to have to talk myself into finishing them over a long period of time. I was expecting to do the same thing with this, even though I am a huge fan of Seth Rogen. 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. The collection ends with a very vivid story about Jewish summer camp, complete with the idea that people might not remember things in the same way. 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). 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.