Photo courtesy of Harper Perennial
Everything Is Wrong With Me: A Memoir of an American Childhood Gone, Well, Wrong by Jason Mulgrew had me basically frothing at the mouth the second I glanced at it’s fantastic cover on Goodreads. Seriously, this cover and title are at the top of my list of best book titles and covers that I’ve ever seen. I’m torn between feeling enormously proud of him for getting this book published and wanting to repeatedly stab him out of my jealous ghetto rage at his success. (In case you don’t know it, I grew up dysfunctional and under the care of a bipolar mother, drunk stepfather, and possible serial-killer half-brother. I want to finish writing my own memoir that I started years ago. And once you read this book, you’ll understand where my stabbing fantasy comes from, as there is lots of stabbing going on in the book!)
Jason Mulgrew is 30 years old and has what I believe to be a best-selling memoir on his hands, damn it! When I discovered that he was writes a blog titled Everything is Wrong with Me 30, Bipolar, and Hungry and it has over 2000 million hits, I knew that I had to review this book. Thank goodness I received my review copy in the mail just in time for the book’s release today. I started reading the book Monday at 7 am and had to wake up at 1:00 am this morning just to finish reading it, because I’ve fallen completely head over heels in love with this book. And I’ve got a bit of a weird crush on Jason’s father, Dennis Mulgrew, who was even more wilder than my own drunken stepfather in his prime.
I don’t know what was funniest story was in this book, it may have been the fact that he was taught to refer to his penis as his “bird,” or when he wrote a paragraph about his pack of wild friends with goofy names such as Jimmy the Muppet and asked the readers to envision Ray Liotta narrating the paragraph in the style of Henry Hill from Goodfellas, or if it was Jason’s wild over-use of hysterical footnotes. I’m leaning toward the footnotes. My favorite can be found on page 154, and the footnote is nearly half the page and runs on to take up a quarter of the next page as well. Basically, it is a delightful story-within-a-story about his favorite childhood game of all time called remote controlling. Everyone in his Philly neighborhood paid off the cable guys to get all the premium channels, including porn, and he and his friends would walk the streets with their remote controls and point them into open living rooms and changed their neighbors tv’s to the porn channels. Jason and crew would then witness the mayhem and hysteria of the families who saw sudden pornography on their television screens. I still can not stop laughing about this story.
This memoir is filled with top-notch tales of hilarious dysfunction, such as his young classmate Carlos who had a giant-sized penis who attempted to teach Jason the correct way to take a piss in the first grade, as Jason held his “bird” like a lion holds its young. Perhaps it was the story about how his father spend Jason’s first Christmas getting pissed drunk, watching his buddy get knifed after nearly getting jumped, and eventually getting arrested for attempted murder. These are the gems that make this book shine. And, it is filled with wonderful pictures. The best one was of Jason dressed up for the annual Philly New Years Day Parade, but that photo wasn’t on his website. So, I thought you’d like to see these two, to give you an idea of what else you can find in the book. The first picture is of Jason getting a ham from Christmas.
Photo curtesy of Jason Mulgrew
In Jason’s life, it was normal for his grandfather to take him bar hopping while he was collecting bets for his gambling business, just as it was normal for him to kick back with a beer as shown below. As much as this picture shocks me, I honestly can’t stop laughing about it, because I know that life, having grown up the same way. I clearly remember the first time I drank an entire pina colada ate age nine, right along with my mom. Whoops! For many people, this is just how life is, and I love nothing more than laughing over the terrible yet funny stories that other people have written about their own childhood.
Photo curtesy of Jason Mulgrew
I can’t beg you enough to buy this book. It is a must-read for every person who grew up loving the fun in their dysfunctional childhoods. Everything Is Wrong With Me: A Memoir of an American Childhood Gone, Well, Wrong is a frank, brutally honest and shockingly hysterical memoir of booze, porn, masturbation, and the stupid acts of boys and men. Who doesn’t want to have a good laugh and a trip down memory lane? Even if you weren’t raised dysfunctional in the traditional sense, buy the book and take a walk down the wild side and see how hard life was for someone else, and perk yourself up knowing at least you didn’t have to survive that childhood. So what if your mom or dad was a little too controlling? His dad let him play with a loaded elephant gun (on accident, but still!) all afternoon with his little brother.
Photo curtesy of People Magazine
Jason Mulgrew currently works for “a white-shoe law firm that tolerates his blue-collar ways,” or at least until his boss eventually reads this book and fires his ass for admitting what he does at work. In addition, Jason still writes his popular blog, almost had a tv show picked up, and has even made it into People’s 2005 Most-Eligible-Bachelor List. I am still wondering who he blew to get that shout out?
To purchase your copy of Everything Is Wrong With Me: A Memoir of an American Childhood Gone, Well, Wrong by Jason Mulgrew, click here.
To visit Jason Mulgrew’s website and blog, click here.
To find Jason’s Facebook page, go here.
And, to follow him on Twitter go here.
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