Dirty Jokes and Beer
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Review by Ann M. Shayne
I feel like I've been on a long plane ride with Drew Carey sitting beside me in the middle seat.
He keeps talking. And talking. By the end of this journey, I've heard ten really funny dirty jokes, I've heard all about his job, I've heard what he thinks about our politicians, I've heard 101 penis jokes. Not, of course, that Drew calls them penis jokes.
I've heard tons of colorful language.
He's pulled out his wallet and shown me the picture of him as a handsome Marine. After we've had three or four beers together, he goes confessional and tells me about his troubled childhood. He even tells me his best Mardi Gras story, one which -- unlike most goofuses' drunken experiences -- ended up on "Hard Copy."
Finally, once we have hit that flattened moment when we've overindulged and overconfessed, he pulls out his short stories and asks me to read them. In my fog, I agree.
"Dirty Jokes and Beer" is the inevitable product of a stand-up comedian's success on a situation comedy. In the string of comedian books of recent years (Bill Cosby and Paul Reiser and Ellen Degeneres and Brett Butler and the like), Drew Carey weighs in a lot dirtier in print than he is on TV. (There's no Department of Broadcast Standards and Practices watching over his word processor -- oh, he tells me plenty about his wrestling with the TV censors.)
Why have I listened to this guy for so long? Can't I switch seats or something? Well, in a season when Drew Carey's book appears with an announced print run of 500,000, it seems that he is suddenly a literary force to be reckoned with. I might as well stay put; there he is, right next to me, and there aren't any other seats available.
To his credit, Carey is completely aware of his place in the literary firmament: "If you bought this book to find out what I'm really like when I'm not on TV, read the stories first. I'm really proud of them and would have written them for free. The rest of the book (which I'm also very proud of and think is damn funny) I just wrote for money."
Like Howard Stern and Dennis Rodman, he's the guy in the middle seat you can't get away from.
Ann M. Shayne is Vice President and Editor of BookPage.
©1997, ProMotion, inc.
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