Spoiled Brats (including the story that inspired the major motion picture An American Pickle starring Seth Rogen)

Spoiled Brats (including the story that inspired the major motion picture An American Pickle starring Seth Rogen)

Author: Simon Rich

Publisher: Hachette UK

Published: 2014-10-14

Total Pages: 224

ISBN-13: 0316368636

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The "hilarious" (New York Times Book Review) collection of short stories from the award-winning humorist Simon Rich includes the story that inspired the Seth Rogen comedy An American Pickle. Twenty years ago, Barney the Dinosaur told the nation's children they were special. We're still paying the price. From "one of the funniest writers in America" comes a collection of stories culled from the front lines of the millennial culture wars (Jimmy So, Daily Beast). Rife with failing rock bands, student loans, and participation trophies, Spoiled Brats is about a generation of narcissists -- and the well-meaning boomers who made them that way. A hardworking immigrant is preserved for a century in pickle brine. A helicopter mom strives to educate her demon son. And a family of hamsters struggles to survive in a private-school homeroom. Surreal, shrewd, and surprisingly warm, these stories are as resonant as they are hilarious.


Ant Farm

Ant Farm

Author: Simon Rich

Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks

Published: 2007-04-03

Total Pages: 162

ISBN-13: 1400065887

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In Ant Farm, former Harvard Lampoon president Simon Rich finds humor in some very surprising places. Armed with a sharp eye for the absurd and an overwhelming sense of doom, Rich explores the ridiculousness of our everyday lives. The world, he concludes, is a hopelessly terrifying place–with endless comic potential. –If your girlfriend gives you some “love coupons” and then breaks up with you, are the coupons still valid? –What kind of performance pressure does an endangered male panda feel when his captors bring the last remaining female panda to his cage? –If murderers can get into heaven by accepting Jesus, just how awkward is it when they run into their victims? Join Simon Rich as he explores the extraordinary and hilarious desperation that resides in ordinary life, from cradle to grave. "Hilarious." –Jon Stewart


Free-Range Chickens

Free-Range Chickens

Author: Simon Rich

Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks

Published: 2009-05-12

Total Pages: 146

ISBN-13: 0812977114

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After a riotous debut collection, Ant Farm, Simon Rich returns to mine more comedy from our hopelessly terrifying world. In the nostalgic opening chapter, Rich recalls his fear of the Tooth Fairy (“Is there a face fairy?”) and his initial reaction to the “Got-your-nose” game (“Please just kill me. Better to die than to live the rest of my life as a monster”). He gets inside the heads of two firehouse Dalmatians who can’t understand their masters’ compulsion to drive off to horrible fires every day (“What the hell is wrong with these people?”). And in the final chapter, he tackles one of life’s biggest questions: Does God really have a plan for us? Yes, it turns out. Now if only He could remember what it was. . . .


Spoiled Brats (including the story that inspired the major motion picture An American Pickle starring Seth Rogen)

Spoiled Brats (including the story that inspired the major motion picture An American Pickle starring Seth Rogen)

Author: Simon Rich

Publisher: Little, Brown

Published: 2014-10-14

Total Pages: 171

ISBN-13: 0316368636

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The "hilarious" (New York Times Book Review) collection of short stories from the award-winning humorist Simon Rich includes the story that inspired the Seth Rogen comedy An American Pickle. Twenty years ago, Barney the Dinosaur told the nation's children they were special. We're still paying the price. From "one of the funniest writers in America" comes a collection of stories culled from the front lines of the millennial culture wars (Jimmy So, Daily Beast). Rife with failing rock bands, student loans, and participation trophies, Spoiled Brats is about a generation of narcissists -- and the well-meaning boomers who made them that way. A hardworking immigrant is preserved for a century in pickle brine. A helicopter mom strives to educate her demon son. And a family of hamsters struggles to survive in a private-school homeroom. Surreal, shrewd, and surprisingly warm, these stories are as resonant as they are hilarious.


Hits and Misses

Hits and Misses

Author: Simon Rich

Publisher: Little, Brown

Published: 2018-07-24

Total Pages: 169

ISBN-13: 0316468878

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A hilarious collection inspired by a former Saturday Night Live writer's real experiences in Hollywood, chronicling the absurdity of fame and the humanity of failure in a world dominated by social media influencers and reality TV stars. Simon Rich is "one of the funniest writers in America" (Daily Beast) -- a humorist who draws comparisons to Douglas Adams (New York Times Book Review), James Thurber, and P.G. Wodehouse (The Guardian). With Hits and Misses, he's back with a hilarious new collection of stories about dreaming big and falling flat, about ordinary people desperate for stardom and the stars who are bored by having it all. Inspired by Rich's real experiences in Hollywood, Hits and Misses chronicles all the absurdity of fame and success alongside the heartbreaking humanity of failure. From a bitter tell-all by the horse Paul Revere rode to greatness to a gushing magazine profile of everyone's favorite World War II dictator, these stories roam across time and space to skewer our obsession with making it big -- from the days of ancient Babylon to the age of TMZ.


New Teeth

New Teeth

Author: Simon Rich

Publisher: Little, Brown

Published: 2021-07-27

Total Pages: 152

ISBN-13: 0316536695

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Laugh till you cry in this new collection of stories from the award-winning “Serena Williams of humor writing” (New York Times Book Review) about raising babies and trying not to be one. Called a “comedic Godsend” by Conan O’Brien and “the Stephen King of comedy writing” by John Mulaney, Simon Rich is back with New Teeth, his funniest and most personal collection yet. Two murderous pirates find a child stowaway on board and attempt to balance pillaging with co-parenting. A woman raised by wolves prepares for her parents’ annual Thanksgiving visit. An aging mutant superhero is forced to learn humility when the mayor kicks him upstairs to a desk job. And in the hard-boiled caper “The Big Nap,” a weary two-year-old detective struggles to make sense of “a world gone mad.” Equal parts silly and sincere, New Teeth is an ode to growing up, growing older, and what it means to make a family.


The Last Girlfriend on Earth

The Last Girlfriend on Earth

Author: Simon Rich

Publisher:

Published: 2014-07

Total Pages: 118

ISBN-13: 9780316255929

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A collection of humorous short stories about love and romance, including the tale of a besotted Sherlock Holmes ignoring all the clues that his girlfriend's been cheating on him.


One More Thing

One More Thing

Author: B. J. Novak

Publisher: Vintage

Published: 2014-02-04

Total Pages: 251

ISBN-13: 0385351844

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New York Times Bestseller A startlingly original debut from the actor, writer, director, and executive producer hailed as “a gifted observer of the human condition and a very funny writer capable of winning that rare thing: unselfconscious, insuppressible laughter” (The Washington Post). A boy wins a $100,000 prize in a box of Frosted Flakes—only to discover that claiming the winnings might unravel his family. A woman sets out to seduce motivational speaker Tony Robbins—turning for help to the famed motivator himself. A new arrival in Heaven, overwhelmed with options, procrastinates over a long-ago promise to visit his grandmother. We meet Sophia, the first artificially intelligent being capable of love, who falls for a man who might not be ready for it himself; a vengeance-minded hare, obsessed with scoring a rematch against the tortoise who ruined his life; and post-college friends who try to figure out how to host an intervention in the era of Facebook. Along the way, we learn why wearing a red T-shirt every day is the key to finding love, how February got its name, and why the stock market is sometimes just . . . down. Finding inspiration in questions from the nature of perfection to the icing on carrot cake, One More Thing has at its heart the most human of phenomena: love, fear, hope, ambition, and the inner stirring for the one elusive element just that might make a person complete. Across a dazzling range of subjects, themes, tones, and narrative voices, the many pieces in this collection are like nothing else, but they have one thing in common: they share the playful humor, deep heart, sharp eye, inquisitive mind, and altogether electrifying spirit of a writer with a fierce devotion to the entertainment of the reader.


What in God's Name

What in God's Name

Author: Simon Rich

Publisher:

Published: 2013-06-20

Total Pages: 170

ISBN-13: 9781846688492

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From the Sunsets Department and Geyser Regulation to the Department of Miracles, Heaven Inc has the earth covered. Unless someone is away from their desk. And these days, the CEO is kind of disillusioned. God knows he should be keeping an eye on the bad things happening on Earth, but instead he finds himself watching the Church channels on satellite TV. His first priority is the team of angels he's asked to get Lynyrd Skynyrd back together. Downstairs on the office floor, Eliza has been promoted from the Prayers Department to Miracles, and Craig, the only other workaholic in heaven, has to show her around. Eliza is shocked by the casual attitude of many of the angels in her new department. And she's furious when she discovers that God has never looked at, let alone answered, a single prayer. So she storms into God's office and asks Him a question that no one has ever dared to ask before. And it might just be the end of the world.


Big Time

Big Time

Author: Jen Spyra

Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks

Published: 2022-07-05

Total Pages: 321

ISBN-13: 198485528X

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The debut collection of raucous, dark, strange, satirical stories from the former Late Show with Stephen Colbert writer and New Yorker contributor, featuring a foreword by Stephen Colbert “Jen Spyra’s stories are shocking, silly, smart, and absurdly funny. Underline both those words, I don’t care how much it costs!”—Tina Fey A bride so desperate to get in shape for her wedding that she enrolls in a new kind of workout program that promises the moon but costs more than she bargained for. A snowman who, on the wish of a child, comes to life in a decidedly less savory way than in the childhood classic. And in the title story, a time-hopping 1940s starlet tries to claw her way to the top in modern-day Hollywood, despite being ridiculously unwoke. In this uproarious, addictive debut, Jen Spyra takes a culture that seems almost beyond parody and holds it up to a funhouse mirror, immersing the reader in a world of prehistoric influencers, woodland creatures plagued by millennial neuroses, and an all-out birthday bash determined to be the most lavish celebration of all time, by any means necessary. Welcome, brave soul, to the world of Jen Spyra.