Redheaded Reviews: I Know You Are But What Am I by Samantha Bee

This hilarious book covers a wide range of topics across Ms. Bee's life. She talks about being prepared for old age since she grew up with a great grandmother and a grandmother who groomed her early for what to expect when she got old; For example 1. Make sure you don't wear inappropriate footwear or shorts too early in the spring or you'll get rheumatism. 2. Get the "sad head-shaking" down. 3. If you're going to have young people over in their shorts put towels down on the couch to absorb the oils from their bodies; 4. Frowning causes wrinkles, and so does pushing your face into your pillow while you sleep; 5. Cosmetic plastic surgery is weird. Do not do it unless you are Wayne Newton.

Her mom, an avid animal lover, started off with a cat named Zenny who adored her and no one else. She got Samantha some gerbils that kept on dying and then a hamster that kept having sex with its mate and killing it that way. She got sick of having these poor females being replaced and let him go into the wild. Then they moved out into the country so her mother could expand her animal menagerie to include a dog, a goat, some roosters, and a horse, none of whom liked anyone but her mother and all of whom attacked anyone who came near them. But Samantha would finally get her own cat that would love her the way Zenny loved her mother and she would name it Newton. She would chase it around her apartment and let it chase her. It would eat her roommate's sandwich which she thought was cute. Until one Saturday night after she had broken up with her boyfriend and gone to her bed which was on the floor and suddenly her cat began to make high pitched noises then he jumped at her back and bit her neck and clawed her back as he humped her back. She can't believe this is happening and get him off her back and put her arms up to block him from getting to her back which means that he latches on to her arm and humps her arm. After several bouts, she gives up and goes to bed swearing that she'll make an appointment to have him fixed in the morning. This whole episode leaves her feeling like a loser.

This book covers a lot of ground from her life as a young girl who wanted Jesus to be her boyfriend to live around penises to her life of crime stealing cars to when she was trying to make it in acting and got a job as Sailor Moon in a horrible production where she met her husband. This is a truly funny book that is loaded in sarcasm and witticisms. I have to admit that I have loved Samantha Bee since The Daily Show and I really love her solo show so I guess it's no surprise that I would love her book. But it is well written and hilarious. I give it five stars out of five stars.

Quotes

One day I walked into class, and all of these formerly scrubbed girls were wearing shimmery pink lip glosses in various shades of whore.
=Samantha Bee (I Know You Are But What Am I p 26)

The peripheral benefit of all this knowledge was a sharp uptick in playground popularity. Star Wars role-play was the game of choice in our neighborhood, but it was frustrating for me to be the only one who had actually seen the movie. I had spent many a recesss trying to explain the fine points of the plot to my slack-jawed third-grade chorts, only to hear infuriatitng cries of “Fetch me the Siberian Emerald!” from the fat kid playin Uncle Owen. I tried to reason with them, but in the end, they played the game they wanted and certainly never let me play the coveted role of Princess Leia. When everyone was sick of hearing me bitch about how poorly they were doing things, I was usually relegated to playing R2D2 and speaking in bleem-blop-bloops in my quest for verité.
-Samantha Bee (I Know You Are But What Am I, p 49)

Even at an early age, I understood that part of forging a healthy relationship with people you don’t see all the time sometimes involves asking questions that you don’t really need the answers to and letting someone think they are helping you when you don’t really need their help at all.
-Samantha Bee (I Know You Are But What Am I p 54)

We constantly debated who had the better chest, Jon Bon Jovi or David Lee Roth. Personally. I found Jon Bon Jovi too feminine and slender—translation: gay. I was a mad David Lee Roth girl; I loved his hairy chest but wasn’t entirely sure why. I knew I wanted to rub my face in it, but that was about it.
-Samantha Bee (I Know You Are But What Am I p 60)

Take a toque wherever you go and, don’t try to operate any machinery of any kind without a grandchild present.
-Samantha Bee (I Know You Are But What Am I p 89)

Showers are like having water attack you. Civilized people take baths.
-Samantha Bee (I Know You Are But What Am I p 92)

Also, full-seated panties are a must. Many People call them “granny panties”—this is inappropriate and disparaging. Think of them as a clean absorbent cotton insurance policy against what is going to happen to you in the future should you happen to laugh and sneeze at the same time. At some point, your thong strap is going to disappear into the golds of your buttocks, and this is counterintuitive to the thong’s original purpose, which is to say sexiness. Embrace a broad cotton gusset and get on with your life.
-Samantha Bee (I Know You Are But What Am I p 92-3)

A person can get away with anything if they’re dressed well and act like they belong, even when they don’t.
-Samantha Bee (I Know You Are But What Am I p 95)

For me, shopping is like a purgatory in which I am eternally shopping for a bathing suit; only in this case everything is a precious hand-crocheted white string bikini two sizes too small. Only super-bitchy drag queens will serve me, while blatantly twittering about the cellulite above my knees
-Samantha Bee (I Know You Are But What Am I p 96)

Sex with my first boyfriend was a little bit like learning how to put ina tampon, but only half as enjoyable! I could have taken it or left it, to be honest. I took it, I found it boring, and after we broke up, it took years and many successive relationships before I even remotely felt like trying again.
-Samantha Bee (I Know You Are But What Am I p 99)

But home-crafted pornography is a completely different animal. It makes a person ashamed to be human.
-Samantha Bee (I Know You Are But What Am I p 119)

Now, I haven’t had sex with a ton of men, but I do have a couple of rules governing my choice of partner. One is that you may not even call it making love, or I will throw up. But the other, more important rule is that you may not have sex with me if your hips are narrower than mine. If you put on my jeans, and you are swimming in them, then you are not the man for me. It is not going to happen.
-Samantha Bee (I Know You Are But What Am I p 125)

After a lot of blood, sweat, and tears, and long after any sensible person would have given up hoppe, I had to ask myself, Was all the effort really worth it? The answer apparently, was a booming, resounding, deafening yes. If there’s one thing I took away from that job, it’s that a man will literally do anything to save the life of his penis and its various accouterments—no matter how dilapidated its condition. And let me be clear, this phone line was not intended to be used for phone sex. It was an actual clinic, run by actual sleazy doctors who knew they could make a lot of money by focusing specifically on a man's inability to give up that particular ghost.
-Samantha Bee (I Know You Are But What Am I p 159)

If you’ve ever seen a god towing a cart in place of its hind legs and thought, I wonder thow would put a dog through that?, the answer is, my mother. IF she had to change a dog’s colostomy bag seven times a day for twelve years, she would do it. She would squeeze clean the anal glands of her cat with one had, scrub the scum from the fins of a clownfish with the other, and endure the loss of a finger from a twenty-pound snapping turtle that she was trying to rescue from the side of the road before she would change the diaper of one of her grandchildren.
-Samantha Bee (I Know I Am But What Are You p 178)

It was so confusing for me because at first, I thought he was attacking me, and then I thought, No, he’ trying to make sweet, sweet cat love to me, and this is just what it feels like for female cats. Then I thought, Well, one thing I know is that I can never tell another living soul about this because this literally makes me a total loser. It’s Saturday night, I just broke up with my boyfriend, I basically sleep on the floor, and my cat is currently fucking me.
-Samantha Bee (I Know You Are But What Am I p 193)