Customer Reviews
Hilarious 
2008-02-16
How fun is to read something you've been through some time in your lifetime.
This book just sums up most of the funny and awkward situations a person can pass by since their youth up to adult life.
Take some time to relax and get to know a litle bit more about yourself, read this book. ;-)
Enjoy it.
FUNNY 
2007-12-27
I love his sense of humor! I was literally laughing out loud on the plane.
Kickin' It 2007-11-12
This book is an autobiography by Paul Feig; it is about his childhood. To be more accurate all the stupid, humiliating mistakes he made during his childhood.
My favorite part must was the Christmas pageant. In 1st grade Paul was taking part in the Christmas play, and like all the other 1st graders he was an elf. Paul's dad decided to save money by using items from his army surplus store. When his parents got every part of the costume together and showed it to Paul he talk himself into thinking he looked just like an elf. For shoes he had oversized socks with foam stuffed in them, for pants he had giant boxers held up with suspenders, for a shirt he had a poncho, and for a hat he had a piece of poorly stitched cloth.
I would strongly recommend this book. Paul adolescent misadventures are hilarious. This book is all so great for people who work alot. It is really a series of short stories with no plot allowing people to take long spaces between chapters. This book can all so raise self-esteem, because we have all done stupid things when we were young but almost nobody did as many stupid "experiments" as Paul Feig [i.e. Holding a firecracker in your hand to see if it will hurt when it explodes]. I think this is a great book.
Takes us back to the not so good old days 2007-09-15
Reading this book was like deja vu. I recognized a lot of moments from my own life being described by Feig. He has written a book about adolescence that is both funny and brutally truthful. If you grew up in the US and were a nerd, at least a handful of the situations Feig described has happened to you.
Feig's descriptions and turns of phrase are what make this book such a riot. He always seems to have the exact expression to describe the awkward feelings and sensations one experiences as a pre-teen. Feig's description of his discovery of the "rope feeling" was one of the funniest things I have read. The humor is often of the slapstick variety, but the fact that these are true tales makes them all the funnier. Feig doesn't pull his punches to make himself look good. In fact, he often seems to be going to lengths to make himself look ridiculous. He is unafraid to expose his own follies and foibles, and that is what makes the book so powerful.
Feig's ability to evoke a sense of childlike wonder at the discoveries of his youth also make this a powerful book. Feig is able to perfectly capture that mixture of wonder and fear that accompanies each discovery and small loss of innocence. I have never read another author who is so completely able to transport the reader back to his own childhood and adolescence. That is a tough trick to pull off and Feig does it with aplomb.
A masterwork about growing up in America. It will make you laugh and cringe at the same time.
These are the things that could break a mere boy 2007-06-20
but Paul Feig was no mere boy. He was (is?) the ubergeek -- able to withstand the torments of dodgeball and other rites of passage and emerge a reasonably well-adjusted 24 year old virgin (see the sequel).
(I'm amazed at the level of detail Paul is able to recall, but yet I learned in the sequel that he didn't keep a journal until college. The love and support of his parents is also remarkable.)
My favorite story was about the bus drivers.
Yes!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 2007-01-11
Written in side-splitting and often cringe-inducing detail, Paul Feig takes you in a time machine to a world of bombardment by dodge balls, ill-fated prom dates, hellish school bus rides, and other aspects of public school life that will keep you laughing in recognition and occasionally sighing in relief that you aren’t him.
Kick Me is a nostalgic trip for the inner geek in all of us.
We love you, Fig Newton! 2006-12-31
I'm a HUGE fan of the cancelled (Why?!WHY!) series Freaks and Geeks, so of course when I learned the creator had written a series of stories about his own tortured adolescence, I had to have it. So many things that I loved about the tv series were present in Feig's memoirs. The gym class archipegalo rings particularly true for me. How well I remember the endless games of "Killer" (or "Battleball", as it was known in my school), the way even the most innocuous names could be twisted into something humiliating, the frightening "freak girls" who were worse than any male bully ever thought about being. From a former geek: It's obvious that he knows of which he speaks. And, as promised, he's gone on to do great things (please, please bring back Freaks and Geeks, please!), while his former tormentors probably lead dull and unimaginative lives.
For anybody who's survived middle school and looked back to see the humor~
Big Loser 
2006-11-07
I picked this book up because Amazon recommended it based on other books I liked. I was hoping for another Augusten Burroughs or David Sedaris. Instead, I found nothing interesting, unique, or even very funny about this book. The chapter on vomit did me in.
Paul "Fag" is hilarious. 2006-09-22
I read this book last year after I stumbled across it in my school's library...and laughed the whole time I was reading. Just the first page, "There is no god!" and then proceeding to fill us all in on his crazy family, horrible life experiences, from single ply toilet paper to "inspections" in gym class. This is one of the funniest books you will ever read.
You Think You Had It Bad? 2006-01-12
Here, the creator of the outstanding (and greatly mourned) TV show Freaks and Geeks, lays out his most embarrassing childhood moments in hilarious vignettes that will have readers cringing their way from start to end. The book takes him from first grade through high school over the course of the '70s, as he evolves into ultimate suburban geek: polyester clad, germ phobic, Monty Python-lovin', sports hating, pimply, awkward nerd. If you're a Freaks and Geeks fan, he's basically kind of a combination of the worst parts of the Neal and Ken characters. And if you're not, think of a lighter version of David Sedaris and you're on the right track.
Feig fully admits his neuroses and total cluelessness, yet I categorically refuse to believe that one person could have suffered so many mishaps, indignities, bullying, and general embarrassment and lived to write about it. The contents of this book simply cannot be true -- but I don't care, 'cause it makes for great reading. Even though a number of the episodes are total cliches (the dodgeball game in which everyone gangs up on him, the horrific first gym group shower, the parents to cheap to get him a proper Christmas pageant costume, the horror of the CPR dummy, Little League ineptitude), Feig manages to make them funny all over again.
This is a great book for any guy who looks back at their youth with distress at their inability to charm the ladies. No one does it worse than Feig: Childhood crush wants to kiss you? Play coy until she gets bored. Crush on cute girl in homeroom? Give her a family heirloom as gift and watch the confusion on her face as she tries to work out who you are. Crush on classmate? Tell tasteless joke comparing teacher to simian and watch her report you. Somehow manage to score a date with a cute, fun-loving chick? Recoil all night in disgust from her beer breath and deliver the worst good-night kiss of all time. The book ends on a great note, as Feig takes his childhood playmate, the girl next door, to the prom and discovers something unexpected.
However, the best stories are the ones that don't fit into the usual categories. My favorite one where he writes about the forbidden childhood thrill of digging around in his WWII vet dad's closet and decides that hanging a Nazi flag in the front bay window is a good way to honor his father's service. Then there's his bizarre flirtation with cross-dressing, and his even more bizarre sexual awakening in the midst of gym rope climb. There's the terror of riding the school bus, and an ill advised stint as PA announced at the high school football game.
It's kind of an interesting read in the sense that Feig is so utterly clueless and harmless that you find yourself constantly rooting for him to get something right. But sometimes his own admitted issues, especially the germ phobia, make one unsympathetic to his plight. In any event, it's highly entertaining and likely to make almost every reader feel better about their own school days. Apparently he's written a sequel called Superstud, about his late teen and early adult years.
