Kick Me: Adventures in Adolescence

I picked up this book because I loved the show Freaks & Geeks. You see, Paul Feig, author of this book, also created the show. This book definetly fits right along, side by side, with Freaks & Geeks.Paul Feig tells of his geeky and embarrasing adventure throughout school. Never have I laughed so much from reading a book. From his showering in gym escapade to the first time he discovered, erm, self love.This is a must read for anyone who ever felt left out or completely embarrased during their school days. In fact this should be part of the required reading for school kids so they can see it could always be worse.All jocks and cheerleader should pass, as they'll probably laughing at instead of with.

Remember those times in grade school when you were picked on or laughed at? The gym class you couldn't wait to end? That awkward first encounter with the opposite sex? Those tense moments performing in front of your classmates? Paul Feig's adolescent angst will make yours seem trivial in comparison. These essays about his experiences as an insecure, picked-on, but yet ever-hopeful kid from the wrong side of the popularity tracks will have you laughing and nodding as you recognize some of those same scenes from your own childhood. Paul was a quiet and fearful boy obsessed with germs, undressing in the boy's locker room, and dealing with girls. He alternately either tried to gain acceptance from, or avoided the attention of, the other kids... all of which, of course, made him the target of ridicule or worse. He describes every anxious moment in his childhood from his unusual homemade elf costume in his first grade class play to his misgivings about his date at the senior prom. I suffered along with him on horrendous school bus trips. I felt sympathy for him when his teacher mispronounced his last name, prompting his classmates to dub him with an unfortunate permanent nickname. I cringed at his Little League and football announcer fiascos. I rooted for him when he performed in the school talent show. I worried about his decision to dress in his Mom's clothing for Halloween. And above all else, I laughed.These stories are not just funny, however. They are masterpieces of observation about the social interactions among kids, or between kids and their parents and teachers. The anecdotes are undoubtedly exaggerated for effect, yet they ring true because they describe every adolescent's fears of fitting in. I recommend this well written and highly entertaining book.Eileen Rieback

Without a doubt, if Paul Feig's KICK ME: ADVENTURES IN ADOLESCENCE were to suddenly become the next zeitgeist in comedic culture, it would be a totally justifiable harmonic convergence- all the evidence and reasoning behind such justification would be manifest within its pages. KICK ME will challenge the gut with all of its laughter-inducing anecdotes, all suffered by the hapless Mr. Feig- in a sense, the tome is like a literary version of a happy form of ipecac syrup, where guffaws are brought up instead of bile. So if you're feeling a bit disgruntled or are having a bad day, simply pluck this book from the shelf and use it to get rid of the agent which is poisoning your system. KICK ME is a collection of stories which chronicle the abject youthful misadventures- forget what the title refers to them as, you definitely have to preface that third word with a mis- of Paul Feig, whose genius mind somehow extracted the quality-show to end all quality-shows, the unfortunately ephemeral FREAKS AND GEEKS, from the chaotic ether of unformed ideas and concepts (wherever/whatever the [heck] that is). Actually, I should take that back; forget this nonsense of a fantastical land that a Muse travels to for the benefit of its Master, bringing back raw, shapeless notions; in Mr. Feig's case, the lightbulbs were already there in his experiences, and his memoir is the proof, the explanation even, behind the eighteen episodes defining the socioecological parameters of circa-1980 high school fauna (which probably smoked a lot of flora in its time, to be sure). That show is not to be missed, and neither is this book. What KICK ME represents is a bible of commonalties in many ways; everything you read never seems strange or alien- you can relate, you swear you've been there before, the deja vu spontaneously transmogrifies into instant recollections of similar events from your own days gone by, the so-called "best time of your life", and you find the substitution of Mr. Feig's shoes in place of your own an easily acceptable event. And it becomes like the argument which attempts to rationalize the success of daytime talk shows: people relish the chance to see that they aren't alone. After reading KICK ME, most of us will realize that, although we believed ourselves to be lonely isolated islands surrounded by nothing but cold, cruel seas, each one of us was in fact part of a close-knit archipelago whose longitude and latitude on the social map were determined by the type of clique represented by such a group; in other words, whatever degree of nerdiness you aspired to, there at least were several others around you who were just as nerdy...and after that, well, there indeed was a long reach of shark-infested ocean. Mr. Feig possesses an incredibly rare talent: he has the ability to convey in words analyses of certain situations that heretofore I have never been able to express with any cursory bit of verbiage, let alone process fully and satisfactorily in my mi

Paul Feig is a gifted writer and director. As a fan of his work on Freaks and Geeks and Undeclared, I was excited to read his memoir. His book is actually better than most of his TV work. There is a poignancy to the writing that really stands out (and could be found in some of his TV work too), but the book is always better than the movie anyway. The book is hilariously blunt. Most of us had one or two of these embarrassing events happen to us as children, but how many of us had 278 pages worth? You will indeed laugh so hard that you will cry and perhaps even want to cry. Feig is clearly one of the good guys. He remembers a time that was indeed simpler--but not one that has gone away. Every kid has his traumas reading about his make your own more endurable. I'm recommending this extraordinary book to everyone I know. If only more people had his honesty and insights, the young adult world would be a better place. Nevertheless, kids like Feig make super adults.

Book by the creator of freaks and Geeks.Very funny and grim, I dont know how he survived childhood.I laughed so hard that I cried.Remember your first time being naked in a locker room?Paul does and it's beautifully horrible.