Justin Halpern, I Suck at Girls
Featured Book
Like High Fidelity for the Twitter age
In 2009, dumped by his girlfriend and living back home with the folks, Justin Halpern mined Twitter gold from his father’s foul-mouthed wisdom. Dusting off quotables from childhood talks and bourbon-soaked heart-to-hearts, Shit My Dad Says spread fast, leading to a best-selling book and TV sitcom of the same name. While Halpern’s career in comedy took off, it took a little longer to win back the girl. With I Suck at Girls, Halpern toys with marriage, taking his father’s advice to consider what he’s learned about the fairer sex before deciding whether to propose. As the title suggests, Halpern’s education has been far from sentimental.
Like a lot of late-blooming boys, Halpern’s adolescent knowledge of women is limited to dirty magazines and lunchroom gossip. When he and a friend discover an abandoned stack of Playboy magazines, it’s practically a light from the heavens. It’ll be a few years before he’ll lose his virginity to a Hooters waitress (he’s a dishwasher on summer break), and a few more before a meaningful relationship comes his way. Like High Fidelity for the Twitter age, Halpern fit together the pieces of his romantic past in order to ready himself for commitment. These collected vignettes, narrated with goofy humor by Sean Schemmel, make up a shaggy-dog memoir that any mother (and father) could love.
