Giggle-inducing musings from a foulmouthed Barbie
“Let’s talk alcohol. Are you with me?” So says Chelsea Handler to her rather strict nutritionist, whose disparagement of vodka — mother’s milk to Chelsea — feels downright hurtful: “It’s not easy to hear negative stuff about the person closest to you, even if it is true.” Welcome to Chelsea’s booze-soaked world, one in which decorum, discretion and political correctness are as immaterial as Jen is to Brad and Angie. Best known for skewering questionably famous celebs on her E! talk show, Chelsea Lately, it’s a delight to hear Chelsea turn her hypercritical eye on herself in her unapologetically naughty essay collection, Are You There, Vodka? It’s Me, Chelsea. She makes for a juicy target.

Handler is the queen of “oh no, she didn’t”-worthy quips, injecting scandal into even the most mundane moments in her life — the suburban New Jersey childhood, the crazy family, the string of loser boyfriends, the Hollywood nightlife scene. Whether she’s detailing her hatred of dog-sitting (“I’d rather be forced to watch a Lord of the Rings marathon and then be raped by a Hobbit“), a dicey experience at a neighborhood “spa” (“No, I don’t want sucky sucky, I just want a massage”), or her well-documented love of little people (“next to fat babies, midgets are my favorite things to hold”) Chelsea’s various pronouncements are wet-your-pants funny and defiantly obnoxious — definitely not for the faint of heart. And if Are You There, Vodka doesn’t happen to be the most cohesive, exquisitely crafted collection, well, so what? Like the best kind of Absolut-fueled bender, it may be full of empty calories, inappropriate ramblings, and pointedly anti-intellectual conversation, but it’s also a silly, dizzy, damn good time.