Yearbook Read online

  This is a work of nonfiction. Nonetheless, some of the names and identifying details of the individuals mentioned have been changed. Any resulting resemblance to persons living or dead is entirely coincidental and unintentional.

  Copyright © 2021 by Seth Rogen

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by Crown, an imprint of Random House, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.

  Crown and the Crown colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Rogen, Seth, author.

  Title: Yearbook / Seth Rogen.

  Description: New York: Crown, [2021]

  Identifiers: LCCN 2021004346 (print) | LCCN 2021004347 (ebook) | ISBN 9781984825407 (hardcover; acid-free paper) | ISBN 9781984825414 (ebook)

  Subjects: LCSH: Rogen, Seth, 1982- | Motion picture actors and actresses—Canada—Biography. | Motion picture producers and directors—Canada—Biography. | Screenwriters—Canada—Biography. | LCGFT: Essays.

  Classification: LCC PN2308.R64 A3 2021 (print) | LCC PN2308.R64 (ebook) | DDC 791.4302/8092 [B]—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/​2021004346

  LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/​2021004347

  Ebook ISBN 9781984825414

  Photo Credits

  This page: Courtesy of the author

  This page: Courtesy of MGM Media Licensing, BLOODSPORT © 1988 METRO-GOLDWYN-MAYER STUDIOS INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

  This page: “Steven Spielberg” by Gage Skidmore is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0: https://creativecommons.org/​licenses/​by-sa/​2.0/​?ref=ccsearch&atype=rich

  This page: Courtesy of the author

  This page: Jeff Kravitz/FilmMagic, Inc/Getty Images

  This page: Courtesy of Universal Studios Licensing LLC, copyright © 2004 Universal Studios

  This page: Courtesy of the author

  This page: Cole Burston/Bloomberg/Getty Images

  This page: Bob Riha, Jr./Getty Images

  crownpublishing.com

  Title page illustrations by Todd James

  Illustrations on this page, this page, this page, this page, this page, this page, this page, this page, this page © 2021 by Son of Alan

  Maps © 2021 by David Lindroth, Inc.

  Book design by Debbie Glasserman, adapted for ebook

  Cover illustration: Todd James

  Cover design: Christopher Brand

  ep_prh_5.7.0_c0_r0

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Bubby and Zaidy

  Bonanza

  Sons of Commandment

  The Karate Yid

  Pornographic Entertainment

  Yearbook

  The Mohel

  An Evening at the Improv

  Firing Ray

  Amsterdam

  Drinking in L.A.

  2012

  Angry Whopper

  Face/Off

  Rhymin’ and Stealin’

  Hacks

  Tigers!!!!!!!

  Verification

  Xenu

  Acid

  Woz and the Magic Castle

  Jewish Summer Camp

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  I wanted to try stand-up comedy. I imagine if most twelve-year-olds told their parents something like that, they’d be met with a healthy dose of skepticism. Fuck, if a thirty-year-old told me they wanted to try stand-up comedy, I’d probably do my best to talk them out of it.

  Which makes it even more incredible that not only did my parents not scoff at the notion of it, they looked in the local paper and found a stand-up comedy workshop to enroll me in.

  I loved comedy growing up, I think, because my parents loved comedy. They would watch SCTV; Billy Crystal’s stand-up; Ghostbusters; Ferris Bueller’s Day Off; Planes, Trains and Automobiles; Uncle Buck; Home Alone; Coming to America; Big; Who Framed Roger Rabbit; Back to the Future; The Breakfast Club; When Harry Met Sally; What About Bob?; and they would just laugh their fucking asses off, and I would laugh my fucking ass off, and if people were doing this for a living, then I was gonna try to be one of those people.

  The workshop was simple enough: You’d spend a day learning the basic concept of stand-up joke writing, write a few jokes, and then, that night, you’d go to the Lotus Club, a local lesbian bar with what in retrospect was a very vaginal flower painted on its awning, and perform your jokes for the lesbians. My mother dropped me off outside; I walked into the class and, not surprisingly, was the only kid—the first of about a thousand rooms that I would walk into over the next decade where that was the case. I’ve been the youngest person in the room a lot of my life. There’s something nice about having aged into my job. But still, I miss those days, because when you’re young, the bar for accomplishment is so low, no matter what you do, it’s pretty impressive. If you’re young enough, just walking is considered a huge deal. My friends are thrilled when their kids don’t shit all over their floors. As an adult, I get little to no praise for doing the same.

  The teacher, a working stand-up comic named Mark Pooley, who looked exactly like Garth from Wayne’s World, took the stage.

  Mark: Nobody wants to hear about what you like. There’s nothing less funny than hearing about the stuff you have fun doing. Fun isn’t funny. Comedy is pain. It’s struggle. So, when thinking of what to write about, don’t ask yourself, “What’s funny to me?” Ask yourself, “What bothers me? What frustrates me? What do I wish I could change? What can I just not fucking stand?!”

  One answer popped into my head. At that point in my life, there was really only one answer: my grandparents.

  I didn’t get along great with them back then. Their real names were Faye and Kelly, but I knew them as Bubby and Zaidy. Their last name was Belogus, which is by all means a hilarious last name. I remember being thirteen, hanging out at a friend’s house, and telling him that my mother’s maiden name was Belogus. His nine-year-old brother cackled loudly from the other room. “Sounds like ‘Blow Us’!”

  It sure does, I thought. It sure does.

  When I was younger, Bubby and Zaidy just didn’t seem that into me. I got the impression they liked my older sister, Danya, more than me, mostly because their words and actions made it wildly clear that they did. They were just nicer to her, which didn’t really bug me that much, because I didn’t love spending time with them.

  Me and my better sister, Danya.

  They were simultaneously tough and eccentric. My grandmother was born while her family was in a caravan fleeing Poland as World War I was breaking out. She got to pick her own birthday when she was a little girl because her parents didn’t know her real one, which is some real Depression-era shit. How rough was Poland for Jews at that time? So rough that when they arrived in Winnipeg, a city in Manitoba that has swarms of mosquitos throughout the summer and debilitating ice storms throughout the winter, they thought, This place is fucking great! Let’s stay here. My grandfather was born in Winnipeg. One of three brothers (the others named Curly and Pinky), he played professional football in the CFL and lied about his age to go to war. When I was about six, we were on a family vacation in Palm Springs and I cracked my toenail when I stubbed it in the pool. My grandfather said he would fix it, and then ripped off the entire nail. We had to go to the hospital.

 
I didn’t really start spending a lot of time alone with my grandparents until I was ten and my sister was thirteen and getting ready for her Bat Mitzvah. She had to attend services every Friday, and I did not want to do that, so my parents would drop me off at my grandparents’ apartment to hang out for a few hours while they went to synagogue with my sister so she could pretend to pray.

  Every Friday night would play out the same. I would plant myself on Zaidy’s La-Z-Boy and turn on “TGIF,” ABC’s Friday-night programming, which consisted of Family Matters, Step by Step, and Hangin’ with Mr. Cooper, which are all shows that are, by any definition, fucking dope as fuck.

  My grandparents would make me a turkey sandwich on challah bread and pour me a glass of chocolate milk, and then sit with me as they tried their hardest to follow what the fuck was happening on these shows.

  Zaidy: Who’s that guy?

  Me: He’s the dad.

  Bubby: Who’s the dweeby one?

  Me: That’s Steve Urkel.

  Zaidy: And what’s that? A robot (pronounced “roe-bit”)?

  Me: Yes, Steve Urkel built it.

  Bubby: What’s the roe-bit doing now?!

  Me: It’s pretending to be Steve to trick the girl he likes into hooking up with him.

  (This show has not aged well.)

  Zaidy: Steve Snorkel?

  Me: URKEL!

  Zaidy: And what’s the show called?

  Me: Family Matters.

  Zaidy: Family Bladders?

  My grandfather worked in the engine room of a battleship in the Royal Navy during World War II, and as a result, was more or less deaf. He loved being in the Navy. He talked about it like most guys talked about their fraternity years. They would hang out, smoke cigars, talk shit, all while floating in thousands of tons of metal around the war-torn Horn of Africa. He arrived at Normandy on D-Day Plus One, but his favorite story was about figuring out that if you broke your rationed rum bottle after drinking it, you could say you broke it before and get a double ration. Anyway, he was deaf.

  Zaidy: Family Crappers?

  Bubby: He’s saying Family Campers!

  Me: No! I’m saying Family MATTERS!

  Bubby: Stop yelling!

  Zaidy: Who’s yelling?

  Me: YOU’RE YELLING!

  This would play out for about two hours straight, and as maddening as spending time with them was, I couldn’t help but think they were entertaining.

  Because they grew up in the Depression, they would steal EVERYTHING. Every time we went to McDonald’s, they would empty the napkin dispenser and put them in a giant box that my grandfather kept in his van. If we were out at dinner and you heard my Bubby say, “Oh, this is a nice plate,” you knew the next time you ate at their place, you’d be eating off that plate, because she straight jacked that shit. Knives, forks, you name it, they swiped it.

  Another thing I noticed was that my grandmother kind of had a wispy white Afro that, when the light hit it, became see-through, leaving you with a VERY good idea of what my grandmother would look like if she was completely bald. And…it was horrifying.

  I wrote three jokes about Bubby and Zaidy that followed the basic structure we were taught: Say the premise or the thing you don’t like; say why you don’t like that thing by making a humorous observation; then do an “act out,” an impression of the target of the joke, bringing it all together.

  My grandparents were hard to impersonate, so I thought I’d just go with a generic “old Jewish person” voice. It was a safe but ultimately good call.

  The night came, and my turn to take the stage was fast approaching. I honestly don’t remember being that nervous, probably because I was twelve fucking years old and wasn’t even mature enough to be nervous. I’ve definitely gotten more in my head as I’ve gotten older and marvel at how I used to just barrel into these situations without much fear or anxiety. Kids can do that. It’s like those very young Chinese acrobats you see, flinging their little bodies in the air, being thrown around, completely unaware of the stakes. If those kids knew what a torn ACL was, they wouldn’t be letting those motherfuckers toss their little asses around like that. And if I had known the pain and shame that goes along with putting yourself out there creatively and being rejected, I probably wouldn’t have been so excited. But I didn’t, so I was.

  I took the stage. The lesbians’ eyes locked on me.

  “So…people ask me what the hardest part about being Jewish is. The persecution? The repeated attempts at systematic annihilation? Nope. The hardest part about being Jewish is…the grandparents.”

  They laughed. And thank fucking god they did, because if they didn’t, I’d be one very frustrated videogame-store employee right now. I continued.

  “My grandparents argue all the time, but they’re both deaf, so they don’t know what the other one is arguing about.”

  Time for the big, quasi-anti-Semitic act out:

  “Hey, Kelly! Pass me a pillow!”

  “What? I’m an armadillo? Why would you call me this animal?”

  “What? I’m not wearing flannel!”

  Small laugh but enough to keep going (which could also be the title of this book).

  I went on: “My grandmother has a thin white Afro, and when the light hits her hair a certain way, you can see right through it and she looks bald. It’s weird to see what your Bubby would look like completely bald. She looks like Gandhi in a pink floral tracksuit.”

  I finished it off with a joke about the stolen napkins that got a so-so laugh, and then I fucked off.

  The lesbians loved me. A guy who worked at another comedy room gave me his card and asked if I would perform there the next week.

  All those times I was dreading hanging out with my Bubby and Zaidy suddenly became something else. Something new. They were fodder. They were…material! I also began to suspect that maybe, just maybe, they knew they were being funny.

  They would come and watch me perform from time to time, and not only did they not mind when I made fun of them, they got pissed off when I didn’t.

  Bubby: Where were our jokes? We’re not funny anymore?!

  Me: Don’t worry. You’re still plenty funny. I gotta make fun of Mom and Dad, too.

  Zaidy: Ahh. Your mom and dad aren’t as funny as us!

  They were really my first significant comedic inspiration. My muse. Or, more accurately, my Jews (or Juse? Can books have alts? Seems like it!).

  As they got older, I realized how much they did love me, and I appreciated more and more how genuinely hilarious they were. I started to see that among their friends, my Bubby specifically was considered a fucking riot. She swore, she drank, she laughed, she didn’t take herself too seriously, but she also wasn’t afraid of having hard conversations.

  Bubby: All my friends are dying! The bastards! Don’t they know I want to play mah-jongg?!

  I remember when I was around twenty, we went to my cousin’s Bat Mitzvah. At this point my Bubby must have been in her mid-eighties. My dad thought it would be funny to keep filling her glass of wine whenever she wasn’t looking, so she thought she had maybe two glasses when she had actually downed about nine. She was SHITFACED. Like, drunk-college-girl shitfaced. We had to carry her out to the car, one arm around me, the other around my dad, as she drunkenly yelled, “I love you guys! You’re the greatest!” She puked on the ride home.

  My Bubby never really slowed down. She lived till her late nineties and was for the most part sharp and aware the whole time. Maybe too aware. Aging can be scary, and it seems like a lack of awareness can be a gift sometimes—a gift my Bubby never got.

  “I’m old. I’m going to be gone soon. But it’s okay. I’m ready. It’s scary, but I think I’m ready.”

  “Don’t worry,” I would say, holding her hand. “I’m gonna stuff you a
nd put you in the living room. It’ll be like you never left.”

  She would laugh and cry a little at the same time, and so would I.

  They’re both gone now, but they shaped me in more ways than I can ever know and, thankfully, in one I definitely do: I wrote my first jokes about them.

  When I was about to move to L.A. to be on Freaks and Geeks, I was getting a lot of advice. People love to give sixteen-year-olds advice, especially ones who seem to be at the precipice of a new life chapter. My teachers told me to keep up with the curriculum. The stand-ups I knew told me to keep working hard, to perform every night if possible. My parents wanted me to stay humble and keep my priorities straight. My friends wanted me to make good stuff that they would want to watch.

  But it’s my Bubby’s advice I probably think of the most.

  Me: I’m moving to L.A.

  Bubby: Oh yeah?

  Me: Yeah. I’m gonna be on a TV show, and I’m probably just gonna try to stay there to see if I can make it in comedy.

  Bubby: Oh yeah?

  Me: Yeah…so…any advice?

  Bubby: Sure.

  She took my hand and smiled at me. “You give those sons of bitches hell.”

  My dad is from Newark, New Jersey. He somehow manages to be simultaneously bald and always in dire need of a haircut. My mom is from Vancouver, British Columbia. She’s overfunctional, but also a Kundalini Yoga instructor who exudes peace and calm. As I’ve touched on, they’re both the descendants of Jews who fled people trying to kill their asses in Eastern Europe, which can be said about most Jews in North America, but probably more eloquently.

  My dad has OCD and Tourette’s syndrome. He’s constantly pacing around, swaying back and forth like a metronome. I also have a very slight case of Tourette’s. It’s something I actually recognize in a lot of other people who very likely aren’t diagnosed and just feel “twitchy.” I feel twitchy all the time. Like I have an itch that needs to be scratched. People with eyebrow furrows, clenching of facial muscles, clearing of the throat, flaring of the nostrils—I get exactly how that feels. For the most part I can control it, but I notice myself doing some twitchy shit from time to time.