Brianne Kane – Staff Writer
Looking for a new moral compass to help with those finicky little problems? Or maybe how to vacation to Turks and Caicos with your limousine driver? Better yet, how to crash a wedding with your brother, only to lose him and find him again in Taco Bell? All the answers you’re looking for, all the adventure you can imagine is found in Chelsea Handler’s 2010 New York Times’ Best Seller, “Chelsea Chelsea Bang Bang.” But before you run out and buy every copy, buckle your seat belts. Handler’s rollercoaster of a life jumps through time with each chapter being a different anecdotal story of booze, sex, family, work, or taking acid and finding your brother swimming in a lake.
Chelsea Handler, who is known for her crude humor and her late night talk-show, shines brightly in her 3rd best seller with hilarious personal stories and memories of growing up lower-middle class in New Jersey dreaming of grander days of martinis and helicopters. These hopes are understood by the reader with one of Handler’s biggest childhood dilemmas: getting her hands on a Cabbage Patch Doll, by first overcoming her parents’ stinginess. It is not just the hilarity of the circumstances in her book, but the witty writing style as well which comes through on every page: “Instead of masturbating on the swing set that day, I took my forty minutes of recess to kneel in the woods and pray that my cheap Jewish father would somehow muster the courage to spend fifty dollars on a doll…” This book is not trying to impress it’s audience, nor is it trying to stimulate their intellect, but rather it’s trying to get you drunk by association and give you some great ideas for next Friday night. Throughout the book, however, you may find yourself laughing at her ridiculousness and then catching yourself – would you really do anything different with her budget? For example, the benefits to riding in a helicopter: bringing your drink onboard and “the great thing about helicopters is that because you fly so much closer to the ground, you can actually wave to people who think they are in the privacy of their own backyards or Jacuzzis, naked.” Can anyone admit they wouldn’t enjoy that?

The book verges on over the top on every other page, and Handler’s humor is not for everyone but if you know you like her show, “Chelsea Lately” – you’ll fall in love with this book, marry this book, and make little happy book babies. But not everyone raves so highly of Handler’s humor, and Handler has never been one to shy away from the spotlight just because the crowd went from laughing to heckling. The most recent publicized drama surrounding Handler was her relationship with rapper 50 Cent and the Ciara drama that came after. Also, Handler received backfire after her calling Angelina Jolie a “homewrecker” for the love triangle that was Angelina Jolie, Brad Pitt, and Jennifer Aniston (then married to Pitt, and a longtime friend of Handler).
The last chapter of the book is a “catalog of lies that have been left open-ended” meaning – lies she’s told as a joke, that she never later explained, and the victims of the joke still believe it to be true. “My tendency to make up stories and lie compulsively for the sake of my own amusement takes up a good portion of my day and provides me with a peace of mind not easily attainable in this economic climate” Handler explains before diving into the abyss of her comical lies. For example, she never clarified to Sylvan (her limo driver) that her friend Paul is a homosexual, but that doesn’t mean he’s a transsexual (“So he has girl parts now?”) or explained to Stephanie, a friend, that pilot Sully Sullenberg (the pilot who landed the airplane on the Husdon River) is not her personal pilot. All in all, there are two types of reactions to this book: you’ll hate it, or you’ll love it and get some great ideas for next April Fool’s Day.