Employee of The Month And Other Big Deals Mary Jo Pehl 9781466378025 Books
Download As PDF : Employee of The Month And Other Big Deals Mary Jo Pehl 9781466378025 Books
You may know Mary Jo Pehl as “the guy from Mystery Science Theater 3000 that’s a woman.†But besides her stints as a writer-performer on the beloved Peabody-winning TV show, and now with the movie-riffing crew Cinematic Titanic, Mary Jo has survived one of the most traumatic, glorious, terrifying, joyful challenges known to humankind, a little thing she likes to call real life. With biting wit, bracing satire, and boundless good cheer, Mary Jo—distinguished member of the First Family of Circle Pines, Minnesota; she’ll explain—takes you on a poignant, hilarious journey through the world of keepin’ on. Dispatched from her Midwestern home state, then New York, Texas, and exotic points beyond, these very personal stories and essays, with illustrations by Len Peralta, reveal a warm, smart, funny writer who can spot the absurdities in what she deals with every day, and make her readers LOL at them. There’s nobody else like Mary Jo Pehl. But then, there’s nobody else like you, either. Hey, you two should get together! Read this book, and you will, my friend you will.
Employee of The Month And Other Big Deals Mary Jo Pehl 9781466378025 Books
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Tags : Employee of The Month And Other Big Deals [Mary Jo Pehl] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. You may know Mary Jo Pehl as “the guy from Mystery Science Theater 3000 that’s a woman.†But besides her stints as a writer-performer on the beloved Peabody-winning TV show,Mary Jo Pehl,Employee of The Month And Other Big Deals,CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform,1466378026,Form - Essays,Humor,Humor Form Essays,Humour
Employee of The Month And Other Big Deals Mary Jo Pehl 9781466378025 Books Reviews
Mary Jo Pehl, I love you! From temp jobs to family matters, a Midwestern cow town girl's move to the big city and all points in between! Funny, uplifting, she needs to read more! She wrote a great travel piece about her trip around the world, and the crazy Americans that where on that tour bus with her. Alas, that story wasn't in this book, but published in a Minnesota paper that I can't find on line anywhere. Just one more good reason for her to write another book ASAP! She also kept a hilarious blog on the Cinematic Titantic website that was a traveling group of former MSR3K stars that would riff movies live in front of you, the audience. So buy the book already! Circle Pines 'fo Life!
Mary Jo Pehl's collection of essays "Employee of the Month and Other Big Deals" is a like a Pandora's box, but one purchased at a state fair. It's a wonderful grouping of personal stories from a diverse writer, comedian and actress who graced the TV screen for years as the character Pearl Forrester in Mystery Science Theater 3000. What makes "Employee of the Month" so strikingly different from other personal essay collections is that she dissects episodes of her life with crystalline precision and (sometimes) brutal honesty, making it come to life as naturally as a conversation with a best friend. So, it's a Pandora's box of achingly poignant stories, but beautifully brought back to earth by a simultaneously wise and naive voice that could probably only come from the perceived wholesomeness of the American mid-west.
Pehl's stories come directly from her personal experiences, and it's fascinating to be in the audience as we read about her growing awareness of her own talents and shortcomings. In other words, she's a lot like all of us. She tackles topics from heart-throb pre-teen love in "The Two Mrs. McDowells" and "The Crush", to the frenzied emotions of working in "To All The Companies With Whom I Was Never Employed", to matters of adjusting to life as an adult in "A Bridge Too Far" and "I Thee Wed". Every story finds Mary Jo meeting the challenges of a life that is far more fascinating than she allows herself to believe. We follow her as she relocates to New York City after years of working in television in Minneapolis, on trips to China and Peru, in the awkwardness of dealing with family and the rough roads of dating.
Every humorist has a particularly clever tool, and for Mary Jo, it is what I like to call the 'sudden recognition'. It's that moment when everything comes whirling together into a moment of clarity, or more often a moment of rude awakening. She describes a date with a gentleman in which she's emphatically stating her rights to be treated with respect, when he suddenly grabs her nose to wiggle it - the painful, patronizing act is both rude and hysterical. So it is with her sudden awareness that Chewbacca had a wife, or that volunteering to help a child learn to read is, in fact, a tedious, arduous and thankless task.
Throughout all the laughs, Pehl manages to let some quietly beautiful moments peek through. In her essay about SCUBA training, she confesses her embarrassment of being unable to get into her wetsuit unassisted, and she takes us on a lazy summer day in the water when she and her sister frankly discuss the death of that sister's son years before. Pehl, known for her blonde locks and voluptuous figure, takes on society's perceptions of beauty and equality head-on What does it mean personally to be a full-size gal in this world?
Employee of the Month is a fascinating and unbelievably funny read. For those of us who fit more or less within this generation that came of age as the interwebs invaded our newly adult lives, there are many mirrors to the struggles we've all gone through. Mary Jo's clarity of vision guides us through those rites of passage with sharp wit, and a brilliant generosity of spirit.
This really is the funniest book that I've read in a long time. Laugh-out-loud funny, milk-out-your-nose funny.
After reading Mary Jo's book, I can hear her voice in many of the best lines that have been delivered on Mystery Science Theater 3000. I made the mistake of attributing the writing to the actor that spoke the words; such a lame thing to do on my part. Mary Jo clearly put her stamp on every episode she was a writer on, and this book is proof of her ability to tell a funny story, tell it well and deliver a punch line. What increases the enjoyment of this book for me is that they are personal stories.
Reading about her life paints a picture of where her sense of humor and irony comes from, and I get entertained in the process! SCORE!
To give you one, small sample from the book "Me, for some time I have known that I cannot have children-if I want to sleep late."
This is a compact book of 121 pages, yet it is crammed full of good stuff. I particularly enjoyed the anecdotes about MST3K fans showing up for the live shows. A good writer can make you look at things in a new way, and this book accomplished that for me. Because no one has asked for my autograph I can get a glimpse about how obsessed fans react to meeting TV show characters and the funny and strange interactions that sometimes ensue.
If you are a fan of Mystery Science Theater 3000 and obsessive enough to look up obscure riffs, this collection of short personal essays from Mary Jo Pehl will tell you the following
* Who Rick and Julie are
* How glamorous it was to be the daughter of the Mayor of Circle Pines
* What it means to be Employee of the Month at a temp agency
* How much MJ loved Roddy McDowell
* What MJ learned from late night movies she watched while babysitting
* How we fans are perceived by the MST Alumni, well, MJ anyway
* The truth about Krusher Kowalski
and so much more, including what MJ was up to between MST3K and Cinematic Titanic. The New York stories were my favorites, including some truly horrific dating stories that made me worry much less about being single myself. I also share her ergasiophobia, and her work stories put my mid-going-on-late 20s crisis into perspective.
But MSTies are not the only people who should read this book. Aspiring writers and comedians may find inspiration in the conciseness of these narratives, often but not always leading up to a punch line of a tiny moment at the end. You will marvel at how much story and comedy Mary Jo can extract from just one moment at a circus or the discovery of pepper jack cheese on burgers.
Whether you love to laugh at pop culture, or you just like to people watch sometimes, this book is for you.
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