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    Thanks for the Money: How to Use My Life Story to Become the Best Joel McHale You Can Be
    Unavailable
    Thanks for the Money: How to Use My Life Story to Become the Best Joel McHale You Can Be
    Unavailable
    Thanks for the Money: How to Use My Life Story to Become the Best Joel McHale You Can Be
    Audiobook5 hours

    Thanks for the Money: How to Use My Life Story to Become the Best Joel McHale You Can Be

    Published by Penguin Random House Audio

    3.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    From actor and comedian Joel McHale comes the most important celebrity-penned book of this, or any, generation - Thanks for the Money: How to Use My Life Story to Become the Best Joel McHale You Can Be.

    Part shocking tell-all memoir, part aspirational how-to guide, and mostly all book, this one-of-a-kind tome is required reading for anyone who enjoys Hollywood gossip, get-rich-gradually tips, and copious illustrations and charts.

    Joel McHale pulls back the curtain on his personal journey to stardom! Here, for the first time, Joel reveals all that has molded him into the acclaimed comic actor he is today: a love of performance, a series of boyhood head injuries, and most importantly, a passion for financial compensation and free shoes.

    It's all here: Joel's career trials and tribulations, his criminal trials and tribulations, and an honest, unflinching list of all the people he's been paid money to make out with, on camera.

    But the book does not stop there! Because if you want wealth, fame, and cost-free footwear, Joel will share every vital tip he has learned: an insanely low-carb diet plan, how to escape from a certain pseudo-religious celebrity cult, and more!

    How can you unlock the power of the Joel McHale who lurks inside? What happened when Joel fought his Community co-star Chevy Chase? And hey, while we're at it, what's up with Joel's hair - really? All will be revealed, within the pages of Thanks for the Money.

    Buy now, and receive - as a special bonus - an email receipt that details your purchase!

    *Bonus PDF includes charts, images, games, and more!

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPenguin Random House Audio
    Release dateOct 25, 2016
    ISBN9780735289017
    Unavailable
    Thanks for the Money: How to Use My Life Story to Become the Best Joel McHale You Can Be

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    Reviews for Thanks for the Money

    3.5/5

    17 ratings5 reviews

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    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 5/5
      Joel McHale is hilarious. And so is his book. I don’t know what to say about it because it’s the most original celebrity memoir I’ve read. So sarcastic and tongue-in-cheek. If you want to learn about McHale’s life, you won’t really get that here. This book is pure humor, and will make you laugh out loud.
    • 3/5
      I think this may be the first audiobook I've ever listened to from start to finish. Pretty amusing throughout, though McHale goes all in on the smug and that wears on a listener by the end. He's a good narrator though and has fun with the audio format. This was a good way to help pass time on a day-long drive in the car.
    • 5/5
      Part autobiography, part self-help, McHale takes the reader through his childhood, which was difficult because his parents were cheap and his brother was so loud. Then we read of his gradual rise to fame while appearing on The Soup, Community, and going on to movie roles. Along the way he provides instructions on how to become rich and famous through endorsements of just about any product, by using celebrity deaths to your own advantage, and gives useful advice for dealing with all the sponges who come after your money. Includes pre-hair plug picture, in color.4.2 stars
    • 1/5
      Nope, no, thanks!6:46 pm 16 October 2016Thanks for the Money: How to Use My Life Story to Become the Best Joel McHale You Can Be - Joel McHaleLet me preface my actual review with a couple points. Nothing is read in a void: I picked this up, for example, as an ARC - which I was provided for with no request/demand for a review, much less a positive one - because I loved Joel McHale on Community. I haven't seen The Soup or his stand up, but I absolutely adored Community! McHale's performance as Jeff Winger, an arrogant asshole who had fallen on hard times and who cared more than he let on, was perfection. Winger was a fully realized character, full of flaws and contradictions as all humans are, thanks to McHale's performance. Winger was perfection, especially when paired up with Abed or Britta or Annie or... the list could go on. I admired him greatly based on that alone. Despite the fact that this show was scripted, and as far as I knew McHale had nothing to do with the writing duties*, I trusted him. Comedic actors often improvise, after all, so who knew? I didn't google him. Hell, I haven't really seen him in anything other than Community. I was just excited to read about him, and hopefully get some insight into that show. He talks about Community itself very little. The impression I get of McHale is someone who still desperately wants to be liked. He talks, with a wink, about how to be famous, how famous he wants to be, how to be like him because you know you want to and on and on. I can only think, after reading this book, that his obsessive focus on this hides a deep, deep insecurity. He wants to be liked. He wants you to laugh at how funny and clever he is. Instead I ended up wanting to give him a hug. "You're on TV! You get parts in movies! You book stand up routines," I want to point out while bear-hugging him. "And hey, as far as I go, I've only seen Community, but I loved you so much on that I trusted you to make me laugh in a book," I'd add in a small, unintelligible mumble. And when he asked me what I'd said, I'd lie. I'd lie straight to the dude's face, because I want to like him and I want him to make me laugh. Because otherwise I'm left with this gross pit in the bottom of my stomach. I wanted to cry more than once, not out of boredom, but because I wanted to be like 'it's okay! You're totally popular enough! I... finished your book!' Something that might make him feel better. Instead I'm left in this awkward position. I'm sorry, Joel. I didn't like your book, but I like your acting in Community! And I think I might like you as a person if you didn't hide under bluster and bravado! My problems with this book are... well, let me count the ways. It wanted to be shocking in a 'ooooh, I offended you, but you laughed,' way. I don't know why, but Joel was too nice to be truly offensive, though, so it was shuffling my feet and looking at them sheepishly. I was supposed to laugh. I was supposed to feel something, but I didn't. McHale calls himself a dick, or a smug arrogant jerk, often during this book, but he doesn't come off as mean, even when he dishes on Chevy Chase to a host of a show and gets taken down for it. (Chevy Chase did not get along with McHale on Community. McHale pokes back, but he's not very mean about it. He does not go in for the kill.) A lot of it feels like a kitten trying for a lion's roar: see? See what a ginormous dick I am? Except that the fact that he never really goes for the kill on much softens the blow. He does come off as conceited, however, but only because he puts this forth in his book. Joking or not, winking at me or not, you can only tell me you're a conceited, arrogant snot so many times without me getting a whiff of that coming from your book. He goes for a mean-spirited funny often, but it never made me laugh so I only got the impression of that mean-spiritedness. (And without being truly offensive, or funny, I can't emphasize how soft-toothed this ended up being.) This is a mess of a book: it wants to be a lot of things. Funny, hip, sarcastic and snarky. It wants to be a memoir that partly masquerades as a self-help book. It succeeds at none of this. It comes off as mean, yes, but a mean that seems to mask a deep, deep hunger for approval. (Or so I suspect: I can't actually say since everything I know about McHale, other than he acted on Community, I learned from this book. I follow shows and characters more than actors in most cases.) Another note, since McHale takes a swipe at negative reviews that smells of as much desperation as the rest of this book: I hope this lays to rest that I go easy on things I like, that I only negatively review things that I pick up specifically as a hate read, or that I'm a shill for traditionally published authors who is after self-published authors. I will address these because McHale takes this swipe, although Primus help me, I can't remember where. I will also address these due to the point I first made: things are not read in a vacuum and the anti-negative review annoyed me due to the recent attacks on reviews. Enough to do this. (Sometimes after I hit the point where I decided that I wanted this to be done, although before I lost all hope that it might improve at all.) I do not go easy on things I like. This is not nearly as scathing as my review of that Transformers book I was looking forward to. The anticipation that then turns sour can make me as, if not more, grumpy than lousy grammar. I pick up many things - as ARCs or books I pay for - that I anticipate I will like. Most times, to be honest, I do enjoy them to some degree. Some are... well, this book. See star rating and the whole fracking review for how that went sideways. Yes, I prefer tradpubbed books. Because I have found a majority of them have better editing in my own personal opinion. They also tend to have the media tie-ins that I most enjoy or the bios that I read tend to be written by someone as famous as McHale who tends to tradpub. Again, see this entire review as proof that I am not a shill who will swoon and five star because of anticipation, or me liking the author. That being said, I will note that I laughed out loud a couple times. The one part that I remember making me laugh was McHale talking about his childhood head injuries: since he was poking fun at himself, he could do so with a good amount of snark and not come off as conceited. It was honest, it was very casual, and it seemed like a far more effortless than the other parts. It didn't reek of that desperation that made me want to hug him. Even when he turned a critical eye on his family, wondering why, after three head injuries that left him bleeding from his head with no hospital visit, he didn't seem casually cruel and dismissive as he did in the rest of the book. In retrospect, although I was only less than a third of the way in, I think I already felt like this book was making me bleed from my head. So I'm going to say it was one percent schadenfruede, and ninety nine percent me really just enjoying that part because it was genuinely funny. I remember being uplifted and thinking, 'hey, maybe this will get better.' And then McHale crapped all over that hope. I felt like ninety nine percent of this book was trying to murder me with guilt for not liking it after it was trying to hard. Maybe with a bleeding head injury, because, hey, it wants me to like it so it'll try to get me killed with the thing I like most. Sighs. I want to actively avoid his standup now. even though he was good enough to go tell his jokes in front of the president. Why, Joel McHale, why? I guess I'll stick to the scripted things you do in the future, so long as they don't look too dumb. Or they're in a fandom I enjoy anyway. *Oftentimes actors will take on double duties, writing for shows or directing. I'm thinking of Jensen Ackles who first directed a Supernatural episode, or Tina Fey who created, acted in, and wrote for 30 Rock. Just two of the examples that I could first think of, but there are many others. I'm still not sure if McHale wrote for Community, but I'm guessing he did not based on how much I adored Community and was bored to tears by this book.read in 2016
    • 4/5
      If you're a fan of Joel's, you will enjoy this book. Even though I was hoping for something a little more serious in parts, having been a fan for over 10 years, I should've known better. This book is classic Joel snark and hearing him read it is even better than reading it yourself. Lots of laughs and a very enjoyable listen. (Though I could've used that PDF!)