Suck It, Wonder Woman: The Misadventures Of A Hollywood Geek
By Olivia Munn and Mac Montandon; Read by Olivia Munn
4 CDs – Approx. 5 Hours [UNABRIDGED]
Puiblisher: Macmillian Audio
Published: July 2010
ISBN: 9781427209825
Themes: / Autobiography / Sexuality / Oklahoma / California / Japan / Robots / Zombies / Pie /
Sample |MP3|
Today’s hottest geek and host of G4’s Attack Of The Show dishes her unique brand of humor of on everything from Star Wars, gadgets, and her love of banana cream pie. Olivia Munn is an actress, comedian and television host, best known for being the face of the G4 network. She also occasionally likes to get dressed up as Wonder Woman. SUCK IT WONDER WOMAN is her paean to Geeks everywhere. Using her trademark humor in essays like THOUGHTS ABOUT MY FIRST AGENT’S GIRLFRIEND’S VAGINA she skewers what it’s like to live in Hollywood. In “SEX: WHAT YOU CAN DO TO HELP YOURSELF HAVE MORE OF IT” she frankly gets down to the business of getting it on. In “WHAT TO DO WHEN THE ROBOTS INVADE (YES, WHEN!),” Olivia offers valuable information on… what to do when the robots invade! And just when you thought she couldn’t get any more Geeky, she can. This book also includes an Olivia Munn timeline of great moments in Geek history and her answers to the Unofficial Geek FAQ. Is it any wonder that Olivia Munn is quickly becoming the most powerful Geek on the planet? SUCK IT WONDER WOMAN is a humorous look at geeks, gadgets, Hollywood, and huge heapings of banana cream pie.
When this audiobook arrived I didn’t recognize the author or what exactly it was. I’d seen Attack Of The Show, and at least one of the episodes of The Daily Show in which she appeared, but something dimly pinged and I decided to give it a listen. Maybe part of it is that I’ve been a sucker for biographical audiobooks since I first stumbled across Michael Caine’s amazing reading of his autobiography What’s It All About?. Since then I’d read maybe a half dozen more. I’m sad to say most were only marginally interesting, but they never sucked, and I’ve found you can learn a hell of a lot about history by hearing about individual lives. The only biography that’s come as close to recreating that first experience was perhaps, rather strangely, a Blackstone Audio version of The Most Dangerous Man In America: Scenes From The Life Of Benjamin Franklin by Catherine Drinker Bowen. Weird huh? Yeah, Michael Caine and Benjamin Franklin have very little in common, other than being male and speakers of English. What they do share, however, is a kind of an ineffable interestingness. Caine’s story was full of a bewildering matter-of-factness, performed by the actor himself, and offered dozens of surprises and a whole lifetime’s worth of experience in the movies in less than three hours. Franklin, that auto-didactic man of letters, inventor, humorist and well … you’ll just have to go listen to the audiobook yourself … was completely and utterly amazing. Olivia Munn, and her book Suck It Wonder Woman are, on the other hand, entirely and completely effable. And by that I don’t only mean that there’s a lot of potty mouth in this audiobook.
Suck It Wonder Woman is potty mouthed and full of dirty stories about crazy people in Hollywood. There are also brief chapters on seemingly random, hip-sounding dos and don’ts. I’m not sure why these bits were added in. The audiobook works best when operating in the more serious storytelling sections. Munn’s description of herself as a child are fun and retrospectively insightful. One chapter, relating her relationship with her grandparents, is highly poigniant. That isn’t fluff. But not all of these stories are all that serious either. Her relating meetings with celebrities (named and unnamed) are surprising and frightening. And while the generalities of Munn’s life story, so far, aren’t particularly unique, she has some fun tales to tell. Munn makes for quite a sympathetic figure in all of the specifics of her life. And, her almost puppy-like eagerness to tell you about it, with her narration, is very endearing. When she relates her sadnesses, you are truly disheartened. But, as Munn reminds us, we can’t be too downcast, there’s always pie.
Posted by Jesse Willis
