Funny Starts With FU: Aquaman and Angela's Ashes

I enjoyed a book called Angela’s Ashes a few months ago. It had been on my list of books to read because it was so highly acclaimed but I kept skipping over it for YEARS. Here’s a description:

A 1996 memoir by the Irish-American author Frank McCourt, detailing his strict Irish-Catholic childhood in Brooklyn, New York. It includes his struggles with poverty and his father’s alcoholism during his life in Limerick, Ireland during the Great Depression.

Depressing AND boring, right?? I probably avoided it for a long time because it did not sound good. It took place during the Great Depression. Depressing. And how interesting could a book about Irish-Catholics be? “We went to confession and took communion and then we frowned at each other for the rest of the gloomy day.”

Sidebar: Does this make me a racist? It was just my first thought that an Irish Catholic person during the Great Depression would be very boring. I think I don’t know any Irish-Catholic people….yet. I hope he/she will be engaging and interesting when we eventually do meet. I promise you, friends, that I will give this individual in my future a chance and I will not be a jerk.

OK, now back to the scheduled programming.

I don’t need any help from a book to be depressed and bored, thankyouverymuch. But this book turned out to be delightful. It is told from the perspective of a young boy making his way through a really tough life. This boy is clever and resilient and more than a little bit naughty. I loved reading his story!

The way this little guy comprehends his world made me laugh. You know the way little kids try to understand adult things but get it mostly wrong and it’s adorable? Like how my Chris used to call hummingbirds “honey birds” for the longest time and I never corrected him?

After gobbling up his book, I found out more about the author of this memoir. Frank McCourt grew up in Ireland and immigrated to the US in the 1950s, earned his doctorate degree, and became an English teacher.

Then I was linked to the reviews of this Pulitzer Prize-winning novel that sold more than five million copies. Not every reader was pleased. To my surprise, many people from the town of Limerick, Ireland were not happy with the way their town was depicted. Some of the people he grew up with called him an outright liar. Actually “a miserable liar.”

Dr. McCourt was criticized for stretching the truth and profiting from a new genre called "Mis-lit" or "Misery Memoirs."

It didn’t actually surprise me at all to learn that the book is not factual. It’s a memoir after all, not a history book. (Not that history books are necessarily factual either, but that’s another discussion.) A memoir is an account of an experience from one person’s perspective.

But this got me thinking about the inescapability of criticism. I often feel worried about putting my writing out into the world. On the one hand, I am so hungry to truly be known and understood. But on the other hand, how many of you will be repulsed or totally weirded out when you read about what’s REALLY going on in my twisted head?

Lots of people had mean things to say about Angela’s Ashes. So who am I to think that I am above criticism or that I will be able to avoid it? Heck, if it’s good enough for Oprah, it’s good enough for me.”

So I'm trying to loosen up the overachiever in me to remember that not every post has to be a greatest hit. I’m thinking of Jason Momoa, of course. Because…..

Of course.

Jason and I have much in common, namely our broad shoulders and spectacular wavy, brown hair. One major difference is that he has approximately 800% more eyebrows and infinity more tattoos than I do. But other than that, we're basically twins.

Jason starred in Conan the Barbarian about a decade ago back in 2011. Even though Jason is shirtless for most of the movie, it still flopped and currently has a 25% rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

In contrast, I get to keep my shirt on while writing most days, and this blog doesn’t even cost close to $90 million to produce most weeks. After all “we’re not millionaires.” (That’s an Angela’s Ashes joke.)

So even though I have to buckle myself up a bit for criticism, I’m learning to let it slide off my backside……where I’ll sit on it until it quiets down and stops bothering me.