Yearbook

by Seth Rogen

I’ve been the youngest person in the room a lot of my life.

There’s something nice about having aged into my job.

My friends are thrilled when their kids don’t shit all over their floors. As an adult, I get little to no praise for doing the same.

I didn’t get along great with them back then. Their real names were Faye and Kelly, but I knew them as Bubby and Zaidy. Their last name was Belogus, which is by all means a hilarious last name.

My grandmother was born while her family was in a caravan fleeing Poland as World War I was breaking out. She got to pick her own birthday when she was a little girl because her parents didn’t know her real one, which is some real Depression-era

shit.

so my parents would drop me off at my grandparents’ apartment to hang out for a few hours while they went to synagogue with my sister so she could pretend to pray.

Every Friday night would play out the same. I would plant myself on Zaidy’s La-Z-Boy and turn on “TGIF,” ABC’s Friday-night programming,

which consisted of Family Matters, Step by Step, and Hangin’ with Mr. Cooper, which are all shows that are, by any ...

My grandfather worked in the engine room of a battleship in the Royal Navy during World War II, and as a result, was more or less deaf.

This would play out for about two hours straight, and as maddening as spending time with them was, I couldn’t help but think they were entertaining.

Another thing I noticed was that my grandmother kind of had a wispy white Afro that, when the light hit it, became see-through, leaving you with a VERY good idea of what my grandmother would look like if she was completely bald. And…it was horrifying.

I honestly don’t remember being that nervous, probably because I was twelve fucking years old and wasn’t even mature enough to be nervous. I’ve definitely gotten more in my head as I’ve gotten older and marvel at how I used

to just barrel into these situations without much fear or anxiety.

Time for the big, quasi-anti-Semitic act out:

Small laugh but enough to keep going (which could also be the title of this book).

I finished it off with a joke about the stolen napkins that got a so-so laugh, and then I fucked off.

All those times I was dreading hanging out with my Bubby and Zaidy suddenly became something else. Something new. They were fodder. They were…material! I also began to suspect that maybe, just maybe, they knew they were being funny.

They would come and watch me perform from time to time, and not only did they not mind when I made fun of them, they got pissed off when I didn’t.

They were really my first significant comedic inspiration. My muse. Or, more accurately, my Jews (or Juse? Can books have alts? Seems like it!).

As they got older, I realized how much they did love me, and I appreciated more and more how genuinely hilarious they were. I started to see that among their friends, my Bubby specifically was considered a fucking riot. She swore, she drank, she laughed, she didn’t take herself too seriously, but she also wasn’t afraid of having hard conversations.

Bubby: All my friends are dying! The bastards! Don’t they know I wan...

My Bubby never really slowed down. She lived till her late nineties and was for the most part sharp and aware the whole time. Maybe too aware. Aging can be scary, and it seems like a lack of awareness can be a gift sometimes—a gift my Bubby never got.

They’re both gone now, but they shaped me in more ways than I can ever know and, thankfully, in one I definitely do: I wrote my first jokes about them.

When I was about to move to L.A. to be on Freaks and Geeks, I was getting a lot of advice. People love to give sixteen-year-olds advice, especially ones who seem to be at the precipice of a new life chapter.

She took my hand and smiled at me. “You give those sons of bitches hell.”

He somehow manages to be simultaneously bald and always in dire need of a haircut.

She’s overfunctional, but also a Kundalini Yoga instructor who exudes peace and calm.

My dad never had or wanted a traditional career, and his attitude toward work is refreshing in that he unabashedly hates it. None of his self-worth comes from what he accomplishes from a career standpoint. He thinks being a good person and helping others (something he’s done throughout his life to a heroic degree) is a better way to get that, and I wish I’d inherited more of this to go along with the uncontrollable eyebrow furrows.

I have two half brothers by lesbian mothers. They were family friends who used my father as a sperm donor. The fact that those women looked at my dad and thought, Great genetics there, is confounding but ultimately complimentary.

Jews like to see all their belongings. We like to know what we’ve got at all times, just in case we gotta pack up shop and get the fuck out of town.

The only fruit I could eat were pears, the lamest of fruit, because they have less sugar than all other fruit, because they’re so lame.

I ate the most boring food on earth. The other kids loved to make fun of me, always being like, “Don’t eat a banana around Seth or he’ll go fucking crazy!” Which really stung ’cause it was kind of true. I mean, you could eat a banana around me, but if I had so much as a bite of one, I would go completely insane.

They knew all my dad’s super-strange quirks: diet soda, no ice; lemon on the side; extra napkins so he can wipe up the table himself throughout the meal. You know, OCD shit. It felt like a little haven for us.

From the ashes of disaster grew the roses of a new life.

She’s the only child of my insane grandparents and somehow turned out to be considerate, progressive, levelheaded, emotionally honest, and wildly weird at the same time.

My mom loves music, and we blasted Sublime and A Tribe Called Quest the entire way. (Again, it was 1997. Just be happy we weren’t doing Da Dip.)

Nothing brings you and your

mother closer together than having an Israeli innkeeper assume you’re fucking one another.

They wear kippahs, which are funny little hats about the size of the palm of your hand that, I’m sure NOT so coincidentally, fit perfectly over a bald spot.

It would, by definition, be more penis, which is probably something every guy would be on board with.

When Jewish people turn thirteen, they have Bar or Bat Mitzvahs, depending if you are a boy Jew or a girl Jew, respectively. You get up onstage at temple in front of everyone you know and read from the Torah in a crazy singsongy tune that I’m 100 percent sure has no musical logic to it in any way, shape, or form, which is objectively humiliating. To make things worse, you have to prepare for a fucking year for this shit.

I was entering high school the following year, and I had one goal: I wanted to have a girlfriend/be a boyfriend, which I had never had/been before.

Nirvana was popular, and all the boys would mosh wildly to “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” until Austin Bell got a concussion at Steven Glanzberg’s Bar Mitzvah and they stopped playing it.

But say what you will, “Cotton Eye Joe” is a great song, in a “this song is not great but fun to listen to for two years straight” kinda way.

That’s how you wind up with movies like Neighbors 2. “This one worked! Everyone loved it! They want more! Not NEW more! Just MORE more!” I’ve been there, Rednex. Neighbors 2 is the “Old Pop in an Oak” to Neighbors’s “Cotton Eye Joe,” and I honestly think

I’ve experienced personal growth now that I’ve gotten that off my chest.

But the real goal was a slow song. “End of the Road” and “I’ll Make Love to You,” both by Boyz II Men, were great options.

“Can’t Help Falling in Love” by UB40 wasn’t bad, but their bullshit quasi-Jamaican beats made them almost tread into fast-music territory, so they were risky.

Hands down, the ultimate slow song to feel out if you really had chemistry with another person was “I Swear” by All-4-One.