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I Don't Care About Your Band: What I Learned from Indie Rockers, Trust Funders, Pornographers, Felons, Faux-Se nsitive Hipsters, and Other Guys I've Dated Paperback – February 2, 2010
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In the tradition of Cynthia Heimel and Chelsea Handler, and with the boisterous iconoclasm of Amy Sedaris, Julie Klausner's candid and funny debut I Don't Care About Your Band sheds light on the humiliations we endure to find love--and the lessons that can be culled from the wreckage.
I Don't Care About Your Band posits that lately the worst guys to date are the ones who seem sensitive. It's the jerks in nice guy clothing, not the players in Ed Hardy, who break the hearts of modern girls who grew up in the shadow of feminism, thinking they could have everything, but end up compromising constantly. The cowards, the kidults, the critics, and the contenders: these are the stars of Klausner's memoir about how hard it is to find a man--good or otherwise--when you're a cynical grown-up exiled in the dregs of Guyville.
Off the popularity of her New York Times "Modern Love" piece about getting the brush-off from an indie rock musician, I Don't care About Your Band is marbled with the wry strains of Julie Klausner's precocious curmudgeonry and brimming with truths that anyone who's ever been on a date will relate to. Klausner is an expert at landing herself waist-deep in crazy, time and time again, in part because her experience as a comedy writer (Best Week Ever, TV Funhouse on SNL) and sketch comedian from NYC's Upright Citizens Brigade fuels her philosophy of how any scene should unfold, which is, "What? That sounds crazy? Okay, I'll do it."
I Don't Care About Your Band charts a distinctly human journey of a strong-willed but vulnerable protagonist who loves men like it's her job, but who's done with guys who know more about love songs than love. Klausner's is a new outlook on dating in a time of pop culture obsession, and she spent her 20's doing personal field research to back up her philosophies. This is the girl's version of High Fidelity. By turns explicit, funny and moving, Klausner's debut shows the evolution of a young woman who endured myriad encounters with the wrong guys, to emerge with real- world wisdom on matters of the heart. I Don't Care About Your Band is Julie Klausner's manifesto, and every one of us can relate.
- Print length272 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- Publication dateFebruary 2, 2010
- Dimensions5.31 x 0.68 x 8 inches
- ISBN-101592405614
- ISBN-13978-1592405619
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Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Review
-Rachel Dratch, actress and comedienne (Saturday Night Live)
"Julie Klausner has the perfect comedic voice for a new generation of ladies-brave, self-deprecating, high-larious beyond and brand spanking new. It's one of those books that you take to bed with you, that keeps you up all night, and that makes you laugh so hard in public the next morning that strangers ask you what you're reading. And make me so glad I'm not dating."
-Jill Soloway, author of Tiny Ladies in Shiny Pants and executive producer of United States of Tara
"Julie Klausner is Helen Girly Brown: hard-working, yet lusty! Romantic and intelligent! But best of all: unapologetic about wanting to be in love. I Don't Care About Your Band has more wit and all of the tsuris of Carrie Bradshaw's Sex and the City, without the pithy bromides."
-Sarah Thyre, author of Dark at the Roots and actress on Strangers with Candy
"All those misplaced orgasms and disappointing hookups with deviants were well worth it. Julie Klausner's memoir is screamingly funny and wiser than a hooker with health insurance. Take it home for a ride!"
-Michael Musto, columnist for The Village Voice and author of La Dolce Musto
About the Author
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
The Clintons were in office, everybody was usingAOL, Will Ferrell and Cheri Oteri did "The Cheerleaders"on SNL, and everybody thought Oasis was fantastic.In hindsight, we were all a bunch of potato–salad–eatingjackasses. Sure, it was before 9/11, and optimism always lookslike corn–shucking yokelry before planes hit buildings, but wewere also marinating in the guava juices of our own naïveté,having collectively just hit our national stride of financial prosperity.And nothing lends itself more to navel–gazing than havinga surplus of money and time on one's hands. Appropriatelyenough, it was in the mid–90s when I began my liberal artscollege education.
I went to NYU's Gallatin School of Individualized Study, aschool I'd chosen because of my crippling fear of places that are not New York City and Gallatin's decidedly laissez–faire policyabout what you actually had to learn. My self–designed concentrationwas in "Cultural Criticism," which afforded me thefreedom to take classes in filmmaking, postmodern literature,abnormal sexual behavior, social psychology, dramatic writing,performance studies, and arts journalism. Gallatin calleditself "The School Without Walls," and you know what it alsodidn't really have? A lot of practical requirements for graduation.You had to take one math or science credit, and social sciencecounted as a science. It was sort of like the A–School: PartTwo, only at Gallatin, nobody cared about you. I spent threeevenings and two afternoons a week in three–hour classes, discussingwhether gender was a construct, and I had the rest ofmy week to spend browsing Wet Seal and looking for guys tofall in love with.
The other defining memory I have of the mid–1990s wasthat everybody seemed to be talking about dating all the goddamntime.
The Rules, that shrill creed designed to make women feelbad about their own desires, was published in 1995. The FirstWives Club came out the year after. Then, in 1998, the MonicaLewinsky scandal broke, and Sex and the City debuted. I think1997 is the only respite of the zeitgeist chatter concerning theins and outs of romance, and I blame that on Princess Diana'sdeath. Clearly, a nation's vaginas were sitting shiva on the behalfof the People's Princess.
At this time, I, too, was eager, to paraphrase Morgan Freemanin The Shawshank Redemption, playing (for a change) awise old black man, to "get busy datin' or get busy dyin'." Ibought into the Clintonian promise of a mouth for every dick, and I wanted in on the deal. The rest of the world seemed tobuzz on the same frequency, and women everywhere in NewYork City seemed to crawl with dating desperation. Terminologythat previously only lived between the covers of Cosmonow seemed to be inescapable: Get and keep a man! Commitmenttime! Pleasure zones! On the prowl!
I dressed the part, in animal prints and red lipstick. But Iwasn't going for "cougar"—I wanted to do the B–movie, cateye–glasses, Bettie Page, fishnets, and Russ Meyer thing. Youknow, the look that people in the Pacific Northwest still thinkis really cutting–edge? But it didn't look cute on me. Instead,I looked like a woman with designs on men, and more DeltaBurke than Annie Potts.
Predictably, my efforts were tempered by the fact that reallife, thank God, is nothing like Cosmo magazine. Which is whynobody should wear makeup to the gym to meet men or learnhow to perfect one's "Faux–O." I was like Carrie Bradshawonly in that I hung out downtown and wanted a boyfriend.My shoes were limited to a couple of comfortable options, Ididn't drink, and you couldn't see my collarbone without anMRI. Also, the people I hung out with around that time werepretty un–fabulous.
There was Jodi, my roommate from New Jersey who wasmissing a set of knuckles, so her fingers could only go perpendicular.Candace, the only person I ever met to have actuallygrown up in the Orchard Beach section of the Bronx, who usedto strip to Motley Crüe in Yonkers and blamed her small breastson an eating disorder she developed during puberty. And Eve,a dumpster–diving punk–rocker wannabe whose identificationof water as "wudder" screamed "Pennsylvania Mainline," butwho wanted more than anything to live in a squat somewhere in 1982. Eve's whole life was scored by URGH! A Music War,but her bank account was padded with the wages of comfortablesuburban parents. I was also friendly with a lot of gay girlswho would never get sick of telling me how great Judith Butler'sbooks are, and why it was important to see Boys Don't Crymore than once, "to catch the subtleties."
"I don't get it," said Lauryn, one of the aforementionedlesbians, after I made the mistake of asking her for adviceabout my sorry dating life. "How many times are you goingto get screwed over by all those shitty guys before you moveon?"
I just giggled in response, like she was fl irting with me—allgay people who share your gender want to have sex with you,you know—and thought, "Lauryn's so funny!" I knew sex witha girl was like the Master Cleanse: Maybe it changed otherpeople's lives for the better, but it wasn't for me, and it sort ofmade my stomach hurt a little to think about diving into thatparticular collegiate cliché.
But Lauryn was right about the shitty guys. I dated themin college like it was my major.
MET all grades of awful men getting picked up in bars I gotinto with a fake Georgia driver's license. Under the guise ofhailing from Savannah, I got to meet winners like ReginaldBlankenship, a carrot–topped lanky Kentuckian who met meat Max Fish two hours before requesting oral sex with a mintflavored condom, which is sort of like ordering a cheeseburgerand drinking it through a straw. Reginald taught me two things:that I can't be intimate with a man with the same skin and haircoloring as me, because the minute a redheaded man lowers hisdrawers, I feel like I'm looking at myself with male genitalia; and also, that when you try to suck a guy off with a mint balloonon his penis, he will ask you to stop, and then he will tellyou that he wants to take a bath.
I met a guy old enough to have known better than todabble with a college freshman at the now–defunct Coney IslandHigh on St. Mark's Place. We kissed until my hair caughtfire from the candle on the bar, igniting instantly the helmet ofWhite Rain hair spray I used to encase my ginger dome beforea night on the town. After the bartender did me the favor ofthrowing a lager on my head, the dabbler and I had boring,missionary sex. I remember his apartment was on Park Avenuein the high 20s, and that he had photos of African childrenon his wall. I wore a garter belt and stockings under what Ithought was a classy zebra–print skirt and V–neck top fromExpress, and I moaned appreciatively as he gently plowed mysoft, eighteen–year–old body.
There was a boy at a hotel in Italy—a fellow Americantraveler—whom I met over breakfast during a summer abroad.I marveled at his chin–length Shirley Temple ringlets and tiny,round balls for the time it took for him to finish in one ofTuscany's finest lambskin condoms, only to run into him thenext day on the steps of some beautiful ruin in Rome, wherehe told me he shouldn't meet up with me again, because hewas in a relationship back at home. "Me too," I lied back, feelingso stupid about being dumped abroad that I forgot he wasthe one who transgressed. My wanting another night of what Ithought was good sex with a cute guy who happened to haveBette Davis's hair from Whatever Happened to Baby Jane was stillless embarrassing than a guy thinking that just once, on vacation,wasn't cheating.
I didn't even like any of these guys, but I wanted so badly for them to want me. When nobody called, I turned to the annalsof self–help and dating books, ubiquitous as they were atthe time. But I read them with an ingenious filter: I wouldn'tlisten to anybody.
"DON'T CALL Him and Rarely Return His Calls," advisedEllen Fein and Sherrie Schneider in Rule Number 5 of theirdating book about not pursuing men in order to trick theminto marrying you. I think the only book that made me as madas The Rules was The Atkins Bible. I lasted on a low–carb diet forthirty seconds before losing my mind, and I didn't even try tofollow any of "The Rules," even the ones that made sense, like"Don't Try to Change Him." Not going after what I wantedmore than anything seemed counterintuitive to everything elseI knew about the way things worked. If I wanted an internship,I'd pester higher and lower–ups at the office until I gotit. If I wanted to get into a class, I'd show up at the Registrarat seven a.m., bounding through pedestrian traffic to calls of"Run, Forrest, Run!" from passersby in order to make it to thetop of the queue on time. And when I had a crush on a boy,I would raze fields of wheat with a torch if I had to, in hopesof getting touch. I would call frequently and obsessively returnhis calls. I would ask him out. I would bring him gifts. Pay formeals. I would never end a date first, or without some sort ofaction. And as for Rule Number 3, "Don't Stare at Men or TalkToo Much"? Well, I was a gaping, chatting, rushing–into–sexmonster, and the idea of seeming unavailable, when in fact Iwas desperate and ripe, ran counter to every instinct I ever had:that doing something, not nothing, was the way to get whatyou wanted from the world.
Predictably, the men I met who liked being chased were will–o'–the–wisps and androgynous paupers. Boys who worked atbookstores, with no body hair or love handles; virgins and vegetarians,steampunk DIY'ers who peddled vintage and did BikramYoga. None of them could compete; none were formidable orcompatible. Sex with that lot was lousy and awkward or nevercame to pass, and nobody was calling me, or calling me back.Merrily I devoured fuel for my one–woman war againstmating protocol, reading book after book featuring variationson the economic principle of supply and demand. And thencame He's Just Not That Into You, which provided women thetremendous relief of knowing that they were simply not terriblyliked by the objects of their affections.
I took umbrage with the idea that if he didn't call, hewasn't "into you"—that any guy who was in his right mindwould know, if he liked a girl, how to chase her down untilshe was his. But what about the guys who weren't in theirright minds? The ones who were a little off or lost, or damagedfrom past experiences, or had no clue that they weresupposed to chase a girl down like a hound on a scent? Thatbook made the assumption that if a guy didn't do what heshould, even if he liked you just fine, then you didn't wanthim anyway.
But what if there turns out to be a lot of guys who don'tknow what to do? And what if you meet one and you knowhe's screwed up—like he'd been messed up to the point wherehe seems like an abused stray, whether it's the kind that snapsat you or cowers—but you like him enough to take him homewith you anyway? What if you thought you could change himor teach him how to treat you, or you just wanted to enjoy thegood parts of him and ignore the bad ones until someone bettercame along?
THAT WAS where I was, making the best of the turkeys in mypath. And never did hearing that the guys I dated didn't actuallylike me ever provide comfort. That book was a sneakyway of reminding women that they don't like the way they'retreated by guys who may in fact be perfectly "into them," butare otherwise dysfunctional. Because if a guy who knows whatto do isn't into you, you don't need a book to tell you that. Youget dumped or blown off after he pursues you like a contender,and then it hurts like crazy, because you know you lost out onsomeone who knew what to do.
But when you're young, and you're habitually dating thedamaged, and they don't come through, you have to make theconscious choice to separate the columns in your head that say "This is who I am" and "This is how I am being treated." Andthen you have to figure out how to let go of somebody who'sgone, not because you're pacified in the realization that you'renot liked, but because you figure out that maybe you're the onewho doesn't like him. Not just how he acts, but who he is. Andthen you have to decide if you want to keep going out withguys you don't think are great, or if you like yourself enough tohang out for a while on your own.
In no way was I in that place yet. I didn't like myself thatmuch, and I certainly didn't want to be alone. I needed to makemy own mistakes to learn from, and I wanted to see more ofwhat was out there—even if it was ugly.
Product details
- Publisher : Penguin Publishing Group; Reprint edition (February 2, 2010)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 272 pages
- ISBN-10 : 1592405614
- ISBN-13 : 978-1592405619
- Item Weight : 8.4 ounces
- Dimensions : 5.31 x 0.68 x 8 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #782,987 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #1,466 in Love, Sex & Marriage Humor
- #6,159 in Fiction Satire
- #22,887 in Memoirs (Books)
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I noticed several one or two-star reviews of this book which said things like, "Julie Klausner dates a lot of losers." To those people I want to point out that the author tells us in the first pages of the book: "What follows in this book are selective stories of guys who came on strong, then sputtered out...." The key phrase here is "selective." That is, she wrote about the bad ones, not every single man she dated (I am holding myself back from typing `moron' but, oops, too late. Tourettes typing at work again.)
Other commenters complain "it's not funny, I thought it would be funny." I don't know what sort of cartoon character lives these people live, but stories based on life experiences are very rarely a series of comic monologues. I laughed aloud and often while reading, and I was thoroughly amused throughout.
Finally, to anyone who has never dated a loser, congratulations, but too bad for you. Most of us do not go into relationships with a laundry list of exactly what we want in another person. And even if we did have such a list, good luck in trying to impose your will upon another human being. I think it is much easier to discover what we are looking for and how we want to be treated by recognizing what we absolutely do not want and will no longer tolerate. This is the happy ending of the book, and of most of our mature lives.
I think the thing with the memoir is that successful memoirists make themselves strong characters and make the people they encounter strong characters, so THIS element was hugely lacking. There were many funny (only a FEW laugh-out-loud) moments, but the story line is basically "girl who has no idea what love is dates a lot of losers".
I think a lot of this may work more in a stand-up platform, than a book. So it's a light, fun read, but not a great read or even the strongest way this memoir could have been written. The story itself was fine. The anecdotes were funny. I hate to say this, but a ghostwriter could've taken her story and made the characters stronger and the plot smoother and added a lot of cohesion.
I particularly enjoyed "Power of Three" (pg.67-68 specifically) and "Red Coats and Mary Wilkies," but the most meaningful part of this catharsis is toward the end, in the section titled "Old Acquaintances."
If you're a woman age 20-35, interested in non-fiction, you should pick this up-- again, don't get thrown off my the title. IDCAYB is a delightfully addictive and humorous memoir, especially if you can relate.
I think quotes, rather than summaries, give you a better idea of what a book is all about. Here's a collection of quotes from IDCAYB that I loved:
"This is a book about how frustrating it is to keep returning to something disappointing you will not give up on."
"I got around to granting amnesty to that girl who spread those rumors about me like warm peanut butter on floppy Wonder Bread."
"Some married men flirt the way starving people pull up to a buffet. They partake every morsel--each breadstick, every cocktail shrimp; pasta and rice--as thought it were their last gasp before reboarding the express train of their marriage."
"I got rid of people I outgrew, and fended off pests who tried to get back into my life."
[...]
"Didn't he know how tough it is to find people you like enough to actually date? How "playing the field," for every girl I know, means "going to bed early at least a couple of nights a month to make the loneliness stop screaming for the night[?]" .....Thank you, Klausner! Couldn't have said it better myself!
Top reviews from other countries
I Don’t Care About Your Band (or to give the book its full title – I Don’t Care About Your Band: What I Learned from Indie Rockers, Trust Funders, Pornographers, Felons, Faux Sensitive Hipsters, and Other Guys I’ve Dated) is a collection of stories chronicling Julie Klausner’s often tragic yet extremely witty dating history.
Review
I Don’t Care About Your Band was another book I bought based on the cover. I thought it looked quirky. And I will admit – although blaming it on being British – I really had no idea who Julie Klausner was or is. However, I picked up her book in hopes of being entertained for 250+ pages.
And for the most part, I was.
I Don’t Care About Your Band has a very relatable feel to it. Whilst you may not know exactly what Klausner went through it does make you look back at your own dating history and realise that yes, you too had gone out with some dodgy dudes.
Klauser’s delivery of these stories is self-deprecating but not to the point that you feel sorry for her, in fact I don’t think that was Klausner’s intention when she wrote this book. I did worry when I first started reading it that it would be a very self indulgent tale (something I have found with other memoirs that I have read) but Klausner’s book was more like a How to guide…no a Who to guide as in Who to avoid when dating. It was genuinely funny.
The one downside for me – and again, I blame my Britishness – is that some of the references were a little lost on me. The book does heavily feature pop culture references, most of which are American so I fumbled along with the ones that I didn’t quite get. This didn’t detract from the entertaining qualities of I Don’t Care About Your Band.
I Don’t Care About Your Band: What I Learned from Indie Rockers, Trust Funders, Pornographers, Felons, Faux Sensitive Hipsters, and Other Guys I’ve Dated by Julie Klausner is available now.
You can follow Julie Klausner (@JulieKlausner) on Twitter