Do You Mind If I Cancel?: (Things That Still Annoy Me)

by Gary Janetti

Overview

The Instant New York Times Bestseller

"From “Family Guy” to his own Instagram account, Janetti has been behind some of his generation’s greatest comedy. This book of essays is no exception."

— The New York Times

Fans of David Sedaris, Jenny Lawson, and Tina Fey… meet your new friend Gary Janetti.

Gary Janetti, the writer and producer for some of the most popular television comedies of all time, and creator of one of the most wickedly funny Instagram accounts there is, now turns his skills to the page in a hilarious, and poignant book chronicling the pains and indignities of everyday life.

Gary spends his twenties in New York, dreaming of starring on soap operas while in reality working at a hotel where he lusts after an unattainable colleague and battles a bellman who despises it when people actually use a bell to call him. He chronicles the torture of finding a job before the internet when you had to talk on the phone all the time, and fantasizes, as we all do, about who to tell off when he finally wins an Oscar. As Gary himself says, “These are essays from my childhood and young adulthood about things that still annoy me.”

Original, brazen, and laugh out loud funny, Do You Mind If I Cancel? is something not to be missed.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781250225825
Publisher:	Flatiron Books
Publication date:	10/22/2019
Pages:	176
Sales rank:	10,627
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.40(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Gary Janetti is a writer and producer of such such shows as Family Guy, Will & Grace, and Vicious. He lives in Los Angeles.

Table of Contents

Lend-A-Hand i

Patti LuPone 11

Paramount 31

The William Esper Studio 31

QE₂ 41

I'd Like to Thank 51

Better Bodies 57

Bennigan's 63

One Life to Live 71

I Don't Feel Well 85

Tim 93

Waldbaum's 103

Letter to My Younger Self 111

Saks Fifth Avenue 117

American Youth Hostels 123

Steven Carrington 133

Paramount Part II 139

Café Sha Sha 149

I'd Really Like to Thank 161

Editorial Reviews

"Gary Janetti's book is so rolling-on-the-floor funny, so brilliantly observant, and so full of heart, I'm sure a jealous Prince George will decree that Gary be locked up in the Tower of London."

— Kevin Kwan, New York Times bestselling author of the Crazy Rich Asians trilogy

“It’s no surprise that Gary Janetti's book is laugh-out-loud funny. It is just as cutting, wild, and droll as I hoped.”

— Taylor Jenkins Reid, New York Times bestselling author of Daisy Jones and the Six

"Do You Mind If I Cancel? is hilarious. Gary Janetti makes waiting tables at Bennigan's sound like one of Dante's circles of hell. It's one of the funniest stories I've ever read. Thank you, Gary Janetti, for making me fall in love with cruise ship puppeteers, and for giving Judith Light her goddam due."

— Helen Ellis, New York Times bestselling author of American Housewife and Southern Lady Code

"The writing of Gary Janetti, whether televised or tweeted, is famously incisive and sharp-tongued. What a revelation it was, therefore, to discover in these revealing personal essays an artist of great tenderness and vulnerability. And he's still funny as hell."

— Armistead Maupin, New York Times bestselling author of The Tales of the City

"Almost as soon as I began to read Gary Janetti’s Do You Mind If I Cancel?, I found myself feeling the way I felt when I first encountered Fran Lebowitz and David Rakoff: laughing and wanting to shout out the best bits to whoever else was in the room, even if no one else was there. This crazy quilt of memoir, cultural history, one-liners aplenty, and periodic arias of hopefulness, frustration, and brashly rude rage, is a work of intertwined great humor and great feeling. I’ve already lost my copy, snatched up by its next eager reader.”

— Benjamin Dreyer, New York Times bestselling author of Dreyer's English

“Gary Janetti, the voice behind some of TV's funniest comedies and a social media force (as Gary himself might say, you really should know this), finally takes center stage with this collection of raw, acerbic, and unflinchingly honest essays. As soon as I finished this book, I started all over again — that's how much I never wanted it to end.”

— Steven Rowley, bestselling author of Lily and The Octopus and The Editor

"These essays explore his dreams of becoming a soap star, the struggle of lusting after an unattainable coworker, and daydreams of fabulous success and the revenge it would allow are sure to satisfy Janetti's army of fans and enlist more than a few new recruits."

— Town & Country

"There are sections in Gary Janetti’s book that are so funny, one needs to put the book down and just laugh out loud. This is particularly embarrassing on the subway, but it is good advertising for the book... Do You Mind If I Cancel? is packed with funny lines, wistful memories, and the kinds of coming of age experiences we all have.”

— The New York Journal of Books

"A memoir that manages to be both intimate and imbued with the punishing wit he brings to his Instagram."

— InStyle

From the Publisher

2019-07-28
A TV veteran's memories of coming-of-age—and coming out of the closet—as an aspiring writer and actor in New York.

This debut collection of essays shows how long it took Janetti to find his footing on a career path that included Will & Grace (as executive producer) and Family Guy (as a writer). "I hadn't…decided if I was going to be a writer or an actor," he writes, "since both seemed equally impossible it was almost like choosing between being an astrophysicist and a Navy SEAL." The author knew he was gay from early childhood and was teased about it through adolescence, but he didn't fully come to terms with himself until he was 18, when he "was finally born." The thematic undercurrent throughout the book is how much different things once were—before cellphones and websites and Google and GPS—when it took so much longer to find anything out. The particulars vary in interest. Janetti's stories about trying to convince his mother to let him stay home from school by feigning illness aren't much different from anyone else's. Nor is his pre-adolescent appreciation of Cher particularly noteworthy: "Today kids have thousands of role models," he writes. "And a Google search will instantly connect you to a wide variety of organizations catering to the entire LGBTQ community. Then we only had Cher….She was our pride parade, our GLAAD, our OUT magazine, our Trevor Project, all rolled into one." There are some allusions to the author's husband and his successful career but little indication of how Janetti got from the "here" of his formative years to the "there" of his belated writing career. In "Letter to My Younger Self," he assures his younger self that everything will turn out all right. "I have had a good run, I can't deny that," he writes, though perhaps he's saving a lot of his material for a future book.

An essayist finds his voice within a hit-or-miss collection.

Kirkus Reviews

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