My Horizontal Life (Handler)

My Horizontal Life 
Chelsea Handler, 2005
Bloomsbury USA
213 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781582346182


Summary
In this raucous collection of true-life stories, actress and comedian Chelsea Handler recounts her time spent in the social trenches with that wild, strange, irresistible, and often gratifying beast: the one-night stand.

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You've either done it or know someone who has: the one-night stand, the familiar outcome of a night spent at a bar, sometimes the sole payoff for your friend's irritating wedding, or the only relief from a disastrous vacation. Often embarrassing and uncomfortable, occasionally outlandish, but most times just a necessary and irresistible evil, the one-night stand is a social rite as old as sex itself and as common as a bar stool.

Enter Chelsea Handler. Gorgeous, sharp, and anything but shy, Chelsea loves men and lots of them. My Horizontal Life chronicles her romp through the different bedrooms of a variety of suitors, a no-holds-barred account of what can happen between a man and a sometimes very intoxicated, outgoing woman during one night of passion. From her short fling with a Vegas stripper to her even shorter dalliance with a well-endowed little person, from her uncomfortable tryst with a cruise ship performer to her misguided rebound with a man who likes to play leather dress-up, Chelsea recalls the highs and lows of her one-night stands with hilarious honesty. Encouraged by her motley collection of friends (aka: her partners in crime) but challenged by her family members (who at times find themselves a surprise part of the encounter), Chelsea hits bottom and bounces back, unafraid to share the gritty details. My Horizontal Life is one guilty pleasure you won't be ashamed to talk about in the morning. (From the publisher.)

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Author Bio
• Birth—February 25, 1975
• Where—Livingston, New Jersey
• Currently—Los Angeles, California

Chelsea Handler is an accomplished stand-up comic and actress, as well as the bestselling author of My Horizontal Life. She is the star of her own late-night show on E!, Chelsea Lately; was one of the stars of Girls Behaving Badly; has appeared on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno and Late Night with David Letterman; and has starred in her own half-hour Comedy Central special. Chelsea makes regular appearances in comedy clubs across America and lives in Los Angeles. (From the publisher.)

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Chelsea Handler is an American stand-up comedienne, humorist, television host, actress, and best-selling author. She currently has her own late-night talk show, Chelsea Lately, on the E! Cable Television Network. In 2009, she won a Bravo A-List Award. She also has her own column in the UK celebrity magazine Now.

Handler was born in the suburban town of Livingston, New Jersey to Rita and Seymour Handler. The youngest of six children, she was raised Jewish by her Mormon mother and Jewish father. Handler has said that while growing up, she felt like an outsider, telling a reporter, "We lived in this nice Jewish neighborhood.... Everyone had Mercedes and Jaguars, and I was going to school in a Pinto." Her mother died of cancer.

Handler has performed nationwide as a stand-up comedian, appeared as a regular on the Oxygen Network series Girls Behaving Badly and on other shows, including Weekends at the D.L., The Bernie Mac Show and The Practice. She is a regular commentator on E! and Scarborough Country as well as a correspondent on The Tonight Show. She hosted the first episode of the reality TV show On the Lot, but quit before the second one was aired, as she later said, "because I smelled the disaster happening before it did." Chelsea Handler hosted The Chelsea Handler Show in April 2006, which lasted two seasons. She was a guest on Red Eye w/ Greg Gutfeld and The View; she co-hosted The View on August 2, 2007, and again on September 5, 2008. On January 25, 2009, Handler was on the CBS gameshow Million Dollar Password as one of the celebrity players. On April 15, 2009, Handler won the 2009 Bravo A-List Award for "A-List Funny."

Handler has authored two books on the New York Times Best Seller List. Handler wrote My Horizontal Life as her memoir. Handler also wrote Are You There, Vodka? It's Me, Chelsea, a collection of humorous essays. Are You There, Vodka hit the New York Times non-fiction best seller list on May 11, 2008; it has already had a print run of over 350,000. She released her third book titled Chelsea Chelsea Bang Bang in March of 2010.

In 2007, Handler performed with the Hour Stand-Up Comedy Tour across the U.S.. Her stand-up has been televised on Vh1's Love Lounge, Comedy Central's Premium Blend, and HBO's broadcast of the Aspen Comedy Festival. Chelsea Handler was the host of the Fox show On The Lot. The show, produced by Steven Spielberg and Mark Burnett, is a competition for aspiring filmmakers who are vying for a chance at stardom. She was replaced after one episode by former Robin & Company entertainment anchor, Adrianna Costa.

In July 2007, Handler began starring on her own half-hour late-night comedy series on E! titled Chelsea Lately. This series places Handler against a slew of male-dominated talk shows, and adding a considerable amount of sarcasm and ridicule to the format. On the show's 100th episode, Chelsea revealed to viewers that E! had picked up Chelsea Lately for another 150 episodes. The show has proved a hit and averaged more than a half-million viewers since its premiere (much more than the average for a late night cable program) and has clips on Youtube with more than a million views. All this success is despite the fact that Handler's guests often are not A-list celebrities. In a 2008 interview Handler said, "The worse the guests are, the more pathetic they are, the funnier the show is.” The New York Times reported that Chelsea Lately has been renewed by E! to run until December 2009; Handler received another contract extension in March 2009 to keep Chelsea Lately on the air through 2012.

Since 2007, Handler has appeared in the Internet based program In the Motherhood with Leah Remini and (since January 2008) Jenny McCarthy. The comedic series is "about moms, by moms and for moms". On September 8, 2008, it was announced ABC would be turning In The Motherhood into a series starring Jessica St. Clair, Megan Mullaly, and Cheryl Hines. Handler decided to drop out of the project due to her scheduling commitments to her show Chelsea Lately. (From Wikipedia.)

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Book Reviews
Where have I been all of Chelsea Handler's life? I had no idea how funny, how brilliant she is. She is too clever for words.
Liz Smith - New York Post

Chelsea just might be funnier than David Sedaris.
Dallas Observer

Opening with a cute story from when she was seven and photographed her parents having sex, stand-up comedian Handler goes on to discuss the virtues of the one-night stand, which amount to having sex early enough so you're not months into a relationship before you discover he's into "anal beads and duct tape." She discusses her quest for sex with a "black man," which doesn't work out because the date she finds on ChocolateSingles.com has a penis so large, she "would have had to be the size of the Lincoln Tunnel to accommodate that thing." After him, there's a "little midget," but she sobers up before sleeping with him. Next come a number of would-be partners with penises too small to consider. Finally, there's a guy Handler does sleep with, only an embarrassing incident involving a "giant skid mark" prevents her from seeing him again. By the end, Handler considers settling down with one man, which might actually net her more sex than these mostly unconsummated one-night stands. Anyone who laughs at the mere mention of vaginas and penises may find Handler's book almost as much fun as getting drunk and waking up in some stranger's bed.
Publishers Weekly

Handler, a stand-up comedienne and featured prankster on the television show Girls Behaving Badly, now adds author to her resume. Chronicling her often wild sex life, this collection of offbeat and laugh-out-loud-funny essays includes a tale of waking up naked with a midget and a narrative of an affair with a Vegas stripper. Though the book seems to rely on the humor of the actual one-night stand, the standout pieces occur near the end, as Handler's attempts at casual sex become less successful and she begins to consider adopting a slightly more conservative lifestyle. In fact, the most entertaining essay concerns not sex but her substance-abusing gay friend's antics at her sister's wedding. Drawing on a supporting cast of hilariously well-drawn family members and friends, Handler succeeds in penning a smart, funny, and quick read. The booze-fueled tales of sex, however, are most likely inappropriate for school and academic libraries or more conservative communities. Recommended for the Sex and the City crowd in public libraries.—Amanda Glasbrenner, New York
Library Journal

Disjointed, lackluster musings on her promiscuous social life, by directionless if cheerful Handler. The L.A.-based standup comic here relates the meandering story of her many sexual misadventures. She starts with a not-very-amusing incident: at six years old, she was persuaded by her sister to take a picture of her parents having sex. (Dad was pissed: imagine that.) Moving on to her teenaged adventures at the Jersey shore, Handler invites us to find it hilarious that she picked up a good-looking man, had sex with him immediately, and dated him for months despite the fact that she couldn't stand talking to him. The joke in the next section is that while her father was a racist, she personally dated a wonderful black man, and it inspired her to want to sleep with many more of them. Next comes what's supposed to be an entertaining misunderstanding involving her sisters and the fact that Handler did not in fact have sex with the naked midget they found in her hotel room. In one genuinely funny moment, the author was dismayed to find that the handsome stripper she picked up wanted to tell her his real name and discuss the fact that what he really wanted to do was act—it figures that she would get stuck with the guy who wanted a real relationship. There is more: the one-night stand who showed up at the restaurant where she worked and was seated in her section, with his girlfriend (Handler pretends she is her own identical twin and has never seen him before); the friend who plays a practical joke on her by telling Handler's date that she has a terminal disease and just wants to cuddle; the gay friend invited to be her date for a wedding who terrorized her family. It might work as standup, but when transferred to the page this shtick is a groaner.
Kirkus Reviews

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Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:

• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)

Also consider these LitLovers talking points to help get a discussion started for My Horizontal Life:

1. Start with Chelsea Handler herself. Why does she pursue her quest for one-night-stands? What is she looking for? What does sex mean to her—or what do the encounters mean to her? In fact, do they have meaning?

2. Consider your reactions to Chelsea. Do you find her open approach to sex funny...appealing...depraved...misguided...or do you see her as a woman who has taken charge of her own sexuality? Do you approve or disapprove of what she's up to? Or do you take a neutral stance, believing it's not for readers to pass judgment?

3. Some readers have complained about Chelsea's lack of compassion or shallow hedonism. Others have found her refreshingly frank. What do you think? (Basically, the same as question #2, just worded differently.)

4. Do you have any favorite encounters in the book? Which do you find most humorous? Which episodes are the least appealing or most disturbing? What do you think of the various men she attempts to have sex with—any favorites...least favorite?

5. Talk about Chelsea's myriad friends and family members, and their reaction to or even participation in Chelsea's exploits.

5. Does My Horizontal Life play into stereotypes in terms of African-American and gay men or midgets?

7. Does Chelsea undergo personal reflection or growth throughout the book? What eventually makes her decide to pursue a more conservative lifestyle, perhaps to settle down with one man? Is there an inner life that Chelsea reveals so that you come to know her as a rich, complex character?

8. Some have compared Handler's book to Sex and the City. If you've seen either the TV show or movie, how does My Horizontal Life compare? Is there a particular character in SATC that Chelsea reminds you of?

9. Does My Horizontal Life deliver or disappoint?

10. Okay, readers: time for some personal revelations on your part. Anything in Chelsea's life similar to your own?

(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)


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