They Call Me Baba Booey Book Review

To read my "published" review you can go the Stern Fan website. But here's the original!

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As many Howard Stern listeners, I am a huge fan, not a SUPER FAN, but still a pretty big fan. I listen to the show every day, bought a Sirius radio 6 months before the show moved, read Artie’s book, etc. I’ve always said it’s like I’m watching some of the best set of friendships evolve over time and I’m just happy to have been a part of it for so long. So now that I’m living in Switzerland the fastest way to get a hold of “They Call Me Baba Booey” when it came out yesterday was to download it on the Kindle. I didn’t want to get the audio book because I really like reading a book on my own, but I have to say on several of the really good stories in the book I could actually HEAR the story in Gary’s voice. If you know Gary (which of course you do), you know this made some of the funny stories even more hilarious (like the part where he retells the story of the apology video to Nancy) so I wonder if I would’ve laughed even more hearing it from Gary’s voice throughout. I might have to get the audio book after all.


Anyway, as Howard and Robin like to point out Gary has had a pretty normal life, I guess they would call it mundane (to borrow from David Arquette). I have to say to a degree this is true, but I think this sense of “down-to-earthedness” also made the storytelling more interesting, more intimate, more like I could be reading this story from anyone. It’s almost like the parts that are sad and even shocking he tells them so completely nonchalantly that you end up thinking “this isn’t so bad”. Unlike when I read Artie’s book and I just wanted to step into his life and try to save him from himself. Now don’t get me wrong, Gary has definitely gone through some crazy and sad shit in his life (and a lot I could identify with because I’ve had very similar situations personally) but while in Artie’s book I could see the train wreck happening before my very eyes, with Gary’s book I could see him already as a mature hard working family man just telling the story about “becoming Baba Booey” in the most normal possible way. And in a sense it gives me hope that you can go through a lot of stuff like that in life and still end up OK.

Even though I heard Gary “Baba Booey” the Baba Booey story on Letterman it was actually my favorite part of the book to hear him telling about how he got the nickname and also how it became like a battle cry for fans. I wasn’t part of the show when “Baba Booey” was born and I’ve definitely head it retold over the years but though the book probably told the best version of all. The story of his teeth needing to be repaired by the dentist after his caps rotted through his own teeth was pretty hilarious; it totally freaked me out even if I couldn’t actually see it! That’s one of the older stories I didn’t already know so I felt great discovering that one for the first time. And in a complete side bar when he talks about not getting assistant jobs because he didn’t know how to type I kept hearing Fred’s “pecking keyboard” sound and couldn’t help but laugh out loud!

I felt myself getting a bit nostalgic when he talks about the whole cast including Artie doing the show from Vegas and just everyone being at their best (isn’t it obvious I miss Artie?!). The way Howard brings him to K-Rock after leaving NBC was also emotional (even if it was just “glossed over” as Howard says). Now, a really sad part for me was when he bluntly comes out and says after 45 years of marriage his parents got divorced. I don’t know why it got to me so hard (my parents are divorced but it happened when I was 5). I think in this case I felt that they had gone through soooo much together (his mom’s mental illness, Steven’s death, his dad’s unemployment, etc.) and they had made it together for so long that how could it all fall apart after so much time. I think I also didn’t know all the background behind that story and that’s why it got to me. In general just reading about how his family history (albeit a bit insane) made me miss a time when families did everything together – not one child playing with the iPhone while the dad surfs the internet and the mom tries to work on her blackberry. I am not as old as Gary so of course I didn’t live through a lot of the things he lived to at an early age, but I know I look at things like writing out the lyrics to a song by hand (which I used to do growing up too, call me a loser too if you want I don’t care) and knowing that a kid today would NEVER do something like that because kids today are used to having everything be a click away. It takes all the fun out of life.

And then the parents’ divorce story is followed by an even sadder story which is his when his mom gets into the car accident and he finally gets the mom he always wanted but then realizes that’s not his mom and that’s not who he wants for a mom. Poignant and bittersweet, this is a part of the book I think I’ll always remember. With how big a force his mom has always been in his life, it’s just not the ending I imagined for her.

Despite some of these “headier” stories, this was all in all a relatively lighthearted, always interesting, sometimes hilarious, and a few times heart wrenching read that will help us better understand the brilliance that is Baba Booey. So if you’re one of the few people who haven’t bought the book yet (can’t be that many of you because it’s sitting at #19 on Amazon right now), go out and get the book! BABA BOOEY!

P.S. And yes the “top 10” lists are kind of hokey – I guess that’s one thing we can all make fun of him for in the future! The one notable exception was the list of names considered and rejected for the book. I gotta keep that one taped to my desk at work along with a picture of Baba Booey’s teeth.