Madeline
First off, I love Colin Jost. The first real exposure I had to Colin Jost was at Clusterfest, a comedy festival put on by Comedy Central. I was there to see a few different podcasts including Penpals and My Favorite Murder. Sure, I had previously heard about him and seen him around in various places. I knew Scarlett Johansson was engaged to someone, but didn’t know much more than that.
After seeing him at Clusterfest, I became low level interested in him. The more I saw or heard of him, the more I wanted more of him. Just like bread, the more I saw him the more my heat rose and the more my heat rose the bigger my interest in him became. Then my Book Club suggested reading A Very Punchable Face, and then my interest in him has now become full blown obsession.
Premise of A Very Punchable Face
A Very Punchable Face starts where all good comedian stories start, in Staten Island. Previously, I knew nothing about Staten Island expect that it was the redheaded stepchild of the New York City burrows. Being from San Francisco, I don’t really understand burrows, but that is another post entirely. I had recently listened to Pete Davidson’s standup on Netflix so by the time I was done with A Very Punchable Face, I felt like I knew all there was to know about Staten Island, specifically as it relates to Saturday Night Live.
As we move into Colin’s college and young adulthood, he is very modest about getting into Harvard. Basically chucking it up to an anomaly. At Harvard, he became obsessed with writing for The Harvard Lampoon, the comedic magazine that only accepted articles from the funniest people at Harvard. Once he finally was accepted into the Magazine, he accepts that this is what he wants to do for the rest of his life.
The end of the book discusses a lot of Saturday Night Live. How he got there. The stresses of working as a Saturday Night Live Writer under Lorne Michaels, showrunner of Saturday Night Live, and working nonstop six days a week with hopes that one sketch will make it to the final show. He talks about how he met Scarlett Johansson. And my favorite chapter was going through many of the sketches that he wrote that made it to the final show that week, including Lobster ode to Les Miserables in a diner. If you have not seen this skit, open a new tab in your browser and watch it on YouTube. Have I mentioned I love Colin Jost?
My Trip Down The Recent SNL Lane
Previous to my reading this book, I took the time to watch the 45th and 46th seasons of SNL. This is when I went from I like Colin Jost to I love Colin Jost. I found myself looking forward to the weekend update with him and Michael Che regardless of how outdated the news was. They are both so hilarious without the need of silly costumes or crazy ideas, although Colin regularly contributes to these outside of Weekend Update. This was all previous to me watching A Very Punchable Face and now I have to say, until he is removed from the writers table and Weekend Update, I will be a faithful follower.
Final Thoughts
Like I mentioned, I love Colin Jost and I am borderline obsessed with him after reading A Very Punchable Face. There is no need for him to be scared of me, but I might cry if I ever met him. And I have this book to thank for this out of the blue infatuation with him.
