Suck It, Wonder Woman!: The Misadventures of a Hollywood Geek

suck it, wonder woman!

The Misadventures of a Hollywood Geek

Olivia Munn
with Mac Montandon

St. Martin’s Press
New York

Copyright © 2010 by Olivia Munn with Mac Montandon.
All rights reserved.
First edition: July 2010
For information, address: St. Martin’s Press, 15 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010
Book design by Jonathan Bennett with Richard Arnold
Printed in the United States of America
ISBN: 978-0312591052

Author's note: The names and identifying characteristics of some people have been changed.

I’m dedicating this book
to everyone who’s ever been mean to me. From family members to girls at school to boyfriends who cheated on me. If you weren’t such jerks, I never would’ve developed such a tough skin to handle Hollywood and be where I’m at today.

So,
thanks for being such assholes!

I wouldn’t have a book deal without you! Cheers!

table of contents
Introduction
1
Ruff Love
2
Thoughts About My First Agent’s Girlfriend’s Vagina
3
The Sweetest Moments in Geek History! Of All Time!
4
Star Wars
Can Totally Help You in Life
5
Random True Story #1
6
Sex: What You Can Do to Help Yourself Have More of It
7
My Fans Rule-And Are Really Good Artists, Too
8
The First Rule of Kindergarten Is That You Have to Bribe Kids to Let Them Play with You
9
My Dinner with Harvard’s Finest
10
The Ten Major Points of Olivia Munn’s 2024 Presidential Campaign Platform
11
What to Do When The Robots Invade (Yes,
When!
)
12
Muscle Relaxers and Swimming Fully Clothed Don’t Really Go Together So Good
13
Surefire Pickup Lines For College Kids Trying to Nail Their Teachers
14
A Gallery of Great Women
15
On the
Playboy
Cover Shoot, Scandinavian Stylists, and Picking out Panties
16
The Time I Met the Champ
17
Dating Tips to Totally Help You Score!
18
My Worst Day Ever
19
Princess Leia Tweets
Star Wars
20
Random True Story #2
21
“Masturbatory” Is Not Always a Metaphor In Hollywood
22
Spotting Assholes Made Easy
23
Boys Can Be Really Great-And Also
Really F’ing Annoying
24
Here’s the Part About Moving to Oklahoma, Throwing My First Party, and Fake Sleeping to Trick the Cops
25
Unfortunate E-mail Sign-Offs
26
The Day I Saw My First Antique Dildo
27
I Did It All for the Love of Pie
28
Random True Story #3
29
Why I’d Rather Date a Geek
30
Suck It, Wonder Woman!
31
How to Make Love Like a Zombie
32
Location, Location, Etc
33
FAQ For a Supergeek
34
“If You Can Get Friction with That Tuba, You Deserve a 25-Year-Old Girlfriend.”
Acknowledgments

introduction

Yeah, so I wrote a book.
I know everyone thinks they have a book in them and that one day they will totally write it and it will be great, but that’s not true. For one thing, writing a book is hard as shit. And writing a book that is interesting and entertaining is doubly hard as shit. Plus—who’s to say if anyone will give two shits? Ya know?

Now, I’m not saying I’m so great and so interesting, I’m just saying I wrote this book. Tough to argue with that! And while I generally worry that I might be doing a terrible job on stuff and am more likely to suck than to rule when I first try any given thing, I have to say, I gave this book my best shot, with absolute honesty. I hope you agree, but if you don’t, that’s cool. I’ll try better the next time!

I’m not sure many people know that I had a fairly unusual childhood and upbringing. It was the sort of childhood that makes you either desperate and suicidal, or makes you see the humor in almost every situation. I chose laughs.

My mom’s parents were Chinese but they moved to Vietnam before she was born. She had eight siblings and my grandfather had a successful bricklaying business. During the Vietnam war, my grandfather was able to pay off the Communists to help his family escape to America. My grandmother and her nine children took a boat to the Philippines and then a plane ride to Oklahoma. Why Oklahoma? Because the only American they knew was a man named Gary, who lived in Oklahoma and offered to help them out any way he could. (Oh, Fun Fact about Gary? This is so crazy. I knew him my whole life and he was like an uncle. A few years ago, there was a really bad winter in Oklahoma, and a lot of homes were damaged. So instead of waiting for insurance to come out and assess his damage, 60-something-year-old Gary climbs onto his roof, steps on his skylight, falls through and is speared by all the falling glass. He lies there dead for a couple of days before anyone finds him. I know! So crazy. All these years, I bet he never thought he’d go out like that. That was an awesome story, you’re welcome. But back to this book!) So my mom and her family moved to Oklahoma in the 1970s to attend good schools. Good, Christian schools in Oklahoma.

Now, there’s something I should clarify to all you non-Asians reading this. There are two types of Asians. The ones who are quiet, polite, organized and laugh with their hand over their mouths. And then there are the other Asians—the really loud, insane messy ones who hit their kids and yell even when they’re just talking about the weather. My family is comprised of loud-ass Asians. The men have serious aversions to shirt wearing—it’s like their bodies literally will not allow their hands to go above their head to put on a shirt. It’s amazing. And the women scream, hit their kids, and address all white people as “Hey, lady!…Hey, you!…Hey, lady!…Hey, you!”

You know the
Joy Luck Club
? The women in my family should form a new club—The Oh Shit You Some Crazy Asian Lady Club.

I mean that in a nice way and wouldn’t want to change them at all. The truth is that as crazy as they can be, they are also wonderful and loving people—so wonderful, infact, that they probably won’t kill me for everything I am about to say and for my riffing on their foibles.

I’ll just run it down for you: One aunt has a daughter who is an ex-beauty queen and a son who lived in his room for three years as a shut-in. Like, he wouldn’t come out ever. He was just in there, not talking to anyone, playing
World of Warcraft
or whatever. He had my aunt’s credit card to order food to live on. My mom once asked my aunt how she knew he was even alive, and my aunt answered that sometimes she would see a light go on or off. That was her only sign of life, or so she speculates, a light switch. Eventually she lured him out and drove him to MY MOM’S house in Oklahoma and told my mom to deal with him. It was crazy! I don’t think the treatment took, as he stayed with my mom for a year before going back home because he refused to go to school or say please or thank you or be…normal.

This same aunt—fun thing about her—I’m pretty sure is a hoarder. She once bought like thousands of dollars worth of rice cookers because they were on sale. She can’t control herself around a good deal. Or a bad one. She once bought out a store of its swing gliders and made everyone in the family throw away their beds to sleep on their very own, individual swing glider.

Another aunt married a guy who makes decent money, so now there is nothing for her to do but go to the gym and take long showers there. Why? I think she does that to save money. In the past, when she came to my mom’s house for dinner, she brought a plastic bag and took fruits and vegetables my mom just bought. According to family lore, she hides food under her bed so her kids won’t find it. The good food. The other food she keeps in the fridge for her kids to eat. What kind of food, you ask? Like, spaghetti with tuna fish, marinara sauce and carrots—all in one big pot. That way they don’t have to eat
her
good food and she doesn’t have to cook for a week. When her kids were young she found a way to make cash off of them. She offered to pay them for chores but when they didn’t do them to her satisfaction she deducted the amount from the ledger, so at the end the month her kids
would owe her!
All kidding aside, I have to hand it to her; that would be kind of a genius financial strategy. She might have a future at Goldman Sachs.

One aunt dresses in short shorts, hot pants and tank tops because she’s desperate to look young. One day she decided she wanted to change her name to Britney. Yes, just like Britney Spears. “Call me Brit-UH-Knee,” she told everyone at the gym. “Call me Brit-UH-Knee, because I Brit-UH-Knee Spears, okay?” Once one of her gym buddies called the house asking for Britney and her husband slammed down the phone. “Hey,” my aunt pleaded. “Hey, that was my friend. Let me talk to my friend. You tell them I am Brit-UH-Knee.”

Then there’s the Doc. The Doc is my aunt who is a successful radiologist. And that’s another thing about my family—they all possess the clichéd Asian drive to succeed, so they all are super-educated and some of them have done really well in their chosen professions. A few of them are doctors and engineers. Doc is so talented she even taught her cats to pee on the toilet.

One other aunt is always in pajamas, and usually I think I can make out some sort of juice or soda or stain all over it. And everyone acts like she’s “simple,” but she’s not and she loves her garage sales. It seems like all she does all day is drive around in a pickup truck going to garage sales. So whatever new thing you have, whatever you just bought, she could’ve gotten it for you cheaper. Here is a an invented—but not totally off base—exchange:

This aunt: Hey, nice MacBook. Where’d you get it?

Me: Um, the Mac store.

Aunt: How much did you pay?

Me: I don’t know, about $2,000 or so.

Aunt: Oh really? You know, I could buy at garage sale for one dollah.

But I have to say, as crazy as my family is, I am very proud of what they’ve done. They spent all their money to come to America for a better life. All nine children graduated from college. And some have gone on to have their own radiology practices, or they’ve worked for NASA, or have been a top engineer for Ford, and they’ve become teachers and parents. I am so very proud of that. Yes, they’re crazy, but who isn’t? I think it’s much better to acknowledge and embrace and, damn I say, celebrate the craziness, than to pretend it doesn’t exist or try to convince people my family is something “perfect.” Because honestly, the craziness is kind of fun and made me the person I am today.

So, yes, there has always been a lot of yelling in my family. And since my mom remarried an Air Force guy, we’ve always moved around a lot, too. I think those two factors had a definite effect on me growing up, and to this day, I’ve looked for shelter and found solace among the quiet and the nerdy. I am a misfit myself and I have always seemed to get along with misfits. And, as I discuss in the pages of this book, I was just lucky that wherever I’ve been—Oklahoma, Japan, Hollywood—there has been a nerd family willing to take me into their fold.

I think I was raised in a way that was not like everyone else—part Chinese, part white, part Air Force brat, and all geek all the time. The geeks who took me in showed me the many joys of
Tetris
,
Super Mario Brothers
,
Dungeons & Dragons,
and much, much more—they may have saved my life in the process. Or, at the very least, they saved what is left of my sanity. Which is good because then I was able to use that leftover sanity to help me write my book, which, again, I hope you will really like because it doesn’t suck and it has a lot of pictures. Some of them were made by my fans who are, no joke, the best fans in the world. Just ask them.

Last thing for now—I realize I’ve talked a little shit about my family here but I hope you realize that when it comes down to it—I wouldn’t trade them in for any family in the world. Except maybe the Kennedys because—fuck, the Kennedys! I mean, I would
love
a family compound and to ask people year-round where they “summer”!

No, really, without my family this book would not have been possible at all—so if you hate it, blame them.