You Deserve a Drink: Boozy Misadventures and Tales of Debauchery (7 page)

Oh, man. I love this comment so much. You might be thinking,
But Mamrie! It’s not that mean,
or
But Mamrie, there are no grammatical errors!
Look, when it comes to appreciating a ridiculous comment on YouTube, sometimes you gotta treat it like a chicken potpie. You gotta peel back a flaky layer or two to get to that real gooey goodness. I will admit that the potpie analogy is partially due to the fact that I’m watching Food Network as I type this. But it is true. Sometimes you’ve got to dig a little deeper to see where a person is coming from. And that is what I did with this gem of a user. I clicked on his avatar.

This is something that people forget is possible on YouTube. As easily as you can click on my username and see what videos I’ve posted, I can do the same exact thing to a commenter. I can also see what videos you’ve uploaded, or liked, or commented on.

This lil’ peach who took the time to tell me that I am an idiot and that I have too much time on my hands didn’t realize that (after drinking a few too many Rumple Minzes) I would click on that avatar of his.

What I found really knocked me off my orthopedic slippers. Homeboy, let’s call him Reginald, had only one original video uploaded to his channel. Now, if I were to tell you that this one video was the most boring thing I have ever experienced, you probably wouldn’t believe me. But I swear on my collection of tiny hats, it’s the truth.

Reginald’s only uploaded video was a montage of sunset pictures. Not a sweeping montage of time-lapse sunset footage. Not gorgeous sunsets over canyons, beaches, and other stunning
landscapes with shots from a GoPro strapped to an eagle’s head. No, no. Reg’s video was a slideshow of scanned sunset photos he’d taken through a window with an old camera that still shows you the date in the corner.

Of course, he broke out every standard iMovie transition (star wipe, dissolve, even that weird spinning cube thing) to sandwich between each blurry sunset. It was set to a classic new age instrumental, to really get the viewer in the relaxation zone. But that’s not all! Halfway through the vid it kicks into a more rocking number and switches to (get this) waterfall pics, but not before Reg cuts to a title card reading, and I quote: “Did anybody sad water?”

Guys. We all know good and well this was a painful and unfortunate typo. He clearly meant, “Did anybody
say
water?” but I think we can all admit the irony is heartbreaking. It
was
some supersad water. I felt so bad for Reginald. We used to live in a world where you could entice your friends and neighbors with a good cheese ball and a box of Franzia in exchange for them coming over and acting impressed with your boring-ass vacation slideshow. And you know, sunsets are the most boring vacay photos. Sunsets are the photography equivalent of people telling you what they dreamt.

But now, sans slideshow party, this man had to teach himself how to edit and scan old photos to throw them onto the World Wide Web, shouting into the void and hoping someone would watch it.

Well, guess what, mothafucka, I did watch. I am one of your sixteen views. And even though you called
me
an idiot who has too much time on her hands, I gave it a thumbs-up. Pay it forward, Reg.

The Backpedaler

In case you who have been living under a rock (or picked up this book because it was on clearance and some smart-ass put Chelsea Handler’s book cover on it), Grace Helbig is my cohort on
YDAD
. This is whom the man with the broken caps lock is referring to.

Let me take it back a little. Grace and I met on our first sketch team at the Peoples Improv Theater, in NYC. Grace was on an improv house team and I was in a sketch-writing class. For those of you who aren’t total comedy nerds, improv is
Whose Line Is It Anyway?
and sketch is
Saturday Night Live
. The theater was putting together its first house sketch team and by some lucky streak, I was put on it.

Going to the first rehearsal, I was super nervous. Everyone else who was on the team had been in the theater awhile. They knew each other. They had been drunk together. I knew one person, my friend Steve, whom I’d met in my class. Fun fact! That first rehearsal, we read a sketch called “Everyone Loves Grace,” in which we played ourselves pitching sketches, the whole premise being that every sketch Grace pitched, no matter how terrible, everyone loved. Every guy’s pitch ended with Grace kissing him. Meanwhile, everything I said would be quickly shut down and ignored. This sounds a lot more mysogynistic than it was, trust me. Our sketch group was called Finger, and that is where the friendship deal was sealed.

Long story short, Grace and I remained friends after the group split up. We also became each other’s daytime drinking buddy. She was making “Daily Grace” videos and I was bartending. Neither of
us had a normal nine-to-five job, and we lived four blocks away from each other. This meant we would get Bloody Marys at one p.m. on a Tuesday and not pass any judgment!

One day over drinks, I told Grace that I had a really dumb idea that would combine my bartending and bad puns. This was right when Charlie Sheen was going batshit fucking “winning” crazy. I thought it would be fun to create a cocktail based on his breakdown and make a tutorial comedy video about it. And thus my first episode, “Charlie Sheen’s Tiger Blood Gimlet,” was filmed and my show
You Deserve a Drink
was born.

The reason why I give you this backstory is because when this comment was made, Grace actually edited my videos. That’s like saying Chris Gaines copied Garth Brooks. It’s the same damn person! And if you don’t know what I’m talking about, do yourself a favor and google that shit. I took over editing shortly thereafter, but the first two years of
YDAD
, Grace was kind enough to edit for me. The only person copying Grace’s editing style was . . . Grace. Actually, this is less of an insult to me and a compliment to Grace for having such consistent editing skills!

Now! Here is where I tell you my dirty little secret. Sometimes,
and I do mean very rarely, I will have a few too many gin gimlets at home and end up looking at my comments. Of course, I check them the first hour I put a video up to make sure that I don’t have two minutes of black screen at the end, or didn’t realize my boob randomly pops out for a few frames. But once in a blue moon (or after too many Blue Moons) I get deep in them comments. Even less often, I actually respond to a comment. Most of these I type out, take another sip of martini, and delete. Type, delete, repeat. But there is the occasional
sip
slip of judgment. This was one of them:

Notice the pet name, the impeccable level of passive-aggression with putting him in his place and then complimenting him. There’s a saying in the South that you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar. I wasn’t going to be mean about it. I wanted to make him feel bad! I wanted to slather him in honey. After all, there was already enough vinegar with that douche hanging out. Hey-yo.
*

Ladies and gentleman, this is the response I got back: