It Never Ends
A Memoir with Nice Memories!
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4.5 • 27 Ratings
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
From cult comedy icon and beloved radio host Tom Scharpling, an inspiring, funny, and thoughtful memoir
It Never Ends is Tom Scharpling’s harrowing memoir of his coming of age, a story he has never told before. It’s the heartbreaking account of his attempt at suicide, two stays in a mental hospital, and the memory-wiping electroshock therapy that saved his life. After his rehabilitation, Scharpling committed himself to reinvention through the world of comedy. In this book he will lift the curtain on the turmoil that still follows him, despite all of his accolades and achievements. In the vein of candid memoirs from comedians like Mike Birbiglia's Sleepwalk with Me and Norm Macdonald's Based on a True Story, It Never Ends is a revealing book by a beloved comedy icon.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Comedian and television writer Scharpling careens with reckless abandon around the curves life has thrown him in his sidesplitting debut. Bouncing around in time, he skims over prank-calling his high school bullies' parents as a freshman and cuts to the depression that led to electroconvulsive treatments for most of his senior year. Listening to the radio became an escape, and in college in the mid-1990s, he turned his passion into a gig as a DJ for Jersey City radio station WFMU: "When I talked into that mic and said whatever I was thinking, the universe literally handed me my voice." In a serendipitous moment, he met Jon Wurster, from the rock band Superchunk, and the two created a comic call-in music show that would eventually become The Best Show on WFMU in 2000. Jonesing to become a "Professional Funny Person," he soon began writing for the TV show Monk and for movies such as Grown Ups 3. All jokes aside, Scharpling uses his struggles to offer poignant life lessons, dropping in thoughtful reflections about the importance of putting ideas into action and overcoming shame ("set it down and move forward"). Readers will laugh, cry, and laugh some more as they cheer on this story of persistence and triumph.
Customer Reviews
A GREAT READ!!!
Tom Scharpling is funny. And smart. The book is great whether you’re already a fan of The Best Show or not. Buy it!!!
Call It Sleep. No, ACTUAL SLEEP
Surly koala Tom Scharpling, The Elizabeth Egotist, The Hackensack Homunculus, The Nutley Ninny, foists his whitewashed hogwash on an indifferent public, a doomed attempt to rebrand himself as a wise and kindly elder statesman to the younger generation. This is a highly edited version of his original 1,000 page manuscript, a full accounting of his trials and triumphs, more exhaustive in scope than Robert Caro's biography of LBJ. The period at the end of this sentence represents your troubles in comparison to Tom's innumerable sufferings. You got that? The title is taken from a comment scribbled on top of the banker's box containing his MS, which was found in a dumpster behind his publisher's building. The following excerpt is purportedly from the planned first volume, which entails his New Jersey boyhood [Suicide Hotline: 1-800-273-8255]-
Please read my full review on Goodreads...