Chelsea Handler is a huge liar and a fan of practical jokes that wreak havoc on the lives of her loved ones. She is also prone to wetting her pants during fits of hysterical laughter. This, and much more, is what you will learn in Lies That Chelsea Handler Told Me. Unique from her other books, this one is a compilation of confessionals straight from the source: her tortured nearest and dearest. It’s a fascinating read, with the same mesmerizing luridness of a huge car accident. You will find yourself both relieved that you don’t work for this insane woman — lest she text your Mom from your phone about your case of full-blown AIDS — yet jealous of those who do, since she regularly lavishes them with gifts and expensive trips to Cabo.
The book is kind of an anthropological exploration of the strange world past the visible half hour of the E! network’s “Chelsea Lately” show. Through firsthand accounts, it repeatedly shows the havoc wreaked by Chelsea Handler in her idle time. To begin, her producer, Johnny, details how Chelsea regularly strips off his clothes just before the show starts and gives him “tear-inducing, ball-crushing, bloodstain-producing underwear wedgies.” It appears that Chelsea has a compulsive need to fuck with people, whether it be a momentary wardrobe attack, week-long faked pregnancy, or six-month plot to torture staff writer Brad Wollack.
The elaborate nature of her plots, her dedication to planning and the amount of patience she summons just for a cruel laugh are astonishing. She is like a personal god of chaos, waiting for her friends to let down their guard so she can leave steamed clams in their desk drawers or write emails from their computers to random people that read: “My clit is burning for you.”
The overarching reaction to this anthology of horrors is: Who the fuck would put up with this shit? To be fair, it often seems like her friends deserve it: Brad Wollack nearly ruined his honeymoon due to one of her pranks because he’s a neurotic assh*le, and Heather McDonald talks about how she was traumatized when she was duped into thinking another coworker was being picked to be on “Dancing With the Stars” and not her. (Insert eye roll.) Beyond this, however, a second reality also begins to emerge: whomever Chelsea Handler f*cks with, she also deeply cares for, and this is her twisted way of expressing affection.
I will try to avoid spoilers, but there is one poignant tale of vaginal drug smuggling that, while mortifyingly hilarious, also served an important life lesson to its target. There are also several anecdotes that illustrate her loyalty. Her friend Amber recounts, when she was vulnerable post-breakup, “[Chelsea] flew from Los Angeles to Las Vegas to San Francisco and then back to Los Angeles all in one day just to make sure I wasn’t alone.” Additionally, it doesn’t hurt that a lot of these stories of Chelsea’s lies take place on group vacations she’d paid for to the tropics, or dinners at Katsuya.
While many of the stories made me cringe, a lot of them made me laugh, and I even found a special kinship with one. Josh Wolf says, of Chelsea’s random knowledge of only one sports team, the 1986 Mets: “She’s kind of a genius the way she uses them. Since it’s the only sports team she knows anything about, she brings it up in any sports-related conversation to make people think that she has a clue. She doesn’t.” This is exactly what I wrote a gal should do in my Dating Survival Guide to the Sports Nut. It sort of simultaneously weirded me out and made me feel cool to know I used the same trick as this consummate liar.
The book is funny and a fast read, and since it’s split up between several authors, you can read any chapter whenever you’d like to get another perspective on this maniac comedienne’s escapades. It will probably inspire you to think up something wicked of your own, and make you feel grateful that you don’t have to dread checking your “sent box” daily for any mischief.
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Next time in The Grin Bin: “Roseannearchy” by Roseanne Barr
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