While lacking much of a through line, Handler's essays are more than a series of connected one-liners. Each story has its own theme (albeit absurd), narrative arc and final payoff. Her desire for a cheap massage, for example, leads to a riotous encounter with a tiny Asian "masseuse" and a decidedly unhappy ending--all of which Handler describes in an escalating, politically incorrect frenzy. In another piece, a dog-sitting stint goes horribly awry when the peekapoo she's watching develops a nauseating and unnatural attachment to her boyfriend, who seems to enjoy it. And a meditation on her distaste for redheaded men turns into wry humiliation when the "Hawaiian-Punch head" she is dating dumps her because he has "other opportunities."
Oddly given her title and an early piece about winding up in jail after a DUI, alcohol doesn't play as big a role in these misadventures as one might expect. Rather, Handler's envelope-pushing attitude and sharp, skewed humor seem to have their origins in her eccentric Mormon-Jewish family, a rich source of material from which she draws often. When she describes her used-car-salesman father urinating in the street, her mother handing out dog-hair-covered grapes or her alcoholic aunt and uncle casually insulting dinner guests, for example, her blithe lack of concern for social niceties seems pretty tame.
Although her essays often inspire cringes along with their laughs, Handler has an undeniably funny take on life and an ability to happily skewer many of our sacred cows. "I have a real problem with homeless people with pets," she says. "How can they have the nerve to beg for food when they have a perfectly delicious dog standing right there?" Because she takes nothing, including herself, too seriously, it seems almost curmudgeonly not to chuckle.--Debra Ginsberg