- What's your best accent?
- I mean, I've gotta vote.
I'm trying to do a .
- Oh, hi there.
The premise of this show is that authors inspire writers.
Today's guest was so inspired by the author, Ray Bradbury,
that she made a music video about him called,
"Fuck me, Ray Bradbury."
Rachel Bloom is the creator of "Crazy Ex-Girlfriend,"
one of my absolute favorite shows.
She can sing, dance, write, act, and her new memoir,
"I Wanna Be Where the Normal People Are,"
shows that she loves books
that aren't even written by Ray Bradbury.
She talks about her lifelong love
of Lois Lowry and Judy Bloom,
and a book she read during puberty
in which she learned how to make herself happy.
I can't wait to see her bookshelf
and find out what other author she has
a Ray Bradbury level of enthusiasm for,
by which I mean wrote a song about.
♪ Show your shelf, ♪
♪ Show some spine ♪
♪ Dust off your tiny jackets ♪
♪ Show me yours, I'll show you mine. ♪
♪ We're delighted to have you with us ♪
♪ Perhaps we appear pretentious ♪
♪ But we're sincerely here to share the wealth ♪
♪ So show your shelf, show your shelf, show your shelf ♪
- Rachel Bloom,
thank you so much for being on "Show Your Shelf."
I'm a big fan, so this is very, very exciting for me.
- Thank you, thank you for having me.
- So we talk about people's bookshelves, and I gotta say,
this is the first time in the show,
I'm really worried about a bookshelf.
- We bought a lemon of a house, so the shelves,
they're folding under the weight of things,
because they're shitty shelves.
- But you seem to have overloaded the shelves, as well.
- Well, listen.
Yeah, I don't know what else to say.
I am in a permanent transient lifestyle right now,
and I have learned to just be one with it.
- You have a ton of baby books,
including baby sign language.
- Yeah, here I can,
do you want me to raise up my computer and I can show you?
- Okay, if you can.
- Oh, it's so heavy.
Okay, this was all my pregnancy books.
So we have "Taking Charge of Your Fertility,"
which is where I learned about like ovulation and discharge.
- So when we were, my wife was trying to get pregnant,
I wasn't trying to get pregnant.
When she was trying to get pregnant,
I learned, or she learned, too,
about noticing your changes through the month
and when you're fertile.
So you didn't know all that stuff,
until you tried to get pregnant.
- Well, I've known about ovulation,
but no one tells you that, to be graphic,
the stuff that comes out of your vagina
is an indicator of where you're at in your fertility cycle.
No one had ever told me that.
- And so many things come out.
- There's a lot, there's a lot of substances,
but there's this whole thing when you're ovulating,
you want it to be like egg whites.
And there's this like picture in the book
of a woman stretching out her stretchy ovulation fluid.
And so we, 'cause we stigmatize,
"Oh, it's this gunk coming out of my vagina.
I don't wanna talk about it, it's gross.
Guys will think I'm gross," but your body's doing its job.
Your body is functioning,
whether or not you wanna have a child, or not.
I'll show you a book that's actually very important to me.
It's so important to me, the cover's ripped off.
This is a book called, you can't read it,
It's called "Mysteries of the Unexplained."
My grandparents gave it to me when I was about 10 years old.
I marked it with my own stamps.
This says, Rachel, that's a zebra
and that's a whale and her baby,
because I would play library.
I would sit at my desk and stamp books,
pretending I worked at a library.
And I was really interested in the paranormal,
the occult, aliens, ghosts.
I still am, actually.
- Where do you think that came from?
- I think imagination breeds imagination.
The part of me that loves this stuff
is also the part of me that loves Disneyland,
and to a certain extent,
the part of me that loves musical theater.
It's all escapism, it's all the fantastical,
it's all the imagination.
And there's a darkness to this stuff
that definitely I talk about in my book,
growing up in Manhattan Beach in California,
there's a lightness to everything
and there's a somewhat lack of dark introspection.
And I liked thinking about things,
like devil worship and the occult,
because it was this, accessing this kind of dark,
dark part of me that I didn't,
I felt like most people around me didn't understand.
- And was that connected to your anxiety,
and depression, OCD, and the way your brain works,
or was it something going on in your life,
in your house and your life at that point?
- I think it was more connected to being made fun of
and feeling out of place.
But I'm sure that there's a connection
with the over-anxious mind.
My psychiatrist talks about
where anxiety and imagination meet.
He said that I have,
"An active imagination with a propensity for anxiety."
It's actually one of the quotes on the back of my book
and the two have a huge overlap.
- A lot of your book is also about being bullied,
not feeling normal, and working so hard to be accepted,
and it just backfiring over and over.
- Yeah, and so I think this question of the,
of the being the other, it makes you search for answers.
"Oh my gosh, well,
middle school doesn't matter
if there's this whole other plane of existence
where monsters can't be photographed."
Or, "It doesn't matter if I got teased today,
because the similarities between the Lincoln
and Kennedy assassinations are quite astounding
and that's actually what's important."
- We asked you to choose three books
that have influenced you.
One of the books you picked
is George Carlin's "Napalm & Silly Putty."
- Yeah, so I have the, basically,
the whole George Carlin books collection.
My parents had "Brain Droppings" in their house,
which is how I got into reading George Carlin,
and then I just became obsessed with it.
So I have "Napalm & Silly Putty," "Brain Droppings,"
I have "Last Words," too.
And I just, I loved it because it's,
obviously, so funny, so subversive.
George Carlin tapped into a darkness
that I felt other people around me didn't have.
And then also the book has a lot of variations of form.
- As does your book.
- Yes, and I that's what I like reading,
especially in memoirs or comedy books,
I like varying up the form.
And so, my book, it's a mix of personal essays,
but then also lists and resumes,
just because that's what I like to read.
- So, okay,
bring me back to when you first hear about George Carlin,
how old are you, what does it mean to you?
What do you think of him?
- Well, this book is from 2001,
so we bought this because I loved "Brain Droppings."
We then bought this when it came out.
So, well, this came out in 2001,
I think I was already loving George Carlin then,
in middle school.
- So George Carlin seems subversive to you in middle school,
even all those decades later.
- Yeah, and he still is.
But yes, he was subversive, and dirty, and,
but smart, not like middle school-dumb dirty.
It was like dirtiness for a purpose,
because the dirty jokes, I think,
when you were in like middle and high school,
there's a, there's almost like a,
there's a gratuitousness to it that's hilarious,
and George Carlin was something different.
Edith Skinner, "Speak with Distinction,"
which is all about the international phonetic alphabet,
and that's how you learn accents.
- So this is NYU, like theater school?
- [Rachel] Yes.
- Did you like this class?
- I did, I really liked dialects.
I love accents and dialects.
- What's your best accent?
- I mean, ay!
- What?
- I'm pretty good.
In other, I mean, when I'm not like doing it on demand,
like, I'm gonna vote.
- Is that Cockney, is that what's happening?
- I'm trying to do.
I'm trying to do a Cockney accent, yeah,
but it's coming out terribly.
- Let's talk about Tina Fey's memoir, "Bossy Pants."
I love that book.
- I read it in one day.
- What's going on in your life right at that moment?
- I was actually in my first TV writing job,
which was amazing, but it was challenging,
and I write about it in the book.
'Cause I, and I that now with me, too,
we've knocked out...
Okay, we all agree rape is bad.
You don't wanna, Harvey Weinstein, bad, Les Moonves bad.
Okay, we agree that over, yelling is bad,
over, yelling and bullying is bad.
But I think what's gonna take longer
to permeate the culture of Hollywood,
and every other work culture,
is that, "Am I being bullied, is that guy mean,
or am I just overly sensitive?
Is this all in my head?"
It's that stuff,
because what it requires is introspection
on the part of everybody,
especially the people who are mean.
And often, the people who are mean,
are not introspective.
So they can be told objectively,
"Okay, you can't pinch someone's ass,
you can't say to someone,
'You're a woman and you're not funny,'
or 'You're black and you're not funny.'"
You can't say that,
but what are the little, more insidious,
things you can do to someone
that you might not even consciously realize you're doing?
So that's what I find interesting.
So I think I connected with "Bossy Pants,"
and I just, I wanted to read how she did it.
And when I was on that first writing job,
I then, right after reading this book,
got an interview to write for "30 Rock."
- In the middle of reading "Bossy Pants,"
you went out and met Tina Fey?
- It was right after I read it,
and it was really, it was really cool.
And she talks in the book about her question
of whether or not to have a second child.
And when I, when she interviewed me, she was pregnant.
- Oh, wow, so she ruined the book for you.
- A little bit.
It was also really cool to get interviewed
by someone who was pregnant,
and to see a person in power
who was going through pregnancy.
- There are certain books you'd wanna hope that I noticed
or hope I didn't notice on their shelves.
- We have a lot of graphic novels, that could impress you.
- I did notice that.
I didn't think you'd be a graphic novel person,
but you have a ton.
- Yeah, we are, we are big,
especially, Brian K. Vaughan household.
We got some, "My Friend Dahmer,"
we got some "Persepolis."
Oh God, I love "Preacher."
So "Preacher," it's been like a minute since I read it,
'cause this is where I'm afraid I'm gonna seem dumb.
It's about a preacher, who's a bad, rebellious preacher,
and he goes around preaching.
I'd like to talk about "The Period Book."
It talks all about swollen and tender breasts,
and it recommends to take a bath when you have cramps.
It says, "'The Period Book',
everything you don't want to ask,"
parentheses, "But need to know."
And the reason I kept it
is they gave you a menstruation chart in this,
and I recorded my menstrual record.
This is my first menstrual record.
You can't really see, but it says,
1999, 11 1/2-years-old,
and here are the days that I was spotting,
here's the days that I was heavy flow,
and this is for a solid year.
- Were you excited?
Was this like you were becoming a woman,
or was it like, "Oh no, this is too soon, I'm not ready"?
- No, I was excited.
At first, I didn't know like what it was,
'cause I went to the doctor 'cause my mom didn't,
'cause it was, when you start spotting, it's brown.
And so you're like, "Wait, is this my peer."
There wasn't like a moment of like, "Whoa,"
it was like little things,
and so we wanted to make sure everything was okay.
So it was the doctor who was like,
"Congratulations, you're a woman."
But I was psyched because I was really interested,
and I talk about this in my book,
in like my puberty period books,
I was just a little bit sex and hormone obsessed.
And so, and I also saw my body as a scientific experiment,
which is definitely how I felt when I was pregnant.
Hence, all of the pregnancy books up there, too.
And that's why I love "Taking Charge of Your Fertility,"
because it felt like a new adolescence.
It was all this stuff
that I hadn't learned about how my body worked.
It was like puberty part two.
- I got you a gift, and not to ruin it, but it's a book.
And so the idea was I wanted to pick a book
that after years of watching "Crazy Ex-Girlfriend,"
and knowing a little about you, never meeting you,
I thought would encapsulate who you are,
which is a lot to put on a book.
- Ooh.
Oh, this is wonderful.
It's "Are you there God? It's me, Margaret,"
but with like this beautiful new modern cover.
- So I didn't know about your period chart,
but I thought this book got into your humor
and your willingness to remember your childhood,
and dealing with your own body,
and your sexuality, and religion,
and kind of all the things that I feel like you explore.
- And I love this book, and I don't have it in a house,
but I read all of Judy Bloom as a kid, and I love this.
And I love this cover, this is so-
- I don't,
I feel like that book is in a time and place,
and there's no texting in the book.
- What I like is that,
in case you haven't heard of Judy Bloom,
and you're a kid in the bookstore and you see this,
you might buy it because you're like,
"Oh, that looks like all of my other cool books."
- I want this, this is what that book is.
I want that kind of a-
- That is, that is, yes.
- I can't thank you enough for being on our show.
This is really cool, sort of, kind of, meeting you.
- This was really cool, sorta, kinda, meeting you, too.
Are you in LA?
- I am in LA.
- I'll wave, and hopefully you see me.