Eliot Glazer, Comedian

Although his website claims that "alls [he] wants in life is to drink champagne at ten in the morning with Hoda and KLG," he seems to harbor slightly more respectable ambitions: he has a web series in the works entitled It Gets Better-ish, while at the moment he is focusing on a Tumblr-turned-book called My Parents Were Awesome. This week you can catch him in the flesh (and maybe spot his enormous Bea Arthur tattoo) at Happy Ending on Broome Street, where he'll be reading at the "How I Learned There Might Be Some Issues: Stories About Therapy" event.

Tell me about My Parents Were Awesome. It started as a Tumblr? Yes. It isn’t straight-up comedy. It’s an anthology of essays that really range in flavor, from funny to sad to bittersweet or really sweet, to very romantic, very adventurous. It spans the rainbow in terms of flavor, so I’m really excited about that. It’s a project I am very proud of. I was surprised to see it become such a thing so quickly.

When did you launch the site? Fall of ’09. I started posting pictures that I got from friends and family. It was like wildfire. As soon as it started, I got some press inquiries and then not long after, they shot a piece for ABC News Tonight Online, and they liked that so much, they shot a piece for ABC World News Tonight. Fox News, NPR, a bunch of radio stations, and magazines—Elle, ElleCanada. [It received] a lot of attention from overseas.

Only a few months after starting the blog, I was approached by literary agents and publishers and I signed with a literary agent. We didn’t really have to search hard because Villard Books was waiting for it. I gathered all these writers and bloggers and comedians with the help of my editor. I did it in four months and survived a mini-mental breakdown in order to do so. It’s a really short amount of time to put this kind of book together. They wanted to rush to publish it for the holiday season but they’ve since moved it to April 5th, in time for Mother’s Day. It was a crunch.

I don’t know if it’s going to sell well or not, but just to have it there with my name on it is something really special. It’s a really positive book without being cheesy or dipping into self-help territory. It kind of touched on this thing that everyone experiences to some end, which is, flipping through old pictures and being like, "Wow, Mom and Dad were beautiful," or "Grandma and Grandpa were gorgeous," or, "This picture is so cool, this picture is so interesting." I think everyone has had that moment.

I had people taking the time to go through old pictures and scan them and send them directly, ten thousand people plus. That really says something. It’s really positive reinforcement to know that people do cherish and appreciate their parents and their grandparents. I guess I opened the floodgates to something, some sort of cultural touchstone that people hadn’t really made a deal of before.

It's kind of like the antithesis of Jersey Shore culture. It's people recognizing themselves as being a small part in a web of people and lives and lineage. Not just a "me" culture. Totally. You look at these pictures and there’s no story behind them because the blog is just pictures and names. But even these pictures which—some are candid, some aren’t, but most are—it’s not like they were taking pictures and then saying, "Show me, so I can approve or delete," over and over and over again. That is a very, very new luxury that we have, that I really attribute to the vanity that runs so rampant and spills over onto shows like Jersey Shore, where it’s all these characters who are like me me me me me, look at me look at me.

There weren't so many opportunities for our parents to indulge it. Right. Some people now live like they are celebrities before they start. You look at someone like Lady Gaga, who makes the statement that she studies fame. She knows that that starts with imagery. Jersey Shore; it’s like, they brought on to this show, real human beings who acted with such self-confidence, they already considered themselves, not even camera-ready, just attention-ready because they were so deserved of attention.

Why? Who told you that? If Snooki was Meryl Streep and was like, "I’m deserved of attention because I’m a really good actress," then I would pay attention. But this is a girl who’s like, I just exist and I’m this color and I do these things and I’m really loud and I’m really tacky and I love attention so pay attention, so she gets attention. It’s just strange. It’s really strange, and I think the book and the pictures and the stories really kind of are almost a breath of fresh air because we’re missing that now. That sort of innocence is long gone and so, it’s really a pleasure to share the stories. Especially these pictures. Even if they are posing, they didn’t have the opportunity to say, Wait, I don’t look good enough there. It’s the capturing of a moment. And that’s gone. Which is sad. It’s a little depressing.

Did you select and sequence the photos for the book or work with the publisher? The book is essays, there are photographs, but it [consists of] essays by a writer or blogger or comedian, tacked to the pictures that inspired the writing. It’s a good read. I am just so pleased with how it turned out because it really is a good book! I’m not even modest about it, because it’s a good book, it’s really fun.

How do your parents feel about it? They couldn’t be prouder. They’re like, "Our nice Jewish boy made a nice book!" It wouldn’t have started if my parents weren’t as great as they are. If I didn’t have the reverence for them, I wouldn’t have this site called My Parents Were Awesome. They are amazing people and wonderful parents. That serves the foundation for the site and the book, and I’m so happy that there are photos of my grandma. I think on the back cover there's a picture of my grandma, and on the front cover is a photo of my parents. It’s such a testament.