cover image Start Without Me: (I’ll Be There in a Minute)

Start Without Me: (I’ll Be There in a Minute)

Gary Janetti. Holt, $27.99 (208p) ISBN 978-1-250-22585-6

Writer and producer Janetti (Do You Mind If I Cancel?) briskly trots through the most memorable moments of his life in this hilarious outing. In vignettes packed with zingers (“The Catholics are the RuPaul’s Drag Race of religions. We put on a show, honey”), he reveals how his refusal to live on any terms but his own took root early when, instead of going out to play as a kid in the 1970s, he opted to watch The Carol Burnett Show in his basement. Sports weren’t his calling, either (their rules were “as indecipherable to me as ancient Greek”), though track wasn’t bad—“All gay people can run, so no problem there.” While his strength lies firmly in his acerbic humor, Janetti has a softer side, too, as seen when he writes of finding a home in theater in college and waxes poetic about Judy Garland, proclaiming The Wizard of Oz to be the “gayest” film of all time: “At only sixteen years old [Judy] already knows real pain. The kind of pain that most gay children can also identify with.” His views on raising a child today are perfectly calibrated, too: “No, thanks, I’m not equipped to deal with whatever the fuck is coming... after TikTok.” Pithy and profane, this entertains from start to finish. (Apr.)