Book Review: "Still Fooling' 'Em" by Billy Crystal

"Still Fooling' 'Em" was one of those books that popped up as an Amazon buck ninety-nine special in my email a few weeks back.  I figured, hey, it's Billy Crystal, it's gotta be good.  And it was.  If you like Billy Crystal, and I don't know anyone who doesn't, you should seek out and read this book.

It's not a new book.  It was published in 2013 to coincide with Crystal's 65th birthday.  While it is autobiographical - separate lengthy chapters cover Crystal's career in his 20's, 30's, 40's, and 50's - it is interspersed with some classic Crystal riffs on growing old.  It is also filled with anecdotes about so many people that have played such important roles in his life, from a contemporary New York City high school basketball player named Lew Alcindor to Mickey Mantle to Muhammed Ali and show biz folk like Mike Nichols, Martin Scorsese, Meg Ryan, Tom Hanks, Robin Williams, Jack Palance, and dozens of others, this book is a real neat ride into the fabulous, or should I say mahvelous, career and life of Billy Crystal.

On more serious notes, Crystal writes of his father's death when Billy was fifteen years old, and the effect that had and continues to have on him to this day.  He also writes that his mother, no matter where Billy was on the given day, would always call him precisely at 7:36 AM, the time that he was born, to wish him Happy Birthday and tell him to be sure and "do something special" on the day.  Years after her death, Crystal still looks at the clock at 7:36 on the morning of his birthday and thinks of his mother's calls.  And on the final two pages of the book, Billy Crystal gives absolutely the best definition of Heaven and the Afterlife that I have ever read, better than anything I ever heard in twelve years of Catholic education, in fact.

And in  perfect note of symmetry, the book also ends with Crystal telling us of the birth of his fourth grandchild, a boy, who was born on March 14, 2013, which was Billy Crystal's 65th birthday!

"Still Fooling' 'Em" gets Four Stars from The Grandstander.