Things I've Learned from Women Who've Dumped Me (21 page)

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Authors: Ben Karlin

Tags: #Humor, #Essays, #Form, #Relationships, #Sex (Psychology), #Man-woman relationships, #Psychology, #Rejection (Psychology), #Topic, #Case studies, #Human Sexuality, #Separation (Psychology)

BOOK: Things I've Learned from Women Who've Dumped Me

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David Wain

David Wain is a director, writer, comedian, and actor. He co-wrote and directed the movies
Wet Hot American Summer
and
The Ten
. On television he co-created and starred in two series:
The State
for MTV and
Stella
for Comedy Central. He lives and works in New York and on www.davidwain.com.

Larry Wilmore

Emmy Award winner Larry Wilmore has been working in television for nearly twenty-five years as a stand-up comedian, actor, writer, and producer. He is currently the “Senior Black Correspondent” (after a brief stint as “Black Correspondent”) on
The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
on Comedy Central. He has also most recently been a consulting producer on
The Office
on NBC, where he has also appeared as a performer. Wilmore was also creator and executive producer of
The Bernie Mac Show
for Fox, for which he won an Emmy, an NAACP Image Award, and a Peabody; as well as executive producer and co-creator of
The PJs
starring Eddie Murphy. He is currently writing his first book.

Acknowledgments

Honestly, I decided to do an anthology because I thought it would be easier than writing a whole book by myself. I was wrong. Compiling this was never easy and I was an idiot for thinking it would be otherwise. That is my first and foremost acknowledgment. I am dumb.

That being said, many people contributed in ways great and small to make this book happen. Comparatively, a relative few made it much, much harder. They will be getting their own acknowledgment in my follow-up project,
You’re Dead to Me
. It will not be funny at all.

First and foremost, I would like to thank each contributor for their time, good will, and most of all for lending their prodigious talents to this project. The best people are usually the busiest, yet the collective
you
made time for this. And not half-assed time. Real time. I sincerely thank you.

By far the person I would like to thank the most is Lauren Sarver. She has been dedicated, professional, diligent, good-humored, and 100 percent reliable. I hope they clone her, ethics be damned. Andy Selsberg is a gifted editor, a talented humorist, a great friend, and oddly, a skilled draftsman. All but one of those came into play during our time working together on this.

Jenn Joel provided many hours of support, counsel, and feedback—all of them useful. Same for Wendy Kirk, who is a spectacularly kind and patient human being. Also, she’s great at her job. Lisa Leingang is awesome and helped far more than she thinks she did. I would like to also thank Paul Sahre for his eleventh-hour design wizardry. I almost ruined his trip to France and he was still very nice to me.

David Miner, Cliff Gilbert-Lurie, and Jennifer Fiore brought insight and expertise and the ability to explain what the hell things mean to me. Thank you for that. Also thanks to Leslie Maskin and Sue Naegle for their perpetual support. Mandy Beckner and Will Reiser at Superego came in toward the end, yet still helped me improve this book tremendously.

At
The Daily Show
, giant kudos to Hillary Kun, who is the best at an impossible, often thankless job. Thank you. Also thanks to Kahane Corn, Jen Flanz, David Javerbaum, Rich Korson, Beth Shorr, and Jon Stewart. At
The Colbert Report
, thank you to the unmatchable Meredith Bennett, Rich Dahm, Hilary Siegel, and Allison Silverman.

To Bob Castillo, Jimmy Franco, Ben Greenberg, Sharon Krassney, Anne Twomey, Sara Weiss, and most of all Jamie Raab at
Grand Central Publishing
: I could not ask for a better environment in which to work. Seriously, I am contractually prohibited from asking for a better environment. I should probably not agree to that next time around. Doesn’t matter, there isn’t one anyway. Thank you.

For their friendship and guidance thanks to Josh Bycel, Izzy Grinspan, Julia Hoffmann, Aaron Lubarsky, Sarah Vowell, Paula Scher, and Stuart Zicherman. Stu’s patience is a wonder of the world, like, right next to the Hanging Gardens of Babylon.

To my mom, my dad, Nanci, Lin, Julie, and David, if I’ve never said thank you for all your love and support over the years, then this is a pretty lame place to first do so. Hopefully, I have and this is just more like a public proclamation of something you all already know . . . right?

And finally, to Paola Guastini,
te amo
.