Neil Patrick Harris. Go ahead and laugh; yeah, he’s a funny guy. And if that reference means anything to you, then you, like me, will be eager to turn to page 181 in the new celebrity memoir, Neil Patrick Harris: Choose Your Own Autobiography, to read all about the creation of Joss Whedon’s Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog.
NPH is a very funny guy, and his autobiography is light and engaging. The Choose Your Own format hearkens back to the Choose Your Own Adventure books that were popular with fifth graders back in the early eighties. It’s an amusing choice by an actor who repeatedly goes out of his way in the text to show that he doesn’t want to become mired down in the all-too-common mud of the memoir: taking himself too seriously. The flaws inherent in the form will be all too familiar to fans who remember the original CYOA series; the reader is directed to turn to page 30 for three adventures in a row and gets tired of dying the same death. As a result, this reader got fed up, ignored the choices, and read the whole thing straight through.
As an approach, this works. Especially when you really just want to know what it was like to play Dr. Horrible. Or Doogie Howser. Or Barney Stinson. You will find out. To begin, turn to page one.
