Nick Offerman: American Ham & Paddle Your Own Canoe

Nick Offerman is best known for playing Ron Swanson on NBC's Parks and Recreation. Swanson is basically an archetypal "man's man" whose loves are meat, whiskey, and hunting. Offerman is often asked "how did you become so manly?" but he will quickly admit than being in a profession where you dress up and pretend to be someone else does not mean you're as macho as that character. And when asked "how do you grow such a robust mustache?" he will reply modestly that step one is, "I don't shave my lip area." This kind of down-to-earth straightforwardness is what I have come to expect after seeing his special on Netflix, and then reading the related book.

Nick Offerman: American Ham is a good showcase for his main real-life passions: entertaining people and gushing about his wife, Megan Mullaly. It's part stand-up special, part one-man show, interspersed with songs, sketches, and irreverent life advice. In the show, Offerman uses some of the same headings as in Paddle Your Own Canoe (which I'll discuss a little later) and he's not entirely subtle about the special being a way to sell more copies of said book. In fact, stacks of the biography are seen in the background whenever there is cutaway to his real-life Offerman Woodshop, as if they're product placement. The special is mostly a filmed version of a stage show Offerman had performed around the country, but when he starts singing a few song parodies, the home audience sees a sketch of him talking to a lawyer (played by Marc Evan Jackson) about the spoofs not being allowed in the special.

Like American Ham, Offerman's book is structured around a list of tongue-in-cheek guidelines to life. Paddle Your Own Canoe: One Man's Fundamentals for Delicious Living might at first appear to be a self-help book, but it is very much an autobiography. It's not as chronological as most memoirs, though; for each chapter he picks a subject and uses it in a somewhat stream-of-consciousness way as he recounts moments in his life that fit the theme. He first talks about his upbringing in the rural midwest. Much of the middle of the book is devoted to his struggles and triumphs in the world of acting, which mainly occurred in the Defiant Theater in Chicago during and after he was in college. He then had the half-baked idea to pursue theater acting in Los Angeles, but of course found that his future lay in television and movies. It might surprise some readers that he has just as many pieces of advice about romance and sex as he does about woodworking and cuts of meat. Each chapter ends with a separate story that describes how he came upon the life lesson that he's imparting. For instance, he became a born-again Christian to get laid at a Jesus camp, and later he claims if you make your partner a homemade card, you're guaranteed to get lucky. I don't know how these incidents will sit with certain people, but hopefully anyone reading a book by a comedic actor will not take things overly seriously.

It is notable how much Offerman credits his family and upbringing for who he is, but he is also forthcoming about youthful mistakes that he made, in hopes that the reader will learn from them. He is also very praising of his wife of nearly 12 years. They met doing a play together and bonded over dirty jokes, and the chemistry between them is palpable whenever she shows up on Parks and Recreation as Ron's ex-wife.

I would recommend American Ham to every comedy fan, you'll get more out of it than jokes told from a stage. I would suggest reading Paddle Your Own Canoe if you'd like insight into Nick Offerman's life and background, or some advice about being a professional actor, but I caution that if you're hoping for behind-the-scenes info or gossip about Parks and Recreation, look elsewhere.