The Day I Met Tucker Max…
on October 23, 2010 at 6:56 PM
On Thursday, October 21, 2010 at approximately 6:00pm I met Tucker Max at Changing Hands book store in Tempe, Arizona. Tucker was there promoting his new book, Assholes Finish First. For those of you who aren’t familiar with Tucker Max, he wrote the New York Times best selling book I Hope They Serve Beer In Hell, which was recently made into a movie, and he is an extremely popular ex-law student blogger.
Tucker went to Duke law school once upon a time. He managed to graduate, even though he took a semester off and went to Cancun. He infamously was fired from a major law firm for being continuously drunk. He was not, as he calls it, a sheep. He then went on to be fired from the family restaurant business by his father. After a struggle, he ended up becoming an author.
Now, Tucker has a reputation of being crass, degrading to women, and an asshole. While I personally already found him to be hilarious, many people (particularly women) find Tucker to be extremely offensive. Meeting him in person was not what I expected. The Sports and Entertainment Law Students Association at ASU was able to arrange an interview with Tucker. Right off the bat it was apparent that Tucker is a brilliant man with great wit.
While Tucker has great wit, he is also surprisingly not an asshole. I was struck by his blunt honesty. Though he does not sugarcoat anything he says, he also does not bullshit. He says what he thinks about something as he perceives the situation. Tucker is confident and cocky, but also brutally honest. Honesty without a bunch of bullshit is hard to come by these days, particularly in the legal profession where many people are often playing the role of a law student or lawyer and are constantly in the “on” position.
Law school is all about networking, especially in this economy where many people get jobs through word of mouth and recommendations and few jobs are actually posted for applications. Your reputation as a lawyer is gold and the legal world is small. Meeting Tucker was refreshing. While I am sure he can be an asshole, he is brilliant with great wit. He puts up with a bunch of ridiculous fans being completely retarded in front of him doing nothing but trying to convince him to do shots or have sex with them. For example, while we were at the bookstore some girl flashed Tucker in front of 350-400 people. That was clearly something he was used to, though he did have sex with a midget so he’s probably used to most things.
While on the surface his stories seem to be about sex, drinking, and partying, they are actually about figuring life out and working through his issues with his mommy and daddy. It’s actually quite sweet, buried under a lot of “filth” (see the ten pages he devotes to a girl who gave him apparently amazing rim jobs).
I left my interview with Tucker Max impressed, refreshed, hugged, and with signed copies of his books.