Like a Boss

So...I like comedy. 

I always have.  When I was in a kid, I was allowed to watch Saturday Night Live and SCTV reruns on Nick at Nite, so I cut my humor teeth on the comic genius of Jane Curtain, Dan Akroyd, Gilda Radner and John Candy.  I would choose videos of Gallagher stand-up at Harco Drugs where we would rent movies.  Later it was Eddie Murphy "Raw."

I religiously watched "Stand-up Spotlight" on VH1.

In high school, my group of friends would all meet up together to watch the hours and hours of the original "Whose Line is it Anyway" series taped by our friend whose grandparents had that amazing but elusive to us "Comedy Central" channel.

I was that weird kid who spent all her time searching the book fair and scanning the scholastic book club order form looking for joke books.  The books I chose to read as I got a little older would usually fall into the "humor" category.  Erma Bombeck and Lewis Grizzard books got devoured in my house faster than a PB& Grape Jelly.  I even did a report on Gilda Radner when in 9th grade we had to read an autobiography of our choosing for class.

So it's no surprise really that I'll pretty quickly read just about any book put out by a certified funny person.

Now, I'll admit I've been burned.  When I was pregnant, a friend gave me Jenny McCarthy's book "Belly Laughs" and it just didn't really resonate with me.  In addition to the fact that I did not actually hate my husband while I was pregnant, she wrote about a traditional birth setting, which I was not having any of, so I just couldn't relate.   I didn't find it all that funny.

This let-down also occurred when I read Chelsea Handler's book "Are you there God?  It's me, Vodka."  What I was expecting to just be full-on irreverent hilarity ended up making me think, "Oh my God - and she's actually TELLING PEOPLE THIS STUFF?"  I mean, I'm not going to lie and act like I don't like to hear other people's dirty little secrets, but this level of her dirty secrets was a little disconcerting.

So I guess I actually prefer "slightly soiled, could be removed with a bit of spit" little secrets.  You know, things I can relate to, like "I once stole a Wet-and-Wild eyeliner from Wal-Mart."*  Not so much "I got open-mouth kissed by an inmate while I waited to get bailed out of jail from a DUI incident."

*Kids, it's never ok to steal; not even when it's a crappy 99 cent eyeliner.

That's why I was so glad that when I recently finished reading Tina Fey's new book, Bossypants, I felt like I had just finished reading the remembrances of my alternate life in Bizzarro universe.  Maybe because I have always thought of myself as "The Stay-At-Home Mom version of Liz Lemmon," the things that Tina Fey talks about are all things I could imagine doing myself...well, except for staying up regularly until 3:00am with a group of writers finishing a show.  I need more sleep than that.

The first example was her discussion of how many of the tennets of good improv are actually just good rules for living.  The whole concept of "Yes, and..." is one that I have tried to employ in my life since learning about it last year.  I find that I am extremely negative when offered pretend roles by Lilah most days, and I recently had to remind myself that I was being an unfun and unimaginative Mommy, and I just started to employ "yes, and..." in my conversations with her. 

Whereas before our rides home from work used to be like this:

Lilah:  Mommy - you be Steve and me be Blue.

Exhausted me:  No, thank you.

L:  Awww.....

Now our car rides go a little more like this:

L:  Mommy - you be Steve and me be Blue.

Exhausted me:  Yes, and we will be planning a big music show!

L;  Yeah!  I mean, "Bah bah bah!"

Tina also describes how she came to portray Sarah Palin during the 2008 election year, a comparison I made on Facebook before anyone else mentioned it (out loud).  Like, I know half a bajillion other people also had the same initial "Woah - Tina Fey should totally do this" but I was so convinced I came up with the idea that I almost asked Lorne Michaels for a cut of the royalties.

Finally, she talks a lot about getting 30 Rock started, and how that process worked for her and how no one really thought the show was going anywhere until this ONE episode with Pee Wee Herman as an inbred German prince....and I was like, "GET OUT OF MY MIND, TINA FEY!" because THAT was the episode that made me think "Ok, maybe this show is funny after all" and it was all because of one scene where Pee Wee strokes Jane Krakowski's character's face with this little tiny baby hand...omg.  And then just one of his eyebrows fell off...anyway, you just have to see it to know what I'm talking about.

Anyway.  So yeah, mostly I liked Bossypants because it cements Tina Fey as a real, mostly WASPy chick who had a mostly nice childhood and who is still kind of just this nerdy theater improv girl who wants to make people laugh...and I like it when I can relate to my comedy icons.  I'd like to imagine I could have a pretty good and entertaining conversation with Tina if we were ever stuck in an ATM vestibule or something.

Who knows.

So - if you like celebrities that are more like real people than over-the-top divii with drug/drinking/anger management problems, then you'll probably like this book.