Bossypants

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I confess: I love Tina Fey. And when I say "love", I mean in a way that's completely inappropriate, given our age difference, our respective marital statuses, our incompatible social circles, geographical separation, and a host of additional irreconcilable differences.

It's OK, though. I think Mrs. Salad is in a similar relationship with Mr. Johnny Depp.

In any case, I've been a Tina fan for awhile. (Yes, I call her Tina. If she doesn't like that, all she has to do is give me a call and ask me to stop.) So I borrowed this book when my daughter finished reading it. It's an overview of her life so far, narrated with smart-ass wit and self-deprecating humor. I never got into the audiobook thing, but I bet the audiobook version would be the medium of choice; the prose reads as if it were meant to be performed aloud. No surprise, given her background.

If I had to gripe about something, it would be the uneven focus. There's almost nothing in here about Tina's movie career. There are numerous stories about non-famous people, nearly zip about her more famous co-workers. (Other than just noting how talented they all are—I knew that already, though.) Her recurring Sarah Palin role on Saturday Night Live (which, along with about 10,000 other bloggers, I encouraged) takes up way too many pages, even including a marked-up sketch script written by—not Tina, but Seth Meyers. Just a quibble, though.

I especially liked the chapter about Don Fey, Tina's father, which is both funny and moving. Probably because I'm a dad myself. And, like Mr. Fey, a Goldwater Republican. Tina's pretty liberal, but she wrote this about her dad:

If you're Don Fey, you can't look at Joe Biden and be like, yes, I want to be led by this gentleman with the capped teeth. You're not going to listen to John Kerry pretending to empathize with you about the rising cost of your medications. You certainly aren't interested in the "unresolved father issues" that rendered Bill Clinton unable to keep his fly closed. Don Fey is a grown-ass man! Black people find him stylish!
The book closes with Tina's inner anguished debate about whether to have another child; if you watched her recent appearance on SNL, you know how that turned out.

Last Modified 2024-01-28 2:35 PM EDT