One in a series of love letters
Hello internets! I feel horrible about my lack of LJ/DW participation, and I feel even more horrible that I seem to start every post this way these days, and I could offer you excuses but I won't. What I did want to do is share some joy, because I am deep down a fannish wormhole recently about Amy Poehler (and now also Seth Meyers, and also how they should be together 4eva, though I also want Seth to stay with his wife because she seems awesome too, HAPPY POLYAMORY FOR ALL MY RPF SHIPS), which is not new, but it has cycled around to a certain level of intensity that means I am overflowing with love and wanted to share. Also because I find Amy Poehler spectacularly inspiring, and in case you do not have her in your life yet, I feel that you probably should. And if you DO have her in your life, CAN WE TALK ABOUT HOW AMAZING SHE IS.
So it came to my attention the other day that Mindy Kaling, like Tina Fey (and apparently Rachel Dratch, though I haven't tracked hers down yet), has a little paean to Amy in her autobiographical book, and that between Tina and Mindy, they manage to express the dual sides of Amy's nature that I desperately admire: she is, by all accounts, incredibly sweet and wise and supportive and a generally amazing friend, and she is also a badass who does not take shit from people, especially sexist shit. I'm gonna let Tina start us off here:
Amy Poehler was new to SNL and we were all crowded into the seventeenth-floor writers' room, waiting for the Wednesday read-through to start. There were always a lot of noisy "comedy bits" going on in that room. Amy was in the middle of some such nonsense with Seth Meyers [Ed note: a;sdlfjas ldfja;slkdfj a;sldfjk a;lsfj] across the table, and she did something vulgar as a joke. I can't remember what it was exactly, except it was dirty and loud and "unladylike."
Jimmy Fallon, who was arguably the star of the show at the time, turned to her and in a faux-squeamish voice said, "Stop that! It's not cute. I don't like it."
Amy dropped what she was doing, went black in the eyes for a second, and wheeled around on him. "I don't fucking care if you like it." Jimmy was visibly startled. Amy went right back to enjoying her ridiculous bit. (I should make it clear that Jimmy and Amy are very good friends and there was never any real beef between them. Insert penis joke here.)
With that exchange, a cosmic shift took place. Amy made it clear that she wasn't there to be cute. She wasn't there to play wives and girlfriends in the boys' scenes. She was there to do what she wanted to do and she did not fucking care if you like it.
I was so happy. Weirdly, I remember thinking, "My friend is here! My friend is here!" Even though things had been going great for me at the show, with Amy there, I felt less alone.
I LOVE THAT SO MUCH, YOU GUYS. (Though I SERIOUSLY want to read the rest of Tina's series of love letters, in that sense where it is none of my business but PLEASE TELL ME ALL THE THINGS ABOUT YOUR BEAUTIFUL FRIENDSHIP AND HOW MUCH YOU LOVE EACH OTHER.)
And then from Mindy:
So the context here is that Mindy was a guest writer at SNL for a couple of weeks, and apparently it didn't go all that well (partially because she came straight from The Office and had had no time to prepare), but:
My Bill Hader pregnant cat sketch got read at the table and went over so poorly I remember wondering if I should fake meningitis so that I could blame that for such a bad sketch. Or if I could, at all, play it off as so ironically terrible it was good. What? I'm not hipster enough for that? I started writing my agent an e-mail asking if I could leave after my first week there. I was literally in the middle of writing it when I heard a knock on my and Kristen's door. It was Amy Poehler.
ME. Hi, Kristen is on the stage, I think, but I can leave her a message.
AMY. Oh, I wanted to talk to you.
Amy went on to ask if I was going to go out with some of the writers and actors after work. I nodded yes, which was a huge lie. I had planned on sprinting back to the Sofitel (where they were putting me up a few blocks away) and falling asleep watching the syndicated That 70's Show, which I had done every night since I landed in New York. But Amy, being warm prescient, Amy, said knowingly, "Why don't I just wait here for you and we can walk over together?"
Everyone has a moment when they discover they love Amy Poehler. For most people it happened sometime during her run on Saturday Night Live. For some it was when she came back to the show in 2009, nine months pregnant, and did that complicated, hard-core Sarah Palin rap on Weekend Update.
I first noticed Amy when I was in high school and I saw her on Conan's first show. She was in a sketch playing Andy Richter's "little sister Stacey." Stacey had pigtails and headgear and was obsessed with Conan. As a performer, she was this pretty little gremlin, all elbows and blond hair and manic eyes. As a teenager, I tracked her career as best I could without the Internet, and was overjoyed when I saw she had become a cast member on Saturday Night Live. I loved when she played Kaitlin, with her cool stepdad, Rick.
But when this popular, pretty genius made this kind gesture to me? That's the moment I started adoring Amy Poehler. She knew I was going to be a coward, and she was going to have to gently facilitate me into being social. We walked over on Forty-ninth Street with a big group of people and Amy asked me about my life in L.A. I told her, super self-conscious about seeming nervous. This was the woman who, ten years earlier, had inspired me to keep my parents up until 1:00 a.m. to watch her on Late Night With Conan O'Brien When I said something even a little bit funny, Amy cackled warmly. (This sounds weird, but that's the best way I know to describe Amy Poehler's laugh: a warm, intoxicating cackle. [Ed note: this is a FLAWLESS description.])
The evening that followed wasn't especially memorable. Many of her friends reasonably expected to talk to her, so I didn't get precious one-on-one Amy time. I had also forgotten to bring cash and had to borrow twenty dollars from a writer I barely knew. But I stayed the second week at SNL. Antonio Banderas was hosting, and at the read-through, I presented a new sketch. This hilarious sketch was about identical twins who were reunited when their parents died in the rubble when the Berlin Wall fell. After an almost laugh-free reading, Antonio looked over to his assistant, befuddled, and said, "Theese? Theese makes no sense to me."
All the humiliation was worth it for the one shining moment when Amy Poehler proposed we walk a few blocks together, late at night, in New York City in 2006.
*slides to the floor in a helpless puddle of love* That legitimately made me sniffly last night. And then I read it to Mr. McK and he got sniffly too. ♥ (I'm really enjoying Mindy's book, BTW, even the parts that have nothing to do with Amy Poehler. Definitely recommended. Tina's book--which I read a couple of years ago, back in the first flush of my Amy Poehler fandom--is, of course, also fantastic.)
Also, if you are not familiar with Smart Girls at the Party, the YouTube channel Amy hosts with a couple of her friends, can I HIGHLY recommend it? Or at least celebrate its existence? Basically the whole thing is geared toward young women especially, and telling them it's good to be smart and weird and assertive and funny and unique, and it's SO BEAUTIFUL. I particularly love the Ask Amy section, where Amy answers submitted questions and consistently gives THE BEST advice and is so thoughtful and wise and lovely and I CAN'T DEAL WITH HOW MUCH I LOVE AND ADMIRE HER. SERIOUSLY. (This is also why I LOLed when Taylor Swift accused Amy and Tina of not supporting other women because they made a joke about her at the Golden Globes. I have nothing against Taylor Swift [well, besides this, I suppose], but seriously, girl, do a TINY bit of research before you go throwing around accusations like that. It's okay that you don't like to be teased, but don't try to make it out to be a crime against the sisterhood.)
And a couple of quotes from Seth, because shut up, I don't have a problem, you don't know me:
"She’s sort of this cute small girl who’s also tougher than anyone you’re going to run into. More than any other comedian I’ve ever worked with, she’s who I’d want with me in an alley fight. But if we did get into one, I’m sure it’d be because Poehler started it."
HEEE. And again, the flip side:
When Amy left in October, just days before giving birth to her son, Archibald, Seth was crushed. "I’ve met Archie," he jokes, "and I don’t know why you'd leave the Update desk for him. Honestly, though, it’s gutting. She was the captain of the football team, the cheerleader, and the school president rolled into one."
<3______________________<3
ETA: WAIT, THIS TOO, from Andy Samberg: She’s the best, and I try to do everything she does as best I can. There’s no one who handles things better, in my opinion, than Amy. Across the board. She’s my hero. AAAAAAGH. (I am having a lot of feelings about Andy Samberg these days, too, and Brooklyn 99, and how my TV is currently full of awesome people who love and support each other. But that's another post!)
So yeah. Amy Poehler. She's my hero, and I legitimately think the world is a better place because she's in it.
(also this is a great but also lethal Tumblr if you like Amy Poehler or if you would like to like Amy Poehler)
(also random bonus material: here is Amy playing charades with Seth Meyers against Tina Fey and Jimmy Fallon and it is the fucking cutest all around: part 1, part 2)
(also BYE <3)
This post is also at Dreamwidth! http://brynnmck.dreamwidth.org/299656.html Comments at Dreamwidth:
So it came to my attention the other day that Mindy Kaling, like Tina Fey (and apparently Rachel Dratch, though I haven't tracked hers down yet), has a little paean to Amy in her autobiographical book, and that between Tina and Mindy, they manage to express the dual sides of Amy's nature that I desperately admire: she is, by all accounts, incredibly sweet and wise and supportive and a generally amazing friend, and she is also a badass who does not take shit from people, especially sexist shit. I'm gonna let Tina start us off here:
Amy Poehler was new to SNL and we were all crowded into the seventeenth-floor writers' room, waiting for the Wednesday read-through to start. There were always a lot of noisy "comedy bits" going on in that room. Amy was in the middle of some such nonsense with Seth Meyers [Ed note: a;sdlfjas ldfja;slkdfj a;sldfjk a;lsfj] across the table, and she did something vulgar as a joke. I can't remember what it was exactly, except it was dirty and loud and "unladylike."
Jimmy Fallon, who was arguably the star of the show at the time, turned to her and in a faux-squeamish voice said, "Stop that! It's not cute. I don't like it."
Amy dropped what she was doing, went black in the eyes for a second, and wheeled around on him. "I don't fucking care if you like it." Jimmy was visibly startled. Amy went right back to enjoying her ridiculous bit. (I should make it clear that Jimmy and Amy are very good friends and there was never any real beef between them. Insert penis joke here.)
With that exchange, a cosmic shift took place. Amy made it clear that she wasn't there to be cute. She wasn't there to play wives and girlfriends in the boys' scenes. She was there to do what she wanted to do and she did not fucking care if you like it.
I was so happy. Weirdly, I remember thinking, "My friend is here! My friend is here!" Even though things had been going great for me at the show, with Amy there, I felt less alone.
I LOVE THAT SO MUCH, YOU GUYS. (Though I SERIOUSLY want to read the rest of Tina's series of love letters, in that sense where it is none of my business but PLEASE TELL ME ALL THE THINGS ABOUT YOUR BEAUTIFUL FRIENDSHIP AND HOW MUCH YOU LOVE EACH OTHER.)
And then from Mindy:
So the context here is that Mindy was a guest writer at SNL for a couple of weeks, and apparently it didn't go all that well (partially because she came straight from The Office and had had no time to prepare), but:
My Bill Hader pregnant cat sketch got read at the table and went over so poorly I remember wondering if I should fake meningitis so that I could blame that for such a bad sketch. Or if I could, at all, play it off as so ironically terrible it was good. What? I'm not hipster enough for that? I started writing my agent an e-mail asking if I could leave after my first week there. I was literally in the middle of writing it when I heard a knock on my and Kristen's door. It was Amy Poehler.
ME. Hi, Kristen is on the stage, I think, but I can leave her a message.
AMY. Oh, I wanted to talk to you.
Amy went on to ask if I was going to go out with some of the writers and actors after work. I nodded yes, which was a huge lie. I had planned on sprinting back to the Sofitel (where they were putting me up a few blocks away) and falling asleep watching the syndicated That 70's Show, which I had done every night since I landed in New York. But Amy, being warm prescient, Amy, said knowingly, "Why don't I just wait here for you and we can walk over together?"
Everyone has a moment when they discover they love Amy Poehler. For most people it happened sometime during her run on Saturday Night Live. For some it was when she came back to the show in 2009, nine months pregnant, and did that complicated, hard-core Sarah Palin rap on Weekend Update.
I first noticed Amy when I was in high school and I saw her on Conan's first show. She was in a sketch playing Andy Richter's "little sister Stacey." Stacey had pigtails and headgear and was obsessed with Conan. As a performer, she was this pretty little gremlin, all elbows and blond hair and manic eyes. As a teenager, I tracked her career as best I could without the Internet, and was overjoyed when I saw she had become a cast member on Saturday Night Live. I loved when she played Kaitlin, with her cool stepdad, Rick.
But when this popular, pretty genius made this kind gesture to me? That's the moment I started adoring Amy Poehler. She knew I was going to be a coward, and she was going to have to gently facilitate me into being social. We walked over on Forty-ninth Street with a big group of people and Amy asked me about my life in L.A. I told her, super self-conscious about seeming nervous. This was the woman who, ten years earlier, had inspired me to keep my parents up until 1:00 a.m. to watch her on Late Night With Conan O'Brien When I said something even a little bit funny, Amy cackled warmly. (This sounds weird, but that's the best way I know to describe Amy Poehler's laugh: a warm, intoxicating cackle. [Ed note: this is a FLAWLESS description.])
The evening that followed wasn't especially memorable. Many of her friends reasonably expected to talk to her, so I didn't get precious one-on-one Amy time. I had also forgotten to bring cash and had to borrow twenty dollars from a writer I barely knew. But I stayed the second week at SNL. Antonio Banderas was hosting, and at the read-through, I presented a new sketch. This hilarious sketch was about identical twins who were reunited when their parents died in the rubble when the Berlin Wall fell. After an almost laugh-free reading, Antonio looked over to his assistant, befuddled, and said, "Theese? Theese makes no sense to me."
All the humiliation was worth it for the one shining moment when Amy Poehler proposed we walk a few blocks together, late at night, in New York City in 2006.
*slides to the floor in a helpless puddle of love* That legitimately made me sniffly last night. And then I read it to Mr. McK and he got sniffly too. ♥ (I'm really enjoying Mindy's book, BTW, even the parts that have nothing to do with Amy Poehler. Definitely recommended. Tina's book--which I read a couple of years ago, back in the first flush of my Amy Poehler fandom--is, of course, also fantastic.)
Also, if you are not familiar with Smart Girls at the Party, the YouTube channel Amy hosts with a couple of her friends, can I HIGHLY recommend it? Or at least celebrate its existence? Basically the whole thing is geared toward young women especially, and telling them it's good to be smart and weird and assertive and funny and unique, and it's SO BEAUTIFUL. I particularly love the Ask Amy section, where Amy answers submitted questions and consistently gives THE BEST advice and is so thoughtful and wise and lovely and I CAN'T DEAL WITH HOW MUCH I LOVE AND ADMIRE HER. SERIOUSLY. (This is also why I LOLed when Taylor Swift accused Amy and Tina of not supporting other women because they made a joke about her at the Golden Globes. I have nothing against Taylor Swift [well, besides this, I suppose], but seriously, girl, do a TINY bit of research before you go throwing around accusations like that. It's okay that you don't like to be teased, but don't try to make it out to be a crime against the sisterhood.)
And a couple of quotes from Seth, because shut up, I don't have a problem, you don't know me:
"She’s sort of this cute small girl who’s also tougher than anyone you’re going to run into. More than any other comedian I’ve ever worked with, she’s who I’d want with me in an alley fight. But if we did get into one, I’m sure it’d be because Poehler started it."
HEEE. And again, the flip side:
When Amy left in October, just days before giving birth to her son, Archibald, Seth was crushed. "I’ve met Archie," he jokes, "and I don’t know why you'd leave the Update desk for him. Honestly, though, it’s gutting. She was the captain of the football team, the cheerleader, and the school president rolled into one."
<3______________________<3
ETA: WAIT, THIS TOO, from Andy Samberg: She’s the best, and I try to do everything she does as best I can. There’s no one who handles things better, in my opinion, than Amy. Across the board. She’s my hero. AAAAAAGH. (I am having a lot of feelings about Andy Samberg these days, too, and Brooklyn 99, and how my TV is currently full of awesome people who love and support each other. But that's another post!)
So yeah. Amy Poehler. She's my hero, and I legitimately think the world is a better place because she's in it.
(also this is a great but also lethal Tumblr if you like Amy Poehler or if you would like to like Amy Poehler)
(also random bonus material: here is Amy playing charades with Seth Meyers against Tina Fey and Jimmy Fallon and it is the fucking cutest all around: part 1, part 2)
(also BYE <3)
This post is also at Dreamwidth! http://brynnmck.dreamwidth.org/299656.html Comments at Dreamwidth: