Acknowledgments
I would like to gratefully thank: Kay Cannon, Richard Dean, Eric Gurian, John Riggi, and Tracy Wigfield for their eyes and ears. Dave Miner for making me do this. Reagan Arthur for teaching me how to do this. Katie Miervaldis for her dedicated service and Latvian demeanor. Tom Ceraulo for his mad computer skills. Michael Donaghy for two years of Sundays.
Jeff and Alice Richmond for their constant loving encouragement and their constant loving interruption, respectively.
Thank you to Lorne Michaels, Marc Graboff, and NBC for allowing us to reprint material.
Contents
Front Cover Image
Welcome
Dedication
Introduction
Origin Story
Growing Up and Liking It
All Girls Must Be Everything
Delaware County Summer Showtime!
Thats Don Fey
Climbing Old Rag Mountain
Young Mens Christian Association
The Windy City, Full of Meat
My Honeymoon, or A Supposedly Fun Thing Ill Never Do Again Either The Secrets of Mommys Beauty
Remembrances of Being Very Very Skinny
Remembrances of Being a Little Bit Fat
A Childhood Dream, Realized
Peeing in Jars with Boys
I Dont Care If You Like It
Amazing, Gorgeous, Not Like That
Dear Internet
30 Rock: An Experiment to Confuse Your Grandparents
Sarah, Oprah, and Captain Hook, or How to Succeed by Sort of Looking Like Someone Theres a Drunk Midget in My House
A Celebritys Guide to Celebrating the Birth of Jesus
Juggle This
The Mothers Prayer for Its Daughter
What Turning Forty Means to Me
What Should I Do with My Last Five Minutes?
Acknowledgments
Copyright
* Or it would be the biggest understatement since Warren Buffett said, I can pay for dinner tonight. Or it would be the biggest understatement since Charlie Sheen said, Im gonna have fun this weekend. So, you have options.
* Improv will not reduce belly fat.
* If you get this reference to David Foster Wallaces 1997 collection of essays, consider yourself a member of the cultural elite. Why do you hate your country and flag so much?!
* The Viennese do not enjoy American sketch comedy.
* This is a paid endorsement from the Saucony Corporation.
* I say Harvard Boys because they are almost always malebut not exclusively; rock on, Amy Ozols!and because they are usually under twenty-five and have never done physical labor with their arms or legs. I love them very much.
* When I asked Steve Higgins if he remembered the Weekend Update piss jar he said, Yes, and be sure you mention the booger that had been wiped on the wall and painted over. So Im mentioning it.
* Is there such a thing as an all-jerk workplace? Yes. I would flat-out avoid working with Wall Street traders or the women who run the changing rooms at Filenes Basement.
* Nose thinned. Glasses made less awesome. Grimace inverted. Digital wig swap. Teeth added.
Neckline artificially lowered, no cleavage found. Lawn chair removed and sold at yard sale.
* Not the 102nd most popular television show of all time. The 102nd most popular television show of 2006.
* Actually, that only happened to me once that I know about. A coworker at SNL dropped an angry C-bomb on me and I had the weirdest reaction. To my surprise, I blurted, No. You dont get to call me that. My parents love me; Im not some Adult Child of an Alcoholic thats going to take that shit.
And it never happened again that I know of.
* Although good news gives me angina, I am impervious to bad news. I should be in one of those Oliver Sacks books, because surely I have a rare head injury.
* This is not something I would normally do, but I wanted everything to be perfect for Miss Oprah. Jon Hamm, if you come back, I will not be pre-inspecting your toilet. I may inspect it afterward to make sure you didnt steal anything.
* See if you can guess what I changed his name to in that chapter.
* It wasnt the last time, apparently. Also, I am available for parties and corporate events.
* Except for several very satisfying work-related things.
* Apparently Margaret Thatcher is alive and says of course she would have told the nanny directly about the problem and she thinks I am a complete chickenshit.
* I know its bullshit that I say babysitter instead of nanny. What I have is a full-time nanny, and I should be roundly punished for trying to make it seem like the teenager next door comes over one night a week. But I dont like the word nanny. It gives me class anxiety and race anxiety. And that is why I will henceforth refer to our nanny as our Coordinator of Toddlery.
* These moments include: cleaning poop out of a one-piece bathing suit, getting kicked in the tits by someone who doesnt want to put on her shoes, Dora the Explorer.
Copyright
Copyright 2011 by Little Stranger, Inc.
All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
Reagan Arthur Books/Little, Brown and Company
Hachette Book Group
237 Park Avenue
New York, NY 10017
Visit our website at www.HachetteBookGroup.com
www.twitter.com/littlebrown
First eBook Edition: April 2011
Reagan Arthur Books is an imprint of Little, Brown and Company, a division of Hachette Book Group, Inc. The Reagan Arthur Books name and logo are trademarks of Hachette Book Group, Inc.
The publisher is not responsible for websites (or their content) that are not owned by the publisher.
Portions of this book have appeared, in slightly different form, in The New Yorker (What Should I Do with My Last Five Minutes?, A Childhood Dream, Realized, Peeing in Jars with Boys, and I Dont Care If You Like It).
The author is grateful for permission to use material from the following: Script excerpts and photographs from 30 Rock courtesy of NBCUniversal. 30 Rock 2011 NBC Studios, Inc. and
Rockefeller Group, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Script excerpts and photographs from Saturday Night Live courtesy of Broadway Video Enterprises and NBC Studios, Inc. 2011 NBC Studios, Inc. Distributed by Broadway Video Enterprises.
Photography Credits: pages 6 (top) and 160 (left) 2008/Mary Ellen Matthews/NBC; pages 6
(bottom) and 229, Alethea McElroy; page 159, Ramona Rosales, courtesy of BUST Magazine; page 160
(right), Ferguson & Katzman Photography/Halo Images; pages 178 and 191 from 30 Rock courtesy of NBCUniversal; page 199 (left) 2010/Dana Edelson/NBC; page 199 (middle and right) 2005/Dana Edelson/NBC; pages 208, 218, 220, and 226 2008/Dana Edelson/NBC; page 233, Jake Chessum/Time
& Life Pictures/Getty Images.
Baileyd @ Demonoid.me
ISBN: 978-0-3161-7586-9
Table of Contents
Copyright Page
For Jeanne Fey:
Happy Mothers Day. I made this out of macaroni for you.
Introduction
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