Ladies and gentleman, it’s time to rewrite my Wikipedia page. Before reading “Bossy Pants,” I had no idea Tina Fey and I had eaten at the same Red Lobster.
It happened in Williamsport, Pennsylvania, which for her was a compromise midpoint destination for family Christmas. For me, it was a well-planned Friday trip with college friends.
In our tiny college town there was only one Red Lobster-level dining option and none that had tasty cheddar biscuits. So weeks in advance, one of my suitemates gathered commitments from roughly 10 people to make the trip to the closest Red Lobster 45 minutes away in Williamsport. Many biscuits were consumed on site and many, many more were squirreled away in purses and brought back to campus for future eating.
How else have Tina and I intersected? Well, in the book she talks about the anthrax scare at 30 Rockefeller Plaza when she left the building for a few hours and returned to NBC News chief Andy Lack updating the SNL staff on the situation. Last year, Lack was very briefly the head of my news organization.
While I did not enjoy this book as much as the one by fellow SNL alum Amy Poehler (who I like a little more), it was still an entertaining look behind the scenes of a person who has had a huge impact on my generation’s pop culture. It also reminded me that I hadn’t seen all of her show 30 Rock, so I started watching from the beginning on Netflix.
And that’s when yet another thing came up during a conversation between Fey’s character Liz Lemon and Alec Baldwin’s Jack Donaghy.
Jack: “So, big plans for the holidays?”
Liz: “Yeah, my parents are coming with my brother and we’re gonna go see Jersey Boys on Broadway and we’re gonna go to that restaurant where they pretend it’s Mars!”
You’ll recall that restaurant came up two books ago and was the scene of a delightful dinner I had years ago with my cousin.
That’s it for direct links, but Tina and I share a similar outlook on vacations. Specifically, our complete lack of interest in going on a cruise.
“Luxury cruises were designed to make something unbearable — a two-week transatlantic crossing — seem bearable. There’s no need to do it now. There are planes. You wouldn’t take a vacation where you ride on a stagecoach for two months but there’s all-you-can-eat shrimp.”
She also imparts great advice about the fact there is no such thing as perfect in writing, because there are deadlines and when the show goes on, you can’t change anything.
“You have to try you hardest to be at the top of your game and improve every joke you can until the last possible second, and then you have to let it go.”
This is what I tell people when they ask how I get started writing something. At work, shows are going on the air and here, well, I have other things to do so I can’t sit here all day. Perfect isn’t coming, so just write and move on.
She also has strong words for people who feel the need to let the world know they think women are not funny. She doesn’t care.
“It is an impressively arrogant move to conclude that just because you don’t like something, it is empirically not good. I don’t like Chinese food, but I don’t write articles trying to prove it doesn’t exist.”