Citizen Reader

I know, everyone else thinks she is, including my sister. And it hurts me to disagree with my sister, if not with everyone else. But I've been saying it for years and I'm sticking with it: Tina Fey is not funny.

Checking out her new memoir Bossypants from the library was my last-ditch effort to find her funny, so I could agree with my sister and all would once again be right in my familial circle. But I can't do it. I read the first few chapters, some bits in the middle, and then some of the excruciating conclusion when she gave the play-by-play (seemingly minute by unending minute) of her stint impersonating Sarah Palin on Saturday Night Live. Now, I'm not saying she's not talented. Or a bad person. Or that she wasn't just spectacularly in the right time and place to be an unnerving lookalike for a famous politician whose accent is really easy to impersonate. All I'm saying is: she's just not that funny.

Okay, well, there's one funny bit in the very beginning, when she describes how her mother told her about menstruation by giving her a box of Modess pads and leaving the room; evidently Modess used to put pamphlets in their "feminine products" in which a fake correspondence between friends was supposed to help illuminate the mysteries of the process. Here's Fey's re-creation of that pamphlet, in a sidebar:

"Dear Pam, I'm supposed to go to a pool party this week, but my 'Aunt Blood' is still in town. Can I go?

Dear Tabitha, Of course you can still go! Modess makes great feminine protection products that are so thick and puffy, you'll be super comfortable sitting on that bench near the pool telling everyone you're sick." (p. 14.)

Okay, I got a mild giggle out of that, but that's about it. (And by the way, I personally think "Aunt Flo" would have been funnier than "Aunt Blood," but maybe AF was too obvious? Copyrighted?)

So, even though I should find Tina Fey funny, and there's lots of bits in this book about being an older lady with a baby, which I should enjoy, as a similarly older lady with a baby, there's just not that much for me here. I can't even get myself to track down any bits with Alec Baldwin, although I LOVE Alec Baldwin. It's just going back to the library.

Update (before I posted, even!): Unruly Reader just posted a review of this (audio)book on her blog, and it hurts me to disagree with Unruly. So I went back and read one of the last chapters, on breastfeeding, which, by rights, I should find HI-larious, as my experience with breastfeeding made (makes) me think my breasts should be revoked by some sort of "Real Women" judging panel. I can't resist the pun: I got a few titters out of the chapter, but that's about it. Yes, I'm just not that funny. But neither is Tina Fey.