please & thank you

They’re fucking gross, man. Look, I love beautiful girls too. I think everyone should be free to have their knee socks and their sweaty shorts, but I’m over it. I’m over this weird, exhausted girl. I’m over the girl that’s tired and freezing and hungry. I like bossy girls, I always have. I like people filled with life. I’m over this weird media thing with all this, like, hollow-eyed, empty, party crap.

—Amy Poehler on American Apparel (via mollylambert)

anditallfallsdownsometimes: Tina Fey’s acceptance speech for the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor Thank you so much. Thank you all for dressing up. Wow. Listening to all of these speeches and performances for the last two hours, I cannot help but feel grateful that I put a bag of pretzels in my purse. I want to thank everyone involved with the Kennedy Center, or as it will soon be known, the Tea Party bowling alley and rifle range. It’s gonna look good. You could get about nine lanes in here. I want to thank everyone at WETA and PBS, not just for televising this event, but for showing The Benny Hill Show so much when I was a kid. I don’t know how that qualified to be on PBS, we may never know. I promise to put this award in a place of honor, to make sure my daughter doesn’t pretend it’s Barbie’s older husband who lost his body in an accident. I never dreamed I would receive the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor, mostly because my style is so typically Austrian. I never thought I would even qualify for the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor. I mean, Maybe the Nathanial Hawthorne prize for judgmental nature. Or the Judy Blume award for awkward puberty. Or the Harper Lee prize for small bodies of work - but never this. And yet I hope that like Mark Twain, a hundred years from now, people will see my work and think, “Wow, that is actually pretty racist”. Apparently I’m only the third woman ever to receive this award and I’m honored to be up there with Lily Tomlin and Whoopi Goldberg. But I do hope that women are achieving at a rate these days that we can stop counting what number they are at things. Yes, I was the first female head writer at Saturday Night Live. And yes, I was only the second woman ever to be pregnant while on the show. And now tonight I’m the third female recipient of this prize. I would love to be the fourth woman to do something, but I just can’t see myself married to Lorne. I’m so grateful to my friends who came here tonight to perform. Some people came from as far away as Los Angeles and I know that you are all very busy people with families and really it means so much to me to know that you care more about show business than you do about them. I want to thank Alec Baldwin for not coming tonight. I already have a reputation as a liberal elite lunatic, I don’t need that guy following me around everywhere…Johnny Huffington Post. Actually I do want to thank Alec genuinely for staying in New York tonight to continue to shoot 30 Rock so that I can be here. So thank you Alec, I love you. I’m not going to get emotional tonight because I am a stone cold bitch. But I want to thank my family. They say that funny people often come from a difficult childhood or a troubled family, so to my family, I say, “They’re giving me the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor. What did you animals do to me?”. I know my mother and father are so proud of me tonight, so this is probably a good time to tell them, I’m putting you both in a home. It’s ok, we’ll talk about it later. I met my husband Jeff when we were both in Chicago and I had short hair with a perm on top and I wore oversized denim shorts overalls. And that is how I know our love is real. At some point in the future our daughter Alice will find a DVD of this broadcast or, I don’t know, download it to the subdermal iPhone in her eyelids…I don’t know how far in the future we’re talking about but I hope it will make her laugh and I hope it will explain to her why her parents looked so tired all the time. The one person without whom I really would not be here tonight – except, of course, for my mother, who is pretty sure she delivered me even though she had a lot of twilight sleep – the other one person is Lorne Michaels. In 1997 I flew from Chicago to New York to have a job interview for a writing position at Saturday Night Live. And I was hopeful because I had heard the show was looking to diversify – by the way, only in comedy is an obedient white girl from the suburbs a diversity candidate. But I remember, I came for my job interview, and the only decent clothes I that had at the time, Lorne was right, was I had a pair of black pants and a sweater from Contempo Casuals. And I went to the security guard at the elevator of 30 Rockefeller Plaza, and I said, “I’m here to see Lorne Michaels”. And I couldn’t believe the word that were coming out of my mouth - “I’m here to see Lorne Michaels”. And I went up to the seventeenth floor, and I had my meeting with Lorne, and the only thing anyone had told me about meeting with Lorne and having a job interview with him, they said, “Whatever you do, do not finish his sentences.”. A girl I knew in Chicago had done that and she felt like it had cost her the job, and so whatever you do, don’t finish his sentences. And I was there and I really didn’t want to blow it, and Lorne said, “So, you’re from…”. And it just was hanging there. “So, you’re from…”. And finally I couldn’t take it anymore, so I said, “Pennsylvania. I’m from Pennsylvania. A suburb of Philadelphia!” just as Lorne finished his thought and said, “Chicago.”. And I thought, that’s it, I blew it. And I don’t remember anything else about the meeting because I just kept staring at him thinking, “This is the guy from the Beatles check, I can’t believe that I’m in his office.”. And, you know, I could never have guessed that a couple of years later I would be sitting in that office until two, three, four in the morning, thinking, “If this meeting doesn’t end I’m gonna kill this Canadian bastard.”. The last time that I was in Washington was in 2004 to take this Life Magazine cover photo with John McCain. And Senator McCain gave my husband and me a tour of the Senate, and we all spent a lovely, busy afternoon together. And I have it on good authority that this picture of Senator McCain and myself has been hanging in his office, by his desk, since 2004. And he has been looking at it every day, since 2004, getting ideas. So I guess what I’m saying is, this whole thing might be my fault. I would be a liar and an idiot if I didn’t thank Sarah Palin for helping get me here tonight. My partial resemblance and her crazy voice are the two luckiest things that have ever happened to me. All kidding aside, I am so proud to represent American humor. I am proud to be American. I am proud to make my home in the not-real America. And I am most proud that even during trying times, like an Orange Alert, or a bad economy, or a contentious election, that we as a nation retain our sense of humor. Anyway, I don’t want to go on and on and on because I know that we still have to talk about the other four nominees. Thank you, and goodnight.

anditallfallsdownsometimes:

Tina Fey’s acceptance speech for the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor

Thank you so much. Thank you all for dressing up. Wow. Listening to all of these speeches and performances for the last two hours, I cannot help but feel grateful that I put a bag of pretzels in my purse.

I want to thank everyone involved with the Kennedy Center, or as it will soon be known, the Tea Party bowling alley and rifle range. It’s gonna look good. You could get about nine lanes in here.

I want to thank everyone at WETA and PBS, not just for televising this event, but for showing The Benny Hill Show so much when I was a kid. I don’t know how that qualified to be on PBS, we may never know.

I promise to put this award in a place of honor, to make sure my daughter doesn’t pretend it’s Barbie’s older husband who lost his body in an accident.

I never dreamed I would receive the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor, mostly because my style is so typically Austrian. I never thought I would even qualify for the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor. I mean, Maybe the Nathanial Hawthorne prize for judgmental nature. Or the Judy Blume award for awkward puberty. Or the Harper Lee prize for small bodies of work - but never this. And yet I hope that like Mark Twain, a hundred years from now, people will see my work and think, “Wow, that is actually pretty racist”.

Apparently I’m only the third woman ever to receive this award and I’m honored to be up there with Lily Tomlin and Whoopi Goldberg. But I do hope that women are achieving at a rate these days that we can stop counting what number they are at things. Yes, I was the first female head writer at Saturday Night Live. And yes, I was only the second woman ever to be pregnant while on the show. And now tonight I’m the third female recipient of this prize. I would love to be the fourth woman to do something, but I just can’t see myself married to Lorne.

I’m so grateful to my friends who came here tonight to perform. Some people came from as far away as Los Angeles and I know that you are all very busy people with families and really it means so much to me to know that you care more about show business than you do about them.

I want to thank Alec Baldwin for not coming tonight. I already have a reputation as a liberal elite lunatic, I don’t need that guy following me around everywhere…Johnny Huffington Post. Actually I do want to thank Alec genuinely for staying in New York tonight to continue to shoot 30 Rock so that I can be here. So thank you Alec, I love you.

I’m not going to get emotional tonight because I am a stone cold bitch. But I want to thank my family. They say that funny people often come from a difficult childhood or a troubled family, so to my family, I say, “They’re giving me the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor. What did you animals do to me?”. I know my mother and father are so proud of me tonight, so this is probably a good time to tell them, I’m putting you both in a home. It’s ok, we’ll talk about it later.

I met my husband Jeff when we were both in Chicago and I had short hair with a perm on top and I wore oversized denim shorts overalls. And that is how I know our love is real. At some point in the future our daughter Alice will find a DVD of this broadcast or, I don’t know, download it to the subdermal iPhone in her eyelids…I don’t know how far in the future we’re talking about but I hope it will make her laugh and I hope it will explain to her why her parents looked so tired all the time.

The one person without whom I really would not be here tonight – except, of course, for my mother, who is pretty sure she delivered me even though she had a lot of twilight sleep – the other one person is Lorne Michaels. In 1997 I flew from Chicago to New York to have a job interview for a writing position at Saturday Night Live. And I was hopeful because I had heard the show was looking to diversify – by the way, only in comedy is an obedient white girl from the suburbs a diversity candidate. But I remember, I came for my job interview, and the only decent clothes I that had at the time, Lorne was right, was I had a pair of black pants and a sweater from Contempo Casuals. And I went to the security guard at the elevator of 30 Rockefeller Plaza, and I said, “I’m here to see Lorne Michaels”. And I couldn’t believe the word that were coming out of my mouth - “I’m here to see Lorne Michaels”. And I went up to the seventeenth floor, and I had my meeting with Lorne, and the only thing anyone had told me about meeting with Lorne and having a job interview with him, they said, “Whatever you do, do not finish his sentences.”. A girl I knew in Chicago had done that and she felt like it had cost her the job, and so whatever you do, don’t finish his sentences. And I was there and I really didn’t want to blow it, and Lorne said, “So, you’re from…”. And it just was hanging there. “So, you’re from…”. And finally I couldn’t take it anymore, so I said, “Pennsylvania. I’m from Pennsylvania. A suburb of Philadelphia!” just as Lorne finished his thought and said, “Chicago.”. And I thought, that’s it, I blew it. And I don’t remember anything else about the meeting because I just kept staring at him thinking, “This is the guy from the Beatles check, I can’t believe that I’m in his office.”. And, you know, I could never have guessed that a couple of years later I would be sitting in that office until two, three, four in the morning, thinking, “If this meeting doesn’t end I’m gonna kill this Canadian bastard.”.

The last time that I was in Washington was in 2004 to take this Life Magazine cover photo with John McCain. And Senator McCain gave my husband and me a tour of the Senate, and we all spent a lovely, busy afternoon together. And I have it on good authority that this picture of Senator McCain and myself has been hanging in his office, by his desk, since 2004. And he has been looking at it every day, since 2004, getting ideas. So I guess what I’m saying is, this whole thing might be my fault.

I would be a liar and an idiot if I didn’t thank Sarah Palin for helping get me here tonight. My partial resemblance and her crazy voice are the two luckiest things that have ever happened to me.

All kidding aside, I am so proud to represent American humor. I am proud to be American. I am proud to make my home in the not-real America. And I am most proud that even during trying times, like an Orange Alert, or a bad economy, or a contentious election, that we as a nation retain our sense of humor. Anyway, I don’t want to go on and on and on because I know that we still have to talk about the other four nominees. Thank you, and goodnight.

Though I will probably never own a Kindle because I love rearranging my books a little too much, I’m pretty obsessed with their commercials. So much that I watch them all on YouTube back to back every few weeks. And I researched the songs and found out that the girl in the commercials wrote them and sings them, so in addition to being totally taken in by hipster commercials, I now have a girl crush on Annie Little.

Speaks for itself.

Speaks for itself.

[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]
Wilco

—Radio cure

alexblagg:

“Radio Cure”, Wilco

(via tesslynch)