Funny Lady

In November Tina Fey will be awarded the Mark Twain Prize for American humor, the most prestigious humor prize in the country. Hells yeah! Fey, 40, is the youngest comedian to be honored and just the third woman (after Lily Tomlin and Whoopie Goldberg). Fey released a statement saying she's psyched and that Betty White must have been "disqualified for steroid use."

Fey has been a PoolBoy favorite since her days writing (first woman head writer, what what!) and performing on SNL. Plus, who doesn't love a lady who came up in Chicago's Second City improv group (yay Illinois!)? Fey's work on NBC's 30 Rock, which is probably the funniest show on TV right now, has provided our generation with a shit ton of hilarious one liners like, "I'm Lizzing!," "ROBOT PENIS," "never go with a hippie to a second location," and "didn’t you tell me to live every week like it’s Shark Week? And that nothing’s impossible except dinosaurs?" among many, many others, which can be heard constantly in homes and retail establishments across the country. She's fucking funny.

I've included one of my favorite SNL Weekend Update clips below, the notorious "Bitch is the New Black." Jump to 1:29.



Now, however you feel about Hilary Clinton, Fey's humor in this clip is witty and to the point: we had a serious female candidate for President and the media was sexist as shit while trying to discredit her. Call her a bitch? Yeah, she IS a bitch, and so are many strong women who have to speak their minds to a society rife with sexism. Clinton didn't get the nomination and Obama is now our President, but Clinton made miles and miles of new road on America's way to it's first female President, just as Tina Fey has for feminism (she dares to use the word on TV!) and women in comedy.

Congrats, Liz Lemon, you deserve the hell out of this award.

(USA Today / NBC)

Spring Breakdown

Did you know that Amy Poehler, Rachel Dratch, and Parker Posey starred in a comedy called Spring Breakdown in 2009? It's possible you've never heard of it since it went straight to DVD and there wasn't very much (read: any) promotion. I read about it in BUST and Bitch magazines, bastions of all things awesome, and was psyched to see it.



A spring break movie in the vein of Revenge of the Nerds II: Nerds in Paradise, Spring Breakdown stars an almost exclusively female cast and features cameos from all your favorite female comic actors (Tina Fey is the only big exception I can think of). These are some of the ladies who appear:

Mae Whitman (Bland Ann Veal from Arrested Development)
Jane Lynch (made you pee your pants in several Christopher Guest films)
Sarah Hagan (Millie from Freaks and Geeks!)
Amber Tamblyn (Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants...)
Missi Pyle (Fran Stalinovskovichdavidovitchsky in Dodgeball. Been in a lot of other things. Totally hilarious here.)

Throw a little Will Arnett (Arrested Development, Poehler's husband IRL) and Seth Myers (SNL) in there and we're talking comic gold! Dratch co-wrote the story about three best friends who are, basically, big losers. Assigned a special mission to keep a (female) politician's crazy daughter out of trouble during spring break, they head down to South Padre Island for another chance at being cool. There's Wilson Philips tunes, electric slide dancing, women's studies jokes, balls references, and hot dudes hooking up with way less attractive ladies (just like the opposite of all those TV shows!).

I thought there was no way a straight to DVD movie could be as good as the few reviews I had read of Spring Breakdown, but I was so wrong, so so wrong. It's a shame that seeing a movie with an all female cast is such an exciting prospect when movies featuring no female characters (except possibly a one dimensional love interest) hit the big screen all the time. The real shame though, is that Spring Breakdown wasn't given the chance to run in theaters, most likely because people in the movie business still think there's no money to be made in movies with female leads that aren't romantic comedies. I would have paid to see Spring Breakdown in a theater. I've certainly paid to see movies that were ten times less funny....

.....like Fired Up! But wait! I only saw it cuz this dude is hot: