Tina Fey is too funny to be a girl.
Girls aren’t funny. We’re not. Really. Everyone knows this. It’s canon.
Jay and I spent the weekend playing video games (we HAVE to, he says, “it’s research”), but we managed to tear ourselves away for a couple of hours to watch the first season DVD of “30 Rock.” We were late to the party on this one, but holy crap, what a great fucking show. When “Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip” came out at the same time…on the same network, with the exact same concept…I pretty much pooh-poohed “30 Rock.” If I was gonna watch a behind-the-scenes comedy sketch show, I was betting on Sorkin. Then it turned out that Aaron Sorkin was a massive, ego-wanking douchebag. Ragingly masturbatory, preachy rants didn’t seem so bad on “The West Wing,” as politics naturally lend themselves to preaching, rage, and masturbation. However, if you make a show that’s “saving” television through the magic of comedy, you might want to make it, you know, funny. We deep-sixed the thing two episodes in, it was just that painful, but apparently we’re a little more prescient than the NBC programmers who let the crap-fest quietly finish out a good 13 episodes of self-righteous, audience loathing doggerel. Suck it, Sorky.
Anyway, back to “30 Rock.” Everything Aaron Sorkin did wrong, Tina Fey rocked out of the goddamn park. Absolutely brilliant. It’s a pitch-perfect show, top to bottom. If you’ve worked in entertainment (me), are a comedy writer (Jay), or have ever lived in New York (Jay, me, our dogs, couple million other people), “30 Rock” is like looking in a painfully real, utterly hilarious mirror. Even if you haven’t done any of those things (you’re a better person because of it), the show is still the smartest, funniest thing on television right now. And it was created and written by a GIRL.
Tina Fey is my new girl crush. I can’t make her have my babies, of course. But I’d like my husband to knock her up. Knock her up real good.
Thinking about how great “30 Rock” is, I found it really sad that when a Vaginal-American does something that’s legitimately hilarious it shocks the hell out of me. I mean, the whole “girls aren’t funny” thing should have gone the way of “black people hate swimming” by now, right? It’s a blanket statement, a stereotype. Surely there are plenty of exceptions. But goddammit, if it is just a stereotype, then why do so many female comedians (I refuse to say “comediennes”) suck? REALLY suck. And even if you find a chick that is funny, she’s just not as funny as a guy.
Sarah Silverman is funny. Or she can be. You’ve got this super cute but not traditionally gorgeous chick saying completely awful things. I don’t want to denigrate the act she has, because it really is good. Her show is awful, and she’s best in small doses, but Silverman is legitimately funny. I like Sarah Silverman, but Tina Fey is a fantastic writer and has the kind of comedic timing that makes me want to stab her in the throat from pure jealousy. She’s that good.
And those are the only professionally funny women I can think of off-hand. Oh, and maybe that chick who started “The Daily Show,” but even that didn’t get really good until Jon Stewart came in.
The thing is, girls don’t have to be funny. I think that cuts to the core of the issue in a nutshell. We got vajay-jays. We’re judged by other standards, we don’t NEED to be funny.
Think back to high school. Think of the guys that were athletic, good looking, and had loads of personality. Those three guys got laid. Everybody else had to be funny. It was the only way they could get someone to pay attention to them.
Girls don’t have that. Think of the ugliest, dumbest, most hideous woman you’ve ever met in your life. That woman, should she so desire, can get laid any time she wants. It won’t be pretty, but she can get some. That is the power of the vagina. We don’t have to be witty, interesting, intelligent, or by any stretch of the imagination attractive…by merely possessing a squishy pink wet thing between our legs, we can make some guy out there toss us a high hard one.
Dudes don’t have that advantage. So guys developed humor. Smart funny, dumb funny, weird funny…all of it came about because somebody sucked at football and needed to get laid. You might not be the strongest or smartest, but you could be funny. And sure, a couple girls needed that coping mechanism just as badly. In high school, I was a 4’10” brace-faced four-eyes with a limp - you bet your ass I’m fucking hilarious. But fewer girls had the type of experiences (wedgies and swirlies being a near exclusively male domain) that create the roiling resentment, cynicism, and burning frustration that is the creative cauldron of really good comedy.
And guys value that comedy over everything because they EARNED it. If I tell Jay I have a smoking hot fantasy about Clive Owen whisking me off to a magical sex island, he won’t blink an eye. If I told him another guy made me laugh really hard at the dog park, he would freak the fuck out. Now I think my husband is incredibly attractive (and I’m not just saying that because he will read this and Christmas is coming up and I want some big ass diamonds), but my insistence that he’s the funniest guy in the world is what keeps him married to me.
Sure, women value humor, too. The most common response to “What the hell do you see in that guy?” is invariably “He’s really funny!” rather than “He’s got a trust fund and a dick that looks like a baby’s arm holding an apple.” Girls like to laugh. And they like to THINK they’re funny. “All my girlfriends say I’m hilarious after my third green apple Cosmo-tini!” In the end, though, we just don’t have the same appreciation, or need for humor that guys do.
So unfortunately, when a girl decides she does want to be funny, we tend to end up with either Erma Bombecks (“Oh when will these kids pick up their laundry, am I right?”) or girls who act exactly like guys (“Look, I said “cock” and I’ve got tits! I’m AWESOME!”). The cunny crowd seems to have major difficulties developing something that is legitimately unique AND funny. Most of the female comics I’ve seen tend to stick to the gender equivalent of “Black and/or White people be talking like this.” Men are helpless imbeciles, gynecologists have cold hands, babies poop a lot. Even the “edgy” lady comics just cuss more when talking about tampons and how stupid their boyfriends are, what with their dicks and all. And it makes me sad.
Which is why Tina Fey is my new girl-crush. “30 Rock” isn’t chick humor, it isn’t guy humor, it’s just plain funny and smart and interesting. If we can get a few more like her working their way up the ranks, the bitches might have a shot. But I think it’s gonna be a bit of a wait.
In the meantime, I gotta go get me a green apple Cosmo-tini. I hear I’m hilarious after a couple of those.