Shannon’s Reviews > Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? > Status Update

Of the two, I actually liked this one better than Tina Fey's. I like the way Kaling thinks, and there wasn't a single part where I was bored or skimming - which happens most of the time with me and non-fiction. I hope she writes a novel next, because I'd love to keep reading her work.

Why didn't you talk about whether women are funny or not?
I just felt that by commenting on that in any real way, it would be tacit approval of it as a legitimate debate, which it isn't. It would be the same as addressing the issue of "Should dogs and cats be able to care for our children? They're in the house anyway." I try not to make it a habit to seriously debate nonsensical hot-button issues.

Thrown-Together Disaster Funeral is my new HGTV show. It's a makeover funeral show where three flamboyant gay guys and a judgmental sassy broad (think Wanda Sykes) crash a tacky funeral and fix it. Wanda's catchphrase is "Nuh-uh. Everyone out of this church. This funeral is a disaster."

I would rather have someone read my diary than look at my iPod playlists. It's not because I have embarrassing playlists called "Setting the Mood for Sex-Time" or whatever. My playlists are humiliating because my workout mixes have dorky titles, like "Go For It, Girl!" and "You Can Do It, Mindy!" Some of the playlists are simply two songs on repeat 15 times, like I'm a psycho getting pumped up to murder the president

The seamstress quickly added about a foot of canvas material to the back, pinned it together, and put it on me. It fit like a glove—er, a glove that is kind of ugly and makeshift on the back. But on the front? Perfection. If I ever do a voice in a Disney movie where I'm the princess whose friends are a bunch of inanimate household objects who come to life, I hope mine are a swatch of canvas and some sassy safety pins

Skinny girls like Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen look ethereal and gorgeous in hippie clothes with lots of volume. I love the bohemian look, but when I try it, I look like a chubby gypsy. Also, chubby people can never truly pull off ethereal the same way skinny people can never be jolly. The only fat ethereal person I can think of was Anna Nicole Smith, and in her case, ethereal might have meant "drugged."

Since I am not model skinny, but also not super fat and fabulously owning my hugeness, I fall in that nebulous "normal American woman" size that legions of fashion stylists detest. For the record, I'm a size eight (this week, anyway). Many stylists hate that size, because I think, to them, it shows that I lack the discipline to be an ascetic or the confident sassy abandon to be a total fatty hedonist.

I remember at the Parks and Recreation premiere, Amy Poehler was looking for her husband toward the end of the night.
AMY: Hey guys. Have you seen Arnett? I can't find him.
We didn't know where he was, and she shook her head good-naturedly, like, "That guy," and went on looking for him. I had never heard a woman call her husband by his last name, like she was a player on the same sports team Will was on.

As an adult, I've met an ocean of divorced people. I might even know more divorced people than married people, because I live in godless Los Angeles, where if you're engaged it simply means you're publicly announcing that you are dating a person monogamously.

My big celebrity crush was Pierce Brosnan. Pierce Brosnan is such an uncreative crush that it sounds like the panicked choice of a closeted lesbian teenager. I was thirteen and watching Mrs. Doubtfire in the theater with my friends. There is a scene in which Pierce Brosnan gets out of a pool, Cheryl Tiegs-style. He is manly and glistening: he has a thick swatch of chest hair. It was a minor sexual awakening.