Girl Walks into a Bar..., Rachel Dratch, 2012

I could not imagine anyone not wanting to be friends with Rachel Dratch after reading her memoir Girl Walks into a Bar...: Comedy Calamities, Dating Disasters, and a Midlife Miracle.  She is funny, gracious and candid without the biting wit or dark side that many comediennes seem to have.

An odd pose..

There are many positive messages in her story, including the surprise of finding out that she is pregnant a month before her forty-forth birthday.

Incredibly honest about the situation, Dratch admits that she was not sure if the father would be involved as they were in a cross-country, non-committed relationship.

Dratch's candidness throughout her memoir makes you realize what a cool person she is and what a great outlook she has on life.

30 Rock
The memoir starts off with Dratch being recast in the television series 30 Rock as Hollywood tends to perceive her as a "woodland creature" or lesbian, versus a starlet, which the 30 Rock role required.

Despite the very public setback in her career, Dratch makes a point to defend the decision made by Tiny Fey (who also wrote a great memoir, Bossypants), the creator, star and producer of the show.

A very gracious and class act considering the barrage of negative questions that she endured as well as the lack of roles she was able to find after the incident.

Overnight Success in Ten Years!
A sub-title of one of her chapters, "Overnight Success in Ten Years!" provides a sense of the time she spent honing her craft before becoming one of the best and making it onto Saturday Night Live.

She refers to herself as Two-Time Dratch based on the number of times she never got called back on her first auditions, but would on her subsequent effort.

Her stories about Saturday Night Live, the origins of the character Debby Downer, the work week and then the celebrations afterward provide an insightful view and she even includes a handy Unofficial Guide to Being on SNL.

Part of Dratch's positive outlook on life ties into the biggnest rule of improv called "Yes And."  According to Dratch, "Basically, this means that whatever your scene partner says to you, you agree and then add to it...  "Yes And" would serve me well, not only on stage but offstage too."

Dating Crusade
With her career stalled, Dratch decides to focus on dating and provides humorous tales of the men she meets and dates, and the men she meets and thinks she's going to date before she walks into a bar and meets the man who would become her baby daddy.

Their relationship flourishes as she abides by the "Yes And" improve rule.  "[I]t was all because I had said yes...and didn't listen to some dumb rules in my head about convention and what you should do."

An (Obnoxious) Boston note: Dratch grew up in Lexington, MA, and attended Dartmouth.  Another Dartmouth alum from the Boston area and female comedienne with a recently released memoir is The Office's Mindy Kaling.

Kaling's memoir is titled Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?  (And Other Concerns) and although an enjoyable read, I thought Girl Walks into a Bar... and Tina Fey's Bossypants were more enjoyable.


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An excerpt from a conversation between friend and comedienne Amy Poehler and Dratch about her book: 

Rachel: I wasn’t like, “Oh, I’m going to write a book,” it was more that I wasn’t really working much and I’d be pissed if I was wasting my time. I usually only start to write after rock-bottom periods, so I was sort of forced into it. And then about a year after that, the whole pregnancy happened, with all the crazy circumstances, so then it was this is now the real wacky story.

Amy: You started writing the book before you got pregnant?

Rachel: Yeah. So all the dating stories, I had written all those before I knew where the story was going. I wrote those as a single lady writing weird stories.