Sarah Colonna believes that just because she dislodged her ass from Fayetteville, Arkansas, and moved all the way to Los Angeles, she no longer deserves to work at a fast-food chain called Chucky’s. She is wrong. I don’t know if there is a fast-food chain called Chucky’s, but if there is, that’s where she deserves to be.
I met Sarah at an improvisation class in the Valley when we were both twenty-one years old. We were magnetically drawn to each other because we both looked like we were in our mid-forties. The class was an embarrassment of riches and a testament that everything happens for a reason. Had I not looked to a sixty-year-old wannabe actor/comic for direction in weaving the name of a city and a profession, yelled out by another classmate, into a hilarious Southwest-level comedy bit, I would never have seen Sarah in her underwear. We have smoked cigarettes while wearing our Invisalign. Well, I was wearing mine, but she needs it.
Shortly after I met Sarah she inherited a cat from a male friend of hers who died. I felt bad that her friend had died, but I couldn’t wrap my head around the idea of keeping someone else’s cat. I knew she had to be from the South or the Midwest, and at the time both of those areas meshed together in my mind, so it really didn’t matter. What mattered is that she kept that cat and it is still fucking alive.
We spent a lot of time together drinking excessively and waiting tables to pay for the former. She drove a smelly white Mustang with doors the size of chaise lounges and I drove a Toyota Echo. Both of those cars survived a lot of fast food, a lot of alcohol spilling, a lot of men, a lot of drive-bys, and a lot of fender benders that were not reported to the LAPD.
She paired that feculent Mustang with a horrifying haircut that I imagined you would find on a secretary from Omaha who worked full-time at a potato plant. I told her repeatedly to let her hair grow out, especially after I saw her license picture once, when we were both proving to each other how old we actually were. She had long blond hair when she was in college at the University of Arkansas and looked ten times better than the girl whose glassy eyes I was barely staring into. We were both drunk on her bed wondering why no one thought we were our actual age. At thirty-five we still have the same problem, so the idea that you grow into it is a complete lie.
We started doing stand-up together somewhere around 1997 and one of us would stop, and then start again, then one of us would stop; then we’d start again. The problem is we hung out so much that our stand-up was too much alike and people would get us confused all the time. All we both talked about was drinking and being broken up with by AM/PM mini-mart managers. We both kind of hated it, but knew there was really no other option for either one of us to get anywhere in life in the real world, and we were both too lazy to change our material. Sarah had more of an acting background. I had more of a bad-attitude background. Our biggest priority was fun and Sarah is probably the funniest person I know and I happen to know a lot of funny people. Unfortunately, none of them are the people I work with.
Cut to almost fifteen years and ten boyfriends later. She and I get to work together every day and I have forced her to share an office with one of the loudest Jewish eaters in the history of West Los Angeles. She is a huge part of Chelsea Lately and After Lately and is by far the most popular person in the office. Everyone loves Sarah. She is my favorite and she will be yours, too. If I write any more, this will start to sound like a eulogy. We’ve come a long way from using our debit cards at Del Taco. We both only eat organic Mexican now; excluding every other Thursday, when Chuy has us over for brunch.