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Marie-Antoinette was born in 1755, the youngest daughter of Empress Maria Theresa of Austria and Emperor Francis I. She was intelligent and artistic but devoid of the ambition or calculation required to survive in the fetid atmosphere of the French court. In many ways, her character was not unlike that of Mary, Queen of Scots.
Over the course of the game you're probably going to have 10 turnovers or so just because you're playing hard, you're competing, that's the way the game goes. But it's the other 10 that you have to limit. You can't have the careless ones, the ones where guys are cutting backdoor and you throw it, or you try the hail mary pass.
Palin was a political Hail Mary, a long bomb in the closing minutes of a game that John McCain and Co. were certain to lose. They didn't care if she had the policy or political or emotional capacity to serve as vice president, let alone president. They were willing to drive the country off a cliff, if that's what it took to win.
I knew that the show was coming and they wanted me to have a co-host. And so I asked Mary Hart and she was one of the first. Before that it was Sarah Purcell then Cindy Garvey. Then Mary Hart, then Cindy Garvey again here in New York, then Anne Abernathy and then Kathy Lee, who stayed 15 years. And now Kelly has been there eight.
Katherine Johnson actually integrated the public university in West Virginia. And Mary Jackson had to petition state courts to be allowed to attend an all-white college to get the qualifications needed to become an engineer. At every turn, these women were involved in the Second World War, the Cold War, the civil rights movement.
William Maxwell's my favorite North American writer, I think. And an Irish writer who used to write for 'The New Yorker' called Maeve Brennan, and Mary Lavin, another Irish writer. There were a lot of writers that I found in 'The New Yorker' in the Fifties who wrote about the same type of material I did - about emotions and places.
I'm not only a lawyer, I have a post doctorate degree in federal tax law from William and Mary. I work in serious scholarship and work in the United States federal tax court. My husband and I raised five kids. We've raised 23 foster children. We've applied ourselves to education reform. We started a charter school for at-risk kids.
Robert Frost had a house in Bennington, Vermont, and I had a friend, the poet Mary Ruefle, who was the caretaker of it when it was owned by Norman Lear, the TV producer. She got a grant to go to Scotland, and she had to be gone six or nine months, so I moved in, and my job was just to make sure the ravage didn't overtake the place.
My dad's American, and my mom's French. I lived in France for the first 18 years of my life, then came here to go to school at the College of William and Mary. I studied marketing. I really didn't know what I wanted to do, so I thought that's what I should do - study business - because it would give me the best chance to find work.
I was a kid who loved to read. I read everything I could get my hands on. I didn't have one favorite book. I had lots of favorite books: 'The Borrowers' by Mary Norton, 'Paddington' by Michael Bond, 'A Little Princess' by Frances Hodgson Burnett, 'Stuart Little' by EB White, 'A Cricket in Times Square,' all the Beverly Cleary books.
When I first started writing comics, in the way-back days, Typhoid Mary was my explosive response to women characters in comics - I made her an innocent virginal type, a clever, dark, liberated woman, and as Bloody Mary, a feminist bent of punishing men - all in one character. She was an instinctual rather than a calculated creation.
In terms of influence, my style icons have been a mixture of Julie Andrews and Olivia Newton-John. When I was little I used to watch 'Grease,' 'Mary Poppins' and 'The Sound of Music' a lot. If you put all those things together you do kind of get my outfits. A slightly tarty nanny in a second-hand outfit. That is pretty much what I wear.
I had an audition for Mary Jane Watson in 'Spiderman' and ended up playing Betty Brant in that series. I auditioned for Amy Adams' role in 'Catch Me If You Can' and, you know, ended up playing the bank teller. So there were a lot of times early on where I felt like I was always sort of the bridesmaid, never the bride - never quite right.
I loved Disney. 'Fantasia' was my first, favorite Disney movie. And it just kept going. I loved 'Bambi.' I loved 'Cinderella,' 'Lady and the Tramp' and 'Snow White' and even 'Mary Poppins' which wasn't even fully animated - it was just a little bit animated. They were such a part of my growing up years; I was just very connected to them.
I just love the people I work with so much, you know. It's an embarrassment of riches to get to work with Kristen Schaal and Mel Rodriguez and Mary Steenburgen and Boris Kodjoe and Cleopatra Coleman and January Jones, but then to get to bring Jason Sudeikis into the mix, you know, we're like brothers from all that time we spent together.
I was a latecomer to romance, although I did read gothics. My father used to work for the 'Fort Worth Star-Telegram,' and their book reviewer, author Leonard Sanders, would pass on the gothics for my dad to give to me since Leonard didn't review gothics. I gobbled up books by Mary Stewart, Madeleine Brent, Victoria Holt and Phyllis Whitney.
I love my ink. They all have a meaning. I'm very strong in my faith, so I wanted to have some religious images. I've got Pieta, a Michelangelo sculpture of Mary holding Jesus after he came off the cross, on my shoulder. A sacred heart on my arm. Musical notes because I love music. The compass on my chest is there because church is my compass.
Like the graduates of some notorious boot camp, my brothers and sisters and I look back with a sort of perverse glee at the rigors of our Catholicism. My oldest sister, Mary, was so convinced of the church's omnipotence that when she walked into a Protestant church with some high-school friends, she was sure its walls would crash down on her head.
