Shannon Cannon

When I heard that Molly Shannon had written a memoir, I thought, oh, that'll be hilarious.  And it was, crammed with all the outlandish childhood and SNL anecdotes you'd expect.  But Hello, Molly! is so much more than a punchline.  It's ultimately Molly's story of her relationship with her dad.  Her mom and baby sister were killed in a car accident.  Four-year-old Molly and her older sister were also in the car, and their father was the one driving.  I'm going to pause to let that sink in for a moment because it's extraordinarily heavy. 

But -- and I cannot stress this enough -- Hello, Molly! isn't a downer.  It's the bittersweet, clean kind of sad that makes you appreciate life and remember that everything happens for a reason.  Like This is Us, plus comedy.  In other words, it has a good tone (and you know how much I value that).  Molly describes the highs and lows of life with her dad -- and her struggles to make it in showbiz -- with the straight-from-the-heart candor of a coming-of-age novelist.  She always sees the best in everything, even when audition doors are slammed in her face and her father acts more like a child.  Because it all really happened -- and made Molly the lovable, no-holds-barred performer we know today -- it's much more engaging than fiction.      

Of course, you can't talk about Molly Shannon without mentioning Mary Katherine Gallagher.  Or, as Shannon calls her, MKG (not to be confused with that other Irish icon, Machine Gun Kelly).  Shannon created the character while she was at NYU, almost a decade before she crashed into Studio 8H at SNL.  And it turns out that everyone's favorite painfully earnest, awkward Irish Catholic teen is based on Shannon herself.  Shannon joined SNL in 1995, so I remember the MKG years vividly.  And the sketch that stayed with me the most is the one where she's reenacting a scene from A House Without a Christmas Tree.  Not only is it cringeworthily funny, it's heartbreaking, showing Mary Katherine at her most vulnerable, reminding you that she's just a kid from a dysfunctional family who wants the world to love her.  After learning about her life, it rings even truer.  

Raw and sweet and hysterical, Hello, Molly! is an American tale (and no, not like when Fievel goes west; although, on second thought, maybe?).  It embodies timeless themes that readers hold dear: Midwestern girl makes good, optimism in the face of incredible odds, and an unorthodox but unbreakable father-daughter bond.  It's universal, its magic extending far beyond SNL.  At the end, I felt like hers was a life well lived (not that it's over yet!), brimming with love and adventure.  

No doubt about it, she's a Superstar.

Rival Goes West: Shape Shifter Drifter

Sweater: Nine West, Kohl's

Long necklaces: So, Kohl's; Belt: Belt is Cool, Amazon

Skirt: So, Kohl's

Skirt: Wild Fable, Target

Bag: Apt. 9, Kohl's

Shape Escape Necklace

Sweater: Nine West, Kohl's

Clockwise: B Fabulous; So, Kohl's; Mixit, JCPenney; Mixit, JCPeneny; Cloud Nine, Ocean City; Delia's

Sweater: Nine West, Kohl's

Clips: Wild Fable, Target

Jeans: L'Amour by Nanette Lepore for JCPenney

Shoes: Betsey Johnson, Macy's

Top to bottom: Amrita Singh, Zulily; Mixit, JCPenney

Luv Betsey, Bocov's

This Shape Escape Necklace is the anchor of the unlikely elements of this post, namely Nine West, citrus, and Fievel.  For one thing, the necklace is teamed with one of three Nine West sweaters.  For another, it appears with a bowl of oranges.  As for the Fievel bit, you'll just have to wait.

First, Nine West.  I've long been an admirer of the beloved brand, picking up pieces over the years in places like Marshalls, ROSS, and Burlington Coat Factory, and sometimes, if on sale, Macy's.  I still remember this Nine West purple suede pouch purse that I got from Macy's back in high school.  I wish I still had it, along with my shiny purple bow purse from Delia's and my sometimes-lilac-sometimes-lavender Coolwear blouse from Macy's that changed in the light.  (Obvi, the takeaway here is that I need to keep a tighter grip on my Grimace gear.)  But back to our Nine West quest.  I was delighted when, a couple of years ago, the brand landed at Kohl's.  I stocked up on tops, skirts, shoes, and even a bag, many of which you've seen.  And along the way, I began wondering about the significance of the Nine West name.  I was pretty sure that it was a place, perhaps even a magical one.  Phoebe Buffay once said that about White Plains, NY, the birthplace of her and Rachel's new apothecary table.  So I turned to that old guru Google and found out that Nine West is the address, namely 9 West 57th St., New York, New York, where the fashion label got its start.  And I was as disappointed as Phoebe when she found out that her supposedly one-of-a-kind flea market table had been mass-produced by Pottery Barn.  Still, deep down I think I already knew that NYC was involved, even if I did insist, for some dubious reason, on believing that the West meant Wyoming or Utah. 

Now, about those oranges. This isn't my first foray into the orange orchard, although it is the first time I used fresh produce as props.  The husband's mom very generously sent us a huge crate of oranges and grapefruits for Christmas, making this staging possible.  Also, it helped ward off scurvy.

And that brings us to Fievel, that feisty cartoon mouse who, much like the American settlers, fought his way through adversity to enjoy the promised land of the West in the early '90s.  (The mouse arrived in the early '90s.  The setters made it here long before that unless you're counting the cast of Friends).  Which just goes to show that things can change when you least expect them to -- or when you most expect them to, in the case of the Nine West thing.  But wherever you roam, whether it be White Plains, Wyoming, or somewhere out there that exists only in your mind, I hope that you always feel like you're home.

And that you never have to compete with a rodent.  Or, worse yet, kill a rodent you love.