We're Petitioning Amy Poehler

It's time to put Amy Poehler to work, you guys. Sure, she may be writing a memoir, her Swedish TV series is coming to America, she's a mom with an amazing ginger child, is busy making tearful and inspiring speeches, and she can rap about butter like a boss, but the time for more is now. Right fucking now because I'm impatient, and if I've learned one thing from the Divine Ms. P, it's that there's never any time like the present. So c'mon Amy: let's do this shit. It's time to take your extreme life goodness and pay it forward to the masses via education instruction.

What is there to say about Amy Poehler that hasn't already been said by millions of people before me, and probably way better? Sure, she's hilarious — she takes no shit from anyone and she's confident in her point of view and the comedy such an outlook brings to life. But she's also probably one of the most giving, doer-y types out there. She doesn't sit back and say "this should be done," she just goes out and fucking does it. In a world that seems to function solely on the backs of "shoulda, woulda, coulda", it's refreshing and downright about-fucking-time that someone just, well, did stuff.

Hyperbole is basically the unofficial language of the Internet: we love, we hate, we are extreme in either regard, and we obsess. So it's easy to pass over things like "So-And-So Is Perfect!" and "This Is The Worst Thing Ever!" and "OMG The Best Thing In History!" or "I Hope This Person Dies By Fire-Ant-Poop Explosion." (Sounds painful.) Even with that in mind, we can't seem to shy away from the facts: Amy Poehler is an exemplary humanperson and we're fairly certain that she needs to start running shit. And not in that "well, Hillary is going to be running for president soon so let's just plaster Amy's impressions of her everywhere" sort of way. More in the "she just gets it. Literally all of it" vein. Which is why we're petitioning Amy Poehler to open a school to teach the world her wonderful, wacky, and weirdly-worldly ways.

Amy's website Smart Girls at the Party is for teen girls but is also great for more adultish ladies, and is all about changing the world simply by being yourself. A lesson that can sometimes be really, really hard for young girls to internalize. It's no secret that it takes all kinds, but that only happens when people do and think and believe in themselves.

And Amy's bringing the real talk, alongside other interesting, fascinating, smart, cool women. Sure it may seem corny to the more cynical out there, but these are also probably the most basic things people need to understand for themselves in order to really BE themselves, so like, ka-dooze on Amy for being the niche-filler, ensuring young girls, boys, and even those a little bit older, have a place to find that.

It's not like she hasn't done it before, either: Amy's one of the founders of the Upright Citizen's Brigade Theater — a.k.a. UCB, a.k.a. one of the best comedy clubs-slash-schools in the country. Do you even know how many funny people have come out of UCB? I'd list them all, but that would just be annoying. (You can click and see them all here.) So, like, if we just think a little bit bigger and ta-da! Instant School!

And her sage wisdom is never patronizing or belittling — because Amy knows that everybody learns things at different times, and in different points in their life. She's never one to roll her eyes or judge someone for not knowing all that she does. Quite the opposite: she knows that people take their licks in all stages of life, and that those insights and all the contributing factors lead to the unique viewpoints and fully-realized people that make changes and create innovative ways of thinking/doing/being/seeing.

Amy Poehler is like the living embodiment of that warm, fuzzy feeling — if that warm, fuzzy feeling also sometimes swore, almost always used silly voices (which, really — wouldn't it totally rule of that's what our warm, fuzzy feelings actually did?), and had an unending love of breakfast pastries.

She's secure, ambitious, intelligent, and does what she loves while loving other people. She makes mistakes and she learns from them. She doesn't just think about the things she wants to change, she acts. So of course she mustn't hide such qualities — she should share them. I mean, really, let's be frank here: we're pretty much sick of anyone that isn't Amy Poehler at this point, because she seems to be the only one talking sense anymore. And, lord, would we love nothing more than to attend classes at the Amy Poehler School for Teaching General Wonderfulness.

She just GETS IT — and it's beyond frustrating to see the world continue to spin madly on for a second longer without such an institution. So sign the petition, and let's get Amy Poehler to get this shit together. Maybe she can even un-shutdown the government. I mean, it wouldn't surprise me at this point.