Guide to Modern Saturday Night Live Disappointment

                Saturday Night Live is such an abject failure it’s not even funny. I know it goes through stages of relevancy but this is ridiculous. Nothing it has presented lately has left a lasting impression on my mind. At the end of it I only have one thought in my mind: “Why”. Why did I decide to stay in on a Saturday night when I could be out living it up, singing Karaoke, drinking, going to a concert, joking with friends, going to bed early, writing blog posts, clipping my fingernails,  literally anything is a better use of time than the succubus of time Saturday Night Live. 

                I have come up with a way of charting the decline of the average episode. Obviously this isn’t true for all cases, but for a majority of their recent output. Without a breakout star, there isn’t anything drawing you to it. Rather, people watch it out of a mindless obligation, like moths to the light. Each time people watch it hoping “Maybe it will be good tonight”. Such thinking is hopeless delusion. Perhaps some time in the future it may regain its marbles and begin to offer biting satire. Until such time, it continues to get smoked by “The Daily Show” and “The Colbert Report” despite having an entire week to write it. During that week period, the writers work diligently to water down jokes to a point so bland it could be served as airplane food. 

                Below is the breakdown:

1.       Cold Open – This usually is an extremely weak political sketch taking on some relevant topic that’s been blaring loudly on the front page of the New York Times for about a month. If the open is anything other than a spoof on a current event (cultural or political) it will be a particularly weak show. 

2.       Guest Monologue – Whoever the guest is gets a chance to ramble on for about 5 to 15 minutes. Generally speaking since the writers don’t write it this happens to be one of the funniest moments of the show. Those who are ‘flash in the pan’ popular fail at this segment, resorting to childish skits. Better guests bode well for a better show. Exceptions do appear but as a rule of thumb it is fairly solid. 

3.       Immediate skits following the Monologue are more enjoyable than what comes later. Saturday Night Live front-loads the quality of the program knowing how old its target audience is getting. Writers know as a fact how hard it is to stay awake until 1 AM for people above the age of 50. Thus, these skits tend to fare better than the rest of the show. 

4.       Andy Samberg Sketch – Andy Samberg is Saturday Night Live’s token young person’s comedian. Most of the sketches mock things the elderly would find funny (Vincent Price, Communism Jokes, William Howard Taft jokes). These are called “Digital Shorts” and vary in quality. What Andy tries to do is create something ‘meme-worthy’ where he consciously knows people will share it on their friends’ Facebook Walls. Digital Shorts with a song involved have a better shot of accomplishing this goal. Laser Cat episodes fail in this attempt. But all Andy Samberg sketches try to create the false illusion that Saturday Night Live is a cool, hip show intended for relevant twenty something viewers. 

5.       Weekend Update – Weekend Update inspired comedians such as Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert to create their own successful shows. Now Weekend Update consists of those shows’ rejected jokes. In the off-chance the material is good; the Weekend Update person makes sure the delivery sucks to completely kill the joke. As a side note, this segment can be funny if they make fun of local New York politicians. I’m not sure why, but they have a knack for eviscerating any New York based politician. To be fair though, New York politicians make jokes about them too tempting and easy.

6.       Last Half Hour in the Program – If you’ve made it this far you’re pretty tough or a masochist. This is the dregs of the show. No matter how good the program has been this is truly terrible. You know how people bring magazines with them into the bathroom? Well, in this case, the writers bring a blank notepad with them whenever they use the restroom. Whatever they write in that couple minute period becomes a full bodied skit. It is generally about as good as the excrement those writers pumped out of their bodies. 

7.       Final Ten Minutes of Saturday Night Live – These ten minutes wish they were as good as human excrement. You should probably turn off the TV before this happens. 

My hope is you learn from these basic steps. I don’t want people ruining their Saturday nights for such nonsense. Even Wednesday afternoons in college in between classes watching recent repeats on Comedy Central sounds like a true waste to me. Perhaps one day I’ll see a change in this, in how Saturday Night Live gets better writers and better material. Who knows if that will happen, though I’d like to be one of the ones who finally bring the franchise back to greener, funnier pastures.

Did “The Thong Song” embody the ethos of the Clinton era?

The Hipster Grifter, a shot of class.

Ah, the Clinton Era. What a great time it was to be alive under one of the most laissez-faire politicians known to man. He interfered in so little, let business do its thing, and generally a great time was had by all. Especially during his period with an unnamed intern who changed the world forever. 

Communism had been defeated. The internet came about and increased productivity. Even the economy grew so fast that a group of people known as the “middle class” still existed. Obviously this happened before the economy tanked hard after Bush’s tenure and real incomes (for the vast majority of America) stopped experiencing any actual growth.

Life could not have been better. Sure, the Republicans tried clamping down on this happy atmosphere by accusing Clinton of improper relations with an intern. But having parental advisories for the news backfired. Watching the news for more improper conduct became a national pastime, and gave Saturday Night Live a new lease on life. Children learned more about what college would be like through NBC news with Tom Brokaw (via explaining sexual techniques and stained dresses). 

That’s where “The Thong Song” came from. Sisqo decided to write a tasteful, respectful song about women’s undergarments and his love for them. Keeping up with the delicate sensibilities he demanded, he decided to make the music video an understated affair, only showing about 800 different women in the video in stages of undress. Originally his benefactors wanted 3,000, but Sisqo convinced them of the importance of letting him do “his art”. His art consisted of different close-ups of women’s asses of various sizes and plumpness. 

Class reeked from the song itself, complete with a beautiful orchestra made of people who needed to pay rent by the end of the week. Together, they embodied the positive spirit that was about to leave the great country of the US of A. Clinton would be leaving this plain of existence, moving to a level so high that he could talk to Kim Jong Il whenever he felt like it and unlimited use of various pornographers’ private jets.

What happened after that golden era of the thong song was brutal. No longer could songs be written with the deliberate intent of being “ironic”. Instead, everybody started taking themselves seriously, since we were at war. Vice Presidents became more interesting than the Presidents they served under (Bush was boring, Cheney was entertaining). 

Many rued the day that the “Thong Song” lost its popularity. How could any other artist hope to do the thong justice the way Sisqo did? Who else could create an entire song based purely on a suggestive undergarment?  Sisqo couldn’t even bring his art back up, after dedicating an entire album to advertising IPODs, cell phones, and whatever else held the imagination of little children. Later he ended up being a lawyer in Miami specializing in sexual harassment cases.

Really it is disappointing how technology has replaced our desire with “thongs” for “3G networks”. Perhaps one day a new sun will shine on America and remind it of wholesome tongue-in-cheek lewdness. We can only hope.

Futurama: Season 6 review (thus far) **Warning: Spoilers**

Disclaimer: I’m a big fan of Futurama so some (read: most) of this will come off as cheerleading.

Futurama hit the airwaves as Matt Groening grew frustrated with his first creation, The Simpsons. As he gradually saw the Simpsons change into sitcom fare, he realized that he needed an outlet for his more philosophical, goofy bent.

Nearly from the beginning, Fox decided “Hey, let’s treat Matt’s show like garbage and see what happens.” So the show got shifted around like those cards you see street hustlers play around with. Eventually this mixed with the stranger nature of the show itself (which employed a great deal of Sci-Fi) lead to its cancellation.

But like a vampire, it lived in the undead realm of Cartoon Network re-runs. These proved to be effective once the show rose from the dead, like Family Guy did once college students bought the DVDs and watched them over and over. Cult-like followings of the show also came from various Sci-Fi aficionados who enjoyed the extremely nerdy humor employed.

When I first heard about the re-birth of the show, I was worried. Remembering how the Family Guy franchise suffered hard, I thought the same might occur with Futurama. Jokes that I originally thought funny with Family Guy felt stale upon watching the new episodes, like the show had plagiarized itself, if such a thing is in fact possible.

The movies didn’t help. Futurama worked best when it had certain restraints, so a full length movie sort of diluted what might have been strong singular episodes. Fans expressed disappointment at most of these, so I won’t go into it here. I’ll just say that perhaps Matt was on a movie kick from “The Simpsons Movie” so he felt that doing the same with another cartoon might work in raising its profile.

Comedy Central proved a good ally. Most other channels would’ve been like “Nah dude, just play the episodes”.  I guess Comedy Central figured that the movies would be better than playing Saturday Night Live repeats from the early 90s once again. 

So that leaves us with the actual episodes. These have been pretty excellent, with a few actually reaching the standards set in the first few seasons when they were on FOX. So it is doubly nice to know that even years later they are able to keep up the quality and that the movies were weak due to their length, not due to a lack of creativity.

“Rebirth”, the first episode, sort of had an in-joke about the show’s cancellation while getting right back into the meat and potatoes of the series. Leela and Fry are involved, and there’s some strange goings-on regarding the entire crew. Dr. Farnsworth steals the show to some extent, thanks to an extra dose of insane that they give him.

Not all succeeded in this way though. In the “In-A-Gadda-Da-Leela” there isn’t much to laugh at, and Captain Zapp Brannigan can’t even make the episode work. Plus, the end feels very forced and confused, like the writers had spaced out and quickly dashed it off. 

On the other extreme, “Lethal Inspection” rocked. Everything I could’ve wanted from the series came together here. Plus, the focus on mortality worked well and gave the jokes a bit of heart, which was nice from some of the more gag nature of what had been going on (like with the Attack of the Killer App episode, which had that gross and unfunny singing Boil). Some of my favorite Futurama episodes from yore worked in this way so it was a real treat.

Ultimately, the new series does work in a good way. Perhaps there’s a little more of MOM than before, but that’s alright. When you get down to it, the writers genuinely care about the characters. That’s the difference between this and “Family Guy”. Family Guy relies on cut-away gags (parodied by South Park) and cruelty (see Brian getting shot in the kneecaps). There’s little attempt made in that show to allow the audience to sympathize with Peter, Stewie, etc. Futurama brings that to you. Leela, Hermes, Bender, and the rest of the gang are treated with the utmost care. And the reasons that some episodes fail is when the writers forget that and just write cheap jokes (like with Amy and Bender hooking up).

I’m glad it is back. Hopefully they’ll continue the rest of the season using only the best bits of time travel, friendship, and love.

The Mutants are RevoltingThe Mutants are Revolting [HD]Bender's Big Score 

Panda Bear - What I want

Noah Lennox knows how to do viral advertising. As I approached Pier 11, I got to see the famous musician dressed in a Panda costume dispensing pesticide-free Soy Milk (in chocolate and vanilla form). Perhaps due to the lateness of his album, he has been forced to sell stuff on the side. Most of the people who approached him were small children who found the Panda suit cute, hipsters who found the Panda suit cute, and, of course, furries.

Why they chose Pier 11 to depart from is anyone's guess, but seeing the inside of a Water Taxi made me feel classy. Upholstered seating adorned the luxurious cabin which oozed of wealth and people well-off enough to use it on a frequent basis.

Of course, the event took place at the Beach, one of the few places on the island that's well protected. But its bigger reason is the joy of seeing the Manhattan skyline. That view is one reason why hobos used to swim across the river to Governors Island. In the early 90s they had a veritable hobo paradise on the island, living in decrepit old homes, getting asbestos in their lungs. Things were easier then, that was before the city came up with the policy of hitting hobos with flip-flops, and far before freegans started eating all their food.

But I digress. There were a few acts I got the joy of witnessing. Our first one had to be some random DJ who played boring dub reggae. All of his transitions were terrible. My only guess as to why he was allowed was the other DJs he beat used the age-old transitions of loud belching into the microphone. So that was terrible.

After that, literally anything sounded better. Teengirl Fantasy brought a little bit of fun. Reading about them, it sounds like they've come a long way. They were fun but nothing really stuck out at me. Some of their choices in varying the music were sort of strange (like bass drum rushes? Who does that?) But it felt like good, mindless fun before the more intense stuff came on.

Gala Drop came from Panda Bear's adopted city Lisbon. Actually, I enjoyed them. Each song they picked contributed directly to the atmosphere, like a form of aural architecture. Often they'd reference kosmic German music from the 70s or minimal dub. Neither one of those things is bad in my book, so I'm happy to wish them the best. Personally I felt like they did the minimal stuff the best, but that's just a personal preference.

If you're reading this, most likely you're hoping I get to Panda Bear. But, to help you with the frustrating experience live music can be, I'll tell you about Avery Tare's set. Unlike the opening DJ, who was terrible, Avery had almost too much taste. The set began bizarrely with I think something from the Godfather, I could be wrong. Basically he kept the event very specific to the crowd being played too. Hell, he even threw in Steely Dan, so he's alright in my book.

"Drone" started Panda Bear's set, sounding off like an alarm. Immediately I ran as quickly as I could towards the station, away from learning how to play Blackjack (I know how to play now, that's an important life skill). Someone next to me asked if it was going to be this abstract the whole night, and I answered correctly "No".

From there, we got exclusively new tracks, some of which sounded absolutely fantastic. Like, if you thought Person Pitch was good, this would be great. The mantra of "What I want" melted into one of the best songs I've ever heard from Panda Bear. A juicy bass, thumping percussion, and a melody to kill for merged into something so delightful I got chills. Right now his live show works as a test for the new material. Most of it sounds great, but I understand he is under a lot of pressure. Multiple live shows then allow him to determine how to edit, what to keep, what to remove, etc. But honestly, I was happy with all the material and hopefully it'll be out by the end of October (that's the new date, we'll see if he keeps to it).

Part of me wanted to see Panda Bear do some old stuff. A few people near me wanted "Bros" which would have been so sweet. Instead, we got massive, sky-filling music. I'd avoid calling it arena rock since the music is specifically designed to make sure you don't sing along that you mumble. Plus, it just sounded like it was being transmitted from somewhere far away. My brain smiled at the set and he even did an encore, which was a nice bonus since otherwise it would've been a short set.

Getting back I saw something that made me wonder if maybe multiple universes exist, or if I live in a different one. The taxi ferries had a person limit, but some jerk tried jumping the fence to meet his stupid, useless friends. Looking at him, it would be hard to take him at his word. With complete douche behavior, he felt he might win an argument against a cop. He didn't.

Meanwhile, on the other side of me, someone peed not once, but twice on the wall, surrounded only by an entire crowd of people struck by disbelief by the sheer stupidity of him.

"I told you once before, please hold it until you board the ferry" - Cop

"I wasn't peeing, some water just happened to run down my leg" was this idiot's response.

When these two people met in the front of the line, they must have realized that miracles do happen. That chance works out for the most boneheaded and douche. A douche bag parallel universe exists as well, for when they got together; they took it to the next level.

The guy peeing on the wall wet himself. A giant pee stain adorned his crotch. Rather than show normal emotions like embarrassment, he tried picking up women with his lack of bladder control, even helping to point out his pee stain to potential mates as he thought in his mind, but in reality were just normal disgusted human beings.

His jumping friend tried and failed to make himself look better by comparison. Think of two douche bags doing the worst job of being each other's wingman and you've got it. While his friend peed himself, he stated, he merely came in his pants. Perhaps this was a Saturday Night Live reference, but unsurprisingly no one was impressed. In their universe woman are turned on by men wetting themselves and talking about ejaculating in public.

Great concert, but I have shown I don't understand how some of the audience even got there.