Relevant Things Going On in My Life Right Now #6

So, a couple of things. Obviously I have a new layout. Yay! (?) I really liked the old one but I feel like this one goes more with the spirit and the tone of this very silly web log. Second, that above is Johnny Weir. Is it just me or does he look slightly like Christian Bale there? Anyway, I just watched this documentary about him, Pop Star on Ice. It has a 17% on Rotten Tomatoes but I actually enjoyed it, even if it was mostly because Johnny is hilarious. His Russian accent is awesome.

Other than that, a lot has happened since my last post, so I thought I'd do one of these to cover everything. (Also I have a Snow Day, A-STINKING-GAIN, and I want to do other things and this is easy-ish.)

• The NGP: No, it's not some kind of government branch that's out to get you. It's the name of what is more commonly known as the PSP2! The NGP was unveiled last week and it basically is a fatter PSP with two joysticks and better graphics. This is enough for many people to rejoice over, but I remain unconvinced. It's not that I don't think the NGP looks cool, because it definitely does, and it's not that I don't think it will be successful, because I know there are a lot of people who want to buy it; it's just that, in terms of innovation, it seems like it's lacking in that extra "wow" factor. I mean, I have a PS3 to play my PS3 games. I don't need a portable for that. What it means for me, though, is that soon the PSP will finally be low enough in price that I can buy one! Yay!
• Jesse Eisenberg on SNL: I am a Jesse Eisenberg fan, and his episode of SNL was the funniest in ages. I watched the entire show, live, and that is something I never do! It was worth it, though. The best sketches were the Don't Forget the Lyrics! one, which awkwardly didn't get as many laughs from the audience as it did from me; the one with Bill Hader as Herb, the old and bitter newscaster who kept hitting everyone in the face (I'm sorry but his constantly hitting everyone in the face with the microphone was extremely amusing, especially when Bill Hader started cracking afterwards); the Lonely Island song, "Do the Creep;" and the Bride of Blackenstein, which featured the best line of the night from Jesse Eisenberg: when asked where he got the bride's mouth, he replied, "From a ho who didn't know her place!" Weekend Update was also amusing thanks to Kenan as Tyler Perry: "My best friend is Oprah!" It wasn't all kittens and cupcakes, though: the fake commercial was incredibly offensive and all of Kristen Wiig's turns were awful. But Jesse Eisenberg was able to bring his antsy energy and host a fun show. Watch the episode here.
• The new series of Skins: It premiered over in jolly old England last Thursday. I watched it over the weekend; it was my first time watching the British Skins in a decent amount of time, since I never watched the third or fourth series besides some clips. Okay, so there were definite shades of Mean Girls, but Franky and Grace and Rich and maybe Alo (which is a stupid name) seem awesome. Matty had potential also but his acting was terrible. I'm excited to see what happens this season. Err, series.
• "The Trapeze Swinger": is a beautiful song, by Iron & Wine. He wrote it for a movie that stars Topher Grace (and, disgustingly, Dennis Quaid):
• No Color by The Dodos: I posted about them last month, but today you can now pre-order their album! There are four different options: digital-only, CD, vinyl, or deluxe, which includes all of the above plus a shirt, a poster, and some other stuff. Also, you can get any of the first three options with a shirt, and the CD and the record also come with digital downloads. I'm conflicted over which package to get. I'm thinking CD, but I kind of want the shirt as well. However, the CD plus the shirt is $30, and that's way too much. I think I'm just going to get the CD. Also, when you pre-order you get a download of the first track, "Black Night," which you can listen to on the site. I listened to it and it is INSANE. In a good way! So. Do that.
• Bioshock: I got it for Christmas and my friend and I started playing it yesterday. Okay, I mostly just watched and yelled, "Welcome to the Circus of Values!" But I got to play a little. It's fun times, but also really scary. I'm not good with scary things. Thankfully, I got over my fear of the screaming, gory splicers kind of quickly. Sort of. Also, the game has the most stupidly easy trophies out of any PS3 game I've ever played. Awesome.
• RuPaul's Drag Race: So the Johnny Weir show was on Logo, and now RuPaul's show is on and we haven't bothered to change the channel. I'm not really paying attention but I see that SUTAN, the make-up artist from America's Next Top Model, is competing, and that is REALLY COOL. His drag queen persona is Raja. This should be fun. Also, watching the show is reminding me of how Tobias would mix up his pronouns a lot in Arrested Development. I'm planning on rewatching that soon, maybe when the AV Club starts its alleged Classic recapping of it.
• Sundance: This year's Sundance has been one of the most-hyped in years, in part because of the wealth of nominations movies from last year's have earned recently (see: Winter's Bone!). I'm going to write an article about it later today; maybe I'll post it on here sometime. I'll at least get around to talking about the movies that intrigued me. One of my life dreams is to go to a film festival (yeah, I totally dream big, right?), so I hope to attend Sundance one day. Maybe as press!
• Zombieland: is sitting in my DVD drive. I've been meaning to watch it for over a year now. Today, I finally will. So I'm going to go do that.

Have a splendid day.

I'll Admit It, I Laughed

That's "The Miley Cyrus Show" from last night's SNL. I didn't watch it live (1. I can't stay awake that late, and 2. why would I do that, anyway? Not even for you, Bryan Cranston), but AOL alerted me to this clip's existence.

Honestly? It was pretty funny. This chick was obviously nervous but she REALLY sounds like Miley Cyrus. SO MUCH. And her face! SHE MADE THAT MILEY FACE AND SHE MADE IT WELL.

The "Goodbye, Jeff" clip at the end was the best part. I mean, these Miley Cyrus jokes are kind of obvious and dull but this girl did a good job. I also enjoyed BCrans as Billy Ray. They'll undoubtedly make this into a recurring sketch, and I'm actually sort of looking forward to it. At least until it becomes really stupid and repetitive. Which is inevitable. Sigh.

Today In News That Probably Only I Care About

Today's top headline:

MATT DAMON IS RETURNING TO 30 ROCK! YES. YES. YES!

Shall I re-post my awful Matt Damon dancing .gif? I think I shall!

Huzzah!

In other news:

• Will Forte is leaving SNL. This is, hopefully, an excellent career move for the very funny Forte [/alliteration]. I think he should do more voice acting, because he's good at it. His character was one of the few on Sit Down, Shut Up that I nearly tolerated (until that TERRIBLE joke about him developing boobs. That was mightily disturbing).
• BREAKING: Final Fantasy Versus XIII is still not out. Oh wait, everyone knows that already? Does everyone also already know that it probably isn't even coming out next year? They do? Oh. Well, carry on then.
• You can now trade games in at Best Buy. But should you? No.
• The interesting-sounding, Jim Carrey-starring romantic dramedy I Love You Phillip Morris is finally coming out. And on my birthday, no less! Now I can celebrate the good old-fashioned way: with gay convicts expressing their love through repeated escape attempts.
• Conan can make fun of NBC if his Tonight Show wins at the Emmy Awards this Sunday, permitted that his remarks "aren't false." In normal people's terms, that means we can potentially look forward to jokes about my admittedly most-watched network's poor ratings and even poorer management. Goody?
• Maybe you've heard of that suicide at a recent The Swell Season concert? Well, if you were one of the unlucky ones to be present, Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova and company are willing to pay for your resulting therapy. That incident really was quite sad, and I'm not going to joke about it. If you'd like to read some people's impressions of what happened there, check out the comments of this SFWeekly article.
• To end on a lighter note, here's a cool mash-up between Scott Pilgrim and Avatar: The Last Airbender (the show, NOT the movie), posted by the former's director and just one of the nicest guys around (he seems nice to ME, anyway) Edgar Wright.

A'ight, so that's the story, from your favorite random news aggregate around. Check it. (If you read that in an Ali G voice it's pretty funny!) 

Relevant Things Going On in My Life Right Now #1

(Relevant meaning to this blog.)

HELLO :) I'm watching MTV's Return to Fat Camp. I live for the Fat Camp series. It's definitely one of my favorite guilty pleasures.

I could write a whole entry on it, but I've devoted enough space to MTV lately. So instead, I'm going to talk about the pop culture-y things I've been thinking about in my otherwise incessantly dull day! This may or may not become a more frequent thing! SO PREPARE.

• Lesbians Who Look Like Justin Bieber: It is exactly as its name implies. AND IT IS AWESOME. Some of these "Biebians" as the creepy Justin Bieber-lookalike who maintains it calls them looks so much like (male) Justin Bieber it is frightening and amazing. It's interspersed with actual Justin Bieber pics. A lot of the time I see them (BECAUSE I SPEND A LOT OF TIME ON HERE OKAY) and think, "Whoa, that lesbian looks EXACTLY like Justin Bieber!" but then I realize that it IS Justin Bieber. He is pretty girly, though, so it's probs a common mistake.

• Tuesday's episode of Glee: So, remember that it was kind of a make or break it for me? Well, it was pretty good. Neil Patrick Harris was, obviously, awesome. I laughed, bro. I laughed out loud. Kids these days would just be like "lol gleeee <33" to their friends on Facebook, son, without laughing for real, but me? I ACTUALLY LAUGHED. The episode was called "Dream On" so, um, here's the eponymous song (which I don't really like when NPH and Matty Morrison aren't rocking out to it). NPH is scary in it (ETA: clip fix'd): 

• Reruns of The Office on TBS: Tomorrow I plan on doing my FIRST EVAH TV reviews on this here blog. That means there's a 50-50 chance of me actually doing them! And if I do, you may find out about my tumultuous relationship with The Office. Here it is in a nutshell, though: There are only two amazing seasons of the show. One other season is very good. The other three are horrible. So horrible, in fact, that I tell people I have a tumultuous relationship with the show. It's that meaningful to me. Okay? Okay. Yesterday I watched reruns of two excellent Season 3 episodes (Season 3 is the "very good" season, by the way), and it made me sad that the show is so BAD now. They were "The Return" and "Ben Franklin." I stinking love those episodes. Those episodes alone warranted my Season 3 DVD purchase (that and my dream of becoming an Office historian). 

• LittleBigPlanet 2: I'm insanely excited for it. Me and my homie G slice Laur-Laur tear LBP 1 UP. And, I mean, I've known about the sequel for awhile. Come on, I read video game news everyday. But I just read that it'll feature custom voice acting, which is a cool (albeit frightening) proposition. I'm going to definitely put really disturbing voices in my RPG (because you can make RPGs and other types of games in the sequel, too :D).  

• Elliott Smith: He's dead. :( I mean, he's been dead for almost 10 years now. But I was listening to "The Biggest Lie," "Needle in the Hay," and "The White Lady Loves You More" today and bro, it made me sad. People like Conor Oberst (who I do like) try to emulate his style, but there's no one alive who's better. Download: "The Biggest Lie", "The White Lady Loves You More"

• Rotten Tomatoes ranks SNL movies: Obviously, most of them are horrible. I've seen Coneheads, Superstar, Wayne's World, and Wayne's World 2. Didn't like any of them. And isn't it funny that Al Franken starred in Stuart Saves His Family? And that It's Pat! even exists?

Yeah, that's about it. And now, I'm going to return to Fat Camp! Get it?! YES!

Remember That SNL Post From A Week Ago?

Yeah, well, I hadn't seen this yet: ZACH GALIFIANAKIS HOSTING. Zach G. is my rock. He is my sovereign. He is my bearded guidance. He is my EVERYTHING.

Well, not really. But I think he's hilarious, and that's more than I can say for most people. Seriously, Between Two Ferns is required viewing for readers of this blog. I knew he was hosting but then I forgot because, well, it's Saturday Night Live and it sucks.

But today I came home with a migraine so I decided, what the heck, let's watch something on Hulu. Originally I was going to watch Gabba Gabba Rey!, who hosted last Saturday, but then I saw a beard with Zach G.'s eyes above it, staring at me, and I had to watch.

HERE ARE THE HIGHLIGHTS, BECAUSE YOU DESERVE THEM!

OHEMGEEEEE DYING HERE. Bullet points!

• "It's great to be back hosting Saturday Night Live..."
• "Putting on chapstick daintily"
• "Homeless professor;" "Vice President of Ultimate Frisbee;" "Alpaca message boards"
• "I live in Brooklyn...and I hate it." I guess a lot of hipsters are in the audience.
• "Excuse me, I've been in Canada...opening up for Miles Davis. Kilometers Davis."
• "I like dark comedies; that's why I like the Wayans Bros." I cracked up at that one. That is just bad. Love it.
• "I went to my high school reunion awhile ago, and it was very weird because I was home schooled...and why I rented that limousine, I have no idea."
• "That is so Raven." He uses that joke a lot, but it's still funny.
• He doesn't really have a blog :(
• "Hoobastank is here!" Hoobastank. Haven't heard that name in awhile. Not since the last Singstar party. Oh, Singstar.

Digital short, so of course it's awesome. I think if Zach Galifianakis crashed the set of some show that I was watching, I'd freak out due to fear and amazement. Dude, if Zach G. crashed The Tyra Show or something horrible like that, I would love it. I would die. And then Tyra would bring me back to life so she can hold onto each and every viewer she has with those disgusting Tyra-fingers of hers and then I would die again.

Zach G. AND Vampire Weekend?! Seriously, why did I not watch this live? Contra stuff isn't that good live but the band is too adorable for it to be a big deal. I love Ezra's new hair, and did he grow five inches? Because he is usually not that tall. And Rostam has this weird way of dragging his feet while he plays guitar that I can totally relate to because I can't dance/stand up like a normal person, either. During the bridge, Ezra was watching him with the intent of a love-stricken bachelor. He, too, was enamored by his band mate's oddness. Oh, and I picked their "Cousins" performance over "Giving Up the Gun" because "Cousins" is a way stinking better song. I could go on and on and on and on about this but I'll stop geeking out now and move on.

PAUL RUDD TOO? And Frank Rich, whose presence/existence I find hysterical because he has the same name as my dad except backwards?! WHAT IS THIS? WHY DID I NOT KNOW ABOUT THIS? This sketch was not particularly funny other than Paul Rudd's being there and Kenan calling Frank Rich "sexy and sinister" and his "wut" face afterwards, but that "What's Up With That" song is going to be stuck in my head for the rest of the day. Zach's outfit was great and I liked Jason Sudeikis', too. And his dancing! We dance similarly, except his dancing is actually SOMEWHAT DECENT. Yeah, I'm feeling self-conscious about my dancing today. Isn't that random?

Whatever, here's "Giving Up the Gun." I have to post it for Rostam's Michael Jackson faces. He looks like Michael Jackson! And why did Chris Tom change his shirt? ...Can I have his old one? Oh, and Chris Baio's footwork is cool. Am I the only one who sees a slight resemblance between Ezra and Devon Werkheiser?

Oh, dear.

Well, that was awesome. I think I feel a little better now. Thank you, Zach Galifianakis. You may look like Marijuana Santa Claus, but to me, you're...well, yeah, I don't know, I guess you're just Marijuana Santa Claus.

Go watch Between Two Ferns now while I watch the Gabba Gabba Rey! episode. Bye.

Saturday Night Live, You Ignorant Slut

It's Saturday night. What are you doing? One of three things, probably: sleeping, partying, or playing Pokemon SoulSilver. Last night, I was doing the latter. But eventually, after playing Pokemon for going on four hours, you think it's time to do something else. So what do you do then?

If you hate yourself, you watch Saturday Night Live.

"That's harsh, Allegra." Girl, please. PLEASE. If you think I'm being a bit over dramatic, then you obviously have not seen Saturday Night Live in the last eight years.

Here's last night's monologue for your convenience.

It's horrible, isn't it? The random appearances of all of those annoying characters was met with relative disinterest by the audience, except for Andy Samberg's Dick in a Box guy. People love the "Dick in a Box" sketch. And you know why? Because it wasn't LIVE.

I think there's something inherently wrong and pathetic about a show that purports itself as the best live comedy hour on television whose best sketches are, well, NOT LIVE. I mean, the show is live for a reason.

So why is all of the live content so bad? Why does it pale in comparison to the pre-taped content? I think it's because of the writing. The writing is just so weak these days. I like Seth Meyers; I think he's a cool, albeit weasel-faced, bro, but he just has not been a successful head writer, at all. Another reason could be that these actors just aren't such great live performers. It seems like all of the performers had some previous experience with it before joining the show, though, so I'm not so sure that's the reason. However, compared to previous casts, this one was much less experienced with improv, with only 1 member coming from Second City, another coming from the Groundlings, and then a few others being in lesser-known improv groups. (Oh, wait, but it doesn't even matter if they can do improv, since Stupid Lorne Michaels doesn't even let them improv! Stupid Lorne Michaels.)

Regardless of their prior experience with live performing, the current cast is actually undeniably funny, even though they try very, very, very hard not to be funny at all on the show (and succeed). Bill Hader, Kristen Wiig, Jason Sudeikis, and Andy Samberg are especially funny -- just not on the show. Andy Samberg is especially horrible on the show, unless he's doing one of his digital shorts. Those digital shorts are always, without exaggeration, the best parts of the show when they're on. Obviously, Andy Samberg's forte (get it? Because Will Forte is also a cast member? Tee-hee? Funny?) is writing his own material and then performing it in front of a camera, and not an audience.

Even feral cats like Andy Samberg!

That leopard is obviously only a fan of his Lonely Island/film work. (Erm, minus Hot Rod. Gross.)

It just bothers me every time I see the show that this awesome cast goes to waste because the writing is awful beyond belief. It's kind of sad, but I would be happy if the show was killed off. I think that it would give these actors the chance to do some better work that they can actually be successful in. They get the chance to film movies and such and such and such, but wouldn't it be cool if Bill Hader starred in his own TV show? Or if Kristen Wiig got the chance to really become the next top female comedienne?

Which brings up another point: everyone ranted and raved over the lackluster Tina Fey episode. Why? Because Tina Fey was there, and she was in the majority of the sketches, and anything with her, no matter how poor it is, is better than anything that they show these days without her. That episode was so hyped because the show has been so bad without her -- and personally, I didn't even find it all that great when she WAS on it! It's just so much more preferable to what we have now. Maybe it's because she's a writer first, and a good writer. Seth Meyers might be both a writer and a performer, but he's lackluster at both of those. I thought Tina Fey kind of sucked on Saturday Night Live, but if you watch even one episode of 30 Rock, you know how talented she really is. I think Andy Samberg would be successful if he was given the same kind of venue (not just with The Lonely Island).

So, in sum: the Saturday Night Live of today is horrible. It is a barren wasteland where talented performers go to make money that, based on the work they perform on the show, they don't really deserve, and where writers who may or may not be good go to become worse. Every single actor on the show is probably just using it to get more exposure so they can go down the Mike Myers or Will Ferrell route, although those two routes really are largely sucky, despite how much money those two might make. Hopefully soon Bill Hader will champion a revolt that will lead to the demise or at least mass exodus of the current cast before Lorne Michaels leeches all of the comic ability out of their impressionable young bodies.

And then they will all cry to Lorne Michaels: