Thoughts For Today

SNL Recap

Lady Gaga’s particular genius is her ability to perfectly mesh the mainstream with the avant-garde. She is willing to try anything, and it serves her well on SNL. I can picture the writers spending previous weeks holding back some of their more twisted material, hesitant to pitch it for fear of the host immediately shooting it down. Gaga, on the other hand, is a gamer. This week’s sketches were fairly weird, and I say that as a compliment. It’s nice to see that even 50 years in the show can still have its moments of lunacy. This week’s episode was one of the high points of the season.

But first we had to plow through the cold open, which dealt with the alleged infighting between Elon Musk and Lil’ Marco. Mike Myers once again portrayed Musk, pushing further into Austin Powers territory. In this one, both Musk & JAJ’s Trump used internal monologues, and Musk’s channeled Dr. Evil as the phrase “one billion dollars!” popped into his mind and Myers used the pinky figure in the corner of his mouth pose.

The monologue was very brief this week; Gaga poked fun at her age, alleging that the current crop of pop stars are all considerably older than she is and she also brought up her recent Razzie wins for the Joker sequel. She is now on her way to the EGROT, which is an EGOT except hurtful.

The show followed with a series of sketches that might not be all-timers but were consistently funny in an off-kilter sort of way. Ironically the pieces which required her to sing did not succeed as well as the other ones did. I will give bonus points for the first of the two in which Gaga & Bowen played an awful couple on their first date at an upscale French restaurant. They sing and dance to Wonderful Tonight, adding their own lyrics and spoken asides in the later verses. It was here that Bowen provided the best line of the evening: “I recently came into some money. There weren’t any tissues nearby.”

A lot of great candidates for Top Sketch Of the Week, but my final choice is the Friendly’s sketch. All of us at some point have played the “pretend it’s someone’s birthday at a restaurant” prank. I still get a kick out of the time my friends & I pulled that at a Ground Round; the look on the face of our target was priceless once he realized that the staff was singing for him. But.. what if there are grave ramifications for such deceit? As it turns out there is the danger of opening up a portal to the netherworlds and releasing vengeful gods who need to be appeased. It was unfortunate that a couple of camera takes were missed, but if you ever wanted to see blood pour out of Sarah’s mouth as she speaks in tongues or Heidi sacrificed Temple Of Doom style, then you’re in luck.

A close second is the luggage scooter sketch. Gaga and Marcello portray a young couple; she is about to leave for Paris to fulfill her dream to train with the great chefs. He presents her with the scooter, and as she rides away he realizes that he has made a terrible mistake and can’t live without her. That leads to the visual of Gaga riding the scooter through the backstage area and then slowly puttering on the FDR on her way to the airport. “Go around!” She encounters a scooter gang and at the end she finally reunites with Marcello at the airport after he and their dog follow her on their own luggage scooters. Luckily he arrived in time - her flight had left hours ago. It seems that one of these scooters won’t get you to the airport very quickly.

The pre-taped pieces were both strong. There was a commercial for cheaply made mascara which easily runs and makes a woman’s reactions seem more dramatic. And the latest edition of Dan Bulla’s Midnight Matinee introduced us to another adorable animal puppet; a little mouse named Pip.

Two desk pieces on Update this week. In the first Kenan appears as ESPN’s Kendrick Perkins. There’s nothing new here, it’s much like Kenan’s old Charles Barkley bit. Just take an NBA commentator and give him outrageous things to say. Better was Mikey as Lord Gaga, a British aristocrat who has made a fortune in the textile industry and seems to have little knowledge about his wife’s “hobby” other than an ability to make puns about her song titles. Jost points out that Lady Gaga is in fact a megastar, which bewilders Lord Gaga. He cannot imagine a woman making more money than her husband. A jab at Jost! Drink!

Still more: the funeral home sketch in which Gaga and Heidi try to convince a grieving Ego to her father’s memorial into a Roaring Twenties themed service. Or the latest in the series of sketches consisting of eccentric testimonials, this one for the little red eyeglasses worn by women of a certain age. Just overall a real solid episode. I haven’t even mentioned Gaga’s tour de force musical performances. As for Employee Of the Week? I came close to giving it to Bowen, but ultimately I think it was Marcello. Gaga loves to play big, and so does Marcello. They made for a perfect pair in the luggage sketch and he was a terrific bully in the Pip sketch.

Lady Gaga is welcome to return to host anytime she wants to; hopefully the next time will arrive sooner than 11+ years. The show is going back on break; no word yet on the return date or who will be the host.

Meet the Nominees - Joy Division/New Order

Of this year’s 14 nominees, the most deserving is Outkast. But the artist for whom I am rooting for most heavily is the Joy Division/New Order twofer. They have a deep catalog of classic bangers and they are also one of those bands who are a crucial link in the evolution of music. It would make me so happy if they get the call this year.

Joy Division were one of the premier post-punk bands in the late 70’s British scene. Ian Curtis’s distinctive baritone gave the band a great gloomy vibe. At the time their type of music wasn’t getting much radio airplay in the US, and the college/alternative scene did not yet have a large audience, but they were gaining a passionate cult audience in the states. Curtis was a troubled soul, suffering from a deep depression. He committed suicide on the eve of what would have been their first American tour. They left behind two albums that have gone on to become classics of the genre.

The surviving members remained together with guitarist Bernard Sumner taking over lead vocal duties, and Gillian Gilbert joining in on keyboards and synth. Both moves were transformative; Sumner’s vocals necessitated a change to the band’s mood and the new keyboard sound similarly amended the central mood of the group. Before too long they would record one of the most important tracks of the mid 80s.

Blue Monday was a club classic; it eventually became the biggest selling 12” record in history. New Order proved that music need not be an either/or thing. A band could be both a guitar band AND a synth band. Blue Monday did not sound much like Age Of Consent which did not sound much like Bizarre Love Triangle which did not sound much like Love Vigilantes and so on and so on. And all of those singles were wonderful in their own way.

Much like the double induction of the Small Faces and the Faces several years ago, the Hall is considering two separate bands which contained many of the same members as one entry. The elevator pitch for New Order is that they perfectly synthesized guitar rock and synth pop better than just about any band ever had. It might be a stretch to call them IMPORTANT in bold print with a large font, but they were still important enough to easily merit a spot in the Hall.

Biggest Billboard Hot 100 hit: Joy Division never had an American hit, New Order’s biggest hit was Regret

My personal favorite: Joy Division - Love Will Tear Us Apart, New Order - so many great choices, but my pick is Regret

If elected, will they perform at the ceremony? : Yes, but… They have toured Europe as recently as 2023, so they very much remain an active band. But the rest of the band had an acrimonious money-related falling out with Peter Hook several years ago. Would he show? If he does, would it be a let bygones be bygones for one night reunion, or would it be an uncomfortable situation like Blondie’s induction was? My suspicion is that Hook would not attend and the current version of New Order - which still has Sumner, Gilbert, and Stephen Morris - will perform.

The New Caps Are Here! The New Caps Are Here!

New Era has put out a new line of what they are calling Overlap hats. It involves placing each MLB’s team logo over the team or city name. Sounds busy, doesn’t it? Maybe they look better than the description makes it sound? Let’s see.

Um, did anyone look these over? The Ashos? The Tetas? (That last one has already been pulled from the website. Wonder why?) If you squint, it appears that there are MLB teams named the Bonbons, the Anals, and the Narwhals. How about the Yannis? Guacans? Mashers? Looks like the Marlins are mmm, mmm, good. Perfect, no notes.

The Oscar Mulligan - 2005

Best Picture: Crash

Other Nominees: Brokeback Mountain, Capote, Good Night and Good Luck, Munich

This was basically the year that this feature was made for. Almost from the moment that Crash was announced as the winner the news was greeted with a collective “huh?” As much as Hollywood is accused of being liberal, it’s only partially accurate. True, the creative forces tend to be more liberal than the general population, but the people on the business side are conservative to the other extreme. This helps result in a vaguely soft liberalism to the industry as a whole, which in turn results in the Best Picture Award going to a movie that makes the bold statement that racism is bad.

It’s not that it’s a bad movie per se; it has an excellent cast. It’s just that it doesn’t tell us anything that couldn’t be found in a term paper written by a first semester sociology student. The tone of the movie is epitomized by the early scene in which the characters played by Ludacris and Larenz Tate bemoan the way that white people look at them, assuming that they’re criminals. They then immediately carjack a white couple. Do you see the irony there, or was it too subtle? A very dumb scene.

Crash’s victory came at the expense of a significantly better film, that of course being Brokeback Mountain. As for the other also-rans? Good Night and Good Luck was the best of those; it does an excellent job of establishing the atmosphere of a specific time in history. Munich was solid but I wouldn’t rank it as one of Spielberg’s ten best. I give Capote credit for Phillip Seymour Hoffman’s great performance. It’s not easy to portray someone with mannerisms as recognizable as those of Truman Capote without looking like a parody. Hoffman did it.

But Brokeback Mountain was special; a story of forbidden love is one of the most basic storytelling devices that there is, but this one stood out from the pack even beyond the fact that it was an affair between two men in a particularly macho line of work. All 4 of the leads were outstanding. Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal had the showier roles, but Michelle Williams and Anne Hathaway were equally great. They both made it clear that they knew what was going on but left it unsaid. And man, having this movie come out the same year that Hoffman won his Oscar serves as a reminder of how tragic the losses of both Hoffman and Ledger have been.

It’s sad to think that the reason it lost is due to close mindedness among many Academy members, but that is likely the biggest factor. One Oscar winning actor was vocal about his refusal to even see the movie, speaking dismissively about the concept of gay cowboys. He has since died, so I don’t see the need to embarrass him by singling him out for having backwards attitudes. Besides, I’m sure that there were many other men of his generation who felt the same but didn’t make those feelings public, so there’s no reason to single out Ernest Borgnine. So I won’t.

Brokeback Mountain was moving, it was heartbreaking, and it has left a lasting legacy. That’s a Best Picture in my book.

Closing Laughs

Say good night Gracie, that is all for now. Please be courteous, kind, and forgiving. See you all on Friday.