Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Narcissists are always shocked to discover other people have agency.

“When somebody takes the time to draw up a playbook, they’re gonna use it.”

The gop couldn’t organize an orgy in a whorehouse with a fist full of 50s.

Let’s delete this post and never speak of this again.

When we show up, we win.

Seems like a complicated subject, have you tried yelling at it?

We will not go quietly into the night; we will not vanish without a fight.

Republicans choose power over democracy, every day.

Even though I know this is a bad idea, I’m off to do it anyway!

An almost top 10,000 blog!

No Justins, No Peace

It’s always darkest before the other shoe drops.

Let’s show the world that autocracy can be defeated.

Jack be nimble, jack be quick, hurry up and indict this prick.

It’s the corruption, stupid.

You can’t attract Republican voters. You can only out organize them.

Imperialist aggressors must be defeated, or the whole world loses.

Sitting here in limbo waiting for the dice to roll

Everybody saw this coming.

Putin must be throwing ketchup at the walls.

Wow, I can’t imagine what it was like to comment in morse code.

You are so fucked. Still, I wish you the best of luck.

Donald Trump, welcome to your everything, everywhere, all at once.

Usually wrong but never in doubt

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Reader Interactions

181Comments

  2. 2.

    Schlemazel

    There was this very nice old lady at the church I grew up in who loved to sing. At one time she had a beautiful voice but as she got older it was not so good anymore and apparently she couldn’t tell how bad it had gotten. But she really was a nice lady & loved to sing so nobody had the heart to stop her.
    Paul McCartney was just on my TV and made me think of her for the first time in many many years

  4. 4.

    Schlemazel

    Of all the one-joke skits that make me want to smash my TV “The Californians” is #1. Not even funny the first time.

  9. 9.

    Schlemazel

    @Baud:
    A good reason for us old folks to go to bed early on Saturday night.

    @MikeBoyScout:
    If only Chapman had been a lousy shot & plugged Yoko. A lot of things would have been better

  14. 14.

    Corner Stone

    A 90 second skit may be left to the viewer to determine what is or is not funny. A 3 minute run time leaves no doubt.

  24. 24.

    Dave Ruddell

    Maybe it’s a generational thing, but I’ve always though Bass-o-matic was stupid and not funny. Mind you, I’ve never really found much from those first few years to be very funny. I could see how it would have been new and different at the time, but it doesn’t hold up.

    I was surprised they did The Californians, but then I realized it was a way to get a lot of cast members in. Not a good way, mind you…

  25. 25.

    Iowa Old Lady

    @Schlemazel: I watched that with my son when he was small. I was rolling around on the floor laughing as the chicken or whatever it was slid away on a slick of blood, and he asked in horror, “Why are you laughing?”

    You can’t do nuttin without a sharp knife.

  26. 26.

    Elizabelle

    They’re too full of themselves.

    And The Californians blew.

    The politics sketch: Dan Ackroyd’s Jimmy Carter and Dana Carver’s GHW Bush were fabulous. (And Will Ferrell as W, although joke was on us. The dupe was reelected.)

    They cannot do an Obama sketch, apparently.

  27. 27.

    Time Travelin'

    As a west coaster, I’m getting the impression that this isn’t going well and I should stick to my regularly scheduled programming, eh?

  28. 28.

    I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet

    @Dave Ruddell: The very early years of SNL were very uneven. The Bees? Chevy Chase’s prat falls? If you believe the stories about Belushi and others being stoned at least part of the time, it’s not surprising. The following seasons have been very uneven, too, of course.

    I loved “The Californians” when I first saw it. I though it was the most original thing they’d done in a long time.

    Tastes differ. :-)

    Cheers,
    Scott.
    (Who isn’t watching the show tonight.)

  29. 29.

    MikeBoyScout

    @Dave Ruddell: I suspect it is generational. Way back when while watching SNL you were likely to see a Ron Popeil commercial. It resonated with the audience and was the first parody of its kind.

  37. 37.

    GregB

    Shit, something happened and my tv switched over to The Walking Dead.

    Oh sorry, it was just Keith Richards introducing the dead vocal cords of Paul McCartney.

    This whole thing is depressing as fuck.

  38. 38.

    Schlemazel

    @Dave Ruddell:
    I think bass-o-matic needs you to have grown up on add for crap just like that on TV. The sludge for the stop leak spray paint or whatever Billy Mays was pushing are highly polished & great products compared to Ron Popeil’s crap.

    @Iowa Old Lady:
    Same as above – if you grew up watching Julia that was a spot on bit. Without her its just slapstick.

  39. 39.

    Dave Ruddell

    Yeah, I started watching in about 1983-4, so that was my point of reference. I remember the first time I got a chance to watch the classic early episodes I was excited, but it quickly turned into “That’s it?!”

    Also, FTR, I am old enough to remember Popeil (The pocket fisherman! The thing that scrambled and egg in the shell!)

  44. 44.

    MikeBoyScout

    Note to the youngsters…
    Let SNL @40 be a lesson to you about how not to try and re-live your glory years at your 40th birthday and succeeding birthdays.

  48. 48.

    Elizabelle

    tiny quip from Martin Short about something being the least of NBC’s problems …

    Made me sad for Brian Williams. Otherwise, he could have been part of this show. He would have loved it.

    And the follow up writes itself: but in years to come, he will tell people he was.

  50. 50.

    lamh36

    I see a lot of people on my timeline waiting on Eddie Murphy. I’m guessing the producers know people are looking for him, so he’ll be last on the show.

    Anyone know a good livestreaming site, other than NBC (it keeps freaking going out for me) to view the show?

  56. 56.

    Elizabelle

    The Chris Rock setup was good. And then Eddie was kind of anticlimactic, with the reminder they’d liked him 35 years before.

    Successes: no one’s adult diapers showed.

  62. 62.

    gogol's wife

    McCartney should have chosen another song. Luckily it was time for Downton, which was great, although I’m crying now.

  63. 63.

    gogol's wife

    @Hildebrand:

    They showed clips, but everyone was chopped up. If you get a thrill from two seconds of Phil Hartman at a time, it was the show for you. It was really inept.

  69. 69.

    gogol's wife

    @JPL:

    Yes, and as usual somebody gave me a spoiler on that before the season began so I’ve been dreading it the whole time.

  73. 73.

    kwawk

    Now I have to Google: What song McCarney sing SNL 40.

    Thanks John, you don’t happen to work for Google do you?

  76. 76.

    fuckwit

    @Hildebrand: A friend brought to a dinner party a video tape of Gilda Radner leading the SNL cast in Winter Wonderland, soon after she’d died, and played it for us. She was totally selling the whole song, and the rest of the cast was just obviously pissed off, not into it, dragging their ass through the thing, and just hating the whole idea, but she didn’t care, she was all enthusiasm, cheering them on, grinning. That dynamic made the bit so much funnier. We all were misty eyed watching. She was great.

    Emily LItella. Roseanne Roseannadanna. etc.

  77. 77.

    gogol's wife

    @Elizabelle:

    Funnily enough, I think you could watch it and not be lost even if you are three seasons behind.

    I’ve got to stop bombarding this thread and go to bed. Nighty night.

  78. 78.

    Elizabelle

    Miley Cyrus fully dressed and no tongue action yet. Rebranding, perhaps?

    She has a distinctive voice.

  83. 83.

    Elizabelle

    @patrick II:

    SNL has a problem when Miley Cyrus is about the best thing yet. Certainly the most memorable (except Murray’s shark song and Chris Rock saying he’d be a funny UPS guy or whatever without Eddie Murphy breaking the path …)

  84. 84.

    Gin & Tonic

    @Elizabelle: She did a good job.

    In other news, Felix Salmon tweeted a picture that looked like Al Sharpton and Sarah Palin walking in (to the show?) together.

  85. 85.

    EriktheRed

    I just stopped watching. I am now seeing if tonight’s episode of The walking Dead is posted somewhere.

  86. 86.

    mkd

    With the good and the dreck that has made up this show, I couldn’t anticipate that I would post a comment that Miley Cyrus killed 50 ways to leave her lover, totally unexpected

  90. 90.

    Suzanne

    I miss George Carlin. Mr. Suzanne and I went to see Jim Gaffigan a couple of weeks ago, and we were musing on how many great comics are gone. He loved Hedberg, I loved Greg Giraldo. Even this guy from Last Comic Standing named Mike DeStefano who was simultaneously heartbreaking and hilarious died. So so sad.

  91. 91.

    Elizabelle

    Palin sighting. Seinfeld called her “Governor Palin.”

    She did fine. No methlike habits evident; got her lines out well. Short commitment; someone else wrote it; cameras were on her. Played to her strengths.

  96. 96.

    GregB

    Trivia tidbit: Maya Rudolph is the daughter of Minnie Riperton.

    Also, find Gilda Radner singing “Let’s Talk Dirty to the Animals” on Youtube.

    It’s NSFW and funny.

  97. 97.

    Hildebrand

    @fuckwit: Emily Litella was my favorite of her characters. She earned her tagline with that character every single time. Just a hilarious bit.

  98. 98.

    Elizabelle

    @GregB: And Maya is partner of bigtime movie director Paul Thomas Anderson (There Will Be Blood, Inherent Vice most recently …)

    Kanye up. He’s insufferable in real life, but I like his music.

    (ETA: Hopefully his baby daughter is not in the front row, crying. Fashion Week has had some bones to pick with Kimye.)

  99. 99.

    karen

    Why did they do the old sketches live instead of showing the original sketch? Maybe it’s me but some of them did not age well at all. A lot didn’t.

    Seeing the Tracy Morgan sketch just made my eyes tear up. I’d forgotten about the accident.

    There are many people in those sketches who are no longer alive.

    I wonder if anyone in the audience knew that Roseanne Rosanna Danna was actually based on a NY anchorwoman, Roseanne Scarmadella, in the ’70s.

    And I love The Beatles and Wings but Paul McCartney should never, ever sing falsetto again. It made my eyes tear up for a totally different reason.

    Miley Cyrus is my guilty pleasure and I loved her smoky voice with “50 ways.”

    This 3 1/2 hour show is uneven but SNL always was.

    But why Kanye West?

  101. 101.

    PurpleGirl

    @NotMax: TW3 was great.

    One SNL skit that I remember involved Freud and his daughter sitting on his lap and the punch line was “Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.”

  102. 102.

    mai naem

    Haven’t seen Dennis Miller on the actual show yet? Does he even have his Fox show anymore? Wonder if Fox didn’t allow him to show up?

  104. 104.

    Elizabelle

    @karen: Yeah, the Tracy Morgan references. You could think he died …

    There have been 20 movies spun off from SNL? Wayne’s World (easy one), did Al Franken have some movie about Stuart or whoever … there’s a trivia question, to get even 15 without Googling.

    ETA: OK, that Cars.com commercial about puppetry (the first date) made me laugh.

  109. 109.

    Comrade Mary

    OK, Kanye’s piece was as mannered as fuck, but I loved it to pieces. Yes, two of the best parts of the show so far have been brought to us by media punchbags Kanye and Miley.

    (Miley was definitely singing live, and while Kanye’s voice was processed — and I usually hate that — some real rawness and raggedness escaped at time. Good stuff.)

  110. 110.

    The Pale Scot

    So I’m visiting and watching some doc on FoxBusiness(?) about using animals as weapons of war: It segways into a piece about how the U.S. worked on attaching incendiary bombs to bats and then dropping bat filled bombs that open up above ground and release the bats.

    They do a full test with dummy bombs and it actually works, the bats disperse and roost in the targeted buildings. Apparently they can cool the bats down to set the weapon up.

    So then the brass wants a live test. As the narrator explains that eight bats are loaded up with napalm, I start laughing, then he’s says the generals show up along with a photographer, when the flash goes off the bats go berserk, torching the building.

    I’m on the floor dieing, everyone else is looking at me. I’m still laughing.

  113. 113.

    barbequebob

    @Dave Ruddell:

    Bass-O-Matic was a parody of the TV ads by Ron Popeil of RONCO Fame that saturated the TV airwaves at the time of that show.

    So yes, if you did not live in that time, of at least understand this context, I can see how you feel that way.

    cheers,

  116. 116.

    GregB

    It is kind of funny watching all of the reverential institutionalizing of what was once an irreverent young enterprise.

  120. 120.

    Comrade Mary

    I wish they had spent some more time on digital shorts than crap like the tribute to musical comedy that was a waste of Maya Rudolph. I’d like to see the Wes Anderson parody, whatever the piece was with patti Smith, and a bunch more.

  128. 128.

    ruemara

    For lamh36, Kingsman is quite a good bit of fun and Colin Firth wears his bespoke suits brilliantly. He’s, frankly, hotter than the young man.

  130. 130.

    Mike in NC

    Fortunately, a two hour retrospective of 40 years of SNL was just enough to include just about every funny thing they ever did. Gave up on it myself about 25 years ago.

  131. 131.

    Violet

    I was going to record it so I could watch it and FF through the commercials and boring stuff but somehow the first hour or so didn’t record. What did I miss?

  133. 133.

    Suzanne

    @ruemara: I thought Kingsman was fun, too. More violent than I was prepared for, but an enjoyable night at the movies, especially because I didn’t have to stand in the ridiculously long lines that the Fifty Shades people had.

  137. 137.

    Elizabelle

    @pseudonymous in nc: More NBC branding, I guess.

    Some of it worked, but not enough. I liked the Wayne’s World skit at the end. Some SNL types aged better than others.

    FWIW, I liked Keith Richards’ intro of Sir Paul. Keith looked like he was in on the joke.

    What song should Paul have sung? He was def offkey as he began … can’t do “When I’m 64” because he’s already blown through that, and so have a lot of SNL peeps …

  138. 138.

    Schlemazel

    @Elizabelle: See my comment on Paul at #2
    Both Pauls, McCarthy and Simon, should join in the Sound Of Silence. Not the song, actual silence. Please let me remember when you could sing so well instead of this dreadful thing you do now.

  139. 139.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Elizabelle: Having not watched it, I will say that some comedy is timeless, and SNL has done some of that. Some comedy is based on current events or current tropes/memes. That stuff doesn’t age well no matter how funny it was at the time.

  143. 143.

    The Pale Scot

    @Elizabelle:
    The show is “Oli’s North’s story time “Animal Warrior’s”, there was video of a burning building but maybe it was stock. I’ll keep an eye out for on tor.

    According to wiki
    In one incident the Carlsbad Army Airfield Auxiliary Air Base 32°15′39″N 104°13′45″W near Carlsbad, New Mexico, was set on fire on May 15, 1943, when armed bats were accidentally released.[5] The bats incinerated the test range and roosted under a fuel tank.

    Apparently the reason nobody else was laughing was because there had already been a story about how they surgically implanted live microphones in cats, it took 2 years to perfect it, on the first mission all the cats were run over by cars.

    I’m assuming that the kitties suicided.

    Just like I’m so sure that dolphins failed the last tests purposely to avoid being put in any danger, but milked the program for as long as possible for all that fish.

  144. 144.

    Elizabelle

    @The Pale Scot:

    it took 2 years to perfect it, on the first mission all the cats were run over by cars.

    Mean, but that has me laughing harder than anything on SNL tonight.

    Poor kittehs.

  145. 145.

    Elizabelle

    @efgoldman: Sending you and the missus homemade cups of hot cocoa.

    Liberally laced with brandy or rum. (Or both.) Stay in and stay warm.

    We have uncharacteristically cold weather too. Last night the wind howled so fiercely in the trees that my neighbor tells me her children insisted they all sleep in the basement to be safe.

  146. 146.

    ? Martin

    My employer-paid health care cost $18,900. Under the cadillac limit of $27,000, but not by much.

    Yes, I’m doing taxes.

  147. 147.

    jharp

    Was just thinking of the SNL skit when John Goodman dressed and played the part of Linda Tripp some time after the Clinton/Lewinski bruhahah.

    To me one of the funniest skits ever.

    Have not seen it in many years.

  148. 148.

    Elizabelle

    @efgoldman: Seriously.

    I was listening to the wind roar last night, and wondering what I would do if the power failed or a window was breached. (Slept with a little flashlight in my jeans pocket.)

    Because forgot to have the gas fireplace serviced last week — couldn’t light it this year, which is unusual — and the streets iced over furiously last night after our short bout of snow. So: it was possibly to be cold, dark and not even able to drive to a hotel. (Neighbors up the street badly damaged the front of their SUV last night; assume they hit ice…)

    Are you reading much of New Englanders dying from exposure or the storms? Wondering how the elderly or those who live alone are faring this very difficult year … wondering if the most isolated of the homeless are giving it up and coming indoors.

  149. 149.

    Steeplejack (phone)

    @Karen in GA:

    That was the high point for me. Usually reprising an old one-note sketch (pun intended) would be fatal, but Bill Murray took the whole Nick Rails/Nick Lobo/Nick whoever thing to 11. Maybe 12. Awesome.

  151. 151.

    ruemara

    @Suzanne: A bit of the old ultra-violence is just what slakes a droogs thirst, ya know? It was surprising in some of the choices, such as, the denouement of the trap scene in the hideout.

  155. 155.

    ? Martin

    @efgoldman: Hey, congrats! I’m 15 years out from my scheduled retirement date, 4 years out from my dad’s unscheduled retirement date when he decided he could either retire or buy an AR-15 and shoot up his office. He made the right choice.

    I’m not sure I can do this for another 15, but my pension calculator says that I’d be a fucking idiot to not hang in there.

  156. 156.

    rikyrah

    @ruemara:

    For lamh36, Kingsman is quite a good bit of fun and Colin Firth wears his bespoke suits brilliantly. He’s, frankly, hotter than the young man.

    Amen.

    Loved Kingsman and Colin Firth.

  157. 157.

    David Koch

    the SNL cast members aged really bad.

    How did that happen?

    it’s easy to say drugs cause premature aging, but most entertainers do drugs and don’t look like the crypt keeper.

    And while Eddie Murphy didn’t prematurely age, how did he lose his once towering sense of humor? It’s like someone put him a pot and boiled out all the flavor.

  158. 158.

    Bubblegum Tate

    Thus far, the highlight of the show is the Android commercial they keep showing that uses “The Creator” by Pete Rock & CL Smooth.

  160. 160.

    Trooptrap Tripetrope

    I was a freshman in high school when SNL debuted. Never thought it was particularly funny. SCTV, on the other hand, consistently managed to make me laugh out loud.

  161. 161.

    Ruckus

    @efgoldman:
    I wanted to wait till 70ish for the same reason to start SS but eating took preference. And no you are not a moocher, you and I paid into SS for all of our working lives so that we’d have a little something at the end. Thanks to the great recession (fucking money assholes) my IRA/401K is now gone, so SS is all I have unless I work. Still 3-4 yrs more part time and I’m going to pull the plug myself and see how it works. Fifty plus yrs of working mostly on my feet in blue collar jobs has taken it’s toll.

  162. 162.

    Ruckus

    @? Martin:
    Take my advice and last. Unless you have managed to save very well and stay well employed throughout the last bit of fuck the working person it ain’t fun trying to figure out how to live on the bare minimum or to actually have to do so. And I see many around for whom the bare minimum is a sleeping bag and a spot in the park. Not my idea of a life.

  163. 163.

    ? Martin

    @Ruckus: We’ve done pretty well between the stock market and the California housing market. I’ll have 35 years in my pension at age 61, which gets me 95% of my income. That’s worth holding out for. Toss SS on top and we’ll be retiring large.

    My dad retired at 50 and he had a few hundred grand in savings mostly due to the simultaneous divorce and sale of their home. He bought a busted mobile home cash in a cheap area and used his newly free time to fix it up and mostly lived out of his garden until age 62. His investments brought him steadily increasing income, but I think he was living on a few grand per year those first years. The VA was his health care – thankfully he stayed healthy. I wouldn’t have a problem doing that, but Ms Martin would object. I still have two kids to put through college, so our true financial state is fairly unknown until those costs become clear.

  164. 164.

    sharl

    @Trooptrap Tripetrope: IIRC Second City was a kind of farm club for comedians who went on to places like SNL. Inspired by the link provided by Elizabelle at #160, I went looking in YouTube for Bill Murray as Nick the Lounge Singer doing his version of the Star Wars song that was on SNL long, long ago. I found it, sort of (audio only), but what I also found was video of a young Bill Murray doing this character at a Second City stage show (in Vegas, apparently).

    By the way, seeing a Second City show in Chicago sometime in the late 80s was a great evening. According to their Wikipedia entry they are still going strong, and I hope their shows are as funny as that one was 25+ years ago. [And the list of alumni comedians at the Wiki site is impressive.]

  167. 167.

    BillinGlendaleCA

    Didn’t realize that Tom Davis was dead. Loved the Franken and Davis show shorts during the first few seasons, and his appearances on Sen. Al’s show last decade.

    The show sucked except Miley and the female weekend update segment.

  171. 171.

    EriktheRed

    @sharl: They are still going strong. I live in the area and I’ve been to 4 shows over the last few years, every one of them having me almost spit up my drink.

  173. 173.

    john fremont

    @gogol’s wife: I’m so old I remember the 15 year Anniversary Special back in 1990. They played 15 to 30 seconds of the best skits from each year. I laughed through the whole thing. Last night was mostly a letdown.

  174. 174.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Trooptrap Tripetrope: Ever see their early-ish sketch “SCTV’s Thursday Night LIve”? SCTV’s humor wasn’t usually very mean, but it was probably the most vicious thing they ever aired, ripping apart the competition’s flaws, and it was hilarious, even though they were picking on the show’s classic early era and SNL’s worst times were still ahead of it (just a couple of months ahead, in fact).

    There’s a bit where someone proudly announces that he’s consuming an illegal drug (and that’s the whole joke), captions on the chyron below audience members that say “This guy is stupid!”, a garbage-pail sketch where everyone has to get on stage for no particular reason.

    The funniest thing about it was that two of the cast members prominently involved in the sketch, Tony Rosato and Robin Duke, went to Saturday Night Live not long after.

  177. 177.

    Bob In Portland

    There was something funny because I laughed at it. For the life of me, I don’t remember which skit it was. We drifted over to “Shameless” after an hour or so.

  178. 178.

    Jacel

    @Elizabelle: Al Franken’s movie “Stuart Saves His Family” is surprisingly good, moving, and funny. As is the Franken book about Mr. Smalley that the movie was derived from.

  179. 179.

    Jacel

    @Karen in GA: Fred shows to so much better comic effect on Portlandia than he ever did on SNL. I’ve been surprised at how consistently good that show has been, even though it’s a Lorne Michaels property.

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