SNL Skit Offensive To Blind People? (or just plain offensive?)

I was in another room of my apartment when I heard the announcement of the Saturday Night Live skit featuring NY Governor David Paterson come over the TV. And the first thing I thought was: "Oh God, they aren't going to make fun of his blindness, are they?"

The second thing I thought was, "Oh God, they're not going to have him hold a bar graph upside down, are they?"


Anyway, it is interesting seeing how split people are on message boards as to whether this skit was offensive or not. What leads one person to say "fuck em if they can't take a joke" and somebody else to say, "this is cruel and hurtful humor?"

Personally? I thought the skit was well below SNL's standard. But this was the show with the "I Jizz In My Pants" music video not too long ago. So maybe it isn't below their standard.

I always stick with: "Sure, it's funny until it's you, your momma, your child, or your friend. If it's you, your momma, your child, or your friend, well, then somebody is going to get their ass kicked." This seems to be one of the ruling factors of the human condition.

Keep Mad TV On The Air And Cancel SNL Instead!

It was with great sadness that I read of the passing of the sketch comedy show Mad TV. I thought the show was great, and as of late more enjoyable than Saturday Night Live. In fact, when we record both Mad TV and SNL on the DVR, I can only sit through the former in its entirety.

I think a lot of it has to do with Mad TV being less of a cult of personality than SNL. SNL has felt for a long time (and maybe forever) as a place where one potential solo character or catchphrase gets debuted after another -- on purpose, as the driving force of the show. As if the personality of the characters and the performers take center stage, as if the moment we see Will Ferrell on screen should be funny in-and-of-itself -- because it's Will Ferrell!

Now Mrs. Swan will never get her own movie.

By contrast, the actors and actresses on Mad TV are chameleons, more or less egoless personages who sacrifice mugging to the camera and getting their closeup (and movie spinoff) for the greater good of the sketch. On Mad TV, the content of the sketches themselves are what drives the show, with the cult of personality coming second (or third, or never). (There were several recurring characters, like Mrs. Swan and Stuart, but they were not the focus of the show.) In that sense, I see Mad TV being far more the child of SCTV than SNL.

Anyway, sorry to see the show go. Hope the actors still get work on those spoof movies. Saw half the cast on "Meet The Spartans" yesterday and I laughed until I cried (though sometimes I just cried).

Who really loses in all this:


















Secretly glad:

When I Hated Will Ferrell

Sean Kleefeld's post about his lack of love for Iron Man brought up the topic of "hating" certain superheroes.

I really cannot think of any superhero I "hate." But I did, at one time, hate Will Ferrell. And he's sort of a superhero.


I remember the distressed look on my friends' faces as I announced, during a discussion of Saturday Night Live, that I hated Will Ferrell. They looked at me as if I killed a puppy. A very cute, oversized, especially hairy puppy.


Why do we hate on certain figures? What drove me to use the word "hate" in conjunction with Will Ferrell?

Well, for starters, that damn cheerleading sketch. Not funny, never was funny, not even when David Duchovny was on it. And David Duchovny makes everything funny.


Also, I never quite cottoned to his character "Mustafa" from Austin Powers, though I have substantially more sympathy for his many trials and misfortunes now.


Furthermore, while he was ostensibly the co-star of the SNL movie Superstar, it was the oft-ignored Harland Williams who really deserved more credit in that film. If it wasn't for Ferrell, Harland Williams might have been America's top bumbling funnyman. Things like that just keep me up at night.

What turned the tide for me on Will Ferrell? His depiction of the loveable manchild in the movie Elf. With Elf, I realized that only bad people hated Will Ferrell. Ferrell was indeed this generation's Dick Van Dyke, or even Tom Poston.


After that, thanks to comedy classics like Anchorman, Talladega Nights, and that ice-skating film with Napoleon Dynamite, I became officially converted to the Cult of Will. I felt ashamed of the hate I once expressed for Ferrell, and that anonymous Wordpress blog I used to write called "Why I Hate Will Ferrell" where I obsessively focused on his body hair and close-set eyes. I took that blog down right away; if I could have burned it, I would have. St. Paul in Damascus much?

So that is how I stopped hating and learned to love Will Ferrell.

Now I hate John C. Reilly, because he is a punk-ass.