A Lot of Night Music

Here, appropriately enough for the day, is a labor of Questlove that opened his excellent documentary about Saturday Night Live’s musical legacy. You can watch the mashup montage directly in his Instagram post or as embedded a couple of paragraphs into an article on the NBC website. The entirety of Ladies and Gentlemen… 50 Years of SNL Music re-airs tomorrow night, Feb. 15th, from 8 to 11 p.m. ET on the network and is streamable on Peacock.



John MacDonald is credited as editor of the montage, and Oz Rodríguez as co-
director on the special. Questlove’s 2021 doc Summer of Soul, about the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival, is for my money one of the best films of the decade, period, and not just because I hadn’t seen Marilyn McCoo in too long; you can watch it on Hulu.

Peacock debuted four 1-hour chapters of a documentary series marking Saturday
Night Live’s 50th in January, with a concert featuring many past musical guests streaming tonight. SNL’s entire catalog of nearly 1,000 episodes is on the service as well. The anniversary special is set to air live on NBC Sunday night, Feb. 16th, at 8 p.m. ET, preceded by a red-carpet show at 7.

Don’t sleep on Ladies and Gentlemen… even if you’re far more interested in SNL’s comedic heritage than its musical guests. Music as part of that comedic heritage is also deftly explored, from sketch jingles and The Lonely Island shorts to celebrity impressions and musicians as hosts.


Related: Mad Mix • Swift Kicks • My Other Saturday Notes

No Small Parts

One tiny spoiler for Ant-Man coming up after this odd image…

Don Pardo 1918-2014

Photo: Al Levine for NBC © 1982.

What’s most surprising about Don Pardo’s passing in August is either half of this sentence taken with the other: He was 96 and still working as the primary voice of Saturday Night Live.

TV Topics

This post is currently down for maintenance.

Dans la Nuit

I came across the image below after clicking on a bad link at Warner Bros.’ French site last month for my review of The Artist.



The studio probably has an “Error 404 / Page Not Found” message spelled out like the Hollywood sign in English on its domestic site, of course, and that would be a moment’s amusement at best; versions of the most mundane things in other languages than one’s own, however, even if they’re somewhat familiar, can seem... weird. N’est-ce pas?

And speaking of French, I’ve had a brief Slate interview with Tarran Killam on the origins of “Les Jeunes de Paris” sitting around for about a year.

Muppet Monday

Jimmy Fallon returned to Saturday Night Live this weekend — and so did Horatio Sanz, Tracy Morgan, and Chris Kattan, to help him close out 2011 with a rendition of their old standard “Christmas Is Number One”.


Screencap © 2011 NBCUniversal Media.

The last time the song was performed on the show, seven years ago, Sanz was the only one of the four still in the cast, and stopped the tune almost before it had begun when he realized there was nobody to back him up. Until, that is, Kermit the Frog popped up to tell Horatio that his friends would happy to join in... Here’s the video from this past Saturday, to jog your memory, and the previous clip with the Muppets.


Related: Muppet Monday (Nov. 28th) • Emerald Sit-In • Stocking Stuff (2011)

Muppet Monday

Jason Segel was joined by the Muppets in his monologue this weekend on Saturday Night Live. The real highlight, though, was Kermit the Frog showing up during Weekend Update to join anchor Seth Meyers in one of my favorite recurring segments in all of SNL. Ladies and gentlemen: Really!?! with Seth & Kermit. Yaaayyy!!!


Screencap © 2011 NBCUniversal Media.

I must say that Kermit oversold it at times, but at least they let the follow-up to the “sausage casings” line go with relative subtlety.


Related: Emerald Sit-In • Muppet Monday (Oct. 17th) • All Right
for Typing • Muppet Monday (Dec. 12th) • Oliver and Company

All Right for Typing (Redux)

The last time Saturday Night Live ran a Fox & Friends sketch, I transcribed the litany of “corrections” that scrolled across the screen and ended up with what was for about a day a very, very popular post. We’ve become used to being able to find almost anything we want on the Internet, quickly, so to do my part I’ve just repeated April’s effort.

Once again, I’ve left all typographical conventions intact, from the line breaks to the occasional omission of a necessary clause-ending comma to the lack of italics around TV-series titles to the failure to properly hyphenate “Spider-Man” — except that I couldn’t help but put in periods on the last few items, which as aired were missing, for consistency’s sake. (To an inveterate copy-editor like me such restraint doesn’t come easily, I assure you.) I had to go through the whole thing a few times from the start, since the DVR I’m using is actually less responsive than the VCR used last time around, but I’m pretty sure I got everything. The relevant text is copyright 2011 NBC Studios and reproduced as a public service.

You’re welcome.

My Other Saturday Notes

I don’t expect brilliance from Saturday Night Live these days. But it’s not impossible, so I still hope for it. A genius moment and genuine belly laugh may come from the old standby of celebrity impersonations or from something utterly bizarre like that French dance sketch that first popped up in October — even from a rare recurring character who somehow stays hysterically funny, like Bill Hader’s Stefon.


Photo: Mary Ellen Matthews for NBCUniversal Media © 2011.

With few exceptions, in fact, the weirder SNL gets anymore the better.

All Right for Typing

I hadn’t planned on reviewing Saturday Night Live in brief or at length anytime soon. But as long as I was pausing my VCR — yes, really — to read the quick-scrolling text from this week’s Fox & Friends sketch, I figured I might as well transcribe it to share on the blog before heading to bed. (And of course that led to me typing up my thoughts on the show in general.)

Here’s what zipped along the screen under the guise of what the fact-checkers had to say, in case you’re interested, copyright 2011 NBC Studios.

President Barack Obama’s middle name is not “Danger”.

First Lady Michelle Obama was born in Illinois, to human parents.

“The first trimester” refers to a stage of pregnancy.
It is not a Tom Clancy novel.

Boing!

I’ve joined my grandparents for dinner the past couple of evenings, although that’s the extent of the similarities between this post and last year’s “Bing!”.



On Wednesday, Grandmom and I spoke about Lost. I’m taking a break from that subject for at least one post, however, since the coming weeks will be full of it.

SNL, &c.

I was glad to see a relaxed but not too relaxed Vice-President Joe Biden on The Daily Show last night.


Screencap © 2009 NBCUniversal Media.

The VP was articulate, knowledgable, and good-humored, a far cry from the gruff-voiced, gaffe-prone parody in the cold open of Saturday Night Live three evenings prior. Biden has made his share of painfully inartful statements, for sure, and it’s fine to razz him for his tendencies to speak too long or say too much. He’s smart, though, and Jason Sudeikis’ impression of him as a gravelly loudmouth sounds nothing like Biden — to me, a fatal error, because good impressions are far more about the voice than the visual. I’m thinking of Dan Aykroyd’s unlikely evocation of Jimmy Carter even with a mustache on early SNL, Gary Cole nailing Robert Reed’s tone as Mike Brady in the big-screen Brady Bunch flicks, or Frank Caliendo’s quick changes from John Madden to Charles Barkley to George W. Bush when visiting David Letterman on The Late Show. (Caliendo is better at stand-up than he was on his short-lived cable series.)

Moe’d Man

I hadn’t tried it yet when writing about Mad Men the other day, but now that I’ve done so I cheerfully direct you to “Mad Men Yourself” on the show’s official website.

Here’s me:



You get just enough choices at each stage that the process doesn’t become a chore yet it still manages — in my case, at least — to produce a surprising likeness. I did think it was strange, however, that options for facial hair included a full beard and a goatee but not the kind of mustache-with-goatee combo I currently sport.

The artwork for “Mad Men Yourself” was done by the designer and illustrator Dyna Moe, whose portfolio is an absolute delight. Also on the Mad Men website are a cocktail guide to era-appropriate libations, a four-minute video recap of Season Two, and a stunning photo gallery of the cast as they’ll look in Season Three [all bad links].

Given the series’ return on AMC Sunday at 10 p.m., I’m pleased to report, NBC is tonight repeating Jon Hamm’s hosting turn on Saturday Night Live, which featured “Don Draper’s Guide to Picking Up Women”.


Related: Mad Mix • Ol’ Pointy Ears Is Back • Screen Savor

30 Days of Tonight

Has it really been a month since Conan O’Brien’s debut as Tonight Show host?



I took a look out of curiosity — as well as respect for both Conan and a late-night institution that dates back to before even Johnny Carson. The filmed opening was funny, but the rest of the taped bits offered diminishing returns and my Will Ferrell tolerance is low, so the main take-away for me was merely a vague excitement around the zeitgeist. One also has to wonder exactly what NBC has done to the TV landscape by slotting Jay Leno at 10 p.m. (ET) weeknights come the fall.

Swift Kicks

The CMT Music Awards show last week opened with a laugh-out-loud — or at least grin-really-wide — collaboration between T-Pain, who even talks in vocoder, and Taylor Swift called “Thug Story”. [1:30]