SNL Problems

January Jones' Saturday Night Live performance was so abysmal that it's prompted the onset of the yearly "How To Fix SNL" articles. Here's EW's particularly poorly-executed version.

My argument would be that there's always at least one host each year who so completely fouls things up that you can't imagine why anyone would keep watching. Last year's season premiere was Michael Phelps; he was a disaster, there was a lot of hoopla, and then SNL settled down into what turned out to be one of it's strongest seasons since the show's inception.

Of EW's suggestions, a few are actually well-taken, particularly their note of how the show's become too reliant on Kristen Wiig. Wiig's become the show's latest breakout star, which is a big deal when you consider what a boy's club SNL has historically been. I've been reading Tom Shales and James Andrew Miller's SNL history, Live From New York, and in its 35 year history, SNL hasn't had a female of this talent and popularity since... Gilda Radner, probably. Last year, Wiig was in 124 sketches - no one else even broke 100 - and yet while it was clear who the star of the show was, it never felt like overkill (part of that might have been early-season emphasis on Tina Fey and Amy Poehler, both gone this season). This year, it seems like it's been a mess of kah-RAZY Wiig characters - especially on nights when the host is weaker and they need to rely on someone else. Since January Jones couldn't even manage to read her lines off the cue cards*, the show devolved into a one-woman show, with Wiig flailing wildly to hold things together. The Wiig backlash has started, and it won't be long before people are talking about how sick they are of seeing her do "the same thing over and over." This is unfair: Wiig is fantastic, and on a bad night, she simply can't out-energy the deficiencies of the show. Let's be honest - none of the writing this week was any good either.

That said, it was one bad show, and just one week after Taylor Swift's triumph that everyone's already forgotten about. I'm betting donuts to dollars that Joseph Gordon-Levitt kills tomorrow night, and by Monday, all the bad press goes away. If you don't believe me, remember I'm the guy who correctly predicted two weeks ago that January Jones would be an unmitigated disaster.

Though maybe I'm the kind of guy who can only sense failure. It would certainly seem appropriate.

Anyway, here's Jones' only good sketch from last week, gently spoofing 60's house manners in a manner less effective but at least considerably shorter than any Mad Men episode.

* You know it's a bad night when everyone starts their critique with the statement "January Jones looked beautiful last night, but -"

Jason Segel remains awesome.

Segel showed up on stage at a Swell Season show in Los Angeles on Wednesday and played a song he'd written to try to get a date. It's fantastic, and features a chorus where he sings aloud what's ostensibly his phone number while Marketa Irglova holds it aloft for easy dialing.

Sample verse:

Well, I know you're charmed by my lovely on-screen persona
Sweet and humble, that's certainly my career
But it would be a shame for you to miss this one-time offer
To make love to Jason Segel this year.

If you're curious whether or not he makes reference to showing off his penis in Forgetting Sarah Marshall... well, you really shouldn't be.

The first "Best Music Of The Decade" article I've seen worth posting.

The A.V. Club did a Best Music of the Decade post that I enjoyed sifting through. I overall felt that they'd made some solid choices, though I'd argue they selected the wrong album from a number of bands, including The National (it should've been Boxer instead of Alligator), Arcade Fire (Neon Bible instead of Funeral), Modest Mouse (Good News For People Who Love Bad News instead of The Moon and Antarctica), and not only did they select the wrong White Stripes record (how can it not be Elephant?), they put it way too high - White Blood Cells is the top record of the decade? Impossible.

I think they put far too much emphasis on "breakout" records and how bands released albums that "defined a sound," rather than saying "which one of these albums is the best?" There's also an obvious indie-bias in the list, but I don't mind that - that's where all the good music was the last ten years.

By the way, would you have believed ten years ago that the website with the strongest interviews and most insightful opinions on pop culture would be The Onion? I wouldn't. They manage to do weekly what magazines like Esquire and Vanity Fair can only manage occasionally: provide the best possible interview of a particular celebrity at the exact moment of his or her breakout.

So, so, so creepy.

The church that I work at launched a foster ministry about a year ago, apparently it's going very well. I hadn't given it much thought until I walked into the building the other day and found these carboard displays.

They're pictures of all the local kids in the ministry, taken in action - they're all playing football or waving at the camera - except they've been blown up into full-size cutouts, like a celebrity-endorsed beer display in a convenience store. Then, on top of the cutouts, small cardboard signs with fake hand-lettering are pasted, advertising that these children are orphans in need of a good home. "I could make your family complete!" says one. "Do you have room in your heart for me?" asks another. The biggest shocker was the one closest to the sanctuary door, where a slightly pudgy girl had a sign simply labeled "Just love me!" It is infinitely sadder than the "Pet Of The Week" section of the local paper, and considerably more humiliating. 

Unfortunately, due to a mix-up at the printer, they aren't quite life-sized (they're about 20% too small) so there's this disconcerting, inhuman element to them - especially since there are dozens of these displays,each placed about 20 feet away from the next one. It's like our church is being occupied by a tiny, needy, child army.

This being the place of my employment, it probably wouldn't behoove me to comment excessively on the displays - or the mindset necessary to create such a campaign - but I will leave you with several pictures I took around the church of some of the more memorable entries.

Jackie Key - "With Or Without You"

During our "Dischord" series in the Loft, I caught wind that Jackie was gonna play U2's "With Or Without You." She was just back in town from recording her debut record, and I thought that this might be a performance to catch. We don't have the capability to record each camera separately during the service, so I worked with the Loft's director, Kim Sumrall, to see what he was doing and give him some ideas for the look, then I snuck out into the congregation to record on my own video camera. I ended up editing that together with the program feed of the service (I actually used bits of all three services we did that weekend - you might notice the lead guitarist's shirt changes) to create this video, which I think ended up coming out pretty nicely, all things considered.