Posts Tagged ‘Saturday Night Live’

Prime time is on trails, not TV

February 6, 2019

The February wind was making the clouds skate around all over the sky yesterday.

The State of the Union (El Rancho Pendejo Edition) is as follows:

Herself is now working 10 hours a day, four days a week, so as to have a three-day weekend each and every week.

I am working not quite so much, my career having developed a slow leak at the potholed intersection of Bicycle and Journalism.

Trail time: When the bike is leaning up against the rock I’m probably not going to fall off of it.

I have a cartoon to draw for Bicycle Retailer and Industry News, and a review to finish for Adventure Cyclist, and beyond that it’s anybody’s guess. Terra incognita. Here be dragons. All hope abandon, ye who scribble here.

Speaking of hope abandoned, I can’t wait to see the ratings for last night’s comedy special from Capitol Hill. Knowing that Charlie Pierce would be on the case, we gave it a miss, reasoning that if we want to watch a loon pretending to be president we can always dredge up some old “SNL” footage of Chevy Chase playing Gerald Ford.

Instead we caught up on “Crashing,” the Pete Holmes thing on HBO. It’s only so-so — Marc Maron and Bill Burr are more my style, when ol’ Freckles isn’t raving about ball sports — but you get to see some funny cameos by twisted comics like Dave Attell and Jeff Ross.

Beforehand I engaged in wheel sport, taking a quick out-and-back spin on the Voodoo Nakisi, which has been neglected while I review the Jamis Aurora Elite. My mad trail skillz have atrophied, and I was dabbing on sections a fat 4-year-old could handle on a balance bike, but it sure beat working. It beat not working too.

Mirror, mirror

January 7, 2019

Mirror, mirror, on the bar; who’s the loony in that car?

I got back on the bike on Saturday for a short spin to blow the ol’ carbon out of the cylinders.

The roads were crusty and dusty, where they weren’t wet and/or icy, so I needed something with fenders (the Soma DC) plus winter tights and a truly ancient Pearl Izumi hi-viz jacket. Seriously, this Day-Glo duster must date to 1994 or thereabouts. It’s old enough to be living in our basement (if we had one) while we paid off its college loans. “B.A.” stands for “barista’s assistant?” Who knew?

There were lots of hi-viz jackets and tights traversing Tramway, so I guess everyone was as sick as I was of huddling indoors or shoveling snow. But boom, come Sunday, we were back in the icebox and I decided to go for a squishy run instead of a second ride.

This time we got rain, which was a nice change. Don’t gotta shovel no rain.

Speaking of shoveling, I see Wally O’Steele hopes to lie straight to our faces in prime time tomorrow, eliminating the middleman (the “fake news”).

I don’t believe that the networks’ news departments are obliged to broadcast fiction — that’s the purview of their entertainment divisions — so p’raps the usual filters will remain in place.

Or maybe Comedy Central could air this piece of performance art, with Garrett Morris on a split screen, riffing on an old “Weekend Update” bit from “Saturday Night Live.”

It’d be a two-fer — delivering news for the deaf from the dumb.

• Late update: The networks blew the call, from James Fallows.

Out on a limb

February 8, 2016
It was pleasant enough by afternoon to ride with knee warmers, but it ain't spring yet.

It was pleasant enough by afternoon to ride with knee warmers, but it ain’t spring yet.

We just can’t seem to get in step with mainstream America lately.

The interminable “feets ball” season came to a conclusion yesterday in San Francisco, but we did not watch, as we do not care for the “feets ball,” not even if Bruno Mars and Mark Ronson are performing “Uptown Funk” at halftime. The poor sonsabitches are doomed to do that number for the rest of their lives, or at least until their first hip replacements.

No, instead we watched “Saturday Night Live” a day late, so Herself could catch Comrade Sanders serving up his patented Kamchatka Fried Chicken (“Left Wings Only!”) to the kool kidz in the key white/50+ demographic.

Larry David was hosting, and did his spot-on Sanders impersonation, but the only real laugh-out-loud bits were his monologue and the closer about two rummies (David and Kate McKinnon) deep into the mating ritual at closing time in a bar.

OK, that’s not true. The musical guests, The 1975, were pretty funny, too. But I don’t think they had intended to be.

What’s the ugliest part of your body?

December 14, 2014

Watching a thing called Charli XCX stink up the stage on “Saturday Night Live” I was reminded of one of my favorite Thomas McGuane references, from “Nothing But Blue Skies,” in which another Frank (Copenhaver) muses, “I feel sorry for the young people of today with their stupid fucking tuneless horseshit; that may be a generational judgment but I seriously doubt it.”

Thus today’s Zappadan 2014 selection, from “We’re Only In It For the Money.”