Tuesday, May 22, 2012
The Best of This Season's 'Saturday Night Live'
Now that Season 37 of Saturday Night Live has come to a close, let’s talk about some of the highlights from the past 22 episodes.
What struck me most about this season was the apparent hunger for new hit sketches. While the show’s tendency to recycle worn sketch premises lives on, Seth Meyers and his writing staff have eased back a bit from tentpoling the lineup with pieces from seasons past, occasionally striking gold with a new premise, and hustling to bring it back as soon as possible. J Pop America Fun Time Now, Drunk Uncle, Lord Wyndemere, Bein’ Quirky with Zooey Deschanel, Piers Morgan Tonight, and The Californians — children of Season 37 — were all reprised within a few episodes of their first appearances.
With the departure of Jorma Taccone and Akiva Schaffer at the end of last season, the digital short, after enjoying five years as SNL's most popular segment, fell to a sporadic hit-or-miss status. In its ashes arose a crop of fresh live sketches, often with dark, bizarre premises, which have crept up from the final (often cut) 10-to-1 timeslot into the front half of the show. Sketches like Les Jeunes de Paris, Brutus the sexually abused monkey, and Slow Motion Hallway let their freak flags fly more than typical SNL sketches. READ MORE
"When we finally caught the first individuals by hand, we noticed that it dyes one's fingers yellow when it is handled. The scientific name (Diasporus citrinobapheus) of this new frog refers to this characteristic and means yellow dyer rainfrog."
—Scientists. So literal-minded. Anyway, NEW FROG! | May 22, 2012
Grand Ole Opry Members Who Have Automatic Porn Names
• B.J. Thomas
• Bobby Bare
• Carrie Underwood
• Leroy Van Dyke
• Boxcar Willie
• Bashful Brother Oswald
• Rod Brasfield
• Ferlin Husky READ MORE
Every Dish That Sucks At Le Bernardin, From 1986 To 2012
THIS JUST IN, NEW YORK TIMES WEB FRONT PAGER: the bread at Le Bernardin could be better! As the new food critic reaffirms Le Bernardin's four stars, we must note that this is the first time that a complaint about the bread has been made. What a long trip it's been for the little fish shack on 51st street and its ever-present four stars. Let's look back!
Here is the 2007 four-star review; here is Ruth Reichl in 1995. Here is the 1989 revisiting. Here is the March, 1986 original review, when the restaurant was three months old. (Fun fact: Le Bernardin was mentioned in 57 articles in the New York Times from its opening until the end of 1987. So maybe the New Foodie-ism is just like the Old Foodie-ism.)
And on nearly every trip, there's something the reviewer just did not like. READ MORE
Absolute Transparency, or Love in the Time of Google
When Andrew told me he’d read my essay, he had no way of knowing what it meant to me. He didn’t even say it outright, come to think of it, only confessed to Googling me. It was the quietness of his admission that was so jarringly lovely.
“Everybody Googles everybody,” he said with a sheepish smile, and suddenly we shared a secret. He was right, of course — everybody Googles everybody, usually to find out if a potential mate is married or a serial killer or a Republican — but sometimes there are other things to be found. I know because I am overwhelmingly Google-able.
In 2009 I’d come out, so to speak, in a national women’s magazine, writing about Klippel-Trenaunay Syndrome (K-T), the rare congenital disorder that deforms my body. The essay caught fire. Loads of news outlets reprinted it, and suddenly my face was plastered on the AOL home page. I was the No. 8 most-searched term on Google the day the story broke, with the name of my syndrome beating me out for the top spot. As a writer, it was thrilling. As the subject (as all memoirists are), it was terrifying. Suddenly I was highly searchable — and that meant to everyone, including men I was dating. The initial exhilaration of being published gave way to my new reality: I was exposed, for better or worse. READ MORE
Here you will find a collection of pictures in which Steven Patrick Morrissey looks somewhat sanguine. | May 22, 2012
Lobstah And Crafts! A Summertime Guide To Portland (The Real One, In Maine)
Portland, Maine, was my first city. I grew up outside it, in Cape Elizabeth, so I always think I know it, but every time I go home, I find it slowly turning into a better place than I remembered, maybe even the place I’ll want to return to someday. What I loved about Portland growing up is still true: there are lots of bookstores, especially used ones, old bars and vintage shops that are nearly junk shops. It is still quiet, with beautiful skies, and the ocean on three sides. But now there's also excellent locavore food culture, local coffee culture, local breweries. We used to dread attempts at food more foreign than what we called “Italian,” and now there are open-air bars with Belgian beer and mussels right from the coast side by side with some amazing new ramen joint. Now when I come home, I love to see my mom, but I also make plans for dinner out most nights.
Most people who come to Maine drive right to the beach. Growing up, I always found this to be a little funny—it’s still very cold—but when it’s hot out, I will say, it’s a pleasure to throw yourself in. READ MORE
What I Was Left With After I Quit My Job: The Ability to Leave Town
For the last year and a half I worked in business development for a start-up. In March, I gave seven weeks notice and moved into freelance consulting, a fancy word for quasi-employment. An inventory of my non-monetary assets tells the story of why I left:
US Airways Miles: 386,359 miles/Chairman status
The start-up was in Boston. I live in Washington, D.C. I spent over 300 hours commuting from my front door to theirs over the course of a year.
I can fly around the world with 386,359 miles. For 14,000 more, I can do it twice. The best part is the two free first-class upgrades. READ MORE
"I'm a kind of half-arsed hermit; I've always had an open house and people visit me." | May 22, 2012
Terrible Parenting Creating A Generation Of Screen Addicts
"Parents who constantly check and use smartphones and iPads around their children may be driving them into a lifelong dependency on TV and computer screens, according to a leading psychologist. Dr Aric Sigman said such 'passive parenting' in the face of the new media environment is actually a form of neglect. He will tell a group of Britain’s leading doctors today that the growing addiction could leave a generation suffering damage to the body as well as the brain."
—This is just the way The Machines planned it, right?
Photo by Anatoliy Samara, via Shutterstock
"A critic’s notebook article on Monday about the prevalence of standing ovations at Broadway shows described incorrectly the quickness with which audience members appeared to be on their feet at a performance of the current revival of 'Death of a Salesman.' Their ovation seemed to occur within a millisecond — one-thousandth of a second — not a megasecond, which is one million seconds." | May 22, 2012
The Sinister Joe Biden Conspiracy To Protect President Obama
[W]hatever his miscues Mr. Biden was a respected Washington figure. And why not? The senator from Delaware had earned that respect the old-fashioned way: by embracing virtually every enthusiasm that passed for wisdom inside our Beltway. On foreign policy alone, Mr. Biden helped cut off aid to South Vietnam in 1975 after the North invaded. He pushed arms control while opposing the Reagan military buildup. He voted against the Strategic Defense Initiative, voted against the first Gulf War, and so on down the line.Now he has become a punch line for late-night television. Of course, that makes the vice president a great convenience for our late-night comics. It relieves them of having to do any jokes at Mr. Obama's expense.
—Oh my God, this thing goes all the way to the top.
"Computer spell checks have created an ‘auto-correct generation’ unable to spell common words such as ‘necessary’ and ‘separate’, a survey has found. Only one in five adults out of 2,000 who took a short spelling test were able to answer all five questions correctly. Sixty-five per cent failed to spell ‘necessary’ correctly while 33 per cent struggled with ‘definitely’ and ‘separate’."
—I mess up "separate" all the time, so who am I to judge? I also have a surprising lifelong conflict with "recommend." | May 22, 2012
Killer Mike Should Buy That Vial Of Ronald Reagan's Blood
About 3 to 4 months ago, I contacted the Reagan National Library and spoke to the head of the library, a Federal Agent. I told him what I had, how I came across it and so on. We spoke for about 45 minutes. The reason that I contacted the Reagan National Library was to see if they would like to purchase it from me. He indicated that if I was interested in donating it he would see to it that he would take care of all of the arrangements. Prior to hanging up the phone, he said to me, do me a favor, don’t move from where you are, I will call you back within 30 minutes but I have to make a couple of phone calls to seek legal counsel, consult with National Archives, the FBI and other three or four letter agencies that I have heard of. I said am I in any kind of trouble or will there be some black cars/suv’s or helicopters hovering above my home and he said not yet but possibly in the very near future depending on what he learned from the phone calls he had to make.READ MORE
