Sunday, February 04, 2007

Saturday Night Re-Lived

Yeah, I stayed home again on a Saturday night, but new episodes of Saturday Night Live are so rare to come by that it's almost always worth forgoing unnecessary Kamikazee shots and group circle dancing to Mark Morrison b-sides for the opportunity to catch a Digital Short before the dude at work with too much hair gel forwards it to you and begins to quote it in your ear before your browser can even load. So sit back on a Sunday and get caught up on what some annoying motherfucker's going to be stuffing your inbox with tomorrow.

1) Body Fusion - the team behind SNL's Digital Shorts prove once again their uncanny eye for visual satire for impeccably lampooning '80s fitness videos that you awkwardly had to watch your mom work out to when you faked sick during pre-school.


2) Jo-Jo the Valet - Amy Poehler proves once again she is a comic genius and deserves to usurp from Sarah Silverman the title of Girl the Geeky Guys Want to Awkwardly Fondle in Their Dorm Room.


3) The Dakota Fanning Show - unfortunately this version of the clip doesn't show the mise en scene that took us from Drew Barrymore's monologue, across the audience and right up to the sketch's set, but I'm sure Robert Altman's estate is collecting some secret royalties. Again, Amy Poehler kills it while Keenan continues to hone his craft as a peripheral cast member consistently delivering as the ubiquitous minority sidekick in celebrity talk show sketches.


4) Drew Barrymore's opening monologue - Andy Samberg once again underscores his preternatural role as a contemporary sex symbol. Video not available right now, unfortunately, probably because it contained songs that NBC couldn't license for online use. But either way, I'm pretty sure you'll see it some time this week when Hair Gel tracks it down and shoves it in your inbox.

Vh1: Friend, Foe, Frenemy?

I am firmly convinced that had I not had Vh1 freely fed into my apartment as an undergrad my G.P.A. would have been 0.6 points higher and I wouldn't currently be sitting in a windowless bedroom that smells like paint updating an internet TV blog for an audience of two (you know who you are, my sole RSS feeder). I had unfettered access, though, to that crack of cable, airing endless marathons of count down lists that legitimately had me wondering, "who DOES have the #4 hardest rock body?!" I would sit on that 9 foot couch, a Chipotle burrito sitting on my chest, and actively know what it was like to have television eat my brain.

Three years later Vh1 has taken its calculus of narcotizing crap and out of it actually spun a viable media platform: Celeb-reality. Shows like Flavor of Love, The Surreal Life, and I Love New York have given the network some of the highest ratings in the land of cable and, as Bill Carter in today's New York Times points out, pioneered the path for a bizarre new programming maxim:

Take a pop cultural idol from the past 20 years or so — idol being defined so broadly as to include almost anyone who ever struck the public consciousness even a glancing blow — and place him or her in some reality television context.
Carter's article raises the obvious criticisms levelled against shows like Flavor of Love, which opponents claim reify black stereotypes of minstrels and hoochies. Most interesting, however, is the paradoxical role Vh1 seeks to establish for itself as the gatekeepers of "Acceptable TV," an upcoming show starring Jack Black that "dovetails neatly with the general skepticism that VH1 executives have about the value of the Internet vs. traditional television."

Here we have Vh1, the network that brought us Mini-Me peeing on a Brady Brother, as the final arbiter of taste between what passes for measly user generated content and broadcast worthy entertainment. Maybe that passes for irony, but I'm not exactly sure of the term's definition. If only I'd spent more time in the library as an undergrad than on my couch inhaling burritos taking note of the top 40 most awesomely dirrrty songs of '04.