1. The Weekend Update guests on this season's third episode of SNL
   
   I'm finally catching up on full Saturday Night Live episodes from this season, and I have to say, almost every sketch on the episode Anna Faris hosted was pretty disappointing. However, the two guests during weekend update, Kristen Wiig as travel writer Judy Grimes and Darrel Hammond as Bill Clinton, were absolutely fantastic:
   
   
   
   
   
   
2. A New York Times blog linked to one of my Table Matters stories
   
   Pretty neat.
   
   
3. Cheese
   
   Seriously though, now that the weather is getting colder, am I the only person who wants to eat warm cheese all of the time? I doubt it.

1. Wayne Coyne's House. He has Fred Armisen over as a house guest!
2. Babydisco!
3. Comedy Shows are doing well with the election. Yeah, we knew that. But did you know that SNL's ratings are up a full 50% from last season?
4. In parched areas of California, dowsing is regaining popularity.

Former SNL writer, current New Yorker writer, and generally awesome guy Jack Handey did a great interview on The Sound of Young America a few weeks ago. As someone who attempts to write both live comedy and humor essay-type stuff, I really liked hearing about Jack's writing process and how he found his comedic voice. In fact, I liked this interview so much that I've embedded the clip here for you in my blog. It's a gift! Happy Thursday!

The Sound of Young America: Jack Handey

First, a mash-up of old Fred Astaire clips with Michael Jackson's "Smooth Criminal." The guy who made the mash-up said this about it:

I love both Astaire and Michael Jackson. I want young people to know Astaire stuff, that is why I made this.

Well, "Smooth Criminal" is my favorite Michael Jackson song, and I am totally sold on needing to watch more Fred Astaire films now. Via BoingBoing.

Second is the new Gnarles Barkley video, which was posted on Best Week Ever and probably about 5,000 other blogs.

Not only do I like the song quite a bit, but I enjoy the addition of Justin Timberlake. Justin is one of those entertainers I do not like for his music or his looks, but rather for doing things like this:

Maybe it's been like this for a while and I just didn't notice, but NBC.com has finally made its videos embedable. That's nice. I always thought it was idiotic that they pulled all of their clips off of YouTube before they had their own video system set up to embed.

To celebrate that fix, I would like to share this wonderful clip from SNL of Will Forte as third-party presidential candidate Tim Calhoun:

I also like that NBC insists on putting that little "Watch Full-Length Episodes" blurb underneath the video even though you cannot actually watch full-length episodes of SNL on their website. Thanks guys.

We all have fantasies. As humans, the desire for things we can't have is embedded in our core. It's what drives us to populate the internet with sexy Kirk and Picard fan fiction. But sometimes, there are some fantasy mash-ups that are so amazing, so explosive that our brains can't even comprehend them.

And sometimes, we discover that those fantasies are real.

Introducing Thunder Ant.

This sketch comedy group is comprised of FRED ARMISEN, the awesome comedian who is currently on Saturday Night Live, and CARRIE BROWNSTEIN, formerly of seminal (yes, I said seminal) lady rock band Sleater-Kinney. One of my favorite comedians is making sketch comedy with a member of one of my favorite bands. Holy shit. And it's good! Oh, it's so good. For example, this quote:

"I can firewalk just across my lawn or my living room, and I firewalk in my bathroom sometimes, just when I get out of the shower..."

My brain is having so many explosions of joy right now.

Here's an excellent live clip of Kristen Wiig and Melinda Hill as tooth fairies:

I ran into this nugget of gold on the ol' IMDB there, and I'm very excited. I can't say that the plot sounds particularly amazing – "A pair of well-meaning, but socially inept brothers try to find their perfect mates in order to provide their dying father with a grandchild." – but let's look at the people involved with this: It's directed by Bob Odenkirk from Mr. Show. Written by Will Forte, who I have very much been enjoying on Saturday Night Live. Starring Mr. Forte, Kristen Wiig (my current SNL favorite), Jenna Fischer from The Office, and Will Arnett from Arrested Development. Assuming the script is solid (oh, please let the script be solid), this movie is going to be like comedy porn for me. It’s out in August. Squee!

I've started watching Saturday Night Live again recently. I didn't really want to – most of what I 'd seen in the past few years had been pretty lackluster, a collection of fart jokes that paled in comparison to the old Steve Martin/Dan Akroyd days of glory. Still, two things brought me back to SNL: 1) that Amy Poehler, one of my favorite comedians, joined the cast and 2) it's a shitty thing to talk about how you like comedy and then not know what's going on currently in the comedy world.

I will say, I've been pleasantly surprised by some of the stuff I've seen, and I have a decent amount of respect for a number of the actors on there, especially Kristen Wiig and Maya Rudolph. It's always refreshing to see funny female comedians in places of prominence, and they're both doing some pretty amazing stuff. I've become especially obsessed with Kristen’s Target Lady and Two A-Holes sketches.

Unfortunately, I have also found my share of bathroom humor and cheap shots. It's not that I dislike those things as a whole, but there's so many of them, which points to a larger problem – these guys pull together an hour of sketch comedy in a week. A week. I don't care if you have 20 brilliant comedic minds writing and acting, a week is not a lot of time. And so what could be a gorgeous, tight half-hour sketch comedy show gets filled with fluff and pumped up to an hour.

And of course, I need to recognize that SNL is one of the largest comedy shows out there, and their target audience is huge. A lot of the jokes, I'm sure, are crafted for broad, base appeal – I'm not going to like them all. Still, it's sad to see a bunch of great comedians working together to create what boils down to 10-20 minutes of really solid material a week. But I'm still watching.