Tag: #SNL

  • BLACK FRIDAY!!!

    When I hear anyone mention “Black Friday” this is what I think of.

    Me, I’m going to be sleeping in on Friday.

  • Thanks, Alex

    I think I need to take a break from the news. I could talk about South Carolina, or that Harvey Weinstein was just found guilty on two counts.

    But what I really want to talk about is listening to Parliament.

    What has brought this about recently is that we showed the kid “Guardians of the Galaxy, and Vol. 2” this weekend, and she completely latched on to the movies, the characters, and the music. (She’s been running around the playground telling the other kids that she’s Gamora.) We added both soundtracks to a playlist for her, which means we have been listening to it pretty much non-stop. That’s not a complaint.

    Vol. 2’s soundtrack has Parliament’s “Flash Light” on it, and this is how we get all of this tied together.

    I have some time for myself this day to work in the home office, and this would make a great time to start listening to Parliament again.

    I know the first time I heard/saw them, and that was on Saturday Night Live in 1986. (I know this only because I can look it up, not that the date was seared into my brain.) Watching George Clinton, Parliament-Funkadelic did leave me a little confused, as I knew it was a band, but the music and attitude on display was not like anything I had seen before.

    Jump ahead five years, and being in 9th grade I make that friend who loves Parliament, and my music horizons are broadened in a most needed way. The Mothership Connection, and Bootsy Collins, and the funk, and for a little white kid growing up in the suburbs, it was like getting invited to the party with the cool kids.

    I mean, I want funk uncut.

  • Compartmentalizing

    I just have trouble saying that word, let alone spelling it.

    I think that was what I was trying to write about yesterday when I was speaking about Brett Kavanaugh.

    I don’t think I was very good at it, as a day later, I now feel I know what I was trying to say.

    And then that white dude got fired from SNL before he every performed on the show. This is another white guy, who should have known better.

    There was a piece about Shane Gillis getting fired that I think was very insightful. The comedian who wrote it made a very good point that most comedians punch down with their jokes, and most comedians are white men. It’s just lazy humor, and it always has been. As some comedians were lamenting that we live in an age where you “can’t joke about anything anymore,” but I have to disagree. If I might point out, 40 years ago, Asian Americans weren’t “cool” with being made fun of by white guys because 40 years ago, no one asked Asian Americans, “Are you cool with being made fun of by white guys?” The funny thing is that 40 years ago you would have gotten the same answer you are getting today, the difference is other people are now asking and listening to the answer.

    Either way, he lost a job for what he said, and he will have to live with that.

  • Gen X: Still a Bunch of Losers

    And I feel completely justified in saying that because I am Gen X, and we are a bunch of losers.

    On SNL this weekend, they had a sketch called “Millennial Millions,” and the clip is below…

    This is a subject matter that I have hit on before, which is that Baby Boomers are ruining everything for everyone, making life way more difficult than they had it.

    Anyway, the part that made me really sit up and laugh was at the 3:15 make when Kenan Thompson as the host laughs at a contestant, then adds, “I’m Gen X. I just sit on the sidelines and watch the world burn.” And there we have it; Nothing better encapsulates my generation than that statement.

    The first person that I know who threw all this shade at us was my friend, and artist Erin Orr, also Gen X, who made this point about three years ago. Her logic to us was more along the lines that Gen X should be moving into the political forefront, as we should be established in careers, earning real money, have families, and the first wave of us just hit 50. In 15 years, retirement will begin to set in. With all of this happening in our generational lives, where are we? Why aren’t we demanding to be on the political scene to have our concerns heard? It’s like we can’t shake our loser persona, and the rest of the world has just moved on to the next group.

    That’s why I’m not real surprised that this story happened, and Gen X got left out again.