Geoffrey H Wood

I've been watching Saturday Night Live (SNL) since I was a little kid. I can't put an exact date on it but I know that it goes far enough back that I remember watching it simply because I knew it was funny (even though I was too young to understand most of the humor).

My interest waned in high school, college, and post-grad since I wasn't usually at home on Saturday night's to see the show. However, sometime around 2002 I bought a TiVo and SNL has been a staple ever since.(1) That means that I've watched almost every skit in the decade being covered in this retrospective; crazy.

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I mentioned my late night TV host preferences in the last post and failed to mention Jimmy Fallon. I've never watched one of his shows all the way through but some of the skits he pushes out to the internet are hilarious. Apparently he has a knack for reunion shows, as he's done a Saved by the Bell reunion, a California Dreams reunion, and now a reunion of Saturday Night Live (SNL) alumnus Chris Parnell and current SNL player Andy Samberg for their classic "Chronic-what?-cles of Narnia" rap - the first of many great SNL Digital Shorts (which are accompanied by many more not-so-great ones).

By the way, it's funny that Jimmy references this video and YouTube at the beginning of the skit. NBC goes out of their way to keep their material off of YouTube and back when the original SNL skit aired (December 2005) they weren't even putting clips up at their own site.

I never think about watching Jimmy Kimmel's late night show "Jimmy Kimmel Live" on ABC. I rarely watch late night tv, at all, and I've been in the Letterman camp since back in high school when I read The Late Shift. Conan is funny, too, but I never watched either oh his shows in regularity. 

However, I caught a preview for this which cracked me up:

Combining that with his appearance on Leno and the whole Sarah Silverman/Matt Damon (& Jimmy/Ben Affleck) thing a few years ago, I probably need to tune in more often.

By the way, he sure has great talent booking to get all those Hollywood-folk together for his skits.

We've been in Des Moines for more than six months now and we love it for a ton of reasons. Not least among them is getting to see most of my siblings (Sean lives in Arkansas, so we don't see him) regularly and enjoying inside jokes. One of which took place just last week and was documented on the interwebs.

Since I'm sure you're wondering what it is - I'll let you in. Check out this clip from Saturday Night Live a few months ago. 

We enjoyed it so we shared it at dinner one night. Several weeks later, my wife bought a vegan cookie at the coffee shop up the street...

...and informed the world on Facebook. We promptly jumped in...

 ...which made me laugh.

By the way, the last line is from a previous SNL sketch, a commercial for Jack Johnson's line of "shoes that look like feet" known as JJ Casuals.

We're only a few weeks in 2010 but it seems like alumni of SyFy's now defunct Battlestar Galatica series are all over Fox programming this year. In both regular and guest roles so far I've noticed the following (apparently they cast in pairs):

24 (series regulars)

• Katee Sackhoff, formerly Starbuck, is now Dana Walsh
• Callum Keith Rennie, formerly the Cylon Leoben, is now Vladimir Laitanan

 Human Target (guest roles)

• Alessandro Juilani, formerly Lt. Gaeta, is now some bit character.
• Tricia Helfer, formerly the Cylon Number Six in all her incarnations, is also some bit character. 

On the subject of Human Target, which I first noticed boasted two David E. Kelley "Boston..." alumni in Boston Legal's Mark Valley and Boston Public's Chi McBride, I've watched two episodes and I think that I'm over it. Critic Tim Goodman, who I pay attention to, seems to like it so it's possible I'll come back to it at some point in the future if he presents a compelling enough argument.

CBS's hit comedy "How I Met Your Mother" has long been a favorite of mine but they stepped it up a bit last night in the episode "Last Cigarette Ever" by making a little local connection.

In a storyline about morning show newsanchor Robin's new coworker they mentioned that he is a "veteran of no fewer than 38 local morning shows" and showed shots of their sets in Seattle, Beaverton, and my hometown of Cedar Rapids.

I'm not sure how many people noticed this but I'm sure anyone else from Iowa, like myself, gave a chuckle. It was only on screen for a few seconds but since I had it on DVR, I immediately backed it up and looked at the image behind the anchor desk and noticed that it looked more like Des Moines than Cedar Rapids.

Consulting some quick images on Flickr (see below) it looks like it's definitely Des Moines with the signature 801 Grand missing from the center of the image. The tall buildings on the "Get Up Cedar Rapids" set appear to be (L to R) EMC Insurance, the Financial Center on Walnut, the Ruan Center, and The Plaza. Feel free to read up on them here: Des Moines' Tallest Buildings. Several of the residential loft buildings are also in the image.

Image from bburnett71 on Flickr.com

One on hand, it's cool that the HIMYM production staff went so far as pull a local skyline image for use on the show. On the other hand, it's interesting that they felt Des Moines worked better than Cedar Rapids (which, as you can see below, does have it's own skyline).

Image from Okie Bill on Flickr.com

Other than that ridiculous Sarah Palin rap(1) during last year's election season, former Vice President Al Gore provides the best sketches of any politician I've ever seen on Saturday Night Live. He had some good ones during his presidential campaign and actually hosted back in 2002 but last night's was the best, yet.

Now that he's left elected office in order to lobby for the environment, he was brought in by the SNL staff to fulfill their "Green Week" network requirements. He joined Seth Meyers at the Weekend Update desk to discuss his plans to "out crazy the crazy" in order to get more traction for his cause. The entire sketch is good but my favorite part is the beginning dialog where Gore and Meyers discuss President Obama:

Al Gore: “…[Obama] was elected with an overwhelming mandate. I mean, he won the popular vote, Seth, and we all know that’s the one that counts.”

Seth Meyers: “He won the other vote, too”

Al Gore; “If you say so, I don’t really pay attention to that. I’m a popular vote guy.”

Good stuff.

(1)If the decision to participate in this is discussed in Palin's new book, it may actually be worth reading.