Editorial
Stand-Up Comedy Is Bringing a Much-Needed Edge to SNL
One of the stranger modern-day quirks of Saturday Night Live is how the show still draws some of its talent from the stand-up scene. This wasn’t necessarily the case for most of the aughts, but in the last few years, the late-night program has reverted to its ’90s strategy of throwing stand-up comedians in with all of the veteran improvisers and writers-turned-performers. Despite this tradition and its variety-show bona fides, Saturday Night Live isn’t especially built for stand-up. Instead, performers who want to flex those muscles traditionally have to head to Weekend Update, where Pete Davidson and Leslie Jones have found a stage in recent years. This season, though, a whopping four of the six hosts so far have been stand-up comedians, and their performances are subtly toying with the s...
LeVar Burton Rips Keith Olbermann’s Weird Kunta Kinte Trump Tweet
Source: The Washington Post / Getty As far as political commentators go, Keith Olbermann may no longer be a go-to pundit for some but that hasn’t kept him from becoming a vocal critic of President Donald Trump. In one of his Twitter missives, the former ESPN and MSNBC host made a weird tweet referencing LeVar Burton‘s iconic Kunta Kinte character from the Roots miniseries, and the actor made sure to school Olbermann on his mishap. In a now-deleted tweet that got some burn before its disappearance, Olbermann wrote the following in connection to a Fox News segment focused on President Trump. “Yes, @realDonaldTrump has always been, will always be, and on the day of his bid for re-election, still is: a whiny little Kunta Kinte,” Olbermann wrote on Election Day. The tweet got a measurable amoun...
The Presidential Election Remains Undecided While Trump Prematurely Gloats
Source: Array / WENN The presidential election will most likely continue to dominate the news cycle for much of the week if not longer as the race is still far too close to call. Despite the slim margins, President Donald Trump has prematurely declared victory over Joe Biden and it remains to be seen how the ending plays out. Election Day (Nov. 3) was, as observed by many a commentator, pundit, and anchor, a nail-biter with Biden owning 238 electoral college votes to Trumps’s 213 according to The Associated Press. And like the presidential election, the U.S. Senate race is also undecided with the Democratic Party gaining one seat thus far but are still sitting at 45-47 with the Republican Party holding the slim majority. President Trump, taking to his favored vehicle of Twitter after being...
Three Crucial Issues at Stake for Musicians in the 2020 US Election
In less than 36 hours, we’ll reach the end of the strangest, sickest, most contentious election season in modern American memory. Many people reading this will have already cast their vote for the next President of the United States; data from the US Elections Project indicates that more than 95 million Americans have taken advantage of early voting options this year, just one more way in which the COVID-19 pandemic has upended the traditional sprint to Election Day. That said, there are still plenty of voters planning to cast ballots in person on Election Day (November 3rd). For those folks, we’ve put together a quick overview of where the two candidates for President stand on three major policy areas affecting the arts in 2020 and beyond: the economic impact of the pandemic on music venu...
How John Mulaney Became SNL’s Go-To Host
John Mulaney was a writer on Saturday Night Live for four seasons. It was a respectable, successful stint, but hardly era-defining. Plenty of SNL scribes have dug in for longer, more influential, runs behind the scenes, and unlike, say, Adam McKay, Tina Fey, or Colin Jost, Mulaney never served as head writer. He was the rare writer who made a handful of on-camera showcase appearances, but his Weekend Update commentaries didn’t garner much attention at the time. Among fans, he was better-known for co-creating Update mainstay character Stefon with beloved cast member Bill Hader. So how is it, exactly, that Mulaney, who makes his living primarily as a stand-up comic, has become not just a go-to SNL host but a reliable highlight for four seasons running? Mulaney’s hosting of this week’s Hallow...
How Sean Connery’s Final Role Capped Off His Career
The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen was a disaster. Less an adaptation of the Alan Moore and Kevin O’Neill graphic novels of the same name than a slapped-together cash-in on the action-horror craze of films like The Mummy, the 2003 film was reviled by critics and opened second to Pirates of the Caribbean. It also happens to serve as the final on-screen role for Sir Sean Connery, who passed today at the age of 90. Stories abound about how much Connery clashed with the film’s director, Blade‘s Stephen Norrington, while filming, and how those experiences allegedly led him to retire from acting in 2006. (Yes, Sir Billi fans, I know that’s technically his final role, but two hours in a voice booth as a skateboarding CG veterinarian isn’t quite the same as starring in a summer b...
Should SNL Replace Jim Carrey as Joe Biden?
What was big, exciting entertainment news just a month or so ago has already become routine tedium: Jim Carrey played presidential candidate Joe Biden on Saturday Night Live. For the third week in a row, the blockbuster comic returned to Studio 8H, where Issa-Rae hosted the festivities. Three sketches into his run, however, and it’s hard to find anyone who appears to be enjoying his antics. (Then again, social media presents a comically skewed demographic of people who more or less despise Saturday Night Live, but feel compelled to provide running commentary anyway. Come to think of it, that’s likely how a lot of SNL writers probably feel about the presidential election.) This week’s endless cold open–under 15 minutes, but, as with last week’s, feeling closer to a full hour–toggled between...
Why Everyone Is Becoming a BTS Fan in 2020
If you’re not familiar with K-Pop global crossover sensation BTS, congratulations to you and your presumably peaceful life without the internet. Here’s the rundown: since their debut seven years ago, the group known as BTS (made up of members RM, Jin, SUGA, J-Hope, Jimin, V, and Jungkook) have broken countless records, successfully tapped into worldwide markets no act has ever captured before, and stolen the hearts of millions of devoted fans (this writer included). In August, BTS landed their latest comeback with the incendiary “Dynamite”, a track that has propelled the group to uncharted heights, including debuting at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100, remaining there for a second week and now returning for a third. [embedded content] Over the past few months, in the bleak landscape of 2020...
SNL Still Isn’t Sure How to Satirize Wokeness
When Saturday Night Live has a genuine stand-up comedian as a host, it can shift the whole structure of the show, which is what happened last week, with Chris Rock, and this week, with less famous comedian Bill Burr. Combined with the season’s endless debate sketches, a longer stand-up-based monologue can reduce the amount of airtime available for actual sketches. Unlike Rock’s gig, the Burr-hosted episode seemed to take some of its cues from Burr’s stand-up material — and with so few sketches making it to air, it only takes a few with common ground to make an episode feel more thematically unified than usual. In his monologue, Burr poked fun at notions of wokeness and allyship, making his case that white women have hijacked national conversations about equality and that a longer, warmer g...
‘Cops’ Resumes Filming Months After Network Canceled Show Amid George Floyd Protests
Source: avid_creative / Getty Well, that was quick. Cops is returning to television four months after Paramount Network canceled the show amid nationwide protests surrounding George Floyd’s death. In June, the network claimed it was moving away from unscripted programming when it pulled and subsequently canceled the long-running show from its schedule. As it turns out, Paramount Network had every intention to revive the show once the protests cooled off. The streets are still hot. Police brutality is a running theme in the news, and protests are growing strong simultaneously in various cities across the nation. So, why have Cops producers resumed filming? According to Deadline, they were “producing fresh episodes for international territories only, and there are no ...
Oasis’ (What’s the Story) Morning Glory? Speaks to the Downtrodden and Offers Hope
Oasis’ (What’s the Story) Morning Glory? means the world to me. For much of my early life, during the 1990s, I bordered upon homelessness — at one point, living with my family in a van. Without television or toys, my siblings and I mostly relied on books and a battery-powered radio for entertainment. On days when we tired of those, usually during the hot malaise of a Chicago summer, my brother, sister, and I dreamed of escaping the barren yet gang-riddled West Side to some safer place. We were Black, but worse yet we were poor. I didn’t find a semblance of financial stability until my early teens. That’s also when I found Oasis. Just before my freshman year of high school, in 2005, I began watching a channel called The Tube. They aired British Alternative and Brit Pop acts from the ’90s, a...
Lady Gaga’s “911” Video: Every Outfit, Ranked
911! Emergency! Lady Gaga’s new music video for “911”, the latest single off Chromatica, just dropped, and it’s packed full of instant classic outfits and weird visuals. From bizarre, spiky horn crowns and masks to Grecian gowns and anklets (which are back, baby, and there’s nothing you can do about it!), Gaga superfans Carrie Wittmer and Emmy Potter are breaking down all the looks. Here’s every outfit from the “911” video from worst to best. [embedded content] 08. Lace Negligee Gown <img data-attachment-id="1071166" data-permalink="https://consequenceofsound.net/2020/09/lady-gaga-911-outfits-ranked/lacenightie8/" data-orig-file="https://consequenceofsound.net/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/LaceNightie8.jpeg?quality=80" data-orig-size="1280,704" data-...
