Isn't She Lovely

Warning: This post contains some damn good political satire.

Is there anyone out there who doesn't like Tina Fey? She's the best answer to series of so-so SNL regulars of late that I've seen in a while. Sure, Steve Carell is gold at times, but Will Ferrell is so tragic it's no longer even slightly funny, and guys like Dan Fogler are just far too like Chris Farley for me. Even if they do well on the show, so many of them do so badly off it that it's not really much of a "launching pad" anymore.

But Tina shows there is a light at the end of the unamusing tunnel. 30 Rock is a great show - great like Scrubs, Seinfeld and Family Guy in their heydays. It's the best thing to happen to sitcoms since Arrested Development, and the day they decided to cancel Two & A Half Men (not yet, sure, but that day will come, and I'll be there with the ticker tape).
Her debut movie lead Baby Mama didn't rake in the box office results, probably because people probably thought it was a real chick flick rather than a comedy-with-minor-love-story, and it went up against Sex & The City and lost. I saw it on a plane a few weeks ago and it was easily better than Get Smart and probably mildly beat Forgetting Sarah Marshall (which also has some awesome comic talent, but the ultimately doesn't use them to their funny-potential). The story is a little predictable but it's not about that - its the sparks flying between Tina Fey and fellow SNLer Amy Poehler (also the mum in Mean Girls) that is worth the watch. Steve Martin is also possibly the funniest I've seen him ever (possibly because this is not a "Steve Martin movie"). Anyway, Fey vs. Poehler. Successful-but ultimately-way-too-uptight-businesswoman in a surrogate mother relationship with white-trash-party-slut. I don't care who you are, that's funny right there.

Probably though the role that has put Tina's name on everyone's lips this year has been her parody of Republican VP-hopeful (well, she might hope, but we don't) Sarah Palin. Her feminist address with a parodical Hillary Clinton was eerily spot-on, while also hilarious. But it's the "Biden vs. Palin" debate parody SNL aired last week that has me in stitches.

The pretext for the parody is that neither candidate really debated one another, they merely said what they had rehearsed and come there to say. For Biden it was finding ways to attack McCain (a fair strategy, as people are voting for him and Palin doesn't need attacking, she takes her rifle to her own foot quite deftly). In Sarah's case, she'd got all the lines memorised, but seemed to forget she was supposed to adapt them to the question. Nevermind, she delivered them anyway.
Tina nailed Sarah so subtly in this sketch and yet so obviously that its comic genius. It's a pisstake, but it'd be damn hard to argue any point was slander or political smearing. It's also nice to see Biden made fun of too - after all, this isn't about picking sides, this is about laughing at the stupidity of people!

Here's the vid - my mate Eion says he can't load it, but so far he's the only one who's had trouble. Enjoy.


While we're on the topic of SNL, here's one of my favourite sketches from them: "Maraka", the fantastic parodia de Dora. Es muy hilaranta ;)

Tinselworm

Warning: This post is deadpan, intellectual and crazy.
Image Source: last.fm
One month hiatus from blogging. What a slacker I am. Just when I thought I was on a productive role for the year (and on the back of fifty-million music posts in August), I ran out of stuff to say. Or maybe not - maybe it was just that I was too busy doing and not busy saying. I have indeed been up to much, though I don't know what's bloggable and what's not. You decide!

I've been back in NZ for the last month, and just returned to Japan yesterday. Goodbye friends, movies and family, hello fast internet and decent club events. But more on that later - I figure the best place to start is the main reason why I even went home in the first place: Bill Bailey.

The guy has been my favourite stand-up comic since around 1998, when he came to the St. James in Wellington (his 2nd time, after hitting the now-defunct James Cabaret in '97 - the home of so much brilliant comedy in those years). The guy is a "nutter", or so he would have us all believe. But under that eccentric shell lies a true intellect that carves his wit to a knife-point, and steers his musical genius from the realm of "good pianist" to something that is as much humour as it is talent.
He's off-the-beaten-track, sure, but he got there with a very good navigation system.

Bill played two shows in Wellington (both sold-out), using mostly the same material across the two. The crowd were real fans on the first night - those on the second were keen too, but a little more intoxicated (and thus annoying: one bloke was under to impression that saying "oh, he's brillunt" after every joke wasn't irritating).

He rolled through what was essentially all new material (a rare gift from comedians these days), starting out with his bemusement at New Zealand customs' obsession with stopping people who may have potpourri in their luggage ("Who carries their own blend of potpourri around?") and the notable invisibility of the Kiwi in the zoo (Probably covered in all the potpourri in the enclosure - that must be where customs dumps it). Before the interval he covered nuclear fusion, asking for audience input and receiving it from a pig farmer (who wouldn't confirm if his farm used nuclear power or not), and a British expat who was an expert on energy and didn't know when to shut up (laughter ensued after 10 seconds of rambling, and when it stopped she was still going on about the theory behind it). You can't plan comedy like that - good on you Wellington for your rather unorthodox heckling.

Moving through priceless musical comedy - including a lynching of Lionel Richie and his lyrical "drivel" ("'What a feeling, when you're dancing on the ceiling' - what, nausea and vertigo?") and a performance of the Star Wars Imperial March a la scat, Bill culminated in what are possibly his two greatest musical works: Ode of the Starbucks Emo, and The Greatest Love Song Ever Written (I take credit for the titles, having forgotten the real ones). The former was new and pure genius - two quotes resonating my mind are "if you were a DVD your region would be polar" and "I pressed thumbtacks into my hand and they spelled 'WHY?'...why did they spell 'WHY'? Because there weren't enough tacks for 'OBLIVION'... "
The latter, a ballad from Bill's previous tour, Part Troll, was an acoustic version of an onslaught on the form of the ballad, mincing metaphors to an epic and hilarious result. The "snowflake on the eyelash of a startled deer" that his romantic character views with his loved one then turns to "pus that oozes from an open wound" upon her betrayal ("The deer, now blinded, stumbles into a ravine").

Mr. Bailey has always been close to my intellectually deranged heart, and he only proved further that if anyone deserves the title of "Nuttier than a Whittaker's peanut slab" (given to him by a critic 10 years ago), it's him.

Here's a youtube clip of aforementioned Love Song. Enjoy.

O-Pa-Pea! (Ocean Pacific Peace)

My friend's kid (Louie) is awesome.

Here's his impression of Yoshio Kojima,


It might make sense to watch this first:

This guy is currently wayyyyy too popular among the youth of Japan at the moment. It's a phase thing, one we're all hoping will fade out fast.
I asked some kids why he's so popular. Responses ranged from "Because he's gross" (mainly because of the melon-flavoured Speedos) to "Because his voice is cool". I'm still confused. FYI, his main catchphrase is "でもそんなの関係ねぇ" ("demo sonnano kankei ne-!"), which basically means "But that's got nothing to do with it!", though it sounds more slang (perhaps "What's that got to do with the price of fish?"). It's a gimmick, but that's why the kids love him.

Meanwhile, more entertaining than that is Louie singing Thomas the Tank Engine in Japanese.

Priceless.