SNL 50TH ANNIVERSARY SKITS DESPERATE - UNFUNNY - GUTTERAL and GROSS

I really wanted to be amused - especially by the UFO abductee skit that featured some so called "A List" actors, but it seems the SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE 50th ANNIVERSARY SPECIAL featured comedic desperation which resorted to dirty shock value !

I always appreciated that SNL was on. It was so New York City and one of the few television shows on networks that featured creative skits and guests - but over 50 years I was not ever a chronic viewer.

In recent years, on a Sunday, I would watch the YouTube redux of the previous night's skits. I and some friends loved the Donald Trump parodies especially.

I enjoyed the fairly recent dog park skit, in which the actors ran the gambit of dog behaviors from scooting butts on the floor to the zooms, but one of my dog-lover friends saw it and said, "No! No!  They didn't!

The skits I saw for the 50th anniversary - sorry!

It's kind like when Joan Rivers was funny for national television standards but she (and her daughter) became known for filthy language outrageousness and crass putdowns instead. 

If you want to laugh without all the sexual references, watch DRYBAR Comedy on YOUTUBE!

CHRISTINE TRZYNA BOOK REVIEW of IN HEAVEN EVERYTHING IS FINE by JOSH FRANK with CHARLIE BUCKHOLTZ

IN HEAVEN EVERYTHING IS FINE
The Unsolved Life of Peter Ivers and the Lost History of New Wave Theatre
C Josh Frank 2008 By Josh Frank with Charlie Buckholtz
Free Press a division of Simon and Shuster publishers


... AN UNSOLVED MURDER MYSTERY on the PUNKIEST NEW WAVE SCENE in Los Angeles; Peter Ivers was found bludgeoned to death on March 3, 1983 in his downtown artist's loft, just when he'd picked up a hefty check for a screen play and was quitting his gig as the host of the New Wave Theatre show. The cable television show featured local bands and sketch comedies inspired perhaps by the mad world of National Lampoon Magazine or Saturday Night Live TV.

... Ivers was a hyperactive, we believe heterosexual, character with a zany showman's antics (wearing diapers on stage), a child of privileged back-east class, wealth, and edu, who no doubt had much more to do. He'd just used his big screen play check to pay back friends who had believed in him, his talent and energy, to keep him in that loft for quite some time. He was destitute. Still, Ivers had succeeded beyond most of his Go-West-Young-Man peers. His girlfriend, Lucy, had become a rare executive woman in movie production - a suit, while he held perhaps a bit too long to his own vision. They had recently lived a bit of a retro homespun life in musical Laurel Canyon, with all it implied.

...While the book has caused LAPD to reopen the case and no doubt the authors presented a comprehensive take on the scenesters around Peter, many who speak a few lines, it fails with too much respect to Peter Ivers. Unaddressed is the menace of the real PUNKS versus the POSERS, the competition for material success among Punk bands which most would deny. If anyone had any motivation to kill Peter, he's too beloved for that to be believed anyway, and what really spoiled this read is that the authors failed to get me even a little angry about his murder. It's as if it were reported in the La Weekly's LA DEE DA COLUMN (la dee da as in BORING, get it?), a column where generations of those desperate enough to be famous for being famous bared and glared for a little photo op.

Review by Christine Trzyna C 2009 All Rights including Internet and International Rights Reserved