An Oscar Retrospective (aka #ManCrush Monday on Seth MacFarlane)

In what critics are calling “the first and most original idea of 2013 or ever” I’ve decided to post a few of my thoughts on last night’s 85th annual Academy Awards.

Soft-shoeing their way into the hearts of millions…

For starters, Seth MacFarlane absolutely crushed it with the hosting duties, which is no easy task given that the über-critical media is just waiting to pounce on any and all missteps, real or imaginary. Also, keep in mind that we haven’t had a decent host for the ceremony since 2009’s festivities; last year was a past-his-prime Billy Crystal (whom I adore, but wasn’t great that time around…probably due at least in part to the fact that he was a last-second replacement for Eddie Murphy) and the year before was the dreadful Franco/Hathaway duo — she’s as bad at being herself as she is good at being other people and Franco just bounced back and forth between “possibly stoned” and “definitely stoned” the whole night. I thought Seth MacEff struck a great balance between deprecation of self vs. deprecation of others, and while every joke can’t be a home run (rough crowd to drop a Chris Brown/Rihanna joke on, I liked the Mel Gibson line but it was a bit passé, etc….though like any seasoned funny-man he recovered impressively and instantaneously) I thought the vast majority of his material was gold. And like it or not, I’m your male 18-34 demographic, so my opinion literally matters more than yours (18 trillion dollars of targeted advertising can’t be wrong). MacFarlane devotees already know that he has a passion for classic Hollywood (thus the soft-shoe numbers and old school pageantry of the opening performances) and if you’re smart enough to see through the boob-jokes, you’ll see a love for tinsel-town’s glamorous golden era that most of this generation lacks. Which leads me nicely into…

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Topical References: A Review of 1980 SNL

I always try to keep these things under 500 words, to make them more accessible to you ADHD kids with your glowsticks and your Kardashian sisters and your pogs to distract you. Out of the 135 posts I have on here, I’ve been successful exactly…zero times. But like I always say, one-hundred-and-thirty-sixth time’s the charm.

Saturday Night Live (or, to use the abbreviation I invented for it, SNL) is starting its 38th season, making it America’s longest-running television show (unless it’s not, I didn’t feel like fact-checking that). If you’re Amish and have never seen the show (yet somehow have a computer, an internet connection and are reading this blog), SNL is a sketch-comedy/musical show whose general premise is to put a celebrity in wacky situations for 90 minutes and hope the supporting cast of funny people around them can make a handful of the sketches bearable. And twice per episode they cut away to the musical guest du jour. Some casts are more successful at this than others, and I could probably crank out a pretty healthy 12,000-word article trying to rank each years’ casts in order from best to worst, but man does that sound like a lot of work. Maybe some other time.