Sun, January 12, 2003

It's come to a point where we're watching Saturday Night Live "just in case." Just in case they happen to stumble ass-backwards into a funny sketch. Just in case a particular guest host does something outrageous. Just in case Horatio Sanz's fake moustache falls off.

It's sad, but the funniest moments on the show are the moments when they screw up and start laughing at themselves. I guess that's why they've eschewed the concept of memorizing lines and depend solely on the cue cards – more opportunities to flub.

With TiVo, the benefit is that you can skip directly to Weekend Update, where Tina Fey still manages to keep the comedy current and sharp and, occasionally, funny. But this week, I ended up watching it in a non-TiVo household, which meant live. Well, West-coast live.

What a shame. You know it's going to be bad when they open with Brian Fellow's Safari Planet. That's supposed to be a placeholder around the end of hour one, when they can't come up with anything better. The show was pure unadulterated bad. Bad from start to finish. There was a career day sketch that my friend (and gracious host) Joe and I had re-written much funnier twice before it was even half over. The rest doesn't even merit mention.

So, I turned my attention to other things. I don't know if you've noticed, but as far as I can tell, wherever Avril Lavigne performs, she brings a little Vornado fan, and parks it at the base of her microphone stand. It makes her hair blow softly backward in an adorably coquettish fashion while she sings Sk8er Boi or Complicated. I guess it's a fine idea, but it's kind of off-putting, just always seeing it there. It was there on Letterman, it was there on Kilborn. From the way her hair looks in the pictures on her website, I'd say it's always there.

It was there on SNL. Well, for the first song. But it was off. I can only imagine that it was malfunctioning, because why would they position it so carefully right where it always goes, and not turn it on? The performance didn't suffer, but it was a slower song, so the gentle breeze would certainly have added something. What's worse, for the second song (Complicated), it was gone altogether! Was it in the shop? Were they unable to secure a backup Vornado on short notice, so they just scrapped it? A young-and-rising pop star's image is at stake here! I was pretty surprised.

I like her, though. I think she's cute and her songs are catchy and fun, and she lacks the manufactured sheen of a Britney or *NSync, or a pre-grimeslut Christina Aguilera. She's a product, yes, but at least she's a product from a slightly more interesting machine. Plus she's Canadian!

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