4/14/12: Josh Brolin/Gotye: You all may have forgotten that Josh Brolin has already hosted once before.  What with Sarah Palin and Mark Wahlberg stopping by, as well Brolin’s W director Oliver Stone commandeering his monologue, as well as musical guest Adele having her first big break, there wasn’t much memorable from that episode that actually featured the host (except for that “I’m No Angel” sketch with a very pregnant Amy Poehler that keeps inexplicably being included in SNL clip shows).  Brolin seems like a nice guy, and he’s a fine actor, but, in my estimation, he doesn’t quite have the the temperament for sketch comedy.  Hopefully, the writing will be solid.
“Who’s Gotye,” some of you may be asking.  Well, his parents gave him the Dutch name “Wouter,” whose French version is “Gaultier,” for which “Gotye” is a fairly close phonetic approximation.  Anyway, you may have heard his song “Somebody That I Used to Know,” featuring Kiwi chanteuse Kimbra.  And you may be surprised that a tune that sounds like an art-rock piece from Peter Gabriel in his heyday has, as of this posting, charted as high as 26 on the Billboard Hot 100.  The music video is a brilliant piece of visual accompaniment, and hopefully Gotye will present something like it on the SNL stage.  (Also, Kimbra’s Twitter (https://twitter.com/#!/kimbramusic) implies that she will be there to join Gotye, so that’s good.)