Jmunney's Blog

5/19/12: Mick Jagger: Whaaa- ???
featuring Foo Fighters, Arcade Fire, and Jeff Beck: How many performances are there going to be and/or how many people will be onstage/performing at once?  I mean, Arcade Fire are already the size of two bands.  Also, I have been hearing over and over the rumor that Keith Richards, Charlie Watts, and Ronnie Wood are also going to appear.  Either way, there will certainly be an abundance of great musicians, so there had better be some good performances.

5/19/12: Mick Jagger: Whaaa- ???

5/5/12: Eli Manning/Rihanna: Guess what?  Little Eli may just be the best quarterback in the Manning family.  Now, yes, he absolutely has a ways to go to catch up to Peyton statistically, but he does have more Super Bowl rings, and that is no fluke.  But … the topic at hand is hosting SNL.  Peyton Manning is hands down the best athlete host in SNL history, and Eli has never really indicated that he has the charisma to match his brother when it comes to endorsement deals or television appearances.  All I’m saying is, Eli may want to take some pointers from big brother.
RiRi appears for her third time, for the third season in a row.  I’m not sure what songs she’ll be peforming, though.  “We Found Love” is the only major hit from her most recent album Talk That Talk, and that has already peaked.  The best song she is a part of right now is Drake’s “Take Care,” which I would be happy to see a performance of, but that seems unlikely, as Drake was already an MG this season.  This seems like a perfect time to dip into the classics and whip out that “Umbrella.”

5/12/12: Will Ferrell/Usher: I keep thinking that Will Ferrell has only hosted season finales, but he has actually hosted one season finale and one second-to-last episode of the season.  So, with this third hosting appearance, it will still be true that he has only hosted the last or the second-to-last episode of the season.  Anyway, he is the greatest SNL cast member of all time.  ‘Nuff said.
Usher (like Will Ferrell the host) has only appeared on SNL in May.  During his two previous stints, he was reliable for fun club-bangers like “Yeah” and “Love in This Club,” but if his current single “Climax” is an indication of what he has in store for May 12, then I am not excited.

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.)

4/7/12: Sofia Vergara/One Direction: I had an inkling Sofia Vergara might host this season, as she seems to be the IT member of the Modern Family cast.  I would have preferred Ty Burrell or a return appearance by Ed O’Neill, but Sofia is certainly a capable comedienne.  I do fear, though, that the material may descend into ethnic clichés, but SNL seems to do that more with British folk (although, granted, there have been more British than Hispanic hosts).
One Direction?  I can understand booking a boy band – if they’re the biggest thing in the world.  One Direction might – might – be headed in that direction.  They were assembled on The X-Factor – the U.K. X-Factor!  Yeah,  I suppose they’re aiming to break into the U.S., but SNL isn’t known for breaking this type of band, and I don’t see why they would want to change that.  But I’ve heard their song “What Makes You Beautiful,” and … I don’t hate it.

3/3/12: Lindsay Lohan/Jack White: I had an inkling at the beginning of the season that Lindsay Lohan might stop by the 30 Rock stage for the first time in six years.  I had heard rumblings that she might go for some career rejuvenation in a place where she has had some success before.  She hosted three years in a row from 2004-06, right before he career became a complete wreck.  Her first stint included some memorable performances, including a well-endowed Hermione Granger and a member of the t.A.T.u.-parody pretend-lesbian group D.A.D.I.  But her ’05 and ’06 stints were relatively meh.  Apparently, she’s the most sober she’s been in a while, so that should help this go-round.
And SNL books Jack White right on the heels of his solo debut.  If there’s anyone who can figure out the weird acoustics of the SNL musical stage, it is he.  Check out the documentary It Might Get Loud to see what I am talking about.

3/10/12: Jonah Hill/The Shins: I like Jonah Hill, and I’ve come to like him even more since he has taken on (and acquitted himself quite well in) more dramatic roles.  His first time hosting appearance was back in 2008; save for a series of MacGruber’s, he wasn’t really given material worthy of his talents.  He definitely deserves another shot.
The Shins are still making music?  I thought that they belonged squarely in the first decade of the of the 21st century.  I’ll probably enjoy them.

2/18/12: Maya Rudolph/Sleigh Bells: When predicting SNL hosts, one maxim I go by is that stars of TV shows usually don’t host during the first season of their shows.  With Maya now and Zooey Deschanel before her, there will be two stars from hit shows in their 1st seasons two weeks in a row.  Anwyay, this will hardly be a triumphant return for Maya, as she left the cast only four years ago and has had guest appearances on eight shows between then and now, most recently two months ago in the Steve Buscemi/Black Keys episode.  Since Fred Armisen is still in the cast, I’d like to see Nuni and Nuni Schoener.
Thank you for booking Sleigh Bells, SNL.  You pushed me over the edge into realizing that I need to start listening to them.  Following Lana Del Rey, Bon Iver, and Karmin, Sleigh Bells will make it four musical guests in a row that old people have never heard of.

I will henceforth be posting reactions to NBC’s press releases regarding upcoming hosts and musical guests on SNL.  My thoughts will have to do with my expectations of the quality of these guests and whether or not I included these choices on my guest prediction list at the beginning of the season.  The lineups for the first two shows in February were the most recently annouced.

2/4/12: Channing Tatum/Bon Iver: I know a lot of ladies like Channing for his face (I guess) and his abs, but I’ve never known him to have much charisma.  He made an interesting face during one part of the Haywire trailer, so hopefully he can capitalize on that.
I am familiar with Bon Iver, but I am not that familiar with their songs.  Justin Vernon’s band seems like just the sort of indie act that ought to be on SNL, and I correctly thought that that might happen this year.

2/11/12: Zooey Deschanel/Karmin: I almost included Zooey on my predictions, but she was the one of the last to miss the cut.  I figured that stars of hit TV shows don’t host SNL until at least the second season of their shows.  The last TV star to host during the first season of his/her hit show was Julia Louis-Dreyfus in 2006 during the first year of The New Adventures of Old Christine, and that could be considered an exception since she was a returning cast member.  Anyway, Zooey’s unmistakably singular quirkiness could lead to a good show, or it could be like Abby Elliott’s impression of Zooey, which makes the mistake of announcing how awesome it is.
And I’m still trying to figure out what to say about Karmin.  Their one “hit” song is the middle-school anti-hater anthem “Crash Your Party.”  They are an engaged couple who seem to actually be musically talented and somewhat intelligent, but are using their musical ability for the purpose of issues that are exclusively the concerns of people much younger than them.  It’s like Michael Jackson singing the songs of Aaron Carter or Willow Smith.