davextreme

For the Mad Men fans out there, “Jon Hamm’s John Ham”.

Might as well check out “Don Draper’s Guide to Picking Up Women” and “A-Holes: Pitch Meeting” while you’re there.

I’ve been watching some Saturday Night Live sketches on Hulu. There are lots of classic sketches missing (no Andy Kaufman Mighty Mouse?), but here are some greats that I’ve found:

• Word Association, Richard Pryor and Chevy Chase
• Mr. Robinson’s Neighborhood, Eddie Murphy
• White Like Me, Eddie Murphy
• President Reagan Mastermind, Phil Hartman
• George Bush Debate, Dana Carvey
• Cooking with the Anal Retentive Chef, Phil Hartman
• Wayne’s World with Aerosmith, Mike Myers, Dana Carvey, Tom Hanks, and Aerosmith
• The Chris Farley Show, Chris Farley and Jeff Daniels
• Down by the River, Chris Farley
• Clinton at McDonalds, Phil Hartman
• Celebrity Jeopardy: Tom Cruise, Adam Sandler, and Sean Connery, Will Ferrell, Ben Stiller, Jimmy Fallen, and Darrell Hammond
• NPR’s Delicious Dish: Schweddy Balls, Ana Gasteyer, Molly Shannon, and Alec Baldwin
• Celebrity Jeopardy: French Stewart, Burt Reynolds, and Sean Connery, Will Ferrell, Jimmy Fallen, Norm MacDonald, and Darrell Hammond
• Census Taker, Christopher Walken and Tim Meadows
• Inside the Actor’s Studio, Will Farrell and Alec Baldwin
• Pranksters, Seth Myers and Robert DeNiro

Yikes. The season premier of Saturday Night Live does not bode well for the year. The show had been doing pretty well in the past two years, but there wasn’t one funny sketch on last night, though I do have to give them credit for making fun of themselves at the end of the water bottle bit. the references to Studio 60 and 30 Rock were astute, but served to remind me that the two shows about fake SNL shows are going to be better than the actual thing.

Hurray for NBC for doing something really right. Last week, they aired an hilarious rap video called Lazy Sunday by a comedy group called The Lonely Island, which spread across the internet like wildfire within 48 hours of its original broadcast. Mid-week, a streaming copy appeared on the Saturday Night Live website. And now today you can download the video for free from iTunes. NBC could have easily had its lawyers throw around take-down notices to all the websites sharing the clip, but it wouldh’t have actually stopped the sharing, and it would have made the network look like a stupid bully. Instead, NBC did the right thing and gave it out for free. After all, people just share these sorts of things because they think they’re funny and want other people to enjoy them. It’s free advertising coming from your own fan base, at a time when the general impression about SNL for years has been that it’s not funny anymore. In other words, advertising their marketing department could never generate themselves, using the actual product to be sold to show how good it is. Bravo.