2 posts tagged “parody”

I'm catching up with some TV shows from this week and I see I'm not the only one who thought Sorkin was influenced by Steve Martin's "Not Gonna Phone It In Tonight" SNL musical number (sorry, can't find video). Indeed, Google tells me many felt it had the same feel as what he was going for at the end of the second episode. And yet no one has found/put video of the Steve Martin bit online. Come on internets.

I was ok with the whole "L.A. Symphony" angle, but he needed a better song than a "I am the Very Model of..." parody. I'm not sure what would have worked better, but then again that's why I'm not getting paid thousands of dollars per episode.

Overall, I think Sorkin will have it easy in the long run  because he only has to ever show us snippets of sketches that are supposed to be funny, and it is relatively easy to come up with a good idea and have 15 seconds of funny material vs. actually writing a sketch that keeps bringing the funny.

On the other hand, the Studio60 opening number was the exact level of "eh, marginally clever" that I would expect from most SNL bits these days, so maybe he is just cranking up the realism.

In closing, here are two "I am the Very Model of..." parodies, a classic by Tom Lehrer, and a more recent bit from the Animaniacs:

I was looking around for bike stickers, but they all seem to draw from the same dozen or so old phrases (share the road, etc). I decided we needed something a bit more modern:

You can grab one for yourself, if you are so inclined. (I made them skinny for bike frames, so you actually get 3 per bumper sticker)