superflea

When my brother and I happen to go home to visit my parents at the same time, obviously most of our friends from home aren't around, so when we're not spending time with our folks or playing with our dogs, we tend to throw on the TV and watch a lot of Comedy Network.

I remember one particular occasion, after having just watched a few episodes of vintage Saturday Night Live, he turned to me and said "I didn't know if the show actually used to be good and just went totally downhill, or if it always sucked and I was just too young to notice. But nope, it used to be spectacular. What happened?"

I'm not going to take issue with any of the comedy. I think the show lost its footing after John Lovitz and Dennis Miller left (and I'll always have a crush on Victoria Jackson), but I recognize that's mainly a question of personal taste. One of my good friends hails Will Ferrell as the funniest thing going right now. Personally, I can't stand the guy, but I'm not going to argue the point about what anybody finds funny.

But I think the last musical guest I saw on a recent SNL was Britney Spears. (I probably tuned in just to see if she'd kiss Halle Berry - the sweetest of all the berries.) Musically, not particularly exciting.

When I got home from the bar last night, they were showing vintage SNL on the TV, and the musical guest was Frank Zappa. And he wasn't doing his mainstream stuff (mainstream by Zappa standards, to be fair). He had a huge band up on stage, performing Peaches en Regalia, which is this absolutely insane arrangement. I was watching the band throw down, absolutely awestruck, and astonished by the fact that not only was there a composer that brilliant with an army of spectacular musicians around him, but that there was a show brave enough to put him on the networks.

To be clear - Frank Zappa is probably a pretty tough composer to get into, and that the mainstream audience today would probably channel surf over to MTV for his segments if he were alive to rock the SNL stage today.

But last night, this decades-old music footage gave me more inspiration than I've had in a while - both in seeing guys who were quite simply that fucking GOOD, and in knowing that there was a point not too long ago when a mainstream audience would have given that music a serious listen.

Please, won't you share any stories of personal or artistic inspiration with the group?

UPDATE: I finally opened my Aliens Quadrilogy box set and decided to watch the extended cut of Alien3. I always had a soft spot for it, because William Gibson (iirc) wrote one of the earlier drafts (the barcodes on the head were his idea), but it wasn't until I read the liner notes that I learned David Fincher was the director.

I just want to go on record as saying that movie's not nearly as bad as everybody on the planet seems to think it is.

As a matter of fact, I'm gonna come right out and say I really liked it.

That is all.