[Chefelf]

Some Things I'm Sick Of

I thought I'd take this moment to highlight a couple of things I'm sick of.

1.) Claiming You Are a Saturday Night Live Expert

You've heard it before. Some knucklehead says the following: "Saturday Night Live hasn't been funny in (insert number here) years!"

The number always varies usually in a multiple of five. 10 and 15 are the most common number but 5 is sometimes used as well. You can generally use this number to figure out the age of the person making the statement. Normally this person has not watched Saturday Night Live at all in the number of years they just specified. The number of years they specified generally makes the "funny" time of SNL fall into the period of time when that person was in high school or college or unemployed or depressed or any other period of time in one's life when they are able to commit 11:30PM to 1:00AM ever Saturday night to watching this show. Generally the people making this statement are just parroting what they've heard others say and have nothing actual to base it on.

The fact of the matter is that Saturday Night Live, while being an important part of our culture and the development of some great comedic talents, has always kind of sucked. It is amusing when people look to the Church Lady as being the pinnacle of SNL's quality level. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy "Lothar of the Hill People" as much as the next guy (actually probably more) but for every Lothar or "Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer" there is an "It's Pat".

Sites like Hulu are great because they boil down SNL into segments which you can watch as you choose. No one should feel obligated to watch the last sketch of the show. I'm pretty sure that even sucked fifteen years ago.

SNL has certainly had its ups and downs but there has always been a healthy dose of crap mixed in with the good stuff. Keeping that in mind I haven't watched a single episode of Saturday Night Live in at least five years. It just hasn't been as good lately.

Well, isn't that special?

2.) Reviewing Old Video Games and Consoles

Okay. We get it. You took an old video game or video game console and you are doing a review of it in 2008, specifically focusing on the game or console's specs. For example: "Check out this brand new Nintendo Entertainment System which operates at a blistering 1.79 MHz!" Again, we get it. At the time that was impressive but now it is a shockingly tiny amount of processing power.

I think it would be far more effective to just find old reviews that were actually published and just print those. They're funny by themselves without being all smug and self-aware.

Don't get me wrong, there are plenty of great old video game reviews that have been done recently. But if you want it to be interesting or original then do a funny review by not pretending the old out of date specs are the greatest thing. There are plenty of games out there that you can highlight the badness of without having to resort to that old trick.

3.) Epic Win/Fail

I would love to round up the people for starting this annoying craze and give them a stern lecture about being annoying. It seems like it has died down a bit but I still see a fair number of people proclaiming, "Epic Win!" or "Epic Fail!" when they see things go well or things go poorly. Could we just bring back "Yay!" and "Boo!" Just as effective yet much less annoying.

4.) Zombies

Stop mentioning zombies. Ever. They're not funny and they never were.

[Spann]

3.) Epic Win/Fail

I would love to round up the people for starting this annoying craze and give them a stern lecture about being annoying. It seems like it has died down a bit but I still see a fair number of people proclaiming, "Epic Win!" or "Epic Fail!" when they see things go well or things go poorly. Could we just bring back "Yay!" and "Boo!" Just as effective yet much less annoying.

Anything that has it's origins on 4chan should be aborted the moment it tries to escape that fetid womb of idiocy and fester in the free world.

[aggiecouch]

Hey, I'm working on a zombie movie right now. And you can't say Shaun of the Dead wasn't funny

[Chefelf]

Hey, I'm working on a zombie movie right now. And you can't say Shaun of the Dead wasn't funny

Shaun of the Dead was great. Zombies, however, are played out. I would abort the project and go with something else. Try Vikings. That had a brief moment in 2002 but it never really took off.

[Vesuvius]

Try Vikings. That had a brief moment in 2002 but it never really took off.

Hmmm, better act fast on that one. Genndy Tartakovsky is soon to release something about Vikings.

I was more a fan of MadTV than SNL. I think that SNL catered to a certain audience, when MadTV could please a larger number of people with absolute stupidity. Kenny Rogers spoofs anyone?

Oh, and Yay!

This post has been edited by Vesuvius: 21 October 2008 - 06:13 PM

[Chefelf]

I was more a fan of MadTV than SNL. I think that SNL catered to a certain audience, when MadTV could please a larger number of people with absolute stupidity. Kenny Rogers spoofs anyone?

MadTV was way better five years ago.

[Ninja Duck]

I just checked and zombies are not on the list of officially played out things. I want to believe you, Chefelf, but I just can't.

[J m HofMarN]

Dear Mr. Elf

RE: Zombies Not Funny

See: Vampires VS Zombies

Regards, JMH

This post has been edited by J m HofMarN: 21 October 2008 - 09:22 PM

[Heccubus]

Hey, I'm working on a zombie movie right now. And you can't say Shaun of the Dead wasn't funny

Shaun of the Dead wasn't funny because of the zombies. The zombies played into the humour very little.

Zombies themselves? Not funny, I agree. However you can write something that is funny that happens to make use of zombies.

Also:
Neither are pirates, ninjas, or Chuck Norris.

This post has been edited by Heccubus: 21 October 2008 - 11:57 PM

[Dr Lecter]

Epic Fail

[Chefelf]

Yes, Shaun of the Dead was not funny because of zombies it was funny because Simon Pegg and his crew are funny.

Maybe it's a generational thing. I've never thought zombies were funny. I just don't get it at all.

[Spann]

It must be the generation - stuff that was cool twenty years ago are always retro and hip - hence retro game consoles, zombies and being slightly genderally ambiguous being all the things that the cool kids are into. Browse myspace music for long enough and you'll find a skinny boy in eyeliner playing chiptunes about zombies.

This post has been edited by Spann: 22 October 2008 - 05:29 PM

[J m HofMarN]

I find Chuck Norris to be funny, just because I think he'd have been Huckabee's vice presidential nominee, and joined him in making nonsensical jokes about people shooting at Barack Obama.

[Gobbler]

Browse myspace music for long enough and you'll find a skinny boy in eyeliner playing chiptunes about zombies.

I'd expect to turn into a zombie myself after a few minutes.

[aggiecouch]

It's not a zombie comedy. Don't know where you guys picked that up from. Guess it was my mention of Shaun, but that was mainly in response to the Chefelf's claim that "they're not funny and never were." I just wanted to argue with claim #4 and mention that I enjoy those type of movies enough to want to emulate them.