Breaking News: SNL Produces Something Funny

So I’ll probably be the last blog (meaning, the 80th million) to write about "Lazy Sunday," the Saturday Night Live sketch that everyone’s raving about. It was a filmed segment featuring Chris Parnell and Andy Samberg rapping in earnest gangsta fashion about eating cupcakes from the Magnolia Bakery and getting psyched to see The Chronicles of Narnia. It’s hysterically funny, and you can see it here. (My favorite lines come towards the end, when they’re sitting in the theater waiting for Narnia to start -– "Now quiet in the theater, or it’s gonna get tragic / We’re about to get taken to a dream world of magic.")

What’s truly priceless, though, is the cultural reaction, like this piece in the New York Times today. There have been others like it, and they all marvel at this sketch. The Times does the dreaded analysis of why something's funny, writing, "It is (Parnell and Samberg’s) obliviousness to their total lack of menace –- or maybe the ostentatious way they pay for convenience-store candy with $10 bills..." Then Parnell says, "It's something the likes of which we haven't seen on 'SNL' anytime recently." Um, I think he means it’s funny. Isn’t that what they get paid to do over there, produce the funny? The skit is really, really good, and some stuff is always going to be the best of the bunch, but how sad it must be for the show –- which cranks out 20 or so skits a week all season –- to get national attention for...a funny bit. It feels like reporting on a kid whose dad just let him win a game of checkers.