Foo Fighters and the Never-Ending Rockefeller Ritual

A few insightful readers recommended I check out last night's episode of Saturday Night Live, since there were apparently some very Secret Sun-worthy bits scattered among the brain-gouging unfunniness that has been the hallmark of this show since the early 90s.

I think it's a rite of passage to get over Saturday Night Live's literally-sophomoric humor. I practically worshipped the show when I was quite young, went into a depressive state when the original cast left and rediscovered it when the Phil Hartman-Mike Myers generation took over. But as Adam Sandler and Chris Farley and the rest of the frat-boys rose, I bailed, mostly for good.

But a sync's a sync and the Never-Ending Ritual is nothing if not totalizing. So I bit the bullet and watched as much as I could handle. Which wasn't much. 

This was like the warm chicken-salad fever-dream of Saturday Night Live. It was the worst-fears-realized version of a mind-rapingly-terrible mainstream television program in the Age of Trump. 

I had been planning to go into the bathroom and flay myself with a Lady Bic shaver but I'm a masochist at heart, so I decided to watch more SNL instead.

THE PLAYBACK

And what a clown-orgy of a blazing shitshow it was. I know next to nothing about Kevin Hart, this week's host, but the cold open was like being trapped at the Daily Kos "Winter-Festival" party. Or the CIA's. 

But I repeat myself.

What I managed to sit through was kind of like watching a mental patient trying to drive rusty nails into his shin with a lug-wrench. He keeps missing the mark and you're grateful for it but you still wince every time he hits raw flesh instead.  I mean, it was positively archonic.

There was a skit about a black Batman and Robin getting arrested for cocaine possession that was not only laugh-free, it was actually a laugh vacuum. It might be a while before anything actually seems funny again after watching it because it sucked all the laughs out of the atmosphere. Just warning you.

There was an absolutely interminable ESPN skit that seemed to exist solely to gloat over the Alabama special election. Because what's more hilarious than a special election for a vacant Senate seat, right?

Then there was a 70s PBS TV parody-- a wide-open target if ever there was one-- that meandered around the far outskirts of comedy like a dog searching for just the right spot to poo when you're already late for work.

Then there was this blisteringly unfunny skit, called "Nativity Play." Because as it is with Trump, mocking Christians is absolutely cost-free in today's America. In fact, it's greatly rewarded. Even so, SNL's idiot writers don't even know the difference between a mass and a service.

The maguffin here was a llama the church youth group was using in place of the Magi's camel. Apparently the llama was "ruddy" -- no, seriously-- meaning it was his mating season. 

I couldn't find any basis for this "ruddy" joke anywhere, so I can only assume this was the Nephilim AI's little contribution. I mean, ruby stars are also ruddy, aren't they?

The skit then became a tedious countdown to when the actors would drop the blanket hiding the llama's "ruddy" phallus, only to zoom in (and linger) on a somewhat-androgynous boy's reaction when they finally did. 

Because this really sums up where the culture is going, folks. Take a good look at the future of mainstream television.

Here, too. A bone was tossed--so to speak-- to Marina Abramovic fans, with a joke (sic) about the Baby Jesus being eaten. 

Of course, if SNL's writers were even half as radical as they thought they were, they might do a skit or two about the corporation who currently owns NBC. If they need a hook maybe they could riff on the fact that it's been named the "worst company in America" twice in the past eight years.

Yeah, I'm not holding my breath either.

But onto the main course, and that was Foo Fighters, performing their recent single, "The Sky is a Neighborhood."

My first thought watching the performance was, "when did Foo Fighters morph into Uriah Heep and where was I when it happened?"

My second thought was "my, those sure are a lot of Garlands on that set there."

My third thought was "are they intentionally paying tribute to this song?" Inquiring minds want to know.

So I went and looked up the music video and saw two young girls sitting on the floor....

...atop a map of the constellations. 

And of course, our old friend Nikola makes a cameo.

And then the band's eyes light up. Because as longtime readers know, that's what happens when you are possessed by alien walk-ins. 

Your eyes get all weird.

Because you're possessed by a disembodied being from a higher reality. 

The eyes.

They get weird.

A bunch of other stuff happens, then we see the girl with the Fraserian buzzcut stare at the ceiling as holes are bunched in it as Grohl sings something about "Heaven is a Big Bang" or whatever.

Must be why I'm thinking of Las Vegas.

Grohl helpfully warns us that something is coming, so don't look. 

Something, of course, being a fleet of Vegas. The girls levitate to the beat as Foo Fighters herald in the beamships.

That nutty Interdimensional-AI overwriting history got a little bit cute with the Foos' next set, a Christmas medley. 

Which kicked off with every child's favorite Christmas carol, "Everlong." 

Interesting art on the single there, huh?

In case you can't make it out, those are electrical high-tension towers.  

Not sure what the sync-nificance of those are, exactly.

It's on the tip of my tongue. Damn it.

In case you missed the reference, the "Everlong" snippet was ol' Grohly indulging his own Christmas memories, thinking back on that how great it was havin' some of that sweet, sweet rock-star extramarital sex with Veruca Salt's Louise Post. 

For the first time, which was just before Christmas 1996.

Louise Post, whose primary influence seems to be Elizabeth Fraser.

Which you can plainly hear on this duet, which sounds a lot like the Foos covering an outtake from Four Calendar Cafe. And has been acknowledged as such, in case you were wondering.

As a matter of fact, Grohl loved Louise Post so much physically and spiritually, felt such a connection with her and harmonized so perfectly with her, that he kicked her ass to the curb for Winona Ryder after a couple months. 

Because movie-star sex trumps rock-star sex. Always.

And just because it had to be, "Everlong" was featured on The Colour and the Shape, which was released on Roswell Records nine short days before Jeff Buckley's death by drowning.

So I guess there was some more so-called comedy, which was as funny as watching puppies die. And then we had the outro, which was held in the skating rink in Rockefeller Center.

Because we need a little Mithras, right this very minute.

And boy, did we get it. 

In fact, there was a running gag that Kevin Hart couldn't skate, so he just kind of crouched in front of Mithras the whole time. 

By the way; is it my imagination or is that guy like 4'11"?

And of course all this Mithras cheer was had on West 4:9th Street. And it was actually the 17th at the time.

And it all ended with this shot...

... which just so happened to match this shot, from a post that went up here exactly 10 years ago. 

I had a feeling that the Demonic AI Overlords were big Secret Sun fans. And it turns out I was right!

BONUS ROUND

Don't forget Rockefeller is transforming. Those circles there are called "portals" for some unknown reason. 

And a FB member pointed out that the Vatican pulled off some master-class trolling on Sunday, to mark the Black Pope's birthday. 

I don't know if anyone bothered to tell these people how inappropriate the poses here are but the fact of the matter is that absolutely no one in power actually gives a shit what anyone else thinks anymore.

This went up a day after I blogged about this song.

Of course, the Foos performed this song on SNL the day the secret UFO program dominated the headlines. Former Senator Harry Reid (D-Las Vegas) tweeted that there.

And damn, Chris Carter must be beside himself. The new X-Files season starts in two weeks and he couldn't possibly buy that kind of free publicity.

And of course he wrote an episode about Twins. Pray to Our Lady it isn't "Fight Club, Part !!." 

There was also a power outage at the Atlantis International Airport. On the 33rd parallel. On the 17th.

Because 2017 is 1733 in the Coptic Egyptian calendar.

The local ABC affiliate had Nefertiti Jaquez on the scene. Which I'm pretty sure was also the name of a character in an Austin Powers movie.

UPDATE: I did end up going back and watching the rest of the clips. Believe me, the garbage I cover here were the highlights. Then I dipped into a selection of other SNL skits from the past few years. 

Just to make certain I wasn't hallucinating.

If there was such a thing as a crime against comedy, SNL would be on trial at the Hague.