SNL isn’t all the funny anymore.  Under the reins of Tina Fey the show has degenerated into over-rated fart jokes and skits about whacked out Appalachian hillbillies.  Certainly not the biting humor of the old.  I haven’t really watched the show for a couple of years.  Every once in awhile a guess will interest me and I’ll tune in.  Last night’s season finale featuring Kevin Spacey wasn’t all that great.  As usual, the first few skits are the funniest and there’s really no other reason to watch the show.  Even the once-funny "Weekend Update" skit is no longer interesting.  Yet another aspect of the show Tina Fey has ruined.  What really makes SNL worth watching is Robert Smigel’s "TV Funhouse,"  the only real biting political humor SNL has anymore.  Last night’s episode: "Real Audio:  Presidential Out-takes" was priceless.  It basically showed how everything President Bush said leading up the the war in Iraq and since was total bullshit.  It was political humor at its finest.  And if all you Conservatives think he is picking on President Bush, well get the hell over it.  Smigel doesn’t play favorites.  Both President Clinton and Hillary have been on the receiving end of his humor.

Everyone’s favorite asshole, Bill O’Reilly, has threatened Mexico with a boycott if their foreign secretary follows through on a threat to sue the US if our government detains Mexican citizens trying to get into the country illegally.  Will this man’s 15 minutes never end?!  O’Reilly seems to think he caused the French some great harm when he called for a boycott.  Let me see, O’Reilly’s show gets two, maybe three, million viewers a day; and I seriously doubt those viewers are the kind of people who visit France or purchase French products.  O’Reilly is so fucking delusional.  It’s sad really.  If the day every comes when he’s not the center of attention in his own little world, I don’t know what he will do with himself.

I’m not a huge fan of the Dixie Chicks; although, during their little brouhaha in 2003 I did go out and buy all of their CDs just to be a shit.  What has surprised me about the Chicks is how unaoplogetic they are — even the so-called "conservative" sisters, Martie Maguire and Emily Robison.  After three years they’ve finally come out with a new CD, but instead of trying to mend fences with their asinine country fans, they pretty give them the finger.  They could have apologized.  They could have returned to their country roots and gone begging to all the Clear Channel assholes who bulldozed their CDs.  They didn’t, and I respect them for it.  I may not like their music, but I applaud any American, famous or not, who has the balls to stand up and speak out for what they believe, damn the consequences.

Maines makes an interesting point in the article.  People seem to think that country music stars are automatically Republican, conservative, and pro-war.  For the most part, that may be the case, but you find there are some who are not.  For every Reba McIntyre and Clint Black who blasted the Chicks, there was a Tim McGraw and Faith Hill who stood up for their right to speak out.  Too bad more everyday Americans won’t stand up for our right to free speech.

This may not actually be, by definition, ironic.  It is, however, damned funny that in the very Catholic country of Italy, in which the Vatican issued almost daily condemnations, The Da Vinci Code ends up breaking box office records.

Here in the good ol’ US of A, the film earned nearly $30 million in its first day at the box office, which would put it on track for a very nice opening weekend in the $75+ million range.  Of course, it’s each day following that will tell if my prediction that Code would be the big flop of 2006 comes true or.

Churches have been getting a lot of attention in the news lately for the different take on trying to keep people from seeing the film.  Instead of calling for a boycott, which always fails, they opted for "educating" their parishioners in the so-called heresy of the story.  As I’ve mentioned before, my own church had one of these "classes," but from what I’ve been able to get from my fellow church members, they are still going to see the movie.