Tuesday, September 29, 2009

Of Interest

Jane Mansfield

Greatest talk show fights of all time… Jerry Springer only got 3rd place!

Without a doubt, the most horrible foods in the world

Bumbling police videos give the non-bumblers a bad rap

World’s Most Rare Diseases My mad cow ain’t shiat!

I saw SNL Saturday when Jenny Slate dropped the F bomb… I wasn’t sure it actually happened until I saw the clip

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

My Man..sweetest set of sweater meat EVER..Jane was the Bomb

an Donalbane said...

Technically, it's "Jayne".

In researching for this comment, I found something I'd forgotten: That Mariska Hargitay of Law & Order is Jayne's daughter.

Another interesting trivia bit: That bar under the back of semi-truck trailers is sometimes known as a "Mansfield bar" after Jayne's death in which her Electra 225 plowed under the back of a slow-moving tractor trailer, killing the actress and three other adults in the car. The accident helped spur the addition of the bars on trailers to prevent such mishaps.

an Donalbane said...

Regarding the SNL 'slip', you may call me a cynic, but I think it has premeditation written all over it. My reasoning follows:

1) New players typically toil in obscurity for some time. Without the 'gaffe', would anyone have known the name Jenny Slate on Monday morning?

2) In an era when social mores have become essentially non-existent, SNL has increasingly skewed toward the LCD (lowest common denominator), coarse or base material that is not necessarily funny - SNL needs the "buzz". (Compare and contrast with the Chase/Pryor bit which used the "n-word", but revealed a larger national dialogue.)

3) Lorne is a very shrewd and talented entertainment executive. I'm still not sure whether he was in on it or not. But certainly he's capable of spinning the story with a cloak of 'plausible deniability'.

Comes now the question of what should happen.

If I were head of NBC's Entertainment Division and determined that the 'slip' was a planned publicity stunt, I would fire the girl. Don't get me wrong - I am very familiar with the word, even occasionally use it myself, with discretion. But I know very well that if I were to use that word in speaking to the public, my customers, I would very likely lose my job. People working in the broadcast industry are acutely aware of this, so it just doesn't fly that she inadvertently used the word.

To fail to recognize or uphold standards is a failure of aspiration.

OK, I'll hop off my soapbox now...