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SNL Recap: Zach Galifianakis / Vampire Weekend

By Steve Murphy, Zoë Rice and Howard Megdal

STEVE MURPHY: I think most actual Obama speeches are funnier than this sketch. Maybe they should stop calling this a “Cold Open” and start calling it the “Dead Open?”

ZOË RICE: Eh, the opening was just not that funny. They could have done something much more clever about healthcare.

HOWARD MEGDAL: This drags, and is utterly aimless. How hard would it have been to make fun of Democrats, Republicans or even the general public here? The target was nobody.

Oscars in Review

By Zoë Rice, Jillian Lovejoy Lowery and Akie Bermiss

ZOË RICE: Oscar night! I confess, I love it. The spectacle, the surprises, the speeches–I even love judging what I don’t love about the night. And of course, though it’s become cliche, I love talking about the fashion. I look forward to being wowed; I want to see a dress and think “Oh, it’s just gorgeous.” Unfortunately, I can’t say that happened much this time around. This year’s the red carpet was muted by peaches, pale pinks, dusky grays, and washed out metallics.
JILLIAN LOVEJOY LOWERY: I love awards shows. Usually. Just not this year’s Academy Awards.

AKIE BERMISS: Well the 82nd Annual Academy Awards were last night, for those of you who didn’t know, and they were quite the scene, as usual. If I felt a little let down by the whole affair, it might be some sort of quaint nostalgia for the days when I think the Oscars were actually really, really important. Could be that I was just young and impressionable. And I wanted to be in movies back then. But all the stars came out last night and it WAS the Oscars, no doubt about that. The jokes were chuckle-worthy, but the biting humor and self-deprecation of the days when the hosts used to sing and dance and do some stand-up and really MC the evening was missing. It was surprising to see Alec Baldwin and Steve Martin so harnessed and restrained all evening. When being host isn’t what it used to be, the rest of the show really suffers.

Baby Names

By Akie Bermiss and Molly Schoemann

MOLLY SCHOEMANN: I figured it might be useful during this discussion to have a look at some of the most popular Baby Names of 2009. It is fascinating to see the naming trends being created and followed by new parents.

AKIE BERMISS: In the Bermiss family we have no illusions about having popular names. My parents, black radicals in the 70s who decided settling down and raising a family would be the most radical move, acted out their revolutionary fantasies by giving us all African and Arabic first names. And, while I go by “Akie” most of the time, my full name is actually: ‘Aamir Lee Bermiss. And, of course, my first and last names are not pronounce AT ALL like how they are spelled. Needless to say I spent quite a few years trying to correct teachers and administrators over and over again before I came upon the provenance of a simple, yet still peculiar, nickname in “Akie.”

And its been smooth sailing ever since.

Recalling What Toyota’s Recall Hath Wrought

By Molly Schoemann and Howard Megdal

HOWARD MEGDAL: Words cannot accurately express the relief I feel knowing that any mistake I have made in my life was obviously the result of subsequent recalls. How unburdened I will feel, retroactively!

MOLLY SCHOEMANN:
How many products out there are performing at sub-par levels, with tragic results? My own life has been impacted in many ways by the shoddy workmanship and temperamental malfunctionings of countless gadgets. I shudder to think.

Immigration Reform and the Democratic Party

By Jessica Bader and Howard Megdal

JESSICA BADER: The purported political implications of immigration reform seem to go a long way towards explaining why it stalled a few years ago and why its fate is uncertain now. Democrats in swing districts (particularly in the Rust Belt) fear Lou Dobbs-style demagoguery from the right that could cost them their seats in Congress. Republicans worry that immigration reform would result in a growing bloc of Hispanic voters increasingly loyal to the Democratic Party. However, both sides have it wrong.

HOWARD MEGDAL: Consider me a skeptic that Immigration Reform, championed by the Democrats and demagogued by the Republicans, will lead to Hispanic voters leaving the Democratic Party in droves. History has shown that groups who get big victories from political parties tend to stay awfully loyal.

Liveblogging: A Non-Liveblogged Look

By Howard Megdal and Molly Schoemann

HOWARD MEGDAL: The sun revolves around the earth. The earth is flat. Dewey Defeats Truman.
The history of snap judgments and immediate reactions is mixed at best. So when it comes to the truly important stuff, I’m thinking Liveblogging isn’t the way to go.

MOLLY SCHOEMANN: I’m not sure I see the point of live blogging an event, or of reading someone else’s live blogged account of an event.

Lost: Week 5

By Zoë Rice and Ted Berg

ZOË RICE: This week’s “Sundown” was my least favorite episode of Lost so far this season. And in fact, I realized that last year, when Sayid was absent from the main plotline for a while, I didn’t miss him one…

Ed Wade: A Look Back, and Forward

By Dan Szymborski, Chris Needham and Chris Pummer

CHRIS PUMMER: Ed Wade is probably the right man at the right time for Houston. And as long as his notorious fetish for overpaid middle relievers doesn’t destroy the organization in the meantime, he’ll be a capable placeholder until Houston owner Drayton McLane gives the go-ahead for a real rebuilding project.

DAN SZYMBORSKI: In today’s game, with the general quality of general managers being much higher than 10-15 years ago, Ed Wade is out of place. The Randy Smiths, Syd Thrifts, Chuck LaMars, and Allard Bairds of the world have generally been relegated to lesser advisory positions. Unless, of course we’re talking about teams run by former Wal-Mart CEOs.

CHRIS NEEDHAM: The best defense of Ed is this: he doesn’t completely suck. Just mostly.

The Value of Spring Training

By Chris Needham, Jessica Bader, Jason Clinkscales and Zoë Rice

ZOË RICE: For the past week or so, I have glutted myself on Mets’ spring training reports. I wasn’t able to go in person, but I’ve been glued to Twitter, blogs, and SNY. I’ve seen about a hundred pictures from Port St. Lucie, at least a dozen videos, and heard every report on Jose Reyes’s health, or how Oliver Perez looks in bullpen sessions, or how Jeff Francoeur is the happiest, most positive person in the world, or how Jason Bay is already fitting in, or how good first round prospect Ike Davis looks, or what Daniel Murphy and Mike Jacobs look like at first…trust me, the list goes on.

CHRIS NEEDHAM: Once you strip away the overwrought prose, Spring Training is really boring. Wake me up at the end of March.

JASON CLINKSCALES: Yes, hope springs eternal, but that’s mostly for the teams that have had little hope in recent years. For the teams that play for the here and now, however, you can’t help but to think that spring training feels more like extended calisthenics and glorified batting practice. Either way, there’s still value, though, in the thirty games for these squads, just not so much for the fans.

JESSICA BADER: As recently as a couple of years ago, I devoured every morsel of spring training coverage as though it were a four-star restaurant’s finest offering and I had subsisted on bread and water for the previous three and a half months. Now I’m just another cranky grump wishing I could fast-forward to Opening Day. What happened?