That’s right, The Golden Girls‘ own Rose Nylund… the incomparable Betty White, is slated to host the May 8th “Mother’s Day episode” of SNL! That this didn’t happen sooner is perhaps life’s biggest mystery.

Betty’s self-deprecating humor and quick wit is sure to be a great match for Saturday Night Live, and we’re excited to see what is likely going to be one of the more memorable SNL episodes.

According to People, “…the special Mother’s Day episode will also reunite six former female SNL cast members, most of whom happen to be moms: Tina Fey, Amy Poehler, Molly Shannon, Maya Rudolph, Ana Gasteyer and Rachel Dratch.” While the 88 year old Betty White is not actually a mom herself, she is perhaps “a mother of great comedy”. That’s good enough for us.

How did this happen? A Facebook fan page titled “Betty White to Host SNL (please?)!” creeped up soon after a Snickers commercial featuring Betty White getting tackled in a muddy football game aired during the 2010 Super Bowl. A groundswell of support and petitioning of Lorne Michaels made it all happen!

Tags: betty white, facebook, fan page, golden girls, lorne michaels, may 8, mother's day, nbc, rose nylund, saturday night live, snickers, snl, super bowl

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Matt and I had a brief IM conversation this morning resulting from I Don’t Want to Wait by Paula Cole playing on the radio:

jamie: wearing shrap-NEL in his SKIN
jamie: that was just on the radio
matt: how nice for you
matt: I don’t hate any songs more than that one
jamie: really? ANY songs?
matt: I can’t think of a single song I hate more
jamie: wow…including Celine Dion? Whitney Houston?
matt: them i can tolerate
matt: if I need to
jamie: you don’t wanna wait? for your life to be over?
matt: but Paula Cole is like nails on a chalkboard for me, which come to think of it, still sounds better than Paula Cole

Ever since the song came out, we’ve made fun of the way she sings “wearing shrapnel in his skin”, but until this conversation, I never quite realized the level of hatred that Matt has for her. Not that I’m a fan by any means. Hearing the song and having this conversation reminded me of many years ago when Matt and I were staying at his cousin Eric’s apartment near Boston for some reason, and we were planning on getting tickets to see Radiohead at the Worcester Centrum later that summer. Tickets went on sale the morning we were at Eric’s, so I called Ticketmaster or whoever the hell you’d call back then to order concert tickets, but since they had just gone on sale, it was hard to get through, and I was put on hold. And the entire time I was on hold (at least 15-20 minutes, possibly much longer), I Don’t Want to Wait by Paula Cole was played on a loop. Part of me thought whoever set that up was incredibly clever, and part of me wanted to find them and kill them in cold blood.

I don't wanna wait, for my brains to be blown out...

Speaking of Paula Cole and Boston, she performed at the first Mixfest in Boston that Matt and I went to, along with our friends Lisa and Erica. We stayed at Eric’s apartment that weekend as well. When Paula Cole came on stage, Erica climbed up into a tree to get a better view of Paula’s hairy armpits while Matt, Lisa, and I wandered off to do something a lot less depressing. I think we went to see the Holocaust Memorial. We were also there for most of Third Eye Blind’s set as well.

Anyway, long story short: Matt hates Paula Cole and she has hairy pits. And eff Radiohead for making me listen to her song for an eternity.

Tags: 90s music, boston, celine dion, eric's apartment, holocaust memorial, i don't want to wait, mixfest, paula cole, radiohead, third eye blind, ticketmaster, wearing shrapnel in his skin, whitney houston

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Songspeak is sad to learn that actor Corey Haim, famous for his roles in popular 80s movies, The Lost Boys and License To Drive, has died of an apparent drug overdose. More recently, Haim and his frequent co-star and friend, Corey Feldman starred in an A&E reality series called The Two Coreys. Anyone who has watched the show knows that Corey Haim has struggled with drug addiction and alcohol throughout his adult life, while Corey Feldman has had his own issues as well. Needless to say, the two have had a tumultuous friendship.

Originally from Canada, Corey Haim was living in Los Angeles, California.

Tags: A&E, child actor, corey feldman, corey haim, dead, drug, drugs, L.A., license to drive, los angeles, lost boys, overdose, the two coreys

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At a family gathering over the weekend, we got into a discussion about a Facebook fan page that was created by a 2010 Winter Olympics watcher strictly for The Norweigian Curling Team’s Pants. My family being blessed with both Norweigian roots AND a terrible sense of humor led me to say “Norweigian Pants, isn’t that a Beatles song?”… which in turn started a discussion about how you could put the word ‘pants’ into just about any Beatles song title to make it better…

All You Need Is Pants
Norweigian Pants (These Pants Have Flown)
Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Pants
The Pants on the Hill
Back In The U.S.S.Pants
Can’t Buy Me Pants
She Loves Pants (Yeah Yeah Yeah)
In My Pants
A Day In The Pants
And I Love Pants
Pants Together
Here Comes The Pants
Happiness is a Warm Pants
I Saw Pants Standing There
Martha My Pants
P.S. I Love Pants
Strawberry Pants Forever
The Ballad of John and Pants
With A Little Help From My Pants
You’ve Got To Hide Your Pants Away
All My Pantsin’

We went back and forth like this for quite awhile. This may have been the thing to my dad saying that we always post “weird” things on Facebook. He’s not wrong.

Are there more “pants’d” Beatles song titles? List them in the comments!

Tags: all you need is love, facebook, fan page, norweigian wood, pants, the beatles, the noreweigian olympic curling team's pants

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Thanks to Tosh.0 for bringing my attention to the Epic Beard Man viral video. It’s pretty disturbing, so I won’t embed it here, but you can view it at this link. Basically, a drunk black dude and a racist bearded white idiot exchange words on a transit bus in Oakland, CA, which then escalates into the white guy beating the tar out of the black guy, leaving blood all over the seats and the black guy asking for an ambulance, only he pronounces it “amberlamps”. Apparently this video has created quite a stir, the men involved in the fight have done interviews, and people have done a ton of video mash-ups using it. My favorite by far is this one, which incorporates the video into the video for Ram Jam’s Black Betty. It makes me laugh every time.

As disturbing as it is that this has become such a phenomenon (I mean, can you imagine being on the bus on the way home from work and witnessing something like this?), at least we’re getting some fine entertainment out of it.

Tags: 70s music, amberlamps, ambulance, black betty, epic beard man, oakland, phenomenon, ram jam, tosh.0, transit bus fight, video mash-up, viral video

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There was a pretty awesome songspeak on the Soup Awards this past weekend. Jeffrey Osborne’s classic 80’s ballad On the Wings of Love was nominated for his perfomance of the song on the season finale of ABC’s The Bachelor. Although Heidi Montag’s abominable performance from the Miss Universe Pageant won the award, Jeffrey Osborne made a surprise appearance and announced to Joel McHale and the rest of the world the existence of his new wing restaurant, Jeffrey Osborne’s Wings of Love. It appears to be along the lines of the Toasted Owl that we here at songspeak like to frequent, and Jeffrey sang a great new version of his famous hit that promoted the restaurant. You can see the performance here (warning – it will make you hungry for wings):

Tags: 10s tv, 80s music, ABC, heidi montag, jeffrey osborne, joel mchale, miss universe pageant, on the wings of love, soup awards, the bachelor, the soup, toasted owl

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It seems like Viacom is taking the bold move of removing The Daily Show and The Colbert Report from HULU, much to this dismay of college students with MacBooks everywhere. Bloggers everywhere (including us) are going to have a much harder time embedding clips of last night's zingers on their posts.

The shows will still be available on ComedyCentral.com, but have you tried to use that site? I mean COME. ON. You need some sunglasses. So many colors.

But seriously folks, in all actuality the videos that get posted to Comedy Central's microsites: TheDailyShow.com and ColbertNation.com aren't half bad. It's just going to be frustrating for people who sort of like an all in one solution, but for that, there's always Boxee, which is better at online video than Hulu anyway.

One more gripe, when you embed, the video isn't 16:9. What is this, 2007?

Tags: comedy central, hulu, jon stewart, stephen colbert, the colbert report, the daily show, tumblr, vancouverage, viacom

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Last month Coral Anne created a Facebook fan page called ‘Can This Pickle get More Fans Than Nickelback‘. Guess what– it did! It only took about 3 weeks! This is good news for cucumbers everywhere. The page has more than 1,530,445 fans.

A lot of news sites are reporting that Nickleback frontman Chad Kroeger found out about it, and instead of laughing off the ridiculousness, he sent a message to the fan page’s creator. But this seems to be fake. I mean, make no mistake, we’re not saying that that poodle of a lead singer is not a d-bag, but c’mon Daily News.

According to the page creator…

“I have had no correspondence with Chad Kroeger or anyone affiliated with Nickelback. Anyone who says so is just spreading rumours and/or are mistaken by pictures that were posted on the site of someone with what was likely a fake account. Nickelback have not done anything wrong in lieu of the making of this page and if anyone out there says that they have, it is not true.

I am fully aware that I misspelled Nickelback as “Nickleback” in the name of the page. This is because Facebook doesn’t allow you to put the word Nickelback in the name of a page because I guess if someone did it would be copyright infringement.“

Also, the most famous pickle of this decade has now been forever immortalized on a t-shirt.

Speaking of fan pages, Songspeak now has a fan page on Facebook. Why not become a fan?

Tags: can this pickle get more fans than nickelback, can this pickle get more fans than nickleback, chad kroeger, coral anne, facebook, fake, fan page, nickelback, nickleback, pickle, t-shirt, upset

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I got my sixty back!

This happened quite some time ago at a poker night at the VFW, but it merits mention nonetheless. It was final table with a few of us left, the blinds were high, and while I wasn’t involved in either of these hands, I was still playing and watching. Two guys got involved in a pot two hands in a row. In the first one, one of them lost about 60,000 in chips to the other. The next hand, he pretty much ended up winning them back. I told him, “you got your sixty back!” and the other guy said, “you other fuckers don’t know how to act”, clearly referencing SexyBack by Justin Timberlake. We all had a good chuckle over that one.

Tags: 00s music, final table, justin timberlake, poker, poker night, sexyback, vfw

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Boner
1968-2010

Some sad news just received here at Songspeak Corporate Headquarters. Andrew Koenig, better known as Richard Stabone, and even better known as Boner, on the hit 80’s sitcom Growing Pains, was found dead of an apparent suicide in a Vancouver park after going missing on February 14th.  If Andrew taught us anything in life, it’s that you can get away with having a character named “Boner” on a family television show.

And if there’s only one thing we learned from this story, it’s that his dad is Walter Koenig, who played Chekov on the original Star Trek.

Tags: 60s tv, 80s tv, andrew koenig, boner, february 14th, found dead, growing pains, missing, richard stabone, star trek, suicide, valentine's day, vancouver, walter koenig

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