SNL

An Ode to Ed Grimley

by Dave on November 9, 2015
in , Television

It’s safe to say that as we ramp up to the 2016 presidential elections most entertainment bloggers aren’t huuuuge (see what I did there?) fans of Donald Trump. As a result, remotely objective reviews or commentary on his recent SNL hosting stint are non-existent. In terms of the writing and humor-levels, however, I’m not afraid to say that The Donald’s first appearance since 2004 was pound-for-pound a much funnier episode than the season premiere (Miley Cyrus) and maybe even – although I absolutely love her – Amy Schumer’s. Her monologue, though, was one for the ages. Don’t get me wrong, this is a Schumer-friendly zone.

It’s no surprise then, that the day-after-breakdowns have focused almost solely on Larry David’s contributions, that Trump is a racist clown, that we don’t like Trump, that I know I’m supposed to be re-capping SNL but don’t vote for Trump… and have almost completely ignored the return of one of SNL and SCTV’s greatest characters of all time – One Mr. Ed Grimley. I’m here to fix that. Or just to ruminate like a psychotic Canadian comedy nerd while nobody pays attention.

Drake’s recent Hotline Bling video doesn’t need much help in the ridicule department from the pantheon of popular culture. It was quick meme material almost as soon as it was released a couple of weeks ago. Still, SNL’s call to Martin Short to come down and recreate one of his most memorable characters was one of their most inspired moments in recent memory. If you had better things to do at midnight on a Saturday, and I sincerely hope you did, have a look at his deliciously wonderful surprise appearance above – and then take a gander at some of Ed’s finest historical moments below. The lackluster audience reaction when he appeared on the live show leads me to believe we’re all in desperate need of a reminder, I must say.

Jesse Spends 9 Hours With Ed

The Reverend gets a long lesson on the ins and outs of Wheel of Fortune and Dolly Parton during this episode from October 20, 1984.

Ed Grimley for the Kids

Billy Crystal and Martin Short educate children on the finer points of laundry in this 80’s episode of Sesame Street.

The Fella Who Couldn’t Wait for Christmas

Before being hired as an established ringer – alongside Crystal, Christopher Guest, Jim Belushi, Harry Shearer and others – to help save SNL from cancellation after Lorne Michaels left the show right before its 10th season, Martin Short developed this strange character regularly on Canada’s SCTV. “Thank you, Bing.”

Incidentally I used to gel my hair, hike my pants up and do my fairly decent (I must say) imitation of Ed at my parent’s dinner parties. I also did it for the whole of my 8th grade class at Rideau Valley Middle School and had my teacher, Mr. Walsworth, in similar stitches. What did the rest of the class think? Let’s just say it’s a good thing I’ve always been a big lad. Adolescent embarrassments aside – it’s good to see you back, Ed.

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Disturbing Keyword Referral Analysis

by Dave on September 19, 2011
in Nerdery, Professional, Pye in the Face

An online marketing guy by profession, one of the most integral metrics I have to keep an eye on is known as keyword referral traffic. Namely, what people are typing into search engines before ending up on a given site. And Jiminy Crickets – those keywords can get weird.

nerdery Pye in the Face has been around for over a decade now, and there are thousands of posts, galleries, tags and categories capable of pulling in organic traffic from Google, Bing, etc. Most of which I’ll regret during my next job search. Through the magic of reporting software which crunches and parses log files – My tool of choice is the awesome and free Google Analytics – you can not only see what keywords are generating traffic but what search engine and which one of your pages the visitor is landing on. You can also see what country they’re from, what time of day they visited, what operating system they’re using, what browser. It’s incredibly deep, fascinating and addictive. When I first started building websites I’d check these sorts of stats fanatically – but my favorite was always, and remains, the keyword referrals.

Obviously, everyone with a website wants it to rank well in Google for a specific set of keywords. The power of big G is incredible. Fortunes are literally won and lost every time their algorithm, which determines how sites rank for a given keyword or phrase, undergoes a major update. If you sell “pink roller skates” and are #1 on Monday for that term, you’re laughing. Book a trip and start pricing jetskis. If, when you get to the warehouse on Tuesday, you’ve dropped to #39 – you’re out of business. That quickly. Better sell that jetski to Kenny Powers.

Kenny has actually had multiple liasons on jetskis.

Ranking well for mission-critical keywords is, well, mission-critical. A website has the potential to rank and draw traffic, however, for any combination of keywords which appear within the code of their site. It’s also important to note that the terms comprising a multi-word search phrase don’t have to appear on a site in the same order. They don’t all even have to appear in the same paragraph. If the potential for ridiculousness isn’t sinking in by now, it should be.

If there isn’t a ton of competition for a phrase which has somehow worked its way into your site’s copy one might find themselves on Google’s first page within a few hours of that text’s addition. Sites with regularly updated blogs especially can start ranking for hundreds – nay, thousands – of terms over the course of a few years. This is definitely the case with Pye in the Face (Last month people used 1,570 different keywords to find the site), and without prattling on about this nerdy stuff any longer I’m going to share my…

5 Favorite Phrases DavePye.com Drew Traffic for in August 2011

1. Florence Welch Bum: Florence may have her machine but she’s also in possession of a breathtaking caboose. I admit, when I featured her on Wednesday Wadio a little over a year ago I took screenshots of the best examples from the band’s video and named the resulting images “florence-youve-got-the-love-ass-video-bum.jpg” and “florence-and-the-machines-ass-butt.jpg” respectively. It was a sad, misguided experiment, but a very successful one. My site is #1 in Google (your local results may vary for everything on the list) for the aforementioned term and pulled in 6 visitors last month. It’s also the top entry in Google’s image search. Traffic also came in for florence and machine bum, and a guy named Dan actually left 2 comments looking for more Welch booty. If I roll the data back to cover an entire year, that article pulled in over a hundred visitors using 84 different keyword variations including: florence welch arse, florence welch hindquarters… butt, ass, shake, buttocks and bottom. This data is embarrassing, sad and doesn’t paint me in a particularly flattering light – but that doesn’t make it any less frickin’ fascinating.

2. Bobby McFerrin Raped my Grandmother: When Alec Baldwin hosted SNL 5 years ago he uttered this phrase during a particularly hilarious skit which you ~~can~~ can’t see below. I jump around on Google’s first page for the phrase, and 2 people found me using by using it last month. Since I wrote the article way back in November 2006, 65 people have typed it in before paying me a visit. I can only pray they were looking for that sketch and Bobby McFerrin isn’t being sought somewhere for questioning.

3. Bunkhouse Cock Buddies: Upon seeing traffic from this term I typed it into Google to see which post of mine could possibly be ranking for it. I went about 5 pages deep through the site results before giving up. Nothing. Then I tried image search – and sweet God in heaven do I wish I could take that back. All the therapy and bleach in the world will never erase that sight from my poor mind. Please take my word for it.

4. Does the Interrogator in the Movie Unthinkable Cut the Terrorist’s Penis Off?: The Unthinkable made an impression on me and I think my review of the Samuel L. Jackson flick holds up. I’m glad I took my time writing it because since it was published on May 28th of last year the post has pulled in an amazing 500+ people via Google and become one of my highest-viewed articles ever. I never mentioned the terrorist’s penis.

5. I’m Going to Die Alone with a Plethora of Cats: Is this someone “calling their shot”? Are they looking for a support group? Regardless, this is a great example of how different words from different areas on a site can combine causing a website show up for a bizarre search. I ranked #6 for this term and the landing page is for one of my categories. Over the course of the 10 articles which appear in this category, I mention cats, dying alone and use the word “plethora” in different posts – hence the ranking. Try to explain the ranking away as I might, I’ll still probably have my face eaten off by a cat days before my neighbors notice the smell.

Sorry, folks, if this all got a bit lengthy. After such a long period of irregular and sporadic writing I must have a lot of flexing to do. I hope you enjoyed all this disturbing data and I do believe I’ll make referral analysis a regular feature. A profoundly disturbing regular feature.

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Friday’s Quizzlet: Cold Kickin’ It Live!

by Dave on April 4, 2009
in Animalistic, Friday's Quizzlet, Movies

The site from which I used to spelunk my quizzlet questions each Friday has unfortunately gone the way of the Dodo. I’m quite happy to make the questions up myself – but that seems pretty disingenuous. I’d also like to reboot the sense of community we had here on Pye in the Face in years past and encourage reader participation. See where I’m going with this?

Using my Facebook status and Twitter account I’m going to invite all of you to submit the 5 questions which normally make up Friday’s Quizzlet. If folks care enough to get involved maybe I’ll be able to do this every week. I’d also like to invite people to answer the questions themselves in the comments like so many of you used to do in PITF’s golden era. Monday I’ll also be reinstating the Quotelet contest – with real prizes this time around. Sound fun? I’m certainly looking forward to it. Update: Thanks for all the submissions, folks. Here we go.

Appetizer: It’s a common observation that people’s pets resemble them in some way. What are 3 similarities between you and your pet? – Amy K.

1. Shepherd is loyal to a fault. You could say that, however, about every dog that has ever lived. “Want me to follow you into traffic? OK!” Although my “gut feelings” are usually quite dependable there have been a few times in my life where I spent time and energy on fixing people – when I should have been taking out the garbage. Or walking into traffic.

2. Shepherd digs his sister. Janet and I have been very close (since we stopped living together at our parent’s) and we both value each other’s support. For obvious reasons this has become especially important recently and also explains how my 5-day business trip to Boston has turned into over 3 weeks at this point. I’m reminded of Belushi’s SNL skit, “The Thing That Wouldn’t Leave”. But she swears she isn’t. We’ll see what she thinks in another 3 weeks.

3. Shepherd is fascinated by deer poo. Don’t knock it till you’ve tried it, people.

Soup: Has anyone ever really cared when Jimmy cracked corn? – Megan C.

Yes – it’s quite possible that over the years at least a few people have cared. I’m assuming that to “crack” corn is to husk it and thought up some possible examples.

His hungry corn-fed family.
A cow, pig or other farm animal who was also quite hungry. If he’s crackin’ corn on a regular basis, he probably lives on a farm. Or needs a hobby.
Any major theater chain you wish to choose. Kernels don’t grow on trees, they grow on corn stalks. And getting at the kernels first requires you to crack those motherfuckers.
Native American dry colored corn artists. Without Jimmy they’d have far less time to create breathtaking art.

So next time you want to hate on Jimmy the corn cracker, Megan, try showing a little compassion instead. Cornpassion, even.

Salad: What’s your favorite Bonnie memory? Sorry that’s personal but I’d like to hear it. – Mary C-B.

It’s obviously impossible to pick just one. There was an amusing recent occurrence, however, which happened up at the lake house about 3 summers ago. I bugged and bugged my mother to get on the back of a jetski with me, which she was absolutely dead set against. After taking a couple of test runs back and forth across her line of vision, I came back to the dock in one piece and finally coerced her to climb on. She got out of her lawn chair which was set up on the dock beside Gordo and several neighbors and they cheered her on as she straddled the evil, motorized sea beast.

The voyage started out well-enough, with Mom giggling and mock-screaming as she held on to my waist for dear life. Then it all went horribly wrong. Anyone with jetski experience will hammer home one piece of advice to a newbie – never decelerate in a turn. I did just that, right in full view of the dock spectators, and Bonnie and I rolled arse-over-tit beneath the waves in a split second. I climbed back on my steed but Mom had had quite enough and dog-paddled all the way back to shore as we both endured comments from the peanut gallery (well, I got a lot more shit than she did). I tied up at the dock myself about 20 minutes later. As I passed by my father he beckoned for me to lean down before whispering in my ear: “Thanks a lot, asshole. Now she’ll never let me get one.”

Main Course: Which crime would you make punishable by death, and how would the guilty be executed? – Gary P.

Child abuse. Particularly that of a diddly nature. Most states will already execute you for killing a child. Ruining the rest of their life via mental scarring will only get you a comparably short jail sentence followed by a “This Guy is a Diddler” sign on your front lawn. I’ll need more time to devise the ideal method of diddler dispatch, but I can tell you that it will definitely be slow, will definitely be painful and will definitely involve… diddling.

Dessert: Why hasn’t Will Smith insisted on starring in films with better storylines? – Angie F.

I have to assume here that you’re speaking specifically about the two cowboys fighting the giant robotic spider in 1880’s California? If you’re not, you should be. At least you get to see Bai Ling’s buttocks in that pile of garbage, which on second thought isn’t much of an incentive. Seven Pounds put me to sleep quicker that a mallet to the temple, but I think recently his choices have been quite sound. I really enjoyed I Am Legend, Pursuit of Happyness and Hancock. Your theory about Will’s bad choices may come back into fashion, however, as I see his next movie in production is entitled Monster Hunter. I’d like to go on record as saying I hope that movie involves at least one Sasquatch pursuit.

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Friday’s Quizzlet: You’re On Your Own

by Dave on November 7, 2008
in Friday's Quizzlet

One of the reasons everybody’s favorite Quizzlet has died off these last couple months is that the wonderful site, Friday’s Feast, I used to get the questions from seems to have died off as well. A year or two ago, when I was writing once or twice a day and my readership was strong I could have asked y’all to provide me with 5 questions. But until I get my groove back, somewhat like Stella, I shall have to pen my own – I have done it before, and Freud would love this. Please feel free to answer any of these questions yourselves in the comments.

Appetizer: Popular opinion states that Saturday Night Live isn’t funny. Your thoughts?
Thanks, Quizzlet. This has been on my mind a lot lately. If by “popular opinion” you mean people that haven’t watched the show since 1998 – or never really did – then yes, you’d be led to believe not only is the show bad it should have been cancelled when Will Ferrell left. Where do I begin? The current cast has certain members that are so strong they have already started appearing in movies. A lot of movies. Usually this doesn’t happen until after they have left the show. Like them or not, Fey (practically a cast member again this year due to the Palin impressions) and Poheler (leaving after this season) have both made the rounds and even collaborated on Baby Mama. Andy Samberg had his own vehicle, Hot Rod, last summer. Bill Hader has been popping up in big movies everywhere since his first season (Tropic Thunder, SuperBad) and I’m surprised that the singularly brilliant Kristen Wiig even has time to do the show (Knocked Up, Semi-Pro, Ghost Town). I should probably make this a separate post I have so much to say, but I’ll leave you with this. Their ratings this season, in no small part to the election, were the highest since the Farley-Sandler-Hartman era and the show has a lot of life left in it yet.

“Sorry… I took a Chinese vitamin this morning.”

Soup: What do you think about the recent clues that suggest Ford, Lucas and Spielberg are currently gearing up for Indy 5?
Internationally, it was the top grossing film of 2008. And that’s with a lot of bad reviews and negative press behind it. They’d be stupid, or overly respectful of the franchise which we already know they are not, not to. If they produce a good script in the next couple of years I think Indy 5 can certainly pulled off. Just please no CGI monkeys this time. The gophers can stay, and so can Shia since we all know the series will probably be handed off to him in some fashion. That may actually be the entire purpose of #5. And let’s bring back those damn Nazis. There could be a whole city of them hoarding relics while hiding out in South America somewhere. A network of caves underneath a German restaurant in Rio, perhaps. Indiana Jones and the City of Thongs, anyone?

Salad: How’s the whole “living in the woods” thing working out for you?
Simply put – I love it up here. Fresh air, silence, a dog, a boat, deers in my yard… it’s a trip. After Janet moved up in May we started actually leaving the house and hitting the local bars on Thursday nights. I met a lot of people very quickly and things changed for the better. I have no idea why I waited almost a year to start socializing, but that’s neither here nor there. Now that Janet has returned to Boston I have a nice group of friends, can hit the local bar and know I’ll see people I know and I even get invited to parties. I like to tell myself it’s not just because I’m frequently asked to do a Beantown accent and recite scenes from “The Departed”. And I’ll continue to tell myself that.

Main Course: Will you ever return to Boston full time?
Things are getting crazy at work and the company is being valued highly by investors that have sniffed around. I have been asked recently by colleagues if I would move back. If it becomes apparent that I will miss out on a potential life-changing payday if I do not, and I negotiate a way with my family to keep from having to sell the house up here as a result, then I will think about it. With my father now in a home up here, however, any move back would be temporary.

Dessert: How do you feel about Daniel Craig as 007?
Growing up my favorite Bond was Roger Moore. And although I still like him in the role today, that was because I was a little kid (who probably shouldn’t have even been taken to see For Your Eyes Only, View to a Kill, etc.) and Moore was the current article. As I got older, my #1 slot eventually went to Connery with Moore as #2. Do I like Craig? On the strength of Casino Royale alone, my top 3 now goes: Connery, Craig, Moore. So yes – I likes him. He’s a sadistic, sexist thug – just like Connery played it – and although the reinvention contains elements I don’t like the elimination of the PC Brosnan-era Bond is a wonderful thing. I will be in line to see Quantum of Solace next Friday night (or maybe even afternoon) when it opens in Ottawa.

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Friday’s Quizzlet: Breakin’ Atoms

by Dave on September 12, 2008
in Uncategorized

Appetizer: When you drink soda, do you prefer to drink it from the bottle, a can, or after pouring it into a cup?
Cutting to the heart of the big issues again are we, quizzlet? That would depend on whether the cup was styrofoam, plastic or paper. And whether or not my other OCD symptoms had allowed me to leave the house after turning the lights on and off 33 times and checking to make sure the oven was off another 27.

Soup: What television show are you willing to stay up late to watch?
The First 48 and, obviously, Saturday Night Live – in which I still take great pleasure and have the utmost faith. It premieres tomorrow night with Mighty Mike Phelps hosting and Little Wayne as the musical guest/criminal. I imagine they’ll compare tattoo tears to gold medals. And if Tina Fey doesn’t literally fall over herself on the way to 30 Rock to play Sarah Palin in an opening scene cameo, I will eat my puppy. I will also be extremely impressed by her snark restraint – at which she’s not very adept.

Salad: Name one person, place, or thing you think of as brilliant.
If I were English I’d have already used the word 17 times today. Since I’m not I’ll give you one of each – The people who invented that atom smasher whatsit that is probably already letting giant squirrels in from a parallel dimension, the end of my dock, my new tennis racket / bug zapper thing. I take it with me when I let Shep out at night, and just stand by the front light while he does his business, culling the herd.

Main Course: Would you be willing to work 4 10-hour days instead of 5 8-hour days in order to save gas?
No, because I work from home. But my mother is willing to drive so far out of her way to get to a pump that will save her 3 cents a gallon – she uses more than what she’d save getting there. She is also willing to talk about where to go to get the lowest gas prices, which never vary around here by more than 3 cents, until my fucking ears start to bleed. The next time I think about gas it will be because I’ve just doused my head in it and am looking around for the BBQ igniter.

Dessert: If you were a superhero, what would you call yourself?
Super Dave. I just hope that the moniker is available. I’d further my originality by wearing costumes only made from genuine Saskatchewan seal skin.

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