Saturday night live has gone through its ups and downs over the years. I will not chronicle the successes and failures of SNL in this post.
However, I would like to point out that SNL has continually strengthened over the past year. The writers and actors are hitting their stride just at the right time...they have PLENTY of material with the 2008 Presidential Race.
After a 4 month hiatus because of the writer's strike, SNL has had 2 new shows. Last night's was one of the funniest episodes I have seen in some time, and included notable cameos from Hillary Clinton and Rudy Giuliani.
The first skit was a mock democratic debate by NBC News in Cleveland. "Brian Williams" and "Tim Russert" couldn't help but show their bias and praise for Obama, and their disdain for Sen. Clinton. Hillary then followed with a live rebuttal, in which she confronted Amy Poehler. Darrell Hammond was excellent at impersonating Russert and his style, and, overall, it was quite amusing...check it out:
For fans of Hillary, this may be the last time she will be smiling for some time. She would need to have HUGE wins in the upcoming primaries in Ohio and Texas. Many Democratic party insiders reportedly will urge Hillary to step aside if she doesn't have significant wins in either of Tuesday's races. They feel the sooner a nonimee is chosen, the sooner the battle can start vs. McCain for the general election.
If you don't believe the facts, check out this delegate calculator. Manipulate the future results as you see fit. You will see that it would be highly improbable for Hillary to overtake Obama.
http://www.slate.com/features/delegatecounter/
Anyway, back to SNL. There was a very funny cartoon of Obama trying to avoid having both Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton be active supporters of his campaign. It's so true...Obama wants nothing to do with the 2 previously most prominent black candidates for president, probably because of their very polarizing image in society, and their tendency to say some ridiculous things.
The Weekend News was also very good. Here are two clips from part of the news.
Rudy was quite a good sport by essentially making fun of his monumental collapse in the Republican primaries and his ill-fated decision to wait until Florida to start "trying".
Again, I will be eagerly awaiting the upcoming parodies of the debates and presidential race.
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7 comments:
Hillary's cameo was good...time to pull out all the stops. But notice when Amy asked how the campaign was going, Hillary said, "Fine. Why, did you hear something different?" That showed a good sense of perspective.
Darrell Hammond is a genius. I'm glad you mentioned the TV funhouse cartoon b/c that was Hammond as Jesse...and it was 8 years ago or whenever that Hammond first did Jesse on SNL. The audience didn't quite know what to do w/ a white man impersonating a black man but it was so perfectly nuanced that you had to be impressed.
on a totally unrelated note -- Steve -- what is the evolutionary purpose of cold diuresis? It seems counterintuitive.
I agree, SNL has been better than I've seen it is a while. And this past week was better than last week. Loved Hillary but afraid it might be too little too late.
Could the evolutionary role for cold diuresis be that it "costs" more to keep higher volume warm, thus the body's response to expel any excess? I know I'm not Steve so probably totally off base.
that makes sense... let's see if Steve can come up with anything better
Kath/Steve what was bottom line of norepi vs. vasopressin (NEJM this week) for sepsis? i couldn't get it online
Wow, I never thought a post on SNL would induce a talk about "cold diuresis".
Anyway, the proported mechanism of cold diuresis is the following:
1. Cold stimulates hormonal stress response, including increase in ACTH and norepinephrine
2. The catechols result in vasoconstriction and an increase systemic blood pressure
3. The rise in blood pressure decreases the the afferent baroreceptor response which then decreses ADH release
4. The fall in ADH results in an increase in free water diuresis
5. This occurs despite renal vasoconstriction and a drop in overall GFR
So, bottom line, cold ends up lowering AVP (ADH) which results in an inability to reabsorb H20 in the collecting ducts.
Melissa will be pleased with this response.
Plus, Steve, thank you for the synopsis of all the political sketches on SNL. I am normally not awake for SNL but the political sketches are my favorites so it's nice to see them all in one place.
No mortality difference btw vaso and norepi in patients with septic shock, suggestion of some benefit in patients rec'ing vaso with less severe shock.
Will, did you know Nat Geo TV station had an hour long program on heroin? Pretty interesting, and depressing...
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