I know very little about comic books, contrary to what my sister might believe. But I know Scott Pilgrim, and I can say beyond a shadow of a doubt that Scott Pilgrim rules. It is a comic about a slackery Canadian slacker superninja who plays in a band and must defeat his new girlfriend’s evil ex-boyfriends. I swear it’s not as nerdy as it sounds.

What rules, possibly even more than Scott Pilgrim the comic, is that Edgar Wright, the director of Spaced and Hot Fuzz and Shaun of the Dead, is directing the movie version. And it stars Michael Cera, which is pretty much exactly who should play Scott Pilgrim. And what rules even more than that is this:

In an fun little bit of crossover casting, Ramona’s fourth ex, Roxy Richter the half-ninja, will be played by Mae Whitman, a.k.a. Ann (her?) from Arrested Development, which means a George Michael/Ann showdown.

Ultimate ninja fight between George Michael and Egg! I mean Ann! I’m getting in line right now.

The other day, I posted a post (that’s what bloggers do, we post posts) about The United States of Tara, a presumably-awful television show created by Stephen Spielberg and a bizarrely undercredited Dakota Fanning, I mean Diablo Cody. In this post that I posted, I expressed puzzlement at a line quoted in a review that referred to something as “that pubic thatch you call a backpack.”

Today, in another review (I did not take the time to actually watch the show I’ve decided to hate passionately) I discovered the context of this quote, which makes it somewhat more comprehensible. Somewhat. Apparently, Tara is looking through her daughter’s monkey-shaped backpack, where she finds a stock of the morning after pill. (First point of contention … can you really stock up on the morning after pill?) The discovery makes Tara slip into her 16 year-old alter ego, a character that talks suspiciously like every character in Juno. When her daughter comes home, the 16-year old alter-ego says something to the effect of “Mom found those pills in that pubic thatch you call a backpack.” In actuality, it was probably something more to the effect of “The Momster found those abortion-flavored Tic Tacs* in that pubic thatch you call a backpack, you Tinyurl LOLcat bloggening Tweet blogger!”

So in this scenario, Diablo Cody is drawing a comparison between a thatch of pubic hair and a monkey-shaped backpack. First of all, this tells me more about the shape of Diablo Cody’s vagina than I care to know.

Second of all, what? Whose pubic hair looks like a gorilla-shaped backpack? Other comparisons Cody considered before settling on “pubic thatch”: “that Fu Manchu mustache you call a backpack,” “that fauxhawk that you call a backpack,” and “that Steve Carrell’s chest hair in 40-Year Old Virgin that you call a backpack.” Then she finally decided, “pubic! I must use the word pubic. There is no funnier word than pubic.” And her brain-ear said, “Please, make it stop …”

*Note: “abortion-flavored Tic Tacs” is funnier than anything Diablo Cody has ever written.

At the beginning of the season, I felt like you were undergoing a creative renaissance. What happened? The last two episodes have been unbearable. Okay, I recognize that it is wrong to believe there was some kind of golden era of SNL in which every skit was a solid hit. The casts that we think of as classic now were always hit or miss. And humor has changed so much in the last 30 years that your Bill Murray/John Belushi era looks pretty dated at this point.

But during the election, I let you back into my heart. You felt alive and exciting again. The digital shorts were frequently worth watching. Tina Fey’s Sarah Palin was consistently hilarious. Kristen Wiig could do no wrong. Amy Poehler and Seth Myers had the best Weekend Update rapport of all the male/female teams in SNL history.

Like an abusive spouse, though, the minute I think you’ve changed, you smack me in the face with a frying pan to make me feel like a fool for ever having trusted you. Last week you completely wasted the comedic talents of Neil Patrick Harris. This week, you subjected me to an hour and a half of skits so painfully unfunny that I got through the whole episode in a little over 20 minutes. Because I fast forwarded through most of the skits, is what I mean.

I know it’s difficult to write, rehearse, and perform 1 1/2 hours of quality comedy every week. We who simply watch from home have a far easier job than your writers. Some weeks, you probably just aren’t feeling very funny. However, that’s no excuse for falling back on lazy comedy tricks that should have been eliminated from your repertoire years ago.

Anyone who has ever taken an improv class knows that “yes, and” makes for much funnier skits than “no, but”. For example, say I am starting a skit, and I say, “Look up in the sky! It’s a giant, flying sea turtle!” If you say, “no, it’s a flying dolphin!”, then we will never get anywhere. Your job as my comedy wingman is to say, “You’re right! It’s a giant, flying sea turtle, and it’s shooting laser beams out of its eyes at the Underdog float!” “Yes, what you are saying is accurate, and here’s some additional information.”

The SNL writers use the “no, but” setup far, far too often for people who are getting paid comfortable salaries to write comedy. For example, one of the skits from last night was called “Good Excuse.” It was the classic “weird talk show host” format that we’ve seen countless times on SNL. In this particular skit, guests came on and told the hosts they needed an excuse to get out of some problem in their lives. The hosts, played by Kristen Wiig and the rarely-funny Will Forte, give the guest a ridiculous and implausible excuse to which the guest expresses skepticism.

The first guest was Keenan Thompson, who said he needed an excuse to break up with his girlfriend. Wiig & Forte gave him some convoluted lie about having to move for his job to an island where his cell phone was captured by a seagull and then his face fell off and his skeleton fell apart. Now that’s potentially funny. But then they shoot themselves in the foot by having the guest look at them and say something to the effect of, “you’re weird. That would never work.” It’s an instant comedy killer. It would be much funnier if the Keenan Thompson character were to agree that this was a fantastic excuse. Because now, we’re looking at a complete absurd world, rather than two people in our world who are just crazy.

Just imagine how old “Wayne’s World” would have gotten if every guest came on and said, “you guys are pathetic and unfunny.” Instead, the guests within the skit accepted the reality that “Wayne’s World” was the coolest local talk show in the world. And you can do countless skits with that kind of setup. It’s the difference between creating characters and creating jokes. Got it? Good.

Thanks for reading, Saturday Night Live! I’m glad I could help. Next week, I’ll explain to you why cross-dressing is best left to the British and sports stars should never, ever host your program.

Anyone watch Battlestar? Last night’s season premiere was just … bad. Pure melodrama.

What’s the story with The United States of Tara? So it’s a show about a woman with multiple personalities produced by Stephen Spielberg. It was also supposedly written by Diablo Cody, but you’d never know this from any of the publicity materials. Why wouldn’t they put the name of its Academy Award winning creator on any of its ads? Could it be because she didn’t actually write it?

Well, whether she wrote it or not, it sounds like it’s got its fair share of the unbearably annoying pop-culture references that define that wacky Cody “style”. To wit:

So, here, we get, “Sometimes you make me feel like I’m living in a Lifetime lady-tampon movie”; “That dude is such a waste of hair product”; “Ive been diggin’ around your closest for an hour, and I still can’t fuckin’ get to Narnia”; “cluck-cluck” as a synonym for fried chicken; “Sudoku” as a racial slur; “Jell-O Pudding is for the children” said in Bill Cosby’s voice; and — this is T explaining how Tara found out that her daughter took a morning-after pill — “She went all CSI in that pubic thatch you call a backpack.”

If that last line made it into the final script, just imagine what they cut. What in the Hell does that mean?

And can you imagine anything worse than being the ear in Diablo Cody’s brain that has to listen to her thinking “Jell-O Pudding is for the children” in Bill Cosby’s voice and then laughing hysterically? That brain-ear has the worst job in Hollywood.

Well, not really Asher himself, but his boy. From the LA Times today:

Chris Llewellyn was staring out the window of Delta Airlines Flight 110, watching the landscape of Los Angeles rise up toward the plane, when he heard the screams of a male flight attendant: “Help me! Help me!”

Turning quickly, he saw that a passenger had pushed the attendant to the floor and was trying to open the rear emergency exit.

“Don’t come near me,” the man warned. “I have a bomb. I have a bomb.”

“I thought this guy was going to open the door. I was thinking, ‘I’m not going to go down with the plane,’ ” said Llewellyn, 26, a 6-foot guitarist, who was flying into Los Angeles from Atlanta on Wednesday morning for a TV appearance with hip-hop artist Asher Roth.

Along with half a dozen other passengers, Llewellyn ran down the aisle into the galley area and jumped on the man, pulling him away from the door.

That is just too weird. The same week that I introduce Asher Roth to the world his drummer saves a plane. I smell publicity stunt.

I know what you’re up to.

Now cut it out.

Update: Damn you, Asher Roth! In spite of the evidence presented in the above video, you are actually talented and are assured of massive success in the very near future. Fine. You win. Your stupid hat still sucks, though.

Every time I think I don’t need to buy any more of you, you go and make me hear a new song I can’t live without. Introducing Laura Marling.

Also: damn you any artist who does not allow me to embed your video on my website.

If you ask me, 2008 was a stellar year for music. Some time in my mid-20s, it seemed like music stopped affecting me as much as it once had. I continued to spend astronomical amounts of money on music, but for years I’d buy a record, listen to it a few times, and never really return to it. This year, for whatever reason, I started to really enjoy just listening to music again. It had been years since I had the experience of listening to an album and immediately starting it over from the beginning and listening again, and at least half of this list has gotten that treatment on numerous occasions. I don’t know if I had some kind of awakening or if music has gotten better. Or is there a connection to the fact that I spent all of 2008 on LSD? Who really can tell?

But anyway, here are the things I loved this year. I assigned them an order based on how much time I spent listening to them. If you have anything to add, please do so in the comments!

1. Los Campesinos, Hold on Now, Youngster: This record is so good I have allowed it to co-exist on my Top 10 of All Time list. Pretty much everything else on that list has been there for at least 10 years. Therefore, this is the best record I’ve heard in the last 10 years.

I can’t explain why I like this album so much. The first few times I listened to it, I thought, “all these songs sound the same.” The more I listened, the more complex it became … the interplay between the vocalists, the instrumentation, the flow of the songs, and especially the hooks … although it may sound like a sloppy mess at first, it soon becomes clear that this is artfully-controlled chaos. With clever, surreal lyrics to boot. A sample:

You said “send me stationary to make me horny”
So I always write you letters in multicolors
Decorating envelopes for foreplay
Damn extended metaphors, I get carried away
On the back of a natural disaster,
Fixed with parcel tape and with kids sticking plasters
Nothing says ‘I miss you’ quite like
Poetry carved in your door with a Stanley knife

This is what it sounds like to be young. And I’m the 33 year old guy who’s listening to this at top volume and pumping my fist as I drive around LA with the windows rolled down, pretending I’m going to pick my friends up and take them to a keg party in the woods where the air smells like burning leaves and no one is worrying about the future. (Listen to tracks right here. Recommended: “My Year in Lists” and “Death to Los Campesinos!”)

2. Vampire Weekend, Vampire Weekend: There are those who will immediately discount my entire list based on this choice. Vampire Weekend is crazy polarizing. They’re rich kids doing afro-pop. They wear sweaters on stage and sing about partying on Cape Cod. They got tons of hype before the album come out, and the backlash was almost immediate. I don’t care what the haters say; this record is one catchy pop hit after the next. It’s the best Police album Squeeze ever released. I’m not going to link to any Vampire Weekend songs, because you probably either love them or hate them already. Or, if you don’t know: now you know.

3. Born Ruffians, Red, Yellow, and Blue: What a great freaking year for the herky-jerky! If there is one thing that always gets me, besides a pop hook, it’s a herky-jerky rhythm. See also: Talking Heads ‘77, Television’s Marquee Moon, and the Feelies’ Crazy Rhythms. What exactly is herky-jerky? I can’t really define it, but t’s like Justice Potter Stewarts’ famous definition of pornography: I know it when I masturbate to it.

I saw Born Ruffians open for the Hidden Cameras last year at the Echo in Echo Park (side note: if you ever get the chance to see the Hidden Cameras live, do so even if you have never heard of them. They do not disappoint). I immediately bought and became obsessed with their EP. This year, their full-length came out and put all other Talking Heads imitators to shame by not really sounding like the Talking Heads at all. If you pick this up, spend a few extra bucks and get the Born Ruffians EP, because you must own this song, which epitomizes the herky-jerky and is also one of the most perfect songs ever.

4. The Knux, Remind Me in 3 Days: This is where the numerical system starts to break down. Although I probably listened to the number 5 record more often this year, I just got this album about 2 months ago, so I’m still in the honeymoon phase with it. The Knux are a duo from New Orleans who migrated to L.A. to spearhead what some are calling the hipster-rap movement, which is hip-hop made by guys who wear skinny jeans. Whatever it’s called, this is the most immediately-striking hip-hop debut I’ve heard since De La Soul’s Three Feet High and Rising. Which was a long time ago and crazy good. So this is a high compliment. In this song, the Knux answer the question “what if the Clash were a hip-hop band?” in a far more satisfying manner than Big Audio Dynamite ever did.

5. Phantom Planet, Raise the Dead: Poor Phantom Planet. First, they were the band that the kid from Rushmore was in. Then, they were the band that recorded the theme song from The O.C. And all the while, they’ve been trucking along, churning out one great pop album after the next and getting pretty universally ignored for it. Raise the Dead is a theme-album about cults filled with devastating hooks and fist-pumping anthems. Please explain what there could possibly be to not like in that description. You can listen to the whole damn album right here.

6. Santogold, Santogold: 2008 is the year that artists finally figured out how to incorporate indie-rock, hip-hop, pop, and electronic music into one mix without sounding like the Judgment Night soundtrack. Trust me, no one had done it before 2008. And after 2008, anyone who tries will forever be compared to Santogold. Nice job, Santo!

Why is the Internet so awesome? You can listen to her entire album online, too! Your first stop should be the song “Lights Out,” which is the best Blondie song Prince ever wrote.

7. Blitzen Trapper, Furr and Wild Mountain Nation: Okay, Wild Mountain Nation was actually released in 2006. But it didn’t start rocking my stereo until this year, and Furr is even better, so screw you for being a purist. Blitzen Trapper is music to listen to at dusk on a mountain while you are a hawk. A lot of people obsessed over the Fleet Foxes record this year, which I agree, is a lovely album. But for my money, Blitzen Trapper did it first, and did it best. Don’t let their name fool you: they are not German. Don’t let the album cover fool you: they do not sound like Def Leppard. If you are a fan of the Band or the Byrds or Gram Parsons or Uncle Tupelo and feel like no one does soulful, white people music anymore, go here and listen to the song “Furr”, guaranteed to make you feel i-ree.

8. My Little Airport, (some unintelligible string of Japanese characters): I don’t know anything about this band. Sarah’s old boss sent her this record, and it’s been in constant rotation since she passed it along to me. Most of the song titles are in Japanese. I think they’re a Japanese band that sings French pop songs. I have no idea if you can even buy their album in the States, so basically I’m encouraging you to either illegally download it or totally ignore this recommendation. Here are some videos. Good luck with that.

9. R.E.M., Accelerate: People are dicks. This album is balls-out great, but when it was released, everyone whined about how it wasn’t as good as good R.E.M. Everyone is wrong. This is their best album since Automatic for the People, and the single “Supernatural Superserious” belongs on every R.E.M. greatest hits compilation forever.

10. Johnny Flynn, A Larum: I bought this one on the strength of this video. Flynn writes moving English folk songs in the vein of a slightly less militant Billy Bragg. The song in the video, “Brown Trout Blues,” is the perfect song to cry to when you’ve just had your heart broken. Hopefully I will never have my heart broken again, but if I do, it’s good to know that Johnny’s in my corner.

Johnny Depp, via People.

On his family: “I’m totally inspired by them.”

On meeting his wife: “We just have a miraculous understanding of each other.”

On his favorite roles: “I was a million percent in love with Edward Scissorhands.”

On fame: “I don’t think of myself as being a celebrity, it’s too mortifying.”"

For Johnny Depp, life is a never-ending series of either mind-blowing miracles or unfathomable catastrophes. Nothing is ever just ordinary. Johnny Depp doesn’t clean a toilet, he REPELS MALICIOUS BACTERIA ARMIES. When Johnny Depp licks a stamp, he actually TASTES COMMUNICATION.