"A List Of Recurring Fred Armisen, Bill Hader, And Jason Sudeikis Characters..."

"... Ranked In Descending Order Of How Much This Commentator Will Miss Them."

Via Throwing Things, where they're going to miss Fred Amisen's Prince:

"Obama said 'chill, you gonna get me impeached'/But you don't need this shit anyway/Chill with me on the beach."

Jay-Z in his "Open Letter" which is — according to the NYT — "lash[ing] out at members of Congress who have raised questions about the legality of his recent trip to Cuba with Beyoncé, his wife."

On Friday, Representatives Ros-Lehtinen and Diaz-Balart said in a letter to Adam Szubin, director of the Office of Foreign Assets Control, that the trip looked like a tourist visit. “Despite the clear prohibition against tourism in Cuba, numerous press reports described the couple’s trip as tourism, and the Castro regime touted it as such in its propaganda,” the letter said.

But the Treasury Department responded that site-seeing [sic] was allowed during the off-hours on an educational visit and Jay-Z and Beyoncé had fulfilled their educational obligations by meeting with the La Colmenita theater group and talking with students at the Superior Art Institute.

I'm reading these lyrics, and I don't think he's (just) lashing out at the critics in Congress.

Politicians never did shit for me
Except lie to me, distort history

Do the "politicians" include Obama? Reread that part I put in the post title. I think he's challenging Obama to drop the charade. Imagine Obama taking Jay-Z's advice, deciding he's not a politician and he doesn't need this shit, and he should just say and do everything he really wants, get himself impeached and move on to better things, AKA the beach.

Jay-Z calls himself "the Bob Dylan of rap music" and riffs on the "Idiot Wind" lyrics:

Idiot wind, the Bob Dylan of rap music
You're an idiot, baby, you should become a student
Oh, you gonna learn today
Where the fuck have you been
The world's under new management
The new role model, fuck this Zoolander shit

Here are the lyrics to Dylan's "Idiot Wind" if you want to compare them to Jay-Z's "Open Letter." They are so much more elaborate and interesting that it makes the phrase "the Bob Dylan of rap music" sound as though it were meant as an insult to rap music.

But more importantly: "fuck this Zoolander shit" is directed at Obama, isn't it? Is it mocking Obama as phonily posing, like the movie character the male model Derek Zoolander?

I've never watched that movie past the first half-hour or so, but now, I'm reading the plot summary, and I see "Zoolander" has a political assassination plot!

[T]he fashion industry has been behind several political assassinations, and the brainwashed models are soon killed after they have completed their task.... As Derek takes the runway, Mugatu's disc jockey starts playing "Relax", activating Derek's mental programming....  

So what's Jay-Z talking about? I don't like seeing even oblique references to assassination in statements about the President.

Also in the Jay-Z song: "Wanna give me jail time and a fine/Fine, let me commit a real crime...."  And: "You know whenever I'm threatened, I start shooting, bark/Catch a body, head to Houston." Bark? Does he really say "bark"? Does that mean "Barack"? At least he said "Houston" and not "Dallas."

New "Gatsby" trailer.

Now, with even more anachronistic pop music, including Beyonce singing Amy Winehouse.

Rap Genius explains "Everything Rush Limbaugh Gets Wrong..."

"... about Beyonce."

Fine. I agree that he misunderstood the lyrics of the new song "Bow Down Bitches." (Limbaugh thought Beyonce was advising women to bow down to their men, but Beyonce was advising women to bow down to Beyonce.)

But you don't understand that he's only talking about Beyonce to get what he calls "low information voter" to pay attention to his show, which he explains here:

This Beyonce thing has just blown way out of proportion. Normally, I would let this go. It's pop culture, but, as you know, we're in the middle here of a vast outreach to low-information voters and this is right up their alley. It is a golden opportunity here.  You're just gonna have to trust me on this. Stick with me on this. I'll try to get through this as quickly as we can. It isn't health care. It's not Obamacare.  We're not going to be talking about any of that. We're talking about what low-information voters are talking about today....

The Drive-Bys do not like me venturing outside of my own area of expertise.... They are not going to allow me into pop culture. They are not going to allow me access to low-information voters. They are afraid of that. So there are all kinds of efforts out now to discredit me on this Beyonce story which, between you and me, I could give a rip. But it's all part of the low-information outreach.

This "low-information outreach" has been going on for months.  Here's the place, in yesterday's show, where Rush throws out another huge chunk of bait for people who don't much care about important economic and political issues but will, like Rap Genius, engage over the right pop culture tidbit. In this new bait, Limbaugh claims that — via some old parody song — he's "The Father of 'Chop and Screw.'"

Is Rap Genius going to write another long column in Esquire explaining, in words and pictures, how Rush Limbaugh is actually not the Father of Chop and Screw? That would be taking Rush's bait, but it's probably also in Rap Genius and Esquire's interest to publicly heartily chomp on this bait. Everybody can win, I say, as I link to both Rush and Rap Genuis/Esquire, who presumably want, more than anything else, traffic.

"The 9 Most Outraged FCC Complaints About Beyoncé At The Super Bowl."

"Remember when she 'showed her vaginal area' and 'simulated sex for 13 minutes'? These people do, and they are FURIOUS."

"Willow was supposed to be doing 'Annie,' we got Jay-Z to do the movie, got the studio to come in..."

"... and Willow had such a difficult time on tour with 'Whip my Hair' and she said, 'You know Daddy, I don't think so... I said, 'Baby, hold up!' I said, 'No, no, no, listen; you'll be in New York with all of your friends and Beyoncé will be there. You will be singing and dancing,' and she looked at me and said, 'Daddy, I have a better idea, how about I just be 12.'"

After Beyonce's publicists asks Buzzfeed to remove some unflattering photographs of her (from her Super Bowl show)...

... Buzzfeed publishes the email, and the photos become a meme. Why don't publicists get the internet? What the publicist wrote:

"I am certain you will be able to find some better photos. The worst are #5, 6, 10, 11, 12, 19 and 22."

What the internet heard: I am certain you will be able to photoshop these photos. May I recommend #5, 6, 10, 11, 12, 19 and 22.

ADDED: The Daily Mail link in the post doesn't work anymore. Here's Buzzfeed's original article, including the email and unflattering photos, but not the Photoshops. Google beyonce photoshop if you want to see some of them.

"And by the way, Beyonce blew the electric in the Superdome twice, I’m told, during her rehearsals during the week."

Blame Beyonce?

But wasn't it all worth it, to get that monumental outline of her entire body — a colossus — for her to pose in front of and then later to get Easter-Island-sized profiles of her face facing each other? The outage gave us time to reflect on the importance of Beyonce, lest we plunge too soon back into the workaday cares of football.



ADDED: "The halftime show, as the Commissioner said, was running on a 100 percent generated power, which means it was not our grid at all."

The notion that the National Anthem is too hard to sing, so it's better to lip-sync.

Argument replete with sympathy for Beyonce and video of bad singing by "seasoned professionals."

I completely disagree with this argument. It's the difficulty that makes the performance thrilling. It's the risk of failure that makes it daring. And by the way, it's a song about fighting a war, which is not a risk-free enterprise. No safety net there. It's not like these seasoned professionals are drafted to sing the old song. The fact that it's also an old drinking song — mentioned in the linked article — counts on the side of throwing caution to the wind and overcoming inhibitions and leaving the consequences — the shame — for the morrow.... in the land of the freeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee....

Forget Beyonce. It will be Bob Dylan entertaining us at Super Bowl half-time.

That's what Tim Heidecker says:

[Dylan] is replacing Beyonce who dropped out after her inauguration lip synching scandal.

“Running Out The Clock” is a previously unreleased song from Dylan’s 1983 “Infidels” album. I guess it makes sense… the football metaphors and references.

Song audio at the link. I find this a tad hard to believe. I love old Bob, but I don't picture him in this setting, and I can't imagine Beyonce is so easily embarrassed.

ADDED: The "Infidels" album has a song with the phrase "running out the clock" in it. It's called "Neighborhood Bully," and whatever they tell you about violence in football, it's not about football. It's about Israel. Lyrics here. Audio. Buy it here.

Beyoncé lip-synched.

Do you care? Is there some authenticity issue here that matters? If so, why?

(Yo Yo Ma bow-synched at the 2009 Inauguration.)