Someone was intoning "Here comes the night time, the night time" as what appeared to be a Salvation Army conga line (costumed by Goodwill) was joined by a white rabbit and what appeared to be The Pillsbury Doughboy.
Here comes the night time, the night time
A man in a painted on raccoon mask was singing that as he headed up a flight of stairs with that white rabbit following him. They passed Bill Hader who smiled and James Franco who was on the phone.
The night time, the night time
It was actually early morning and, in fairness, as Saturday Night Live wrapped up, she'd warned us, Tina Fey warned that it was about to get weird. She wasn't kidding. As a depressing season premiere of Saturday Night Live (no NSA spying skit, no Syria skit, Seth can't handle political -- please get him out the door quickly) came to an end, Tina thanked the guests and announced NBC was giving the next 30 minutes to SNL musical guest Arcade Fire.
There was Michael Cera, behind the bar, making drinks and saying that Arcade Fire "dreams of being Mumford & Son."
The 30 minutes were rated TV-PGL which we found a little much for a special that, even if it did go racy, would be over the heads of anyone watching.
Tiny bananas, Cera was complaining, "We're listening to these tiny bananas" when they could be listening to Michael Buble instead.
It went to commercial. And then the theme song to Big Bud - Little Bud -- some TV sitcom -- began playing as Aziz Ansari (apparently "Little Bud") skipped around.
Down on your knees
begging you please . . .
The band stopped performing songs to speak with astronauts . . . Bill Hader and Zach Galifianakis.
Bill Hader: Hi, everybody, this is Captain Bill.
Zach Galifianakis: And I'm Captain Zach!
Bill Hader: And we're coming to you live from outer space which is zero gravity.
Zach Galifianakis: The music in here sounds bad. I'm sure there it sounds good but the music up here is bad for some reason.
Actually, the music of Aracde Fire sounded bad to us too. Even on Saturday Night Live. It was so bad, we wondered how they got booked on the season premiere. Since 2004, they've had one top 20 hit and three more make it into the top 40. The Go-Gos had to rake up two hits to get booked on the show back in the day (number 20 with "Our Lips Are Sealed" and number two with "We Got The Beat").
Arcade Fire lacked the passion and style of The Go-Gos. In fact, the lead singer looked like Lance Loud and his wife and backup singer looked like a young Marilyn Sokol (trying to send up Grace Slick). It wasn't until the last song that the lead singer appeared to actually try singing (singing requires hitting different notes).
Is anyone as strange as a normal person
Is anyone as crazy as a normal person
It was the only song that worked.
I think I'm cool enough
But am I cool enough
Am I cool enough
For you?
Before that, we got a trailer for a fake movie called FESTI.
The show ended with a snippet of a scene from the fake sitcom Big Bud - Little Bud as Aziz Ansari ate tiny bananas. Then the screen quickly swiped and we had a snippet of another show entitled Night On The Rim starring Michael Cera.
Then it was all over.
And as though no one had seen it.
There was no mention of it in any of the SNL pieces we saw. We went to NBC to stream the episode, lost any desire to see that crap again about 10 seconds in, so went to the end and there was Tina thanking people but she made no mention of the special coming up. Did SNL post the dress rehearsal?
It's apparently the show no one saw.
We saw it and think there's been nothing on TV like it since 1976 when Paul Lynde invited K.I.S.S. onto his holiday special.
Again, we're not fans of the band. Who cares? It was memorable television. Those who saw it will be asking WTF? for years to come. We'd recommend more attempts like this and suggest that this sort of craziness would actually build buzz and an audience.
If you saw it, you know what we're talking about.