Smoke Ceeeg-arettes and Loook Gooooood

I realize that it's always going to be cool to rip on Saturday Night Live, and lots of folks have done exactly that for this very uneven season. (As funny as some of those skits were last night, did anybody notice how many production flubs they had? And how distracted everybody seemed to be?) One reason for the current dip in quality, in my opinion, is the sorely obvious absence of my favorite cast member, Maya Rudolph. Whether playing a drunken Donatella Versace, living it up as one of the members of the (sorely missed and sadly defunct) Destiny's Child knockoff Gemini's Twin, co-hosting the deliciously geeky in-school A/V production "Wake Up Wakefield," or singing the intro theme song to "Gays In Space," Maya never fails to make me crack my shit up. And girlfriend has been on maternity leave for what seems like FOREVER!

Incidentally, in researching this post, I found out two very interesting factoids: Maya was a keyboardist for the indie-rock group The Rentals back in the day. (I lived for their song "Friends of P" during my freshman year of college.) And...AND!!! The father of her baby is none other than Fiona Apple's one-time boyfriend (and Boogie Nights visionary) Paul Thomas Anderson!! How come I didn't know this?!