10 Worst SNL Hosts

Alex

Next week is Saturday Night Live's season premiere, so what better way to celebrate than to look back at the iconic TV series' worst host ever to be invited on the show? For example:

Steven Seagal (April 20, 1991)
Seagal bears the special distinction of being the SNL host with the least detectable sense of humor. It's not just that he didn't know how to play comedy, but that he seemed to have no understanding of what this thing called "funny" was. Compared to him, hosts like George Steinbrenner and Rudolph Giuliani look like Conan O'Brien on laughing gas.

The show's success depended on Seagal eliciting people's laughter, a reaction that he couldn't seem to get past responding to as a personal insult. This aroused concerns that, in the unlikely event that the audience might laugh at what he did in a sketch, he might take offense and charge into the crowd with violent intentions.

The fact that the musical guest that night was Michael Bolton made for an amount of pure awfulness per square inch that may have been unprecendented, not just in SNL history but that of all recorded time.

Phil Nugent of Nerve has the entire list. See if you agree: Link

Link


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I don't care what he says about Paris Hilton as a host. She was the perfect straightman for a Weekend Update segment.

http://dumpalink.com/videos/How-To-Get-Into-Paris-Hilton-84c7.html
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A lot of news sources are reporting this with a sense of glee, but I can't find it in myself to feel that way. Their demise is their own doing, poor vision and an apparent inability to adapt to changing markets, but that doesn't lessen the impact they had. One of my earliest projects I remember was building a voice synthesizer for my Commodore 64 (or VIC-20) built with parts entirely from Radio Shack.

In the early 90s even I tried to get a job at one, and if I remember correctly, I was told that the commission earned was mostly thru (high pressure) battery sales. Retrospect says my decision to walk away was the correct choice, even before this news. There have been interviews with ex-employees long before this and it painted a pretty grim picture of the environment.
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In the '80s, I used to go there a lot because they were the only place that sold resistors, capacitors, circuit boards, etc. But then the upper management had the bright idea: "Instead of carrying the things our customers can't find anywhere else, let's just carry batteries and cell phones, both of which are already sold at a million other places." Idiots.
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My first job was at a RS franchise... installing CB radios and 8-tracks, yes I'm that old... and my first soldering experience was with a 2-transistor radio that my dad helped me build... from RatShak. My first computer was a TRS-80 Model 1... Dad got it for me, it was expensive... but that became my career and opened doors for me. I'm sad to see it go, but it was run into the ground long ago. Sad.
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I remember leafing through Radio Shack catalogs back in the 1970s. It was the equivalent of logging on to a web site and clicking through links to see what was offered. One of their problems then was that they were an accessory supermarket -- fuses, adapters, cords, you name it - while their own brand (Tandy, e.g.) were never quite known for being high quality items. If you bought a Tandy/Radio Shack stereo, it was usually because you didn't have the money to go to a better store to get a Harmon Kardon. The model they tried to work was people coming in for a battery (remember their Battery of the Month Club?) and then trying to steer the customer towards a stereo. It never worked. I remember buying batteries in a Radio Shack during the 1980s and laughing when a salesman asked if I wanted a VCR. I explained that the leap from batteries to VCR just struck me as funny. I always wondered if they might have succeeded if they'd embraced their role as an accessory supermarket rather than trying to be taken seriously as an outlet for stereos and the like. I'll never forget this moment from "The Simpsons":

Homer: We'll search out every place a sick twisted solitary misfit might run to.

Lisa: I'll start with Radio Shack.
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