Are You Ready to Ride the Snake?

I just noticed that Jim Carrey will be hosting the first new Saturday Night Live of 2011 tonight. Astonishingly enough this will be his first time hosting since 1996! I don't know about you but I find it a bit baffling that such a modern comedy giant and sketch comedy veteran, who would likely be the most ideal kind of host for the show, was last on to promote the release of "The Cable Guy". Perhaps he still has a lingering loyalty to his early "In Living Color" days and is reluctant to appear on their old rival (which, if true, I would totally support since I never liked the idea of people on other less prominent sketch comedy shows eventually becoming famous enough on their own to host the evil empire; fortunately I don't think we'll have a problem with any superstar former "Mad TV" cast members coming on)?

Overall the fact that Jim Carrey is hosting isn't something I am all that excited about. The show will most likely still be about 85% comfortably mediocre to terrible (at least this time it'll probably more due to the writing than the host's performance). The lone exciting prospect for me about the return of Jim Carrey is the remote possibility of the return of one of my favorite SNL sketches: "Jimmy Tango's Fat Busters". While all SNL bits are subject to major diminishing returns, to once again see a hyper manic, meth addled, Carrey urging his audience to "Ride the Snake" would be infinitely superior to some one note sketch about New House Speaker John Boehner crying too much or an extended edition of "What Up With That?". Actually I think the skit could still work 15 years later. If anything the sketch is more relevant today than ever, obesity is way up and, as the news and "Breaking Bad" has shown, meth-amphetamine use is rampant.

All I can say is I'm more than ready to "Ride the Snake".