For too many of us contemporary culture vultures, everything feels predictable.

Okay, for this culture vulture but let me speak for the group.

We long for something or someone to surprise us since at this point we usually can predict the outcome of an election, the top winners at any major awards show or whether a new person will bomb or crush in their film or TV debut with at least an 85% accuracy rate.

It’s not that we feel brilliant or above it all… most of the time.

It’s more that there is so much coverage and traditional wisdom around these events everywhere you turn that it’s hard not to be correct.

This is especially true when you’ve made wasting your time following these things your principal side gig because it makes you feel in control of… something.

That is why I’m particularly unhappy to report that after frittering away my Saturday on watching the results of the South Carolina Republican presidential primary, the SAG awards and the Saturday Night Live hosting debut of comedian Shane Gillis (Note: He of the well-documented racist and homophobic jokes, imitations and remarks) not a f-ng thing out of the ordinary happened.

-Trump beat Nikki Haley in her home state of South Carolina by a whopping 20%.

-The Screen Actors Guild awarded Cillian Murphy (Oppenheimer) and Lily Gladstone (Killers of the Flower Moon) top film actor and actress [Note: Turned out it didn’t matter how much WE all wanted an upset by Paul Giamatti (The Holdovers) and Emma Stone (Poor Things)]; and the top honor for best motion picture cast to Oppenheimer to literally NO prognosticator’s surprise.

-Shane Gillis turned out to be as good of a fit for Saturday Night Live as The Chair would be as a guest on one of his infamous podcasts where he does imitations of Asian people, makes Jew jokes and manages to stay timely with snide remarks about the trans community.

At the end of the day, it’s all a bit tiresome.

Meaning, if the world is going to continue to devolve on such sour notes and drag pop culture down along with it, the least it can be is a little unpredictable.

Perhaps the problem is that the last time the majority of us were truly surprised by a political contest, an awards show or the virgin performance of an entertainer in any field was with the results of the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

We all remember that feeling, right?  Even those who hoped for that outcome were surprised.

(Note: Yes, Michael Moore, I know YOU knew and I’m still a fan but please, stop SAYING it).

Look, it’s easy to underestimate or overestimate the political the power of Aspiring Orange Hitler, but it didn’t take a genius to imagine he might emerge with a decisive victory this weekend in a state where six of ten voters identify as White Evangelical Christians. 

What’s harder to figure is how some of them might not fall away given the 91 criminal charges against him, including the rape of one woman and the bribing of another who just happens to be an adult film star… that he had his lawyer pay to stay silent… about the adultery he committed with her… several times. 

It also begs the question of thinking that surprise might be coming for him considering his opponent was a popular, two-term former governor of the very state they were running in.

Until you consider that opponent is a WOMAN.  And a non-white one at that. 

Shame on any one of you, or us, for believing the inside skinny that at the very least this would narrow his margin of victory. 

Or that anything could except the literal reappearance of the son of God himself.  (Note: But, well, you do know that a subset of said evangelicals do believe He was anointed by God to become POTUS again, right?)

Speaking of God, or goddesses, this brings us back to the SAG Awards and one of the few divine moments in all of those competitive events on Saturday – the acceptance speech by Barbra Streisand for SAG’s Life Achievement Award.

Right, the Chair is gay, AND Jewish, AND from the New York boroughs so OF COURSE he loves Barbra. 

But that aside – see for yourself if you don’t find her musings on why she became an actor, and her love of the movies and the people who make them, especially honest, disarming and, well, a bit unpredictable given all the buildup.

This is to take nothing away from Pedro Pascal (The Last of Us), who provided the other small surprise of the ceremony when he went onstage to pick up his award for best actor in a TV drama series and admitted he was a little drunk and could get drunk because he thought he’d never win.

Yeah, many predicted one of the Succession guys would but I actually had an inkling PP might get the nod because… well… he never wins, he is THAT good and he is the kind of actor who can admit he drank too much but still manage to be charming and semi-coherent..

Not to mention – the just-a-tad too open, but not unwelcomely open, white shirt.

Alas, on Saturday Night Live a somewhat uncomfortable Shane Gillis made his entrance onstage wearing a loose-fitting plain black T-shirt and seemed to do everything he could to make amends by not making amends. 

Admitting as he began his monologue, I shouldn’t be here, he then performed a somewhat flat, rather undistinguished ten minutes affirming SNL’s decision more than four years ago to fire him from the cast before he even filmed his first episode.  This was due to the treasure trove of free-wheeling online remarks and bits targeting all sorts of minority and majority groups found after his hire that any bro fest across the country might discuss, but only in the privacy of their own, um, bar. (Note: Sadly, times and tastes in the podcasting world have changed since then, and not necessarily in a good way).

What we discovered in Gillis’ SNL appearance this weekend, is what most of us from any of the above targeted groups could have predicted.  In the unforgiving spotlight of network TV, his humor level was revealed to be practically nil because it’s not particularly funny, or clever, or timely to begin with, especially when you take it out of the kind of bars where members of groups like us are not welcomed in the first place.

Jokes about the handicapped, the Black community and the gay community are couched by Gillis confessing he has family members in the first two groups, presumably meaning that anything he says about them is now okay.  Then, by admitting that he himself was once gay for my Mom as a boy until the first time I whacked off, at which point I then began to wonder, when is that bitch gonna leave the house, he seems to grant himself permission to speak about the third.

So okay, here’s the thing.  Portraying yourself as a little gay boy onstage by making shy little gay bows and sways is the kind of very predictable, unamusing stuff that one expects from the guy. Ditto the jokes about Down’s Syndrome just because his sister has a child born with the condition, or the ethnic ones preceding it since she had adopted Black daughters…

There really was only surprise. 

Why he, in particular, was brought back to host in a time when we all desperately need to get past our differences and laugh at ourselves.  Also, just how utterly predictable and inadequate so much of what is being offered up to us in the public square has become in election year 2024.

Barbra Streisand – “The Way We Were”