SNL Does The iPhone5

If what the actor Edmund Kean supposedly said on his deathbed, “Dying is easy, comedy is hard,” is true, then the writers of SNL can go to their heavenly rewards with no regrets because the iPhone5 skit last week was comedy to die for.

The skit featured a panel of nerds on a mock show called Tech Talk, with SNL regulars playing guests from C-Net, Wired Magazine, and Gizmodo, all whining maddeningly about the “plethora of glitches and flaws” in the new Apple product.

Apple maps have been a total disaster (well, true), if you point the camera straight at the sun there’s a slight purplish hue on the photos (duh), and worse of all, it’s just too light and too thin: you feel like you’re holding three pieces of paper stabled, not a smart phone.

Then, when one of the techies wonders out loud just what the makers of the phone were thinking, Voila! As it can only happen in an SNL skit or a Woody Allen movie, the makers of the phone—three Chinese peasants laborers headed by Fred Armisen, all looking incredibly Asian—come in to answer the criticisms.

I really related to this, having been whining a bit about my own iPhone, albeit merely a now lowly 4S, on my last blog. Here’s some of what I thought was so brilliant on the show . . .

Meet Your Makers, iPhone Users

“Talk about Apple map, it no work, right? It take you to wrong place. You want Starbucks, it take you to Dunkin Donuts. That must be so hard for you.”

One of the women adds: “You want Macy’s it take you to JC Penney? Oh, how you deal with that?”

The other says: “I guess we just lucky We don’t need maps. We sleep where we work.”

About the bugs in phone, the Armisen character tells us that he sleeps in “communal bunk with hundred stranger. Lice is best bug I get. Best!”

Then one of the women plays sad violin music “from New York Subway” and the other performs the Traditional Chinese Sarcastic Dance complete with dramatic gestures and copious weeping.

When the moderator asks the factory workers if they’d like to complain about any American product, the reply is, “Let’s see, what does America make? Does diabetes count as a product? If not, we have to get back to you . . .”

Well, maybe you had to be there.

My telling of it was not nearly as much fun as watching this brilliant piece of satire. Which you can do in its entirety at:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ybDKfGEw4aU

You can watch it on your iPhone. . .