Paula Downed by System
Live from New York, Paula Abdul was straight up upstaged.
The diminutive American Idol host made a cameo appearance on Saturday Night Live last weekend in an attempt to poke fun at herself and the ongoing allegations that she carried on an affair with an Idol contestant.
Unfortunately for Abdul, musical guest System of a Down proved to be better at delivering a performance that left everyone talking.
Abdul appeared in the opening scene of the show and announced that the following skit would be an inaccurate account of recent events and that she would be the butt of the joke.
"What you're about to see is a reenactment of some events of this week's biggest news story," Abdul said. "Now, all the facts have been changed to get laughs at my expense. I hope you enjoy it."
In the sketch that followed, Finesse Mitchell spoofed season two Idol contestant Corey Clark's recent Primetime Live interview, in which Clark claimed that Abdul had bought him pricey clothing and that he had carried on an affair with the judge.
Amy Poehler played Abdul in the sketch, offering male Idol contestants such as Clark, Mario Vazquez and Constantine Maroulis (as portrayed by various SNL castmates) sexually tinged critiques such as:
"Corey, that was beautiful. You really blew me away. It's like I rolled over and said to you this morning, 'You have real star quality.' I'll see you at home."
At the skit's close, Abdul took the stage again to offer her own take on the skit.
"You need to perfect the clap a little more and be a lot more sexier so contestants will be willing to sleep with you," Abdul advised Poehler.
Funny stuff, indeed. Well, kind of.
Unfortunately, the entire appearance smacked of the kind of desperation that led both a post-sex tape Paris Hilton and a post-Super Bowl Janet Jackson to take the SNL stage in an effort to save face.
While initially a fresh way of showing the viewing public that a token celeb is bigger than the embarrassing scandal du jour, using Saturday Night Live as a method of delivering the A-list from humiliation is getting old. (Publicists, take note.)
Luckily, System of a Down had its own plans for making the night memorable.
The heavy metal rockers performed the song "B.Y.O.B." from their latest album Mezmerize, with NBC dutifully muting the line in the song that repeatedly asks, "Where the f--- are you?"
However, the network was apparently unprepared for guitarist Daron Malakian's decision to scream "F--- yeah!" into the camera as it focused on him toward the end of the song.
The unbleeped expletive left fans of the rockers amused, while NBC and the FCC were most likely less than thrilled. As of yet, neither the network nor the commission has commented on the incident and it's unknown what consequences, if any, the F-bomb dropping could have.
The band performed its second song, "Aerials," from 2001's Toxicity, without incident.
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