This might change with “Turtleneck and Chain,” especially after this weekend’s mind-blowing performance with Michael Bolton for the “SNL” digital short “Jack Sparrow.” I’ve been singing this song nonstop for the past 48 hours straight. It’s some of the group’s best work, and I’m pretty sure it’s the best thing to happen to Michael Bolton’s name since “Office Space.” If you haven’t seen the video, you need to fix that immediately:

Note: This song is best watched on a continual loop after first viewing so that you’re able to get all the background interstitial dialogue. (Jorma, Andy and Aviva’s reactions are the best, even when they’re just shaking they’re head and going “What?” Although, again, Bolton wins with his pirate’s hat when he pops up singing, “Now back to the good part!”)

Despite pulling huge names like Beck, Snoop Dogg and Rihanna (“Shy Ronnie” runs a close second for best video these guys have come up with since their last album) for “Turtleneck,” there is a reason that “Jack Sparrow” premiered the weekend before the CD release. Bolton is far and away the best guest track in the lot, and he succeeds specifically because he’s not what Lonely Island fans think of as cool. Sure, Justin Timberlake singing “Dick in a Box” is funny, and Akon lending a verse to “I Just Had Sex” gives the song a much-needed shot in the arm, but “Jack Sparrow” works because it’s so far outside these guys’ comfort range. This really is a Michael Bolton song, carried entirely on the strength of his voice and not, like most of the other numbers on the album, by auto-tune. If the mashup of hip-hop and a Michael Bolton hook wasn’t funny enough by itself, the song’s numerous blockbuster references make it an instant classic.

And I’m not alone in feeling that way: The video has been viewed over 2.5 million times on YouTube since Saturday. Michael Bolton himself isn’t ruling out a tour with Samberg and company, telling Entertainment Weekly that he would gladly reprise the role of himself. One character Bolton doesn’t want to do again, though? Erin Brockovich in drag:

“I was terrified to look in the mirror. I tried to avoid it. I noticed when they were finishing me up as Erin that the crew started reacting in this really uncomfortable way. As I walked past, people were clearly uncomfortable. At one point I was breast-feeding the baby … With Erin, I just kind of wanted to get those clothes off and take a shower.”

But let’s back up to 2001: Tina was already head writer at “Saturday Night Live,” the first woman Lorne Michaels had ever hired for that position. So, you know, score one for the ladies. This was also the year that Tina’s crew won a Writer’s Guild Award for their 25th Anniversary Special. Behind the scenes, Tina was killing it.

And then Lorne gave her the role of co-hosting “Weekend Update” with Jimmy Fallon, which traditionally only kept female anchors on to play the straight man (or woman) to their raunchy male counterparts. TV Guide called the pairing the best since “Dan Aykroyd called Jane Curtin an ignorant slut.“

Tina and Jimmy’s relationship was much less tempestuous than the point/counterpoint segments that Jane and Dan used to do (where, it should be noted, the joke of the sketch involved Jane and Dan calling each other terrible names while making their cases). Fallon was the goofball younger brother to Tina’s staid, “smart girl in glasses” prude. While Jimmy ended “Update” by throwing pencils at the ceiling, Fey would make her own callback to her predecessor Curtin by using her and Chevy Chase’s original closing line, “Goodnight, and have a pleasant tomorrow.” But it was still hard for Tina, a comedian trained at Chicago’s Second City, to only play one part on the show. Even Lorne noted that he was placing his head writer in a box:

The audience isn’t seeing Fey’s whole range, Michaels said, noting that she’s somewhat restricted by the “more contained presence” required by “Weekend Update.” But there’s more there than just humor, said her boss, who admires her tenacity.

Of course, later that year, when it became obvious that Tina was becoming “the hot one” (of the women on the show), Lorne totally changed his idea of why he put Tina with Fallon. In an article for the Observer in March 2001 called “Meet Four-Eyed New Sex Symbol, ‘Weekend Update’ Anchor Tina Fey,” Lorne commented on the duo’s dynamic:

“The old Hollywood thing was that she gave him sex and he gave her class … the rhythm and timing of that is just a chemistry thing: either it works or it doesn’t …. We saw the beginnings of that working.”

Fey’s admitted rocky relationship with her own sexual presence (and that of all female comedians, basically) didn’t start in the writer’s room where she may have been outnumbered, but was still boss. It began when the comedian was put on air and immediately stopped being the head writer and started being part of the “Astaire-Rogers combination.” (Another Lorne-ism.) Though no one ever stopped calling Tina brilliant, smart and funny — in short, her credentials and intelligence were never in question — that added ingredient of the camera immediately commodified Tina in a way that it commodifies any actor or actress. Maybe that’s why her early “Weekend Update” pieces were more about giving Fallon the room to ham it up than it was to prove her own comedic chops:

Post-Fallon, Tina and Amy Poehler had their all-girls club on “Update,” another first for the show, and it was easier to see Tina’s success on-screen as part of a feminist comedy movement. But back in 2001, despite all her achievements and success running the show, Fey was still wrestling away from the image of being just another pretty face. Even if that face was wearing glasses that were only being used for TV appearances.

Cool. For everyone else who is not enraged by the presence of The Lonely Island (the comedic hip-hop trio of “Saturday Night Live’s” Andy Samberg, Akiva Schaffer, Jorma and Taccone), their latest video “We’re Back” is worth talking about, if only to debate its relative merits in regards to the group’s other classics like “I’m on a Boat,” “Jizz in my Pants,” and “Dick in a Box.”

“We’re Back” is the first non-”SNL” video released by Lonely Island since they announced May 10th as the release date of their second album, “Turtleneck and Chains.” I guess Andy and co. were worried that their fans would think they’ve gotten too famous to write songs entirely about their flaccid, stinky penises, and penned this single to show everyone that they haven’t sold out, despite being “Grammy-nominated” and “getting paid too much money for this shit.”

It’s not as catchy as some of their other work, but does do an interesting job subverting the standard conventions of hip-hop like the boasting of sexual prowess, claims of authenticity (“We started this fake rap shit!” yells Jorma at one point), and allusions to “murdercore” (Akiva gives a sandwich to a homeless man, which “just sounds like a nice thing to do”).

It’s cute, but we’ve seen better from these guys. Dick jokes are fine, but they belong in one specific box, and we’ve already heard that song.

No, what was so noticeable about this week’s “Saturday Night Live” was that every sketch Elton was in –from cold open to finish – revolved around the singer’s homosexuality. (The one exception might have been the “Knights of the Realm,” which was more about making fun of British people than the gays.) Take the Lawrence Welk opening number, for example:

And then there was this sketch “The Silver Screen,” the premise of which, as far as I could tell, is that it’s funny when old queens give each other pet names. Every time Taran Killam and Elton kissed, the audience hooted.

This was not to say “The Silver Screen” wasn’t funny. It was very funny. And there is definitely room for gay humor on TV. But not if it’s being used as the only thing making a sketch funny: the concept for “Silver Screens” couldn’t have been more than “Two gay men spend more time making googly eyes at each other while dressed like Christopher Guest from ‘Waiting for Guffman’ than paying attention to Vanessa Hudgens.” (To be fair, a lot of things are better than paying attention to Vanessa Hudgens.)

The most egregious of these pieces was the “Old West” sketch, which Hulu describes as “A cowboy from the future finds himself very out of place in an old west saloon,” but would be more aptly characterized as “Elton John as a gay cowboy on a unicorn.”

None of this should be surprising, although it is disappointing. “Saturday Night Live” has a history of making gay jokes that focus on the humor of overtly masculine guys being gay. (“Shmitt’s Gay Beer” is probably the most famous example, where Adam Sandler and Chris Farley are two 90s bros who crack open their brewskis  to find a pool full of hunky beefcakes rather than bikini-clad girls. They are delighted and high-five.) Now, the updated “SNL” jokes are more subtle: commercials for estrogen supplements marketed to pre-op transsexuals and characters like Stefon, a tweeked-out gay club promoter who describes “hot” new venues that sound like something out of Clive Barker’s nightmares:

But there is a difference between the character of Stefon and the Estro-Maxx commercial/Elton John episode, in that the former only uses a character’s sexuality as an aspect of his persona, while the other two use it as a punch line.

But wouldn’t keeping homosexual humor entirely out of shows like “Saturday Night Live” just be a way of pretending that the culture doesn’t exist? Thomas Rogers posited in his piece two years ago, “Late night’s new gay obsession: Is it funny?” was that this type of gay humor might actually be a subversively positive side effect of the mainstreaming of the culture.

“But it’s also possible that comedians like Kimmel and Samberg think they’re able to get away with more un-PC humor now that gay visibility has made some progress – and that its culture has become more mainstream. One of the hallmarks of a movement’s success, after all, is its ability to have a sense of humor about itself.

One of the hallmarks of a movement’s success, after all, is its ability to have a sense of humor about itself.”

Elton John would seem to fit into this category: after all, he is a gay man making fun of his well-known gayness. But by having the show focus on that one joke and never move beyond it, SNL isn’t making a statement about homosexuality being normal. It’s saying that if you are a gay celebrity, your sexuality is the only part of you worth noting.

Ryan’s name-calling applies to anyone who doesn’t want their music to be coopted by Lea Michele or Matthew Morrison, according to Dave Grohl. The Foo Fighters frontman issued some harsh words himself against Murphy last week, saying “It’s every band’s right, you shouldn’t have to do f—ing Glee,then the guy who created Glee is so offended that we’re not, like, begging to be on his f—ing show… f— that guy for thinking anybody and everybody should want to do Glee.”

So far America has been waiting breathlessly for a profanity-riddled retort from Murphy, but that may have to be shelved now that “Glee” has bigger haters to fry, namely in the form of crazy-pants Victoria Jackson. The former “Saturday Night Live” actress continued to give women in comedy a great name when she released her latest diatribe against Muslims and gay people on WorldNetDaily.com, and calling the recent Kurt/Blaine kiss featured on “Glee” disgusting.

This new al-Qaida magazine for women has beauty tips and suicide-bomber tips! Gimme a break! That is as ridiculous as two men kissing on the mouth! And I don’t care what is politically correct. Everyone knows that two men on a wedding cake is a comedy skit, not an “alternate lifestyle”! There I said it! Ridiculous!

Did you see “Glee” this week? Sickening! And, besides shoving the gay thing down our throats, they made a mockery of Christians – again! I wonder what their agenda is? Hey, producers of “Glee” – what’s your agenda? One-way tolerance?

It’s easy to assume this is some weird joke, especially when watched with the accompanying video of Victoria warbling terrible one-liners (not even jokes, really) about the “Mooslims,” but nope, Victoria is definitely a hateful, misinformed bigot. (She’s also married to a fire-breather and a magician, which should be funny but isn’t, on account of all the crazy.)

After last week’s cameo of Kathy Griffin as a Christine O’Donnell/Sarah Palin hybrid described in the show as a “Twitterer and former tea party candidate,” it’s obvious that Ryan Murphy and “Glee” has no qualms about gunning after the fringe conservatives. And though his tantrum over the Kings of Leon was uncalled for, we’d love to see him inflict some of that vicious rage towards a target that actually deserves it.