vampire weekend

Both The Black Keys' 'Brothers' and Vampire Weekend's 'Contra' have been nominated for the Best Alternative Music Album Grammy. Stephen Colbert can't decide who will get his vote. May as well let 'em fight it out on 'The Colbert Report' (weeknights, 11:30PM ET on COM).

Ezra Koenig, Vampire's lead singer/guitarist, grabs a baseball bat and tells drummer Patrick Carney, "I'm gonna bash those ironic glasses right through your skull!" Carney's Black Keys bandmate Dan Auerbach grabs a chain and yells, "Bring it on, Cape Cod!"

"My Grammy vote goes to whoever has teeth left!" says the host, before an official of the awards joins the scene and threatens to strip Colbert of the Grammy he won for Best Comedy Album. The host doesn't scare him: He breaks a bottle and threatens to "cut your face!"

Advertising agencies are desperate to show that they're "with it," which is why they cram ads with the latest radio-friendly alternative songs. The songs -- the more emo-ish, the better -- give the product a sheen of hipness that no visual can convey quite as well.

Over the last decade, alternative songs on ads have become so prevalent that it is one the main ways I discover new music to buy. I would have never found Kings of Leon back in the mid-'00s without that VW ad featuring the song 'Molly's Chambers,' and Apple's relentless use of Feist's '1234' on an iPod ad made me go and download it from iTunes.

But, for the most part, the repetitive nature of advertising has ruined my enjoyment of a number of songs over the last few years, with no more egregious example than the song 'Holiday' by Vampire Weekend. This song is featured in not one but two holiday-themed ads this December, both of which are being played in heavy rotation. Those ads, and some more songs ruined by commercials, after the jump.

(S35E16) This was definitely one of the weirder installments of 'Saturday Night Live' in a while, but for fans of Zach Galifianakis, it was a real treat. It's very rare that the entire tone of the evening so perfectly fits the host. A lot of hosts, be they athletes or singers or professional actors, use 'SNL' as a platform for showcasing other talents that they have (or think they have) and that can often lead to strange, near unwatchable territory.

Galifianakis knows where's his strong points are and confidently played those up all through the episode. He is not at his best with cue card-heavy parts, but rather when he forces the audience to bask in his glorious, beardy, unsettling presence. So we got a lot of that. A lot. Response to this episode will probably be highly divided (well, more so than other weeks) but, speaking as a long-time fan of Galifianakis, it worked.

Even though a lot of people put down 'Saturday Night Live' (and yes it's probably not as great as years gone by), hosting the show is still a pretty big deal. The show gets a lot of viewers and watercooler talk (and by watercooler talk I mean comments on the web), it's a good push for the first weekend of a new movie opening, and it gives fans of various celebrities a chance to see them do something different.

The two latest hosts to be named are Zach Galifianakis and Jude Law. Galifianakis will host on March 6 (with musical guest Vampire Weekend), and Law will host on March 13 (with Pearl Jam).

Let's not forget what happened the last time Law hosted the show.

Vampires aren't scary anymore. They haven't been for a while.

Anne Rice saw to that while she was making her fortune turning vampires into the kind of delicate camp caricatures you see hosting cooking shows on Bravo. It's continued through Twilight and every Twilight clone coming down the pipe. Still, Twilight can build it's own Federal Reserve Bank now, and no one gives a cuss what I think.

Now, I've officially typed the word "Twilight" way more than I wanted to today, and I need to get to the point. So, vampires will be the cause celebre of Spike TV's 4th Annual "Scream.," Tuesday, October 27 at 10 PM ET/PT.

(S33E07) I was really hoping that this night would redeem Saturday Night Live from the crappiness of Ellen Page's episode, but, boy, was I disappointed. Usually, when an episode is weak, I just shrug it off, write a post about it, and move on. This time, I actually felt a bit of regret when it was over. "I totally could have been using that time to clean my room," I thought. Obviously, I wasn't particularly fond of this one.

I haven't seen Amy Adams in much apart from Talladega Nights and Enchanted and, even though both of these films left me feeling like I could have been using the time to clean my room, I was all right with Adams. Unfortunately, she looked super nervous throughout the episode and sped through her lines so quickly that she would sometimes use really bizarre inflection.