Live From Beijing: Two weeks ago, when soliciting your help in casting Olympian Michael Phelps (thereby sparing him a terrible Hollywood future), we predicted of the athlete, "There's bound to be an awkward SNL-hosting stint yet to come." Today, TV Guide announced, "The Summer Olympics' outstandingly golden boy, swimmer Michael Phelps, will dive into not-ready-for-primetime television as the guest host of Saturday Night Live's 33rd season premiere." Were we simply prescient, or is Lorne Michaels now culling ideas from the digital pages of Defamer? If Phelps appears in a Saved By The Bell skit, perhaps we'll have our answer. [TV Guide]

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· When did they let this moaning, twitching, four-legged freak-creature (two white legs, two black with socks on) into the Big Brother 10 house? Look away! It's positively monstrous! [Arguably NSFW.] [B-Side Blog]
· Ben Silverman told TCA today that the Amy Poehler is actually starring in a completely separate project from that Office spinoff. In other Poehler news, Lorne Michaels said that her departure from SNL will be a "big loss." (Rifling around frantically for our Kristen Wiig doll...There you are. Hugggies.) [THR, LAT]
· Patrick Swayze looking surprisingly hunky for someone with inoperable pancreatic cancer. Go get 'em, Bodhi! [Daily Mail]
· The poster for Alan Ball's True Blood makes us quiver with antici. (Count to three.) Pation. [Slashfilm via AICN]
· Remember that time you were thinking to yourself, "If only I had a visual dictionary of a wide variety of baby animals." Well, today is your lucky day. Even Four-Legged BJ Monsters are cute when they're babies! [Baby Animal Alphabet]

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We don't know if Venus is in retrograde or God hates us or whatever, but we can scarcely remember a time in recent history where we've been subjected to a series of more non-stop, ear-punishing horrors than the past month. Between recent performances by Jason Castro, Teri Hatcher, and Fantasia (as accompanied by the inmates of the Asylum of Charenton under the direction of the Marquis de Sade), we really didn't know how much more we could take. But those were all American Idol-advanced atrocities, which is why we thought we'd be safe with a seasoned pro like Usher on SNL. As the clip above will make quickly obvious, our assumption was dead wrong. Is this the worst performance in history? Probably not. But it's close, and contains the most hilariously spastic freestyle dance moves we've seen since Richard Simmons's Cranergy endorsement (to say nothing of more flat notes than a Post-It pad). Chris Brown: You're safe for now, Boo. [SNL]

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It's difficult to properly convey to you the excitement level that hits you the second you walk through the revolving doors at 30 Rockefeller Centre before a live taping of Saturday Night Live. After all, it's one of the hardest tickets to get in show business. So, unlike a concert or athletic event where you can see the eyes of some attendees glazing over from boredom, everyone who is in attendance is someone who desperately wants to be there. As anyone who is in the building will attest, the energy in these moments is both palpable and kinetic. And that's just in the lobby of the ground floor of the building!

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Rumours that notorious SNL line-flubber Jimmy Fallon might replace Conan O'Brien following his move to The Tonight Show have been floating around for over a year now. But today, Fox News adds some real substance to all the chatter by boldly reporting that "it's a done deal." Debates will inevitably and endlessly ensue regarding Fallon's ability to fill the shoes of everyone's favourite red head (with all apologies to the late Lucille Ball), especially considering Fallon's lack of experience as a writer or improviser. More details from Fox on how Fallon is handling the news and when we can expect an official announcement, after the jump.

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As we learned recently, SNL's Chris Farley was far from coddled or loved during his final years by fellow cast members. And now, a new biography on Chris Farley titled The Chris Farley Show will divulge more depressing tales from friends of Farley and how exactly they went about attempting to help the struggling addict get better (hint: they didn't). From former co-stars dishing on his desperate attempts to be loved using prostitutes to anecdotes involving his habit of licking everything from his shoelaces to his wallet, one revelation made by Chris Rock stands out:

"'Chippendales' was a weird sketch. I always hated it...The joke of it is, basically, 'We can't hire you because you're fat.' There's no comic twist to it. It's just [bleep]ing mean. Chris wanted so much to be liked. As funny as that sketch was...it's one of the things that killed him."

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If you're wondering why you're not seeing as much of popular SNL featured players like Jason Sudeikis, Bill Hader and Andy Samberg these days, there's one simple reason why: Kristen Wiig. Since she made her debut on the show back in late 2005, Wiig has quickly established herself as one of the most gifted and versatile performers to ever grace the stage at Studio 8H, not to mention one of the funniest. In this short time, she's quickly become Lorne Michaels' MVP of the show, often appearing in 4-5 sketches per episode. While it's debatable as to whether or not she'll ever reach breakout superstar status of SNL alums like Bill Murray, Eddie Murphy or Mike Myers, she is, for our money, the single most talented sketch comedian the show has seen since fellow Groundlings alum Will Ferrell retired. After the jump, we feature two sketches that she knocked out of the park this weekend. The first features a spot-on impression of Jamie Lee Curtis filming a commercial for Activia yogurt; the latter, a virtuoso turn as a haggard and worn down travel writer named Judy Grimes who, for the life of her, can't stop kidding around.

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Tina Fey, arguably the most powerful vagina-having joke force in the universe, has rarely minced words in the past when it comes to some of her lesser-abled collaborators, whether describing Paula Abdul as a "disaster" or Paris Hilton as "a disease-ridden fucktard" [Ed.note: Could we have an intern verify that?] But we never expected the 30 Rock star and showrunner to run off so freely at the mouth about her comedy giant equals, such as in the case of her surprisingly harsh assessment of Jon Stewart's more politically solicitous material:

COMEDY queen Tina Fey says that while she makes people laugh, political pundit Jon Stewart only makes them uncomfortable.

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Following a season of Project Runway is something akin to sticking your head in a gay pinball machine, at the end of which enough "fierces" and "feroches" have ricocheted off your skull to cause your brain to dissolve into a soft pink foam and run out your ears. It's an effect not entirely lost on the writers of SNL, who noticed that the search for America's Next Top Designer You'll Probably Never Hear From Again was perhaps a sconch over-reliant on oft-repeated catchphrases, whose non-meanings decreased with each sassy intonation. And we'd be remiss in not presenting the Fierce Trannie Hot Mess Gold Star to Amy Poehler, who really manages to capture the dippy, squared-off smile of Runway victor Christian Siriano.

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When Ellen Page strutted onto the stage of Studio 8H to deliver her monologue on this week's episode of SNL dressed like one of the Sweathogs, we didn't pay it much mind. With the benefit of hindsight (and after having seen this skit), maybe our eyebrows should have risen ever so slightly. But, at the time, we were too busy enjoying Andy Samberg's impression of Diablo Cody to wonder about the Ellen Page Sexuality Sweepstakes. While all you bloggers and froggers out there will likely concur that his Diablo didn't quite reach the level of the Diablo impersonator in the Funny Or Die video, we did love the calvacade of blog references that he managed to mix into his impression. The video, along with a complete list of all of the blog-related catchphrases in the making follows after the jump:

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