Look, you read the headline, right? You know what’s gonna happen here; you pretty much signed up for it when you clicked. So go ahead and press play: You’ll get exactly what we promised. Yeah, there’s a framing story, since this is a Saturday Night Live skit and not an extremely specific fetish video or whatever. It’s ostensibly some kind of talent competition where Mikey Day and John Cena are competing as owl trainers. But you did not click on this story because you want to see a biting satire of the well-known flaws of talent shows or the even better-known flaws of owl trainers. No owl-trainer fan, you! What you want—the reason you clicked—is to see a video where a raggedy-ass owl puppet pukes all over John Cena. That’s just what you’ll find here.
And even though Slate’s layout practically demands two paragraphs of exegesis, let’s not kid ourselves: you also didn’t click to read some kind of clever explanation of the skit. You don’t need to be told why it’s funny to watch a raggedy-ass owl puppet puke on John Cena. You already know why it’s funny. It’s a really crappy-looking owl puppet and it’s puking, for God’s sake. On John Cena. You’re here for the owl puke. We’re here for the owl puke. The owl puppet is here for the owl puke, and it’s gotta go to the trouble of puking. You don’t have to be ashamed. We like it too! No judgment. You’re safe here, on this little off-ramp from the Information Superhighway. Just you, your friends at Slate, John Cena, Mikey Day, and an extremely fucked-up-looking owl puppet that can puke. Enjoy!
