Two days before Megan Thee Stallion strode down the main stage in a sheer, black, corseted cocktail number to begin her 90-minute sprint as Saturday Night Live’s host and musical guest, she sent out an apologetic tweet to her legion of fans. “Hotties, I’m really sorry but after SNL I really gotta take a break I’m so tired, physically and emotionally.” This is a young woman who, among a multitude of other griefs and grievances, lost in rapid succession her beloved mother to brain cancer in 2019 and then her grandmother a few weeks later. On the day she posted the pre-SNL tweet, her California house was robbed.
We don’t let Black women rest in this country. (Everyone, follow @thenapministry and read Tricia Hersey’s Rest is Resistance: A Manifesto.) May the Hot Girl Coach, aka Tina Snow, otherwise known as the H-Town Hottie, demeaned by her haters and uplifted by facts as Dat Bitch, sleep for a hundred days come Sunday. May she take a break from grind culture, throw her phone out the window, and stay in the bath until the hot water runs cold.
In her monologue, which she delivered with aplomb, the only tell of her nerves her constant waving of her fingernails for emphasis, she shouted out her graduation from college in 2021. This girl earned a degree in health administration from Texas Southern University while winning Grammys and touring the world. Then she directed the audience to her website badbitcheshavebaddaystoo.com, joking that hotgirlbummer.com was taken, and it turns out to be a completely user-friendly mental health treasure, with therapy platforms and podcast spotlights and resources directories like “Therapy for Black Men” and “LGBTQ Psychotherapist of Color Directory.”
Content
This content can also be viewed on the site it originates from.
It wasn’t a perfect night, by any means. The cold open, despite my most fervent hopes, returned to Trump with a zoom-in on the January 6th committee. Points though to Heidi Gardner, who gave good Liz Cheney. “I’ve been asked ‘How did you get a backbone of steel?’ and I ask back, ‘For your 10th birthday, did you eat pizza at Chuck E. Cheese with all your friends or did you shoot a deer in the face with Dick Cheney?’” And Sarah Sherman continues to be the best kind of true weirdo. Her Chuck Schumer is so good—“I want 12 dill pickles still floating in the juice”—it almost makes me wish he would consider running for president just to see more of it.
Content
This content can also be viewed on the site it originates from.
But Megan Thee Stallion, who was in every dang sketch, working her tail off, was excellent company to the Studio Players. And when Kenan Thompson made her break, while playing her daddy who couldn’t see the deer right in front of his face, or in the window waving at him, or standing behind him with a steak knife, it was a joy to see this woman hide her face behind her elegant nails so she could try to suck back her laughter.