None of y’all know this, but today our very own A.J. Hammer, John, turns 30 (and his fraternal twin brother too).  Or, as he puts it, “dirty thirty.”

I couldn’t think of much of a tribute — but Sarah Silverman always seems to do the trick for him.

As you already know, last week Fox announced it won’t renew King of the Hill.

I didn’t make a point of watching King of the Hill, but I enjoyed it every time I caught it. Each time I saw it, even after creators Greg Daniels and Mike Judge had already left, I was surprised by how funny it was—and it was smarter than I gave it credit for, too. One recent episode that really impressed me dealt with gentrification in Austin. It’s hard to center any kind of plot at all around gentrification, since the problem is so vague and ongoing, and it’s even harder to make it funny. King of the Hill did both.

After watching that episode, I decided that King of the Hill accomplishes what South Park wishes it does: It takes the piss out of everyone. Hank is often too small-minded and naïve, and the forces he’s up against are too out-of-control. On South Park the effect of making fun of everyone makes it seem like anyone who has an opinion is stupid for believing in anything, but King of the Hill is more focused on finding a middle ground.

I hope that King becomes one of those series that’s in reruns forever on Cartoon Network. It holds up very well. In its place, Fox will debut Sit Down, Shut Up, an animated show about teachers from three people I find to be geniuses: Mitch Hurwitz (Arrested Development), and Bill Oakley and Josh Weinstein (The Simpsons, Mission Hill). I am very excited about this. (Just look at the voice cast.) Knowing Fox, if it doesn’t get good ratings immediately, it’ll be axed no matter how good it is, but if it does moderately well, they’ll let it run for a dozen seasons, just like King of the Hill.

I leave you with this one clip, from the aforementioned gentrification episode. I’ll think about this every day I ride the L to Brooklyn.

I’m not exactly sure why Ben Affleck hosted the most recent episode of Saturday Night Live. I don’t have much against the guy; apart from his late-nineties/early-aughts propensity for playing besuited tools in bad movies, the dude has appeared in some decent movies: Changing Lanes (the best of his suit movies), Hollywoodland, and the Kevin Smith oeuvre (plus, he was the bomb in Phantoms). He also directed a pretty terrific movie from last year, Gone Baby Gone. But he hasn’t appeared onscreen since early ’07 and isn’t scheduled to turn up again until spring of next year.

In that sense, his hosting gig was a throwback to the show’s earliest years, when people just hosted for the hell of it, not because they had a movie coming out, a recent Oscar nomination and/or Olympic medal, or a hit show on NBC. Affleck’s non-promotional stop makes sense: he has a recent history with the show, this being his fourth time hosting since 2000, and his sixth appearance overall. It must be said, though, that Affleck isn’t exactly Steve Martin or Alec Baldwin in terms of his ability to slip right into the rhythms of the show as a surrogate cast member. He’s clearly game enough, but he was in over his head as an impressionist, doing a raspy, Eastwood-y imitation of Baldwin himself on a parody of The View (alongside Casey Wilson’s dead-on Jennifer Aniston), and, with a slightly better impression but a far worse sketch, an interminable Keith Olbermann — a drawn-out bit that felt about half an hour long.

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