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The Boggling Seth MacFarlane Helps Ring in Sinatra's 100th Birthday Without Making A Single Dick Joke

By Seth Freilich | Videos | July 23, 2015 |

By Seth Freilich | Videos | July 23, 2015 |


Seth MacFarlane is a god damned enigma. He does great things like giving a million dollars to Reading Rainbow and helping to get the greatest modern science show aired. When he wants, he can make you laugh hysterically at juvenile humor. But he’s also brought vile things to us. Stupid things. Vile and stupid things.

I don’t get it. The guy is a smart, funny, and stupidly talented man who goes back and forth between using these talents for good, using them for funny dick jokes, and using them for awful stupid. At times, he is eloquent and charming, while at other times, he uses a monumental Supreme Court decision validating marriage equality to stupidly market his teddy bear sequel. And yet, despite the bad things (let’s really pretend he didn’t host the Oscars, ok?), I can’t help but love him because of the good things and my respect (and jealousy) of his talent. Which is why he breaks my heart when he does the bad things.

All of which brings me to last night, where he most decidedly did not break my heart. The Hollywood Bowl was putting on a special shindig to ring in Frank Sinatra’s 100th birthday (which isn’t actually until December), and MacFarlane was one of a handful of folks brought out to croon The Chairman of The Board’s tunes. You may not know this, but MacFarlane is, among other things, a phenomenal singer who has performed at Carnegie Hall. A lot of folks last night didn’t know this and were shocked when MacFarlane absolutely nailed a couple of Frank songs (some even thought he was the best voice of the night, and he damn close was). Here’s an intro and one of those songs, listen and enjoy (and though I’m a staunch believer in horizontal iPhone videos, I failed to abide that here, which I’ll blame on the bottle-and-a-half of wine I had imbibed up to this point):