G.E. Smith was for many years the guitarist and apparent leader of the Saturday Night Live band. Throughout the 80s and early 90s, when I watched the show, he would mug for the camera and attempt to show off his chops and stage presence. Week after week he molded his deeply wrinkled face into a grimace that approximated a smile and tried valiantly to look like a rock star rather than a middle-aged studio musician. He actually wasn't a bad guitarist, but his incredibly wooden appearance in front of the camera--and the fact that, year after year, he never realized just how awful he looked--made him one of my personal icons, the embodiment of what it was to be not cool.