Saturday Night Dead?...

I fucking hate it when people call it that. Saturday Night Live is a show that has made me laugh consistently since I first started watching it in the early 90s. All you haters that have been proclaiming it Dead since way back when the second episode aired can suck it. I practically inhale anything SNL related. I just loves it, is all. It makes me laugh, and humour is the greatest aphrodisiac.

I think EVERYONE has a Saturday Night Live memory. Regardless of your feelings about the show now, you have to admit to yourself that, at some point in your life, you watched SNL. And you liked it. Ever stay up real late, maybe at a friend's place, and roll around together on the floor, laughing at the antics of Belushi and Ackroyd, while silently repressing the desire to just grab your friend by the face, look lovingly into their eyes and......wait......wrong childhood memory.

Have you ever tried so hard to stay awake for Update, only to have your eyes snap open suddenly, and discover only the test pattern? (For the kids: A test pattern was a bunch of colored bars on your screen, while an annoying tone plays in the background. Yes! TV stations did go off the air after midnight. They didn't broadcast 24 hours a day. And CDs were the size of your head and you listened to them by scratching needles across the surface. Or something like that.)

Have you ever quoted an SNL sketch? Even once? ONCE IN YOUR WHOLE LIFE? I bet you have. Fuck, half of the world's population was saying "Ve Vant to Pump........YOU UP" in the early 90s.

You want to know my clearest SNL memory? It's not a particularly funny one, and not one that is directly tied to SNL, but I will always remember where I was and what I was watching when I heard the news that Shannon Hoon had died of a drug overdose.

Shannon Hoon was the lead singer for Blind Melon. Blind Melon was then, and continues to be now, one of my favorite bands. I'm sure you are all familiar with Blind Melon, and this post isn't about them, so I'll be brief. I had bought their second album "Soup" the day it was released. I loved it, and listened to it on a constant rotation. I thought it was a great improvement on their first album, and was excited to see where they would go next. Now, I can't remember the exact length of time between this albums release, and Hoon's death, but it wasn't too long at all. I'm thinking less than 6 months? I could wikipedia it to find out for sure, I guess. But it's Sunday, and thou shalt not Wiki on the Sabbath. Anyway, I was at my Dad's place for the weekend. Everyone was asleep except for me and my brother. We were in the living room, all of the lights off, watching Saturday Night Live. I remember feeling very cool that I was up that late. Later than my Dad even! I was a cool kid to be sure.

So we were watching, and during a commercial, a news update came on the screen. It announced that Shannon Hoon had, that evening, been found dead in his tour bus. I still remember my blood running cold. I can't remember if SNL was particularly funny that night or not, but I'm sure that I didn't laugh much after that.

Starting to get my point? Love it or hate it, SNL is one of the most influential, and entertaining shows ever on television. Even though it seems fashionable to hate on the show now, I will continue to scream my love for it from the rooftops. Or at least from a properly railed balcony. I'm kind of scared of heights.

Any other SNL junkies in the building? Check out (if you haven't already) the book "Live From New York" by James A. Miller and Tom Shales. I literally read it to pieces. I don't know how many times I read it, but it ended up falling apart. It's the kind of book that you can flip open to any part of and just read a few pages for a quick laugh. You can get it on Amazon for like 6 bux right now. Fuckin 6 bux. You should totally order it. No, I'm not getting a kickback from Amazon.
http://www.amazon.com/Live-New-York-Uncensored-Saturday/dp/B0007XAWS0/ref=pd_bbs_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1210534446&sr=1-1

My fucking kingdom for someone who can tell me how I can compress that link down into just a simple word or something. I'm sure HTML has something to do with. Fucking HTML.

So what made me feel the need to preach about SNL on a Sunday afternoon? Quite simply, this:

Fucking hilarious. That was from last night's episode, hosted by Shia TheBeef. No doubt, 10,000 sad little people have already flooded the internet with critiques about how shitty last night's show was, and why SNL should be cancelled. Well fuck that. I've got news for you, sad little people. You're still fucking watching it! Why is that? Because if its so terrible, why do you consistently tune in every week? I thought so. And don't give me the whole "The show was so awesome when Farley and Sandler and Ferrell were on! Why can't it be that good now?".

I remember watching those shows, and then all you heard was "Oh the show was so rad when Carvey and Hartman were on. Why can't it be that good now?" (Yes, we used to say "rad").

Well I implore you not to laugh at McGruber. Double dog dare and everything. You can't do it, because that shit is hilarious. End rant.

Oh, and don't stop now. Continue reading down the page. This is the second post I've done in about 12 hours, so in case you haven't checked in a few days, there's more reading to be done. I'm not finished with you yet.