Live from MCPL, It's Saturday Night!

January 18, 2013

People tell me I’m funny. Not funny lookin', that I crack them up! It’s partly because I watched a lot of Saturday Night Live as a child, back when it was really good (I call it "old SNL"). I wanted to be up there on that big, glowing box making the country guffaw and snort, but hey, I was only a kid! So, I took to imitating the characters instead and performing for family and friends. I even recorded some of my best impressions on cassette (c’mon, it was the eighties!), like Gilda Radner’s Roseanne Roseannadanna.

I got my sister into the act as well. She did a great Ed Grimley (originally portrayed by Martin Short). I remember her coming out of the bathroom one night with her pajama pants pulled up to her armpits, a big section of hair gelled and sticking straight up in front, doing that little kick jump. I laughed so hard, I almost cried! One particular show we put on together, our rendition of a rap by Jim Belushi and Alex Karras from season 10, didn’t go over so well with our fans. We thought it’d be funny to put on for the grandparents after dinner one night, but no one was laughin’ with us. Hello, is this thing on?!

My favorite characters from SNL mainly occur during the late 80s and early 90s seasons. Remember Matt Foley (Chris Farley) who incessantly used air quotes and lived in "a van down by the river"? Or how about those crazy body builders Hanz and Franz who were there to pump us up? I especially loved Coffee Talk with your host Linda Richmond, a.k.a. Mike Myers. There were a lot of great "Weekend Update" hosts before him, but Kevin Nealon will always be the best to me. That’s news to him! These characters brought me some good laughs, and I was getting pretty good at my home impressions. So, with those years of practice and being older and a little less embarrassed, I branched out to performing "in public," meaning I did Dana Carvey’s Church Lady dance for my high school gym class. Maybe I should’ve been MORE embarrassed!

From Dan Aykroyd advertising the Super Bass-O-Matic ‘76 (“Yes, it’s just that simple!”) to Christopher Walken’s demand for "more cowbell" (hard to believe that was 13 years ago, huh?), old SNL is a treasure trove of classic sketch comedy. Great characters (some even spun off into movies: “No way?!” “Way!”), great commercials, great hosts, and great musical guests (the ONLY place you can see Nirvana’s Dave Grohl sit in on drums with Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers). And MCPL has many DVDs to suit your SNL tastes, even one dedicated to those great musical guests, Saturday Night Live. 25 years of music! You might also want to check out a couple books while you’re in the neighborhood, such as Thirty-Nine Years of Short-Term Memory Loss by Tom Davis or Live from New York: An Uncensored History of Saturday Night Live by Tom Shales.

Well, it just goes to show ya. It’s always something. If it isn’t one thing it’s another thing…

Goodnight and have a pleasant tomorrow! 

Jenni P.
Raytown Branch