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"Live
From Dayton, Ohio..." Gather 'round The Gallows, once again, Tubeheads! This week your ol' pal the crazyman is here to deliver a rant fraught with bittersweet dichocotomy and bony contention. (Find a sore spot and pick at it with a salted stick, I always say. ) So as I do the dance of death on the trapdoor once again this week, taunting the Fates (Or at least Count Gore!) to taut the slack, let us intone the immortal words of a couple of wild and crazy guys from a LONG time ago who said ( pause for effect ), "Let's SWING !"... "IT'S ON E! ???" Part 1: The Disclaimer An immediate aside: I still feel ridiculous even writing the E! network's name. I'll try to mention it as little as possible in the course of this discourse and limit my use of exclaimation points to save us all any undue embarassment. Period. ---"IT'S ON E! ???" Part 1.5 Ok, so it was a major factor in the demise of the late-night horror host; that's a given. Despite that fact, this week I've been catching up on some episodes of that accursed and accused usurping interloper -- or interloping usurper (?) -- of the local airwaves, the original SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE. (Yeah, I know the "Live" part was added after Howard Cosell's ABC show of the same name was cancelled.) Everyone remembers the "Saturday Night Live with Howard Cosell" show that ran on ABC back in '73-74, right ? Of course not-- even if you were alive then, it was a cathode labotomy. It is somehow relatively relevant here though for a few reasons if you overanalyse it. So by way of somehow validating my presence here... . Point one: Producer Lorne Michaels over at NBC had to drop the "Live" from the title of his now legendary ensemble comedy/ variety program, which led to the chestnut openings from season #1 featuring Chevy Chase doing a pratfall and blurting out, "Live from New York, it's Saturday Night ! " It was a roundabout way of getting across the idea, "Hey, we're doing this RIGHT NOW, FOLKS !" without the benefit of having the word in the shows title-- and a historic catch-phrase was born. A second, more important point was made when Michaels at last walked away with the "Live" title. The message was spray-painted on the wall; the "kids" had won, and the new face of television wore a perpetually stoned smirk. The castle had been stormed, and the doors were wide open for SCTV -- an extension of the Chicago-based Second City "comedy school" that spawned many an SNL alumni--where we ironiclly met the imitative yet inimitable host parody Count Floyd (Joe Flaherty) as he welcomed us to Monster Chiller Horror Theater (C'mon, you know you loved "Dr. Tongue's House of 3-D Stewardesses", just admit it. ) ABC's FRIDAYS (which indirectly led to the birth of "Seinfeld"), was close on SNL's Mercurial tail. Then there was Night Flight, which is a topic unto itself... SNL takes the brunt of the blame for the demise of the local horror host, but the brutal fact is, the networks were trying to fill that time with SOMETHING. Had it not been SNL, it would have been something else, and at least we got a show so subversively funny as SNL in trade. We should thank the gods of the air that "something" wasn't Howie the "C". I remember the first episode of SNL as vividly as the first episode of "Shock Theatre with Dr. Creep" ( later retitled Saturday Night Dead, and following SNL at 1am). I recall thinking at first that it was a local show, and kept waiting for Chevy Chase to introduce a movie or stumble over to a desk--then the slow realization sank in that this was a VERY different sort of tv. Carson all of a sudden looked a lot less cool. Johnny didn't have a Landshark, y'know... Unlike most tapes out there, or even the edited versions that Comedy Central showed a few years back, The E! ( I swear I'm not laughing...) rebroacasts give us more than just someone's idea of "highlights". I had forgotten about sketches such as Bill Murray trying to climb the corporate ladder in a Roman vomitorium, or Murray and Dan Aykroyd as the "Ex-Police" ( "... another marijuana related death !"). "So was there a dark side?", you ask, obliviously listening to a bootleg MP3 of Adam Sandler's latest masterpiece whine on in the background, "Why are you telling me all this--and why in the world hasn't Gore pulled the blasted lever and shut you up???" ( Hey, I'm trying to avoid exclaimation points not question marks, right???) Alright, so the socialpolitical and otherwise sociopathic implications I've outlined haven't grabbed you by the boo-boo. To hell with ya, you don't have to write a weekly column ! ( Ooops.) Yep, SNL was funnier once, and for the most part because it was darker and "edgy". Except for those Steve Martin opening monologues. Wow, we must've been REALLY stoned to think those were funny. Was the old "arrow through the head" bit EVER funny? His portrayal of "Theodoric of York: Medieval Barber"and other unforgettable characters make Steve's purposly-bad lounge comic-bit worth sitting through again though. The Twilight Zone parody hosted by Anthony Perkins was always a personal favorite, with John Belushi starring in one vignette as "The Thing That Wouldn't LEAVE !!!". (Part of the title, doesn't count.) Jim Henson's prehistoric "Land of Scortch", Michael O'Donoghue's "Mr. Mike's Bedtime Stories", not to mention the almost too-creepy-to-mention "Don't Look Back in Anger" short film by Tom Schiller inwhich an elderly John Belushi reflects on the lives -- and dances on the graves -- of his Not Ready For Prime Time Players cohorts. That one still raises the hair on the back of my neck in a way John would appreciate and probably intended. The list of outstanding musical guests who appeared on the early seasons is way too long to reel off, but Frank Zappa performing "I Am The Slime (From the Video)", or the first network-tv appearances by Devo or the B-52's, still shine with a time-capsule quirkiness. Some cheese just gets better with age. Legends and legends-to-be in the worlds of comedy and entertainment also too numerous to mention took a spin through the SNL turnstyle during the first couple of years as well. Besides the original "Not Ready For Primetime Players"--a deliberate jab at Cosell's (always back to that guy ) "Ready for Primetime Players", of which Billy Crystal was a member after being bumped from the SNL cast the day of it's premiere--true icons such as Richard Pryor and Andy Kaufman found a home at SNL, and in our living room's. No, they didn't replace the horror hosts in our hearts, only in their timeslots. Besides, SNL wasn't the judge, jury and executioner here, simply the harbinger of a changing world... and damn funny to boot. Well, I've mentioned E! and defended SNL in the same column, and can obviously never show my face in the horror host community again; just throw the acid in my general direction and have done with it. Not the brown acid, please. I've heard it's bad... Sailin' with Wavy Gravy and livin' in the past,
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