May Day Newsletter

Classic SNL Recap - Season 3 Finale

Season 3 ends with Buck Henry hosting; now that he has hosted 2 consecutive season finales it’s officially become a tradition. This was his 6th stint as host, the sketch that introduced the concept of the Five-Timers Club was still a decade away, so Henry did not receive a smoking jacket. It should come as no surprise that he was the first five timer.

Once again, this episode was heavy on recurring sketches, or at the very least sketches that had come out of common templates. Buck Henry often served as the foil in the samurai sketches, and this week he was the customer of Samurai Television Repairman. These sketches were a good showcase for John Belushi’s physical gifts, and I can only think of two occasions in which he accidentally slashed a costar with his sword, but this character has not aged very well. A white actor spouting gibberish that’s supposed to be Japanese doesn’t feel right.

The cold open featured Dan Aykroyd’s devastating Richard Nixon impersonation. It wasn’t a particularly strong piece; the focus was on the disappointing sales figures for his memoirs, but I notice one aspect of the cold open that has largely gone away. In the early days the cast tended to remain in character when saying “live from New York!” but for years the default has been to break character and have every performer in the sketch joyfully say the famous phrase in unison. I’m not saying one method is better than the other, but it’s something worth mentioning.

Buck Henry monologues generally focused on two topics - the show’s insistence that he is both dull and a secret pervert, and this week’s was no different. After mentioning a movie he’s working on that stars his close friends Warren Beatty & Julie Christie (that would be the great Heaven Can Wait) a scroll ran throughout the monologue which said that he doesn’t know either Beatty or Christie and that he is actually a friendless recluse. “He lives alone in his small Hollywood apartment - just a few magazines and a telescope. You figure it out.”

In the Robert Klein episode that I discussed last week two of the most popular recurring sketches were introduced and both appeared this week as well. In the Olympia Diner sketch Belushi’s owner was attempting to rent guard Dobermans from Henry due to burglaries in the neighborhood. That meant Bill Murray’s counterman could no longer sleep in the back room of the diner, lest the dogs would attack him. Belushi fired Murray, only to rehire him once he learned the cost of the dogs.

The Nerds were also back, and as opposed to their appearance in the Klein episode, this time they were fully in their recognizable form. Lisa & Todd were now a couple, and there were the requisite references to the late Mr. Loopner - God rest his soul - who had the misfortune of having been born without a spine.

This was Aykroyd’s final turn as the Weekend Update co-anchor; he went out with another edition of Point/Counterpoint. His replacement the following season would be Murray, who also appeared in this edition as his Hollywood reporter character. This was one of my favorite examples of that bit. Here he didn’t get a chance to actually see the movie he intended to review, so he based his review on the clip that the studio sent. The movie was The Greek Tycoon, which starred Jacqueline Bissett as the widow of an assassinated American President who went on to marry a Greek tycoon. Murray was beside himself over the barely disguised similarity to Jackie Onassis, so he implored Onassis to demand points, helpfully informing her that she needs to ask for gross, not net. After all, as he pointed out “you’re a widow with two children and no visible means of support.”

A few other points: This week also featured an appearance from Leonard Pinth-Garnell, this time hosting Bad Conceptual Art. In a slight twist on the Knights Of Columbus sketches that often ran, this episode featured a meeting of the Sodom Chamber of Commerce, as they were attempting to increase tourism without focusing too much on sodomy. Henry’s ad exec helped introduce a new “I Love Sodom” jungle set to the tune of the old “I Love New York” ditty. There was also a conceptual revisit of a stunt baby sketch that had appeared a previous time that Henry had hosted. This time it was a stunt puppy. Henry was an actor in a movie filming a scene that involved his beating up the family dog in a drunken rage. Don’t worry, the abused animal was an obvious puppet, but I’m sure that Kristi Noem gleefully has that sketch running on autorepeat in her office.

I haven’t yet mentioned this week’s musical guest, who were literally held off until the final segment of the show. That would be Sun Ra - can you imagine the show booking the 2024 equivalent of Sun Ra on the show? I suppose the answer is that there is no modern equivalent of Sun Ra, but my point holds. SNL is nowhere near being that adventurous anymore.

SNL returns with the next set of new episodes this weekend, so I’ll wait until later this month to look at the premiere episode of season 4. That episode is hosted by a plucky little rock & roll combo by the name of The Rolling Stones.

50 Years Ago - Hong Kong Phooey

I would suspect that after reading the title “Hong Kong Phooey” many readers of a certain age immediately next heard “#1 super guy” in their heads. One of the easiest ways for a Saturday morning cartoon to become addictive is with an earworm of a theme song, and Hong Kong Phooey had one of the most earwormiest of them all.

HGP was a Hanna-Barbara production, and like most toons that came out of that particular factory it had a simple premise accompanied by minimalist animation. This was the story of a mild-mannered (naturally) janitor dog, voiced by Scatman Crothers, who works at a police station and is secretly a masked super hero specializing in kung fu. He’s quite inept and clumsy, in fact the real hero is his best friend, a cat who basically covers up all of his mistakes and would generally be the one who winds up catching each week’s villain even though Hong Kong Phooey gets all the glory.

The show capitalized on the kung fu craze of the time - those movies were a staple of weekend afternoon television, the David Carradine series was in the middle of its run at the time, and Bruce Lee’s legend was firmly established by now, further exacerbated by his mysterious death. Was the cartoon guilty of cultural appropriation? I could see people making that argument, but there were no bad intentions behind it. The tone was so innocent, and I can speak from experience. 1970’s children were obsessed with martial arts, and this show was a big part of it.

Saturday morning cartoons and live action shows tended to churn in and out quickly. This one was no different; it only ran for 1 season of 16 episodes. It speaks volumes that whereas many children’s shows that premiered at the same time have been long forgotten, this one lives on. Credit - or blame - goes to that theme song. Apologies if you are unable to get it out of your head.

Do You Believe In Curses? Yesssssss!

It’s May 1, which means we’re far enough into the baseball season that things are beginning to take shape but still too early to draw definitive conclusions. Unless, of course, if a team that was expected to be terrible is playing at exactly as poor of a pace as had been feared. As the calendar turns another page, there are 3 teams that have still not been able to manage 10 victories. One of them is the Rockies, the other two have got some seriously bad mojo about them.

I’m an adult, reasonably educated man. As a rule of thumb I don’t believe in hexes or things of that nature. But the Marlins & White Sox are causing me to question those beliefs. Both have got some serious karmic payback going on.

Of all the crazy stories I have heard as a sports fan, few were as bizarre as the tale of Drake LaRoche. He was the then teenage son of White Sox pitcher Adam LaRoche who spent a lot of time in the clubhouse; seemingly too much time as management eventually restricted his access which caused tremendous blowback. One teammate even said that the Sox lost a leader when the club forced him to step away. Remember, this is a 14 year old kid we’re talking about here. I don’t think there is some sort of Curse of Drake LaRoche, the White Sox did make a few postseason appearances after the events in question. If there’s a curse, it’s this one. Things went downhill as soon as they brought Tony La Russa out of retirement to manage. Things have not been right since.

If you want to look at a franchise that has tempted fate, look no further than the Miami Marlins. Their original sin was removing the home run sculpture from center field, which probably annoyed the baseball gods. What sent them over the edge was the attempt to diminish Kim Ng’s position in the organizational hierarchy. She was really going to be rewarded for a surprise playoff appearance with a demotion? She wasn’t having that and resigned instead. And now the team is a total mess. What a clusterf*** of an organization. On second thought, that’s not a curse it’s probably just incompetence.

Blasts From the Past

One of my daily website visits is gocomics.com. For those of you unfamiliar with it, it aggregates dozens and dozens of daily comic strips, both new and vintage. Needless to say I really enjoy a daily dose of long-dead comics such as Calvin & Hobbes & The Boondocks. The recognition of strumbling across a decades old edition that I still clearly remember after all these years gives me the warm fuzzies. It’s even better when one of the classics still holds up - see Calvin & Hobbes.

The reprints of For Better Or Worse just recently got around to the famous plotline in which Farley the family dog rescued April from drowning & the strain resulted in a fatal heart attack. Killing off a beloved family pet in that way was certainly a choice; I found it odd that these events didn’t seem to traumatize the child too badly. BTW, I know you’re expecting that a dead dog story will inspire me to make another Kristi Noem joke, but I’ll only allow myself one per day. Feel free to insert your own.

The comic that I really want to talk about is Peanuts. GoComics runs 2 different Paenuts strips each day; the classic version as well as Peanuts Begins. Seeing the very earliest form of the comic demonstrates how much it evolved over the years. The drawing looks so different; the heads were HUGE and all of the characters, not just Charlie Brown had oddly shaped heads as well. Many of the most familiar characters had not been introduced yet, in these early days there was a lot more of the likes of Shermie & Violet instead. Charlie Brown was already a bit of a sad sack, but he gave as good as he got. He wasn’t a full whipping boy yet.

The most radically different character in this embyronic stage was Snoopy. In these early days he was simply a cute little puppy who was always hanging around. In fact, it wasn’t exactly clear that he was Charlie’s dog. He seemed more like Pete from The Little Rascals, a dog with no owner who was simply there. And of course he didn’t have the human qualities that would make him so popular as time went on - no inner fantasy life. I won’t say that the depiction of Snoopy as a more realistic dog was better or worse; who can say anything bad about such an adorable little dog? (Note to self - do NOT make a Kristi Noem joke.)

Reading early Peanuts strips makes me think of long-running TV shows that had character turnover as the years went on. The likes of Gary Burghoff or Shelley Long didn’t fully enjoy the victory laps that their shows went through in their final seasons. So too for Peanuts. Everyone remembers the major characters from the later run of the strip - your Peppermint Patties & your Woodstocks. How about some justice for Frieda?

Closing Laughs

That’s enough for today. Thanks for reading, and why not pass along the word about Tending the Herd if you can? See you all again on Friday.