Opening Day Eve Newsletter

Classic SNL Recap - Season 17 Finale

The season 17 finale was Woody Harrelson’s second time hosting. He is now a 5-timer, but it took him quite some time to earn the smoking jacket. He first hosted back in 1989, #5 happened only two years ago. That proves two things. One, although he has been a reliably strong host, he hasn’t been strong enough that Lorne felt he HAD to be placed in the regular host rotation. Second, Woody Harrelson has been a star for a long time. At the time of this episode (May 1992) Cheers was still on the air, and his movie career at the time largely consisted of comedies - this was shortly after the release of White Men Can’t Jump. Natural Born Killers was still in his future; so audiences naturally assumed Woody Boyd the character and Woody Harrelson the actor were one and the same. The content of this episode leaned into that.

But first it was time for the cold open, which focused on a huge television event. This was the time when Johnny Carson retired as Tonight Show host, so Dana Carvey’s Carson and Phil Hartman’s Ed McMahon presented their own version of the Carson farewell. McMahon was drunker than usual, and also said “no!” at one point because he wanted to see what it was like to disagree with Johnny. There were pre-taped testimonials from other late night hosts (Kevin Nealon as Jay Leno, Chris Rock as Arsenio Hall, Carvey again as Dennis Miller) along with interruptions from Adam Sandler as David Brenner and Julia Sweeney as Joan Embry. It was weird, wild stuff.

Speaking of farewells, being that this is a season finale it is also a final episode for some cast members. 17 would prove to be the only season for both Beth Cahill and Siobhan Fallon, they each went out with another edition of the Delta Delta Delta sketch. This was also Victoria Jackson’s swan song. I was never a big fan of her; I had seen her in a few things before she joined SNL and she never really expanded much on her established act: performing odd songs on her ukulele whilst subverting the dumb blonde stereotype. I will once again acknowledge that SNL in this era was particularly inhospitable to its female cast members, so perhaps in a different time she could have had more opportunities to shine.

The central sketch of the week was set on a boardwalk; Harrelson took off his shirt to grab some rays and the other men whom he was with hesitated to do so for various self conscious reasons. First was Chris Farley, it looked like the sketch was another excuse to make fun of his weight. But it was much more than that. Nealon had excessive body hair, Myers had women’s breasts, Carvey had recently received a baboon heart transplant. As for Sandler? He claimed his belly button was too much of an outie. When he finally removed his shirt it revealed a phallic outie extending several inches out of his belly. I’m shocked that visual made it past network standards & practices. The sketch didn’t really have any jokes, merely a series of shocking visual gags.

I loved this week’s Sprockets. Harrelson’s initial hosting gig included what was arguably my favorite Sprockets ever. That episode aired the week the Berlin Wall fell, and Harrelson was an East German filmmaker experiencing the decadent west for the first time. This time around he portrayed an artist who has designed a German response to EuroDisney. His theme park, named EuroTrash, included such features as Ennui Village and the Diseased Bear Jamboree.

The other notable piece this week was a brief appearance by the Super Fans on Update. No George Wendt this week, so Myers, Farley, and Robert Smigel appeared remotely to preview the following day’s playoff Game 7 between the Bulls & Knicks. The central joke was that they alleged Knicks coach Pat Riley’s signature slicked back hairdo was a ripoff of Mike Ditka’s style. (Don’t @ me, I’ll fully aware that Riley sported that look long before Ditka did.) The show also included a surprise Jon Lovitz cameo as well as appearances from two recurring characters that never did it for me: Sandler’s Opera Man and Rob Schneider’s Sensitive Naked Guy.

SNL returns with new episodes this Saturday, so I will return in a few weeks with a recap of the Season 18 premiere. Nicholas Cage hosted, I remember this one fondly.

Programming Note

Tomorrow I will send out a bonus edition of Tending the Herd featuring my 2025 MLB preview. Should be in your inbox at the usual time.

Meet The Nominees - Phish

No nominee has had a profile quite like Phish’s. Yes, there have been past inductees who could be classified as jam bands. The Grateful Dead and Dave Matthews Band share some key traits with Phish. None of these are bands that have very many casual fans; their fanbases are all intensely passionate, the most devoted of those fans have attended more than a hundred concerts.

What differentiates Phish is that unlike the Dead & DMB, they have little presence on radio. Not only has Phish never hit the Billboard Hot 100, but few of their songs have even made it onto album rock radio playlists. Nor do they have a batch of platinum selling albums in their discography. The case for a Phish induction comes almost entirely from their live shows, which makes for a challenging argument. How can a Phish fan convince a skeptic?

Hall candidacy consists of a tricky combination of objective and subjective factors. Almost of the positive parts of the Phish ledger are difficult to quantify. In their case it’s not just the size and passion of their fan base, it’s also the sense of community. I mentioned the sheer number of shows that the typical Phish fan has attended. A part of that is that you are going to spend an evening with like-minded fans, all sitting in eager anticipation of the unknown. What will tonight’s set list look like, how will they reimagine songs I have heard countless times? How many new friends will I meet tonight, how many fellow members of the tribe will I run into in the parking lot?

I don’t have much of a sense on their chances. In short, are there enough voters out there who are devout fans to get them in? They would have a better chance if the Hall used ranked voting. There’s a good chance that an overwhelming amount of their support would come from voters who would place them first on their ballot. Instead the totals are determined by a raw vote count, which lessens their chances considerably.

Biggest Billboard Hot 100 Hit: They never reached the Hot 100

My personal favorite: By default it’s Down With Disease, because it’s the only Phish song that I know.

If elected, would they perform at the ceremony? : Yes. When Genesis entered the Hall, Phish performed in their place. The only issue is that in recent years the event producers have sharply cut back on the amount of time allotted for performance. How tough will it be for Phish to cut their set down to only 8 minutes or so?

16 & 16 Remaining

It could be a one year fluke, but the NCAA tournament is lacking the randomness that often makes the event so special. Whether it’s a reflection of NIL, or of the conference realignment, it bears watching going forward. A chaos free tournament is still a thrilling one - see Maryland’s buzzer beater that may or may not have been a travel - but I sure miss watching a lesser known school make a magical run. Where have you gone, St. Peter’s, a nation turns its lonely eyes to you.

In the men’s bracket, only 5 double digit seeds won a first round game, none higher than a 12. 12 of the top 16 seeds survived into the Sweet Sixteen. It’s hard to call any of the 4 outliers Cinderellas; 15 of the 16 are spread across only 3 conferences. The sole outsider? Duke! Not a mid major to be seen.

The women’s tournament has historically tended to be much shorter on early round upsets as the men’s has, so the chalkiness seen there is not as striking. But once again, only 2 10 seeds made it into the second round and the seedings have mostly held into the Sweet Sixteen. There are 3 5 seeds remaining; that’s it as far as surprises go and a 5 seed beating a 4 isn’t exactly a shocking result. Just as is the case on the men’s side the remaining teams all come from the power conferences.

The flip side of that is that the big teams and big stars are mostly still in play. Unfortunately a terrible pall was cast on the women’s bracket when in the first quarter of Monday’s game - the last game played in the second round - USC superstar JuJu Watkins suffered a torn ACL. That sucks for her personally, for her school, and for the sport.

The Oscar Mulligan -2006

Best Picture: The Departed

Other Nominees: Babel, Letters From Iwo Jima, Little Miss Sunshine, The Queen

Academy members are only human, so it stands to reason that they will on occasion award an Oscar for what is essentially lifetime achievement rather than for a particular movie. Al Pacino has so many legendary performances in his ledger; Scent Of a Woman was NOT one of them. Yet, that is what he finally won for. The Oscars dodged a bullet recently. Glenn Close was dangerously close (no pun intended) to winning for Hillbilly Elegy. That would not have aged well.

Which is to say that I understand why The Departed won. It’s amazing that by 2006 Martin Scorsese had yet to win Best Director, nor had any of his films won Best Picture. I have awarded him 3 retroactive awards in this feature, but no one in the Academy has taken up my suggestion to honor Raging Bull, Goodfellas, or Gangs Of New York. Don’t get me wrong, I love The Departed. It’s thrilling and it’s fun to follow all of the double and triple crosses. But, is it one of Scorsese’s ten best? If one of his earlier films had won the prize that it had deserved, would The Departed have been honored with Best Picture?

Babel has an overused format; interweaving seemingly disparate stories that have a surprising connection. It does this better than others have, but to me it’s easily the weakest of the five. Iwo Jima is a type of film that never fails to hit me hard; a story about doomed soldiers facing a battle that they know will be certain to kill them all. Extra credit to Clint Eastwood for tackling the heavy task of simultaneously shooting two different movies about Iwo Jima from the perspective of both sides.

I have little use for modern monarchy, which is part of the reason why The Queen impressed me. It did a great job of depicting how useless those people are. And I loved the scene in which Elizabeth’s car got stuck in the mud. It shows that beneath it all these are actual people. That’s the same reason I was always fascinating to see her carrying a purse. What could the Queen Of England possibly have in her purse? Certs? The literal keys to the castle? Launch codes?

In the end it’s a choice between The Departed and Little Miss Sunshine. LMS is the sort of small scale movie about ordinary people that the Academy had a tendency to nominate, but not bother with awarding the big prize, until recently. The small touches in the movie did a wonderful job of humanizing the characters. They were all quirky, yet they felt so real. And it gave us a great lesson, always listen to Alan Arkin.

The only hesitancy I have is that Little Miss Sunshine, although it has inspired several similar films in its wake, has not in and of itself left a large cultural footprint. I do still believe it is the best of the 5 nominated movies and it receives my coveted retroactive prize.

Closing Laughs

Thanks for tuning in, see you all once again tomorrow as we get ready for the 2025 MLB season. Can’t wait.