Uncle John's Ahh-Inspiring Bathroom Reader (35 page)

Keriomancy:
Study the flickering flame of a candle.

Aleuromancy:
Read messages in baked balls of dough.

Oomancy:
Crack an egg into a glass of water and study the shapes the egg white forms in the water.

Scrying:
Study “crystals, mirrors, bowls of water, ink, blood, flames, or other shiny objects.”

Ceromancy:
Drop some melted wax into water and study the shapes that are formed.

Some people say the best comedy is on TV. We say it's in Washington, D.C
.

“Concerned that ‘the pickup owners of this nation might get screwed in all this gas-guzzler talk about SUVs and vans,'
Zell Miller (D-Ga.)
introduced an amendment to keep pickup fuel economy requirements at 20.7 mpg. He also co-wrote, sang, and recorded ‘The Talking Pickup Truck Blues.'

“A sample of the lyrics: ‘Sure, an SUV is classy travel, / But it ain't much good for haulin' gravel, / Or hay or seed or bovine feces. / So please, don't make my pickup truck an endangered species.'”

—
Fox News

“A controversy started September 11 when
Brian Kerns (R-Ind.)
gave the
Indianapolis Star
a harrowing account of watching a hijacked plane slam into the Pentagon during his commute on George Washington Memorial Parkway. ‘I'm in shock,' he said. ‘I still can't believe it. I drove into the office and told my staff to go home.'

“The
Indianapolis Star
reported, however, that the plane in question never flew over that parkway. And an American Legion official said he remembers being in Kerns's office with the congressman when networks reported the Pentagon attack. Kerns's response when pressed on whether he was mistaken about what he saw: ‘Who knows?'”

—Associated Press

“Patrick Kennedy (D-R.I.)
was accused of causing $28,000 in damage to a rented yacht on a Y2K booze cruise. He later appeared at a political roast dressed in a sailor suit and capped off the evening by singing ‘Patrick the Sailor Man.' At the same roast, the admitted former cokehead joked about Senator Lincoln Chafee (R-R.I.), another admitted former cokehead: ‘Now when I hear
someone talking about a Rhode Island politician whose father was a senator and who got to Washington on his family name, used cocaine, and wasn't very smart, I know there is only a 50-50 chance it's me.'”

—Mother Jones

“Answering questions about whether his recent election was helped by nepotism (after receiving $1 million from the Republican Party's coffers),
Bill Shuster (R-Pa.)
, son of Pennsylvania representative Bud Shuster, insisted ‘This is about Bill Shuster…and Bill Shuster standing on his own two feet.' Maybe. We wonder if Solicitor of the Labor Department Eugene Scalia, son of Antonin; Health and Human Services Inspector General Janet Rehnquist, daughter of William; FCC chair Michael Powell, son of Colin; and President George W. Bush feel the same way.”

—Roll Call

“In September 1996,
Mickey Kalinay (D)
was defeated in the Democratic primary for the U.S. Senate in Wyoming…despite his tantalizing proposal to make the space program more efficient by constructing a 22,000-mile-high tower so that space stations can be accessed by electromagnetic rail cars.”

—News of the Weird

“The last time
former Vice-President Dan Quayle (R)
lived in Washington, his words were parsed almost as closely as the current president's. He still lets off the occasional zinger; during an appearance on MSNBC's
Hardball
, as he tried to ‘set aside the Middle East peace situation' from the war on terrorism, he asked: ‘How many Palestinians were on those airplanes on September 9? None.'”

—
Salon.com

“In 1988,
Tom DeLay (R-Tx.)
explained to reporters his lack of service in the Vietnam War, despite being eligible and healthy. ‘So many minority youths had volunteered,' he claimed, ‘that there was literally no room for patriotic folks like myself.'”

—online columnist, Ted Barlow

Lorne Michaels had all of the ingredients for
Saturday Night,
now he had to figure out how to mix them together. (Part I is on page 79.)

The scheduled air date for the first episode of
NBC's Saturday Night
was October 11, 1975. Just about every-one—from the executives to the crew—didn't see the show lasting an entire season…except for Lorne Michaels. He reassured his worried cast and writers on the 17th floor that their grandchildren would be watching reruns of the first episode in history class. But no one was convinced. And the chaos of the final week leading up to the premiere didn't help matters.

By the time Saturday rolled around, Michaels had no lighting director (he had fired two already); the antiquated sound system had broken down; and instead of the brick wall they were promised for a backdrop, they had a ton of uncut bricks piled in the middle of the floor.

While Michaels was busy ordering script changes and settling various arguments, Ebersol brought news that the network had ordered the show's celebrity host, George Carlin, to wear a suit and tie—the embodiment of everything
Saturday Night
was against. (Carlin compromised by wearing a sport coat with a T-shirt underneath.)

A lot of thought went into the best way to begin the show. Michaels wanted people to know from the get-go that they were seeing something different. His solution: Begin with a “cold opening.” When the clock struck 11:30 p.m., viewers were pulled immediately into a sketch featuring Michael O'Donoghue and John Belushi as, respectively, professor and student.

O'Donoghue:
“Let us begin. Repeat after me. I would like…”

Belushi
(
in a thick foreign accent
)
:
“I would like…”

O'Donoghue:
“…to feed your fingertips…”

Belushi:
“…to feed your feengerteeps…”

O'Donoghue:
“…to the wolverines.”

Belushi:
“…to thee wolvereeenes.”

This goes on for a few minutes until O'Donoghue clutches his heart and keels over. Belushi sits there, shrugs, then grabs
his
heart and keels over. The puzzled audience is left hanging for a moment, and then
Chevy Chase
enters wearing a stage manager's headset. He looks at the two figures lying on the floor, then breaks out into a big grin and says to the camera:
“Live from New York, it's Saturday Night!”

The show didn't go off without a hitch, but despite a few miscues, they had pulled it off—within the allotted budget—a feat that impressed the skeptical NBC brass.

The ratings for the first few episodes were considerably better than those for
Tonight Show
reruns (although still not enough to pull in major advertising dollars), while the initial reviews were a bit mixed. But a big boost came from the highly touted TV critic Tom Shales:

NBC's Saturday Night
can boast the freshest satire on commercial TV, but it is more than that, it is probably the first network series produced by and for the television generation.…It is a live, lively, raucously disdainful view of a world that television has largely shaped. Or misshaped.

Younger viewers agreed. Here was a show that actually
made fun
of television. Dick Ebersol referred to it as “the post-Watergate victory party for the Woodstock generation.”

As much as kids loved the show, grown-ups hated it. Johnny Carson echoed a lot of aging comedians' views when he described the Not Ready For Primetime Players as a bunch of amateurs who couldn't “ad-lib a fart at a bean-eating contest.” It was a completely different brand of comedy than they were used to. Comedians like Bob Hope and Milton Berle made their audience comfortable, then made them laugh. By mocking the establishment,
Saturday Night
made some viewers uncomfortable. Just to make fun of politicians in general wasn't enough, this new show singled out specific politicians, particlularly presidents, and ridiculed them. All of a sudden, the revolution was being televised.

The first season belonged to Chase. Because he anchored “Weekend
Update,” he got to say his name every week, and he was the only one who did. The show opened without naming any of the cast, so Chase's tagline, along with his clumsy portrayal of President Ford, thrust him into the spotlight. He alone was nominated for an Emmy Award and then was named “heir apparent to Johnny Carson” by
New York
magazine. The other cast members were jealous—especially Belushi—creating an intense air of discord backstage.

But it didn't matter. Chase left shortly into the second season to pursue a woman (he married her) and a movie career in Hollywood. He later called his departure one of the biggest mistakes of his career. Michaels, on the other hand, realized that the show had an amazing potential to make stars, so he added the cast members' names and pictures to the opening credits. Meanwhile, ABC's
Saturday Night Live
was canceled, so Bill Murray was available to replace Chase in 1976.

The ensuing season saw the cast, writers, and crew start to really come together. Recurring characters like the Coneheads and the Bees (which Belushi always hated) were quickly becoming household names. Catchphrases like “Jane, you ignorant slut” and “No Coke, Pepsi!” were becoming part of the national lexicon.

In the first season, Lorne Michaels had to search long and hard for willing hosts and musical guests; in the second season, they were calling him. When stand-up comedian Steve Martin first watched the show in a hotel room, he was blown away. “They did it,” he said to himself. “They did the show everyone should have been doing.” And then he made it his goal to be a part of it, which he did in the second season. He has since gone on to host
SNL
more times than anyone else.

Another part of the show's success: drugs. “From the beginning,” say Hill and Weingrad, “grass was a staple of the show, used regularly and openly.” Cocaine was also used, although by fewer people and behind closed doors. One of
SNL
's early masterpieces, a sketch called “The Final Days” that chronicles Nixon's downfall, was written by writers Al Franken and Tom Davis while they were on LSD. Drugs found their way into the sketches, too, something
that some cast members, most notably Chase—who once demonstrated the proper way to “shoot up”—would later regret. But it was just this kind of humor that made
Saturday Night
so popular with the youth culture.

By 1977 Belushi and Aykroyd were the show's big stars, and they often flexed their muscles by threatening to quit if they didn't get their way. Meanwhile the women—Radner, Newman, and Curtin—were feeling alienated by the drugged-out and sexist behavior of the men. Michaels was running himself ragged trying (unsuccessfully) to keep everyone happy, while Ebersol was under constant pressure from the network to curb the controversial subject matter.

In 1978 Chase hit it big with his movie
Foul Play
. Aykroyd and Belushi knew that movie careers were waiting for them as well and left after the fourth season to make
The Blues Brothers
. Instead of replacing them, Michaels hired only one new cast member, comedian Harry Shearer (who, years later, would add his vocal talents to
The Simpsons
).

In his quest to find the next big star, Michaels devised a billing called “featured player.” Because they didn't have full cast-member status, he didn't have to pay them as much. He tried out band member Paul Shaffer (of David Letterman fame), writers Al Franken, Tom Davis, and Don Novello (Father Guido Sarducci), as well as Brian Doyle-Murray (brother of Bill), and Peter Aykroyd (brother of Dan). The result: A disastrous 1979 season.