SNL
Saturday Night Live, Season 8, ep. 15
Host Bruce Dern, Musical guest Leon Redbone.
Leon Redbone, you know it’s difficult to imagine a much cooler name than that. It’s not the kind of thing you think of often. It’s not the thing that you think of at all, this thing, this name of this man with the hat and the glasses and the mustache and the deep voice, the rich voice that he has, overflowing with…richness. When he sings there’s no question about his depth or his mustache. This hair aims for Clem’s.
On this night, I was less than thirteen years old and Saturday Night Live for me was still a magical thing. This was before your Martin Shorts and your Dana Carveys. This was way before your Victoria Jacksons and your Keven Nealons. Your Dennis Millers were still in the distant future, and so were your Ellen Cleghornes. Your Chris Farleys and your Any Gasteyers? Well, we’d have to wait a few years before we’d meet them.
This was AFTER your Jane Curtains and your and your Bill Murrays.
What does the name Nora Dunn mean to you? What’s the image it conjures? My sister’s friend was heavy and I remember she hated Nora Dunn. She revealed it to me as we sat on a front porch one summer. Nora Dunn had played a character who seemed to shame people into not masturbating. The key line from this sketch is the one she kept quoting as an example of what she hated about Nora Dunn. It seemed to me and the time and until this very moment that she took that bit in the sketch personally, and I figure I know why.
At any rate, I understand her cast mates had some pretty specific observations about her. There’s a lot I could say but sometimes you have to just err on the side of caution. I doubt that Nora Dunn or any of the other people involved are reading this, but stranger things have occurred.
I will only say this: It doesn’t matter how you get into the water, the point is to wade in whenever possible.
Now, this episode in 1983 is the one where Buckwheat is shot. It looked just like the Reagan shooting. It took them two years (Reagan was shot in 1981), but they still were satirizing the assassination attempt of a president. Pretty nuts when you think about it. I doubt anyone was joking about Lincoln’s shooting two years after, but then of course Reagan lived. Also, Lincoln was Lincoln.
Lincoln Logs, man. Those used to be the big toy, which is also hard to believe. There’s no video game version of Lincoln Logs. They exist only in the real physical world and in our memories. Lincoln Logs, in that sense, are very much like the Lincoln Assassination. Or, rather, they are not.
(Lincoln’s wallet is the one that says “Bad Mutherfucker” on it. In terms of Presidents, he’s the one that is supposed to be all the shit. Giant SHIT MAN is Lincoln, according to the historians. He built stuff out of wood and he did this and he did that. He “spun a yarn” and he was “quotable.” Many of his “quotes” are “in books.” ((You see how quotes are used to demonstrate irony. It’s a very specific reassignment of the duties of this piece of punctuation. The quotation mark was intended to indicate dialogue, to show what one is saying. And then somehow it got to mean like something is “quote” bullshit.)) He’s the captain of the team at all times. This was before your James Garfields and your Chester A. Arthurs. WELL before your William McKinleys and your William Howard Tafts. He saved the Union, he had a beard and when you look at him without knowing he’s “Lincoln” you realize he a pretty scary-looking dude. He could’ve easily just been some kind of criminal when you consider his looks. Grew up in a log cabin and then probably used that fact to get all “common man” on people. I can’t support that in my memory.)
It strikes me as a pretty bold move at any point to make fun of such a thing. The real Buckwheat, at the time, was very much against the use of his image during this episode to be satirizing the shooting of Reagan, saying repeatedly that he found it “ditdateful.”
8 seasons in, people were saying it was “over” and how innocent do we all look now, when we look back and see things from the perspective of time, which has past by the fuckload since then. We were all about to find out about a little something called “We Are the World” and AIDS. All that shit was coming up, we couldn’t have known.
Sitting around watching Tim Kazurinsky or some shit. Is he anyone’s favorite cast member?
Ah, but you ask the obvious question. “What DID Leon Redbone sing?”
“Sweet Sue,” “When You Wish Upon a Star” and “I Ain’t Got Nobody.”
Any questions?
http://www.hulu.com/watch/10389/saturday-night-live-buckwheat-buys-the-farmhttp://www.hulu.com/watch/10389/saturday-night-live-buckwheat-buys-the-farmhttp://www.hulu.com/watch/10389/saturday-night-live-buckwheat-buys-the-farm
Posted in Uncategorized | Comments (1)
February 2nd, 2010 at 7:20 am
Yes, those were the songs that Leon Redbone sang.
And I should know. I’m Leon Redbone.