But, I Digress

In the last year or so, NBC has been airing clipped reruns of some really old Saturday Night Live shows in the hour before the Saturday night local news. They started with the very first show hosted by George Carlin. Tonight they presented a show originally aired in September, 1991, the first of that season. That era was my favorite – Dana Carvey, Mike Meyers, Chris Farley, Victoria Jackson, Al Franken, and Kevin Nealon among other big names including my all time favorite, Phil Hartman. This evening’s airing was hosted by Michael Jordan who was featured in a great bit, ‘Daily Affirmations with Stuart Smalley’ (Al Franken). However, the reason I bring this up is the discovery of what I believe to be the genesis of my oft used expression, “But, I digress”. The show started with a Wayne’s World review of the best events of the summer of 1991. At one point, Wayne goes a little off topic and drops the line, “But, I digress”. Bingo – there it is. The seed is planted. Some of you with functioning memory cells may have picked up on the origin a long time ago. In this case I can honestly say, like a subpoenaed member of congress, “I have no recollection.” However, when he made that to-the-side comment it felt like Quasimoto just gonged me. Who needs or wants a memory when you have reruns?

One other curious note from that show – musical guest was Public Enemy. Curious because they were also the musical guest last night (Friday) on Jimmy Kimmel Live from the Brooklyn Academy of Music. What are the chances? I suppose their publicist could have something to do with this curiousity and ruin my innocent wonder.

Wait. One more nugget from the same show – on Weekend Update Jesse Jackson reads Green Eggs and Ham. Fun.

Photos. Not many. First one is the deceased vacuum pump that made the air conditioner useless. Yeah, who cares!

Second: Thursday night, gametime. Granderson steps in. Mother nature steps on the satellite transmission. A whopper of a thunderstorm is on top of us. Thor’s not on the mound but throwing lightning bolts a few feet away. Exciting. The game is a jumbled mix of staccato images with a few seconds of video here, a little audio there until the count on the fifth batter is 2-1. A few pitches later Lucas Duda struck with some lightning of his own. The storm passed by the half inning break and left that stubby rainbow as a sort of, sorry about that.

Pic 3: looking towards the north, the sun peaking out from the passing storm lit up the mountains so that it looked like a painting. Very surreal. I’ll never get tired of that stuff.

But there was a game to watch. And then, condolences to the Chicago faithful. The Curse of the Murph, again.

Spent the evening tonight with my first cousin, once removed, Sean, and family, kids technically first cousins twice removed, and third cousins of our daughter’s son. Love you guys.

Happy Trails to you.

Until we meet again.

Did you know that Roy Rodgers first home was in a tenement that was later torn down to make way for Riverfront Stadium in Cincinnati? Neither did I.