I don’t go to the movies a lot anymore, mostly because it costs eight million dollars, you have to buy your tickets online in advance, and if that’s not enough, you then pay a “convenience fee” on top of that which I don’t find particularly convenient. And park me in a recliner in a dark room and within 15 minutes I’m being elbowed by the person next to me to wake up or at least control the ungodly sounds emanating from me.
I’d been seeing press about Deliver Me From Nowhere for quite some time, mostly because a lot was filmed here in New Jersey, and every time Bruce* would show up somewhere it was hot news. (These days, I’ll take it.) Admittedly, I didn’t pay much attention to what the movie is about, I just assumed it was another biopic, and with each update I would have to spend a half an hour lamenting that I’ve reached the age where all the music I listened to as a kid is now fodder for documentaries and biopics.
But my old pal Kathleen was in town and we both made mention of the Bruce movie. I was secretly giddy that we were off to Closter Plaza because they have a fancy Coke machine and the only time I drink soda is a vanilla ginger ale at the movies. It’s the little things, you know.
So I ask the child working at the concession stand for the smallest drink possible, and he hands me a 50 gallon drum for which I have to shell out 8 dollars. The boy reminds me with a smile that I get as many refills as I want. “Refills?” I think to myself, “If I drink even half of this thing I’ll need to be catheterized so I don’t miss the movie.”
Time has been kind to the Big Ragoo.
While Kath is bringing up the tickets on her phone, the bartender asks me if I’d like something. “No thanks,” I say, “I’ve got 8 thousand gallons of ginger ale.” He smiles and writes me off as feeble.
The only seats available for this film were in the the first two rows, so when we settle into our recliners I am almost fully supine. Kath wishes me good night. “Nuh uh,” I reply. “When those lights go out I’m going to get up on the seat and scream, ‘ 1-2-3-4! The highway’s jammed with broken heroes..'” We then reminisce about our trip to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and comment on the previews like we’re Statler and Waldorf.
A Rolex commercial then comes on the giant screen, and I age 20 years. “Let me get this straight,” I complain to Kath, who’s no longer listening. “I just paid 20 dollars for a ticket, and then another 8 bucks to have vanilla ginger ale pumped into me intravenously (it is delicious, tho) and now I have to sit through commercials? This is outrageous.” At this point, Kath is wishing that she had stayed with the gentleman we met at the wine tasting, who implied that I was fat but that he liked fat women.
Once I realized this movie is not your basic biopic, I thought it was excellent. Spoiler alert: it’s about the making of Nebraska , and the issues that contributed to it. You’re not going to hear the Boss’s greatest hits, you’re not going to recognize fun places in New Jersey, (save for Asbury Park), and Julianne Phillips has not even been born. But I really enjoyed it, just as the crowd of Boomers behind me must have enjoyed my rendition of Atlantic City while the credits rolled.
A word about Jeremy Allen White. I am not a fan. I find it hard to look at him, probably because I associate him with a deranged character he played on an old SVU episode from 10 years ago. All my female friends disagree, but I don’t get his appeal. Having said that, he is fantastic as Bruce. Super acting job. He’ll probably get nominated for an Oscar just for the scene with the psychiatrist. He even sounds like Bruce, imitating perfectly the accent I never understood. He does not, however, look anything like Bruce. It’s more like a combination of Andrew Dice Clay and Carmine from Laverne and Shirley.
And one more thing. A native New Yorker would never say “WPIX.” They would say “Channel 11.”
All I all, Deliver Me From Nowhere gets a busting bladder and two hands strapped across my engines. Go see it!
*Some of you may remember that my first love will always be Rick Springfield. This movie is not about him.
Saturday Night Live is celebrating its 50th birthday this weekend. 50. And I am ready to kick, stretch…and kick! It’s 50! 50 years old.
Being only slightly older than 50, I can’t say that I remember watching the early seasons when they originally aired, but as I got a little older I do remember my older cousins talking about the Blues Brothers, the Bees, Roseanne Rosannadanna, and Nick the Lounge Singer (“…if they could bar wars, please let these star wars…sta-ay.” You’re welcome.)
So by the time I figured out what they were talking about, I learned that I was not allowed to stay up that late, despite the temper tantrum I threw on a regular basis. My parents never really got SNL. My mother was apathetic, and my father, usually a funny man, thought it was silly and sophomoric. So I added it to the list of things I felt I was deprived of as a tween and teen, which was mostly cable. Now I ask you. How does an 80s girl grow up without MTV? It was borderline inhumane.
If this picture doesn’t immediately make you say, “Mem..member when you were in the Beatles?”, I cannot be your friend.
But anyway, we still had channel 4, and one magical Saturday night my parents had company and I managed to stay up long enough to see something called “Gumby’s Christmas Special – Merry Christmas, Dammit!” Gumby hung Sammy Davis Jr’s glass eye on the tree, and my love of sketch comedy was born. It would take a while before my family got a VCR, but let’s just say those tapes are still in my basement somewhere.
Understand I’m a full blown SNL nerd. Not like some of these freaks I’ve found on the internet, but I can hold my own. I can promise you I knew who Tina Fey was before you did. Do you remember “The New Show”? I do. What about Brynn Hartman’s earring? Yes, I know about it. Do you see that boulder over there? I want you to lift it.
During my senior year of college, I wrote a thesis on the cultural implications of Weekend Update. Really – it was amazing. I drove my roommates crazy doing “research”, which basically translated into me sitting around eating ramen and watching reruns with a notebook. I may have passed out there a few times, but water under the bridge. But hey, if they’re making fun of you on SNL then you must have made some kind of impact, good or bad. It took me about a week to print out that behemoth on Chris’s equally huge dot matrix printer, but I did get an A and a note from my professor that I should consider going into TV analysis or something like that. I promptly ignored it, because I knew right there and then that soon Lorne Michaels would be my boss and I’d be the head writer of SNL before I turned 30.
I love these women. Not in a weird way. Ok, maybe a little.
So… that didn’t exactly work out the way I had planned. I didn’t realize at the time that when they were handing out lives, Tina Fey got the one I was supposed to have and that is the only logical explanation to that. But this is a birthday party, so back to the celebration!
Every August, I would send in my postcard with the hopes I could get tickets to my show. You can imagine the squeals when my mother called me at school, informing me that I had received a letter from NBC with tickets to an SNL dress rehearsal.
The beauty of SNL is that the most unfunny, lame, pathetic sketch is hilarious if the next day you’re laughing about it with your friend. If you’re lucky like me, you have a Kathleen who appreciates all of your references and voices and lingo.
Naturally, Kathleen and I headed to the dress rehearsal and I was happy like a little girrrrrrl. I considered it even better than a live show because you could see all the things that went into the production. We saw sketches that never made it to air. We saw Lorne. And I got to sit next to Chris Farley’s mom. It was my Mecca disguised as Studio 8H. (Fun Fact: because we got on NBC’s mailing list, a year later two tickets to the first season of “Late Night with Conan O’Brien” arrived.)
I get that not everyone shares my affection for the 11:30pm happy space. Sometimes I don’t. I often wonder what people outside the Tri-State area think, as New York is really like a cast member. Can you really appreciate “Bodega Bathroom” or “Airport Sushi” if you’ve never been to the city? Inevitably, every new season brings an article predicting SNL’s demise, probably using the phrase Saturday Night Dead or something tired like that. Don’t tell anyone, but I sometimes find myself saying how I would have ended a particular scene, or how it would have been funnier if they had done x,y,z… to anyone who is listening, which is usually no one. I always get why something is supposed to be funny, even if I’m not laughing. Except for this one Easter sketch with Michael Keaton, which makes our friend Dennis fall to his knees. I’ll let him have that one. He’s made me watch a million times and I have not laughed once.
Skrrrt, skrrt! Kathleen sent me this a few days ago. There was giggling. We are both in our 50s.
Now here comes the part you’ve probably been waiting for – the best of SNL! I assembled a crack team of 3 people to provide the best in the following categories. Because I realize the near impossible nature of the task, I allowed 2 choices for each.
BEST SKETCH
Kathleen voted for “Celebrity Jeopardy”, “Diner Lobster”, “Mr. Robinson’s Neighborhood”, or “What’s Up With That.” Clearly, she can’t follow the rules, but these are hard to argue with. She then had to text me in the middle of the night to add “Synchronized Swimming”, “Woodrow”, “The Chris Farley Show”, “Alien Invasion”, “Barry Gibb Talk Show”, “Brian Fellow’s Safari Planet” and “More Cowbell”. Fine.
Dennis voted for the aforementioned Michael Keaton Easter sketch, which is unfunny and I’m vetoing it.
No, the best sketches are sadly unfortunately not always available online. They are “The Bennett Brothers Christmas,” “The Nude House of Wacky People”, and the one that makes me laugh uncontrollably no matter what kind of trauma I’m suffering is “The Coconut Bangers Ball – It’s A Rap!” Look it up. I best not post it here.
BEST WEEKEND UPDATE HOST
Kathleen came in with solid choices: Norm MacDonald, Dennis Miller, and Tina and Amy. (Remember I only said TWO.). Dennis votes Norm.
Correct choice: Dennis Miller, with Norm at a close second.
BEST COMMERCIAL PARODY
Kathleen weighed in with a confident “Schmitt’s Gay” and “Annuale.” I bullied Dennis into voting for “Dissing Your Dog” and “Old Glory Insurance” and then he threw in a last-minute “Totino’s (the one with Kristin Stewart.)”.
I wouldn’t argue with any of those, but “Compulsion by Calvin Kleen” and “Amazon Echo Silver” would win here. O-dessa!
BEST MUSICAL GUEST
Kathleen was unable to pick a musical guest. Dennis says St. Vincent and Nirvana. I had to think about this one for a while. U2 was great. Adele. Miley Cyrus was good. Elvis Costello. We were lucky enough to see Annie Lennox. But after careful thought I choose Maneskin, because it was their performance that turned me into a crazed fan. It went a little something like this.
Sunday morning, January 23, 2022. I can’t say in good conscience that I always watch the musical guest because I am old and I usually don’t know who it is. But this particular morning, I must have been reading and not paying attention and happened to look up at the screen the most beautiful face I have seen in a long time. I immediately text my friend Sam, who never gets any of my references and I don’t think has ever seen an SNL from beginning to end, and ask her if I’m too old to be in love with this group. And thus I go down yet another road of obsessed fandom because I need that.
I’m too old to be getting this worked up at 12:30am.
BEST MUSICAL PARODY
I cannot count the numbers of hours off my life that I’ve lost to watching the musical parodies. Did I ever see “Game of Thrones?” No, but I’ve seen “Throw it on the Ground” about a million times. The Lonely Island guys brought a new level of hilarity here, but my favorite moment occurred on Saturday, December 21, 2013. (I don’t normally know air dates. Note I had to look this up, lest you think I might have too much time on my hands.)
I had just stopped working, having been unceremoniously laid off six months after returning from cancer treatment. I was feeling a little low and was home all by myself when the SNL gods sent me “(Do It On My) Twin Bed.” I mean, that thing is magical. And if you search under “J” on my tv, the first selection will always, always, be “Jamarcus Brothers”. I’m going to listen inside your butt.
Dennis voted for “Jizz in My Pants”, natch. Kathleen went with “(Do It On My) Twin Bed” and the Ebony and Ivory sketch featuring Stevie Wonder and Frank Sinatra. I’ll approve. But I’m kind of surprised she didn’t include “Come Back, Barack.” I mean, it’s kind of like Sophie’s Choice.
Soon, I’ll park myself in my recliner with a few well-chosen snacks and watch the SNL 50th anniversary special for 4 hours. I’ll be as happy as a little girl. Girl…GIRL!
Happy Birthday, SNL. Thank you for all the giggles. Up and down the sidewalk, take a doo-doo pie, I love you.
“Evidence indicates that poor mental health is correlated with celebrity worship.”
-Wikipedia
I’ve been going to concerts since I was 12. During the very first one, while my friend Sam and I were huddled together, suffering through the agonizingly long minutes until our favorite person in the entire world was in the same room as we were, the girls next to us inhaled joint after joint like they were human intake fans. Sam and I couldn’t tell the difference between our apparent contact high and our newly discovered hormones. And while we screamed and cried and sang our voices raw, these two smokestacks enjoyed the show in their own special way, by grunting the rare “uhhhhh” and “oh yeah” when they were not offgassing two little girls from New Jersey.
My point here is that I’ve been witness to some odd fan behavior in my years. For example, I’ve been to a lot of NFL games, where the ribbing goes from the mild (“We’re going to beat you!”) to downright fat-shaming (“Hey, 72, why don’t you try a salad once in a while!” usually followed by a few colorful expletives.) And I’ve seen fans shell out lots of lucre for tickets to a show only to spend most of the time going to the bathroom. Really? You not only had to go through the psychotic corn maze of buying a concert ticket these days, but you fought all this traffic on the Turnpike, sold a kidney to pay for the parking, and you’re going to spend “Born to Run” in the fetid chamber of horrors that is a MetLife Stadium restroom? You better see a urologist, buddy, and quick. And I was in The Bahamas once where a woman who was lucky enough to have first row seats practically mainlined tequila sunrises and passed out in the aisle before the gentleman crooner even took the stage. For the show she had flown to The Bahamas to see. Oddly, we all remained in our seats for an awkward moment watching as she crashed to the ground, taking a few folding chairs with her, as we all thought the same thing – “Yeah? You fly all this way and now you do not even see what you came for?” A gentleman came to her aid and snapped us out of our outrage, restoring my own faith in both chivalry and humanity. And then there was also the time where a crazed fan1 got stuck on a fence in an undulating crowd storming the stage at a general admission concert and was almost split in two while being pulled to safety by her friend.
Now put a bunch of middle-aged women in a room with their favorite male singer and things can get reallyweird. Add to that some alcohol, a show that starts late, a New York attitude, and the fact that menopause is causing these broads’ moods to swing more than a pendulum do, and things can turn from weird to violent. Let me tell you about such a show.
I had been looking forward to this show for months. It was a surprise that we were going, as it would be the third time this year that we’ve seen our guy, our celebrity crush, our reason for living. But our friend Lil had scored really good seats, and you don’t argue with the universe.
The dimple. I want to build a condo in it and spend my retirement there. And that’s not weird at all.
I love my favorite singer. He brings me pure, unadulterated joy. And we were going to be right up front! He will see us! And he even might sweat on us. Who wouldn’t be looking forward to that?
So Sam and I arrive in what I was expecting to be a quaint little town to find it is really more of the armpit of Westchester County. We drive around the sad labyrinth of this burg, wondering how many taco restaurants one really needs in a place this small, and wondering how our GPS can be telling us we are literally in front of a brewery when all we see is a Metro North parking lot. Something’s brewing all right, and it’s Sam’s rage. She pulls into an Italian restaurant and tells me to go inside and ask where she should be parking. Please don’t make me do this, I beg. I am getting nervous that she is going to call it quits and go home, when after about 30 minutes of circling the theater in some deranged Griswoldian nightmare, we see the huge sign that reads “EVENT PARKING” directly across the street. I shell out $25 and let out a sigh of relief.
Lil and Moe are our dear friends whom we may or may not have met at a concert a few years ago. We normally don’t talk to strangers (see how I did that, fans?) but in that case Sam noticed that Moe was using the same camera and proceeded to bully him into showing her a specific feature. And they weren’t freaks! And we liked them!
Anyway. Lil and Moe effortlessly arrive in town and immediately inform us that they parked for four bucks at the train station. Now we are hungry and start looking for a place to eat where we feel safe. Or isn’t completely seafood. So we end up at the same Italian restaurant where I refused to go in and ask about parking. I try my hardest to order something that won’t end up down the front of me so when my guy spots me he won’t think that I shovel my grub in so fast it sometimes doesn’t always make it in and I don’t care. Or worse, that I actually showed up to his show wearing a sweater with grease stains where my boobs should be. I don’t dress to the nines for these events because I know I’ll be a sweaty, heaving mess by the end of it, but I do like to put at least a little effort into it.
We finally get in the theater and find our seats, along with the accompanying cast of characters we’ve grown accustomed to seeing at these things. Our new friend Winnie Tok Fan, who is sort of excited to see us, tells us that the “mean girls” are in the audience. How fetch! But here comes Quadrangle Hair, Tree Girl, Bette Midler, and Orange Glasses. Or at least that’s how we know them. We typically lump this group of “loyal” fans under one name – The Encroachers. Encroachers are those fans who slowly invade your personal space with the idea of nudging you out of the way and getting closer. You know the ones. You synchronize your watches, get online an hour before tickets go on sale, and eat dog food for a week to afford the best tickets, only to have the chicks from the cheap seats slither on down to get in front of you. Tonight they are hanging out right at the stage, just chatting and taking approximately one million photos of one another, probably with the cute drum set in the background. I lean over to Sam and ask her just how many pictures of each other do you need? She and I have been friends for over 45 years and I think I have three photos of the two of us. At the same time, Moe comes in from the other side and asks me the same question. I mean, every 5 minutes these chicks get the amazing idea that a group photo is a novel idea and maybe will distract the rest of us from the fact that they’re Encroachers. Listen, babes, I’ve been to enough of these that I know that what you’re up to. You’re hoping that by standing where you are that the show will start and you’ll be right up front with nowhere else to go. We get it.
The show starts a bit late and there’s a familiar countdown video that I’ve seen way too many times for it to keep having the same effect on me – it’s pure bliss. I giggle like a dope until the forces of nature and fangirlness have me singing and moving about in my confined space. I try to convince Moe to pull up his shirt and show his man boobs just because it would be hilarious. He refuses and shooshes me like I yelled out in the library.
A few songs into the show, I switch between grinning like an idiot, singing, and entering into a state of abject paralysis when my guy comes over to our side of the stage and is within five feet of me. He looks directly at me and Sam and all I can do is an enthusiastic wave. He moves on and Sam and I look at each other without words. He knows we’re there.
My favorite song is called “Souls.” It was likely written about me, who knows. But I love this song, and I don’t always get to hear it live. So when I do it’s a sacred event. While Mr. S. and I are in spiritual communion, Sam grabs me about the head and neck. She yells into my ear, “HEY! There is something brewing over there!” I can barely hear her so I look around like I’m interested and go on about my singing. Seconds later, she is leaning on my shoulder once again, yelling “THERE IS GOING TO BE A FIGHT OVER THERE!”. I thank her for updating me during my favorite song.
Na na na na na na na, we’re all gonna get in a fight. But does it have to be during my favorite song?
By the time the song is done, we have added two new characters to our cast of weirdos: Butter Face and Animal. These two broads, fueled by some kind of hormonal rage or maybe a couple of boilermakers, are beating the crap out of an Encroacher. Whoa, nelly! Now this we really haven’t seen before. Butter Face is throwing punches and pulling hair while Animal is accosting the feckless security guard with her huge hot dog fingers, pointing and stabbing at the air as to the location of each Encroacher. Also, someone pukes. I’m fairly insulated from the fracas but soon one of these ticketed seat holders pushes Lil (who has remained in her space) and now I am worried. These women are strong, pissed, drunk, and possibly horny because of who’s on stage. I have a flashback to my friend MaryJean telling me how she also saw Mr. S. about twenty years ago and how her unsuspecting husband was nearly stampeded by a wall of estrogen-deprived maniacs. I try to get behind Sam as a human shield.
The crowd settles, united in showing a bit of respect for a particular song that is personal for a lot of us. I sob and Sam whispers something about pornography in my ear.
“Ma’am, you’re fifty. Put your tube top back on.”
Then the music starts rocking and it’s back to more fighting! Butter Face is about to lose her tube top while she’s trying to force someone back to her seat, while Animal practically has the security guard up over her head like she’s King Kong. Lil is trying to take cover in the safety of our row of folding chairs. Sam puts her arm around her. We’ve now become a Jerry Springer audience, and Sam is convinced we are somehow going to be drawn into it. I snap a few pictures in case I need them for evidence.
Sam again yells in my ear that things are getting messy and how she can’t believe that these morons would rather be the Seat Police than enjoy the fact that they are still in the first five rows. I’m getting annoyed that I had to get a third job to pay for this ticket and now I’m missing it because I’m afraid I’m going to get hit by a flying chair.
I get it. It’s frustrating to pay a whole lot of bucks for a great seat to your favorite artist, only to have Encroachers come from the back and get in front of you. But sometimes that’s how a crowd works. I once saw a fan2 go from one section of a crowd to another totally involuntarily – just from the movement of the fans. At some point you need to ask yourself just how much of the show you are willing to miss completely while you rain blows down on the fan next to you. I’ve been in both positions – I’ve had a guy from the cheap seats stand behind me and use my shoulder as a camera tripod, and I’ve also ended up getting smashed against the stage when my ticket was perhaps in another section. It happens. I mean, it’s not like these women aren’t going to the show in the next city anyway. So what are you fighting for? Put your boobs back in your tube top and enjoy the show. I hate to break it to them, but he only has eyes for me, Sam, and Lil. And Morganne when she is with us. Put the security guard down and sing out loud. Don’t spend BooKoo bucks only to leave a pile of your vomit in the aisle. (I also took a picture of that but for some reason it didn’t save properly.) I remember every moment of this show – what will you remember, Animal? When you called the security guard a pussy and then pantsed him? How you distracted the entire front section with your nonsense? And how about you, Butter Face? Why are you so angry? Maybe next time lay off the sauce and dance it out.
You gave fangirls a bad name that night. I think you should reimburse me for my ticket.
Late to the Party 