[tws]

Ho-lee crap. Has it really been since November friggin' 21st since I've written on this thing? Not to worry, I'm going to begin doing a daily feature called "Daily Dose of Awesome." Per the request of a good friend who needs the stimulation, I send her a short playlist of four songs by one artist every day of the work week. It's usually just some random band I felt like throwing onto her radar. Like I said, she craves the stimulation and appreciates a good nerdy discussion about why 80's music videos are an art form up there with all of the classics. (See album sleeve, above).

Anyway, Thanksgiving came and went very well. I got to see what's been completed thus far of Doxin, and I can honestly say it is astoundingly good. Ned Ivory is one of the greatest comic actors of our time, and I'm not just saying that because I've known him since we were kids. All in all, it was wonderful being home, and I took a break from Thomas Wolfe's 7xx-odd page opus The Web and the Rock to tear through Steve Martin's Born Standing Up. I highly recommend this for even casual fans of Martin's classic standup. As someone who's been doing this for a couple of years now, it gave me a ton of perspective on what truly drives someone, as well as what can drive them out of something (Martin hasn't done standup at all since 1981, for completely understandable reasons that you'll have to read the book to learn). It was very inspiring, despite Martin's unimpeachable status as a genius, no matter how many hokey family comedies he produces.

I wound up having a long conversation with my father about the classic years of SNL, which Martin was an integral part of, hosting the show twelve times over the course of its first six seasons. Ever since its revival of sorts in the late 90's (Celebrity Jeopardy is still uproarious), a number of people have passed through the cast, some of whom are actually pretty funny on a general level. Some, in my humble opinion, are not. Actually a lot, though I don't want to name names. But I will. Jim Breuer, Chris Parnell, Jimmy Fallon, Ana Gasteyer, Fred Armisen, Chris Elliott, Chris Kattan, Rob Schneider, most of the cast of 2003 at times, and a few other annoyances who've slipped my mind.

Here are my five favorite SNL cast members of all time, and why.

DAN AYKROYD
I'm doing this alphabetically, but if it were in order of preference, Aykroyd would probably be first anyway. Watching his sketches from the show's mid-70's heyday (when he was about my current age, incidentally enough), was what taught me how to appreciate good sketch comedy. After spending my entire high school career wanting to do it, I went all out during a Night of Scenes senior year and performed his "Decabet" sketch (where the Latin alphabet, in accordance with the "metric switchover" that was supposed to happen in the 70's, would have been condensed to look like A, B, C, D, EF, GHI, LMNO, and the rest of the letters in one giant moosh). He took every commercial parody they did, which given the times could have been a fine satire anyway, and made it laugh-out-loud hilarious. This clip here is of the classic "Bass-o-matic" sketch. "...and after about 5 or 10 fish, it gets to be quite a rush!" I haven't even mentioned Beldar Conehead yet, or "Jane, you ignorant slut." Oh, man.

DANA CARVEY
His standup special in '96 was playing around the clock on Comedy Central when many of us first got the channel, but he'd already made a name for himself long before then. I liked what a good foil he was to Mike Myers (who came very close to this list himself) on Wayne's World without even trying. Even though the writing on some of the WW sketches wasn't a strong as it could have been, Carvey and Myers were so good that it didn't matter. The joke even held up for two movies! He even got away with a ridiculous impression of Bush I that rivaled Norm MacDonald's classic Bob Dole lampoon in terms of ridiculously-overblown-but-who-the-hell-cares. I wasn't too crazy about Will Ferrell for the most part (sacrilige, I know, 95% of humanity) but he did one hell of a Bush II. Janet Reno, too. What I'm trying to say is that Carvey laid the foundation for the show's strongest aspects of the 90's.

TRACY MORGAN
All of the long-overdue worship he's gotten via "30 Rock" aside, I loved this guy ever since he popped up and stuck out like a sore thumb on a generally lackluster cast since day one. With the possible exception of "Werewolf Bar Mitzvah" from the aforementioned sitcom, no moment in the past 10 years of SNL still makes me laugh as hard as this one:


GILDA RADNER
No disrespect for Jane Curtin or Lorraine Newman (both of whom were very funny), Gilda was the true breakout female star of the show when it first came on. After all, she was the first cast member that the producer Lorne Michaels brought in. She could snap from playing a frightened little girl in one sketch then play Candy Slice, a strung out punk, five minutes later with barely anything lost in the transition. Her impact, both comedic and sociopolitical (she passed away from ovarian cancer in 1989, greatly increasing awareness of the disease) could not be overstated. Plus, Rosanne Rosannadanna and Emily Litella would probably have been as annoying as shit if anyone else had played them.

ROBERT SMIGEL
His contributions to SNL have been so scattershot yet so important. Keeping in mind that his greatest accomplishment, Triumph the Insult Comic Dog, hit it big a few flights down in the NBC building, he did more for SNL during the late 90's than most any cast member short of perhaps Will Ferrell and Norm MacDonald. "Fun with Real Audio" and "Ace & Gary" remain some of the most creative and consistently funny moments of those years.

So, now I guess they're coming out with Season 2: The Complete Set on DVD. Pretty exciting. I would have included Steve Martin on this list since he was almost as integral a part of the show as the Dan Aykroyds and John Belushis. Plus, he outperformed the entire cast each of the fourteen times he hosted the damn thing. Props to Conan O'Brien, too, for doing outperforming the entire cast on March 10, 2001, having written for the show back in the day.