If you missed NBC’s Saturday Night Live 40th anniversary show, consider yourself fortunate.  A promising evening of entertainment turned out to be a tortuous three and one-half hour  festival of ingratiating ego-pumping and contemporary performance overkill.  Way too heavy on musical productions and way too short on Belushi, Chase, Aykroyd, Radner, Murphy, Murray, and so many others I had been looking forward to watching.   I thought with a 3.5 hour block of time surely I would be treated to a snippet here and there of many, if not most of the classic sketches.  But there was hardly a one.  I can’t tell you how depressing it was to sit through this thing, desperately and patiently waiting for Buck Henry’s portrayal of Lord Douchebag, only to have my hopes crushed by the vocals of Miley Cyrus, Kanye West and Paul McCartney.  The program started out propitiously- Dan Aykroyd and his current rendition of the infamous “Bass-O-Matic” routine.  But the original was way better.  That was “Bass-O-Matic 76.”  I’m not sure what this model number was.  And the commercials had to set some sort of record for fewest minutes between breaks.  There was one every 5 minutes at times during the last hour.

Call me an old geezer but I didn’t do much catching on to whatever point Kanye West was trying to make while he was laying on the floor sing-talking.   I think I got it that he was trying to project an image of himself in a completely different perspective, like he was singing upside-down or something.  But I gotta tell you I was not impressed.  I thought he looked kind of silly.  I know it’s probably just me, but if I wanted to go out and be all showoffie and sing upside down, well I just think if that’s the look you’re going for then do it up right.  For me it would have made sense if he was actually upside-down, like with his knees locked around a trapeze bar, and maybe swinging back and forth.  Now that would lock down a big score with me.  I’de probably give him a solid 9.  But then there was the song itself.  Not my cup of tea.  Probably have to dish him out a 2 on that.  While I was watching all the bazaar ducking and crawling around on the ground I couldn’t help thinking how off target the producers were for not subbing a clip from the last SNL Mick Jagger episode for this shit.  Adding to all the perplexity were those two people that slithered out on all fours and started in contortionating along with Kanye about half way through the performance.  One of them was a fella I didn’t recognize at all, but you could pretty much make out from the way the other person was creeping around that it was a woman,  and I am likewise pretty sure I know who it was.  She was well hidden underneath that scary, nuclear enriched hairpiece that was last worn by one of the gigantic monsters co-starring in a not well known Godzilla movie.  But I am fairly certain it was Beyonce.  We all know about the uncontrollable obsession Kanye has with her.  I can’t figure out how he talked her into donning that ridiculous head-gear though.  I am sure he didn’t want anyone upstaging him, but man I think this was over-kill.  That thing had some serious compression fracture potential.  I hope she’s all right