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October 24, 2023 • 24 mins
Another Mini Episode. Brad is getting stressed about Game 7 of the National League Championship Series. He also discusses his fandom of Saturday Night Live during the 80s and his daughter enjoying the show now.
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(00:17):
From Geppetto Studios in New Freedom,Pennsylvania. Welcome to the Cosmic Geppetto Podcast,
your home for inclusive, positive geekculture where we talk about movies,
comics, music, books, andwhatever else we feel like. Please welcome
your host their mission to fight injustice, to write that which is wrong,

(00:40):
and to serve all mankind. BradMendenhall, Hey kids, it is episode

(01:00):
eighty nine at the Cosmic Geppetto Podcast. Another mini episode, so it follows
again the the highs and lows ofbeing a Philadelphia Phillies fan. Last night,
the Arizona Diamondbacks came into Philadelphia andthey won, and it was I

(01:23):
think the final score was five toone. The Diamondbacks pitched around the big
bats and the Phillies weren't able toget enough hits strung together to score any
runs. So we calm down toGame seven. Everything's gonna be thrown against

(01:45):
the wall. It's Ranger Suarez,who is the Phillies number three pitcher,
but it's pitched well. This postseasonwill be going up for the Phils.
You should still if you're a fillyou should still feel pretty good. The
Phillies are still at home. Theyplay very well in front of the Philadelphia

(02:07):
crowd, It's gonna be an insanecrowd. I have a it's very difficult
to keep Bryce, Harper and Schwarbercompletely in check. Costellanos, I always
Butcher his last name, who wason fire earlier in the playoffs, has

(02:31):
cooled off and I feel like there'sa chance he will sort of catch fire
again. So the Phillies have achance. I would say in above fifty
to fifty chants, but all creditto the Diamondbacks. They've played very well.

(02:53):
But again that's not what I'm hereto talk about. As I've mentioned
on a few episodes in the past, my daughter London has recently become a
pretty big Saturday Night Live fan.It is now she says her favorite show,

(03:13):
and it's pretty funny how that happened. She's a what's her name,
Jenna Ortega, the actress who playsWednesday Adams. She's become a fan of
that actress, which is weird becauseshe didn't watch all of Wednesday because Wednesday
was a little bit of a darkshow. My daughter doesn't really like dark

(03:34):
shows, but I think she's seeninterviews and she just connects with this actress,
so a few couple of years back, it's like, well, you
know, you know Wednesday, shehosted SNL and I played the episode and
London loved it. And then wehave the Peacock Network, so she's like,

(03:59):
well, who else? Who elseis cool? And I would just
go through recent seasons and find performersthat she likes and I would play that
episode and she got really into it, and it's sort of neat. I
went through an SNL phase in theeighties. I was a big fan of

(04:21):
Dennis Miller, who did Weekend Updatefor a while. I love I really
like Dennis Miller, and it's ashame because he's lost his fastball as a
comedian. It's sort of a thingwhere I thought he could be insightful,
smart, clever. He would dosome cool wordplay and I really enjoyed.

(04:46):
He had an HBO weekly talk showwhere it was a moologue with a rant
that became a signature thing, arant where he would just he would start
by saying, I don't want toget off rant here, and then he
would talk about some social issue andthen he would have an interview and they
were sort of relatively long form interviews, and then he would finish up by

(05:13):
doing this Week in the News,which was a take on his Saturday Night
Live Weekend Update thing. You know, pretty standard, show a picture and
make a joke about it, soit would be, you know, a
picture of George Bush, and hewould say something about George Bush. I
think for me, Dennis Miller becamea victim of his own success, where

(05:44):
there was the things that people likedabout him, and it was using big
words and going on a rant.And the problem that some performers have when
they have their success is they justlean so heavily into their signature bits and
the creativity tends to stop. Areally good example of that is Jeff Foxworthy,

(06:11):
and that is the Southern identified comedian. In what I mean by that
is like so much of a shtickis he's from the South, and he
became very famous for his you mightbe a redneck if and sort of funny.

(06:32):
But I remember listening to his firstone or two comedy albums and he
was he was actually a pretty smartcomedian with good timing and a definite viewpoint.

(06:53):
And then he would do that well, if you if you have a
shower outside, you might be redneckwhatever. I don't particularly remember that.
But that became his thing, andyou could hear on his subsequent specials,
and he's got deeper and deeper hiscareer. He sounded bored with the bit,

(07:16):
but he would even say, hewould even make a joke it's like,
oh, if I don't come backout and do the encore, that
you might be a redneck, youmight riot. And I became less creative.
It wasn't really a strong bit anyway. It was just sort of saying

(07:39):
stuff with the same punchline, andhis audience would have a little bit of
recognition because I guess, listen,everybody, everybody that hasn't lived their entire
life inside of a major metropolitan areahas that cousin that lived in a trailer
park, has that uncle, hasa old clunker car in their front yard,

(08:07):
or drives through their small town andthere's a house with a beat up
couch on the front porch. Sothere's humor by recognition. But Dennis Miller,
it was his rants in his youknow, five cent words that he
would use in his bits, andhe just became it seemed like he became

(08:31):
less and less interested in being thoughtful, creative, clever. He also became
a bit of a right wing darling. He appeared pretty frequently on The O'Reilly
Factor, which you know doesn't makehim not funny in and of itself.

(08:56):
But I become very suspicious of comedianswho have a major philosophical change part way
through their career because it feels ingenuous. It feels like Dennis Miller became more
conservative, not because of a heartfeltchange in philosophy, but oh, I

(09:26):
have a big conservative audience. Ishould start making more jokes about Barack Obama
than I was making about the Bushfamily. And maybe that's not fair.
Maybe you know, sometimes people theyget older and richer, and often they

(09:46):
become more conservative. Back to SNL, I have tried, they said we
have Peacock, which goes all theway back to the first episode of Saturday
Night Live, the host of whichwas George Carlin. I was a big

(10:09):
George Carlin fan. I had abunch of his albums. I tried watching
getting London to watch those, andshe was not feeling it. And I
understand because Saturday Night Live is sotopical that the Richard Nixon jokes, the

(10:37):
Reagan jokes, the Jimmy Carter isa peanut farmer, jokes don't land and
the pacing is so different. Andthat original SNL cast that was like seven
eight people, and Saturday Night Livenow has I don't know twelve to fifteen

(11:03):
cast members and then featured players ontop of that, and plus because it
such an institution, you'll also haveso many weird celebrity cameos. For this
most recent episode, which the hostwas bad Bunny, out of nowhere,

(11:28):
there's Mick Jagger. He wasn't amusical guest, he wasn't a host.
He was just came out in themiddle of a bit, He's Mick Jagger.
I was like, what, what, why? Why? Why Mick
Jagger? And it was fun.He was, you know, he I
don't know. He didn't do awhole lot. He just came out there

(11:50):
looking at that weird charismatic skeleton thathe's been for the last twenty five years
and McJagger. And then I hadto explain to London who Mick Jagger was,
and all she was aware of himwas John Mullaney and my daughter loves
John Mullaney, a successful comedian andfive time host and former writer for Saturday

(12:15):
Night Live, talked about being awriter and Mick Jagger being such a weird
celebrity because Mick Jagger's been Mick Jaggerfor fifty years. He doesn't know how
to behave like a normal human beingbecause he hasn't had to. So I

(12:43):
was like, that's my Stagger's likeJohn Mlaney talked about him and He's like,
yes, he did. The sweetspot seems to be the past five
years. London likes watching SNL episodefrom the past five years because at the

(13:03):
hosts for the last five years tendto be people who are still known quantities.
I think if you get too farback, she doesn't recognize anyone.
The political humor is you know,she's eleven. She's not, you know,

(13:31):
completely dialed into the intricacies of currentpolitical back and forth. She knows
who Donald Trump is, she knowswho Joe Biden is, so there's a
laugh of recognition, but dan Quaildoesn't really register in her humor receptors.

(14:01):
I'll probably try to at some pointshow her some of the SNLS that I
watched that uh Mike Meyerstein of CarveyPhil Hartman. What will be very interested
to see is how funny will shefind the Wayne's World skits, because there's

(14:26):
been a lot of discussion. Irecently was talking with a couple of friends
of mine, one of whom justrewatched Wayne's World movies and the Austin Powers
movies and he's like, they don'tthey don't all hold up too well.

(14:50):
And Wayne's World, I know,the last time I watched it, I
was like, what, we wereall obsessed with this movie. Everybody watched
it so many times. And theiconic guys in the car headbanging to Queen
and singing along to Bohemian Rhapsody.And when you watch it on TV,

(15:18):
why, like you realize it's notthat funny. It's a long scene.
There's no punchline to it. It'sjust like four guys, one of whom

(15:39):
looks like he's about ready to throwup listening to the song. And I
guess the whole thing is it's apretty they're metal heads or they're you know,
they're rock fans, and they're drivingaround listening to Bamian Rhapsody. The
first two Thursday is a very prettysong, or it's not a rock song.

(16:06):
You have the pretty sections and theoperatic parts, and it is until
the end when they really lean intothe guitar and Everyone's head bang and all
that, and it's it's actually sortof funny because it's a weird song that's
sort of almost cultured, but it'sit's it's not funny. It's it's really

(16:32):
not funny. Like you try topoint out. I was like, why
do you laugh? So you Iwonder it's like why were we so obsessed?
And I guess part of it iswhen I when that movie came out
First Off Started at Live, wason one of its it's not necessarily creative
peaks, but it was definitely apeak of popularity. Mike my understand at

(16:56):
Carvey were very popular and people viewedthem as having very good chance of becoming
breakout stars. Mike Myers, itsort of happened in the Austin Powers movies

(17:18):
were definitely very successful. The firstWings World was very successful. He gets
a lot of credit and I thinkdeservedly so for Shrek films being such breakout
hits. Dana Carvey, I thinkthere was another case of being a victim

(17:41):
of his own success because I rememberhe started doing wacky interviews and was sort
of being presented as the next RobinWilliams, and it felt like sometimes during
interviews and during some of his performand says, it almost felt like he
was doing a Robin Williams impersonation andwas actually Rob Williams. Once hosted SNL

(18:07):
and Dana Carvey played Robin Williams' son, and he was doing the same stick.
And the thing is, Dana Carveywas no Robin Williams. He wasn't,
I don't think a great improviser.He didn't have the dramatic chops,
he didn't have sort of the pathosthat Robin Williams had. I loved Robert

(18:34):
Williams and with all the energy andall the comedy, there was this undercurrent
of just pain and sadness that wouldleak through that made him compelling, and
Dana Carvey never had that. DanaCarvey was a very good impressionist and a

(18:56):
good creative, a good writer whowould come up with some interesting characters that
always had a hook that would pullyou in the church Lady Garth from Wayne
and Garth. And I think hewas trying to be something that he wasn't.
And I know he also had somehealth issues, and also I think

(19:23):
there was a weird bit of smugnessthat would come through in some of his
work that I've found off putting nowin interview in subsequent interviews, especially when
he has talked about his personal struggles, his affection for Phil Hartman, he

(19:49):
comes across so likable and so sweet. So you know, I might been
seeing something that wasn't there, butI would like it would sort of be
interesting to see London watch those eightiesepisodes and you know, see what she

(20:14):
makes if John love its and uh, you know, and see add a
young Adam Sandler and you know,try to figure out how'd he end up
becoming such a big star. Sothat that wraps this episode. I'm not

(20:34):
sure what's gonna when we'll be back. I have some interviews lined up.
Uh. And if the Phillies dowhat I know they can do and win
tonight and go to the World Series, there has been some preliminary discussions in
getting a small panel of Philadelphia Philliesfans to talk about what that World series

(20:57):
could look like. Until then,in the words of Jar Parten see in
the Funny Pages, Subscribe to TheCosmic Geppetto podcast on iTunes, Stitcher,

(21:25):
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(21:45):
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