Saturn Night
Live
[Saturn revolves around the earth once every 29.46 Earth years. In astronomical
terms, this means that Saturn Night Live airs reruns for 15 out of every
30 episodes. In practice, however, these reruns, rather than being clustered
at the end of the year, are staggered: the reruns air when the sun passes
between Earth and Saturn, which alignment renders a live broadcast problematic.
The show always starts a few minutes late. Gravity on Saturn is 1.16
G, rendering certain comic pratfalls too dangerous too attempt. But
the slapstick is maintained through jokes involving the dense atmosphere
and the effect it has on interplanetary cosmopolitan life. The surface
temperature is -80 degrees Celsius, which is good for a few laughs.
Hydrogen jokes -- actors innocently lighting cigarettes and exploding
-- are worked until they're thin. The day on Saturn is less then half
the day on Earth, so rehearsals are short, but the cast gets more sleep
and is thus less prone to drug addiction. Although admittedly drugs
are harder to get out here then they are in New York.]
Hi, I'm a Newspoet. You may recognize me from such Newspoems as "Ode
to News" and "Stopping by News on a Snowy Evening". Every Saturday
I take a much-needed break from watching reruns of Saturday Night
Live on Comedy Central and hop on the Newspoetry space shuttle which
whisks me to a secret location. I'm usually the first to arrive, so
I flip on SNBC and pop open a Diet Titan. As the other Newspoets filter
in, we chat about HTML and CGI and wait for this week's rerun of Saturn
Night Live.
yeah--sure. I watch Saturn Night Live.
It's ok I guess. But I always preferred it/s weekday counterpart,
Tuesday Night Dead. Why did they cancel that, anyway?
as my eyes tire of a cathode ray display
about five times further away than I am used to, they begin to itch.
Make no mistake, the show is funny, but when a land shark shows up
at MY door, he usually leaves a business card and campaign promotion
materials.
We gather on Saturday Night
The cathode ray tube set alight
Tune in SNL and then laugh just
like hell
The community makes it alright
Floating in boats
Wearing old coats
The formerly working poor
Shuffle into Bush's bleak new world
It turned out
And then I remembered that
......
I can but you wouldn't
!
And now, live from Hyperion, it's...
Saturn Night Live!