I think you’re mixing up two different episodes. In 1976 Simon appeared in a turkey suit for the Thanksgiving episode.
The bit with Paul Simon the Senator was from when he hosted in 1987.
I think it’s safe to say they are best friends. According to Keenan they live next to each other in the same apartment building on the Upper West Side.
Yes, it seems I was. There is no way I could have seen the 1987 episode, as I was living on a remote island in the Pacific with no television, so I didn’t know he hosted again.
Hah, now there is a bit of trivia I did not know. Not that I care at all about celebrity’s lives, but I make a small exception for Paul Simon, as I had a massive tween-age crush on him in the early 1970s when all my peers were daydreaming about David Cassidy and Donny Osmond.
If you can find it Kenan Thompson talks about it on the WTF podcast from a few years ago.