Babs’ uvula is still one of the all-time greats.
There was a sketch on an episode that Michael J Fox hosted where it was America’s Most Wanted: Child Stars.
Phil Hartman was the narrator and they went to a scene of a crime gang where all members were former child stars. The leader of the gang was Danny Bonaduce (played by Michael J Fox) and they were all discussing a job whey were about to go on. Until Michael J Fox (played by David Spade) came in to talk them all out of it until Danny Bonaduce pulled out a gun and shot him, yelling “Take that Alex”
The smerk Michael J Fox had on his face while David Spade was playing him was hysterical.
In the early days, he would do “Weekend Update” and end every sentence with “Me, Al Franken” and they would flash his name at the bottom of the screen. My dad would watch SNL just for this.
And has nobody yet mentioned Pat? Loved him or her, a ma’am or a sir!
So many great ones have been mentioned, so I’ll add “Where you’re going”, the parody of a Micholob commercial that shows a bunch of yuppies exchanging stories and ends up with “You’re going to hell”.
But the one that blew me away was a musical segment of Paul Simon and George Harrison doing “Here Comes the Sun” and “Homeward Bound”.
That was my fave all time John Goodman sketch…in second place was his Wilford Brimley diabetes parody.
I loved the Dan Akroyd sketch where he tries to prove to Candice Bergen that anything could be a hazard to kids and she keeps a straight face through the whole thing.
Maybe the most memorable was the racially charged exchange between Chevy Chase and Richard Pryor. I have a hard time believing that skit could be made on network television today.
Great list! That could be a best of DVD there.
Another memorable one was “Schmitt’s Gay Beer”. It had Adam Sandler and Chris Farley (!) as two gay guys house-sitting, and the original music was by Van Halen. Re-runs had generic hard rock guitar music.
And how about the SNL immediately after George Bush v. 1.0 vomited all over the Japanese Prime Minister? That story was merged with “JFK”, which was in the theaters at the time, and it was absolutely hilarious. As an aside, after Justin Bieber and Lady Gaga both did that onstage within days of each other, I told multiple people, and posted on Facebook etc. that Obama is probably really really REALLY hoping he didn’t have to meet with the Japanese PM any time soon. 
Already posted the first time this thread was up, but here’s a few more:
Toonces the Driving Cat (“He drives around / all over town…he’s Toonces the driving cat!”)
“I can’t stop my leg!”
Laurie Anderson’s turn as musical guest, performing “The Day the Devil Comes to Get’cha” with a voice modulator. My head exploded.
And a one-off skit with Ian McKellan - “Victorian Hot Air Balloon Mystery Theater”, featuring a Sherlock Holmesian murder mystery taking place entirely on board a 4’ x 4’ hot air balloon basket.
Jesus all this ink with no mention of Christoper Walken or Alec Baldwin?
How about the “Canteen Boy” sketch with Baldwin and Sandler?
“I’m sorry Canteen Boy…my beard is scratchy…”
Joe Montana announcing that he was heading to his room to masturbate.
Wasn’t this on the MTV VMAs?
I’m getting all nostalgic with him and the magnifying glass. Another gem I remember was Robert Mitchum as a film noir detective talking out loud to himself instead of a voiceover.
Quote:
Originally Posted by nearwildheaven
7. When Nirvana was on, Krist Novoselic threw his bass in the air, and “caught” it with his face
Yes.
I assume that was when Jane Curtain was proving to Gilda Radner (on Weekend Update) that she was in fact not wearing a padded bra, by ripping her shirt open. That had me in stitches. Saw that again recently, wasn’t funny at all – showing how important surprise is as a comedy element.
“Jane, you ignorant slut.” - classic. Still makes me laugh. I still like to use this in debates, but unfortunately I’m rarely debatint anyone named Jane.
Garrett Morris and Eubie Blake. The connection between these two, who had just met, was remarkable.
Talking Heads playing Take Me To The River. Prior to that, I’d heard TH on radio etc, but hadn’t paid them any attention. For some reason I’d pigeonholed them with other artsy bands making what I thought was pretty much noise rather than music. They proved me dead wrong with a single performance; I was riveted. Big fan ever since.
I rarely watched SNL after the original cast, but one time I caught a show and REM was the music act. Their first number was awful. I’d been in really bad garage bands that sounded better. I wondered what was up, since I liked their studio stuff but had never seen them live. On their second song, they rocked the house like I’d expected them to. Oh well, I guess even the greats have weak moments.
A lot of the posts above bring back great memories. Some make me wish I’d seen more shows. Even in the original-cast heyday, when I caught most of them, I remember thinking that really only about one out of three shows was really funny, but that’s to be expected given the approach. Some stuff strikes a chord, some doesn’t, and it’s hard to tell beforehand.
I’ve never actually seen the “MOAR COWBELL” skit, but I feel as though I have since I’ve heard it so many times, and it’s the de-reguer reply at rehearsal when a song works, or when it doesn’t. One-size-fits-all comment! I can see Christopher Walken delivering that line in my mind, and it feels like a memory but I know it isn’t. One of these days I’ll have to watch to see how close!
A few more that usually goes unmentioned:
About 7-10 years ago, Colin Farrell was hosting and did this weird skit where he plays a guy who runs a store with his parents. The store was called “<someone’s> Slacks, Snacks, and Knick Knack Shack”. I laughed by ass off on that one.
More recently, I have a particular affinity for Jenny Slate, who was on for only a year or two, and her trashy doorbell/chime selling store.
And one sketch that was one of the earliest ones with Kristen Wiig, that made me love her as a weirdo actor, was her in Vince Price’s (played by Bill Hader) Halloween special. I think she was playing Judy Garland or some other famous actress of the black and white era, and had this really affected way of talking and emphasizing odd syllables in her sentences. Wiig would later kind of bring that character back in her recurring sketch of the old Hollywood actress on the game show “Secret Word”. Loved that one too! 
One of my favorites. “Mick you ignorant slut!”
Wow, this is an old thread.
The good news is that I was going to post something, and discovered I had already posted the exact same thing back in 2006!
Does anyone else remember a Weekend Update (or Saturday Night News) bit with Tim Kazurinsky explaining his new simplified alphabet?
I’ve searched the intarwebz for it, but thus far no luck finding it.
An odd one that was memorable for me, at least…
In 8th grade our class was given an assignment to recite a poem and write like a paragraph on it. We were specifically told to go to the school’s library and pick a book from there.
I, desperate to be precocious, searched in vain for a poem that struck me as even slightly out of the ordinary, interesting, or funny amongst the few volumes in the section labeled “poetry”. I then noticed a slim pamphlet half-fallen behind the books. There was no library information of any kind on it, so the librarian let me just take it, rather than having me check it out. I don’t remember the title of the collection, but I do remember quite clearly the joy I felt as I chose the perfect poem to memorize and recite for the class.
Dark and lonely on a summer’s night
Kill my landlord
Kill my landlord…
This was in '79 give or take 6 mos. Two years before Eddie gave this poem its national debut. I remember jumping up and down with glee as I recognized the masterpiece he was performing. Neither my family whom I awoke that night, nor my friends whom I extolled to the next day, gave a shit.
My poor Googling skill gives me no hints that there was a real (or otherwise) Tyrone Green who penned these lines prior to Eddie’s bit on SNL. I suppose it’s possible that I found some other, similar “urban” poem (that someone thought would be funny to slip into a suburban middle school library) and transplanted Eddie’s bit into my memory after the fact, but I remember particularly the C-I-L-L part of the one I memorized because it tickled me so much to be able to misspell something on purpose in English class.
I don’t recall that one, but there was a sketch with Dan Aykroyd (April 24, 1976) presenting the ‘Decibet’.
“And finally, the so-called “trash letters”, or P, Q, R, S, T, U, V, W, X, Y, and Z, will be condensed to this easily recognizable dark character.”