Wild and Crazy

Besides Mr. Robinson's Neighborhood, one of my favorite recurring Eddie Murphy skits on SNL was the caucasian-hating Tyrone Green. He was an inmate, and in the first installment, the prisoners were being incouraged by prison staff to express their feelings through poetry.

Here is what Tyrone wrote:

IMAGES by Tyrone Green

Dark and lonely on a summer night

Kill my landlord, kill my landlord

The watchdog barkin', do he bite?

Kill my landlord, kill my landlord

I slip in the window

I break his neck

Then his house I start to wreck.

Got no reason, what the heck.

Kill my landlord, kill my landlord.

C-I-L-L my landlord.

-

In the skit, landlord was pronounced "layun-lawah." Murphy knew the golden rule of ebonics, always leave off the last consonant.

The antethesis of Tyrone must then be Jack Handy, which was another of my favorites from SNL: The Good Years.

A few of my fav's:

I can still recall old Mister Barnslow getting out every morning and nailing a fresh load of tadpoles to the old board of his. Then he'd spin it round and round, like a wheel of fortune, and no matter where it stopped he'd yell out, "Tadpoles! Tadpoles is a winner!" We all thought he was crazy. But then we had some growing up to do.

If you're a cowboy and you're dragging a guy behind your horse, I bet it would really make you mad if you looked back and the guy was reading a magazine.

I remember that one fateful day when Coach took me aside. I knew what was coming. "You don't have to tell me," I said. "I'm off the team, aren't I?" "Well," said Coach, "you never were really ON the team. You made that uniform you're wearing out of rags and towels, and your helmet is a toy space helmet. You show up at practice and then either steal the ball and make us chase you to get it back, or you try to tackle people at inappropriate times." It was all true what he was saying. And yet, I thought something is brewing inside the head of this Coach. He sees something in me, some kind of raw talent that he can mold. But that's when I felt the handcuffs go on.

When you're riding in a time machine way far into the future, don't stick your elbow out the window, or it'll turn into a fossil.

If your friend is already dead, and being eaten by vultures, I think it's okay to feed some bits of your friend to one of the vultures, to teach him to do some tricks. But only if you're serious about adopting the vulture.

It takes a big man to cry, but it takes a bigger man to laugh at that man.

Fear can sometimes be a useful emotion. For instance, let's say you're an astronaut on the moon and you fear that your partner has been turned into Dracula. The next time he goes out for the moon pieces, wham!, you just slam the door behind him and blast off. He might call you on the radio and say he's not Dracula, but you just say, "Think again, bat man."

Dad always thought laughter was the best medicine, which I guess is why several of us died of tuberculosis.

Maybe in order to understand mankind, we have to look at the word itself: "Mankind." Basically, it's made up of two separate words - "mank" and "ind". What do these words mean ? It's a mystery, and that's why so is mankind.

One thing kids like is to be tricked. For instance, I was going to take my little nephew to Disneyland, but instead I drove him to an old burned-out warehouse. "Oh, no," I said. "Disneyland burned down." He cried and cried, but I think that deep down, he thought it was a pretty good joke. I started to drive over to the real Disneyland, but it was getting pretty late.

Anyway, I was searching around the internet for Best of SNL DVDs (I want the ones featuring Murphy, Farrell, Carvey, Chevy Chase, Christopher Walken, Billy Crystal, Phil Hartman, Steve Martin, Weekend Update) and felt like sharing some of the experience.

You have any favorites?