LIVE FROM NEW YORK, IT'S SATURDAY NIGHT!

Is anyone else somewhat baffled that Saturday Night Live is still on the air? I don't know if I'm just getting too old or SNL has become too political or it's just not as funny anymore. Now days I watch the entire 90 minute show and maybe chuckle once or twice if I'm lucky. And, geez, half the show is taken up by the opening credits to introduce the 20 or so contributing cast members.

At the risk of sounding every bit of my 70 years old, I sure did like it a whole lot better in the good, old days. Saturday Night Live debuted in 1975 - I was all of 25 years old and my son wouldn't be born for another year. The original cast was dubbed "The Not Ready for Prime Time Players" and consisted of John Belushi, Jane Curtain, Gilda Radner, Dan Ackroyd, Garret Morris and Chevy Chase. Just six of them did the entire show and it was really funny.

Chevy Chase left after one year but his pratfalls were legendary. He was followed by Bill Murray, Eddie Murphy and later on, by Jimmy Fallon, Tina Fey, Seth Meyers, Amy Poehler and many others. My research shows that SNL had 156 different cast members over the 45 years of its existence!

Those first six "Not Ready for Prime Time Players" are still the ones who I remember the best. Who can forget Gilda Radner's Roseanne Roseanna Danna's long winded rants about something or other only to find out at the end that she was mistaken or had misunderstood, and simply said, "Never mind."

Being a sports fan, I loved Garret Morris as Chico Esquela, a fictional baseball player from the Dominican Republic, in his interviews as he reiterated, "Baseball been berry, berry good to me." Who didn't love John Belushi and Dan Ackroyd as The Blues Brothers?

John Belushi had some of the craziest and most memorable characters during his short stint on SNL. The Samurai was a good one, but I think my favorite was the Cheeseburger, Cheeseburger sketch that made no real sense but it sure made you laugh. No Coke, Pepsi. No fries, cheeps (chips). If you're too young and think I'm nuts about now, it's on YouTube. Lou and I went to the diner it was modeled after in Chicago on one of our trips - back when we could actually travel places.

Some other memorable characters were Father Guido Sarducci, Baba Wawa and of course, Mr. Bill. There is a special place in my heart for Mr. Bill. He was a little clay clown figurine who was a parody of children's shows of yester year. But this guy always got squished some way or another.

SNL was on at 11:30 PM and I always stayed up to watch it. That was my little bit of me time by myself. One night, Darrin was probably 4 years old, and he couldn't sleep. I brought him in with me and we snuggled on the couch under the afghan to watch Saturday Night Live. When "The Mr. Bill Show" came on the little guy was flattened and as he yelled, "Ooohhhh, Noooooo!", Darrin started giggling. He could not stop laughing which got me laughing. My son and I were laughing uncontrollably for several minutes. What memories!

I loved Eddie Murphy's "Mr. Robinson's Neighborhood" sketches that put a bit of  criminal twist on Mr. Roger's Neighborhood. I heard years later that Fred Rogers actually got a kick out of those bits. Eddie Murphy's take on Buckwheat as a grown up version of the Our Gang character with a speech impediment struck my funny bone, too. Although I'm guessing it is too politically incorrect for this day and age. Buckwheat became the most popular character on SNL at the time and was "killed off" a couple years later when Eddie Murphy was tired of always having to do Buckwheat.

Hopefully, many of you will remember these iconic SNL characters and sketches from days gone by. What are some of your favorites? Hard to believe that show has been around for 45 years! With YouTube it will tickle your fancy to relive all of these classic SNL sketches.