Happy Birthday, Rich!! (that's my nephew/almost brother, if you are wondering).

Ok, so last night I finally got to watch part of the first show from the first season of Saturday Night Live I got for my birthday last July (I'm a bit behind my DVD viewing, as you can imagine). Oh, boy. I'm more... let's call it "experienced", than I thought (old doesn't sound accurate for someone who's only 37).

I actually started watching SNL regularly in the mid '80's since I became a Chevy Chase fan after National Lampoon's Vacation, but my big brother recorded on VHS some old shows from satellite, so I saw most of the classics (along with some Monty Python and Benny Hill) when I was a teenager. Also, I remember watching parts of the original broadcasts when I was a little kid and went with my family to the US on vacation. I remember being wildly alarmed at Dan Aykroyd making fun of then-President Jimmy Carter on a sketch involving a football... back then political criticism was looked upon with very stern eyes, especially in Mexico.

So now I get to watch this show from 1976 -just one year before Star Wars when I was already around and very much aware- and saw George Carlin as a very cool, hip comedian, and Billy Preston performing Nothing for Nothing with huge afros, sideburns and wide lapelled coats. Holy crap. I actually lived through those days? I barely remember the bell bottomed pants, but yeah, after all I was a Space 1999-Six Million Dollar Man-Planet of the Apes fan. That explains my long hair back then.

I have renewed admiration for these guys (I gotta get myself a copy of the "I'm Chevy Chase and you're not" autobiography), and again thought about the social memory thing (see one of my past blogs, I can't remember the exact date).

But what really struck me is that I don't remember anything becoming such a relevant media cornerstone since those first SNL shows. I mean, we now have reality TV, but those guys back then had the guts to go against the establishment just as people as William Gaines did back in the '50's with his EC comics (just as a side-thought, Mad Magazine today is a very pale shadow of what it was in the '60's and early '70's when they actually tackled relevant social and political issues). Now anything goes, and it probably does because of these guys. But we also have to remember that this is not the case everywhere. We still live in a world where a Hindu woman gets arrested for showing afection in public and women in arab countries need to cover their faces when going outside. Man, we've covered a lot of ground, but there's still a long way to go.

Have a happy week.