We Passed the Hash Pipe and Played our Doors Tapes

I was so thoroughly charmed and delighted by SNL's season-ending grand finale "Goodnight Saigon" humgdinging ding-dong of a sketch (thank you hugs'n'kisses to the always wonderful Videogum):



Maybe it's because there is nothing I love more than a star-studded finale, or maybe it's because I am consistently enamored with earnestness, or maybe it's because I remember being on a family trip driving through California and listening to that "Billy Joel Greatest Hits Volumes 1 and 2" mondo cassette and eagerly anticipating each time "Goodnight Saigon" would finally come on, right after "Allentown" (where our fathers fought the second world war; spent their weekends at the jersey shore) because, at age 12, I had just figured out what it was, like, really about man, or maybe it's because we kept that cassette in the station wagon and once my mom was doing errands and sort of half-listening to it and when the opening helicopter-noises from that song came on, she pulled over in a fright that she had blown a tire and then drove to the gas station so that Jack the mechanic could check her tires and tell her that, no, she didn't have a flat tire, it was just those helicopter noises from the beginning of "Goodnight Saigon" or maybe it's just the way Ferrell plays those maracas at the top.

Either way, I love this so much that I want to put a ring on it. And also, um, sort of maybe I kind of want to own the Billy Joel's Greatest Hits Volumes 1 and 2 mondo-cassette again. Remember that swelling chorus in "THe Night is Still Young?" I sure do.