I’m not sure anyone who didn’t come of age in the 1970s can understand how important Saturday Night Live was for those of us on the tail end of the Baby Boom. I escaped my life for 90 minutes every Saturday night, and I honed my sense of humor by watching not just Gilda, Jane, and Lorraine, but Belushi, Aykroyd, and Murray. Humor was the lifeline I grabbed onto in high school, even if I used it as both narcotic and anesthetic, and Saturday Night Live provided me with images of where a lonely, funny girl could end up … and although I didn’t end up there, I got to where I am largely because I knew from SNL that girls could be funny. Funny worked. Funny gave me hope. And pretty much everything I know about Funny, I learned from Saturday Night Live.
And yeah, I cried when Gilda died. Stacy Kern, you did, too … so I’m thinking of you tonight.