Tag Archives: SNL

More Cowbell

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MoreCowbell0503

OK we all got that it is freakin’ winter. We get the cold. We get the snow. We get frostbite. We get that it has to be grey with no color showing. We get it. The lack of color is probably the worst part of winter. The grey of the sky and the dirty white of the snow becomes the monotone of our existence, we almost forget what color looks like.

This situation reminds me of a time back in April of 2000 when Blue Oyster Cult was having a tough time reentering the music business as megastars. They had recorded a song called “Don’t Fear The Reaper” that was promising. It had a good beat, you could dance to it. It was pert not to mention sassy. It had good rhythm and made you tap your foot to it. But it was missing something. You noticed it right off. “Damn that’s a great tune but it’s missing something” was a comment heard around many a water cooler.  Fortunately Christopher Walken was there to save the day.

According to Saturday Night Live (SNL) Christopher Walken brought the band into their studio and immediately figured out what the song was missing. Cowbell. It needed more cowbell to bring it into gold record territory, make that Platinum territory. Fortunately Will Farrell was up to the task and added the needed cowbell and more. Soon the song was off the charts, and Blue Oyster Cult was saved from a life of oblivion.

When you look outside right now, go ahead and look we’ll  wait, you’ll see nothing but shades of grey. It’s lacking something, just like “Don’t Fear The Reaper” was missing something. No it’s not Cowbell, but if cowbell were color that would be what it was missing. So I guess if the concept is the same you could exchange cowbell for color or color for cowbell and it would work.

So that ‘s what I did this morning. I took an old black and white image that had turned mostly to grey and I added color. Then I added more color and kept adding it until there was enough cowbell, if you get what I mean. Looking at it made me feel a lot better. I looked back outside and it was still grey so I came back and looked at this image some more. I gotta tell ya, I feel a lot better. I think this could work for you too. If you’re just, like sick, and I mean sick, of this time of year, spend sometime looking at this picture. Or get a picture of your own. Make sure it’s got plenty of color in it. Stare at it a lot and soon I’ll bet you’ll be hearing Cowbells. I know I do.

NOTE: As of 01-10-2018 The link below has since broken, was removed, or just doesn’t work anymore, so it won’t do any good to click it. If you’re determined however to see the video mentioned, google cowbell, SNL, skit, whatever you can think of and it should popup. If it doesn’t too bad, it was really funny.

P.S. if you’re still fuzzy on the whole cowbell thing watch this skit from SNL and it’ll make more sense. Maybe. Here’s the link https://vimeo.com/55624839

Candy-Gram

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Candy-Gram3631Coyote Yellowstone River

Television has always had a larger than life effect on the animals in Yellowstone. KYEL, Yellowstone’s own closed circuit TV station has been available to the parks residents for many years now. Most animals had cable until satellite came in and now that seems to be the system of choice due to the park’s restrictions on running overhead wires.

The effects on the young animals of the park has been pronounced over the years. Many young Sandhill cranes learned to dance watching American Bandstand and young antelopes waited breathlessly for the Olympic track and field events, especially those featuring the sprinters. Sea Hunt with Lloyd Bridges was a favorite of all the young otters and of course all the young spike bulls never missed Mickey Mouse Club when Annette was on.

But TV had its dark side too. Things that were meant to be humorous were changed by certain individuals to fit their own purposes. We’re not mentioning any names here but they looked a lot like coyotes. Coyotes were drawn to the edgier, hipper, more intellectual type of humor like Saturday Night Live or SNL as we know it now. One of the skits that they particularly enjoyed was called ‘Land Shark” and featured a giant shark that used lots of different ploys to get young women to open their doors so he could eat them. While most viewers laughed at the absurdities of the situation the coyotes watched closely. They saw how they might turn this approach into a technique that would allow them to approach their intended meals in a way that would cut down on all that chasing and running and leaping to get fed. Using the right choice of words would have those ground squirrels walking right into their open jaws.

Here we see a coyote at the front door of a young well-fed ground squirrel calling “Candy-Gram” down her hallway, a favorite ploy of the Land Shark to get you to open your door. You and I laugh at the idea of this actually working but then we don’t take into account the natural dim-ness of a young well-fed ground squirrel. Sitting there on the couch, bloated and on a sugar high from eating all that grass, they are easily fooled and in this case the thought of someone actually sending her a candy-gram overcame her normal sense of caution. Too bad for her.

TV is a force for both good and evil. In this case it was, unfortunately, not used for good. The moral of this story then is, if you’re a young well fed ground squirrel and someone knocks on your door saying “Candy-Gram”, Don’t open the door. Nobody sends ground squirrels candy-grams. If you had watched SNL instead of 100 uses for fresh green grass shoots on Cooking For Rodents, you’d be safe and snug in your burrow right now.