The opening monologue

If you’re anything like me—and really, there are far better, although not more handsome, role models—you’ve also watched Saturday Night Live for years. And in all that time, two things remain steadfastly true.

First is that the monologue and Weekend Update are the best parts of the show. And second, everything after Update is a comedy wasteland.

I have a few favorite monologues done by some people who I wouldn’t have thought I’d find myself liking. And because I’m a giver despite being an only child, I wanted to share them with you because we all need a good laugh right about now, amIrite?

I’ve never been a big Justin Timberlake fan, but I have to say he was pitch perfect in his monologue about how he wasn’t going to sing. You can literally feel the reaction of the girl he sings to in the audience. A little trivia: John Mulaney and Seth Meyers won an Emmy for the lyrics and the song.

A Swifty I’m not, but Taylor Swift cracked me up with her innocent sweetness as she delivers this razor-sharp take down of boys who’ve done her wrong.

SNL alumni Adam Sandler not only has a few surprise guests during his opening, but sings a great song about getting fired from the show and how it worked out for him.

For my money, the monologue is always better when a comedian is hosting. John Mulaney was a writer on SNL for years, and is now one of the premier stand-ups in the country. Here’s a little sample of the reason why.

Zach Galificanakis has his weirdness and Steven Wright one-liners on full display during his SNL stint. And he plays piano, so who says there are no surprises left?

The razor's edge

I realize there are a lot of important things going on in the world. The shithole president is dismantling our democracy piece by piece. There are shootings virtually every day in the news. Hurricane Florence just wreaked havoc on the Carolinas. The deficit has swelled to an unheard of $898 billion. It's a stressful time, and sometimes it feels like all it's going to take is one more thing to break us.

Well, I hate for you to find out this way, but we as a nation have reached a tipping point—a pivotal moment in time where history will judge our actions on yet one more decision that will effect all of us in one way or another.

Should Alex Trebek keep his newly grown beard, or shave it off? I know. No one said it was going to be easy.

About a week ago, Trebek bounded out onto the Jeopardy stage with a newly grown, white beard. Contrasted against his expertly tailored and extremely pricey suit, it lent him a more rugged, worldly look that was not so much that of a well-known, long-running game show host as the third runner-up in the Kern County regional Ernest Hemingway lookalike competition.

Rugged in the way he could look in the mirror now, and grip the one true thought that he was truly alone. Not wanting to, but knowing that despite the stillness of the dark, he could do nothing to prevent morning from making its appointed rounds. And it was a fine morning.

So anyway, you can go online to the Jeopardy website and cast your vote. I don't feel strongly one way or the other, but I am going to let my opinion be known.

Because if we've learned anything over the last year and a half, it's that very bad things can happen when you don't vote. This I can tell you.

Dave

There's this friend of mine who's a writer and also writes a blog. Well, sometimes he writes a blog. A lot of the time he just captions pictures. But he's putting it out there and often the captions are quite funny. It all counts - at least he's making the effort.

Which, if you read this blog on a regular basis, know that's something I rarely do.

Anyway, like many other blogs including this one, he posted about David Letterman today. Here's one of the things he said about Dave when he left Late Night at NBC: "But then the real Dave moved to CBS, and the middle of the road with his humor and he lost a step. And he lost me."

I'd agree with him, except then we'd both be wrong.

I don't believe he lost a step. I think it's clear he found his footing. I'm sorry he lost you pal, because that means you missed some of the best, most subversive and defiant comedy ever put on network television.

Dave's master plan was always to bring his brand of innovation, lunacy and comedy to a wider audience. That audience's address was 11:30. After he was wrongfully denied the Tonight Show (and by the way, if you're calling anyone's humor middle-of-the-road you might want to start with Jay Leno), executive Howard Stringer at CBS gave Dave the platform and freedom to do his show his way.

A lot of it meant bringing over staples from the NBC show (Top Ten List, Stupid Pet Tricks, Stupid Human Tricks, Jack Hanna). But since NBC claimed the intellectual property rights and threatened to sue - which turned out to be an empty threat - Dave was forced to do something he would've done anyway: continually stretch the boundaries of what a talk show could be.

I'd argue he did more innovations to the format and pushed the boundaries - sometimes to the breaking point - more in the CBS years than ever before that.

The beauty of it was that unlike the boot-licking, let's not offend anyone host Leno became, Dave was always Dave. If he didn't like a guest, we knew it. And if he loved a guest (I'm looking at you Julia Roberts), we knew that too.

On a personal note, when Paris Hilton appeared on the show just after her release from prison, Dave made a point of repeatedly asking about her ordeal. I don't think she'd been that uncomfortable since someone accidentally called her smart in the fifth grade. It's some of the finest eight minutes ever aired. You can see it here.

Yes, Dave went from sports coats and sneakers to suits and leather shoes (still with white socks though). If you're going to live at 11:30 you have to dress for the occasion. It wasn't just college kids and stoners watching anymore. It was the world.

Jay Leno built a career out of copying bits, routines and ideas Letterman had years before. Maybe that's why there is no Jay Leno legacy, aside from mediocre political jokes. There were no tributes. There was no emotional investment in Jay Leno. He didn't influence a generation of performers in the way Dave did. Once he was gone, he was forgotten.

Something no one will ever be able to say about Dave.