stevemartin

Steve Martin, who rose to fame in the 1970's with the help of Saturday Night Live, will appear for a record 15th time on the show on January 31st. Just in time for sweeps.

Obviously, he'll be there to promote the Pink Panther sequel and his new Banjo CD. Once again I will put on my old person's hat and recall the times he hosted in my youth and how funny he was back then. While he obviously doesn't have the vigor of youth anymore, he has the sort of stage presence and timing that livens up the sort of comedy that SNL does (even when the sketch itself is lame). He's a better sketch performer than most of the current cast.

I loved the irony and intellectualism of the stand-up comedy of Martin's early career. I hope he returns to it some day and does an HBO special like Robin Williams did in 2002.

Hopefully the gelt you received this past holiday season hasn't been all used up on paying your credit card bills for the gifts you gave this holiday season. That's because there are a number of books about television that you could be using that free money towards. There are books about TV shows, books about TV characters, books written by TV characters, and just general television history books. There are so many books about television already out or about to be released that you could easily spend countless hours reading them on the steps of your local library after the nuclear holocaust.

Just don't break your glasses.

So, here are eight titles to get you started.

Ladies and gents, Steve Martin will be coming back to host Saturday Night Live on February 4. Whoo-hoo! This guy is such an important part of SNL history, it's as if he used to be a cast member himself. Actually, a lot of people think that Martin used to be a player, but nope, he's like Benjamin Franklin to the presidents (just because he's on the $100 bill doesn't mean he was ever president, y'know). Anyway, this will be an exciting episode. I hope they do this legend justice.

Prince will be the musical guest (I'm trying to think of some sort of Prince-like squeal to express happiness but I can't figure out how to spell it). I hope he and Fred Armisen (who sometimes plays him on the show) will do something together... Hey, maybe Steve Martin can bring Beyonce (his co-star in the new movie, The Pink Panther) to fill in for new mommy Maya Rudolph and Prince can fill in for Armisen! That way, they'd have a real "The Prince Show"! Oh man, that'd be twelve different kinds of awesome.