As of this morning, I can count on the finger of one the number of times an item at top center of the home page of The New York Times has reminded me of Tony Orlando’s 1979 tribute to Bob Hope, as relayed by a smirking Bill Murray to Jane Curtin on “Weekend Update”:
Bill Murray: …[Graphic reading: "QUOTE OF THE YEAR"] Nominations for Update’s Quote of the Year have piled up over the months and even though two weeks remain in the year, uh, the front-running quote looks hard to beat. Comes from the former member of Tony Orlando and Dawn, Tony Orlando himself. [Photo of Tony Orlando] It was on Bob Hope’s seventy-fifth birthday special that Tony said, and I quote here, [slowly and solemnly] “If you could put all the laughs that Bob Hope has gotten, one after another, they would stretch all the way to the universe and fill up the black hole in space.” Unquote. Jane?
Jane Curtin: [shaking her head in admiration] Great quote, Bill….
Return with us now to those thrilling days of thisteryear three decades on, to the centerpiece of today’s Times home page not two inches beneath its antique-script heraldic crest, to an item fairly bursting the paper’s pixeled integument like one of Bob’s own “surprise” proscenium-stealing walk-ons through an NBC “Curtin” more venerable, that framing countless Carson-era Tonight Shows already in progress:
Valerio Mezzanotti for The New York Times
We can only Hope.
Back to you, Jane…
This must explain how I was able to get a reservation at Milliway’s. Now, where did I put my towel?
Heh. We laugh, but that’s the way the dice tumble:
“Hey, what happened to Earth?”
“I, dunno, man. It was doing fine, and then some dickhead just…POIT!”
“Bummer. Well, let’s hit Marang instead; you’re buying.”
If we were inside a singularity right now, would we even notice? I’m not going to say, “If we were inside a black hole right now” etc. etc. because for all I know we may well be. How else do you explain the current administration? ” . . . and then some dickhead just . . . POIT!”