Many, many years ago, when the internet was as a newborn babe and Saturday Night Live was starting to look like it was in real jeopardy of being canceled due to a couple years of sheer awfulness, I read on a Janeane Garofalo proto-fansite a reference to a vicious behind-the-scenes takedown of the show that had been printed in New York Magazine. (You see what I mean about the internet being new? The site I was reading had a bibliography that sourced its information.) Though I hadn’t watched the show in years, I sort of thought of it as a childhood friend, and I hated to hear that my old pal had been spotted sleeping under newspapers in an alley with track marks on his arms so I endeavored to read this article.

My efforts were doomed. We hadn’t gotten to the technological stage yet where old issues were archived online, and even the most rabid fansite wasn’t bug-nutty enough to transcribe the whole thing. I thought, “Boy, I’d love to get my hands on that at a library or something… maybe I can order a back issue from somewhere if it’s not more than $5,” and then promptly went and did my history homework.

That should say “did my history homework and promptly forgot about the whole thing,” but I didn’t. Though I never tracked down the physical magazine, I have thought of the article on and off– and continued to search for it online– for nearly twelve years. I didn’t know the author, but I remembered that it was in New York Magazine and it was called “Comedy Isn’t Pretty.” Every so often, I would be minding my business when suddenly the ball marked “New York Magazine article” would tumble out of the bingo ball cage that is my mind and I’d be frantically Googling for ten minutes or so. I never found it.

A few weeks ago, NBC did a whitewashed quasi-documentary about this godawful period in the show’s history for sweeps. In this doc, those years were amazingly transformed into a golden comedy renaissance that was misunderstood by the public and those stodgy critics. This is what happens when a show’s history is recounted by the network that kept it on the air. Anyway, in that show, those interviewed mentioned my article and their desire at the time to literally viciously beat the man who wrote it, as he had gained their trust backstage and betrayed them, like Judas with taste.
“Hey,” I thought, “there’s that bingo ball again.” Again I turned to Google.
And New York Magazine had seen the show too. And they too had been disappointed in the whitewash.

So they put up a PDF of the mother-loving article.

After eleven or twelve years, it’s sitting on my desktop. I don’t know what to do. I’m almost terrified to read it.

I recognize that this is not an interesting story. I just 1) found it illustrative of something about myself that I cannot otherwise articulate and 2) wanted to share my nerd joy. The white whale is cut up into steaks in my freezer!