BLOOMBERG CELEBRATING DIVERSITY BY HIRING VULCAN-AMERICAN JOURNALISTS:

As Lt. Saavik once said, “Humor. It is a difficult concept.” (Note the ratio on this tweet.) “More Cowbell,”  from April of 2000, remains simply the funniest, most beloved sketch of the post-Phil Hartman-era Saturday Night Live, which is why, not coincidentally, it’s the most universally known sketch of the post-Hartman era. That was the last time SNL was a widely watched show by both sides of the aisle. In the late 1970s, the Coneheads, the “Wild and Crazy Guys,” and “I’m Chevy Chase and you’re not” were all universally known routines. Only the Cowbell sketch has achieved that level of cultural cachet.

Fortunately, film critic William Bibbiani has come to Smith’s rescue: “I never, in my wildest dreams, thought I would have to explain the @nbcsnl ‘Cowbell’ sketch to another human being, but okay, here we go….First: Yes, there’s a joke, and no, it’s not watching other people pretend they get it. They actually get it. You’re the one who’s lost.”

Read the whole thing, which a younger, funnier Lorne Michaels would have been in complete agreement with for understanding the rules of comedy.

In addition to everything that Bibbiani wrote, the “Cowbell” sketch was also a pitch-perfect send-up of VH1’s “Behind the Music” series geared towards boomer nostalgia,  a series then still relatively new and fresh. (Complete with the invariable formula: band gets together, band reaches stardom, individual band members do drugs, squabble and quit, band breaks up, band triumphantly reunites to tour hockey arenas in the 1990s.)