Hey, everyone!
So, as I mentioned over the weekend, this is actually the tenth anniversary of me starting this blog (yes, down to the exact date and time because blogs posts have time stamps on them you can pay attention to). In fact, this September is going to be the tenth anniversary of when I started writing SNL reviews in general but it would be another four years and some change before I would start publishing them to my blog.
Yeah, I used to just write reviews and post them to the old SNL message board on Voy.com and the old S-N-L.com message board run by a guy named Sean Bradley. Those two sites are long dead and thus those early reviews I did of seasons 34 through 37 of SNL are legitimately lost to the sands of time...thankfully. I mean, I started writing those when I was 17 going on 18 so I WAY had not developed my writing skills to where they are today so, yeah...I'm not exactly proud of the ones I wrote in high school and early college. I mean, hey, who DOESN'T look back and cringe at themselves at that age, right?
Still, I kept at it and learned to write in a way I would feel comfortable with myself and other people reading decades in the future. In fact, this blog wouldn't exist if it weren't for few specific journalism classes I took in my late college years. They each required me to maintain blogs and post assignment responses on there regularly so I figured "hey, while I'm doing this...why don't I just start a FIFTH new blog for my SNL reviews just for fun? I mean, I feel like they're WORTH saving for posterity now! Maybe someday people who AREN'T regular posters on two very specific niche message boards would want to read them!"
Well, here we are, a full decade later and I can confidently say I have received enough feedback to have been proven right! So naturally, I have a few people I'd like to thank.
First and foremost, I'd like to thank my family for (mainly my parents) for introducing me to SNL (and sketch comedy in general) at a surprisingly young age and making it such a huge part of my life. I was lucky to grow up in the '90s which, even putting SNL aside, were really a peak era for sketch comedy what with All That, Kids In The Hall, In Living Color (which I only really saw as much of two decades after the fact) and of course, the rise of MADtv. All of these shows (along with MAD the magazine, CRACKED, The Simpsons, "Weird Al" Yankovic and their ilk) were really formative to my early sense of humor.
Secondly, I'd like to thank the one we all know simply as "Stooge". His reviews were the first I read on those old (now defunct) message boards. Since I started reading those boards and his reviews in my junior year of high school, he really spoke to me at a pivotal time in my personal SNL history when I started to turn a more critical eye to the show I grew up loving to watch so much so (naturally) I wanted to write and post my newly formed opinions on the show somewhere online for people to read just like he did.
Third, I'd like to thank these three specific people by their real, actual names: Andrew Dick, Tim Cicalli and Jon Schneider. Yes, these men are podcasters and not bloggers like myself, but still, I consider them to be at the forefront of online SNL fandom, building new communities, bringing people together and leading longtime SNL fans into the next era of new media. I'd discovered Andy and Timmys' "That Week In SNL" podcast through the Voy board just before it became largely abandoned and naturally started following him and his podcast account on Twitter, which was where a lot of people reading this right now started gravitating toward each other at the time so naturally, we eventually formed our own little group chat, which later evolved into a Discord server when ol' Andy decided that would be a be a better "home" for his fans and acolytes and invited us all to hang with him over there. I had checked out quite a few other SNL related podcasts around this time as well but "That Week" was "that one" I kept coming back to the most, time and time again.
Just like Stooge inspired me to start writing, reviewing and blogging, Andy and Timmy inspired me to dip my toes into the podcasting pool. Naturally, when Jon started up his "SNL Stats" project (which he later renamed "The SNL Network" and then "Saturday Night Network" as it is now known as of this writing) a few years later, I sat up and took interest. You see, when Jon made his presence known in our little burgeoning new SNL community he put it out there that it was an interactive project that he wanted our help with (which is kind of what I'm about to do with this blog post but I'll get to that in a few paragraphs) so I reached out, kept in touch, and got to be a featured guest on HIS podcast multiple times (hell, I even got to be on the "Saturday Night Vibes" podcast once because of him). Because of Jon Schneider and his podcast, I got to introduce this blog to some potential new readers and ingratiate myself into yet another new like minded community of which I am forever grateful to be a part of as they made it clear they value my contributions greatly.
Finally, I'd like to thank all of you out there reading this right now. You make this all worth it for me and you are the ones I am doing this for. I'd especially like to thank my dear friend who goes by the name Blood Meridian. You see, ever since I joined Discord and became more active with Jon and Andys' servers there (in fact, Jon may have even started his discord at my suggestion but I digress) I have received more and more positive feedback on my reviews. Blood Meridian, in particular, has been my biggest and most directly vocal cheerleader as of late and his told me directly how much I've been an inspiration to him as he has started his own SNL blog where he regularly reviews the show. Hell, he has more motivation than me and Stooge have had in the past few years to go back and review older seasons in the present day (I guess life got in the way for me there, too but again...I digress).
One thing I've heard a lot of from my regular readers as of late is how mine and other amateur, unpaid fan penned SNL reviews mean a lot more to them than the "professional" reviews from writers paid for their work by well known pop culture publications. This warms my heart and I am eternally grateful to hear it. Hell, I've considered the possibility of putting my reviews behind some kind of paywall (two of the people I've thanked have their own Patreons of which I am subscribed to and I've seen a couple of guys with their own Substacks who review SNL) but I know everybody has different budgets these days and not everyone even has an extra five bucks a month to spare so I'd rather keep my blog easily accessible to everyone and maintain my integrity. I really like the independent/homemade ethos of this blog (I've kept this here on Blogger and never once considered a move to Wordpress for God's sake) and I'd rather keep that than make a hypocrite of myself. Yeah, I could probably make a decent amount of extra money doing this as a side hustle but I'm already growing my audience enough doing my blog the way I'm doing it right now, just for fun rather than as a low paying second job I only clock into on the weekends.
Speaking of which, I'll admit publicly that for a brief time over the summer (right as season 47 ended to be precise) I actually considered ending this blog. Thankfully, I became intrigued by the direction the show was heading in and you, my dear fans, reached out to me and made it loud and clear how much it would mean to you if I continued this blog so I'd like to give something back...and invite you guys to be a part of this blog!
I've invited Blood Meridian to write his very own guest post on this blog that will be posted early tomorrow afternoon. After all, we were talking recently and he told me the first year anniversary of his blog was ten days ago and when I told him that the TENTH anniversary of mine was coming up, he began pushing me to do something to celebrate, so...he's the reason I am writing these words right now and likewise, I am giving him the chance to write a few words of his own here.
I'm also opening up the floor to questions from the rest of you fans so, if any of you have any questions you would like me to answer, please post them in the comments and I will answer them here on the blog. It might be a whole separate post for this one or I might be parceling them out over the next few posts depending how many I get and how long it takes me to formulate answers. Either way, I thought the tenth anniversary of this blog would be a great time to introduce a "fan mail/reader mailbag" element (much like Andy does with his podcast and most recently did with his 100th episode celebration), so...any questions you've got, just send 'em in. Post them in the comments and I will answer them later.
...and hey, if you'd also like to be like Blood Meridian and write your own guest post on my blog, too...well, just let me know and I can arrange that for you, too!
Of course, this is all just to say thank you for indulging me for a full decade now and allowing me to keep on going with what turned out to be the only real creative outlet I've allowed myself to have in my life. If it means, the world to you, it means the world to me, so...thanks, everybody!
Keep those fan questions coming and I'll see you guys in a few days for my Aubrey Plaza/Sam Smith review! (glad to see Aubrey finally get to host, BTW. She'd been long overdue and hopefully she subverts my expectations in a better way than Selena Gomez did)
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