The origins of Ed Grimley.

From a Vanity Fair article about Martin Short:

Grimley grew out of an existing Second City sketch called “Sexist,” in which a male employer interviewed two candidates for a job, one an accomplished, over-achieving young woman played by the future SCTV star Catherine O’Hara, the other a flagrantly stupid man—“the joke being,” Short said, “that the guy who’s hiring says, ‘You’re both so good, I can’t make up my mind!’ ”

Click "read more" for the part that made me laugh out loud.

Short’s version of the stupid man grew increasingly broad and outré with each performance, until he morphed into Ed, with his checked shirt (an artifact from Short’s actual teenage wardrobe), hiked-up trousers, hunched posture, and forelock greased straight up into a point. But as much of a hit as Ed was onstage, Short, by the time he joined the cast of SCTV, in 1982, had not played him in public for four years and was initially reluctant to do so again because, he said, “Ed had become a part of my life with my wife, Nancy.”....

“A part of your life with Nancy?”

“Yeah! So I’d come out of the shower nude … like this.” [Makes grimacing Grimley face.]

“With the hair sticking up?”

“Not even the hair—just nude.”

“Just doing the face and posture?”

“Just the face. And she’d say, ‘Ed, get outta here!’ Or sometimes we’d get into a fight, and she’d say, ‘I don’t want to talk to you. I want to talk to Ed! Ed, what is wrong with him?’ [Grimley voice] ‘Oh, he’s jealous of you, Miss Nancy. It’s very sad, I must say.’ This was a private thing. So when I joined SCTV, I thought it was now way too personal to do Ed.”

“Marty—are you saying that Ed Grimley had therapeutic value in your marriage?”

“Yes.”

Chris Christie on "Saturday Night Live."

Last night:



He does a nice job with the comedy — even with this eyes locked tellingly on the teleprompter. And here's something that surprised me, in the end, when he recited these Bruce Springsteen lyrics:

Well, I guess everything dies, baby, that's a fact
But maybe everything that dies some day comes back
Put your makeup on, fix your hair up pretty
And meet me tonight in Atlantic City

I'm a little embarrassed to say this, but I'm saying it because it's political. When Chris Christie said "fix your hair up pretty," I got a chill. It had nothing to do with the substance of the comedy sketch. Chris Christie has that Bill Clinton about him. It bypasses the brain and goes to a woman's... heart.

Normally, I am steeled against the manipulations of politicians, but, here, caught off guard in this comedy context, I discovered something about Chris Christie. I know, you may say that I'm crazy to let my reaction stand in for the reaction of all of the women of America. But this is America, where politics feeds on feeling and women determine the outcome. Crazy only just begins to describe it.

It's still too early to bet on Chris Christie 2016 at Intrade, but I just checked.

Are you ready for another debate?

Here's a reminder of what happened at the last debate:

SNL does the VP debate.

Photos, quotes, and video here.

Biden, played by long-time SNL veteran Jason Sudeikis, called one of Taran Killam’s statements a ‘bunch of malarkey.’ When Ryan explained that it was an Irish expression, Sudeikis responded: ‘No, Irish is I come over there and smack that dumb look off your face.’

ADDED: This bit would have been much funnier if it had stuck with the first joke — Biden's laughing and interrupting — and upped it to higher and higher heights of absurdity. Instead, they switched over to different ideas and the energy flagged. Using Usain Bolt excited the studio audience, but from the home-viewer perspective, it was dull. Paul Ryan's water drinking was a funny enough second theme, and it was upped in stages, but should have had more of a payoff. At one point, the actor playing Biden drinks water too. Did the actor just get thirsty?