The Betty White episode of SNL was quite popular, among me and the general public. But I re-discovered yesterday that fellow Golden Girl Bea Arthur hosted back in November 1979. I was able to watch online thanks to my Netflix subscription. (To fellow Netflix customers, I recommend checking out seasons 1-5 of SNL; you can watch episodes in their entirety, including musical guests.)Once the episode actually got under way, I remembered it surprisingly well; I'm sure I saw it back when I was 10 or so, and Nick at Nite was re-running old SNLs. There's a rather long skit that's shot like a made-for-TV drama, and it's about the tragic pain and embarrassment a man (Bill Murray) goes through when his wife (Gilda Radner) has a mastectomy. Bea Arthur plays the doctor who has to explain that even though his wife is "half a woman" now, he should remember that there are other parts of her body that are sexually arousing. What's funny is I remember the skit very well but when I saw it 20-some years ago, I was too young to realize it was a joke. Wonder what that did for my development.
Anyway, the reason I had time to explore such things yesterday was that I had a genuine day off. My friend Dave crashed over night (and helped me discover I've had a sofa bed all along, which would have been handy to know for any of my previous three overnight guests this summer). We had brunch on the block, and then he was off to meet with another friend, and I spent the whole day in utter relaxation. Went to the store to pick up some nibblers for dinner and basically watched movies, read and caught up with a few folks on the phone. It was surprisingly paradisiacal/paradidaical.
I think living in New York can make people feel as though they have to squeeze activity into every moment of the day, but that's unsustainable, at least for me. You gotta get your rest.
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