Dan Aykroyd’s eccentric talent was recognized by others in the highly competitive SNL environment: when he first presented his famous “Super Bass-O-Matic ’76” sketch….which was a fake T.V. commercial in which a garish, hyper-pitchman touts a food blender that turns an entire bass into liquid pulp….when to other writers and cast members….”the ‘Bass-O-Matic’ was so exhilratingly strange that many remember sitting and listening, open-mouthed…as nobody felt jealous of it because they couldn’t imagine writing anything remotely like it.” While Aykroyd was a close friend and partner with fellow cast member John Belushi and shared some of the same sensibilities, Aykroyd was more reserved and less self-destructive. Aykroyd later recalled that, unlike Belushi and other of his peers, he was uninterested in recreational drug use. In 1977, he received an Emmy Award for writing on SNL….where he later received two more nominations for writing and one for acting. In Rolling Stone‘s February 2015 appraisal of all 141 Saturday night live cast members to date….”Of all the original [SNL] greats, Aykroyd is the least imitated”, they wrote, “because nobody else can do what he did.”
Eric Idle’s work in Monty Python is often characterized by an obsession with language and communication….as many of his characters have verbal peculiarities….such as the man who speaks in anagrams….the man who says words in the wrong order…..and the butcher who alternates between rudeness and politeness every time he speaks. A number of his sketches involve extended monologues ….for example the customer in the “Travel Agency” sketch who won’t stop talking about his unpleasant experiences with holidays….and he would frequently spoof the unnatural language and speech patterns of television presenters. As the second-youngest member of the Pythons Idle was closest in spirit to the students and teenagers who made up much of Python‘s fanbase. Python sketches dealing most with contemporary obsessions like pop music, sexual permissiveness and recreational drugs are usually Idle’s work…. often characterized by double entendre, sexual references, and other “naughty” subject matter….as seen in this video below where Idle and Aykroyd present their interpretation of “Drag Racing Today”.
