Oh Lord, I’m gonna have fun with Blogger’s new “Video Bar.” In the upper right-hand corner of this blog, you’ll be seeing some of my favorite YouTube findings.
Like right now. That’s Eddie Murphy’s 1989 appearance on “The Arsenio Hall Show,” in four parts. Including a surprise guest appearance by Michael Jackson.
Arsenio doesn’t get enough credit for how he funked up late-night television for five solid years. Looking back, we can see that Arsenio’s early-’90s heyday coincided with the “golden age of hip-hop,” and with the “black film boom” (John Singleton, the Hudlin Brothers, the Hughes Brothers), and with the rise of a new generation of black comedians (Chris Rock, Martin Lawrence, Eddie Griffin).
There was never a better time to be black in America. And Arsenio Hall was in the thick of it.
It’s wild… I’m only just now getting into YouTube. There are so many tasty pop-cultural artifacts out there, amidst all the homegrown weirdness and random noise. I look forward to wading knee-deep in the stream, pan in hand, to sift for gold.
Which I will then present to you on UBM-TV!
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2 comments:
How about the classic Chevy Chase/Richard Pryor SNL skit? I only discovered it a few days ago
SJ, the tricky thing about the Blogger "Video Bar" is that it doesn't allow you to hand-pick which specific videos to showcase.
You have to put in search terms, then take what the machine snatches up.
The Arsenio-Eddie thing was ideal because it was in four parts... and I could isolate it in the search.
I'm gonna have to play-by-ear the future mixes. And I definitely want to show some Pryor.
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