Classic Material

I just got home, and flipping the channels I see “SNL:The Very Best Of Eddie Murphy” is on. I’ve been planning to buy this dvd, but I keep forgetting to. This is when Eddie was the funniest nigga alive. I’ll never forget how I was introduced to this cat. I was probably 8, 9 years old and a die-hard WWF fiend…and on the Saturday morning show, they would be showing the promo’s for “Saturday Night’s Main Event”. What ?!?!? Wrestling on tv at night ? I’m all over it ! Asking all the homies on the block, “Hey, you watchin’ Hulk Hogan vs. Iron Sheik tonight ? 11:30, It’s gon’ be fresh…Cage match !”(Yeah niggas, I said “fresh”). Anyways, my dumbass figured that it was gonna be an every week thing. So, the next week I wait for it to come on, and some shit called “Saturday Night Live” comes on. WTF ? Where’s The Hulkster ? I’ve been robbed…maybe it’s coming on afterward. So, fighting to stay awake, I watch this other show. I didn’t get much of it, until this dude comes out pretending to be Mr. Rogers, and it was funny to me. Fast forward to week 3…same story, waiting to say my prayers and take my vitamins like a true Hulkamaniac, and again it wasn’t on, but the Mr. Rogers dude was now dressed like Gumby and talking shit. And it was funny, not because I got the jokes, but because a nigga was actually watching Gumby & Pokey after school everyday, and to see a bad Gumby cracked me up. After about a month, I was watching this shit every week. Mr. Robinson’s neighborhood, Gumby, Shabazz K. Morton ( I actually went to school and told my teacher that the recipe for peanut butter was stolen from George Washington Carver by 2 white dudes named Edward “Skippy” Williamson and Frederick “Jif” Armstrong), James Brown, but what sealed the deal was the Buckwheat skit and the Velvet Jones skits. After that, this Eddie Murphy dude could do no wrong in my book. I was sneaking and listening to my older cousins Eddie Murphy albums and going with them to see his movies (without my mom or grandparents knowing). For those of you out of the loop, here’s a transcript of my favorite skit:

I Wanna Be a Ho – by Velvet Jones, an educator from the Velvet Jones School of Technology.

“Hi, I’m Velvet Jones. Are you a female high school dropout, between the ages of sixteen and twenty-five? Are you tired of lying around in bed all day with nothing to do? Well, you never need get up again, because in six short weeks I can train you to be high paying ho. Just think – fifteen hundred dollars a week, without even leaving the comfort of your own bedroom. Sound too good to be true? Just send for my new book, “I Wanna Be a Ho.”

voiceover:
Additional Velvet Jones publications include “I Wanna Drive a Pink Cadillac, Wear Diamond Rings and Kick Women in the Butt” (The I wanna be a pimp guidebook); The Velvet Jones Harlequin Romance series featuring “Velvet Love” and “Kicked in the Butt by Love”, and an exciting new videocassette entitled “The Exercises of Love”. Yes, it’s all here: the squatting, the thrusting, the grunting and the groaning. Take it from Velvet, these are exercises you will want to watch again and again.