In the week between Christmas and New Year’s Day, I had a Christmas-themed dream. I wanted to blog about it at the time, but never got around to it. Now Christmas is long gone. And in general people don’t like to hear about other people’s dreams. But it’s my blog, and I’ll do what I want.
In the dream, I was working at Saturday Night Live twenty years ago. (I must have been a writer, because I have neither the talent nor the charisma to be a cast member.) A large group of people from the show was gathered in a hallway. Jimmy Fallon began to sing an improvised Christmas song. In the gaps between his lines, I would improvise lyrics of my own, creating a call-and-response effect. (Of the phrases that I sang, the only one that I can remember is “I wanna sleep this Christmas”. Those who have read the blog regularly will know that this is true.)
Then, as the song built to its dramatic conclusion, Tina Fey started rapping.
Everyone viewed the song as a great success. There was talk of the group performing it again, and even recording it. (Presumably, the other people present were somehow involved in the song, though I don’t remember exactly how; maybe they just clapped rhythmically in the background.) Fallon convinced NBC to let us to perform the song live in the 10:30 pm time slot. But he felt that what had made the song special was its spontaneity, and he forbade the rest of us from practicing so as to preserve this feeling of spontaneity.
We all assembled for the live broadcast, and I thought about how I would have to tell all my friends about it. As the show began, Fallon spoke an introduction, which included him saying, “Bill Robinson sings some great background vocals,” and I thought about how Jimmy Fallon had gotten my name wrong on national television.
We sang.
But, because Fallon hadn’t let us practice, our performance turned out to be a disaster, and everyone was disappointed.
