the last book I ever read (Al Franken, Giant of the Senate by Al Franken, excerpt three)

from Al Franken, Giant of the Senate by Al Franken:

Of the original cast, Danny was the one we teamed up with the most. He and Tom created the Coneheads after taking a trip together to Easter Island. Tom and I wrote Danny as Julia Child bleeding to death after cutting herself deboning a chicken. We collaborated with him on sleazy characters like Irwin Mainway, purveyor of dangerous toys for kids, like Bag o’ Glass. Danny played two presidents with mustache: a hyper-competent Jimmy Carter early in his term, taking phone calls with Billy Murray’s Walter Cronkite and masterfully talking down a young man on a bad acid trip (played by Tom, of course), and an inebriated Nixon talking to White House portraits during those stormy Final Days.

I worked with so many talented men and women going through exhilarating but also sometimes very difficult periods of their lives. Putting on a live ninety-minute comedy show week after week can be thrilling, and it can be painfully stressful. And of course, we were all of a very tender age. People had sex and fell in love. But mostly had sex. I personally had 227 sexual encounters during my fifteen years at SNL. All of them with Franni.