Sunday 15 March 2015

Obsessed with... the birth of Wayne Campbell

I'm currently adding my two penn'orth/cents to KQED Arts' new Obsessed feature, "a weekly series featuring everything the KQED Arts gang can’t stop talking about." My contribution to Feb 26th's post:



It may be a depressing indictment of Saturday Night Live’s current form, but I loved that the only truly funny part of the show’s 40th Anniversary last week came courtesy of Mike Myers and Dana Carvey resurrecting Wayne’s World. As a sincere, longtime fan who knows both spin-off movies by heart (my all-time happiest childhood memory, no joke, is when my parents pretended we were going out grocery shopping but took me to the movie theater to watch Wayne’s World instead), discovering Mike Myers’ first outings in character as Wayne has brought me so much joy.

A year before SNL, Wayne made his debut in 1987 on Canadian TV variety show It’s Only Rock & Roll (as a ‘contest winner,’ no less) in his own recurring segment called Wayne’s Power Minute. From the very first one, he’s still basically the same loveably enthusiastic, incongruously florid Wayne, just with a strong Canadian accent and a slightly worse wig. All his It’s Only Rock & Roll appearances make me laugh like a drain, but my favorite has to be ‘Wayne’s Encyclopedia,’ in which Wayne discusses his self-penned Encyclopedia Metallica, complete with ‘History of Metal’ biology flowcharts (“Amoeba → Protozoa → Zep”) and tips for living the metal life: “A Volvo is bogus.” With the self-indulgent horrors of the later Austin Powers movies and The Love Guru, it’s easy to forget Mike Myers used to be really funny.

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