We Need to Do the Antler Dance
So here’s the deal: 2020 was a bad bad year. We didn’t start 2021 great either. Howard Beale was on to something when he said back in 1976: “I don’t have to tell you things are bad. Everybody knows things are bad. It’s a depression. Everybody’s out of work or scared of losing their job…We know things are bad — worse than bad. They’re crazy. It’s like everything everywhere is going crazy, so we don’t go out anymore. We sit in the house, and slowly the world we are living in is getting smaller…” He implored his audience to get mad, yell, scream. Well, I think we’ve been there, done that. Now let’s do something else from 1976: I want you to get up and do the antler dance.
What’s the antler dance, you ask? It is a delightful dance that Michael O’Donoghue came up with for Saturday Night Live. O’Donoghue was not, how do I say this, a cheerful Charlie. When he was head writer of SNL in the early eighties, he requested his title to be Reich Marshall. Before SNL, he wrote for National Lampoon, where one of his articles was “The Vietnamese Baby Book” where a Vietnamese baby’s napalm wounds are kept in a scrapbook. He was pretty darn dark. He didn’t write for the Muppets’ lone season because he wouldn’t “write for felt.” So him coming up with a cheerful dance song would’ve been like Bob Hope touring with Jefferson Airplane in 1968. But he did, and Lily Tomlin debuted the song/dance when she hosted the second season premiere. Ten minutes to one, she started to sing (And thanks to SNL transcripts for this)
A man in a mask walked into my room, late last Saturday night
I said, ‘Hey, Mr. Mask, what you doin’ in here?’
He said, ‘There ain’t no cause for fri-i-ight!
Well, I got a dance that’ll beat the bump, the hustle and the hoochie-coo!’
And then he took off his pants, and did the Antler Dance
It’s so easy, you can do it, too!
Then she put up her hands like antlers, and sang this chorus:
Put your hands on your head, like a big ol’ moose
Keep your elbows high, and your legs real loose
Groove around the floor, kinda leap and prance
Shake your middle just a little, and you’re doing the Antler Dance!
Well, well, well, the Antler Dance!
Tomlin started to dance around the stage. The SNL cast started to join her. Paul Shaffer sang the second chorus:
A UFO, came out of the sky, and landed in L.A.!
The top blew off, and a thing crawled out, that flashed with a purple ray-ay.
It ate concrete, and it had nine feet, and a face like an overshoe.
And then it took off its pants, and did the Antler Dance
Well, it’s so easy, you can do it, too!
Musical guest James Taylor was dancing by then. Gilda Radner was laughing, bumping Garrett Morris with her hip. We saw O’Donoghue dancing then, with fellow writers Anne Beatts, Marilyn Suzanne Miller, and Alan Zweibel. The Muppets O’Donoghue wouldn’t write for put on antlers and their spokespeople were dancing around the stage. Chevy Chase started playing the tambourine. Pretty soon audience members joined in the dancing. The credits rolled with everyone on stage doing the antler dance.
After watching the episode on Hulu, I did the antler dance in my living room. No, I didn’t make a video of me doing this. But I did feel less sad.
I am a realist. Doing the antler dance will not make COVID go away. It will not bring back so many people we lost last year. But just watching everyone dance was amazing. Gilda Radner was still alive and so young. John Belushi never went to the Chateau Marymount. O’Donoghue was dancing, not experiencing the cerebral hemorrhage that killed him in 1994. They were all having fun in 1976, a year when America turned 200.
So come on everyone! Let’s put your hands on your heads. It doesn’t matter if you’re bad. Just dance.
