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Louis C.K. Sends A Letter From SNL: "It's Pretty Impossible To Describe" NYC Right Now
By
Jen Carlson
Published Nov 3, 2012
Modified Nov 3, 2012
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By
Jen Carlson
Published Nov 3, 2012
Modified Nov 3, 2012
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Louis C.K. is hosting Saturday Night Live tonight, bringing some much needed comic relief to a city that was just hit by a massive storm, and hasn't even begun to fully recover yet. He just sent out a nice letter from his dressing room at Studio 8H that is worth sharing—it reads, in part:
"Hello. It's Louis here. I'm clacking this to you on my phone in my dressing room here at Studio 8H, right in 30 Rockefeller Center, in Manhattan, New York City, New York, America, world, current snapshot of all existence everywhere.
Tonight I'm hosting Saturday Night Live, something I zero ever in my life saw happening to me. And yet here it is completely most probably happening (I mean, ANYTHING could NOT happen. So we'll see).
Here we are in the middle of New York City, which was just slammed by a hurricane, leaving behind so much trouble, so much difficulty and trauma, which everyone here is still dealing with every day. Last night we shot some pre-tape segments in Greenwich Village, which was pitch black dark for blocks and blocks, as it has been for a week now.
It's pretty impossible to describe walking through these city streets in total darkness. It can't even be called a trip through time, because as long as New York has lived, it's been lit. By electricity, gas lamps, candlelight, kerosene. But this was pitch black, street after street, corner round corner. And for me, the Village being the very place that made me into a comedian and a man, to walk through the heart of it and feel like, in a way, it was dead. I can't tell you how that felt. And you also had a palpable sense that inside each dark window was a family or a student or an artist or an old woman living alone, just being in the dark and waiting for the day to come back. Like we were all having one big sleep over, but not so much fun as that.
This is how a lot of the city is still. I know people in Queens, Brooklyn, Staten Island, New Jersey, all over, are not normal yet. And not normal is hard.
Anyway. I just wanted to let you know. If you watch the show tonight, when Don Pardo says my name and you see me walking out, all the shit in this email is what I'll be thinking.
You can read the full thing here.
Tagged
hurricane sandy
louis c.k.
saturday night live
Jen Carlson
Jen Carlson is a former WNYC and Gothamist editor.
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Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
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