Greetings. As I've continued extracting video from my previously declared "dead" videocassettes, I've been searching for some of my treasured long-lost recordings, mostly just faint memories at this point.

I hit pay dirt yesterday, and successfully recovered one of my favorite clips. It has nothing whatever to do with technology, computers, privacy, or the Internet, but it's certainly making me smile -- an increasingly challenging task these days -- so I hope you'll forgive my off-topic posting in this case, as I hope to bring a smile to you as well.

Dating from October 2, 1975 -- almost exactly 35 years ago -- it's a segment from the late Tom Snyder's eclectic late-night Tomorrow Show (aka Tomorrow Coast to Coast). During my period of youthful, intense nighttime code hacking, Tomorrow was on my regular viewing agenda.

This wonderful video segment features Snyder playing a taped performance (that he claims he had not seen previously) recorded by three members of the legendary Credibility Gap comedy group -- Harry Shearer, Michael McKean, and David L. Lander.

The performance is (for me at least) a hilarious send-up of Snyder and the Tomorrow show itself, with Shearer playing Snyder, McKean a UFO researcher, and Lander a very poorly disguised CIA operative.

A few words of warning about this particular video. First, it is not "politically correct" by 2010 standards (or by 1975 standards, for that matter). Also, at a "critical" juncture of the "interview," the audio briefly drops out and there appears to be a video cut. These effects were apparently indeed part of the joke itself, and have been present since the original transmission several decades ago.

Finally, this material was extracted from among some of my oldest personal tapes, and even after dousing this segment with a great deal of processing "CPU Juice," it begins abruptly and still is in fairly ragged shape as you'll see (especially near the beginning). Please be patient, it settles down considerably during the course of the presentation. But believe me, the original unprocessed source video makes the posted version look like near perfection by comparison.

I hope you'll find this small slice of comedy history as entertaining as I do.

Enjoy.

"The Credibility Gap" - Tom Snyder - UFOs - and CIA Poisons!
[YouTube] (~10 minutes)

--Lauren--