They didn’t have their eye on the ball.
One of the better things about The Lonely Island and Seth Meyers Podcast is that these are guys who recognize that when you work in the comedy mines as long as they have, you don’t always find gold.
On the most recent episode, Meyers and the Lonely Island comedy trio — Andy Samberg, Akiva Schaffer, and Jorma Taccone — reflected on the simple-but-silly Neil Patrick Harris-led “Doogie Howser Theme” Saturday Night Live digital short, in which the recognizable synthesizer ditty is blown out with a full rockin’ orchestra.
Taccone wondered what Harris, who finally had the kid physician role in his rear view, thought of the bit because, he said, “Sometimes I feel like we let people down.” Which reminded him of Tom Hanks’ testicles.
The digital short “My Testicles” from 2006 is, and we say this with great love and respect for all the fine people involved, far from the collective’s finest hour. The premise is that Hanks and Samberg are a Right Said Fred-like Europop duo, and their newest song is about how they do not want people to damage their gonads. That’s… that’s pretty much it. It doesn’t even have a catchy melody, which, weirdly, other Lonely Island hits like “Jizz in My Pants” and “Jack Sparrow” kinda do.
“I just saw Tommy Hanks recently,” Taccone sighed, “and I was just immediately feeling terrible that we let him down so hard with the short.”
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Tom Hanks performs his ‘SNL’ monologue, with an assist from Jason Sudeikis, prior to the airing of ‘My Testicles’
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Before the gang could get into it much further, Samberg playfully slipped Taccone a solid diss by asking, “Hey, Jorm, did you break your foot dropping that name so hard?”
Meyers clarified that Taccone (beloved to those with true taste as Cha-Ka from the criminally underrated Land of the Lost movie) saw “Tommy” Hanks because he was watching Forrest Gump.
“Oh, I see, he was just watching him on the silver screen,” Samberg joked.
Amusingly enough, the notion of “letting down” heroes with lackluster sketches has come up before on this podcast. Indeed, in one of the earliest episodes, which has even more about “My Testicles,” the gang confessed that before they “let down” Hanks, they whiffed it (so they believe) with Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin.
“My Testicles” was originally called “Sexy Song,” making it an even more direct spoof on the British group Right Said Fred and their global 1991 phenomenon “I’m Too Sexy.” The dance track was a No. 1 hit in the US, Australia, and several European countries. Know-it-alls like us love to point out that the little guitar break was actually based on the Jimi Hendrix instrumental “Third Stone From the Sun,” though the late American guitarist was not credited as one of the songwriters. (The Hendrix estate and Right Said Fred apparently handled this one out of court.)
Josh Brasted/WireImage
Akiva Schaffer, Andy Samberg, and Jorma Taccone of the Lonely Island perform at the Bonnaroo Music & Arts Festival on June 15, 2019.
To hear the entirety of the latest The Lonely Island and Seth Meyers Podcast episode, which is not completely gonad-focused, click below.
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