If satire is the sincerest form of flattery, then “Saturday Night Live” gave a wet kiss to the would-be celebrities of Brooklyn Community Access Television [see video] last weekend.
On the program, Williamsburg resident Kenan Thompson served up a gentle — though a bit too accurate — spoof of some of the channel’s eccentric personalities.
Thompson’s near-sighted character, Mason Lemmings, hosts his own BCAT show, “Buyer Beware,” which is taped in his garage. (It should be noted that the folks at NBC used a “Brooklyn Information and Culture” logo on screen instead of BCAT’s exciting new “bugs.”
The segment — punctuated by Thompson screaming out “Consumer alert! Consumer alert! The peaches up at the Bushwick farmers market are nasty!” with little provocation — wasn’t too funny, but it certainly tickled the folks at the Fort Greene-based BRIC, which produces all of BCAT’s programming.
“Once you’ve been satirized on ‘SNL,’ it means you’ve made it,” said Greg Sutton, BCAT executive producer.
Sutton was reminded that Thompson was making fun of BCAT.
“Public access television makes an important contribution to Brooklyn life,” he said. “And as with all contributions, it gets satirized. Any mention of public access is fine by me. It came from a loving place.”
Thompson’s take on BCAT shows may not be entirely accurate. After all, The Brooklyn Papers Editor Gersh Kuntzman and Senior Editor Vince DiMiceli donned tuxedos and celebrated the year’s top stories with champagne toasts, on the year’s final Reporter Roundtable program. It will be cablecast on channel 56 (Time Warner) and channel 69 (Cablevision) on Saturday, Dec. 16, 9 pm; Monday, Dec. 18, 1 pm; Tuesday, Dec. 19, 1:30 and 9:30 pm; and Thursday, Dec. 21, at 2 pm.
Joining Kuntzman and DiMiceli on the program are former Papers staffers Jotham Sederstrom of the Daily News and Patrick Gallahue, who is now Brooklyn bureau chief of the New York Post; and Tom Tracy of the New York Post’s Courier-Life Publications. — with Vince DiMiceli
©2006 Community Newspaper Group
By submitting this comment, you agree to the following terms:
You agree that you, and not BrooklynPaper.com or its affiliates, are fully responsible for the content that you post. You agree not to post any abusive, obscene, vulgar, slanderous, hateful, threatening or sexually-oriented material or any material that may violate applicable law; doing so may lead to the removal of your post and to your being permanently banned from posting to the site. You grant to BrooklynPaper.com the royalty-free, irrevocable, perpetual and fully sublicensable license to use, reproduce, modify, adapt, publish, translate, create derivative works from, distribute, perform and display such content in whole or in part world-wide and to incorporate it in other works in any form, media or technology now known or later developed.