Live, from New York, it's Saturday night!

In the late 1970s, with the clock ticking toward 11:30 on a Saturday night, my heart would be pounding with anticipation of those words.

Part of the anxiety would be not knowing if I was going to get to feel like a real teenager and watch the show.

It was at the whim of another.

In the next room, on a small black and white television, a glimpse into being "with it" was about to unfold.

Panicked, I used the best form of communication I knew: A note.

"Is it OK if I watch SNL in your room?" it said.

And I waited.

At about 11:29 and 59 seconds, there would be a knock on my door. It was my step-sister, from years my senior, usually nodding "yes" and gesturing toward her room with her head.

SNL, in case you live on a cloud or in Nebraska, is Saturday Night Live.

In those days, the late-night show was cutting edge. It held back nothing and featured a talented cast of characters known as the "Not Ready For Primetime Players."

More than 30 years later, and through some ups and downs, the show still stands. The cast has changed numerous times, with mixed results. It has given us Eddie Murphy and Adam Sandler - not to mention Wayne's World - but also regrettable many busts.

I rediscovered SNL two or three years back. It failed to match its glory days, but I found enough humor in it - particularly with the Weekend Update segment and animated cartoons by someone named Robert Smigel - that I deemed it worth watching again.

And, in most recently, SNL's original fighting spirit has returned in such vigor that it may as well be our very own Rocky running up the art museum steps.

It started two Saturdays back, when no punches were pulled while spoofing what was then the most recent Democratic debate between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. It depicted CNN falling all over Obama, which they clearly did in more subtle ways, while dissing Clinton.

During Weekend Update, the segment's former writer and co-anchor Tina Fey (the host of that show, the first since the writer's strike) went on a diatribe about the stupidity of Clinton's fall from grace in favor of a media darling and encouraged women to stop listening to Oprah and get behind Hillary before it's too late.

In the intervening week, clips of the two skits received considerable hits on the worldwide Web. Meanwhile, CNN endeavored to make itself feel better by seeking out experts to explain there has been no bias toward Obama or against Clinton.

The print media wasted little time lambasting the show for, get this, using an actor who is half-white and half-Asian - Fred Armisen - to portray Obama. The fact that Armisen's face was darkened with makeup was likened to a minstrel show.

Lest we forget that Obama is a half-white man who never really knew his Kenyan-born father and is not even a descendant of slaves. He was raised by his white mother and Indonesian stepfather before his white grandparents took over the full-time raising gig.

If a black actor were used with makeup to make him look lighter, would there be the same outcry?

Methinks, not.

To his credit, the show's longtime head honcho, Lorne Michaels, not only supported the skit but promised another, which came this past Saturday and was equally critical of MSNBC's handling of the more recent debate.

While not as funny - in a "ha-ha-ha" sense - as the previous week, I like the stance. When the skit ended, the real Hillary Clinton appeared alongside Amy Poehler, who portrays her with aplomb, for some more joking around before Hillary said those famous words that still ring out from so long ago.

Live, from New York, it's Saturday night!