Chris Farley as Newt Gingrich

April 4th 1995 was the day Chris Farley barreled into a republican congress meeting impersonating the speaker of the house, Newt Gingrich. Having the number one movie in America at the time, Tommy Boy, Chris made the otherwise stiff congressmen laugh as he portrayed the Newt as he had done so many times before on SNL. I had actually written CSPAN on several occasions over the years to obtain this clip. Unfourtunatley they never released it to me. A few years back their website was not as user friendly as it is today. Charging $106 for this ten minute bit. Therefore I had forgotten/gave up on this event until I was able to view it on the Huffington Post website (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/12/08/chris-farley-impersonatin_n_1136927.html). With this renewed interest in the subject I found CSPAN also updated their archives making it less expensive to own this piece of political comedy history on dvd, mp4 or for free (http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/NewtGi) or just watch the embedded version below. It should be noted that although claiming no interest in politics while alive, Chris' family were republicans. Recently his older brother Tom ran for city council and in the past made a bid for lieutenant governor of Wisconsin (http://farleyforward.org/). Chris Farley's view on politics is more accurately portrayed in this SNL sketch of Spade in America:

Chris Farley & March Madness

Every year around this time I remember one of the greatest moments in NCAA championship history. There I was sitting on our blue wrap around couch with a large pizza hut pizza, my black NCAA basketball and 2.1 seconds left to go in the game between Duke and Kentucky. After taking another bite of the double cheese, sausage and pepperoni pizza and gulping down a glass of pepsi, I watched history happen. Instead of giving a play by play, I will let the "late great Chris Farley" (as described by ESPN Page 2 ) tell you what happened next.



That commercial was actually in heavy rotation on ESPN back in the day but never had a chance to record it, so I appreciate ESPN for posting the video. By the way here is actually what occurred, lets see how close Chris was.



Chris Farley made it in a current book titled: LIFE Gone too Soon: Their Lives Were Not Long but Mattered. In the John Belushi section Farley is mentioned along with Phil Hartman and Andy Kaufman. I have seen Chris before in these types of magazines or books, but find this one interesting because in a way he shares the pages with the likes of not only celebrity royality (Marilyn Monroe, James Dean) but also religious, political and cultural icons (Jesus, John F Kenedy and Anne Frank) which I have not seen before.







And on a personal note my wife and I used the welcometofarleyville youtube channel recently to make a big announcement...