John Mulaney, 37, might have just had the best opening monologue all season! The former Saturday Night Live staffer was the first-ever to host the long-running NBC series on a Leap Day Saturday, he confirmed, and wasted no time poking fun at himself. “If you’re watching at home and you don’t know who I am, I’m sorry,” he began. John, of course, is no stranger to SNL fans having worked on the series for six seasons! “I’m like Louis Farrakhan, I mean a lot to a small group of people,” referencing the Nation of Islam leader who is also known as Louis X. He then added, “I am the first host to have done the least between his second and third times hosting…I have nothing coming up, I am here to promote the month of March.” Hey, we’re here for it! Later, he admitted he was flattered by a young woman who used her wish via the Make-A-Wish foundation to meet him — but concerned! “If I’m someone you wish to meet, I take the 405 express train a lot, I take the six — you can find me,” he wanted the audience to know.
He then opened up about his family life, reflecting on his dad Chip Mulaney, Jr., who was a lawyer in Chicago. “Clap if you have a dad between 60 and 75,” he asked the enthusiastic audience. “They’re so emotional! My dad hugs me so tightly sometimes, I’m like, ‘is one of us about to die?'” He went on to share that his dad — who is married to John’s mom Ellen, a former professor at Northwestern University — has no friends of his own. “If you think your dad has friends, you’re wrong: your mom has friends, and they have husbands. These are not your dads’ friends. Why do none of our baby boomer dads have friends?” he went on, noting that he thinks the entire generation of men “forgot” or are too consumed with money.
The best part of the monologue, however, had to be when he compared dads of today to the one and only Jesus Christ. “It’s hard to make friends as an adult male — I think that’s the greatest miracle of Jesus is that he was a 33 year old man and he had 12 best friends,” he quipped. “And they were not his wife’s friends’ husbands! And he didn’t meet them a long time ago in school — he met them in his 30s! 12 best friends!” The joke even got some giggles out of the SNL band, who were on camera right behind John!
“Remember when your dad went fishing once? These guys went fishing every day! And they’re all best friends and they do magic magic tricks for them, and they loved it,” John continued on the Saturday Night Live stage. Food for thought!