BassOmatic - SNL
Here’s one of my favorite skits from the early days of Saturday Night Live that I found on Hulu, the BassOmatic!
Dan Aykroyd plays the part of the sleazy TV salesman. As you might gather, the skit spoofs Ronco products. Oddly enough Ronco products and their sales methods have more or less survived to this day, just like SNL.
Another little bit of trivia about this skit is that Phil Zimmermann, who invented PGP (Pretty Good Privacy), borrowed the name to describe a cryptographic algorithm he developed for his original version of PGP. He said that it did to data what the BassOmatic did to the fish. He later replaced this algorithm as he improved upon his program.
Are you ancient like me and remember when this skit was first shown on TV? Are you an old geek like me and had heard of it’s connection to cryptography? Or is this your first time seeing this disgustingly funny skit?
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