Elsewhere on social media: some dude asserting, "I'm so old that when I was a kid, Bill Nye was Mr. Wizard!"
Me: "I'm so old that when I was a kid, Bill Nye was a speedwalking superhero!!"
Ah, Almost Live. Assuming you weren't watching Seattle TV in the '80s and '90s: Almost Live was a locally produced sketch comedy show that aired before SNL every week (and actually pushed it back by half an hour). Bill Nye was an early cast member, and did appear in his Science Guy persona on the show. He was in plenty of other sketches as other characters, though, too. A lot of it's floating around YouTube, so you can still find clips of it. And yes, Speed Walker was definitely a thing.
I also just got a good laugh out of running across this sketch about -- go figure -- Boeing contract negotiations. Bill's playing one of the machinists here. I note that in real life, he used to be a Boeing engineer.
Meanwhile, also in real life, the machinists' union just finished a weeks-long strike. This sketch, by comparison? Was from 1989. Thirty-five damn years ago. The more things change...
Find out what it will take to get the machinists union back to work!With Bill Nye, John Keister, Bill Stainton and Ed Wyatt.First aired Nove




















