MR.GUMBY TALKS DIRTY

Eddie Murphy's impersonation of Michael Jackson singing "She's Out Of My Life" isn't merely savagely accurate, and funny ("Tito, give me some tissue"), it's shrewd. Skewering Jackson, and the other singers in the bit, including mid-and-late period Elvis, Stevie Wonder (a long-winded Grammy acceptance speech) and James Brown (grunting unintelligible), sets up the terms of Murphy's fame: other comics aren't the competition, only pop stars.