Do you know the Saturday Night Live (SNL) skits with Kristen Wiig as a part of the “Lawrence Welk Show” sketch series? However connected I might have been to the “Lawrence Welk Show” in my grade school days in Wisconsin, I feel more connected to Lawrence now since our hilltop is directly above the Lawrence Welk Resort (now owned by Marriott as a timeshare) that sits adjacent to Rt. 15 between Temecula and Escondido on Champaign Boulevard. Apparently Lawrence Welk stumbled into the resort business almost by accident in 1964 when he was scouting an orange grove investment in North County San Diego but ended up buying a small motel and nine-hole golf course instead. Specifically, he bought a 4-room motel called the Esquire and a mobile home park Next door. After he staged one of his TV variety shows on-site, the property became an instant draw for his legions of fans, and it grew from there into a full resort with a theater, golf, and vacation homes. Welk passed away in 1992, but a 2001 project added another 200 timeshare condos and a recreation center at the Escondido flagship property. Today the 450-acre flagship still has two 18-hole golf courses, the Welk Theater (still running live productions), eight pools, and a farmers market — though it’s now Hyatt-run rather than Welk family-run. Whenever I tell people where we live, I start by asking if they know the Lawrence Welk Resort as a reference point.
But back to Kristen Wiig. One of her most memorable characters on SNL is Dooneese, the fourth of the Maharelle Sisters from the Finger Lakes (my family spawning grounds). She is part of a singing act on a parody of the old Lawrence Welk variety show, hosted by Fred Armisen as Welk. Each performance introduces three conventionally attractive, flirtatious sisters first, before bringing out Dooneese. Her sisters are attractive and flirtatious young women, but that’s a stark contrast to Dooneese herself. She has exaggerated “deformities” like an extremely tall forehead, tiny hands the size of an infant’s, and an odd canine tooth. When it’s her turn to sing, her contribution is invariably a weird or unsettling tangent like describing eating cats, or having worms in her hair, and she often makes inappropriate, handsy advances toward whichever male performer is in the sketch. In Wiig’s final episode as a cast member on SNL, Jon Hamm played an Italian crooner character who, unlike most guest stars, actually seemed drawn to Dooneese, leading to an exaggerated makeout scene as a send-off. Wiig returned for “SNL50: The Anniversary Special” in February 2025, joining Scarlett Johansson, Kim Kardashian, and Ana Gasteyer as her fellow sisters, with Will Ferrell playing Robert Goulet. In that sketch, Wiig’s Dooneese licked her own tiny hands, stroked Johansson’s face, and drummed on Kardashian’s backside while delivering one of her trademark bizarre monologues. The character and skits are such beloved recurring bits precisely because of the tonal whiplash, going from wholesome variety-show schmaltz to deeply uncomfortable in about ten seconds flat.
I used to find Dooneese so funny because of her small hands. Her weird mannerisms were more typical of other SNL characters, the the small hands were strangely intriguing. We’ve all heard the controversy over Donald Trump’s hand size…it’s a genuinely odd, decades-long saga. The origin was in 1988 when Spy magazine co-founders Graydon Carter and Kurt Andersen coined the nickname “short-fingered vulgarian” for Trump. It was a deliberately juvenile, ad hominem physical jab that stuck. Spy used it in virtually every story that mentioned him from then on. And of course, Trump couldn’t let it go. Carter later wrote that for years afterward, he’d periodically receive an envelope from Trump containing a magazine photo with his hand circled in gold Sharpie “in a valiant effort to highlight the length of his fingers,” along with a note saying “See, not so short!” Carter said he’d mail it back with “Actually, quite short.” This apparently went on for over 25 years. Then it went mainstream in 2016. As Trump surged in the GOP primary polls, Carter revived the joke in a Vanity Fair piece, and it became a favorite line of attack from Trump’s critics. There was even a comparison using his bronze handprint at Madame Tussauds, which one outlet found put his hands smaller than roughly 85% of American men’s. Marco Rubio then weaponized it on the campaign trail, joking that despite Trump’s height, his hands were the size of someone five inches shorter. My guess is that Marco doesn’t bring it up so much any more…
Everyone loves poking fun at Donald Trump, probably less because his hands are small than because he is so incapable of taking a joke and laughing at himself. It’s the classic sign of someone who takes themselves too seriously and thereby feeds the beast because people tune into those sensibilities very quickly and just love picking at them based mostly on the reaction they invoke.
I never found the Trump hand thing as funny as the Dooneese skits, but now I’m wondering if I should find either so very funny, given my own hand predicament. Part of my three times per week training sessions are always dedicated to hand and arm exercises now that I’m so focused on my peripheral nerve issues. We do a lot of wrist curls and grip strength exercises. I have spent more time looking at my hands the last few months than I ever had my entire life. I now notice what my oldest son pointed out to me and his sister, that she and I have “pancake hands”. I’m guessing that means they are flatter than normal. Now, when I look at my hands, wrists and forearms, I find myself thinking that they DO seem much more delicate than I had ever noticed. The hand muscles are, indeed, less prominent on my left than on my right and my wrists and lower forearms do seem, dare I say it, slender. How is that possible on a guy who is as big as I’ve been my whole life? Am I turning into a version of Dooneese? Luckily my forehead still has a fairly tight hairline, otherwise I’d be a lot more worried.
Once you get an image like the Dooneese hands into your head, its hard to get it out. I gotta stop staring at my hands and just accept the fact that maybe I’m just a little guy who has lived in a big man’s body his whole life…