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Where have you gone, Joe Piscopo? Today's your birthday

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By ED BARK
Joe Piscopo occasionally is referenced in these spaces, and for reasons he likely wouldn't appreciate.

Few Saturday Night Live stars have fallen as far, to the point where Joe apparently can't even get on his old network's desultory I'm A Celebrity . . . Get Me Out of Here. That's gotta hurt.

But today, June 17th, is Piscopo's 58th birthday. So there's reason to celebrate him for an SNL tenure (1980-84) during which he and Eddie Murphy pretty much carried the show and saved it from cancellation. They also were best friends.

Piscopo used to do killer impressions of Frank Sinatra and David Letterman among many. But unlike Murphy, he had no post-SNL movie career, unless you're counting his portrayal of Danny Vermin in Johnny Dangerously.

From the TV time capsule, here's Joe donning fake teeth and doing Letterman while the genuine article shared a couch with him on a 1987 episode of Johnny Carson's Tonight Show. How many of us can say as much?

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