The Best VersionS of "The Lion Sleeps Tonight--" The First Installment: Best Version on A Television Show.

You read that right: It's The Best VersionS of "The Lion Sleeps Tonight." A couple of weeks back, when I determined for the world what was The Best Part Of "The Lion Sleeps Tonight", I had the chance to spend an entire Friday listening to version after version of "The Lion Sleeps Tonight." And you would not believe the versions that are available out there. Some of them are great. Some of them, like this one:



Are not. That video is horrifying. Did that girl have a spider on her head? Yes. What's up with the axe? It's like "South Park" if South Park were a collaborative effort of those Hellraiser guys. So don't watch that video.

But I'm not here to celebrate the worst versions. I'm here to celebrate The Best VersionS of "The Lion Sleeps Tonight." Because there were so many great versions of the song that I could not, for the first time ever, make up my mind as to which, in particular, was The Best, so I broke it down into a couple of categories. And we'll explore those categories over the next week or so, to celebrate Spring (when, of course, March stops coming in like a lion and goes out like a lamb. So you see? I've got some method to my madness.*)

*There is a lot more madness than method.

Today's Version is The Best Version of "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" On A Television Show, and the winner is "Friends." Remember "Friends?" I loved those guys. They were like my Friends. Oh-- wait-- I just now got that! That title? The characters weren't just friends with each other, they were friends with me, too, right?

Odds are, if you remember "Friends," you remember "Marcel," the monkey Ross got to let him know what it's like to have a kid. Which is a smart idea, because everyone knows that kids can climb the walls when they're young and are incapable of any sort of intelligent communication. And they carry scary diseases. And have tails. That's what I've learned from raising my own kids.

"Friends" loved "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" so much that they did it twice:










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