Every time I come across some poor sap who rebuts my persistent hero-worshipping of former “Saturday Night Live” cast member Will Ferrell, I like to relate the following anecdote as though it were my own:

Ferrell was on “Late Night with Conan O’Brien” some time ago, most likely doing publicity for whatever god-awful sketch-to-screen disaster Lorne Michaels was producing that year. Conan brought up the comic’s college days at USC, and Ferrell went on to explain that he and some friends had one professor in particular that they couldn’t stand.

Ferrell and his cohorts weren’t having any of it. So one day, he skips the beginning of the class and saunters in halfway through, donning a janitor’s outfit and pushing a mop and bucket. The professor and class fall silent as Ferrell makes his way to the front. Then, with a subversive smirk, he asks the professor, “Did someone call for puke clean-up? Where’s the puke?”

Clearly, Will Ferrell had been honing his skills from early on, skills that got him recognized locally as a member of The Groundlings comedy troupe and later on at the national level with “Saturday Night Live.”

When Ferrell joined the cast in the fall of 1995, the show was undergoing a massive facelift. Gone were the frat-boy antics of Chris Farley and Adam Sandler, as well as the bankable impersonations and characters authored by the likes of Mike Myers, Phil Hartman and Dana Carvey. This was “the new cast,” one that desperately needed a star to lend the show some consistency and win back countless disillusioned viewers.

Thankfully, Lorne Michaels and the rest of America found that star in Will Ferrell. For seven years his cartoonish mugging and shouting created an entirely unique comic persona that can best (or for that matter, only) be described as “Ferrell-esque.” He made arduous sketches bearable (the Spartan cheerleaders), garish actors watchable (Chris Kattan, Ana Gasteyer), and improvisation look like a routine part of live television.

Then there are the quotes. Rarely a day goes by that I don’t use a phrase or witticism gleaned from the book of Ferrell. If there was one thing that truly set him apart from “SNL” cast members past and present, it was his gift to hit just the right note at just the right time, sending all those in attendance into a tailspin of aching guts and teary eyes.

Here then is a far from all-inclusive list of some of Will Ferrell’s funniest moments from “Saturday Night Live,” introduced, of course, by their respective one-liners:

“Get off the damn shed!”–The first sketch of Will’s “SNL” career had him glaring off-camera as his no-goodnik young’uns played atop the neighbor’s shed. Not exactly Ferrell at his best, but it created the kind of boorish and unpredictable everyman-character he would go on to perfect throughout his tenure on the show.

“I once saw him scissorkick Angela Lansbury.”–This one is in reference to the man/deity coworker (Bill Brasky) of a bunch of drunken louts. You might have missed these sketches if you couldn’t make it ’til midnight (they were almost always pushed to the last half-hour of the show), but you’re all the luckier if you did. Other gems in the Brasky series had Ferrell devouring an oversized snifter and trailing off into incoherency.

“Strategery.”/”Play my song!”–As was the case with most of his impressions of celebrities, Ferrell’s respective impersonations of George W. Bush and Janet Reno were all the more hilarious simply because they were so hyperbolized. Having him lampoon the former Attorney General as a man-hungry ball of testosterone always had me in stitches before (s)he even spoke.

“I’m John Rocker! I sign my name with an ‘X’!”–With the exception of Chris Farley’s Bennett Brower, I can’t think of a funnier Weekend Update character from the 90’s than Ferrell’s John Rocker impersonation. Do yourself a favor and download this one as soon as possible. Pure genius.

“If you were a hot dog and you were starving, would you eat yourself?”–How he managed to keep a straight face while asking things like this is beyond me. Harry Caray must have been chuckling in his grave.

“I wrote this song after I killed a drifter to get an erection.”–Sometimes it seemed like Ferrell’s Neil Diamond impersonation wasn’t as much a parody of the musician as much as it was a forum for Will to just do and say whatever he could think up for a laugh.

Good luck in Hollywood, Will. If it doesn’t work out, though, I’m sure UW is always in search of new janitors.