27 - Where the Hell Was I?

March 2, 2006

27

Charlie’s “100 ~~Things~~ Posts About Me”

#27. I have roughly twenty-seven hours of Monty Python-related material on videotape.

That’s two hours of Life of Brian, another two of the Meaning of Life, an hour and a half of And Now for Something Completely Different, fifteen hours (two and a half tapes’ worth) of episodes lifted off of PBS, and eight half-hour Fawlty Towers episodes. Plus another two hours of A Fish Called Wanda, which I’m counting. Oh, and a half-hour special interview to round out the set.

And yes, I know that some of that doesn’t really count as Python proper, but to me, it’s all Pythonesque, and that’s what matters. I’ve also got books and tapes and vinyl LPs — in other words, I’m a big fan. I’ve been watching the ‘silly six’ for years now, ever since I accidently caught them on late-night PBS as a teenager. One glimpse, and I was hooked. Not with the most popular skits, necessarily — sure, I love ‘The Lumberjack Song’ and ‘Australian Philosophers’ and the ‘Norgewian Blue Parrot’ as much as the next guy. Those are classics. True comedic genius.

But for my money, I’ll take the ‘Mosquito Hunter’, or ‘The Cheese Shoppe’, or even ‘The Fish-Slapping Dance’ (which Michael Palin claims is also his favorite sketch ever). These are the my favorites — they’re silly, and fun, and make very little damned sense at all. Just like this blog. Yippee!

So, as proof of my Python influences, I’ll tell you this — in high school, I was one of three people chosen (Forced? Coerced? Can’t remember.) to ‘host’ the talent show. So, we weren’t performing, per se; we were just introducing the other acts. Well, unfortunately for them, they chose me, a friend of mine, and a friend of his. All of us Python fans. And so, we lobbied to not just introduce the acts, but to entertain the troops during the setup periods with a skit. A Python skit. I don’t remember how many we ended up doing, but I do know that it was at least three — at the tender age of seventeen, we performed ‘Albatross!’, ‘The Job Interview’, and, yes, ‘Norwegian Blue Parrot’ for nine hundred noisy, rowdy high schoolers who were just glad to be out of class. And we were a relative hit. We even got a laugh or two, and brought a little ray of silly sunshine to all those kids in the process. Downright fucking heartwarming, isn’t it?

As you can see, my love for the Pythons started early, and continues to this day. It’s been a while since I’ve fired up the old VCR with Biggus Dickus or ‘the salmon moooouuse‘. But I think it’s about time for a showing. Now if I can just find that bag of wolf nipple chips…