Lemon Curry?
When I have a stressful day, many things help me
blow off steam: having a cocktail, swimming some
laps, walking on the beach. But there is perhaps
nothing more effective—or more fun—than
popping in one of the DVDs from my 14-disc
collection of "Monty Python's Flying Circus." Lemon
curry? No matter how many times I watch the
episodes, they never fail to make me laugh out
loud.
Take what I watched last night, for instance:
the Olympic Final of the Men's Hide and Seek
competition, in which the competitors have the
whole world in which to hide. Terry Jones was
attempting to beat the world record set by Graham
Chapman of 11 years, 2 months, 26 days, 9 hours, 3
minutes and 27.4 seconds. While Chapman hid in the
bowels of a castle in Sardinia, Jones searched high
and low for him in Great Britain, Madagascar and
Budapest. As time ran out 11 years later, Jones had
a brainstorm and hopped a flight to Sardinia, where
he found Chapman by a stroke of luck. Did he beat
the world record? No. Did he lose? No. In an
amazing coincidence, he tied it, finding Chapman in
11 years, 2 months, 26 days, 9 hours, 3 minutes and
27.4 seconds.
"Absurd" perhaps best describes the style of
Monty Python's humor. But the troupe is not so
easily pigeonholed by one adjective.
"Intellectual," "bawdy," "nonsensical," "fanciful"
and many others would fit equally well. Lemon
curry? Such creative and original humor has not
been seen since the Pythons disbanded.
There is the famous Dead Parrot sketch, wherein
John Cleese complains about the parrot he bought,
claiming that it had died, passed on, gone to meet
its maker, shuffled off this mortal coil, run down
the curtain and joined the choir invisible, kicked
the bucket, was dead, demised, deceased, expired,
bereft of life, had ceased to be... that it was, in
a word, an ex-parrot.
Lemon curry?
And then there are Mrs. Premise and Mrs.
Conclusion, two terrifically ugly British
housewives played by Cleese and Chapman, who
discuss the philosophy of Jean-Paul Saartre while
watching the telly. And then there's my favorite,
the 18-second Raymond Luxury Yacht sketch. Pure
nonsensical Pythonesque humor. It'd take me longer
to describe it than it would for you to watch it,
so I'll leave it at that.
Whether it's cross-dressing lumberjacks,
exploding penguins or a delusional Spanish
Inquisition, the Pythons never fail to make me
laugh... again and again.
Development note: I've
noticed that this site doesn't look like it should
in Netscape Navigator. Rather than waste time
jury-rigging it to look right in a
soon-to-be-obsolete browser, I'll just add the
cliché "This site best viewed with Internet
Explorer."
©2003 Michael
Strickland ALL RIGHTS
RESERVED
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What is "The Daily Strick"?
I have long called
myself a writer, but too often I don't do
what a writer must do daily: write. So
you, dear reader, are the beneficiary of
my resolution to make a positive change in
at least one area of my life. Every single
day of this new year, I will write
something, anything, and post it here. It
is my intention to use this daily exercise
to jump-start my too-long-dormant creative
energies, and perhaps generate some
worthwhile material this year. Hopefully
you will find at least an occasional
amusement or insight in my daily
musings.
Today's
Column
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Previously...
4/23:
My
Father Midas
4/22:
Earth
Day
4/21:
Joshua
Tree, Part III
4/20:
Joshua
Tree, Part II
4/19:
Joshua
Tree, Part I
4/18:
Royal
Flush
4/17:
A
Long Strange Trip
4/16:
A
New Line to Back
4/15:
Still
Writing
4/14:
Conspiracy
Theory
4/13:
Los
Coronados
4/12:
Y2K
in Y2K3
4/11:
Slow
Glass
4/10:
Freedom
of Speech
4/9:
Why
We're Fighting
4/8:
Eucalyptus
Memories
4/7:
Sleep
4/6:
Writing,
Just Not Here
4/5:
Sci-Files
Trivia
4/4:
Sobering
Up
4/3:
Great
White Hope
4/2:
Entropy
4/1:
Peace
on Earth
Previous months in
The
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