Monty Python's "The Piranha Brothers, Part 1" (1970)

"Dinsdale!"

A searing look at gang crime in 70's Britain. This segment of BBC's "Ethel the Frog" documentary team spotlights the notorious Dinsdale and Doug Piranha Gang, the two guys who made the Krays and Al Capone look like boy scouts.

As far as I know Spiny Norman was never captured and Luton Airport is still out of service.

Part two of the documentary is here: http://youtu.be/nhV856sXf3w

A Charles Dickens' Anniversary Tribute (Courtesy of Marty Feldman and John Cleese)

 (Right ) The famous sketch of Dickens, entitled "Mr. Dickens contemplates throwing Mr. E. Wells off a large tower."  

On this 200th Anniversary of Charles Dickens' birth, the staff at "doug's Site" has chosen not to embellish on Charles Dickens literary reputation but to observe this occasion by presenting a past tribute to Dickens and his arch-nemesis, Edmund Wells.    

This classic two-handed "bookshop sketch" was originally done with Marty Feldman and John Cleese in the late 1960's for Feldman's "At Last the 1948 Show" and was revived over and over with various other comedians (Graham Chapman, Ronnie Corbett, Connie Booth, Terry Jones, et al) usually with Feldman or Cleese in the sketch with them. This as far as I can tell is the original. 

Not only is the sketch a sort of left-handed tribute to Charles Dickens, but also to Dickens great literary rival, the great Victorian plagiarist Edmund Wells (b. 1824?--d. 1875?/1878? or perhaps even $18.99?) 

As Dickens himself once said of Edmund Wells while at a Cardiff hotel in 1864 where he was about to give one of his famous public readings at a local theater: 

"Wells!  Wells!  A plague on that carbuncle! That bastard has nicked my book...again!" 

 Mr. Dickens followed this remark by flying into one of his rare but famous homicidal rages. He bodily threw a local reporter, two bell-boys, a spaniel named "Alf"  and several manuscript pages of his latest novel through the open window of his second-floor suite.  All the human victims survived thanks to landing on a large canopy over the hotel entrance and were promptly given free tickets to that evening's performance by the contrite author. 

 Great fun was had by all.  

 

When Did "Flaming" on the Internet Pass For Argument?

"Flaming, also known as bashing, is hostile and insulting interaction between Internet users. Flaming usually occurs in the social context of an Internet forum,  Internet Relay Chat (IRC), use net , by e-mail...and on video sharing websites. It is frequently the result of the discussion of heated real-world issues such as politics, sports, religion, and philosophy, or of issues that polarise subpopulations, but can also be provoked by seemingly trivial differences."--Wikipedia

 

I found myself checking out my You Tube website this morning, to see if any messages I left weeks and months back thanking or commenting on videos had elicited any responses. I only do this once every few months.

 

  It turned out I had several responses back to my past comments. A couple of them were nice--people acknowledging my thanking them for posting some rare video clip or something. I never expect that but its a nice gesture.

But the majority of comments on what I thought were simple corrections or reasonable rebuttals backed up by facts as I knew them, were  hostile. It was suggested that (a) I must be on drugs (b) a brainwashed idiot who takes orders from a cable television news station and (c) simply brain-dead.  A couple of the other comments were backed up by the kind of foul language I personally reserve for when I accidentally fall off the roof while mucking out the gutters.  

If you've been around the Internet, visited You Tube or a small to regional newspaper "comments" site or any website where politics, sports, religion, or any debate-able matter is open for discussion, you'll know what I mean.  You Tube itself has started to cut off commentary on many videos if they have a glut of these angry missives. Other still open have page after page of this junk that passes for "debate." I went through a couple sites today and was disheartened to see there was no end to some of the crud that passed for argument. Is this what has become of the  greatest personal communication  system since the invention of the telephone?

By now many experienced hands on the 'Net are saying "Well, what do you expect, Doug?"  Same old, same old as they say. Well, frankly, I think things are getting worse out there, not better.  And that's my point.    

 

Shouldn't more web users be getting the knack of this by now?  Why do more sites seem polluted by rancor and nastiness.  When did typing "you suck" (and that's just the lowest level of abuse) become a clever debating gambit?  What is It about the anonymity of the web that causes people to sink to the verbal level of a childhood schoolyard, or at the worst a prison exercise yard?    

CNN's Tod Leopold interviewed a communications professor on this subject for a November 2008 article. Here's a portion of it: 

  

"One reason for the vitriol that emerges on the Web, experts say, is the anonymity the Internet provides. Commenters seldom use their real names, and even if they do, the chance for retaliation is slim.

"'In the [pre-Internet era], you had to take ownership [of your remarks]. Now there's a perception of anonymity," said Lesley Withers, a professor of communication at Central Michigan University. "People think what they say won't have repercussions, and they don't think they have to soften their comments."

"'Contrast that with a face-to-face conversation, or even a phone conversation, where you can judge people's moods from facial movements or vocal inflections, observes University of Texas psychology professor Art Markman. "It's hard to be aggressive when you're face to face," he said.

"Moreover, he points out, aggression often carries a subtext of power.

"'A lot of times, real anger is an attempt to get control over a situation where the person doesn't usually have it," he said. In that respect, comments to blog posts are attempts to strike back.'"

http://articles.cnn.com/2008-11-03/tech/angry.internet_1_web-sites-blog-posts-nonverbal-communication?_s=PM:TECH

 

Let me first off say that I am not talking flaming from any of my regular friends here on Multiply.  People seem to be able to disagree here and there and get along okay. Those who want to spew  some kind of personal attack on me can have at it here--to a point.

Those strangers who come along to my site just to raise ire for the sake of drawing anger---well, horseman or woman, please gallop on by. 

 

Criticism I can handle.  Most people can.  But what I'm seeing on under-monitored sites is appalling. I'm curious what if other people have experienced this flaming lately and if they think this is getting better or worse?    

Fawlty Towers (Season One, 1975)

There are some shows that hold up well on multiple viewings and I think Fawlty Towers is one prime example. To watch Basil Fawlty's pathetic schemes come to naught is painful and funny--like watching a man trying to saw a limb off the branch of a tree he is sitting on--and then to take said
branch and beat his malfunctioning minicar with it!
His inexcusable physical attacks on Manuel and the odd traveling spoon-salesman aside, I always felt confident that each episode revealed a bit more sadness behind this hotelier's desperate attempts to crash into a stratum of society he could never pull off. It was equally true that few characters got their just desserts at the end of each episode than this demented example of the human frailty most of us share writ large in a person so, so very much in the wrong profession.


And I would caution all viewers please "don't mention the war" in any comments they might wish to include below. Your patronage as always is deeply appreciated and please consider stopping at "Doug's Site" when you make plans for next season's social networking holiday.

Michael Palin for President 2008--Approved by the Silly Party, USA

The following is propaganda, bordering on treason or common sense:


Finally, a Palin for the rest of us! Mr. Michael Palin, formerly of "Monty Python's Flying Circus", "Ripping Yarns", the films "A Fish Called Wanda" and "A Private Function" should be Our Next President.

The facts speak for themselves. In addition to being a world figure and a reputed nice man, Palin is also an explorer in the tradition of Magellan, Drake, Lewis and Clark, et al, leading a series of television documentary crews on global excursions around and over the poles and such to prove that the earth is indeed not flat. A man so brave that he once led an expedition in Peru to cross the Andes using frogs. He is a man not afraid to slap another man with a large fish. He is a lumberjack (and that's okay). He is a closet "trainspotter". Can Senators Mc Cain or Obama make similar claims?
Commander Palin is head and shoulders above any of the national nominees for Chief Executive and Vice-Chief. I understand that, unlike the major candidates, he not only writes books as they do, but reads those written by others as well!

Some in the USA will say, "Dream on, dude! That's downright unAmerican. That English dude from England is not an American citizen. You gotta be born here, bubba, right here in this here country or our territories. You hear me! Born here and the like, junior. Don't make me tell you again! "


But thanks to Article Two, Section 9 of the American Constitution of 1787, there is an "nullification clause" to that--slipped in by the Founding Fathers out of fear that just such a situation could come to pass as we face now, to wit:

"Congress shall have the power to rejoin our late enemies government if this experiment in self-government by the free and independent states proves to be a bigger pain in the arse than it is worth. So, if this whole Enlightenment thing goes gunny-bags, disregard all this other stuff about a "more prefect union" and all. We really got too carried away. Sorry. Sorry."

Or, as James Madison ("The Father of the Constitution") said in Philadelphia's Independence Hall during the Constitutional Debates, "Why should we assume future generations will be able to maintain a republic? Is it not possible, my fellow delegates, that our government's Representatives can and indeed will one day be as corrupt and as bad as that pack of rum-swilling ineffectual card-playing whore-mongers those guys back in London, or whatever the place is called, are? Why should we as Americans be heavily taxed to support a local government as bad as anything the King's ministers' could offer us--and at a better rate?"

To which the great elder statesman Benjamin Franklin replied: "Sounds good, Jimmy. Now can anyone remind me where to pee?"
So, it all could work out by a simple two thirds majority in the Congress. Our nation is in crisis. Let's us before it is too late put the right Palin in the White House!

http://www.michaelpalinforpresident.com/

John Cleese Goes Too Far

One of my favorite funny guys of all time is Monty Python alum John Cleese. I find it odd , however, that he runs a website that demands people spend 50 bucks a year to even look at most of its content.

It's more than odd--considering the success Cleese has had from his million of fans, it smacks of greediness. Most celebrity websites are a good deal friendlier to fans and only sell things that you actually purchase and can get in the mail. The question is, why does John Cleese think his website alone is worth a 50 dollar subscription per year?


Maybe I'd buy a book of Cleese for 30 bucks or pay 50 dollars to see him in a comedy concert. But, as big a fan as I am of the guy, there is still no way in hell I'm shelling out for the pleasure of seeing the guy's home movies or his thirty year old commercials or whatever he's offering. It's a disappointment to me that the guy who gave us so many great characters in Python and "Fawlty Towers" and "A Fish Called Wanda" et al, can't have a website open to the public--without putting a meter on it.




So, figuratively speaking, here's that ridiculous face right back at ya, mate.

Graham Chapman--"A Very Silly Man..."

Graham Chapman (1941-89) was probably the most important Pythoner, most often the catalyst for their best skits and best feature films, and that is why his loss is so keenly felt by many fans. The idea of a Python reunion film or special of some sort in the nineties would not have been likely, but without Chapman there was a nail to the coffin even if the others were game. It was like the end of John Lennon's life and the chances for another group of bright men to come together. The dream was really over.

Although he might not have been the most productive of the group in turning out silly films and things to amuse us ravenous hoards of ungrateful twits, he was after all the authority figure in so many of the sketches, the man playing the Establishment, usually a policeman or a stuffy military officer. The more he tried to restore a semblance of order and decency to the proceedings, the funnier the sketches got. He was also "King Arthur" in "Monty Python and The Holy Grail" (1975) and "Brian" in "Life of Brian"(1979) . Imagine any of the other Pythons playing those major roles and you can see why Chapman was an indispensible talent.

Over educated for his chief vocation (he was, in fact, trained as a doctor) Mr. Chapman was also the author of "A Liar's Biography, Part VI" (1980) . In an interview for the book years ago on a radio station, I heard him say that he chose comedy over medicine after getting advice about his life from none other than the Queen Mother of Great Britain. I got the impression that this was not a lie.

He wrote some screenplays for a couple 1960's British films with John Cleese, his closest Python friend, as well as numerous television shows that were run-ups to the Monty Python Empire. (Cleese was the guy who mostly wrote, and Chapman lay about making improvements to the work. I suspect Chapman was the one responsible for the more daring bits of funny business. ) Chapman also had his share of personal problems that he was candid about and did contribute to his being hard for the others to work with at times. (Please see Wikipedia entry.)

His greatest permanent contribution to Western letters was a suggestion made to Mr. Cleese for a sketch: instead of a customer returning an inanimate object like an umbrella for a skit about a shop with a questionable return policy, that the man instead bring back an animal...specifically a parrot...a dead parrot. The rest is history.

Here is a sample of Mr. Chapman's work, presented on You Tube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ww3MDDyBoZo&mode=related&search=

Correction: In the Captain America blog, Brook M. has reminded me that Marvel Comics "Submariner" in fact did not have a submarine at all! Being from Atlantis, he could get about under water just fine without one. I stand corrected, humbled and bereft of all my petty pride and dignity .

I should also admit that I made a mistake earlier in this website by stating that the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-5 was a conflagration between the rising Japanese Empire and the Russo Brothers of South Philadelphia. The Russo brothers did not actually attack Japan, but did once make a ruckus in a Japanese Restaurant in Teaneck, New Jersey.

It was in fact the Japanese naval forces who attacked Russian (Russo, get it?) forces at the carved -out for "Russo" colony of Port Arthur. I regret this and the Russo brothers are blameless for this and all other major 20 th Century wars.

Legal disclaimer: The long list of major crimes of shag carpet retailers Frank and Giuseppe Russo, while bloody and treacherous and mostly offically "unsolved", can in no way be considered a "war" in the strict sense of the word.

Eric Idle--This "Greedy Bastard" Gets Around

I don't know if Eric Idle is my favorite Python performer. I used to say my favorite was John Cleese. I was going to write this next blog about the alarmingly-talented Mr. Cleese. After all, he's taller than the other Montys and taller people tend to stand out a bit more.

But Cleese, despite some of the good work he has done, and the clear path he had to become the Icon of the group in films and/or television, seems to be a writer/performer who wants to leave his fans with less and less --certainly after the fun of "A Fish Called Wanda" (1988). After that film, he sort of flamed out on major comedy projects and took to writing psychology books and appearing for speaking engagements at business seminars in Chicago like he was Tony Robbins or Henry Kissinger or something. In movies, he's the "Kng of the Cameos", appearing in small roles consuming a few days work and doing animated films where little of his creative energies seemed to be in danger of being utilized. So I'm a bit cheesed at Cleese and I've written too much about him for free and so now...

It's Eric Idle who gets the call first. Maybe I wouldn't have picked him, but he has been the most prolific of the group in this decade. I also just read his book, "The Greedy Bastard Tour" and its basically a three month diary of his One-Python and Others show he did across Canada and the United States.

I missed the show--it didn't come within a couple hundred miles of where I live and by the time I was aware of it it was over and gone, so I blew it. But I think the book is full of funny and witty material and Idle is a modern James Boswell, writing about himself and others along the tour in a way that makes you sorry you missedthe show but, after reading the book, also makes you feel you got the next best thing. (see example below)

"Incidentally, did you know that the first draft of the Canadian national anthem, 'Oh, Canada', was originally "O, Sorry"?

Besides the tour, he wrote the Tony-award winning musical, "Spamalot" and wrote and directed a second film about his faux Beatles group, The Rutles, called "Rutles 2: Can't Buy Me Lunch", which the morons at Warner Bros. have yet to put on DVD. The"Spamalot" cast album is very good and Idle had the good sense to keep a couple of the original songs from the film, including the "Camelot" song, which feature s these classic lines:

We're awful mad in Camelot,

We eat ham and jam and spamalot

Which prety much sums up life in the old 20th Century, don't you agree?

Monty Python: The Appreciation Continues Unabated

I first saw a "Monty Python" episode in the Summer of 1974 on KQED-9, a PBS station out of San Francisco. As I watched the show, I was helping my parents pack for our move from California to Florida. I got to see maybe one more before the move.

The one thing I remember about it was that it was the episode where Michael Palin played a man set to "jump the English Channel". He did indeed try, and fell some 26-27 miles short of Calais, France. There was another part which made wicked fun of David Frost, then the most popular British person on American television. The guy playing Frost (Eric Idle) was a famous celebrity booby who took credit for other people's work and sat at a restaurant saying "Super! Simply Super" over and over again.

Parts of these shows were silly, then absurd or wickedly sarcastic. No quarter was given to any sacred cow, and continuity was for small minds. There was more behind some of the material than just getting laughs, but it couldn't take itself seriously enough to be a "message" show. There were a lot of the slang phrases like "sod", "twit", "stupid git" and such. I had had a taste of Marty Feldman's humor on various variety shows, but this seemed even less tame.

I first thought "Monty" was a sort of sit-com. But all the British sit-coms I had seen before this (like "Doctor In the House" with Barry Evans) were much like the American variety of standard comedic fare with lots of 'safe' jokes and predictable plots built around well-groomed and handsome or pretty young people dealing, say in a hospital, with crotchety but non-threatening authority figures in a set-up/joke environment.

This didn't prepare me for Monty Python.

I didn't fall instantly for the show , although I didn't have much chance to take it all in. "The Pythons" weren't carried regularly for a couple years down on the Miami-PBS channel. I did see more of them late in 1975--an "ABC Late Night" Special showed some of their sketches from the four seasons they had on the BBC in an out-of-order, bowdlerized way. I found out later that the comedy team sued ABC --successfully-- for the way they messed with the raunchy and biting parts of the show, such as the famous "Nudge, Nudge" sketch, pictured above, with Eric Idle and Terry Jones, which was apparently tamed by a ABC narrator to prevent the slightest American viewer outrage.

Come the regular featuring of the "Monty Python" shows that ran on Saturday Nights on PBS and I was hooked on them. Not all the shows were great, but enough of them were terrific to make up for any lapses.

"Saturday Night Live" debuted on NBC and I found that ensemble funny. But "Monty Python" was edgy and a touch cerebral and , best of all for me, British. It was like watching people from another planet in the solar system, tearing into all the layers of convention that this "Planet England" had built up over centuries and then knock them all down in two or three minute skits.

I soon acquired an 8-track tape (yes, I really am old) of the group's live performance at New York's City Center. The recording had most of the best stuff the group had done on the tube: Karl Marx and Chairman Mao competing on a game show; the legendary Dead Parrot sketch ("This....is an ex-parrot!!!); a good humor man selling an albatross; Australian academics from the University of Wallomalew, and all named Bruce, singing about all great Western philosophers being hopeless drinkers; a man who goes to a clinic to have an argument; the send up of homophobia, "The Lumberjack Sketch" and John Cleese announcing a wrestling match with only one competitor and the late and great Graham Chapman as a policeman busting up a confectionery factory that produces such delectables for their assortments as "crunchy frog" and "cockroach cluster" and a candy that shoots steel arrows through both cheeks as the unsuspecting eater bites into it. Soon, my friend and fellow Python-fan Brook and I were walking up and down the hallways of our high school, hawking copies of the Naples High Spirit Newspaper by shouting out "Albatross! Get yer Albatross! Albatross!" OK, maybe you had to be there, but it was fun.

I decided this was the best show on television. I may be accused of a sort of adolescent prelapsarianism--thinking something was better because it came before my "fall" into adult jadedness--but reviewing what I saw has not diminished my admiration for the show.

A couple years of "Monty Python" and in 1978 I got to see "MP and the Holy Grail" for the first time. It completely filled my expectations for what a film with these six sharp and funny men could do. There are few comic films I have ever enjoyed so much even though I saw them first all alone. One was Kubrick's "Dr. Strangelove". The other was "The Grail". I wish I had seen it when it first came out in 1975 and played at Naples Kon-Tiki Theater but I hadn't realized how good these guys were just yet. I made up for it later by cassette audio taping the movie (an early version of VHS or Beta, though not as visually stimulating) and listening to the "movie" many times. I had the dialog down cold. You have to really like a movie to do that and I did.

Bleedin' Anglophiliac Back Again: Monty Python's Finest Hour (and a half)

King Arthur: "This new learning amazes me, Sir Bedevere. Explain again how sheeps' bladders can be used to predict earthquakes. "

*************

Castle guard: "Are you suggesting that coconuts migrate?"

*************

Knight of Ni: "You must chop down the largest tree in the forest...with a herring."

***************

'Bloody' Peasant: "Look, mate, watery tarts passing out swords is not a system of government."

**************

a dismembered Black Knight--"I'm the Black Knight!!!" King Arthur--"You're a loony."

****************

King Arthur: "No more frontal assaults. That rabbit's dynamite."

***************

Narrator: "Winter set in. They were forced to eat Robin's minstrels...and there was much rejoicing."

******************

King Arthur:"Runaaawwway!! Runawwway!!"

****************

Arthur again: "The Castle Arrrgh. Our quest is at an end!"

******************

French soldier on battlements: "I'm French; why do you think I have this out-RAGEOUS- accent?"

***********************

Princess Zoot: "Welcome, good knight, to the Castle Anthrax."

There can't be such a thing as the funniest movie ever made. But the best example to my mind of what can't be is a small-budget classic released in 1975, "Monty Python and the Holy Grail". Well you can't say it isn't the funniest film set in the England of the Dark Ages made with two directors and no horses, just guys behind the knights banging coconuts together. With those caveats, this is the funniest film of the lot.

(more on this and other matters Pythonesque coming soon)