The Pythons

Monty Python is one of my favorite shows of all time.  I first watched it back in the 70's - on PBS.  It was the show that many parents didn't want their kids to watch even though I don't recall my parents ever telling me I couldn't watch it.  Still, there was something forbidden about it. Maybe it was the topless woman in the news shop.  Maybe it was the incessant talk of bums and sex.  Preteen boys like that kind of stuff, generally speaking.

I still watch it.  My Tivo is full of it.  It's insanely intelligent and offbeat.  And it's still hot.

Two decades and a pop culture eternity later, "Monty Python" should by all rights resemble a dead parrot. Passed on. No more. Ceased to be. Expired and gone to meet its maker. Resting in peace.

Instead, "Python" is hotter than a Spam souffle. That's Spam as in "Spamalot," the musical based on "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" that is packing houses on Broadway, beginning a national tour March 7, opening this fall in London and taking up a 10-year residence in Las Vegas next spring.

...Make an involuntary mental substitution, though, and you might be inclined to sing "Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam" while deleting pitches for mortgages and online pharmaceuticals. That we still remember these "Python" gags, or that we might like to have our memories refreshed, is the excuse for the new six-installment series "Monty Python's Personal Best," making its debut Wednesday on PBS and continuing for the next two weeks, with two episodes each night. Then, beginning in April, PBS will air every half-hour of the original series, including two "lost German episodes."

My favorite Python sketches (an incomplete list and in no order):

1. Spam
2. Twit of the Year
3. Fish Slapping Dance
4. Knowhatimean? Nudge Nudge
5. The Gits
6. The Blancmange (I believe that's the first one I ever saw)
7. Dennis Moore
8. The Spanish Inquisition
9. The Bishop
10. Lemming of the BDA
11. Consfuse a Cat
12. Ministry of Silly Walks

Comments

[cpurick]

Oh, I'm a lumberjack and I'm okay,...

[asohrt]

Damn! I got stoned and I missed it!

And now, a man with three buttocks.
We've done that already.
Alright, alright! A man with nine legs.
'E ran away.
Oh, bloody 'ell! A Scotsman on a horse!
(elderly women applaud)