[lit-ideas] Re: The Monty Python Philosophers Song
- From: David Ritchie <ritchierd@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Thu, 12 Nov 2009 10:13:51 -0800
On Nov 11, 2009, at 3:54 PM, Robert Paul wrote:
Which movie had the philosophers playing football?
It was from Monty Python's Flying Circus which, I'm pretty sure,
was a TV series and not a movie.
Could be, but I saw it in a theater. Likely MPFC was both.
There was also a foray into German television, which featured the
philosophers' soccer sketch. You can find it on DVD.
I keep looking at the job announcements in History, expecting to find
a position at say the John Reed Revolutionary Studies and Culinary
Institute looking for expertise in Cultural History, eccentric
Scottish Explorers of the American West, sheep. Also some fluency in
the history of British comedy. I recently saw John Cleese on his "Pay
for the Third Divorce" tour, who told a version of the story of his
life, showed film clips, took questions. There were some refreshing
things in his performance. He asked that there be no "California
Questions," which he defined as a question which begins with a long
list of things that the questioner admires about the person being
asked. "I *know* I'm amazing," he said. "Sometimes I look at myself
in the shaving mirror and practically faint. So I don't need to be
told."
He had a new way of describing how boring his childhood home, Weston-
Super-Mare, seemed. "When the Germans dropped a bomb on the place,
we knew there was something very wrong with their strategy because
there was nothing in Weston-Super-Mare that was in any way close to
the value of the bomb."
Perhaps his best line came when he explained how much he was annoyed
by his mother, who lived to be 101 in spite of a two-page long list
of phobias. He would call her once a week, dutifully, and listen,
dutifully, to how she was "feeling a bit low." One time he had an
inspiration. When she said, "You'll miss me when I'm gone," he
responded, "No I won't."
"Why?"
"Well mother, it's because I'm going to have you stuffed. I'll put
you in a glass case by the front door and I'll say things to you as
I go in and out of the house."
There was a pause and then she began to cackle. Apparently she
shared his black sense of humor. Told everyone in the home that
her son was going to have her stuffed.
David Ritchie,
Portland, Oregon
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