The Pimple

Through the kindness of a friend (I've never found strangers to be very kind-- sorry, Blanche) I was fortunate enough to acquire, on loan, for no charge, and no interest, the 6-hour British extravaganza that is commonly known in titular form as "Monty Python: The (Almost) Complete Truth: The Lawyer's Cut".

It goes without saying that, upon receiving these DVDs, I was in an altered state. And not the sort of altered state I was, apparently, in when I wrote Friday's blog. Seriously-- sometimes I even scare myself.

So, the DVD is great. I'm about midway through thusfar, and it has covered the boys' upbringing and schooling, how they met at Cambridge and Oxford, who their influences were, how they developed the show, and their subsequent feature films, and their various reactions to the passing of Graham Chapman from cancer in 1989.

Like most documentaries, this is a mix of interviews interspersed with archival footage, photos, music and reminiscences. Obviously, the interviews are with Terry, Mike, Eric, Terry, and John-- the surviving members of the group, and there is some rarely-seen interview footage featuring Graham. Interestingly, Graham is shown being interviewed on three or four separate occasions, and each interview was recorded in 1980. Must have been a big year for him.

Anyway, this documentary, which is pretty exhaustive, even for someone who thinks he already knows everything about "Python" also includes interviews from folks who were not in the group, but were in the periphery at the time-- cameramen, musicians, and then there are also interviews from modern day celebrities who give their opinions/commentary on "Monty Python". They talk about how the group influenced them, what their favorite sketches/films were, and what the greater cultural impact of "Python" was on their upbringing, development as comedians or actors and the group's effect on comedy at large.

And, to be perfectly honest, there isn't really a modern comedian or actor out there who I give enough of a damn enough about to give much of a damn about what they think about anything-- let alone something as important to me as "Monty Python" (it's annoying to have to be putting that in quotes all the time-- do I really have to keep doing that?) though there were performers featured whom I respect-- such as Steve Coogan and Dan Aykroyd, whose name I can't believe I just spelled correctly without Googling or IMDB'ing it. And I have to say that, while I admittedly don't care very much about what these relatively talent-free people are saying about this 42-year-old comedy troupe, the documentary itself trucks along in a very inoffensive, informative and aesthetically-pleasing manner.

Until Russell Brand shows up.

And he shows up frequently. Too frequently. Like as in: all too frequently.

He's filmed sitting on a window-sill it looks like, in front of a huge picture window, and I cannot stop fantasizing about him falling backwards through the window, even though I know that there wouldn't be nearly enough force to break through it. He would definitely need to be pushed, and I would hurt any number of people to be at the head of that line.

Is that mean?

He's wearing some sort of ridiculous tight white shirt and it's covered with an even more ridiculous looking drapey women's type garment-- it's brown and flowy, with huge sleeves and he's got this fucked up kind of jewelry on, and his hair looks like it hasn't been washed in a week, and his face is all scrunched up like he's just smelled a wicked nacho fart and his voice is cloying and sychophantic and his comments are, largely, redundant and irrelevant.

It's like, God-- I don't know. Like the DVD is a relatively nice looking girl's face, and Russell Brand is this terrible pimple. On her forehead. And not in one of those strategically okay places where this relatively nice looking girl could cover it with some strands of her hair, or off to the side where, if she turned her head to the side and dimmed the lights you'd think it was just a shadow, or if it were on her forehead in a place where, if she furrowed her brow a lot, she could hide it well enough to pass.

LIKE RIGHT FUCKING THERE IN THE CENTER OF THIS RELATIVELY NICE LOOKING GIRL'S FOREHEAD, LIKE A GODDAMNED BINDI.

He's nauseating. He's cloying. He's immature. He's fatuous.

I hate him.

I hate Russell Brand. There. I said it. And I'm glad I said it. And I hope he sits at home Googling himself, so he can find this and tell me to go fuck myself, because I'd just love that. Or, better yet, maybe HIS FANS will find this post and tell me to go fuck myself!

SCORE!

That would be so totally cool!

I remember when I wrote a shitty review of a Sean Hoots concert, and his fans cyber gang-banged me on my old blog.

That was GREAT!

No, actually, it was. I thought it was hilarious.

I just am trying to picture what a cadre of rabid Russell Brand fans looks like. Who would those people be? And would they be people I would want to have over for dinner? Would they be pimples, or give me pimples, or burst like pimples if squeezed with just the right amount of psi?

Who knows?

All I know is, the faces of John, Mike, Terry, Terry, and Eric (and, yes, even Graham's dead face) are far too wonderful to be besmirched by one lousy pimple.

Fucking. Stoned.

Hahaha. You thought this was going to be a post about me using marijuana. See? You don't really know me at all.

Do you?

I was thinking about the scene in Monty Python's "The Life of Brian" recently where John Cleese presides over the stoning of an elderly, spindly little man for the crime of blaspheming-- in this case, saying "Jehovah." Of course, because it's Monty Python, John Cleese's character ends up getting mercilessly stoned by a bunch of men dressed as women wearing fake beards pretending to be men (you following this?) and, as they say in the world of MPFC, "Well that was all good fun, and we all had a jolly good laugh."

Pondering this scene got me thinking about stoning. A while ago, when I was delusional and thought that what I wrote on here mattered a nanodamn and that, if I could change just one person that was akin to changing the world, I wrote a half-way serious post about that woman that they were going to stone in the Middle East for infidelity. I don't know what the hell happened to her, but I'm willing to bet that, whatever it was, it had little to do with my blog. And I'm okay with that.

Stoning is a shockingly economical way to execute somebody, and I'm not sure that it shouldn't be re-examined in the Western hemisphere-- if we're still going to entertain the notion of state-run terminal justice. Ooh-- I like that-- "Terminal Justice." I think I would buy a CD by a band called "Terminal Justice." Do people buy CDs anymore? I'm not sure I exactly know what normal people do. I work in a mental hospital after all, and that skews all kinds of lines.

It skewers them, too. Which is another relatively cheap way to kill someone-- if you happen to know where very large skewers that can penetrate chest cavities/skulls may be located.

Still, I think stoning's the way to go, if you're on a budget-- which, let's face it, most states are these days. N'yah mean? Look at Camden-- they just laid off all those police officers and firefighters. Feel free to disagree with me (it's a pretty popular pastime amongst immediate family members) New Jersey sounds like a state that ought to be considering stoning.

If you think about it-- stoning is ingenious. No money spent on new technologies. No reliance on electricity or firearms or pharmecutical companies-- and green?! Oh, is it green! Especially if the stone has moss on it. But seriously, kids-- no waste! You use what's right there on the ground in front of you, and after a quick spritz with the garden hose (obviously with sprinkler-head attachment to conserve water) those rocks are ready to roll once again!

You can even feed the prisoner stone soup for his last meal!

Fucking. Genius.

So, yeah. Stoning. Awesome and such. There are people in this world who need to be stoned, and, even though I am not a real big proponent of mind-altering substances, there are definitely people in this world who need to get stoned. You see the diff, of course, jawohl? You know who I mean in the latter category, right? Those insidious, tightly-wound, Type-A people who walk briskly wherever they're going, even though they may very well have no place in particular to go. They're always checking their watches and tapping their feet and fixing themselves in the mirror and worrying. Worrying about what others are thinking, worrying about what they're thinking, worrying that people aren't thinking of them, worrying that people are thinking of them. Picking their cuticles. Biting their cuticles. Flicking their palms with their fingers. Fretting. Holding in their urine and their poodie for a more... opportune time. They use words like "opportune" and, incongruously, "poodie," often in the same sentence. They've got white hairs, and wrinkles. They're a frigging mess.

They're... me?

People always say that they'd love to see me stoned. I know they mean "on drugs" and not "pelted mercilessly with rocks," and, although it annoys me to no end when people comment that I would be funnier/better/calmer/more or less... whatever on drugs, I'm at least comforted by the fact that they don't want to see me lying dead on the floor with more dents in my head than on the front fender of a 1987 Cadillac Fleetwood Brougham.

Yup. People often say they'd like to see me stoned, primarily because they think it'd be a laugh riot. Nobody ever says that they'd like to see me with no trousers on, though. Thing is-- that'd probably be a lot funnier.

When John Cleese Dies...

...I'm going to be very sad.

He's not my friend or a distant relative, and we're not even buds on Facebook but, when he dies, I am going to be devastated. Maybe not as much as when my allergist died, but that's a different story altogether.

I wrote John Cleese a letter once-- when I was twelve. It was my version of a "fan letter" I suppose, and I included a Python-inspired sketch and his agent wrote back, saying something to the effect that Mr. Cleese was "very busy" and didn't have time to write back to "children in America."

Quite fired up about that, I shot back a nasty letter asking what, exactly, John Cleese was so busy doing, back in 1992? "I find it hard to believe that John Cleese is so busy these days," I wrote in a letter to his agent, printed out on our ancient Dot Matrix printer, "all he does is gain weight and advertise Magnavox TVs."

That earned me a letter back from Cleese himself, which I have, of course, since lost.

I owe John Cleese a lot, and I'm sorry that, in my porn-filled adolescent angst I basically referred to him as a fat sell-out. He is, but Eric Idle, the purveyor of "Spamalot" and a thousand other Python-related reinventions and machinations designed at netting him a small fortune from nothing other than resting on his, and the other Pythons', laurels, is more of a fat sell-out than Cleese ever could be.

Incidentally, I also wrote to Eric Idle when I was twelve, and I've a good mind to do it again, now that I have a marginally better vocabulary.

Like lots of other boys my age, I grew up watching shows like "The Muppets" and "The Dukes of Hazzard" and "Diff'rent Strokes." Unlike lots of other boys my age, I also grew up watching "Monty Python's Flying Circus," "Fawlty Towers" and films like "Clockwise" and "Time Bandits." Because I have a somewhat obsessive personality, I didn't just watch one or two episodes of MPFC or one or two British films, I engorged myself on all of them and, as I began acting onstage, I began incorporating bits of the actors whom I respected so much. As I grew older, the actor whose mannerisms and vocalities I adopted the most of was undoubtedly John Cleese.

Though you wouldn't know it to look at him now, (because he's a fat sell-out), in his hey-day, John Cleese was beanpole thin, with endless legs, which made him hilarious-looking. One night, after performing the Major-General's song in The Pirates of Penzance, one of the actors in the male chorus remarked to me, as he was changing from his pirate costume into his policeman's costume, that "you don't even need to open your mouth to get laughs-- they're rolling about in their seats just looking at you." And I said, embarrassed, "Well, this is when being funny looking is its own advantage. Didn't help me much in high school, though."

I realized, though, that it's my physical appearance that's funny, and that appearance is very similar to that of John Cleese. Tall, impossibly skinny, with forever legs that any runway model would kill Heidi Klum and Tim Gunn for. While I can thank my parents genetics for my "funny body" more than I can thank John Cleese, I can at least thank him partially for knowing what to do with it onstage.

Work it, girl.

A story came out a couple of years ago that John Cleese was almost killed in his chauffeur-driven car when his driver had either fallen asleep or had suffered some sort of medical emergency at the wheel. Cleese was fine, but I thought to myself, "God, what if he'd died?" What if? People die every day, don't they-- people far more important in the world than John Cleese. But I suppose it's the people in your own little corner of the world that matter the most, to you. Not that John Cleese resides in my own little corner of the world, though, with his move to California, he's a lot closer to my own little corner than he was back when he resided in England.

I definitely owe John Cleese my voice. My British voice, that is. Though it's been tweaked somewhat, whenever somebody (particularly an English somebody) congratulates me on my accent, I always make sure to credit the original source: John Cleese. He taught me everything I know, especially how to rip out a good, "BAAAAHSTARD!" whenever necessary.

I know it's morbid, and it's not like he's on a respirator or anything at the present moment but, when John Cleese dies, I'm going to be seriously bummed. I might even eat him, dig a grave, and throw up in it.

That's a... a... Monty Python... um... joke.

You know...

...Cannibalistic Undertaker... Sketch....

Episode 26...

It....

Nevermind.

I'm Immature

I wasn't always immature, but I seem to be getting more so as I grow older.

It's supposed to work the opposite way, right?

When I was eight, I was watching Monty Python's Flying Circus, and emulating John Cleese's "city gent" characters by dressing in black three-piece suits and bowler hats. I had a vocabulary far elevated beyond my chronological years. In elementary school, I watched ABC Nightly News with my parents, or without them. I once held a mini tape-cassette recorder up to the television so that I could tape the ABC Nightly News theme music, because I liked the importance of the trumpets and the base drums.

I would sit at my desk in my bedroom, in a sport coat and tie and I would listen to the theme music alone in my room and pretend I was Peter Jennings until the tape wore out.

I was a fan of Bach's harpsichord concertti. I was writing letters to the Austrian government in defense of Antonio Salieri amidst rising speculations of his culpability in Mozart's death. I wrote to the Queen as a proponent of arming British police officers.

Buckingham Palace wrote back, addressing me as "Master," which I liked.

As I've grown older, though, I've begun to notice my maturity level sloping downward.

I routinely prance around the house squealing in a high-pitched manner, frequently wearing questionable amounts of clothing and behaving in an otherwise disordered way that would understandably leave one to believe that I was stored in an airtight container for most of my infancy. I talk to myself a lot, which is perhaps less a sign of immaturity and more a sign of impending insanity.

I'm ready for it.

I feel like my sense of humor is also deteriorating, perhaps tending towards the sophomoric. I wasn't very sophomoric when I was a sophomore, at least, I don't think I was. Nowadays, though, my antics would probably make a sophomore cringe.

Last night, in the supermarket, (where they sell pancake-wrapped sausage... "ON A STICK!") I was fumbling through the coffee aisle. Instead of buying Starbucks brand coffee, as is required by law, my eyes focused on a brand of coffee I had never seen before: "Peet's Coffee." I stopped and stared at the bag, in disbelief at the name of this particular flavor of Peet's Coffee.

"Major Dickason's Blend."

I mean, what are people thinking? According to some other numbnut's blog, a gentleman named Key Dickason, a retired Army officer (who was actually a Lieutenant) was a regular customer in Peet's Coffee's original coffee shop, and you could create your own blend there back in those days. So that's how this ridiculous thing got started, according to wikhistory.

If this is a true story, I really like how Key Dickason can promote himself from Lieutenant, skipping right over Captain, to fucking Major. So he can change his rank with no problem, but they leave his ridiculous name? That's just silly.

In the supermarket, I started imagining names for other Peet's Coffee blends:

Brevet Major-General Twat's Aroma

Lieutenant-General Grundle's Grounds

Colonel Crotchington's Coffee

Second Lieutenant Bumwhacker's Java

I immediately selected this brand, obviously for no other reason than the name, and showed it to Mrs. Apron.

"Major Dickason?" she said, one eyebrow dubiously raised, first at the package, then at me.

"Can you imagine if they combined with "Chock Full O' Nuts?" I asked, grinning from ear to sophomoric ear.

"Yeah, it'd be Major Dickason's Nuts." Well, I guess she's getting a little sophomoric, too. Must be contagious.

I immediately started cracking up in the market, because the formerly higher functioning components of my brain are obviously eroding/leaking. Maybe that's what earwax really is: brain sophistication detritus.

By the way, I don't know how I feel about Major Dickason's blend as a libation. I mean, it's wet and brown like all other coffee, but, to my sophomoric palate, it just tastes like sugar.