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ohiosmith Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Mar-09-06 05:16 PM
Original message
Eric Idle thoughts.


Eric Idle is the sixth nicest member of the old Monty Python group. He was born in the North of England what's so great about being nice anyway? Many fine people have lived richly fulfilling lives without having to worry about being nice. Nobody said Mozart was "nice." They didn't say "I loved Shakespeare's Hamlet but what a nice guy he is." In fact many great artists weren't very nice at all. I forget my point.

Oh yes, my point is - so what if I wasn't the nicest? It doesn't mean I didn't have a lovely life with a wonderful wife and a loving son and daughter. It doesn't mean my puppy doesn't love me. It doesn't mean I didn't have any friends. You see. Actually I didn't have many friends. But the friends I did have thought I was nice. Well not "nice" nice. But nice enough to have as a friend. I expect.

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Oeditpus Rex Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Mar-09-06 05:29 PM
Response to Original message
1. Yes, I quite agree with you
I mean what's the point of being treated like a sheep? I mean I'm fed up with going abroad and being treated like a sheep. What's the point of being carted around in buses surrounded by sweaty mindless oafs from Kettering and Boventry in their cloth caps and their cardigans and their transistor radios and their Sunday Mirrors, complaining about the tea — "Oh, they don't make it properly here, do they? Not like at home" — stopping at Majorcan bodegas, selling fish and chips and Watney's Red Barrel and calamares and two veg and sitting in cotton sun frocks squirting Timothy White's suncream all over their puffy raw swollen purulent flesh cos they "overdid it on the first day." And being herded into endless Hotel Miramars and Bellvueses and Bontinentals with their international luxury modern roomettes and their Watney's Red Barrel and their swimming pools full of fat German businessmen pretending they're acrobats and forming pyramids and frightening the children and barging in to the queues, and if you're not at your table spot on seven you miss your bowl of Campbell's Cream of Mushroom soup, the first item on the menu of International Cuisine. And every Thursday night there's a bloody cabaret in the bar featuring some tiny emaciated dago with nine-inch hips and some big fat bloated tart with her hair Brylcreemed down and a big arse presenting Flamenco for Foreigners, and then some adenoidal typists from Birmingham with diarrhoea and flabby white legs and hairy bandy-legged wop waiters called Manuel. And then, once a week there's an excursion to the local Roman ruins where you can buy cherryade and melted ice cream and bleedin' Watney's Red Barrel, and one night they take you to a local restaurant with local colour and colouring and they show you there and you sit next to a party of people from Rhyl who keep singing "Torremolinos, Torremolinos" and complaining about the food — "Oh, it's so greasy isn't it?" And then you get cornered by some drunken greengrocer from Luton with an Instamatic and Dr. Scholl's sandals and last Tuesday's Daily Express, and he drones on and on and on about how Mr. Smith should be running this country and how many languages Enoch Powell can speak and then he throws up all over the Cuba Libres. And sending tinted postcards of places they don't know they haven't even visited, "To all at number 22, weather wonderful, our room is marked with an 'X.' Wish you were here. Food very greasy but we have managed to find this marvellous little place hidden away in the back streets where you can even get Watney's Red Barrel and cheese and onion crisps and the accordionist plays 'Maybe It's Because I'm a Londoner'," and spending four days on the tarmac at Luton airport on a five-day package tour with nothing to eat but dried Watney's sandwiches, and there's nowhere to sleep and the kids are vomiting and throwing up on the plastic flowers and they keep telling you it'll only be another hour although your plane is still in Iceland waiting to take some Swedes to Yugoslavia before it can pick you up on the tarmac at 3 a.m. in the bloody morning and you sit on the tarmac till six because of "unforeseen difficulties," i.e. the permanent strike of Air Traffic Control in Paris, and nobody can go to the lavatory until you take off at eight, and when you get to Malaga airport everybody's swallowing Enterovioform tablets and queuing for the toilets, and when you finally get to the hotel there's no water in the taps, there's no water in the pool, there's no water in the bog and there's a bleeding lizard in the bidet, and half the rooms are double-booked and you can't sleep anyway, and the Spanish Tourist Board promises you that the raging cholera epidemic is merely a case of mild Spanish tummy, like the last outbreak of Spanish tummy in 1660 which killed half of London and decimated Europe. And meanwhile, the bloody Guardia are busy arresting 16-year-olds for kissing in the streets and shooting anyone under 19 who doesn't like Franco...
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Rabrrrrrr Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Mar-09-06 05:36 PM
Response to Reply #1
2. That is indeed one of the greatest rants ever
Especially funny to hear him deliver it without hardly pausing for breath.
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Oeditpus Rex Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Mar-09-06 06:00 PM
Response to Reply #2
3. What utterly amazed me
was when he did it live at the Hollywood Bowl, part of it while walking among the audience. Unless someone with cue cards was staying ahead of him, he had to have memorized all that — or else he's a genius at the ad-lib rant.
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skygazer Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Mar-09-06 06:04 PM
Response to Reply #3
4. That's what gets me
When I first started watching Python, I thought, "oh, these guys have to be fried all the time to do this stuff" but when you see them do it live and it's perfect, verbatim from the shows, you realize it's all written, learned and meticulously performed.

Absolutely brilliant.

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Oeditpus Rex Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Mar-09-06 06:28 PM
Response to Reply #4
5. It's really great when they do it live
and they try to break up each other.

I think it's in "The Secret Policeman's Private Parts" when they're doing the Parrot Sketch and Cleese amps the hell out of "Pinin' for the FEE-yoOOORDS?" and you see Palin about to lose it, but he snaps back into character.

A similar thing happened in the same film in the "Salvation Fuzz" sketch. When the Church Police show up, Claus and his wife and son jump in the air as they turn around, and the whole cast just about breaks up.

And there was a bit in "At Last, the 1948 Show" where Cleese, Chapman and Marty Feldman change some lines without telling Tim Brooke-Taylor, who has to do some fast ad-libbing without laughing. He actually does sort of stammer-chuckle at one point.

I just love stuff like that. :rofl:
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skygazer Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Mar-09-06 06:41 PM
Response to Reply #5
6. Love that bit with the Church Police
Terry Jones just about loses his wig (or maybe he does) and everyone is reduced to grimacing as they try not to laugh.

I've always been amazed at how comedians can remain deadpan when doing the funniest stuff...
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Oeditpus Rex Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Mar-09-06 07:33 PM
Response to Reply #6
7. I didn't catch the wig thing
I thought it was just from the pirouette they all did. Now I gotta go watch it again.

I need a bigger teevee. x(
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Oeditpus Rex Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Mar-09-06 08:32 PM
Response to Reply #6
11. I just watched it again
You're right — TJ's wig goes flying off, and Chapman edges over to block him while he fetches it. I didn't remember that.

TJ also breaks up when Idle shoves the slice-of-strawberry-tart-without-so-much-rat-in-it in his face. And Palin loses it a bit when he corrects "vicar sergeant" to "detective parson."

Pretty obvious they had a lot of fun doing the stage shows.

It's on "Live at the Hollywood Bowl," btw, not "The Secret Policemen's Private Parts" as I said earlier.
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Arkham House Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Mar-09-06 08:17 PM
Response to Reply #5
10. Watch the original "parrot" sketch--
Cleese almost breaks up a couple of times when he's doing his "joined the choir invisible" routine. Palin must have had this effect on him, because he--Cleese--also almost loses it during the "customs official" sketch...
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Benfea Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Mar-09-06 07:35 PM
Response to Original message
8. That's a canned rant, isn't it?
"Nobody said Mozard was 'nice'" would've been more effective if you used Newton's name instead. He was reputed to be quite an asshole.
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Random_Australian Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Mar-09-06 07:38 PM
Response to Reply #8
9. Whoah! He sure was! n/t
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