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Monty Python 40 Years Old Today!
cheros was one of several readers to note that today, Oct 5, in 1969 was the very first airing of Monty Python. Although not every sketch has aged
particularly well, you'd be hard pressed to find a more influential and funny show. Heck, look at the Icon we use here to indicate humorous stories! Who among us can't claim to have viewed the Holy Grail at least
somewhere in the double digits.
This is an excellent opportunity to honor Monty Python by honoring the group's mastery of shock and irreverence and stop quoting, word for word skits and films! The irony is killing me slowly.
Highly apropos XKCD comic on the subject.
I disagree. Because you are quoting something surreal does not make it any less surreal. Monty Python is surreal humor, not original humor. Of course, the shock and awe of seeing it the first time is very effective. But that should in no way prevent you from continually enjoying it. If it being original was a requisite to the innate humor, the very act of placing it statically on a medium would remove the humor from it.
Of course it's quotable in the same way David Lynch is quotable or Salvador Dali's Persistence of Memory is replicated in anything from The Simpsons to T-shirts. I think that XKCD comic has little to no merit in claiming that Python was loved for their mastery of shock or defiance of convention. They were loved for their humor--be it unique, it was still not entirely original. Quoting Monty Python should make no one more depressed than quoting Shakespeare or Homer. Stop fretting about being unoriginal and enjoy it.
My work here is dung.
"Seems random" != "is random"
Big xkcd fan, but that particular one is totally without merit--the Pythons were obsessive rewriters. Every sketch went through multiple drafts, they chose their topics and precise wording very carefully. They put a lot of effort into finding the absolute most effective way of surprising the audience, and they usually succeeded. The brilliance of Python is that they took the kind of humor that doesn't rely on surprise (a la Laurel and Hardy), and made it so surprising that everyone mistakes it for surprise-humor. Most comedy incorporates surprise, but nothing stays surprising forever--the comedy that stands the test of time is the comedy that doesn't depend on it. Take surprise out of Python and you still have some of the best-written jokes the world has ever produced. The most common format for their sketches was essentially to repeat the same joke over and over again with different wording--Dead Parrot, Crunchy Frog, Spam, Spanish Inquisition, Self-Defense, etc. After the first twenty seconds, there's nothing left to surprise you even the first time you see it. The humor is in the flawless execution--and that's why it's so obsessively quoted and rewatched.
The original Howling Frog is a fictional character and has no UID.
Man did you all miss a load of karma by posting as AC. Oh... wait...
His chief moderation would have been Funny ... Funny and Insightful. Insightful and Funny ...
His two moderations would have been Funny and Insightful ... and Underrated ...
His three moderations would have been Funny, Insightful, Underrated ... and Interesting ...
His four ... no ... Amongst his many moderations would have been such words as Funny, Insightful, Underrated ...
I'll come in again.