You Blow Me Awaaaayyyy!

Always enjoyed the Monty Python troupe. In high school I saw The Holy Grail and it was all downhill from there ;-). Actually that was just the beginning for me. As a music nut I discovered they had some comedy albums, and I snatched those up from my local used record store as fast as I could earn the pennies to buy them. Oh, and can you believe my son asked me why I called a song a "record" on the radio the other day? Man.. times have changed... I did say, well it's still a record-ing, but yes I bring my past with me, part of the Dave package :-).

Excuse me, I digress... Python's song "Sit on My Face and Tell Me That You Love Me" is one of my all time teenage favorites (see how I try and throw that back to my "teenage" years... hoping that my peeps will think I am more mature these days. Hey! I heard that back in the peanut gallery!). Along with the skits like Dead Parrot, Cheese Shop, and the Bookstore that was a front for secret agents, all the shows, and the fil-ems. And of course I've followed most of their solo careers as well. Thanks to Kelly and Matt, they took us to see Spam-O-Lot last year - what a riot! I wondered how they could pull this off on stage. But Eric Idle (and I believe Neil Innes?) wrote some great new songs for this show. They revisited The Holy Grail, and gave us new and entertaining bits as well. Heh, heh, I said "bits."

I bring up the Python's because I finally got a chance to see their wonderful 2009 documentary, "Monty Python: Almost the Truth." It's six episodes, running about 5 hours in length, that take you down memory lane and then some. With the back story of so much of this troupe's career, and the where and why of so much that was just happenstance creation (hey, really, isn't most of it all just happenstance?). It really was great fun with to visit with them in new interviews with the Python's (except for Graham Chapman of course, who passed away) along with many guests and regulars from the show who share their often hilarious moments.

I did learn in this show that Terry Jones, one of the Python's, actually "saved" all the episodes we see today. The BBC, instead of keeping a lot of the shows they taped, they would save the 90 pounds per tape and "re-use" them! What you say?! You read that right. There is a lot of material that was not saved, especially from the 60's, that is not available because they "taped over" these original shows. Terry Jones told them he would buy each tape from them to keep the shows history. Ironically, it was the BBC who came to him years later and asked if they could borrow the tapes to play the shows! If you remember in our country, it was actor/creator Jackie Gleason who had his shows taped for future presentations. Of course at the time the studios couldn't foresee these would be seen again. And that was in the 50's. So thank you Terry Jones, and Jackie Glesason, for insuring that we all got to see your shows, again, and again, and again.

So a big WATCH THIS goes out to Monty Python: Almost the Truth. It's perfect for us fans, and if you've never seen the Python's, this is a good introduction to this kooky, wacky troupe.