But it’s 40 years since the Falklands. And from that we get this:
May 4th 1982: As HMS Sheffield is abandoned and the fire spreads towards the Sea Dart ammunition. The remaining crew gather on the foredeck singing “Always look on the bright side of life”.
Now I have heard that story and I’ve always thought it were more than a little bit mythmaking. And yet, and yet. Someone I know (our fathers knew each other, he took a sister out a few times, we worked together for 6 months later on) was actually there. Running the flight control stuff from the next ship over:
Singing led by the FC that we had loaned to them. One of our Sea Kings closed on the fo’c’sle to pick up wounded and saw them all swaying from side to side with their arms outstretched. I learned why when he got back.
I’ll take that as being something that really happened then. Not for publication, not something published for home consumption, but something that actually happened. Young men, on a burning ship, not knowing whether they’d be lifted off before the fire got to the missiles and the kaboom of their little bits all over the South Atlantic. […]
We’re a weird, weird culture here in Britain. We will, and do, take the piss out of absolutely anything, including our own impending death.
Now, whether that’s quite what the economists mean by institutions that aid in economic development is another thing but it is indeed one of those institutions of that British culture.
It’s also wholly glorious but then I’m a Brit so I would say that, wouldn’t I?
Tim Worstall, “The British Are A Very, Very, Weird People”, It’s all obvious or trivial except …, 2024-05-06.
August 7, 2024
QotD: The crew of HMS Sheffield in the Falklands
December 2, 2021
“Good idea, Judith. We shall fight the oppressors for your right to have babies, brother. Sister. Sorry.”
The power of Python compelled Stephen Green to write this:
Stan: “I want to be a woman. From now on, I want you all to call me ‘Loretta’.”
Still from Monty Python’s Life of Brian, 1979.
Of all the jokes, gags, and barbs thrown in every direction, Jesus is the only figure shown respect. Monty Python trouper Eric Idle later said of Jesus, “What he’s saying isn’t mockable, it’s very decent stuff.”
For a non-believing, take-no-prisoners comedian like Idle, that’s practically a whole-hearted endorsement.
Instead, the film — Python’s only real film, the others were basically collections of sketches, even Holy Grail — is anti-authoritarian, anti-fanaticism, anti-nihilism, and anti-humorless prigs.
Life of Brian is, however, very pro-funny.
The Pythons even saved their sharpest barbs for political extremists and self-deluded lefties.
Case in point on that last observation: The classic Colosseum conversation between the would-be revolutionaries of the Judean People’s Front.
Or was that the People’s Front of Judea?
Regardless, take two minutes (clip below!) to bask in the comedic good sense that would get the cast and entire production crew canceled in our times.
The postmodern Left should probably cancel everyone who laughed at this scene, just to be safe.
Anyway, point-by-point, Monty Python satirically dissected the then-nascent cultural trends that have since come to dominate not only our culture, but also our politics and even our private lives.
Enjoy … although I will admit that re-watching this today, the laughs were a bit more bitter than they were when I first watched Life of Brian nearly 40 years ago.
February 26, 2021
QotD: “What have the Romans ever done for us?”
LORETTA: And from our fathers’ fathers’ fathers.
REG: Yeah.
LORETTA: And from our fathers’ fathers’ fathers’ fathers.
REG: Yeah. All right, Stan. Don’t labour the point. And what have they ever given us in return?!
XERXES: The aqueduct?
REG: What?
XERXES: The aqueduct.
REG: Oh. Yeah, yeah. They did give us that. Uh, that’s true. Yeah.
COMMANDO #3: And the sanitation.
LORETTA: Oh, yeah, the sanitation, Reg. Remember what the city used to be like?
REG: Yeah. All right. I’ll grant you the aqueduct and the sanitation are two things that the Romans have done.
MATTHIAS: And the roads.
REG: Well, yeah. Obviously the roads. I mean, the roads go without saying, don’t they? But apart from the sanitation, the aqueduct, and the roads–
COMMANDO: Irrigation.
XERXES: Medicine.
COMMANDOS: Huh? Heh? Huh…
COMMANDO #2: Education.
COMMANDOS: Ohh…
REG: Yeah, yeah. All right. Fair enough.
COMMANDO #1: And the wine.
COMMANDOS: Oh, yes. Yeah…
FRANCIS: Yeah. Yeah, that’s something we’d really miss, Reg, if the Romans left. Huh.
COMMANDO: Public baths.
LORETTA: And it’s safe to walk in the streets at night now, Reg.
FRANCIS: Yeah, they certainly know how to keep order. Let’s face it. They’re the only ones who could in a place like this.
COMMANDOS: Hehh, heh. Heh heh heh heh heh heh heh.
REG: All right, but apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, a fresh water system, and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?
XERXES: Brought peace.
REG: Oh. Peace? Shut up!
Monty Python’s Life of Brian, 1979.
July 16, 2018
Monty Python RAF Banter
bakerco502
Published on 30 Apr 2007secretly why I put a RAF impression together hahah
I’ve also disabled comments because people were starting to turn it into a pissing contest over who did what during the war.
October 17, 2017
Monty Python – Dirty Hungarian Phrasebook
rylxyc
Published on 20 Nov 2006The Dirty Hungarian Phrasebook sketch and courtroom scene from Monty Python’s Flying Circus
P.S. Yes, we know they’re just speaking gibberish and it’s not really Hungarian. We don’t need any more smartypants commenters telling us that.
August 3, 2017
Not the Nine O’Clock News – Monty Python worshipers
Published on 21 Jan 2009
A sketch from the british series Not the nine o’clock news commenting on the controversy created by the Monty Python’s film – Life of Brian.
April 23, 2017
The Real Reason We Never Hear From Monty Python Anymore
Published on 20 Apr 2017
The legendary comedy group Monty Python was once a force of nature, influencing everything that came after them with their surreal, absurdist approach to comedy. So, why don’t we hear from them anymore? When Graham Chapman ceased to be in 1989, fellow Python member Terry Jones described it as “the worst case of party-pooping [he’d] ever seen.” His death came the day before Python’s 20th anniversary, and what followed was a bizarre but fitting eulogy, written to pay tribute to the man who’d written a dead parrot into one of the troupe’s most famous sketches. Chapman becoming an ex-person seemed to put a damper on any kind of authentic reunion, but what about the others? What happened to the late, great Monty Python?
Terry Jones’s illness | 0:44
Michael Palin’s travel shows | 1:54
John Cleese’s purism | 3:01
Terry Gilliam’s moved on | 4:13
Eric Idle’s Broadway ambitions | 5:06
They want to finish on a good note | 6:02Read more here → http://www.grunge.com/53323/never-hear-monty-python-anymore-2/
January 27, 2017
Monty Python – Coal Miner Son
Published on Apr 23, 2014
World renowned blue-collar play-wright at odds with his elitist coal-mining son.
H/T to Megan McArdle for the link.
June 12, 2015
The psychic powers of the Python crew…
… all those years ago, they still managed to foresee the kind of political arguments we’d be having in the twenty-first century:
H/T to American Digest, among others who pointed out the prophetic powers of the Pythons.
April 9, 2014
Palin – “A lot of Python was crap, it really was”
The funny bits were very funny indeed, but we tend to forget the never-ending interminable repetitive repetitiveness of a lot of the other material:
Michael Palin has finally admitted what many of us have known in our hearts for some time: a lot of Monty Python‘s material was “crap.”
“People forgive you the things that don’t work. A lot of Python was crap, it really was,” said Palin, yesterday, at the launch of a tour called “Travelling To Work” announced at the London Book Fair.
“We put stuff in there that was not really that good, but fortunately there were a couple of things that everyone remembers while they’ve forgotten the dross,” he said.
Palin is dead right, of course. As a child in the 1970s I remember sitting stony-faced through entire episodes of Monty Python’s Flying Circus. But at the time, and ever since, there has existed a powerful omerta whereby no one can admit to finding Monty Python unfunny for fear of being thought humourless or not part of the gang.
Monty Python‘s inflated reputation derives as much as anything, I think, from a combination of obsessive repetition and peer pressure. That is, a lot of their sketches are not particularly funny in and of themselves, but have been conferred the status of classics as a result of being endlessly repeated by drunken students who brandish their knowledge of Python sketches as a way of acquiring cult credibility.
I know this because it’s exactly what I did myself at university in the mid-Eighties.
Yeah, well, on that last bit all I can say is “All right, it’s a fair cop, but society is to blame”.
July 14, 2012
QotD: Monty Python fans
Monty Pythonites are a specific breed of movie quoters, ones you have to handle gently, like Renaissance Faire people and Dungeons & Dragons players (and if we’re being honest, the Venn Diagram on those three groups probably isn’t too complicated). Your film editor says this without judgment; I spent a fair amount of high school trading lines from the Parrot Sketch and “nudge nudge” with my friends, which probably (partially) explains why I didn’t spent a fair amount of high school on, y’know, dates. So my love for MPATHG is strong, but I (and all of us Python fans) must at least make the effort to resist the urge to insert “It’s just a flesh wound” and “It’s only a model” and “Ni” into every social situation. That said, if you can find an reasonable excuse to say “Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony” in an everyday conversation, well, I’m not going to judge you.
Jason Bailey, “The Movies People Need to Stop Quoting”, Flavorwire, 2012-07-12
