Strange (Solstice) Sensations

Happy Solstice everyone -- the sun begins its return! May hope return as well.

Having finished my review of Deleuze and Horror Film and caught a cold, I justified retiring to bed for a little video splurge yesterday which included finally watching the last half hour of Monte Carlo or Bust AKA Those Daring Young Men in their Jaunty Jalopies. Not a great film (hence the delay in finishing it) but part of the Peter Cook oeuvre, so necessary to have accomplished. I did loot one of the character names for a work of my own, so there's that. After it, I decided to watch another episode of the Marty Feldman show (thanks, James!) and found myself in a madeleine in the tea moment.

Lightning Tours!

That's the clip above. It was one of those family things -- we always remembered it and used the "toot-toot, everyone back on the bus" whenever we got out of the car for a long time after (we can really run a thing into the ground). I can't be sure if they simply showed the Marty Feldman show in the States in the late sixties/early seventies, or if it was that comedy clip show that was maybe called "Comedy Tonight" (taking its name, of course, from the song in A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum). Either the clip show looted liberally from Feldman's show or they did just show whole episodes, because I recognized the next sketch, too about a "pet" in a giant wicker basket at the vets, although I probably didn't recognize at the time a young "Goodie" Tim Brooke-Taylor. The following stuntman sketch was written by show regulars Michael Palin and Terry Jones.

That clip show also provided us with another long-standing bit that was, of course, repeated ad infinitum. "Nuff, nuff": it came from a bit told with all the sound effects by a comedian I cannot quite bring to visual memory. The story is about a kangaroo and an elephant who are robbing a store (or a bank?). The sounds included the elephant chucking a brick through the window, the kangaroo stuffing things into its pouch, and so on. In the midst of the first run through, the elephant says "nuff, nuff" and the kangaroo says, "what's that?" and the elephant answers, "I got my trunk stuck in the door" (or window -- how memory fails us). It gets repeated without explanation in the "real" robbery and of course the audience laughs. For ages afterward, we'd all do the "nuff, nuff" and roll the window up and down, and laugh. I'm sure my folks got tired of it faster than we kids did, but they did it, too.

If anyone recognizes this bit or can tell me which comedian it is, I'll give you a cookie.

The other strange sensation was watching a film (thanks, Robert) starring someone I've only met as an adult, who in the film is playing a 15 year old (and is somewhere near that age). He looks recognizably similar, but he sounds almost exactly the same, which struck me as bizarre. I hope I don't sound like my fifteen year old self!