Tuesday's Overlooked A/V: Do Not Adjust Your Set

I'm looking forward to Holy Flying Circus tomorrow night, the documentary on the fight against the Python's Life of Brian. I know I've likely seen a lot of the footage already, but I'm sure it will be enjoyable nonetheless. Good example of how bonkers people can get over something they assume will offend them. At heart, Brian is a very moral film, which focuses on the all-too familiar foibles of human behaviour. Ah, but if you're reading this you likely already know that.

Something you might not know about is Do Not Adjust Your Set, one of the many training grounds for the future Pythons, like The Frost Report and At Last the 1948 Show (source of the original Four Yorkshiremen sketch). DNAYS featured Michael Palin and Terry Jones (who had also worked on The Complete and Utter History of Britain) as well as Eric Idle. This was a kids show, which is kind of stunning (although if you look at a lot of the mad kids show at the time, perhaps not quite so odd) so a lot of the humour is very nonsensical in the Goons/Spike Milligan/NOBA vein of absurdity. You can really see the connections between the Pythons and what came before them.

Of course one of the key reasons to see DNAYS is the Bonzo Dog Band. Why anyone thought they were safe for children, I don't know. The ginger geezer Vivian Stanshall and the delightfully daffy Neil Innes headed a rotating roster of musicians but those two were really the magnets. I've gone on at length about both of them, so if you don't know them yet, you should stop reading right now and just go look at the videos widely available at a certain tubish site.

A fave moment, appropriate for the season: the Bonzos sing "Monster Mash" for your delight.




As usual, find the whole roundup of overlooked a/v over at Sweet Freedom.

Comedy Classics: The Running, Jumping & Standing Still Film

Hectic day ahead, much to do so I leave you some entertainment by way of one of Richard Lester's early films featuring the Goons Spike Milligan and Peter Sellers as well as other luminaries. If you don't know it, you should. If you do know it, isn't it great to see it again?

Friday's Forgotten Books: Puckoon

Spike Milligan's Puckoon

Once again this is a "forgotten" book only in the States; Spike Milligan is an icon for many in Britain and Ireland (not to mention the rest of the world). My Penguin copy actually has a note on the back cover, "For copyright reasons this edition is not for sale in the U.S.A." I bought it in Skoob some time ago (ah, Skoob, where I have whiled away many an hour).

I'm not going to write an entire review as there is a superb one by Jim Murdoch available. Rather I want to focus on why it's such a funny book and I love it. "This damn book nearly drove me mad," Milligan writes in the foreward, "I started it in 1958 and doodled with it for 4 years. I don't think I could go through it all again, therefore...this will be my first and last novel." Fortunately, that didn't prove to be true.

I love mad chaotic humor like Milligan created for the Goons (and yes, of course Peter Cook, source of my endless fascination with world domination). Milligan could be rather erratic as his personal histories attest, but when he was on, there was an elegant madness that makes you marvel as well as laugh. Long before it became a staple of post-modern literature, Milligan made himself a character as well as The Author, leading to exchanges between the two of them like this:

...He rolled his trousers kneewards revealing the like of two thin white hairy affairs of the leg variety. He eyed them with obvious dissatisfaction, After examining them he spoke aloud. 'Holy God! Wot are dese den? Eh?' He looked around for an answer. 'Wot are dey?' he repeated angrily.
   'Legs.'
   'Legs? LEGS? Whose legs?'
   'Yours.'
   'Mine? And who are you?'
   'The Author.'
   'Author? Author? Did you write these legs?'
   'Yes."
   'Well, I don't like dem. I don't like 'em at all at all. I could ha' writted better legs meself. Did you write your legs?'
   'No.'
   "Ahhh. Sooo! You got some one else to write your legs, some one who's a good leg writer and den you write dis pair of crappy old legs fer me, well mister, it's not good enough.'
   'I'll try and develop them with the plot.'

Delightful, eh? This is the kind of writing I aspire to do. It reads as if pouring from the brain spigot but of course, as Milligan's foreword makes plain, it's very hard work to achieve even if the prose reads effortlessly. Always the case.

If curious about the 2002 film version, here's the trailer. I'm not encouraged. For more Forgotten books, check out Patti Abbot's blog every Friday.

The Old Man and the Seaport

The Moby Dick reading marathon ends at noon today, with a big birthday cake for Melville. The joey Zone is in the thick of it down on the decks of the Charles W. Morgan in Mystic Seaport. His chapter was read in the middle of the night, I think (but I could be mis-remembering). It's a free event, so there's time yet to catch the reading of the last few chapters. To the left here's some scrimshaw carved by Robert Weiss of Queequeg, Ishmael's pal.

So, of course these nautical adventures remind me upon waking of a Spike Milligan poem that I can't quite remember right (of course, as we all know too well, I'm constitutionally incapable of remembering anything quite right):

Let's sail away on a gravy boat,
You and me and Franklin the stoat.
We'll live our lives on the Caspian Sea,
And eat nothing but jellyfish for our tea.

Or something like that...

Is it really August?! No, no -- can't be. Surely.

The Miller's Tale

We headed up to Crispinus' college to see Doctor, er Sir Jonathan Miller Thursday night. How much of a comedy geek am I? Well, here I am getting my program for Beyond the Fringe signed by the good doctor. He joked about the description of him in the program, then 27 years old. It was a fantastic evening of laughter and thoughtful analysis. Miller has always been quite the raconteur, and his wealth of experiences and polymathic interests has made sure that he has an enormous cache of anecdotes for any occasion.

He does a good impression of his former co-hort Peter Cook (my idol) and used his piece "Sitting on the Bench" (which you can find 3 minutes 50 seconds into this clip) to delve into some of the reasons that he found both Henri Bergson's and Sigmund Freud's theories of comedy insufficient.
In the course of the discussion, Miller also did great impressions of his other co-hort, Dudley Moore (but not Alan Bennett), as well as Goons Spike Milligan and Peter Sellers, using their comedy for fodder in the argument about the nature of humor. In this talk, Miller wanted to bring out the pleasurable aspect of humor and explain its appeal. While he may not have come to any definite conclusions, the journey was a lot of fun and the crowd enthusiastically devoured all the stories and jokes, many of which were no doubt new to them.

There are two more events -- with luck, we will be able to attend them, too. I'm glad I worked up the courage on the first night to get the program signed: I would have chickened out later. It's quite an artifact -- funny little tie-ins in the ads, from North Thames Gas to the official tailor, Dougie Millings & Son mentioning the title, as well as ads for then current productions: Chita Rivera and Peter Marshall in Bye Bye Birdie at Her Majesty's Theatre and Christie's The Mousetrap, then only in its "10th Imperishable Year!" of keeping new productions from the West End. Playgoers are commanded "Now you must see Kenneth Williams in One Over the Eight" which had been written by an undergraduate Peter Cook, and which they promise is "snappy and gay" (well, it is Kenneth Williams).

Now I have to go read up on Erving Goffman and John Austin, whom Miller mentioned and intrigued me enough to want to find out more.

Thanks to Gene for the photos!

No Respect

The other day we watched the television show "The Comedians' Comedians" hosted by Jimmy Carr. It counted down the top 50 comedians according to, well, comedians. While it was a British show, they did include a number of Americans like Richard Pryor, Bill Cosby, Joan Rivers, Bill Hicks (long lionized in Britain) and Robin Williams. I suspect an American show would fail to list any British comedians -- perhaps Eddie Izzard, just because he has made such successful inroads into American pop culture. Of course, that's unlikely to happen because Americans don't on the whole have the same appreciation of comedy that Britons do. You can't imagine a critic here writing, as Brian Clover did, that "Arguably, comedians are the true artists of the troubled Twentieth Century." Obviously, I agree. We enjoyed the show leading up to the satisfactorily anticipated top spot going to the genius that is Peter Cook.

But one thing really disturbed me: in the top ten was Eric Morecambe without Ernie Wise. For those of you unfamiliar with them, Morecambe and Wise (pictured above) were an institution. Check out some of their classic clips like the breakfast sketch or their version of "Singing in the Rain" to see the physical side of their comedy. Watch more clips to get a feel for their playful sense of dialogue. They define the classic double act.

So why is Morecambe there near the top without Wise?

I suspect it's because so many of the young comedians they spoke with are solo acts. They don't understand the dynamics of the duo, unless it's someone they know (contemporaries Vic & Bob and French & Saunders all make the list). The straight man is a thankless role. Eddie Braben, who composed many of the sketches for which Eric and Ern are so well-known, wrote, "In his own way, Ern was every bit as talented as Eric, he underlined his comic greatness. Even at their peak I don't believe Ern's contribution was fully acknowledged. Eric was probably his greatest admirer" (98).

So here's to Ernie Wise! and all the overlooked straight men and women in the world.

Gene forwarded a link to an NPR story on the play Ying Tong: A Walk with the Goons, that's playing in Philadelphia. I'm resisting an urge to look at the Amtrak schedules and jump on a train to go see it. I may have to console myself with getting a copy of the script. I can't help but wonder how it will go over with an audience unfamiliar with Milligan and the Goons. The website for the production offers all kinds of background links, so perhaps it will help educate the audience. Hope it goes well -- wish I could be there!