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RIP Terry Jones

35 Comments

Amid all the insanity this week, the saddest news to me is the passing of Terry Jones.

I discovered Monty Python when I was in high school. This was before the television show but I had all their record albums.  One of favorites was Eric the Half a Bee:

Another favorite was An Elk:

By the time I got to Carleton, the television show was airing on Sunday nights and I was a founding member of the 4th Burton Penguin Society:

We got together every Sunday night to watch the show and drink Fosters (do not ask me why we thought we needed to drink Australian beer while watching an English comedy show – I don’t remember at all). All of us in the “club” had a small ceramic penguin; I still have mine and keep in my studio

When Monty Python and the Holy Grail came out, I laughed until I cried and went back to the theatre three times in the next couple of weeks. I have it on DVD but it loses a bit on the small screen, especially the moose credits at the beginning.  YA doesn’t even begin to understand the appeal of Monty Python.  But I loved the irreverence, the silliness, the fun graphics and the craziness of some of the sketches.  This was a great team.  It was sad to lose Graham Chapman too soon and now Terry Jones.  I gave all the record albums to tim last year because I didn’t have a turntable anymore, but I am enjoying the tv shows that are running these days and, of course, you can find a lot of it on youtube, but it’s not quite the same as crowding around a small black and white tv set in a dorm room on 4th Burton, seeing them for the first time.

Who has made you laugh over the years?

 

35 thoughts on “RIP Terry Jones”

  1. my son just gave me the larry david show called curb your enthusiasm for my smile needs these days, i mentioned the good place a while back as another, the marvelous mrs mazel is a third and grace and frankie with lily tomlin and jane fonda round out my current go tos.
    lily was on laugh in which was one of the first irreverent comedy’s along with the smothers brothers flip wilson and monty python, mr bean and benny hill never worked for me
    at the same time as the monty python albums were out cheech and chong, bob newhart and bill cosby all made us laugh on vinyl and the thankfulness i have for the memory of tears rolling down my cheeks is huge,
    i had a monty python screen saver back in the early days of personal computes, the twit races and from the show and the knight at the walk bridge make me remember the way they did their magic
    it’s hard to watch all the stuff you grew up with fall around you as time ticks on. over the next 10 or 20 years they will all be gone.
    my grandson makes me smile these days, last night at my wife’s birthday party he was lit up by helium balloons and was like a boy in heaven as he ran around the house in circles with two balloons tied to his waist.

    thanks to all the smile makers.
    they make life a little better for a little while and it is appreciated.

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  2. Don’t forget Johann Gambolputty de von Ausfern-schplenden-schlitter-crasscrenbon-fried-digger-dingle- dangle-dongle-dungle-burstein-von-knacker-thrasher-apple-banger-horowitz-ticolensic-grander-knotty-spelltinkle-grandlich-grumblemeyer-spelterwasser- kurstlich-himbleeisen-bahnwagen-gutenabend-bitte-ein-nürnburger-bratwustle- gerspurten-mitz-weimache-luber-hundsfut-gumberaber-shönedanker-kalbsfleisch- mittler-aucher von Hautkopft of Ulm

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  5. SCTV was really under-rated it seemed; at least here in MN. Maybe it was just here because it was hard to find on TV.
    My friend Pete introduced me to Monty Python. And it was my brother Ernie and his roommate Gordy in their first apartment when I was visiting that I saw The Holy Grail. One of my favorite memories is he and I adding Grail quotes to a TV western with the entire family around.

    I had an autographed picture of Flip Wilson. Lost it somewhere.
    Loved Benny Hill in high school. Pete and I could play the theme song on our trumpets. People hated us for it because we played it all the time.
    Could almost play Monty Python theme too but we just didn’t know it as well.

    And now for something completely different:

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  6. Let’s offer a little love for some of the pioneer comics.

    While I loved the Pythons, I laughed more at one of the groups preceding it: the Goons (Spike Milligan, Peter Sellers and Harry Secombe). The Goon Show, a British radio show running from 1951 to 1960, featured madcap absurdist humor that influenced such later groups as the Pythons and the Beatles.

    Long ago I enjoyed Andy Griffith’s monologues as well as the button-down mind of Bob Newhart. I recently listened to tracks by Arlo Guthrie. I’m quite sure Griffith helped shape Arlo’s sense of humor.

    I still crack up over Groucho. “Outside of a dog, a book is man’s best friend. Inside a dog, it is too dark to read.”

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    1. “I don’t like country music, but I don’t mean to denigrate those who do. And for the people who like country music, denigrate means ‘put down’. Bob Newhart

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  7. Rise and chuckle, Baboons,

    Nobody makes me laugh like Carol Burnett. And many of her old, old sketches remain relevant.

    My sister and her husband left yesterday. While she was here she pulled an old routine of Carol Burnette and company clucking “In the Mood.” Harvey and Tim were their usual riot of facial expressions and Carol was her usual comic genius.

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    1. Funny! I shared that same video on Facebook about one week ago.

      I first encountered Carol Burnett in Cheyenne. My old landlady, Ann Garvin, was a fan and watched her show religiously. My introduction to American daytime TV back in 1965.

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  9. It’s on days like this on the trail that I’m most keenly aware that the comic geniuses I revered early on are completely unknown to you, and vice versa, with one notable exception: Danny Kaye. Here’s a small sampling:

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  11. Dirch Passer was a Danish actor/comedian that was very popular in Denmark during my childhood and youth. Physically he looked a lot like Garrison Keillor, tall with bushy eyebrows and not particularly good looking. He had a big mouth with a pronounced gap between his two front teeth, a gift for improvisation and imitating foreign languages. He claimed to be able to speak any language, he just couldn’t understand any of them. Here’s an example of his work that doesn’t require you to be able to understand Danish:

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  15. In my teen years I was a Monty Python fan, and the early SNL years were pretty memorable. I also had George Carlin’s Class Clown album. A classic.

    These days the person who makes me laugh is John Oliver. I really love his take on the current political shenanigans. And I don’t remember the last time I laughed so hard at a comedic bit as I did at his response to the settlement of a slander lawsuit against him. If you haven’t seen it, the show that prompted the lawsuit was this one, a devastatingly funny analysis of the coal industry in the 21st century:

    And after the judge had dismissed the lawsuit that resulted, Oliver gleefully produced this gem, Kinda crude but hilarious.

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