Word: humors
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...made for us. Unlike the Beatles' music, it wasn't meant to sound like our stuff. Either the Pythons never thought to appeal abroad or they just didn't care; they were writing and performing for themselves. The show, with its sly mix of highbrow and no-brow humor, of university wit and pratfalling physicality, must have seemed strange enough to U.K. viewers. But for Americans there were extra layers of mystification: the BBC in-jokes, the references to Brit politicians and seaside resorts, the sight of grown men speaking in shrill voices and wearing women's clothing. (They...
...Another thing about the Beatles and the Pythons: both could be called musical comedy acts. Just as the Fab Four made humor a crucial part of their appeal, so the Pythons frequently used songs in Flying Circus ("Eric the Half-a-Bee," "The Lumberjack Song," "Dennis Moore") and their films. Idle's blithely idiotic ditty, "Always Look on the Bright Side of Life," helped make Life of Brian that rare Crucifixion movie you could hum your way out of. And the Jones-Palin anthem from The Meaning of Life ("Every sperm is sacred / Every sperm is great / If a sperm...
...When people say it's undergraduate humor I think they're wrong," Jones says of the Python style. "It's postgraduate humor." (Like MP&HG, which grew out of Jones' study of Chaucer.) Yet the adolescence factor can't be dismissed. Squint a little, and you could see the Pythons as British versions of the American college jocks who reached their apex of glory and achievement as young men, then went into real estate, coasting on their lingering allure. It's true, anyway, if we see the TV show and Holy Grail as an extension of the glamorous days Jones...
...mine; and his mentor, Mozzie Fishman, who leads convoys of similarly disenchanted souls (and later Angel Day) to Dreaming sites across the state. Around them swirl stories large and small, glorious and grotesque, of epic quests and seeping social wounds, but cauterizing it all is the writer's earthy humor. "I've had a lifetime of stories and humor," says Wright, who was raised on her grandmother's tales of the bush, "and it's one of our strongest points, I think, as a people. It's one of the things that keep us going...
...believed in the curing power of humor, especially slapstick. One of his favorite routines was mimicking awkward hospital volunteers who invariably said the wrong thing. When a leg amputee was convulsing in so much pain he couldn't talk, Jim handed him a chocolate shake and a three-by-five-inch index card with a scribbled message: "That will be $5. Bless you." But he mainly used treats to break the ice. After a couple of shakes, amputees were asking questions of the man who walked on two fake legs and worked for the U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs...