And now for something completely different

I stood on the hill and surveyed the battlefield, preparing for my sortie. The stakes were high, and it was unlikely I could do any harm to my enemy though he would certainly do harm to me if I were to become careless. I assessed the enemy troops, tried to discern their deployment and their likely movement. I had fought this battle before, I was prepared. No muscle twitched, no thought but the count, the pounding in my ears matching the inexorable stride of the sentry. I count eleven until the sentinal about-faces and return my way. Eleven, he turns and departs again. Eleven, he returns. Eleven, he departs. I make my move, leaping into motion as if I were unburdened by books and bags, dashing past as the sprinkler sweeps by me and returns for the chase, but I beat him and take refuge in the dry concrete before my gate. I have made it alive, I have won.

Such is life if I come home late at night: the sprinklers are on, and only at certain places but without fail to be the ones lining the verge across from my porch. It's a bit of a trick getting in dry, and I've mistimed the sprinklers before.

The reason I came home late wasn't, unfortunately, some late-night rendez-vous with some gorgeous and besotten paramour (I can dream, can't I?) but it was a dinner date. His name is Terry Jones, and he is the director of Monty Python. His irreverency and particular humor in combination created the genius we know as the Life of Brian, the Holy Grail, Flying Circus, and others. By some stroke of luck or fate, he sat at our table at dinner, so we (my table-mates and I) had the delightful challenge of coming up with enough questions to pepper him with for the course of the meal. We inquired as to filming locations and plot details, he to our names and majors, spurring an involved discussion as to the merits of applied mathematics.


Following dinner he gave a short presentation, in the digressive and rambling manner I have come to associate with British people (starting one thought and going through three others, interrupting oneself to begin a new topic, and eventually arriving at a conclusion that is grammatically completely unrelated to the original sentence) while showing us clips no one else has ever seen, including a montage from the 60s of a deck-chair romance, some of the shorts and skits he did while at the BBC, and deleted scenes from the Life of Brian. Also included were clips from the Meaning of Life and the Wind in the Willows (below), Erik the Viking, and the Complete and Utter History of Britain, of the latter of which I had never heard.



His aforementioned irreverency caused considerable consternation at the release of the Life of Brian, which tells the story of the life of Brian Cohen, mistaken to be the messiah. The film, as well as two others of Jones's films, was banned in several countries, including Norway and Ireland. The Swedes, who criticize the Norwegians for having no sense of humor, marketed it as "A film so funny they had to ban it in Norway!". At that time, says Jones, they were just starting to ban films in Ireland, and of the four that were at that time forbidden, three of them were from him.

Reg: All right, but apart from the sanitation, medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, the fresh water system and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?
Attendee: Brought peace?
Reg: Oh, peace - shut up!
Reg: There is not one of us who would not gladly suffer death to rid this country of the Romans once and for all.
Dissenter: Uh, well, one.
Reg: Oh, yeah, yeah, there's one. But otherwise, we're solid.



[a line of prisoners files past a jailer]
Coordinator: Crucifixion?
Prisoner: Yes.
Coordinator: Good. Out of the door, line on the left, one cross each.
[Next prisoner]
Coordinator: Crucifixion?
Mr. Cheeky: Er, no, freedom actually.
Coordinator: What?
Mr. Cheeky: Yeah, they said I hadn't done anything and I could go and live on an island somewhere.
Coordinator: Oh I say, that's very nice. Well, off you go then.
Mr. Cheeky: No, I'm just pulling your leg, it's crucifixion really.
Coordinator: [laughing] Oh yes, very good. Well...
Mr. Cheeky: Yes I know, out of the door, one cross each, line on the left.

Perhaps inspiration for Eddie Izzard:

(Remind anyone of Cake or Death?)