Walter Bego has asked to use this blog to play tribute to his favorite artist.
He was the only American-born member of Monty Python, and perhaps the most accomplished director of the cast as well, but Terry Gilliam has always been the artist - the man who took us away from the familiar faces of the players and gave us something completely different.
The era leading into Python was a time of Pop, influenced by the Beatles, and by LSD.
It seemed like all the rules were broken already. How is an artist supposed to deal with that? Gilliam found ways of breaking rules we didn't know we had - like art was supposed to either be animated or still. Gilliam refused to follow.
The largely stationary head with one moving part - frequently the jaw, eye or teeth, became something we identify with him to this day.
Gilliam brought the absurd to the spiritual - a favorite theme of Monty Python.
He also held a mirror to the absurdity of modesty.
It was well that he was taken in by Monty Python - American broadcast television in the 60s and early 70s never would have tolerated him.
A little girl harvesting hands from a grave-site would not have meshed well with Mayberry RFD. But Gilliam didn't shock for the sake of shock. In Holy Grail, Arthur and his knights run in fear of a great monster. Gilliam might have created something truly fearsome.
Instead he gave us something so absurd, that the chase scene had no element of terror.
It wasn't because he lacked the talent to do otherwise. Gilliam gave us great landscapes.
And streetscapes.
And interior scenes where the characters are dwarfed by their surroundings.
And, of course, he gave us countless images of the human foot.
And the reconstituted human body.
Why is he relegated to the title of comedian, while Warhol and others are called artist? I don't know. But I think he understands.
I know, it’s February, not December. Putting together a year in
review post seems out of place.
But not in a Just Plain Stupid world.
My first post for JPS was February 28th 2013. There are
now over 300 posts on this blog, and I, for one, am surprised. I
never thought I had so much to say, even if most of it was useless
dribble.
This Year’s Failures
The dribble has flowed slower this year, and so I began the immensely
unpopular serialization of Dirk Destroyer’s Less Destructive
Brother. S.B. and someone I don’t know from Russia faithfully read
each post of Dirk, so it hobbles along. If you’re off your meds
and wish to start reading this Donald Trump-less political satire set
in a world inundated by sheep, here’s a link to the firstinstallment, and better yet, here’s a link to the firstinstallment that has anything to do with the story.
Several posts other than Dirk Destroyer have failed to attract
attention this year; many because they didn’t deserve any, but a
few I thought were worth reading. Tricycle Baskets Full of Evil
falls in that latter category, along with Apply Yourself, and the
not-yet-immortal story of Mortimer the Drop of Goo.
This Year’s Successes???
Picture posts – those stolen from FB, or taken from tee shirts or
catalogs have always been among my more popular subjects, along with
guest posts from other Go Figure Reads writers.
So I should just shut up and plagiarize?
Particularly surprising was the popularity of Will Wright’s rant
about his bad cruise on Royal Caribbean, but less surprising was
Walter Bego’s lionization of the art of Terry Gilliam.
Unfortunately for my more faithful readers, I remain incapable to
taking a hint. I continue to write a few posts with a minimum of
plagiarism, and some of them have done well (if sickening large
numbers of people can be defined as doing well.)
Gloves vs. Mittens preyed on the public’s fascination with
celebrity, and I exploited my brother’s secrets in the post,
Horatio.
Clearly, many of my readers would prefer Horatio to be the Hauser
that writes this blog.
The top post of this third year, Body Part Insults (written with
assistance by Kim Webb,) was based on an ill-advised Facebook post of
a Grammy award nominated FB friend who probably wishes now that A)
she hadn’t posted her desire to not insult our noble excretory
system when addressing jerks, and (especially) B) that she hadn’t
clicked ‘accept’ to my friend request.
I’d like to thank you each personally for reading my blog, but I
don’t want to risk the ensuing storm of rotten vegetation (or
worse.) As we limp into year Four there’s always the hope that
somewhere along the line I’ll learn to write good stuff.
Or at least learn to shut up and plagiarize.
So for the video I looked up Best of 2015 on youtube and got this. These are toys, right?
“You’re funny, Headley,” said an unidentified person to
me recently, “but you can’t hold a candle to Monty Python.”
Like most people raised in the 60s and 70s, I didn’t
take offence; I only nodded my head in agreement. There
isn’t/wasn’t/ever will be any human or collection of humans as
funny as Monty Python. It has become an article of faith in my
generation, much as Elvis’ supremacy had been to the generation
preceding mine.
So I thinks to myself – how can I do what they did?
What can I write that is as brilliant as Holy Grail, Life of Brian,
and the Flying Circus shows?
When you love something, never try to figure out why.
To have one’s faith shaken is a disturbing sensation.
Observing the scripts of Monty Python without the
stork-like posturings of John Cleese,
the quirky art of Terry
Gilliam,
the smarmy naïveté of Eric Idle,
the bulging bombast of
Graham Chapman,
or the shrill transvestitism of Terry Jones
is to
look at a bag of Doritos after the last chip has been masticated.
As Chapman, in army uniform informed us
it’s just
silly.
(oh, and Michael Palin showed up too – but he was
just a tosser.)
(What is a tosser, anyway?)
Consider this:
A man and a woman are lowered into a diner where they
find that Spam is considered an essential (or several essential,)
part to every menu choice. A group of Vikings interrupt the dialog
with a song about Spam.
It looks like a pathetic idea there in black and white –
until you add the talent…
Or, a man walks into a pet shop to complain about a
parrot he’s just bought there that is dead.
Sounds like a loser, but…
How about, a man pays to have a five minute argument.
Almost the entire dialog consists of the service provider denying
everything his customer says until the police break the thing up for
being a pathetic sketch.
Pathetic sketch or not, add the Monty Python cast and
it’s…
So until I can get the surviving (and perhaps the dead,)
members of Monty Python to play out Trouble in Taos, link or Volition Man, link I’ll never really know if my stories are funny or not.
And getting the Coen brothers to direct wouldn’t hurt
either.
There is one sketch that I think was brilliant even read
from the page.
John Phillip Sousa:
A man who felt that unwieldy instruments designed to be played in
carefully constructed concert halls would be better implemented
causing scoliosis among adolescents in parades across rutted and
muddy football fields.
Patriotic
March: A style of music revolutionized by
John Phillip Sousa because he believed that chauvin-style patriotism
and war were too short in supply.
The
Sousaphone: Created by John Phillip Sousa
because no instrument of the orchestra was sufficiently annoying.
The
Steel Guitar: Not invented by John Phillip
Sousa, only because he never thought of it.
It’s been my
privilege, over the years, to watch the parents of many budding
musicians. I particularly enjoy seeing how parents respond when
their young angel starts a band called “Death on a Cracker.” I
make it a point to visit on band night. It’s not that I
particularly enjoy hearing musical wannabes, ten years from
instrumental competence strain their yard sale equipment in an effort
to make sure “the hottie down the street can hear us.” What I
really enjoy is sitting at the kitchen table with the Mom and Dad.
The bass amp, downstairs, turns the
spoon in my teacup into an unwilling percussion instrument. After
several unrecognizable cover tunes they break into their future hit,
“You’ve got my cupcake in your spleen.”
The kids
are pretty excited, thinking that they’re breaking new ground. The
parents are struggling with mixed feeling of pride, dread, nostalgia,
and the epiphany that they finally understand their parents. I’m
feeling pretty smug, having no kids of my own and knowing I can leave
before the Advil runs out.
I’ve
lived just long enough to wise up to the fact that life presents
certain consistencies. I’m not talking just about death, taxes and
the French being rude; I’m talking about more significant patterns.
Wise King Solomon wrote that there’s nothing new under the sun.
I’m willing to wager that thought occurred to him while Rehoboam
and the Diaspora were rehearsing in the basement.
It makes
me wonder about Mr. and Mrs. Sousa, John Phillips parents.
When you
name a kid “John Phillip,” you must be hoping the kid will turn
out to be some kind of weenie. John Phillip took a lot of ribbing as
he waited with the other kids at the school carriage stop each
morning. Smart-ass violinists kept poking him with their bows and
although Mom and Dad had bought him a harpsichord for his birthday,
he couldn’t take it on the carriage with him or use it to defend
himself. It was at this time that John Phillip began imagining a
world in which all non-aggressive children had a sixty-pound metal
instrument with leather case that they could use to whomp the heck
out of violin players.
It was
when he started getting together with a hundred of his friends in
their basement when Mr. and Mrs. Sousa’s headaches began.
“Really
son, patriotism is a fine thing but I’ve had to recaulk the window
twice since you and your friends started meeting here. Maybe you
should consider a new arrangement of Yankee Doodle for small
instruments only.”
Like
most people, I grew up going to July 4th
picnics and high school football games. I enjoy a charred hamburger
as much as the next guy and who could find fault with boys in their
late formative years lining up over an ovoid air filled leather
bladder and on cue do their level best to injure the fellow on the
other side. The fun would end (or at least be suspended) when it
came time for the after barbecue concert or halftime entertainment.
Pubescent and post-pubescent players of protrudinous platnumised
pot-metal promenade precariously while a pudgy pompous impresario
with a pompadour pushes, pouts and points in a practically
pornographic paroxysm of pointless pedagogy (please excuse, my doctor
said I had to do alliteration exercises every day to prevent tongue
cancer). All this is done in an attempt to create obscenely loud
elevator music.
John
Phillip did write the theme for Monty Python so at least he showed
the good taste to be a Terry Gilliam fan but why continue with his
music? Even Sousa’s original vision is no longer valid as
incidents of children being attacked by rowdy violinists are way
down. A wise guy in the back suggests it’s a conspiracy of the NEA
and bedlam-loving music storeowners. I don’t buy it.
Maybe
people have trouble envisioning an eighty five-piece rock band in
stiff, polyester uniforms, with portable amps walking in file and
spelling out “bobcats” in perspiration darkened primary colors.
Maybe if more talked to my red-eyed friends across from my rattling
teacup, they might catch the vision.
“And now
for half-time, the Abbeyville marching rock bad will be playing,
‘You’ve got my cupcake in your spleen.’”
I kinda like this band - the dorky host? Not so much.
