Gratitude for the Pythons

Reading through Eric Idle's journal of touring through America early this year, I cannot exhaust my gratitude for these gentlemen's piercing, anarchic minds and kindly souls. What would our world view have been like without their work? Perhaps darker, more bitter, yet less clear, less a balance of unavoidable absurdity. The work seems inevitable only in retrospect, and remains a massive source for brutal honesty, deepest silliness and genuine humanism in comedy. Certainly, not every bit was good, no one's is - but they produced ingenious, highest-risk writing and performance, and held their real contempt for the brutality and arrogance of assumed authority. The Pythons built my comedy values, and therby, many of my actual values. I owe them many of my own favorite thoughts, and a knack (I hope) for sniffing out and shoveling away the most dangerous bullshit.

Idle wonders later in the journal: what if the Royal navy had gone around performing comedy reviews instead of shelling everyone?