So my daughter, Gwen, an art student up in Boston, was taking a class that was an overview of Aztec art. The teacher was discussing the Spanish conquest of the Aztecs, and at one point she endeavored to put things into historical perspective. “What else,” she asked the class, “was going on in Spain during the 15th century?”
Gwen raised her hand and replied,”The Spanish Inquisition.”
“And what was the Spanish Inqusition?” asked the teacher.
Without hesitation, Gwen replied, “Unexpected.”
Dead silence from the class. The teacher laughed. The rest of the class just frickin’ sat there.
I think she was relieved when she told me what happened and I laughed, and then I related it to Kath and she laughed. At least *we* got the joke. Shows we raised Gwen right.
PAD
• 
Kudos to Gwen. That was funny.
Well, of course nobody laughed. After all, nobody expects …
Nah. Can’t make it work.
Kudos to Gwen for quick thinking!
TWL
A chip off the old block. At least the teacher got it; the rest are probably just football scholarships and liberal arts majors.
Nice job, Gwen. And what the hëll have they not been teaching these kids?
A similar story from my freshman year, as retold a year later by my professor, and now butchered a little on account of my memory:
“I was just starting: first semester, teaching at Penn, just beginning my career. I was teaching History of Western Technology, and I was sweating through it, trying to make it work in a class filled mostly with football players looking to fill requirements. I was walking on eggshells. And I get to the Enclosure Act, which in Britain allowed landowners to fence in their property. It was the end of community property.
“I look down and realize that I’ve written, in my notes, ‘Huge Tracts of Land.’ Now, I know there’s only one way to do this. But I know that if it doesn’t work, it’s disaster. But I don’t really have a choice, do I? I get to the passage, then do it like it should be done: ”Uge…tracts of land!’ Complete with hands in the right place. Dead silence. And I think, I’m dead.
“Then, from the back of the room, comes this sound: the milk-through-the-nose snort of disbelieving laughter. Turns out it was Will and Reha. And I knew, those were my people.”
(Me and a friend, naturally.)
Nice job, Gwen. And what the hëll have they not been teaching these kids?
A similar story from my freshman year, as retold a year later by my professor, and now butchered a little on account of my memory:
“I was just starting: first semester, teaching at Penn, just beginning my career. I was teaching History of Western Technology, and I was sweating through it, trying to make it work in a class filled mostly with football players looking to fill requirements. I was walking on eggshells. And I get to the Enclosure Act, which in Britain allowed landowners to fence in their property. It was the end of community property.
“I look down and realize that I’ve written, in my notes, ‘Huge Tracts of Land.’ Now, I know there’s only one way to do this. But I know that if it doesn’t work, it’s disaster. But I don’t really have a choice, do I? I get to the passage, then do it like it should be done: ”Uge…tracts of land!’ Complete with hands in the right place. Dead silence. And I think, I’m dead.
“Then, from the back of the room, comes this sound: the milk-through-the-nose snort of disbelieving laughter. Turns out it was Will and Reha. And I knew, those were my people.”
(Me and a friend, naturally.)
Yes, your quick wit, knowledge of language, and viewership of Buffy the Vampire Slayer has obviously positively influenced Gwen …
… Wait, you mean someone said that about the Spanish Inquisiton before Dawn Summers?
I gotta say, that anecdote, though it happened to someone else, is a pretty good metaphor for my experience in life.
And the teacher also gave her an ‘A’, right??
Tell Gwen not to feel bad–similar thing happened to me in college. We were talking about ‘King Lear’, and the teacher said, “At the beginning of the play, Lear is in a position of omnipotence, god-like power. But what position is Lear in at the end of the play?”
I piped up with “Prone.” He just looked at me like I was an idiot, and so did the rest of the class.
Some people just have no sense of humor.
I hope at least the teacher let her sit in the comfy chair.
“Unexpected” is a reference to a Monty Python skit, right?
(I saw the episode of Family Guy that I believe [or was told] was referencing the same thing.)
“Unexpected” is a reference to a Monty Python skit, right?
“Nail that man’s foot to the deck.”
TWL
Your daughter is cool. She deserves an A for the Python joke alone.
I mean, she knows Monty Python. You done good in raising that girl. 😉
Gwen should go to her next class and attack everyone with some soft cushions for their ignorance.
I don’t get it, but I want to. Point me to the source material and I will return here ready to laugh. (Was it Mel Brooks?)
Python, eh? Methinks I shall hunt it down.
For those who dont remember the skit, go here…
http://people.csail.mit.edu/paulfitz/spanish/script.html
..it was in the python collection commercial aired like a 100 times even, Im shocked more people dont at least recognise it.
I don’t get it, but I want to.
*sigh* What do you people do with your lifes, you sad souls who haven’t been introduced to Monty Python? 🙂
Ha ha ha ha ha ha!!!
That’s awesome. God, I can hear the skit in my head. That’s some funny, funny stuff.
No one in the class laughed? Wow. That’s really rather sad, isn’t it?
*snork*
Two quick related things:
When Daniel was in 7th grade, one of the requirements was 4 quarters of ‘Language Sampler’ (each quarter was a different foreign language and in 8th grade, they selected a language to take for the entire year).
4th quarter was Latin. First day of class, the teacher asked the kids if they knew any Latin phrases already.
Someone said ‘Carpe Deum’..another, ‘Semper Fi’. Daniel raised his hand and was called on. He stood, picked up a book…chanted the monks’ chant from ‘Holy Grail’, smacked his face with the book and sat right back down.
He told me when he came home that the teacher laughed so hard that they ended up being late for class the following period.
__________
Back in 1992, I was working part time at our local shul as the Admin for our Rabbi. The photographer from the local paper came to take the annual ‘Look! We have Jews!’ photo of the Rabbi getting the shul ready for the High Holidays. We were in the sanctuary and the photographer, discussing Columbus (remember this was the 500th anniversary year of Columbus’ allegedly ‘discovering’ America) and commented that about the ‘coincidence’ of Jews leaving Spain around the same time.
Oh, did I mention that the Rabbi was a *big* fan of British comedy?
The Rabbi and I glanced at each other. She starts explaining about the Diaspora and comments about the ‘coincidence’ with ‘Because noooooobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!’ and we launch into the routine.
The photographer didn’t get it. At all. Not the humor, not the routine…and not the Inquisition.
Man, I loved that Rabbi.
Leah
(still thinking you should have put bunny ears on Caroline’s head last year on Black Monday )
…and of course, I meant ‘Carpe Diem’.
Bad me. Bad, bad me.
wife and i are both laughing over this one 🙂
Clearly Gwen needs to start hanging out more at MIT or HRSFA (the Vericon folk).
I’m cracking up from both the joke and the responses…
My 2 cents: When I was a junior in college, our dormitory decided to do a Python-themed homecoming parade float. We had a tower, a load of fair-maiden-wannabees, a fair maiden (dude in drag, w. balloons for the huge…) and, dressed in appropriate robes (borrowed from the Cantorei), a procession of monks, led by me…carrying cafeteria trays.
One got used to the pain rather quickly, and most of the people watching got the joke, I hope. We didn’t win best float that year due to the fair maiden wannabees mixing condoms in with the candy that they were tossing to the onlookers….
Geez, you’d think more people would have seen Sliding Doors!
Sorry, had to throw that out there.
Ha! Ðámņ, I really miss the Pythons. Gotta buy some DVDs…
Great response, Gwen. You’re your father’s daughter. 🙂
okay, embarrassing story.
i was in a Junior High English class, and I think I remember everyone was way overly excited to be the next person to read alout from the text.
there were littereally shouts of “me next!” “Then me!” I couldn’t stop my mouth and blurted out “Then comes the oral sex!”
I got suspended because of Monty Python
..yeah
We are still working on Knock-Knock jokes with my daughter. Gwen sounds like a smart lady.
1A very wise child. I have to remember that one.
My son Brandon is 15 weeks old. he has just started smiling and laughing. What I find he smiles and laughs most at is when I start singing “Immanuel Kant was a real pissant, who was very rarely stable.”
You know the rest.
That’s a great kid you got there. *big grin*
—KRAD
Given her parentage, quick thinking genes will tell. But hers isn’t an isolated case. Ottawa SF convention years ago had a lady smartly attired in an Imperial officer’s uniform, doing military precision march up to the podium during the costume show and then giving an enthusiastic pitch for a career in Palpatine’s trooper squads, finishing with “Remember the armed forces, there’s no life like it.”
Most of the audience [the Canadian majority] nearly fell down laughing at this, but she didn’t even rate honourable mention in the humour division because the [American] authors/comic artists who made up the judging lineup didn’t know the Canadian army’s recruitment catch phrase.
Lesson being: know your audience and tailor your jokes to it.
College kids not knowing Monty Python? If you need any more proof that our educational system has gone to the dogs…
Now, Randy mentions his son being amused by the Philosopher’s Drinking Song. My niece Carleigh, who is 2 1/2 years old, smiled quite a bit at Christmastime when I sang her Tom Lehrer’s Vatican Rag and National Brotherhood Week.
Of course, she also amused when I put red play-do on my nose and told her I was Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer…
Guess what’s on BBC America as I write this?
Hey,
This is kinda off subject but does anyone know anything about the Dreadstar comic series? # of issues, etc. I post here because the name on the cover is PETER DAVID & ERNIE COLON. I figured the other fans of PAD’s comic books would be able to answer. I buy anything with PAD’s name on it and sometimes its not even him….
Thanks
P.S. I’m 13 and i love Monty Python.
We did a similar thing at one of my girlfriend’s Halloween parties while she was still at UGA. A friend of mine had recently broken up with his girlfriend, and knew that everybody was going to be grilling him about it at the party. Another friend of ours wanted to do a costume that year with a Python theme.
So the first friend and I stage an loud discussion/argument by the front door about how he and his girlfriend broke up, escalating it to the point where he says “geez, I knew people were gonna be asking me about this, but I wasn’t expecting the Spanish Inquistion.” The second friend then kicks in the door, jumps through in full-on Palin costume, and yells out “NOBODY expects the Spanish Inquisition!!!” At which point about three people got the reference and hit the floor doubled over with laughter, leaving everyone else chuckling mildly about the clever entrance.
They just don’t make college students like they used to. My first friend still got grilled endlessly over his breakup, too.
Your kids being able to quote and refer back to the Python crew is a sign you’re raising them right! Congrats!
My niece Carleigh, who is 2 1/2 years old, smiled quite a bit at Christmastime when I sang her Tom Lehrer’s Vatican Rag and National Brotherhood Week.
Marvelous, but why on earth didn’t you include Lehrer’s “A Christmas Carol” in the repertoire? 🙂
TWL
“don’t stand underneath when they fly by…”
I’m very proud of my honorary niece.
I love it!
My two “nobody really got it” stories.
1. Church Business meeting and an 80 something man who was filling in for the pastor as moderator gives a report from the Cemetary committee. “The Cementary is doing well and growing.”
I sat there wanting to laugh, I look and noone else got the funny. Do you?
2.In New Testament class at Divinity School, Teacher is giving a lecture in which he gives the possible theory that Thomas, the disciple of Jesus that was know for doubting, might have died in India as a missionary. I fellow raises his hand and asks, “Are they sure about that?”
The professor replies, “Pretty sure.” Never missing a beat. Realization spread like the wave at a football game in the class.
Award her the Holy Hand Grenade Of Antioch, Peter.
And, now, for MY “why didn’t they get it?” story. In college, I was in the Games Playing Club, and due to all the officers getting placed on academic probation, I was made an officer. So our librarian-turned-president decided our public service project would be, get this, A Knight Of British Comedy, and everyone in the club would have to perform. Out of forty some people, I and two others were the only ones with any performing experience.
THAT’s not the worst part.
So, I’m the co-director/co-lead/co-one responsible for this whole mess. I wanna raise some serious money with this thing. So, a co-worker who also worked with recovering mental patients agreed to bring them all to the show.
So, we’re out there in all of our Python/Black Adder/Are You Being Served(A large redhead stomped her feet on our heads until we put it in) best,a and the two laughs we got were when the Camelot model was an old Fisher Price castle with a spring flag that just bounced back and forth the whole time, and when the Inquisitioner’s cushy pillow turned out to be a duffle bag with Tammy’s bra sticking out. Also, we got a good chuckle when the Inquisitioner said “We have a new kind of chain…Velcro!” So he says Velcro a few more times, and then Pat, our resident Fezzik, comes out and says “I’m Velcro!”
1 I used to teach courses in VMS and Unix operating systems. The command to add a device to the directory tree is “mount.” The command to remove it is “umount” (Not dismount, not unmount, umount). I tried emphasizing this with umount/Oprah (or multiple variations). No one else thought it was funny (they were probably right), so I quit doing it.
2. As a teenager in Los Angeles, I was in a community youth band. Disneyland had a program (that they now call “Magic Music Days”) where High School and youth bands parade down Main Street. In my case, I was of the generation of Disneylanders who performed when you still had to use the Alphabet tickets. As compensation for performing, we would get admission and a booklet of “Magic Key” tickets, which were wildcard admissions. In warning us not to waste their value, I was the only one to groan when the band director inadvertantly stated “Now you only get five of these tickets, so don’t waste them on any of the Mickey Mouse rides!”!
I now hang my head in shame. I just went into the bedroom and told Stace, my long-suffering wife, the whole story and what I was typing, and when I told her she gave me a blank look that said “What the hëll did I marry?” I’m gonna have to give that woman a series of Latter Half Of The Twentieth Century Culture classes….
Right on! Way to go Gwen!
This happened when I was 14. I was in the bathroom preparing to engage in some ‘paper work’ when I over hear my parents watching a news story involving necrophilia. I don’t know why but I knew what the word meant. Then I heard my mother ask my step-father what it meant. He had no idea. I then heard her coming down the hall and she calls my name. I respond and she asks me where my dictionary is.
Me being me I decide to save her some trouble and tell her what necrophilia is.
MOM: Mitchell?
ME: Yeah?
MOM: Where’s your dictionary?
ME: (giving the definition) It’s having sex with the dead.
MOM: Mitchell! That’s disgusting!
What makes it funny is that the entire exchange was yelled through a bathroom door.
PAD I hope you reward Gwen with something nifty. Like a big-ášš bág of chocolate.
Salutations,
Mitch
My first year at Columbia, I took the required “Literature Humanities” course (a survey of Western Literature from Genesis to Virginia Woolf or your money back). Midway through the Spring semester we got to the Decameron, which is a compilation of mostly humorous and/or obscene stories from the fourteenth century. The stories themselves are mostly funny, but the setup for the characters to tell each other stories is that they meet while they’re holed up outside Florence because the Black Death is destroying the city, and Boccaccio describes it in a very moving passage. As the professor was reading this aloud, someone at my end of the table muttered the dread words “bring out your dead,” at what was a fairly appropriate spot in the description. The four or five of us who were laughing aloud at a description of the Plague received some very strange looks.
I have to share this Python related story that happened to me. I moved to Florida about ten years ago and next door to my best friend’s Mom’s store, I worked in a comic book shop where the owners name, one of the other employees name and one of our best customers were all named Bruce.
So, my friend Allen walks in one day we start to have a conversation about life and things going on at the time when my boss asks me who this guy is.
Realizing that all three Bruce’s were there, I had to do it and so I introduced Al to everybody with…
“Michael Baldwin, Bruce. Michael Baldwin, Bruce. Michael Baldwin, Bruce.”
The three Bruces just stared at me while my best friend is dying on the floor with tears in his eyes from laughing so hard.
Somehow, it just made the joke better to me.
Meanwhile, one of my other friends, Jim, considers it sacralege that a comic book store owner didn’t know a Monty Python skit. I have to agree with him.
Peace,
Larry
One of the few times I watched PBS as a young lad was to get my weekly fix of Monty Python. During the mid-1970s (1974?), it was on Sunday nights in Chicago. My friends and I would play basketball in the gym of the local Catholic School where one of the guys was a part-time custodian. We’d always stop playing just before it was time for Monty Python to come on, run upstairs to one of the classrooms, and roll out one of those classromo TV sets on a stand to watch it.
Yeah, “Nobody expects… the Spanish Inquisition!”
No excuse!
In this day and age of the massive amounts of info on the internet, nearly every TV show on DVD and the hundreds of reruns shown on the thousands of cable and satellite channels there is NO excuse to not know the classic comedy routines out there.
Why in the world would anyone home on a saturday night, for instance, waste 90 minutes of TV viewing watching that weekly showing of the incredibly unfunny tripe known as the current Saturday Night Live, when they can just as easily pop in a DVD and watch Monty Python, SCTV, Black Adder, Fawlty Towers, etc….
NO EXCUSE!!!!
perhaps on ‘bring a pet to school day’ she could bring an ex-parrot ??