Tragical History Tour
Jan. 28th, 2008 07:34 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
captainsblogThe Beatles. Python. NBC's Saturday Night (as I will always know it in my heart, the "SNL" moniker belonging to ABC and Howard Cosell, of all people, in the first season they both shared). They represent the triumvirate of popular culture from my pre-teens through the end of the 70s (even if it was the Ramones who worked that reference into a song). And, as with many institutions, they had interlocking directorates which bound the band, the troupe and the show together for most of my early college years until gunfire in Manhattan ended all hopes of the ultimate merger of the three.
Emily had friends here on Saturday night. Eleanor and I were both exhausted, but these kids are just so much fun to have around, we wouldn't have kiboshed it for the world. Their choice of DVD entertainment was the Monty Python Live at the Hollywood Bowl film which we acquired recently. It's a marvelous blend of live performance and filmed/animated bits, some I already knew by heart by the time of its '82 release, others (such as the Pope and Michaelangelo bit) originated for this performance. All of them brought laughs and tears to kids who hadn't even been imagined at the time the Pythons trod on these particular boards.
The second leg of the trium-vertical stool is in my desk drawer right now. A Friend from here, who is quite the scholar of both MP and TB's, posted an impassioned plea a few weeks back about how Netflix was Netscrewing her out of a viewing of the Beatle film Magical Mystery Tour. I'd read a bit about how Netflix's "unlimited" rental plans are a bit more limited than advertised- in particular, about how some high-volume users (defined, apparently, as three-at-a-time plan members who actually dare to turn over their threesome as many as three times in a month) get "throttled" and subjected to longer waits for popular titles and even longer waits for their more obscure ones. To test this theory, I tried ordering the film myself, and voila! It said it'd ship the next day. It then turned into a "long wait" for me the next morning, but by day's end it had shipped and it's been, um, processed and the original returned to them. (Another Friend-of-Friend had offered to buy her the video by then, so I never sent her the film. If she still needs it, she should say something.)
Yet it was that real Beatle film which reminded me of another in our collection: All You Need Is Cash, the story of the Rutles. My Rutlemania goes back to the original airing of an Idle-directed clip of the band on the original Saturday Night show, and to the prime-time airing of this very documentary on NBC a few years later. I bought at the time, and actually kept until a few years ago, its vinyl double-album soundtrack which is now, I'm told, quite the collectors item. This time, though, I've been watching with Eric Idle's commentary running, and it's quite good. He plays it straight and offers some interesting sidelights to the parody going on in the film itself. One, from around the time of Mick Jagger's as-himself cameo, is Eric mentioning that his co-director, Gary Weis, was one of the cameramen who filmed the infamous Stones concert film at Altamont- along with another up-and-comer of the day by the name of George Lucas. Eric also points out several fairly lurid appearances by the woman who would become (and according to IMDB, still is) his wife, as well as a number of other walk-on parts from less-than-famous people who were still quite dear to him. Anyone who hasn't seen this ancestor of Spinal Tap and the like really ought to check it out.
Emily had friends here on Saturday night. Eleanor and I were both exhausted, but these kids are just so much fun to have around, we wouldn't have kiboshed it for the world. Their choice of DVD entertainment was the Monty Python Live at the Hollywood Bowl film which we acquired recently. It's a marvelous blend of live performance and filmed/animated bits, some I already knew by heart by the time of its '82 release, others (such as the Pope and Michaelangelo bit) originated for this performance. All of them brought laughs and tears to kids who hadn't even been imagined at the time the Pythons trod on these particular boards.
The second leg of the trium-vertical stool is in my desk drawer right now. A Friend from here, who is quite the scholar of both MP and TB's, posted an impassioned plea a few weeks back about how Netflix was Netscrewing her out of a viewing of the Beatle film Magical Mystery Tour. I'd read a bit about how Netflix's "unlimited" rental plans are a bit more limited than advertised- in particular, about how some high-volume users (defined, apparently, as three-at-a-time plan members who actually dare to turn over their threesome as many as three times in a month) get "throttled" and subjected to longer waits for popular titles and even longer waits for their more obscure ones. To test this theory, I tried ordering the film myself, and voila! It said it'd ship the next day. It then turned into a "long wait" for me the next morning, but by day's end it had shipped and it's been, um, processed and the original returned to them. (Another Friend-of-Friend had offered to buy her the video by then, so I never sent her the film. If she still needs it, she should say something.)
Yet it was that real Beatle film which reminded me of another in our collection: All You Need Is Cash, the story of the Rutles. My Rutlemania goes back to the original airing of an Idle-directed clip of the band on the original Saturday Night show, and to the prime-time airing of this very documentary on NBC a few years later. I bought at the time, and actually kept until a few years ago, its vinyl double-album soundtrack which is now, I'm told, quite the collectors item. This time, though, I've been watching with Eric Idle's commentary running, and it's quite good. He plays it straight and offers some interesting sidelights to the parody going on in the film itself. One, from around the time of Mick Jagger's as-himself cameo, is Eric mentioning that his co-director, Gary Weis, was one of the cameramen who filmed the infamous Stones concert film at Altamont- along with another up-and-comer of the day by the name of George Lucas. Eric also points out several fairly lurid appearances by the woman who would become (and according to IMDB, still is) his wife, as well as a number of other walk-on parts from less-than-famous people who were still quite dear to him. Anyone who hasn't seen this ancestor of Spinal Tap and the like really ought to check it out.
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Date: 2008-01-29 02:24 am (UTC)And I'm really kinda glad I never signed up for Netflix. It just seemed too good to be true.
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Date: 2008-01-29 03:01 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-01-29 04:18 am (UTC)