MPFC – If you know, you know

 kw: book reviews, nonfiction, humor, satire, lampoons, parodies

Well, folks, this is a step up from Kindergarten: Everything I Ever Wanted to Know About ____* I Learned From Monty Python by Brian Cogan, PhD and Jeff Massey, PhD. Hmm. If one ignores the learned asides and references, the visual humor of Monty Python in its various incarnations is Kindergarten all the way. The bottom of the book cover has the footnote, "* History, Art, Poetry, Communism, Philosophy, The Media, Birth, Death, Religion, Literature, Latin, Transvestites, Botany, The French, Class Systems, Mythology, Fish Slapping, and Many More!" Various portions of the book do indeed treat of these items, and many more.

The authors make much of the educational background of the six Python members. No doubt, having been steeped in British culture about as much as one is able to steep, Python was eminently qualified to send-up nearly every aspect thereof. Even the "American Python" Terry Gilliam was a naturalized Brit after 1968.

The book is no parody of Monty Python; that's not possible. It is a series of riffs on their treatment of the various and sundry subjects. I have seen only one of the TV shows from Monty Python's Flying Circus, "Spanish Inquisition". The TV show ran on BBC from late 1969 to the end of 1974 and many episodes were re-run in later years on PBS. I've seen scattered bits that made their way to YouTube, and during the period that I could stomach watching PBS, I saw The Life of Brian and Monty Python and the Holy Grail. The book's authors have apparently binge-watched the entire MPFC corpus several times.

I enjoyed the book. I can't write more than this, so I'll leave it to you, dear reader, to delve into it yourself.