Guest Blog By Todd Ainsworth

I’m not dead yet!

Unfortunately, that’s not quite true anymore for Terry Jones of Monty Python fame.

We, who “got” the Monty Python humor ( and I remember many of my friends when I was younger didn’t ) were saddened on January 21st. by the news of his passing. Now, with Graham Chapman, two of the six geniuses who were Monty Python’s Flying Circus, are gone.

One of the final scenes in “The Meaning Of Life” has Burt Bacharach singing, “It’s Christmas In Heaven”, and I hope Terry and Graham are hanging out together again, if that’s “wha’ it’s all about.”

My introduction to Monty Python changed my life.

I didn’t know I needed it, but when I found it, I realized I wasn’t alone with my weirdness and “strange” sense of humor. I had already found Benny Hill, but it wasn’t the same; Hill was more vaudeville and had less biting satire.

As the show’s run on American TV was ending, there was a marathon on PBS that I stumbled upon and I must have watched for hours – laughing uncontrollably as a piano player got his arm ripped off and a fountain of blood spewed from the socket! Good times.

The unflinching look in the mirror the Circus took led me to realize that we have to laugh at ourselves and our society in general. That may be the only way to make progress…to point out how ridiculous we really all are, coming together in agreeing…”We’re all crazy.”

This isn’t as funny as it should be, but I didn’t expect some sort of Spanish Inquisition!

RIP, Terry…and now for something completely different.

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