A few months ago, I bought tickets for a show for a date night for my husband and myself.  Our date nights are few and far between, and we were both looking forward to this show last night.  But with my aunt’s death early yesterday morning, we weren’t sure if it was appropriate to go or not.  Does one go to a humorous show on the day a loved one has died?  But, we knew my aunt was in heaven, we knew she loved to laugh, and we knew that if we could ask her what to do, she would say, “Go to the show!”

So, we went.  And we had a marvelous time.

What was the show?  We watched John Cleese, of Monty Python fame, perform a one-man show consisting of him telling stories about his life in comedy television.  The show was held in the Fox Theater in downtown Redwood City, an old historical landmark theater.  JJ and I went early and had supper at a fabulous little Italian restaurant about two blocks from the theater.  It was a good thing we did, because when we came out and walked to the theater, the line to get into the show stretched for two blocks in the other direction!  If we had been trying to park right before the show, we would have had to park quite a distance away.  We were both pleased about that.  And the food was wonderful at the restaurant!

The show itself was — hilarious!!  We laughed and laughed.  Apparently, John Cleese and his wife recently divorced VERY unamicably.  He has to pay her $20 million, leaving her richer than him!  He talked about this at the beginning of the show, explaining to the audience that he’s doing these shows simply because he “needs the money.”  After spending a little time hilariously ripping on his ex-wife (and her lawyer), he began to talk also hilariously about his childhood, his early years in TV, his time with Monty Python, his award-winning show Fawlty Towers, and a bit about the movie he wrote “A Fish Called Wanda.”  He wore a simple pair of jeans with a collared yellow shirt and a jacket, and the props on the stage consisted merely of a small table and chair with a glass and water pitcher on the table, a podium on the side of the stage, and a projection screen hanging in the middle, onto which various pictures were shown that connected to what he was talking about.

Here are a few interesting/funny highlights that I can remember from the show:

1. When he was ranting about how much he has to pay his wife in his divorce settlement, he mentioned various female celebrities and how often he could have married and divorced them and paid them settlements that would have equaled the $20 million.  He said something to the effect of this: “I could have married Pamela Anderson 2 and 1/3 times.  I could have married _____ 3.4 times.  I could have married this woman from Fremont (and he showed a picture of some minimally attractive woman) 200 times.” – except that he couldn’t get out the end of the joke because he was laughing so hard at the picture of the woman from “Fremont” [a city right across the Bay].  It was hysterically funny, especially because Cleese was buckled over laughing himself.  It was SO funny!
2. He was the only child of his parents, born after they had been married 13 years.  They hadn’t been planning to have children, so John’s arrival was a bit of a surprise.
3. He made the joke that he was born to parents who were “poor, but honest – the worst kind of childhood of all.”  The way he said it was so funny!
4. He made a lot of jokes about his childhood hometown of Weston-Super-Mare, in England.  He said it was a town where absolutely nothing ever happened.  However, it did get bombed in WWII; Cleese said the Germans bombed it simply to prove that they had a sense of humor.
5. When Cleese graduated from high school, he applied and was accepted to Cambridge.  However, for some reason there was a glut of graduates (I forget why), so he had to wait two years until it was his turn to enter Cambridge.  During those two years, he was offered a position teaching 10 year old boys at his old elementary school, and he took the job.
6. He met Graham Chapman at Cambridge, and they were doing comedy together almost from the start.  Cleese studied to become a lawyer.
7. He somehow (I forget how) ended up in a musical on Broadway right after his college graduation, even though he couldn’t sing a note.  Under order from the music director, he mimed the words along with the rest of the men in the chorus.  One night when he did try to sing along a bit, the music director noticed and sternly reminded him after the show, “No singing!”
8. Recently he asked his fellow Pythons what their favorite “silly” scene from the “Flying Circus” shows was, the the unanimous choice was the fish slapping scene.
9. The “Black Knight” scene in the movie “Monty Python and the Holy Grail” (the one where Arthur lops off the arms and then the legs of the Black Knight, even as the Knight refuses to acknowledge defeat) was one that every producer of the movie wanted to take out.  However, when the movie was shown to preview audiences, that invariably was one of the people’s favorite scenes, so it stayed in.
10. Michael Palin can make Cleese laugh more than anyone.  Cleese shared a story of the time the Pythons were performing live in the Hollywood Bowl, and Palin changed a line in the “Dead Parrot” sketch, which completely cracked Cleese up.  He was laughing so hard he couldn’t remember his lines, and when it was his turn for a line, he turned to the Hollywood Bowl audience, who filled in the lines for him.
11. Cleese is apparently very anti-marketing and anti-political correctness.  Every time he mentioned marketers, he loudly spat onto the floor.  He also said that political correctness has ruined a lot of good comedy.

In the lobby, there were T-shirts for sale that said “I Saw John Cleese Perform” on the front, and on the back of the shirt it said “Just Before He Died.”  JJ and I thought those were pretty funny.  Other T-shirts for sale had silhouette images of Cleese in various poses of his “silly walks,” and on the back it said “Alimony Tour – Year One.”  There were also autographed hats that said, “What Would JC do?”  It was all very funny.

At the end of the show, when his “time was up,” he took a few questions from the audience.  There was a microphone ready on one side of the floor, and people lined up in the aisle to ask him a question.  He took about 5-6 questions, and they were all good questions from people who were much bigger Python fans than I am.  But one of the questions I remember: Someone asked about the PC-ness of the song “Never Be Rude to an Arab.”  It made me go home and dig out my Monty Python Instant Record Collection CD and listen to that song; it is most definitely NOT a politically correct song!

All in all, it was a really fun evening, and it has made me want to dig out my video of “The Life of Brian” and watch it again.  I’ve also never watched “The Meaning of Life” after an aborted attempt with a friend in high school; maybe I’ll give it a try again.  I know it’s full of black humor, but perhaps it will strike me a little differently now.  Our local PBS station also often plays old episodes of “Monty Python’s Flying Circus” — I’ll probably watch those a little more closely, too.

It was fun to get out, fun to go to something that made us laugh, and it was just fun to see a famous person — in person!  At the very end of the show, Cleese mentioned that he recently moved to an apartment in San Francisco, so who knows?  Maybe he’ll be around in this area a little more.  Then again, I know a number of other celebrities live in SF, too, and I never see them either.  I’m not one who moves in celebrity-ridden circles, you know.