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A certain dose of vitriol keeps the forum entertaining. Perhaps TotallyOz can enlighten me, but I was not aware that a member here is obliged to read every post and know the details of every feud. Silence is a powerful weapon.

20 Facts About Monty Python and the Holy Grail That Might Make You Say, “Ni!” March 9, 2015 Sitting at or near the top of many “best” lists (including an Amazon UK/IMDB poll rating it Britain’s Best Comedy) is Monty Python and the Holy Grail, the bare bones little film that could. The oft quoted, silly and irreverent Pythons (John Cleese, Eric Idle, Michael Palin, Graham Chapman, Terry Jones, Terry Gilliam) share their take on King Arthur and the movie features each of the players in several roles. For my money, there are few funny movie scenes that hold as well as that of the Black Knight, it never fails to crack me up. And if any of you whippersnappers out there have yet to see this, then you must cut down the mightiest tree in the forest…WITH A HERRING. Black Knight Reliable Bridge Security T Shirt $24.99 Only $19.99 with Coupon Code: KNIGHT ________________________________________ 1. The opening credits are so plain because the sequence was done at the end of filming and there was no budget left. The “Swedish” subtitles were written by Michael Palin; he used it as an opportunity to entertain the “captive” audience. When the film opened at Cannes, the subtitles got huge laughs and right at the end of the credits, the film stopped and a bunch of firemen ran in to usher out the audience. Because of the perfect concurrence of events, filmgoers thought it was all part of the show, but they had been evacuated for a real bomb scare. After the theater was deemed clear, the audience went back in and resumed watching. According to John Cleese, “The Llama is funny, like moose and Nixon, and fish of any kind.” 2. The Monty Python group was formed (according to Gilliam) while he was working for David Frost. He met John Cleese (who was doing “The Frost Report” along with Chapman) and everyone was working in television–Mike Palin, Terry Jones and Eric Idle on “Do Not Adjust Your Set.” Gilliam was a cartoonist; John Cleese introduced him to the “Do Not Adjust Your Set” producer, who liked Gilliam’s work. Gilliam began doing caricatures of the weekly guests and did his first animation there. Cleese had a standing show invitation for the BBC, so the group did a show together. After their fourth outing, the BBC said they didn’t understand the show and were ready to pull them off air, but the public loved them and thus, Python was born. Other group names considered were: A Horse, a Spoon and a Basin, Owl Stretching Time, The Toad Elevating Moment, Bun Whacket Buzzard Stubble and Boot and Gwen Dibley’s Flying Circus (Gwen Dibley was the lady who played piano at Palin’s mother’s afternoon town guild meetings and Palin thought she’d be quite surprised to have a group named after her.) For a while they had a working title of Circus, then Cleese suggested “python” as something nasty and sneaky and Idle came up with a sneaky agent called Monty. Terry Jones remembered a “Do Not Adjust Your Set” animation called “Elephants” that inspired him to think of continuous sketches that flowed like animation and that idea became the format for their show. 3. Self-described by co-director Terry Gilliam (The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, Twelve Monkeys, The Fisher King, Brazil, Time Bandits) as “ambitious little shits who wanted to direct at all costs,” he and Terry Jones (Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride, The Life of Brian, The Meaning of Life) decided to do a film and that anyone named Terry would get to direct it. 4. In the original script, half the film was set in the middle ages and the other half in the 20th century. The story flipped about between them; at end of the first draft, the Holy Grail was discovered at Harrods department store, at the Holy Grail counter…because Harrods has everything. At the time, Terry Jones was working on his (Chaucer’s Knight: The Portrait of a Medieval Mercenary) book and thought it would be nice to keep it in middle ages, so they figured why not do the King Arthur story? 5. The opening shot was actually completed at the end of filming, near Terry Gilliam’s house. They had a big problem with locations, which had been set up in Scotland ahead of time. A week before filming was to begin, they got word the Environmental Department had forbidden them to shoot at any castles. In a last minute panic they found the privately owned Doune Castle in Glencoe. So all location shots (of different castles) are Doune. 6. Gilliam said the only time he ever saw Michael Palin get really annoyed is when he had to spend all day crawling in the Plague Village mud. The mud was foul and “full of pig shit; people had to get tetanus shots.” Palin said he spoke to a prop man about how he’d know which mud to eat–the man said he’d put down chocolate–to Palin it all looked the same. After about 14 takes, Palin lost it and beat the ground, which according to Cleese was “hysterical.” After all that, most of Palin’s crawling and mud eating was cut. 7. When Patsy (GIlliam) and Arthur (Graham Chapman) are crossing the meadow, the castle in the background (and later, Camelot) is a plywood cutout. Shooting had to be stopped many times as the wind kept blowing it over. 8. The actual period of the film is the 1350s. Gilliam said they blackened and yellowed all the actors’ teeth “because people always think medieval means bad teeth, but it probably wasn’t that way.” Referencing the Mary Rose (a ship sunk in 1545 and salvaged in 1982), the director related that the mariners all had perfect teeth because they had no sugar in their diet. 9. The Black Knight scene was inspired by a story John Cleese heard at college: two Roman wrestlers were engaged in a long match and they became so entangled that one of them suffered a broken limb. He couldn’t take the pain any longer and submitted, so various attendants came over, untangled them and tapped the winner on the shoulder, saying “You won,” at which time they discovered he was dead. Cleese and Chapman did their own stunts, including the sword fighting, which was described as very difficult because of the tiny eye slits in the helmets. At the time of shooting, they had run out of budget and the producer was running the camera and lighting; they had about three other people and it took a week to shoot the scene. 10. Gilliam said that because the film came out during the time of the Vietnam War, all the liberals who came to the see it were very anti-violence and couldn’t handle it–people didn’t laugh until the Black Knight’s very last limb was cut off. He said they (Jones and Gilliam) enjoyed the audience coming to terms with the scene, realizing it wasn’t about violence, but rather attitude. No matter how much of the guy is removed, he’s still a belligerent, mad character who won’t give up. Part of the scene is done with Cleese holding his arms behind his back, part by a one-legged silversmith, named Richard Burton (which delighted Cleese because he could say “Richard Burton was my stunt double”) and part with a wired puppet. 11. John Cleese’s first wife and “Fawlty Towers” co-writer and star, Connie Booth played the witch. During the scene, Eric Idle came so close to laughing that he bit his blade (on film). 12. The book scene was done to save money; Gilliam’s wife turned the pages (shot in his living room) and Michael Palin’s son Tom is the little baby. 13. Animated God was a picture of one of Britain’s most famous cricketers, W.G. Grace. 14. Gilliam spoke of people trying to write papers about the left-brain/right-brain theory of Python, noting that the group is split down the middle. John, Eric and Graham were Cambridge educated, Mike and Terry Jones went to Oxford and Terry Gilliam was the token American. In addition to the different universities, were differing heights. The Cambridge group was the “Tall Group” and the “Normal Sized People” were Mike, Terry and Gilliam. According to Gilliam, Cambridge seems to produce the kind of person whose best defense is strong offense (more logical, precise, etc.) and their verbal skills are more obvious. Mike, Terry and Gilliam were more conceptual. Whenever Python had a disagreement, there was usually a split down the middle of these groups. 15. The film played steadily at a cinema in France until The Life of Brian came out (1974-1979). 16. The catapulted cow was a toy from a railway set. It was the directors’ first model shot; Gilliam said, “We dug the camera into the ground, threw the cow in Julian Doyle’s (Production Manager) back garden, put it all together and we had entered the world of Special Effects. Explaining the tactic, the director said flinging animals in battle was not unheard of. During the Battle of Corsica, there was a town under siege for years. Gilliam related a story: the woman in charge of the town was trying to convince the besiegers that they were fine and had enough food, so she took the town’s last remaining pigs, stuffed them with bits of grain and other things and fired them out. It worked and the besiegers went home. The Python group was also obsessed with animals at the time, thus the Trojan Rabbit. 17. The directors were surprised at the success of the film. When it opened at Cinema One in New York, before dawn, there was a queue around the block. They didn’t know how people had heard about it and they snuck into shows with audiences. Gilliam remembered two people coming to him from out of the crowd, it was John Belushi and Gilda Radner, both of whom were just starting out–trying to break into showbiz. 18. The movie was made at a time in England when the rich were paying “crazy” taxes, 80 to 90 percent. All the music stars had made lots of money and were looking for ways of creating tax losses to salvage their earnings, so Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, Elton John and Chrysalis Records funded the film. The Python group didn’t have a lot of money to make it (most of the money went to costuming), thus the mimed horse riding with coconut banging (copied from BBC radio horse-clopping) sound effects. It is the film from which they made the most money because it cost the least to make and the group owns most of it. There is no ad-libbing; everything was scripted and rehearsed, which helped to keep down the cost. 19. Shooting inside Doune Castle led to Terry Jones writing Chaucer’s Knight: The Portrait of a Medieval Mercenary when it was learned the castle’s interior was sectioned in two (by walls). One section was for the lord and one for the soldiers, each defensible from the other because the soldiers were mercenaries and couldn’t be trusted. The lord had to defend himself against his own defenders. Jones set on path of reexamining Chaucer’s The Knight’s Tale and the symbol of knights being chivalrous; “It may have been a totally ironic piece written about a mercenary.” 20. Gilliam said, “The most damage we did was to the killer rabbit.” The lady who owned the bunny didn’t want it to get dirty or messed up, so they tried to keep her distracted. The dye they used didn’t immediately come out and the lady was crazed. He wondered why they didn’t just go out and buy a bunny instead of using a “trained” rabbit. The director felt that animal wranglers are the maddest people you’ll find on film, saying “The animals not really trained, they’re just doing what animals do–most of training is in trainers’ minds.” http://se7ens.info/20-facts-about-monty-python-and-the-holy-grail/

A lawyer opened the door of his BMW, when suddenly a car came along and hit the door, ripping it off completely. When the police arrived at the scene, the lawyer was complaining bitterly about the damage to his precious BMW. "Officer, look what they've done to my Beemer!" he whined. "You lawyers are so materialistic, you make me sick!" retorted the officer, "You're so worried about your stupid BMW, that you didn't even notice that your left arm was ripped off!" "Oh my god", replied the lawyer, finally noticing the bloody left shoulder where his arm once was, "Where's my Rolex!"

One of my all time favorites..."It's just a flesh wound" And to think that Radner and Belushi saw it when they were just starting out. Time does fly.

Another good day !! http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/03/17/pcusa-lgbt-book-of-order_n_6885966.html Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) Embraces LGBT-Inclusive Definition Of Marriage The tide has turned for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender couples seeking to be married in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A). Following years of debate and introspection, America’s largest Presbyterian denomination has announced a change to its constitution that allows for a more inclusive definition of marriage. Officially called Amendment 14-F, the new wording in the denomination’s Book of Order will describe marriage as being “between two people.” About 71 percent of PC (USA) leaders approved of the change during a general assembly meeting last June. The church had been waiting for a majority of its 172 Presbyteries, or regional bodies, to approve the measure one by one. On Tuesday, this majority was reached, with 86 Presbyteries handing in decisions to support same-sex marriage within the church. “Today we are rejoicing!" said the Rev. Robin White, co-moderator of the LGBT advocacy group More Light Presbyterians. "So many families headed by LGBTQ couples have been waiting for decades to enter this space created for their families within their church communities.” More Presbyteries will continue to hand in their decisions until June, when the amendment is scheduled to go into effect. But not everyone agrees with the change. As of Tuesday, 41 Presbyteries have voted against Amendment 14-F. Although the updated Book of Order will describe marriage as "a unique commitment between two people," church leaders added a caveat explaining that it “traditionally” occurs “between a man and a woman.” The careful wording reflects a continuing tension between conservative and liberal factions within the 1.76 million-member church. After last year’s assembly, PC(USA) ministers have been allowed to officiate at same-sex weddings in places where it is legal for LGBT people to tie the knot. Amendment 14-F won't make it mandatory for clergy to perform same-sex marriages, and clergy members who object to its wording will be allowed to refuse to officiate those ceremonies. Hundreds of parishes have left the denomination in recent years, partly because of its more inclusive attitude toward LGBT members. The PC(USA) counted 10,959 member churches in 2005. That number dropped to 10,038 in 2013, according to church statistics provided to The Huffington Post. The decrease includes both churches that dissolved completely and churches that were dismissed to other denominations, including the more conservative Presbyterian Church in America and the Evangelical Covenant Order of Presbyterians -- neither of which ordains gay clergy or condones same-sex marriages. The Covenant Network of Presbyterians, a group that has been advocating for LGBT members since 1997, has been tallying the results as they have come in throughout the year. Executive Director Rev. Brian Ellison said that his group still has much more work to do. “It’s an important moment for the church in that there really continues to be serious disagreement about this,” Ellison told HuffPost. “This moment is a real opportunity for us to struggle, to work through differences, but still be committed to each other.”

Now you know how many folks feel about BO. Sigh, indeed. Best regards, RA1

The Pharisees are thriving, it appears.

Calli, lets get ONE thing straight: I am NOT angry, I am Annoyed. And I never tried to hide WHO I was over "there" I said from day 1 here I was JJkrkwood, and detailed my time and struggles "there".... So if you think you have made some big revelation here, YOU HAVENT, but what you have done is continued to be a pain in the ass... In fact, YOU sound very "GLUTESY" to me ! Lucky and Zippy..... they are just "disappointing" and unhappy about Everything. As for MsAnn, I dont know who she is or if she has another identity "there", but what I do know is that I enjoy her HERE, and if she IS Bigvalgurl "there", that would be the BEST psychotic transformation, and someone should hand her an Academy Award. Talk about being Sybil. that's a MAJOR split personality.

Perhaps he will form a coalition government with the Republican Party. I think it will be some years before we get back our independent voice in the Middle East. Interesting that Saeb Erekat lost no time vowing to go to the ICC, which Palestine joins on April 1st. I was hoping Israel would get a Prime Minister who could make friends as well as enemies. Instead it looks like we're all in for another few years with the Big Cheese.

... we got this space-time view, this view of action integrals and action in distance, and pads in space and time instead of fields, and so on, that we were thinking about. Then Wheeler called me up one day and he said I answered the phone in my dormitory - Feynman, I know why all the electrons have the same charge and mass, all different electrons. I said, Why? He said, Theyre all the same electron. So I asked him what he meant by that brilliant idea. He said, You know, we always make the world lines go one way, but suppose the world line of an electron is one enormous knot, going back and forth in space-time, just one line, going back and forth. Then when we cut it in the place of present time, wed have a large number of intersections, which would represent electrons. I said, Oh. Yeah. Very nice. He said, It turns out that the back section, where its going the other way, the proper times running the wrong way, corresponds to a negative charge. You see why? Then he explained why. I could see it from our action principle: you change the sign of BS and change the sign of the charge. So that was I said, Yeah, but where are all the positrons? Well, maybe theyre hidden in the protons somewhere or something, the back sections. I said, Ok. Its a nice idea. But what I liked about the idea was that the positrons were electrons going backwards in time, and that world lines could be inverted. This idea I kept in my mind, although I didnt go so much for the fact that all electrons are the same electron. He always liked to prove it to the most dramatic point. I just took the backwards-moving electrons as very likely candidates for the positrons. Because here we had a theory that we could represent both electrons and positrons in classical physics in a very simple way, by reversing, by letting the world lines go backwards and forwards in time. So it was pretty good. He had a lot of good ideas, Wheeler. Weiner: Yeah. He seemed to be able to deal with the ones that you brought in too. Feynman: Yes. Well, what he did, you see, things like Id like to remark that the moment he mentioned advanced waves that is, against causality and all this other stuff is against cause, the causes would precede the effect no, the causes would follow the effects instead of preceding them, and so on I didnt ever say, But thats impossible! or anything like that. I was not ever upset by any of the obvious troubles, as against some principle of causality or something. This was from the training we had in physics from Einstein and Bohr and so on. See, the history of physics was that a crazy idea like relativity, which is so evidently nutty like when one man thinks two things are simultaneous, some other guy riding by doesnt say so or, that you cant measure simultaneously position and momentum, or something It had been discovering that you must always think carefully about the real experimental situation before you cavalierly say such a thing is impossible, you dont like it. So I never objected to any of these crazy ideas, on those grounds. I never said, for instance, How can it go backwards? How would it know when its going to meet an electron? I knew that that was something we would have to study that that wasnt obviously cockeyed. The fact that there were protons and not positrons were an obvious trouble, but I let him get away with it, so someday well discover how the protons go, wind up in this knot, too. But never mind. His brilliance, the wildness of his ideas, apparently impossible ideas, did fall on fertile soil, because I never objected to what other people would immediately have objected to, you know. All the books would say we cant use advanced waves because this would mean effects would precede causes. But things like that never bothered me. I dont give a darn. I never thought in terms of cause and effect necessarily, anything. http://www.aip.org/history/ohilist/5020_3.html

One born every minute.