I Am So Popular: Bring Me a Shrubbery!

In the seventies, the TV show SOAP came out and the Church issued a proclamation banning good Catholics from watching it due to racy content. This would eventually lead me, in college, to a life that consisted of smoking nightly bong hits of skunkweed and watching reruns of SOAP, doubly amused both at the show itself and how this was yet another way to thumb my nose at the faith I left behind. But for the time being, during that period when the show was fresh and new and radical, being forbidden to watch it simply counted as yet another form of the heavy censorship I grew up with.

Most of my reading materials came from a collection of Reader’s Digest Condensed Books (does anyone else remember these abbreviated, cleaned up collections of already squeaky clean fiction?), a small stack of books published in the late 1800’s (seriously) passed down the family by a distant, long dead relative who’d been in publishing, the Gospels, and whatever tomes I might be able to sneak in under the radar. (Oh, and later, there were those Cosmo magazines I ferreted out of my oldest sister’s closet.)

Which is to say, under the tight watch and heavy fist of a censoring zealot, it was no easy task getting a practical education, the sort of thing that would truly help me make it in the world. The library in the town where I grew up (population at the time under 3,000) was roughly the size of a maxi-pad and housed in the basement of the equally small police department. Luckily, at some point, some subversive someone stocked a copy of Our Bodies, Ourselves, which I fortunately stumbled upon. I knew better than to bring it home, but I devoured voraciously, hidden in the stacks, amazed to learn alternate uses for zucchini.

There were other sources of excellent information that came my way, at least two of them packaged in a such a manner as to not raise the suspicions of my parents, despite the delightfully warped perspective they provided me. Top on the list was MAD Magazine. A plumber who lived across the street kept a subscription for years, passing along his used copies to my brother and me. I’m sure the mags appeared innocent enough, filled as they were with comic illustrations, no doubt prompting my mother to dismiss their presence with a “What, me worry?” attitude. (The mags also, helpfully, opened the door to the Snappy Comeback books, as if anyone from New Jersey really needed pointers on sarcasm.)

Perhaps even more pivotal in my educational edification, though, was The Holy Grail, which—thank you Baby Jesus—happened to run on PBS when I was in junior high. Time for a shout out here to my old pal, Dave Wegner, my classmate at Gateway Regional Jr/Sr High School for six years. Dave—whom, I just have to point out, I defeated in the race for Student Council President— and the other naughty boys in his pack (no doubt hell-bound Protestants, the lot of them!) took it upon themselves to steer me in the direction of True Comic Genius and Rebellion. I’ll never forget the Back to School Night when the guys showed me my first National Lampoon, opening up my life experience to ongoing photos of Your Girlfriend Naked with a Bucket Over Her Head and sundry other brilliant gems of satirical journalism that pre-dated (and no doubt inspired) those kids at the Onion.

It was Dave and company that told me about this Monty Python thing, which, they informed me, I could see for myself on public TV. This was pre-cable, when we only got three major networks, PBS, and a few snowy local channels. SOAP notwithstanding, everything back then, before HBO and Comedy Central, was pretty squeaky clean. Pre-Monty-Python, the edgiest my viewing experience got was watching the Love Boat and Fantasy Island back-to-back weekend nights.

These days, given how bombarded we are with movies, Internet porn, YouTube, and hundreds of television channels to choose from, it might be damn near impossible for you young’uns to wrap your head around what seeing MP did to rock my world. I honestly think that The Holy Grail prompted more hard laughter in my fourteen year-old self than I had collectively experienced in the preceding years of my life. Oh, I had to keep a lid on it volume-wise, lest I be discovered. But as far as my parents could figure, if I was watching something on PBS, it must be good for me.

And it was, good for me. Very good.

I can’t count how many times I’ve seen that movie now, plus, of course, all the others. My most memorable time was when I took Henry, then 7, for his first look at it. We were living in Tennessee, and it was playing at a theater very similar to the Paramount. Imagine being a little kid, your first screening of HG on a massive screen. I believe we performed a spontaneous synchronized pant-wetting ritual when that rabid rabbit first appeared.

A couple of nights ago, Warren and I went to the newly fabulous Bass Concert Hall to see Spamalot, which is playing through Sunday. I didn’t look up any info on the show and I admit, as we took our seats, I wondered if it would be a rehashing of HG and, if so, if the material would still amuse me, thirty years after I’d first seen it and considering I’d seen it so very many times.

Well let me just say—Holy Mother of God—what a show. Yes, yes, there are lots of scenes lifted directly from HG, every one of them easily standing the test of time. Plus there’s some excellent meta stuff going on, some wonderful new awful puns, and nods to other MP masterpieces sprinkled throughout. These are funny enough to amuse even under-rock dwellers who’ve never seen MP before, and all the funnier for those of us who have. And tiptoeing around potential spoilers here, let me say only that Spamalot the Musical, also spends a good bit of time parodying the very form they carry out onstage—the Broadway musical.

Which, as I watched, recalled for me yet another piece of my twisted childhood education. Save for Jesus Christ, Superstar, which he was fond of blasting up from his basement lair times we kids pissed him off (read: all the time), my father, though he was a huge pop music fan, didn’t go in much for Broadway musicals. However, the mom next door couldn’t get enough of them. Saturdays, as she scrubbed the toilet in what she called “the powder room,” she’d blast Guys and Dolls, West Side Story, Fiddler on the Roof, anything with Ethel Merman. It didn’t dawn on me at the time what this would do to the adult me, and I was surprised, when I met Warren—a big enough fan of Broadway that, yeah, he might just be gay—to realize I knew far more Broadway songs than I’d taken the time to consciously acknowledge.

And so I sat, edge of my seat as the best of two of my happiest childhood memories collided in a mash-up of Monty Python and musicals. I was in awe of the Knights Who Say Ni dancing seemingly effortlessly across the stage, flashing back to my informal childhood education, thankful for every teacher along the way who’d managed to sneak a little kookiness in between my Louisa May Alcott collection and The Word of the Lord.

Spike Gillespie wants you to know it’s only a flesh wound and that you MUST MUST MUST go see Spamalot before it closes this weekend. She blogs at www.spikeg.com. And she is the Head Mistress for the Dick Monologues. Next show: April 15th—email spike@spikeg.com for reservations.