The Toad Elevating Moment

Recently I’ve been watching a six-part documentary about Monty Python on the Independent Film Channel (IFC). It has brought me great joy. Thanks to this documentary, I’ve discovered that the airing of Python on the Dallas PBS station in the early seventies—the very programs I watched as a teenager—was the first ever American airing of the series. Who would believe that something so avant-garde would begin in stuffy, conservative Dallas? I feel very privileged to be one of the first true American fans. I remember the show as my first real “appointment television.” My parents found the whole phenomenon strange indeed. To begin with, it was on PBS. My blue-collar household never watched anything on PBS. Then they were confounded by my uncontrollable giggling. When they would watch a moment or two to see what was so funny, they just couldn’t see what was so funny.

The ironic part is that my father, now in his seventies, recently “discovered” Python and thinks it’s hilarious. He can even do bits of the dead parrot sketch from memory. I’m touched.

Just last night, as I was watching another installment of the documentary, there was a commercial spot for a new issue of Fawlty Towers on DVD. Now I loved Fawlty Towers, too, and saw every episode numerous times. While I found much of it funny, the one thing that reduced me to guffawing tears was the playful rearrangement of the letters on the sign outside the inn. “Watery Fowls” was funny, for certain, but “Farty Towels” just rendered me incontinent. As I watched the commercial last night, the “Farty Towels” image showed on the screen. Just thinking about that little sophomoric joke, I began to laugh and laugh, all alone in my living room. In the middle of the laughter, I choked.

It was one of those spasmodic chokings. Nothing blocked my airway, it just closed in on itself. As I gasped and gasped, waiting for air to return, I had a moment’s panic. What if, this time, I choked to death? What if I died laughing at “Farty Towels”? Of course, I instantly thought of “The Funniest Joke in the World” sketch and how ironic that would be, to die laughing at a Pythonesque silliness. What would that death certificate say? Acute cuteness? Terminal titters? Death by mis-amusement?

So I just want to state publicly, for the record: If I am found collapsed on my living room floor, curled up in a ball with my face frozen in a rictus of hilarity, you will all know what to tell the authorities—“She died from Farty Towels. Round up the silliest suspects.”