Saturday, November 15, 2014

And now for something completely different

You may know that line if you ever watched Monty Python's Flying Circus back in the day. Recently I was reminded of it while watching the national news on France 2. The anchor woman has taken to saying, "Et maintenant, tout autre chose," to transition from one news story to another. Whenever I here her say it, all I can think of is John Cleese saying, "And now for something completely different." It makes me laugh every time. I wonder if she knows.

Approaching the sixteeth century château d'Azay-le-Rideau.

 So, I've finished with the photos from our short trip to Burgundy. The day we returned, we welcomed a friend from California for the weekend. We had a great time eating, drinking, reminiscing, and otherwise catching up. She had enrolled in an intensive language program in Tours and had just finished her first week of classes. On Sunday, I drove her back to Tours. We stopped along the way to visit two famous Loire Valley castles: Azay-le-Rideau and Villandry. Naturally, I took the camera along.

6 comments:

  1. and now...number one...the larch...the larch...and now...

    MPFC never fails to make me laugh even today! thank the dogs and cats for youtube!

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  2. Monty Python sayings crop up in everyday language in such a way that I sometimes wonder how many people know that was the origin of a particular expression. They always make me laugh, too.
    Lovely picture of one of my favourite châteaux.

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  3. Strictly speaking, I think they were picking up on the old style of TV presentation where someone was ready to go on camera (dressed up to the nines) to introduce all the programmes and cover for any technical mishaps (cue the potter's wheel and other interlude films). As I recall, French TV clung on to the tradition of the glamorous "speakerine" long after British channels had become more informal.

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  4. Yeah, I loved Monty Python, too. I must confess however that, like Saturday Night Live, it was really better in the retelling of those gags the next day. To this day, I still think of the skit where someone modified an English-French (or some other language) dictionary with phrases that substituted rather rude phrases for the original rather innocent ones. Like "where is the train station?" became something like "will you please fondle my buttocks?".

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  5. wow amazing post and photo

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  6. According to what I read on Wikipedia, the Monty Python gang took the line from the Blue Peter show, where the presenter said it as a transition between subjects. Don't know how accurate that is.

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