Anybody else have those teachers that can just go off in random directions, far far away from the lesson? Well, herr Mangan is like that. He usually manages to stay on something at least kind of related to German, though.
So, i’m in Deutschklasse. Herr Mangan is talking about ethnic germans in other countries.
“So, Germany wanted these people back.” (Who? I don’t know. Wasn’t paying that much attention.) “So to get them to come back, they offer them money and huge tracts of land…”
I absolutely explode in laughter. Dustin is doing the same. Everyone else just stares at us. And stares, and stares… We were the ONLY TWO in the entireclass that got it! And the fact that everyone else thought us crazy made it just that much funnier. And we Couldn’t Stop Laughing. I should probably explain that to him tomorrow.
I used to have an Indian history professor who would do just that. Literally in the first minute something would set him off and we’d spend the next 45 minutes talking about anything but Indian history. Maybe a little bit how people thinks he looks Hawaiian. Maybe something about his track and field days back when he was younger. Anything, but what we were goinhg to talk about. I always just called him the Stand-Up professor.
One day we were to have a test, just before he passed it out somebody came to ask him something, another student. He told us to study a little more while he went to deal with this, wha-ha? Spent the next 25 minutes out there talking to this guy. Nobody complained because his tests were so easy. There were only two questions, short essay, and he told us to take the second one home.
p.s. I think I’m missing something, why did you and your friend burst into laughter?
My Shakespeare professor quoted the sex education scene in Meaning of Life the other day. Yup, mentioned “clitoris” in the middle of class.
In high school, I did a “King Arthur” project on The Holy Grail. Even showed the movie in class. The teacher was already a fan, and loved the excuse to watch the movie again.
In junior high, my homeroom teacher showed “Life of Brian”. I had to explain the funny parts to my classmates. God were they dense.
Well I had a Classics teacher (Greek and Roman) who played us a video of Cassablanca as a class leson as she claimed that it was a “classic”. Personally I think she just stuffed up her lesson plan. A great teacher who I never really apreciated.
As a Python fan, I need to step in and ask - “he” is quoted? Monty Python is not one guy, it’s a group of 5 British and one American: John Cleese, Graham Chapman, Eric Idle, Michael Palin, Terry Jones, and Terry Gilliam.
Gilliam is the American and is now known for directing films as 12 Monkeys, Brazil, The Fisher King, etc.
There’s a line in Monty Python and the Holy Grail when a lord is trying to convince his son to get married. He describes the bride:
“She’s rich, she’s beautiful, she’s got huuuge [gestures with his hands at his chest, indicating breasts] tracts of land…”
At least I’m guessing that was what they found funny.
Had a music theory teacher who would always get to number one and mumble, “The Larch,” or get to number 9 and keep repeating, “Number nine… number nine… number nine…” I got both references.
I had a Roman History professor who showed “Life of Brian” as part of the class. He claimed that it was actually a very accurate representation of that part of the world under the Roman Empire.
One of the textbooks for my roommate’s Three Religions of Abraham class mentions Lfe of Brian as a good portrayal of a misunderstood messiah.
I do tend to get blank looks when I lapse into “Nudge nudge wink wink a nod’s the same as a wink to the blind bat” etc, but then again you really have to have been there for that one. On the bright side, though, I opened up the drain in my wallet a bit more to get the special ed DVD of Holy Grail!
It was part of one of the “Monty Python’s Flying Circus” episodes.
A segment called “How to identify different types of trees from very far away.” (or something like that. I may be paraphrasing slightly as it’s been a while since I’ve seen it).
Screen shows what is obviously a slide projection. Voice over reads title of slide presentation: “How to identify different types of trees from very far away.”. slide projector clicks to next slide Slide reads: Number one: The Larch". Voice over reads slide title. click Picture of a tree across a field is shown. Voice over intones “The Larch.” click Slide reads: Number one: The Larch". Voice over reads slide title, this time a bit hesitant. click Picture of the same tree across the same field is shown. Voice over intones “The Larch.” This goes on for a bit, jumping back and forth between the two slides. Finally, we get a new slide. click “Number two…” click “The Larch.” click Same tired picture of the larch is shown.
I think eventually a different type of tree is named but then the same damn picture of the tiny larch off in the distance is shown.
I know this symopsis doesn’t quite do the skit justice (i.e. the skit is funny and this is tedious to read), but hopefully you get the idea.
It might help if you got the line right: the word is “candid”.
I was watching a TV program on sketch comedy last night, in which they interviewed John Cleese. Among other things, he talked about the origin of the Dead Parrot sketch, and how surreal it was when Margaret Thatcher quoted it in a conference speech.
He also told a story I hadn’t heard before about when the show was being marketed in the US for the first time, in which the (American) distributor guy said, “Now let me get this straight: you six are all gay, right?”
I used to play a Champions superhero, a dark-clad avenger of the night type, who was hunting the wrong people. He had received faulty information as to who had wronged him some time in the past and he had devoted his life to hunting them down and punishing them, but the people he was handing over to the police were all innocent.
In my 11th grade english class we watched and had a test on the film Excalibur, which is on the Arthurian legend. The teacher passed out a 10-question quiz on the film; Number 10 was: “What is the average land-speed velocity of an unladen swallow?” Maybe five or six of us got the joke.
