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It may not work for everyone's browser but if you have Windows Media Player installed, this link oughta bring you a little more than a minute of Monty Python's Spamalot, as seen on Broadway.

In the early seventies, the folks behind Monty Python's Flying Circus did some odd things for money. They hadn't made all that much off the TV show so they grabbed some offers to do industrial-type films. This one is for Harmony Hairspray, it runs seven minutes and I should warn you that the video image is not the best and that much of it is out of sync. I don't create these clips. I just link to them.

Python authority Kim "Howard" Johnson points out to me in an e-mail that these films represent the directorial debut of Terry Jones. The Python TV shows had been directed by John Howard Davies (the first four) and Ian MacNaughton (the rest) and making commercials gave Python the opportunity to bring the director's job into the group and to give Jones some experience. He and Terry Gilliam would soon go on to direct Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

I think that's everything I know about this film…and yes, I know it's for hairspray. But how often do you get to see Python work from this era that you haven't seen before? Heck, I'll settle for just about anything I don't know by heart.

No, not the last day to mail your income taxes…you can do that on Monday. But today is the last day to order lifetime service for a TiVo. The $299 price, which covers the life of one machine, goes away after 7PM Pacific time tonight. Let's see how long it is before TiVo announces a price hike for month-to-month service.

I agree with this blog post by Glenn Greenwald. I don't know if all these retired generals criticizing the war effort are right or wrong, but I think their views need to be heard and considered. The Bush administration has scared a lot of Americans — and cost themselves a good deal of support — with the concept that they have a plan and they're going to follow it, no matter what evidence might emerge that it ain't working. I think there'd be a lot more confidence in Bush if he seemed to have the capacity to admit mistakes and move to correct them. And his supporters aren't helping him when they rush to attack the sanity, integrity and motives of anyone who criticizes his policies.

Jonathan Chait on a new attempt to get rid of the Electoral College.

Several folks have written to say that the sketch that was this morning's video link — The Four Yorkshiremen — appeared on At Last, the 1948 Show. In fact, it apparently appears on this DVD which I have here but haven't watched yet.

If that's its point of origin, that helps narrow down the question of its authorship. The writing credits for that program were for its stars: Marty Feldman, John Cleese, Graham Chapman and Tim Brooke-Taylor. Tom Wolper sent an e-mail saying that Eric Idle performed the sketch on his recent Greedy Bastard Tour and identified it as one written by Feldman for At Last, the 1948 Show. Good to know.

Bob Elliott (of Bob and Ray fame) is pretty much retired these days but he recently gave a good interview to my pal Steve Darnall for Nostalgia Digest magazine. If you have some Adobe product installed on your computer, you can read a PDF version of the interview by clicking here.

Or you can do yourself a favor and subscribe to Nostalgia Digest, which routinely features articles this interesting. And while you're at it, loads of great Bob and Ray stuff can be purchased from The Official Bob and Ray Website and it almost doesn't matter which CD you order. I have listened to hundreds and hours of Bob and Ray radio material over the years and have yet to find the weak material. I'm beginning to suspect there isn't any.

Starting today and continuing for I-don't-know-how-long, we'll be linking to Monty Python rarities. Today, we focus on a sketch the Python guys did in a number of different places, though not on their TV show, perhaps because it really isn't a Python sketch. The first place I saw it was on the program I mentioned here, Marty Feldman's Comedy Machine. I don't recall who, apart from Feldman, appeared in it and I suspect it did not originate there. Perhaps it's something done earlier for some other series like At Last, the 1948 Show with John Cleese and Graham Chapman…though when I asked someone to ask Mr. Cleese about it, he had no memory of where it had first appeared. In any case, various British comedians have performed it in a number of settings, especially for charity performances, and I'm curious as to whether Feldman wrote it, or if one or more of the Pythons did or just what the story is. It's awfully funny and back when we first saw it on Mr. Feldman's Comedy Machine, several of my friends and I added lines from it to our repertoire of catch-phrases.

A version of the sketch that runs a little over three minutes appeared in the Python Hollywood Bowl concert. Here's a link to it and as you'll see, it features Michael Palin, Eric Idle, Graham Chapman and Terry Jones. A slightly better, longer version of it appears below. It runs four minutes and features Palin, Jones, John Cleese and non-Python Rowan Atkinson. Ignore the foreign subtitles.

Michael Kinsley asks where we're going to meddle next. Good question. Of greater interest is the capsule history he provides of our shifting relationships with Iran and Iraq.

Around or about "late summer of 2006," a production of The Producers (the Broadway show) will open at the Paris hotel in Las Vegas. No word yet on who will star or if Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick will play the first few weeks, then hand off to others.

They might not want to because if early announcements are true, this Producers will run 90 minutes with no intermission. The version in New York clocks in at 2 hours and 40 minutes, fifteen of which is the intermission. So the Vegas Producers will need to lose close to an hour…and I have no idea how they'll do that without ruining the show. The recent motion picture version cut two numbers and it still runs 134 minutes.

Not all that long ago, some (including the guy who runs this weblog) were predicting that the new Vegas trend would be to import Broadway shows and perform them in full, instead of the cut-down "tab" versions that had been the norm for such transplants. A lot of Broadway shows have made it to Vegas but only a few haven't lost their intermissions and a few numbers. Then in 1999, an uncut production of Chicago did good business at the Mandalay Bay, followed in 2003 by Mamma Mia, also performed in full, which is still running and still successful.

Then last September, the Broadway smash Avenue Q opened a production at the new Wynn Hotel in Vegas. Although on a ten-a-week schedule, they performed the entire show as it runs in New York — about two hours plus a fifteen minute intermission. Ticket sales were disappointing and in an attempt to boost business, they lost the intermission and cut about a half-hour from the show. The cuts didn't help sales (the production closes in May, well ahead of when anyone hoped) but they seem to have marked the end of the full-length Broadway show in Vegas, at least for now.

One suspects the running time was not the problem. Avenue Q is an adult puppet show and a satire of Sesame Street that at any length seems out of tune with Vegas audiences. It has also been suggested that the producers simply had unrealistic expectations, opening what is basically a "small" musical in a 1,200 seat theater. With a ten show schedule, that means there are 12,000 tickets available each week so a lot of empty seats were inevitable. In New York, Avenue Q plays at the John Golden, which seats 804. With eight performances a week, that's about half as many seats to fill…and folks who've seen Avenue Q in both venues say it simply plays much better in the more intimate theater.

Still, those who are bringing Broadway shows to Nevada are looking at its failure and ordering trims. Hairspray — which opened two months ago at the Luxor in Vegas — was cut down from 2 hours and 40 minutes to 90. And a condensed version of The Phantom of the Opera is soon to be mounted at the Venetian in Las Vegas. Unlike the others, this one is not being marketed as a replica of what's playing in New York. It will be called Phantom: The Las Vegas Spectacular and will run 95 minutes with all-new staging by Hal Prince, who directed the original. (The New York Phantom runs around two hours and fifteen minutes. The Vegas incarnation is being advertised as having "all the songs" of the original, though no one is suggesting they'll be performed in full.) There will be ten performances a week so the primary roles are being double-cast. Two different actors will take turns playing The Phantom, two actresses will rotate as Christine, etc.

That may be the new trend: Less show, more performances. Once Avenue Q vacates its space at the Wynn Las Vegas, the showroom will be remodelled and renamed The Grail Theater and in 2007, it will be home to a production of Monty Python's Spamalot. The New York production runs two hours and twenty minutes, fifteen of which is intermission. The Vegas version will reportedly run ninety with all roles double-cast to allow for an unprecedented twelve performances a week. I don't think any show that ever originated on Broadway has gone on to do twelve performances a week in any theater anywhere…and that's not the end of it. There will also be something called (tentatively) "The Spamalot Experience," which will cost $70 million to build. One presumes it will be not unlike "The Star Trek Experience" at the Vegas Hilton, which is like a mini-theme park allowing tourists to become a part of the show.

Personally, I don't want to become a part of the show. I just want to see the whole thing, especially since they're going to be charging New York prices…or more. The problem with Avenue Q isn't that it was too long. It was just the wrong show in the wrong town in the wrong showroom. My suspicion is that Vegas entrepreneurs are seizing on its failure as an excuse to not do shows in their entirety. They like the idea of 10-12 performances a week, and of 90 minute shows that get the tourists back out into the casino in a hurry so they can resume gambling. I'll bet The Producers, performed in full, would sell just as many tickets per performance, if not more. It's just that if they do the whole show, they can't do it twice a night.

The fine cartoonist Stan Sakai reports on a recent trip to Grenada, Spain with the fine cartoonist Sergio Aragonés.

I was trying to think what I could put up here to note the first night of Passover…

And then I thought, "Maybe, somewhere on the World Wide Web, I could find some footage of a puppet doing an investigative report on how matzah is made." Yes, I know the odds of such a thing seem slim but sometimes in this world, you get lucky.

I got lucky…

I've mentioned Paul Harris before here. Paul hosts a very fine radio interview show every weekday afternoon on KMOX in St. Louis and he has an amazing knack for, first of all, getting very interesting people to talk with him. He's also darned good at extracting interesting and informative answers from those interesting people.

This afternoon, he had on former U.N. weapons inspector Scott Ritter. Of all the "talking heads" who've been out there telling us what's happening (and what will happen) in Iran and Iraq, Ritter may well have the best track record for getting it right. His chat with Paul ran a little less than a half hour but if you want to know more about weapons — and hear why the Iran situation may not be as ominous as it sounds from some reports — that could be time well spent. Here's the link.

Here's an important (I think) article by Glenn Greenwald and I'll try to summarize its thesis. It's that for years after 9/11, Bush's defenders met almost every criticism of the administration by charging that the critic hated America, was pro-terrorist, was giving aid and comfort to the enemy, etc. But now, a lot of those Bush defenders are looking to distance themselves from him and his actions and are engaging in the same kinds of comments they previously found so treasonous.

You ask a question here, you get answers…

• JEFF GRUBB: I think the characters come from the old Saturday Evening Post. They had a humor/cartoon page in the back, with these little guys in the title bar.
• LES DANIELS: I can offer a tentative tip on that cartoon. When I was a kid in the 1950s, my parents had a sub to the Saturday Evening Post, which interested me mostly for the cartoons they ran. I recognize the style of "You want it when?" from the Post of a half a century ago or more. I'm sure this artist was a regular there, but I can't remember his name. I realize this is a pretty slim lead…
• BEN HERNDON: Double check me, but I always had the impression these laughing characters were drawn/created by Stan and Jan Berenstain (of "Berenstain Bears" fame…)
• RUSS MAHERAS: I'm almost positive that cartoon illustration was drawn by Orlando Busino, and I'm also pretty sure it originally appeared on the cartoon page of the Saturday Evening Post.
• MIKE LYNCH: The "You want It When" guys are a question I've had too. I'm a magazine cartoonist, as well as an NCS member. I've always been interested in the magazine cartoonists. I've talked about that iconic image to a lot of the pros. The consensus is that it was drawn by Henry Syverson. There are some images here.
• GALEN FOTT: Looking on Usenet, someone wondered this back in 1993, and they were referred to some books by Alan Dundes, titled with variations on Urban Folklore from the Paperwork Empire. So maybe you could find the answer there.
• NATE BUTLER: I think it's from the Saturday Evening Post…from the top of that page (toward the back, as I dimly recall) that had all the jokes or gag panels or whatever. I think the "You Want It When?" wording got added later maybe. I don't remember the name of that cartoonist who always did those little big-nose characters on the top of that page of the Post, but I'm pretty sure this is where the mystery art came from originally.
• BRAD CASLOR: I'm not sure if this was the first use, but weren't the laughing cartoon guys the recurring mascot on the "Post Script" humour page of the Saturday Evening Post in the 1950s, possibly drawn by one of the regular Post cartoonists like John Gallagher?
• TIM (no last name): I absolutely don't know who drew it but the guys in the drawing are dead ringers for cartoon characters that were in the Saturday Evening Post when I was a kid (60s). In fact, I believe they were at the top of the page but I can't find an example anywhere yet (if I do I will send it). I think what you're talking about was created by ripping off these guys from the page and adding "you want it when" but that's just a theory.
• JOHNNY LEE ACHZIGER: This won't help much, but I remember back in the early 1960's (when Xerox machines still required a couple trays of wet chemicals to make copies) watching my Dad make copies of the same sort of cartoons like this at his office. There were a bunch of different ones, but they were in the same style. So even way back when, they were around.
• SCOTT SHAW!: That cartoon — or at least, the original version from which it was traced (over and over and over, etc.) — was drawn by magazine gag cartoonist Henry Syverson, who regularly did such silly drawings for Saturday Evening Post's page of cartoons. I think that the "You Want It When?" was added by someone else.

I think Scott and the others who've fingered Henry Syverson are right. The samples Mike Lynch pointed us to seem to confirm it. So for now, I'm willing to go with Syverson and what I'm wondering is if he or the Post ever marketed a poster or sign of the drawing or if its life in Xerox just began with someone blowing it up. For now, thanks to all who've sent in their thoughts.