"From the Archives" Friday

This is probably the best response I can think of to the excellent six part documentary of Monty Python airing this week on IFC. As inspiring as the best of Monty Python is now, it was even more inspirational when I was younger - arriving at a time of comical development in my life. I immediately embraced its sense of anarchy, insanity, and utter silliness. This had a profound effect on my writing. Up until I was wrapped up under this Pythonesque spell, I was mostly a very serious Space Opera type sci-fi writer. Combined with these Python type urges, my writing style was utterly transformed. I became a Space Opera type sci-fi writer with some very strange concepts of humor.

As a result, although I spent the first six years of my writing career trying to write the Great American novel (in the Under 12 category) and failing miserably, as soon as I embraced the sillier side of my writing embrace, it was only a mere 18 months before I was writing my first novel length story (with some friends who have asked to remain anonymous).

Anyway, my thought this week was to start selecting some of the funnier bits out of these old writings. Humor, of course, being subjective (I found this stuff hilarious in High School ;) you might differ in your opinion of what is funny. So that's why I've decided to spare you by only printing small chunks and only on Fridays.

So here is the first of my new From The Archives selections:

We interrupt this program for an editorial statement from a concerned reader...

To whom it may concern... It has come to my attention that recently students at campuses such as UC Berkeley and Stanford have been staging riots and protests. Now there is nothing wrong with that, its the way they're doing it.

The other day I walked over to a local college and saw a guy walking in a circle, by himself, carrying a Gucci picket sign with the words, "Make Love; Not Dr. Pepper," written on it. What sort of protest is this anyway? Aren't our American youth protesting in peaceful ways? Is this what America has been reduced to, a nation of peaceniks? Why John Wayne would spit in his grave! I say the only way to a commie terrorist apartheid person's heart is through his guts. So let's drop those picket signs and grab picket axes and let's show the world what American protesters are made of.

Sincerely,
A Concerned Reader

The views expressed are not necessarily the views of management. But that doesn't mean that they ain't...

And now back to our regularly scheduled program...

Fritz Jordan and The Martian Papers

Chapter Seven: Too Close

(1985)

William Robison

Come back next week for yet more silliness... and have a good weekend.