Eccentric Flower:201009/Wrong On the Internet

I wrote this at 1:30 am a few nights back, on a night when the evening had not gone well, and it was clear that even though I felt mentally exhausted, when I got into the bed my body was going to be unable to sleep. I don't usually post things I write under such circumstances, because the morning light almost always reveals them to be incoherent and better left unseen, but for some reasons unknown to me, I've decided to post this anyway, exactly as written.

The cryptic first sentence will make sense as you read the rest; the cryptic last sentence makes sense only to me.

First off, I don't actually think the skit is in Live at the Hollywood Bowl.

It is certainly not in the filmed version of that, because I own the DVD and know it well, and it isn't there. It's possible that an audio-only version of Hollywood Bowl has the skit, because they did perform bits at some of the shows which weren't in the performance they filmed. But the facts are thus: 1) I'm pretty sure I remember hearing it on Monty Python's Contractual Obligation Album (which, despite being exactly what its name says, has some of their most brilliant skits ever) and 2) I believe this is some bit of internet mislore which was begun by the bad memory of the person who first wrote down this transcript of the skit and has been propagated ever since, as one site copies another site, removing attribution but preserving errors (such as the misspelling of "Samarkand").

For this is how the internet works. And one day, some idiot is going to insist that it's "Samarkind" because he read it on the internet in at least a dozen places ... and nothing you say or show him will convince him that he's wrong.

But surely, you insist, there is an original, unimpeachable source? Straight from the horse's mouth, as it were?

Well, no, not always. For one thing, the original source is often (I want to say "usually") not interested in having that content appear on the internet, for either proprietary or paranoid reasons. Or if they do, they choose to use its appearance as an opportunity to censor, to rework, to alter history.

Look at this, for example. Looks like it bears some pedigree - it is from a publisher and it seems to be a transcript taken directly from a Python-approved book of skits. Yet it contains two serious differences from the Contractual Obligation version: "101 Ways To Start a Fight" by "an Irish gentleman whose name eludes me for the moment" is changed to the safer, less logical, and far less funny "101 Ways To Start a Monsoon" by "an Indian gentleman whose name eludes me for the moment," and more importantly, the best exchange in the script:

gets destroyed. (You may not think this is the best exchange in the script, but that's because you're not hearing John Cleese's delivery in your head, whereas I am.) In the version in the last link above, this joke has been not just utterly neutered but rendered completely nonsensical by changing "W.H. Smith" (a large British book chain) to "chemist" (the British generic for "drugstore").

These, too, propagate - spreading the useless version far and wide as well. And thus you are limited to choosing between the version that gets a lot of things spelled or punctuated badly, or the version that simply isn't the version most of us heard. Not a fabulous choice.

But wait - perhaps I have done someone a disservice. For the Mad Music site points out that the version with the illogical punchlines is in fact the earlier version, being a script from the pre-Python days of "At Last, the 1948 Show." So apparently when they decided to reuse the script to help fulfill their Contractual Obligation, they improved it. I am relieved enough by this ("At least they didn't succumb to the lawyers!") that I don't have the heart to complain how the more "official" pages all reuse a version of the script which is clearly inferior! (It wouldn't at all surprise me if Python members deliberately chose to ignore the Contractual Obligation version, seeing as how they apparently they resented having to make it.)

What this teaches us is, if you want accurate information on the internet, you have to find a site that is run by people who are zealous enough about their topic to put in the time and effort to get it absolutely right. No one else can be trusted. And that this, ultimately, is the sole useful purpose of True Fans - that in their constant nitpicking about their chosen topic (because they can't stand to see someone being wrong about it anywhere), we eventually arrive at tediously complete and notoriously accurate information.

Of course, the problem is that True Fans, in practice, only bring that level of interest and attention to things which are of utterly no importance to the functioning of the universe. I mean, who really cares besides a handful of people who probably have something deeply wrong with them?

And this is why I cringe when I hear the nerd in the audience insist, "Well, actually, he didn't direct that episode ...." (even if I am secretly thinking what the nerd is saying aloud); why I deny myself on the grounds of uselessness when I have the urge to edit my Bond pages; why I flinch a little every time I reflect on how useful and beautiful David K. Smith's "Avengers" pages are ... because that level of concern in/about any aspect of popular culture is wrong and bizarre, and the only reason we don't realize how wrong and bizarre it is is that we who do it tend to surround ourselves only with other people who also do it and understand it. We make our bubble. Meanwhile, out in the real world, they know us for what we are. (Or at least all the ones who aren't following celebrity gossip 24/7 know us for what we are.)

If we brought the energy we bring to considering writing a cross-reference of British character actors between "The Avengers" and "The Saint" episodes, or a searchable index of Warner Brothers cartoons, or reading and writing and editing "Doctor Who" fan fiction, or looking up the best way to get through a particular quest in Dungeons and Dragons Online, if we brought that energy and effort and ambition to solving the problems of the real world, just think of what we could accomplish.

You start first.

I'd love to find some independent verification that that really was John Hollis.