I always get a little teary-eyed when the final credits roll on this film. The last image of the television floating away from the screen as it plays the opening credits to Flying Circus almost seems to me like a final goodbye. I realize that probably wasn't their intent when they made the movie, but in light of Graham Chapman's death a few years later, that's what it became.

And with the death of Chapman, there could be no more Monty Python. Python needed all six members. Without all six the balance was lost. If you need proof just look at the notorious 4th season of Flying Circus. Cleese left the show after the 3rd season because he felt they had already begun to repeat themselves. While the 4th season was funny and did have some truly inspired moments, it just wasn't [b]proper[/b]. It seemed unbalanced. The shows didn't gel as well. As a result the fourth and final season was cut very short.

So, yeah. I love The Meaning of Life. I think it's brilliant. It stumbles a bit more than Holy Grail and Life of Brian, but it's still far, far, far funnier than a rather large percentage of other comedies you might see.

[i]Whenever life gets you down Mr. Brown
And things seem hard or tough
And people are stupid, obnoxious or daft
And you feel that you've had quite enough

Just remember that you're standing on a planet that's evolving
And revolving at 900 miles an hour.
It's orbiting at 90 miles a second, so it's reckoned
A sun that is the source of all our power
The sun and you and me and all the stars that we can see
Are moving at a million miles a day
In an outer spiral arm at 40,000 miles an hour
In the galaxy we call the Milky Way

Our galaxy itself contains 100 billion stars
It's 100,000 light years side to side
It bulges in the middle, 16,000 light years thick
But out by us it's just 3000 light years wide
We're 30,000 light years from galactic central point
We go 'round every 200,000,000 years
And our galaxy is only one of millions of billions
In this amazing and expanding universe

The universe itself keeps on expanding and expanding
In all of the directions it can whiz
As fast as it can go, the speed of light you know
12,000,000 a minute and that's the fastest speed there is
So remember when you're feeling very small and insecure
How amazingly unlikely is your birth
And pray that there's intelligent life somewhere up in space
'Cuz there's bugger all down here on Earth!

[/i]"Makes you feel sort of insignificant, doesn't it?"

Ahhhhh, nice. I just watched [b]Near Dark[/b] for the first time in several years. (I needed to wash the lameness of The Prowler from my palate.) Glad to say it really holds up. I'm even more convinced that this was THE vampire movie for 1987, and not a certain other glossy MTV vampire movie, [b]Lost Boys[/b], bleh.

Makes me kind of sad that Near Dark gets overlooked time and again while that one gets all the hooplah. Give me grungy white trash vampires over pretty boy vampires any day.