Watts Online

By David Watts

The Internet has much to amuse us. In the paper this column has pointed out the simple pleasures of the AltaVista translation engine and a few good Monty Python sites. There are many more places to go for a good laugh.

But before we look at them, it is important to remember that humour -- like beauty -- is in the eye (maybe that should also be ear) of the beholder. It depends on your mood. Monty Python's Flying Circus was all the rage on TV in the early 70s.

The unfortunate side-effect was that the show spawned hundreds of spotty wannabes, who deluged every party and other social occasion with their John Cleese impersonations and declamations of the Dead Parrot sketch, or tuneless renderings of the Lumberjack Song.

What was priceless when heard the first time, and treasured on the second, third or fourth repeats, became a bore. As the 70s subsided, these imitators grew less; seeming to swap their flares for the double-breasted suits of the greedy 80s.

But thanks to the wonders of modern technology they are back. Hundreds, more probably thousands, of Python lovers are a mouse-click away on the Net.

Judging by the hundreds of sites I have peeked at in the past week, they are even sillier than their older siblings of the 70s. Or maybe they are the same people and the facility to sit for hours in front of a word-processor or HTML editor somehow provokes the Silly Walks or Spam, Spam genes. Because out there in cyberspace are more copies of the Dead Parrot, Nudge-Nudge, Cheese Shop, Life of Brian and Meaning of Life songs, pictures, audio clips and video footage than can possibly be imagined.

Any nearly every Python site is written in Cleese-Chapman-Palin-Idle-Jones style . . . dead silly. Some people are good at this; many are not. They are all imitators. And, if you are in the right mood, bless them.

Here are just a very few of the places you can find a good argument or marvel at upper class twittery: *Stone Dead Productions* is an Australian site with just about everything you ever needed to know, or knew already, about Python. It features plenty of good links to other sites as well as a window on the very silly *alt.fan.monty-python* newsgroup.

And that's all I'm going to tell you about Python sites. If you don't find what you're looking for in the links from the above site, your brain is not working; or your ISP's network has given up.

Now for something completely different -- the Goons. If Python imitators got on your goat in the 70s, you should have been around in the 50s. The voices were of Eccles, Major Bloodnock, Moriarty, Bluebottle and Neddy Seagoon. Spike Milligan, Peter Sellers and Harry Seccombe transformed the world of comic entertainment with this first truly popular appeal to straight silliness.

Sadly, the Goons do not appear as well represented on the Web as Python. It comes as no surprise that Goon sites are far less graphic and far less colourful than Python ones. The show was on radio after all, so Web sites in its honour are primarily text-based to reflect the interest in Milligan's mad words.

Unfortunately, a trawl through many promised Goon links revealed lots that had vanished or simply would not respond. As Henry Crun would say: "They can't get the wood, you know."

But have a look at the *Goon Show Archive*, an Australian site with lots of scripts and sounds; and *Goon Show Episodes*, another homegrown one, which will provoke plenty of tears of nostalgia and mirth. Or maybe not . . . it depends on your mood.

Rest assured there is a naughty surprise at one of these sites. If Sellers was your favourite Goon, do yourself a favour and check out both the *Pink Panther Page* and the *Peter Sellers Page*. You can download some priceless audio clips of his Inspector Clouseau days.

And if you feel like a more general romp, have a look at *What's Funny on the Internet Today* and the BBC's *Comedy Zone*. For those who want to pay money and subscribe to the once-free Slate, the Diaries of Bill Gates are a laugh a minute . . . not.