Eric Idle

Eric Idle

DOB: March 29, 1943
Where: South Shields, County Durham, England
Education: Pembroke College, Cambridge
Occupation: Actor, author, comedian, singer, writer
Years Active: 1969-present
Noted Work: Monty Python, The Rutles, Spamalot
Website: http://pythononline.com

-English comedian, actor and composer.
-Was a member of the British comedy group Monty Python

Early Life/Education
-Born to Nora Barron, a health visitor, and Ernest Idle. His father served in the Royal Air Force and survived World War II, only to be killed in a hitch hiking accident on Christmas Eve 1945. His mother had problems coping with a full time job and raising a child, so when Idle was 7, he was enrolled in the Royal Wolverhampton School as a boarder.
-According to him, "It was a physically abusive, bullying harsh environment for a kid to grow up in. I got used to dealing with groups of boys and getting on with life in unpleasant circumstances and being smart and funny and subversive at the expense of authority. Perfect training for Python."
-Idle said that 2 things made his life enjoyable. Those were listening to Radio Luxembourg under the bedclothes and watching the local football team, the Wolverhampton Wanderers. Radio Luxembourg was famous then, because now famous British celebrities remember listening to when they grew up during WWII
-He also attended Cambridge University, meaning he is very highly educated

Career
-Idle started at Cambridge a year after future Pythons Graham Chapman and John Cleese. He started the children's TV comedy show Do Not Adjust Your Set, costarring his future Python members Terry Jones and Michael Palin(both of whom are Oxford graduates).

Monty Python's The Life of Brian

Monty Python

Monty Python

Monty Python and the Holy Grail

-Idle wrote Monty Python by himself. The characters end up having verbal strangeness, such as the man who speaks in anagrams, the man who says words in the wrong order, the butcher who goes back and forth between rudeness and politeness every time he speaks.

Monty Python. Playing an upper class "twit"

-He is one of the youngest members of the team- year behind Cleese and Chapman at Cambridge. Idle was closest to the spirit of the students and teens who made up much of Python's fanbase. The sketches on the show dealt with then obsessions, like pop music, sexual permissiveness, recreational drugs. Idle's characters often include double entendre, sexual references, and other things considered bad.

-On Saturday Night Live, he and a bunch of guys created a parody of The Beatles called The Rutles. They even made a movie of it, called All You Need is Cash, a parody of the song All You Need is Love. It was a collaboration of Python members and Saturday Night Live hosts and crew. Actors appearing in the film included John Belushi, Bill Murray and Gilda Radner, and also musicians like George Harrison and Mick Jagger.

-When it came to movies, he appeared in various movies over the years. Like Terry Gilliams 1989 movie The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, the 1990 movie Nuns on the Run alongside Robbie Coltrane, Casper(1995).
-He also appeared on 3 episodes of The Simpsons, as a famous documentarian named Declan Desmond.
-In the 2007 movie Shrek the Third, he provided the voice for hippie-like Merlin the Magician, alongside former Python John Cleese, who did the voice of King Harold.

Nuns on the Run

The Simpsons

Merlin the Magician

Personal Life
-Married an Australian woman named Lyn Ashley in 1969. She appeared in Monty Python occasionally. They divorced in 1975. They have one son named Carey, born in 1973.
-He married his current wife, Tania Kosevich, an American, in 1981. They have one daughter, Lily, born in 1990. He has lived in Los Angeles since the early 1990s

Filmography

My Weekend

This weekend, I swear, was the loooooooooooooooooooooooongest weekend EVER!! But it was good. I bought myself a new CD, of an artist I swear I thought I'd never listen to. I ended up buying a CD of Judas Priest, titled the Essential Judas Priest. After a while of hearing Living After Midnight and Turbo Lover on the hard rock radio stations, you begin to start liking them.

And also, my stepdad bought Monty Python's The Life of Brian on Blu-Ray. Now I know why my dad never let me and my sis watch that movie. There's full frontal nudity, it's considered irreverent, and alot of bad language, including the F word and alot of British slang not alot of people would get, except me for some reason. If I hear someone use British slang, I almost instantly know what they are probably saying.

And my sister actually went on a first date with a dude she is going to school with, a guy named Gary. I'm startin to worry that maybe she's maybe moving too fast with him. I don't want him pushing her to have sex with him, because if she gets pregnant, major worries there!

And most of last week I spent blowing my nose out with a cold. And somehow, this morning I woke up to find my nose was bleeding! WTF? I had to blow my nose and all I see was blood! Last week all I did was blow my nose, sleep and practically hack up a lung from my stupid cold that my sis brought home from school, yay!!! Yeah, you can see the sarcasm, huh?

And as for the job search, there is a God!!!!!! I finally managed to find one, it's temporary, only about a month long, but hey, good enough for moi!! I start sometime this month. I gotta call this phone number to find out my start date. Basically it's a mail room job at the US Bank lockbox in Queensgate, really about 15-20 minutes from my house. All I gotta do is basically sort mail and stuff and send it to where it needs to go, mainly tax info. The job ends in April or June, somewhere around there. But, hey, this job is gonna help me towards school, especially the $1200 I have to pay because my financial aid went down like the Titanic. All because of one bad grade, WTF???

Driver 3

Driver 3

-Marketed as DRIV3R
-Racing, shooting, adventure video game
-Brings back features from Driver 2 and adds the ability to ride motorcycles and boats, swim, use ladders,  use weapons, enter certain buildings.

Plot
-The game opens in Istanbul, Turkey, in a shootout between a gang and the Istanbul police. Jericho is seen shooting at the cops with his sawed off shotgun, and Tanner is seen with Jones shooting some of the gang. Jericho hides and starts to reload his gun, in which Tanner takes advantage of to run to his position. Just as Jericho loads the gun, Tanner runs after him and we see him slamming the car door and it cuts to a scene blackout. Later on, the scene goes to a hospital where Tanner and Jericho are injured and the doctors examining one of them, and later shows one of them flatlining

-The game goes back 6 months before in Miami, where undercover FBI agent Tanner(Michael Madsen), along with partner Tobias Jones(Ving Rhames), are infiltrating a crime ring known as South Beach, which specializes in stolen cars. A woman named Calita(Michelle Rodriguez) runs the ring, and there is a weapons specialist named Lomaz, and Bad Hand/ Tanner convinces them to give him a shot to work for them. He is accepted by the group and he begins to do odd jobs for them, in hopes of achieving a record of 40 stolen high performance cars

-South Beach ends up having a falling out with a local crime lord named "The Gator", so Calita sends Tanner after him. He is told to blow up The Gator's superyacht docked by an island in south Miami. The problem ends when Tanner shoots him in the sea and Calita and sends him and Lomaz to kill the Gator, thinking he is dead

-Later on, South Beach moves their stuff to Nice, France and Tanner relocates there too. Interpol agents Henri Vauban and Didier Dubois have their own plan to take down the ring and are at odds with Tanner. He decides to work the job his own way, which in several cases, leads him to conflict with the Interpol agents. After a few jobs, the Interpol agents mistakenly blow up Tanner's cover and a man shows up to Tanner, revealed to be Jericho(Mickey Rourke). He manages to escape him and blast his way out of Nice, along with Jones

-In Istanbul, Turkey, Tanner is now working as a rogue agent. However, Tanner and Jones are able to find a number of contacts who lead them to the crime ring and it's real leader, Jericho, who betrays and kills Solomon Caine, his former boss. Jericho appeared at a warehouse while Didier Dubois was using a laptop belonging to Calita, first stunning Tanner, who is confronted and ends up shooting Dubois

-Later, Dubois' partner Vauban tells Tanner that Dubois is in a body bag and the bullets are his. Tanner walks away and ends his work with the police force, forcing him to escape to the nearest warehouse. Once it's known that Tanner has found a way to stop the gang from selling the stolen cars, he is brought back onto the force and aids in stopping the sale of the cars. After a car chase between Jericho and his men and the Turkish Police, Tanner faces him in a final showdown. Tanner gains the upper hand, taking down Jericho. As Tanner decides he isn't worth killing, Jericho takes this chance to shoot Tanner in the back with a concealed gun.

-The scene shifts to the hospital and shows both Tanner and Jericho unconscious on operating beds, one of them flatlining. It's left unclear which one, but a doctor uses a defibrillator on him

Game play
-The vehicles are modeled after real life vehicles and are designed to behave as such.
-Weapons are unnamed in the game. They vary from pistols to grenade launchers. You gain weapons from seizing them from police and armed civilians, hideouts or safehouses

Monty Python's Flying Circus

Monty Python's Flying Circus

-BBC comedy show broadcast from 1969-1974
-Comprised or surreality, risque, innuendo humor, sight gags, observational sketches without punchlines
-First episode debuted on Sept. 7, 1969
-The show targeted various topics, like British culture, especially those of high ranking people. The crew members of the show were very highly educated; Terry Jones and Michael Palin were Oxford graduates; Eric Idle, John Cleese and Graham Chapman attended Cambridge; and American born Terry Gilliam is an Occidenal College grad.
-Their humor is often intellectual, while making jokes about literary figures.

Did You Know?
-Terry Gilliam was the only American in the group

Characters

Arthur Pewtey(Palin)
-socially inept, very dull guy who appears in the skit "Argument Clinic" "Marriage Guidance Counselor" "Ministry of Silly Walks"
-His skits take the form of an office appointment with an authority figure, usually John Cleese, or occasionally Chapman. They end up parodying the British establishment by having the professional employed in bizarre fields of work

The Reverend Arthur Belling(Chapman and Palin)
-Vicar of St. Loony-Up-The-Cream-Bun-And-Jam
-Known for bizarre behavior

The "It's" man(Palin)
-Robinson Crusoe-like castaway, with torn clothing, long, unkept beard, who appears at the beginning of the show
-He is seen performing some long or dangerous task, such as falling off a tall, jagged cliff, or running large distance towards the camera and saying "It's"

Mr. Badger(Idle)
-Scotsman whose specialty is interrupting sketches
-Has been seen as an airplane hijacker, whose demands are odd

The "Pepperpots"
-Screeching, middle aged, lower-middle class housewives played by the Pythons in dresses.
-The Pythons played most of the female roles themselves, unless the part called for younger, more glamorous actresses
-"Pepperpot" refers to what the Pythons believed was a typical image of a middle class British housewife
-Their real life targets have included then Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, the British police, being shown in drag, Queen Victoria

Character Traits

Chapman
-Played straight faced guys, of any age/class, authority figures, such as military officers, police, doctors
-Also was called upon to play cross dressing and gay stereotypes, in fact he was gay, but it was not publicly known

Cleese
-Played ridiculous authority figures
-Chapman claims he is the funniest one in drag
-Also played foreigners with odd accents, such as Frenchmen

Gilliam
-Many of the animations were done by him
-Some of his on screen work included: A man with a stoat through his head, Cardinal Fang in The Spanish Inquisition sketch, A dandy wearing a mask, bikini underwear, and a cape, a hotel clerk in The Cycling Tour episode

Idle
-Best known for his roles as a cheeky, suggestive playboy, "Nudge, Nudge" as a crafty salesman, in Monty Python's Life of Brian, a merchant who loves to haggle
-Known as the master of the one liner
-Unlike Jones, Idle usually ended up playing the female roles, only altering his voice slightly.
-Several times he appeared as upper-class, middle aged females, such as Rita Fairbanks, sexually repressed Protestant wife

Jones
-He was said to have pulled most of the strings on the show

Palin
-Considered by all the Pythons as the one with the widest range, adept as a straight man, or wildly over the top
-Played working class northerners, weak willed, put upon men, boring accountant in the "Vocational Guidance Counselor"
-Also plays heavily accented characters, mostly French

March Birthdays

Since it's March, I wanna give a big, ol' Happy Birthday shout out to the following people:

Carrie Underwood
DOB: March 10, 1983, Muskogee, Oklahoma

Queen Latifah
DOB: March 18, 1970, Newark, New Jersey

Keira Knightley
DOB: March 26, 1985, Teddington, London, England

Akira Kurosawa
DOB: March 23, 1910, Shinogawa, Tokyo, Japan

Brenda Song
DOB: March 27, 1988 Carmichael, California

Michael Imperioli. Hottie!!
DOB: March 26, 1966, Mt. Vernon, New York

Kenny Chesney
DOB: March 26, 1968, Luttrell, Tennessee

Michael Caine
DOB: March 14, 1933, Southwark, London, England

Eric Idle
DOB:  March 29, 1943, South Shields, County Durham, England
IDK why, but every time I see him on TV or in a movie, I keep thinking of Monty Python. He cracks me up. He makes me laugh so much.

Quincy Jones
DOB: March 14, 1933, Chicago, Illinois

Spike Lee
DOB: March 20, 1957, Atlanta, Georgia

Timothy Dalton
DOB: March 21, 1946, Colwyn Bay, Wales

Johnny Knoxville
DOB: March 11, 1971, Knoxville, Tennessee

Rest in Peace, Davy Jones of The Monkees

From the way I hear it, he was the only British member of this 1960s American pop rock band. And his real name, David Jones, is actually very similar to David Bowie's real name. That's why he changed it to Bowie to avoid confusion with this young man. IDK, but I've recently been listening to The Monkees and I really like their music

Ruby Tuesday (The Scorpions)

Recently, 1980s era German hard rock band The Scorpions released their newest album, Comeblack. This album has alot of their earlier hits like "Rock You Like a Hurricane" "No One Like You" redone in a harder rock version

The album has half of their songs and the other half are covers of other songs.

Tracks
Rhythm of Love
No One Like You
The Zoo
Rock You Like a Hurricane
Blackout
Wind of Change
Still Loving You
Tainted Love: Gloria Jones
Children of the Revolution: T.Rex
Across the Universe: The Beatles
Tin Soldier: Small Faces
All Day and All of the Night: The Kinks
Ruby Tuesday: The Rolling Stones