The Ink Stained Wretch #187 5/28/25

No One Expects the Sketchy Inquisition, Tales From The Theme Park, Thanking Eddie!

Here we go with yet another of the obnoxious, obtuse, and overbearing bits of ovation that are these newsletters! This week our sketch demands a confession, Tales from the Theme Park, and how an annoying online intrusion ended up being a blessing in disguise ...on with the 'Wretch!

Sketch o'the Week: Michael Palin!

Click here if you are interested in this original sketch.

Here's another in my "Monty Python's Flying Circus" series- Michael Palin from the "Spanish Inquisition" sketch!

I intend to do each Python in a different sketch. This was always one of my favorite Monty Python skits. It's just so over the top ridiculous, and Palin, Terry Jones, and Terry Gilliam played it that way. Soft cushions and comfy chairs indeed.

While I was looking up different references for this one I happened on a story paraphrased from Palin's published diaries (specifically Halfway to Hollywood: Diaries 1980-1988) where Palin said Mel Brooks accused Monty Python of stealing the "Spanish Inquisition" sketch idea from him. One can only assume he meant they copied it from the "The Inquisition" musical number from Brook's film "History of the World: Part 1".

As the story goes, Palin met Brooks in the MGM studio commissary in Los Angeles in 1987. Palin was there filming “A Fish Called Wanda”. They shook hands and Brooks very amicably "forgave" the group for "those ideas you used." He specifically (but cryptically) mentioned "Spanish Inquisition". Palin wondered if he was joking, but a later conversation he had with Christopher Guest suggested that Brooks was not. Guest told Palin that Brooks has a difficult time accepting competition, and that he sometimes projects things into his own world. He really thought the Pythons got that Inquisition sketch idea from him.

Brooks must have been really projecting, or he didn't know what year it was. “History of the World: Part 1” came out in 1981. Monty Python's Spanish Inquisition sketch (aka "The Comfy Chair") first appeared in the second episode of their second season... in 1970. If anything, Brooks cribbed from Python. But, that is unlikely. Both sketches only have the Inquisition in common. The premises of the humor is very different in each.

By the way, I briefly considered doing Palin in the “Dead Parrot” sketch. Here’s a comic con commission I did a while ago where Alfred took over Palin’s role:

Premium Subscribers can be tortured into confessions by watching the video of me doing this caricature! Video at the bottom of the newsletter…

The Naked Truth

Memorial Day is the unofficial start of summer around here, which used to mean I was busy opening theme park caricature operations. I'm basically out of that business now with the exception of my two booths in Nickelodeon Universe out at the Mall of America, but Memorial Day still gives me the cold sweats. This would be a good time for another in my very occasional series of stories from the theme park trenches!

This episode took place at Six Flags Atlanta in either 1989 or 1990. Those two summers I was the manager of the caricature art concessions there for Fasen Arts, the company I had worked for the previous four summers while attending college back in Minnesota. After graduation The Lovely Anna and I packed up and moved to Atlanta for me to work that job.

One really busy, crowded day I had just finished a drawing when this really obnoxious guy basically pushed this girl down into the customer's bench in front of me. He then very loudly proclaimed "This is my girl friend! I want you to draw her NEKKID!

("Nekkid" is deep southern-fried English for "naked")

This got the big crowd around our booth's attention. Heads turned our way. The guy was loud and acting like an ass. His girlfriend was really embarrassed, and obviously didn't really want to have her caricature drawn. She was meekly going along with it.

"You want me to do what?" I said.

"YOU HEARD ME!" He basically yelled. "I want you to draw her NEKKID!"

The crowd is laughing, mostly at the guy and his antics, but a bit uncomfortably.

"You want me to draw her naked?" I asked.

"YEAH! I want you to draw her NEKKID!"

"Let me get this straight," I said looking incredulous. "You want me to draw her naked? Are you sure?"

"YEAH! DRAW HER NEKKID!"

"Okay. I usually don't do this but..." I stood up and started unbuckling my belt and pulling my shirt out of my shorts.

The crowd went nuts, the loudmouthed guy went red and shut up, and his girlfriend got a good laugh.

I actually did draw her naked in the drawing after asking her if she was okay with that. I did the gag where she was hip deep in water, back turned to the viewer with one arm raised up so you only saw a bit of the side of one breast and the top of her rear end. She had a surprised look on her face and a turtle was swimming away with her bikini in his mouth.

Thanks Eddie!

I don't spend much time on LinkedIn but I do have a profile there. I used to have my caricature business listed there as well until an odd series of events caused me to delete that and took me from annoyed to oddly grateful, thanks to one guy named Eddie.

Some years ago I started getting LinkedIn messages via the company page addressed to "Eddie". This perplexed me until I found that some guy named Eddie Hernandez had claimed he was the owner of my business on LinkedIn. Apparently you can (or used to be able to) claim you worked at any position for any company listed there without anyone checking that was true.

I had never heard of this guy so I tried to contact him through LinkedIn. My memory about what happened is a little fuzzy but I never heard back from him with any explanation as to why he'd claim to be the owner of my business, but he changed his listing. It may well have been an honest mistake, and LinkedIn connected him to my business when autofill listed businesses with "Illustration" in their name when he filled out his form. Who knows? At the time I was also getting weird emails from sales people thinking I was an art supply store, so I deleted my company listing. I figured that would solve the issue.

A year or two ago emails started showing up in my inbox, not via LinkedIn mind you but my main email inbox, addressed to "Eddie". 100% of these were cold contact emails trying to get me to buy some service or product I don't want. I started to go back to LinkedIn or do some Google searches to try and find Eddie and tell him to stop claiming he worked with me. I couldn’t find that anywhere.

Then it occurred to me, all of these people must be buying the same marketing email lists, scraped from the old LinkedIn company profile that claimed Eddie is the owner of my company. It further occurred to me that all these annoying spam emails started with the name "Eddie".

A simple email filter "rule" later and all emails addressed to Eddie go straight to the spam folder. The best spam filter money can't buy.

So thanks Eddie...whoever you are!

Regular Subscriber? That's it for another lame issue of the 'Wretch! Thank you for subscribing! As always, if you liked what you saw please share it with others. Remember I'm always looking for feedback, questions for the mailbag, and suggestions for future Sketch o'the Week subjects. Just reply to this email with any of the above, or leave a comment on Substack! And always remember... it's crackers to slip a rozzer the dropsy in snide!