i forgot he was in that movie.....

I stopped by the Brentwood Library on my way home from work yesterday. I needed to pick up a new book (just finished Grisham's "The Testament" and it was great; picked up his book "The Kind of Torts) and also a couple of dvds for Sara. She's had a fever on and off since late Saturday night, and she needed some new viewing material. I picked up the original "Peter Pan" and "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang."

CCBB is one of my favorite movies of all time. I remember seeing it in the theater when I was about five. The fact that a car could go from land to water to the air was thrilling to me. Hey, I was five, I didn't know it wasn't a documentary. I always wished my dad would buy a car like that.

Meg and Sara settled in to watch the movie upstairs. The bride and I had a bunch of stuff that we had taped over the past week, so we decided to catch up on all our shows downstairs. I went upstairs around 9:00 to tell the girls goodnight, and ended up watching the last 15 minutes of the movie with Sara. It's the scene where Chitty comes into the castle to rescue everyone. I look and on the left-hand side of the screen is the toymaker - BENNY HILL!!!!! The same Benny Hill that I stayed up late on Saturday night to see as a teenager! The same Benny Hill that I thought (and still think so) was hilarious as a teenager! I immediately started telling Sara that the toymaker was one of the funniest people ever. Would I want to sit down and watch an episode of "The Benny Hill Show" with her? Uh.....no.

Isn't it funny to see people in movies where their characters are nothing like the roles that made them famous? It's sort of like Michael Chiklis. His character on "The Shield" (new season starts in March on FX!) is nothing like the character he played on "Seinfeld" in the episode "The Stranded" in 1991.

It was great to have that memory come back last night about Benny Hill. I can still remember being in my room, hoping my parents believed I was asleep and wouldn't come in and catch me, with an earphone plugged into the television in my room, trying my best to hold back my raucous laughter. Ah, yes, good times.....