Waiter, There's a Horse Feather in My Duck Soup

So if anybody asks me what bowl game I watched yesterday (pause for you to ask), I'd reply:

"Huxley v. Darwin."

You see, since Christmas I am the lucky owner (thanks, Amy) of The Marx Brothers Silver Screen Collection. Save up or use your gift certificates but run out and buy it, or have a birthday soon and ask. It's probably too big to shoplift, and I wouldn't suggest such a thing anyway, unless you have a coat like Harpo's that holds candles lit at both ends and swords and fishes.

What will you get? Endless laughter in the form of The Cocoanuts, Animal Crackers, Monkey Business, Horse Feathers (the wonderful send-up of college life, mostly about sex and football, of course, that we watched Jan. 1) and Duck Soup.

If Groucho isn't the great American comic character of the 20th century, I don't know who is--fast-talking, odd-walking, so in love with his own voice it keeps talking after it does him any good; he is America, in a way. And as for the sublime silliness of Duck Soup, now it reads like prophecy. Bet even S.J. Perelman never saw a politican like George W. coming.