I have a piece in my alumni magazine about the Marx Brothers and a late '70s college organization called the Marx Brotherhood, and how me and my friend Nathan Kaatrud, who became Nash Kato of Urge Overkill, were the only high school members of that organization, and what the Marx Brothers meant to us, and what's become of them in the popular mind since. A sample:

The first Marx Brothers movie I saw was one of the last they made, A Night in Casablanca, from 1946, which my older brother and I watched one Friday night on WCCO-TV’s “Comedy and Classics,” hosted by John Gallos. I was 10, and their appeal was immediate. The world was full of dull phonies and lousy schemers, then the Marx Brothers burst on the scene and upended everything. They popped the pretensions in the room. While most of the other characters looked normal but felt fake, the Marxes were obviously fake—a bewigged mute with a trench coat full of tricks (Harpo), a piano player with a two-bit Italian accent (Chico), and a wiseass with a greasepaint moustache (Groucho)—but they had an air of authenticity about them. They were always themselves.

The whole thing here.

Honk honk.