From the Marx Brothers’ “A Night at the Opera” (1935), as Otis B. Driftwood (Groucho) and Fiorello (Chico) go over the terms of a lengthy contract:

CHICO: Hey, wait, wait. What does this say here, this thing here?

GROUCHO: Oh, that? Oh, that’s the usual clause, that’s in every contract. That just says, uh, it says, uh, if any of the parties participating in this contract are shown not to be in their right mind, the entire agreement is automatically nullified.

CHICO: Well, I don’t know…

GROUCHO: It’s all right. That’s, that’s in every contract. That’s, that’s what they call a sanity clause.

CHICO: Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha! You can’t fool me. There ain’t no Sanity Clause!

You can watch the scene here.

Merry Christmas, everybody.

(P.S. Yours truly has the next few days off, but columns have been prepared in advance to run in my absence; ditto with daily blog entries. Continue posting comments, but because I have to approve them before they’re published, don’t be surprised when they don’t pop up for a few days; I won’t be near a computer most of that time.)