Even though the embargo just broke this morning, I’ve known about Mel Brooks’ upcoming June 11 visit to Milwaukee for a little while now. Make no mistake: This is a "bucket list" show for me. Brooks is one of my all-time favorites in Hollywood, and "Blazing Saddles" has sat atop my favorite movie list since I saw it at the way-too-young age of around 9.

In fact, I told my dad that Brooks is coming – he’s the one who first showed me this legend’s movies – and he recalled seeing "Blazing Saddles" at the Avalon in 1974. "It was the last time as an adult that I wet my pants," he recalled.

I’ve never had the chance to see "Blazing Saddles" on the big screen. The first three dozen times I watched it was either on a low-quality dubbed VHS tape that also contained "Airplane" (thanks again, Dad) or on an even-worse edited for TV version as kid. Recently, I watched it on Blu-Ray and fell in love with this film all over again (not that I’d ever really stopped). I can still quote the movie word-for-word.

I’ve seen a bunch of Mel Brooks’ movies, some I loved more than others. Obviously, there are masterpieces like "The Producers" and "Young Frankenstein." But I also loved "To Be or Not To Be" and "History of the World, Part I," and to a lesser extent, "Spaceballs." His more recent stuff was less great, but make no mistake: The 89-year-old Brooks is a giant among men. Seeing him live is a last-chance, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

So this weekend, I was thinking of how "Blazing Saddles" shaped and changed my life. Now I’m ready to put it into words. This could be a pretty long list, but here are seven of the most obvious ones:

1. Quote material for life

I once observed that my friends and I now only speak in quotes from "The Simpsons" or movies we’ve all seen, but "Blazing Saddles" has provided the most one-liners. Many of them are not fit for print, but given that I have the whole movie memorized, it’s not surprising that phrases like "The ol’ number 6," "a Laurel and Hardy handshake," "They said you was hung," "Never mind that sh*t, here comes Mongo" and dozen of others still remain in my lexicon 42 years after this movie was released, the year I was born.

2. Race relations

Until this movie, I had never heard the "n-word," and I certainly didn’t know what racism really was. Brooks so skillfully made small-minded bigots look like buffoons, and while a movie like this could never be made today, "Blazing Saddles" honestly helped shape my world view. Cleavon Little (R.I.P.) and his railroad friends were the coolest black guys I had seen in a movie. Hell, they were the coolest guys, regardless of race, that I had seen in a movie.

3. Introductions to swearing

I was definitely too young to hear all the swears in "Blazing Saddles," but Brooks found a way to make them appropriate (or at least in Yiddish; see below). The movie didn’t turn young Andy into a potty mouth (yet) but it did help teach me the art of using colorful language in an effective and funny way later in life.

4. Easter eggs

I obviously didn’t get many of the jokes when I was a little kid, but each time I saw "Blazing Saddles," something else jumped out at me. Even into college, I was still discovering little nuggets – I had no idea who Hedy Lamarr was back then. "Blazing Saddles" is the kind of move you have to watch over and over again to get the hundreds of references and inside jokes. Speaking of which …

5. Rewatching

I watched that old dubbed VHS until it fell apart. I don’t know the exact number of times I’ve seen all or parts of "Blazing Saddles," but it’s probably upwards of 50. Along with "Airplane," I don’t think I’ve seen any other movie more. And to this day, I can still anticipate every joke. It still holds up and still makes me laugh. Hard.

6. Yiddish pride

Only Mel Brooks could inject a Yiddish theme into a spaghetti Western. With Milwaukee’s own Gene Wilder playing the Waco Kid, "Blazing Saddles" had a Yiddish vocabulary larger than my own. As a kid, it made me proud to be a Jew (Lilly Von Schtupp, I’m looking at you).

7. Enduring legacy

It’s dawned on me that with the exception of Mel, almost everyone in this movie is now dead. Still, I’ve never met anyone who didn’t love Mel Brooks and "Blazing Saddles." A friend from college texted me this morning and said he’ll fly out from D.C. for this show. My dad, obviously, is super excited. I have so much more to say about this movie – including the brilliance of Richard Pryor’s writing to the theme song by Frankie Laine. Quite simply, from top to bottom, "Blazing Saddles" may be the best comedy ever made.