Pointless Nostalgia, The Funny

Remember These Guys!: Kids in the Hall

I just read Nathan Rabin’s Year of Flops retrospective on Brain Candy, the 1996 Kids in the Hall film. Reading it brought back a whole slew of memories of a movie I used to quote on a nigh-daily basis. I actually saw the movie in the theatres, making me one of several dozen people to do so. It’s not a perfect flick by any means, but I think Rabin draws an apt comparison between it and far-reaching Monty Python features like The Life of Brian.

Rabin’s article also reminded me that there was a period in which I watched Kids in the Hall constantly. When I was in high school, CBS showed a late night hour-long block of KITH on Fridays (two episodes stitched together with extremely weird bumpers). CBS knew their audience: late Friday nights were perfect for the comedy dorks like yours truly who were right in the KITH wheelhouse, and unlikely to be doing anything else with their weekend.

I first heard about Kids in the Hall from a high school friend, back when the show first aired in the States on HBO. I didn’t have cable, so he paid me back for years of reciting Monty Python by singing the “These Are the Daves I Know” and imitating The Head Crusher Guy.

The first time I got to actually see the show was during a trip across the border. My two younger brothers were on traveling soccer teams and playing in some weekend tournament in Montreal. One of my goals for this trip was to try and see Kids in the Hall, since I’d heard so much about it (I vaguely remember reading of its hilarity in several music magazines I read) and I realized this would be my only real chance to see it, unless my mom finally caved and got cable (which she wouldn’t until I was away at college; cable was the last luxury to fall in our house, left over from the days when we was Dirt Poor).

Needless to say, it was love at first sight. It was a direct descendant of Monty Python, with all its non-sequiturs, envelope-pushing, and cross dressing. They did sketches that would be virtually impossible in America (for instance, suggesting that gay people actually exist while also not making them the butt of every joke), in accents I could understand. Plus, KITH was being made right then, not 30 years earlier, so I didn’t need to ask my dad to explain jokes about Edward Heath and decimalization.

When KITH wound up on CBS, I taped it religiously and watched it after school pretty much every day. I remember it being The Hotness among dork circles in the early 90s. A college friend of mine told me he even dressed up as the Head Crusher guy for Halloween one year (complete with folding chair), despite the fact that not a single candy dispenser knew who he was. I laughed, but only because it was exactly the weird/obsessive kind of thing that I would have done.

So my question is, How come nobody talks about them anymore? Granted, it’s hard to talk about something that doesn’t exist. But you will still hear lotsa love extended to other 90s comedy pioneers like The Simpsons, Mr. Show, or even the ultimate Dork-Fest, Mystery Science Theatre 3000 (I say that as a fellow dork). But references to these shows are far more likely to elicit knowing chuckles than, say, The Chicken Lady, even among Dork Circles.

Somehow Kids in the Hall slipped under the cult radar, even for me. By all rights, I should own all of the shows, which trickled out on DVD a few years ago. And yet I don’t. Shame on me!

As punishment, I shall watch this video of what might be my favorite sketch from the show. This bit is a lot funnier if you had a daddy who drank. Or is it sadder? I get those two confused a lot.

Baseball, Videocracy

Oh Japan, You’ve Done it Again!

Paxarcana’s twitter page pointed me to this amazing video originally posted at Dvorak Uncensored: Japanese hitting coach bats baseball straight up a rope. For real.

So not only have the Japanese conquered the Real Baseball world, they’ve also cornered the market on Pete Maravich-esque baseball trickery. That’s it, we give up. You guys win.

How long before this is an event on Unbeatable Banzuke?

Baseball, Inappropriate Walkup Music 2009

Inappropriate Walk Up Music: 04.02.09

santo-shea.jpgFor previous Inappropriate Walk Up Music posts, click here.

Every day until Opening Day, Scratchbomb presents three tunes that are completely, unequivocally inappropriate for use as major league walk-up
music.

These are not necessarily bad songs–although that
certainly helps. They are merely songs that don’t evoke the fear and dread one traditionally associates with the walk-up song. In fact, they evoke the exact opposite.

Imagine yourself in the on-deck circle. Bottom of the 9th. Down by one. Man on second, two out. You hear the PA system blare, The centerfielder, number 20… The crowd roars at the sound of your name. And as you stroll to the batter’s box, you are greeted with the strains of one of these songs:

Today I present a Super Sounds of the 70s post. All told, the 70s don’t bug me. In fact, I think if I had to pick between the 70s and 80s as a cultural whole (and couldn’t cherry pick a band from decade one and a book from decade two, etc.), it’d be a close call.

But there’s one aspect of 70s culture that always drove me nuts. It’s that “hey man, just take it easy!” attitude that pervades so many of the songs. Even songs that purport to rock are rocking around the concept of havin’ a good time and takin’ her easy. I don’t know if this came from a post-Watergate, post-Vietnam desire to tune out the world, or it was just the massive amounts of weed being smoked at the time, but there was a lot of 8-track tape committed to telling America to chillax.

* “Take it Easy”, Eagles
Is it cliche to hate the Eagles by now? I don’t care. At the risk of sounding like every other jackass who quotes The Big Lebowski, I hate the fucking Eagles. Ironic that they’d write so many songs about takin’ it easy, since by the end of the decade, they were doing enough blow to support the Bolivian economy single-handed, and only speaking to each other through legal teams.

* “Rock’n Me”, Steve Miller Band
Steve Miller wrote some oppressively stupid lyrics. I dare you to look at the lyrics to any of his songs written down and not laugh. But be warned: The exercise may shave a few points off your IQ.

But if I have to pick one Steve Miller hit for maximum idiocy, this one takes the cake (don’t know about his album tracks–bet there’s some real doozies in there). If you tried to write a thoroughly retarded rock song, you couldn’t come up with a better example than this. Real Stupid beats Fake Stupid every time.

* “Rhiannon”, Fleetwood Mac
I am neither here nor there on Fleetwood Mac. But the mental image of someone coming up to bat to this song amuses me. Especially if the batter had his Louisville Slugger draped in scarves, Stevie Nicks-style.

A potentially explosive collection of verbal irritants