Rewritedept presents ... 'can't fix the car without a whole lotta milk-ah.' or, a collection of some of my favorite times on the kids in the hall

The Kids in the Hall is a Canadian sketch comedy group formed in 1984, consisting of comedians Dave Foley, Kevin McDonald, Bruce McCulloch, Mark McKinney, and Scott Thompson. Their eponymous television show ran from 1988 to 1994 on CBC in Canada, and 1989 to 1995 on CBS and HBO in the United States. The theme song for the show was the instrumental "Having an Average Weekend" by the Canadian band Shadowy Men on a Shadowy Planet. The troupe made one movie, Brain Candy, which was released in 1996. -- from Wikipedia.

strangely enough, my parents got me into this show. i remember watching episodes of kids in the hall well before i was old enough to understand most of the humor on it, which may be why it's always such a pleasure to revisit.

going through and collecting clips reminded me of how many great moments they had in their five season run. consider this a jumping off point (and for those of you who live in the states, the entire series is on netflix streaming currently).

here, then, are some of my personal favorite kids in the hall moments. enjoy.

































some of my favorite recurring characters...

the Sizzler Sisters




Mississippi Gary


this is a particular favorite of favorite's for me.


Francesca Fiore and Bruno Puntz-Jones




Buddy Cole




sidenote: there are seriously so many great buddy cole sketches that i strongly recommend just going on youtube and watching all of them. the following one is another of my favorites.





The Chicken Lady




Steps




The Axe Murderer




The Pit of Ultimate Darkness (Simon and Hecubus)




Bauer




Cabbage Head






*

p.s. Hey. Splendide musician, writer and d.l. Rewritedept would like to bestow the blog's blessings on those Canadian former wunderkinds The Kids in the Hall, which seems like a most reasonable request, and, hence, I suggest you honor his prioritizing with your full attention and comments, thank you. And to you, Rewritedept, I say 'good one, pal' and many thanks. ** Scunnard, Cool, glad you were intrigued. Dietz's work is pretty great. More good news yet? This thing of yours is getting nuclear, in the good way. Awesome. Sorry to be slow on writing back. I'm hopeless, but I won't be much longer, be assured. It is nice to be back in Paris, you betcha, even though the snow has entered its later life, shoe-drowning phase. But, yeah, Paris, yippee! ** Cobaltfram, Nice how you're blowing and perverting your friend's mind. May he never be the same again. No, the sex club scene at the beginning/end was filmed in the basement of Paris' biggest gay club/disco Le Depot. The only time I went there, it was specifically to check out the space where it was filmed, and it is nothing like in the movie. Totally fiction, that scene. ** Chris Cochrane, Good ... morning, Chris? It's morning here. We had great snow, but we might be done with it, sadly. It says on my weather widget that it's going to snow three out of the next five days, so hope is not entirely lost. I'm really, really not interested to see 'Argo'. I might even take a permanent pass on that sucker. Awesome that you got to see Young and Crazy Horse. You sure there wasn't some kind of Youngian wink in that star spangled banner thing? Strange, but it's all about the rock, in his case, ultimately. I'll get that new album, I imagine. Saw a slideshow of pix from 'or and animal' on FB, courtesy of Rico, I think. They looked great, and you even got one of those coveted reactionary, dumb ass reviews from that Alistair fucker at the Times, I think, no? I want to see video at least. I don't think you did tell me about that Paris gig, or I somehow spaced out on that. Wow! That's totally great! Definitely let me know when the specifics are known. I went to Poitiers to do a talk/ audience q&a, partly to promote 'Them', so I talked it up a bunch, and, when I wasn't doing that, I was talking about 'Jerk', which was being performed there at the time. Listening ... nothing really new and relentlessly, I don't think. I think I've mostly been raiding the gold area in my sonic archives lately: Pollard/GbV, et. al. Oh, I got off on an 80s 'power pop' jag for a bit: 20/20, The Shoes, The Records, The Pop, et. al. Might make for a related post. I'll pass along any great discoveries as they dawn on me. Yeah, talking with Ish re: that is obviously a good idea. I'm game pretty much whenever. Love to you, man! ** David Ehrenstein, Hi. Interesting Cale interview, thanks. Reed seems like he really has finished shooting his creative wad, and did so long ago, whereas Cale is still totally on his toes. I'm pretty sure I'll see 'ZDT' at some point. One of the problems with these late European releases is that you get sick and put off by all the controversy and blah blah that smothers movies sometimes before you have a chance to see them, and I think that movie is way too saddled already for me to want to see it for a while. I think the same thing has happened to 'Django', which is a film I actually really wanted to see. Oh, well. ** Paradigm, Hi, Scott! The ice of the novel is cracking, is probably more accurate, but it's definitely good. I know, yeah, true, about adding movement thing. So simple in a way, but so fresh/difficult. Yes, everything came through just fine on the post. It's so great, man, so extremely in my area of interest and revelatory too. Thank you so much! I've got it set to launch on Saturday, Feb. 2nd. Fantastic about the possible post on Jon Rose. No, I don't know of him, which makes it even more exciting. Unfortunately, the snow has done that slow, soggy death thing, but, if we get some more new layers, as is forecast, all will be forgiven. I think I will enjoy my day, thank you, and I hope your sleep was long and nightmare-free. ** Allesfliesst, I'm glad you thought it was okay. I will be forever grateful for your intro to his work. He and I exchanged emails too, which is exciting. He seems super nice in addition to his brilliance. Uh, yeah, sounds like running full speed in the opposite direction from that ultra-skimmed and rushed diagnosis is the wisest move you could make. Gross, really. Is that the only hypnosis center? I mean, I don't think New Agey hypnotherapists are the norm, but, hey, I don't know, maybe. What next? Have you decided? ** 5STRINGS, Uh, ha ha ha. Everyone, here is d.l. 5STRINGS' most unusual little celebration of MLK Day. I think you wish they had loose butts, man. I don't know. I like that generation, if it's a generation. It's not sexual at all. I just like them. They seem like teachers to me. I don't know who Rosalind is. I haven't read Shakespeare in for-fucking-ever. I probably should again. I hardly remember anything. I liked 'King Lear' the best by far. Nipple touching, hm, yeah, that sounds kind of nice. Not mine, somebody else's. That diet will skinny you out for sure. Be careful maybe. When I used to go hardcore vegan every couple of years, I would get unbelievably skinny, and I thought I looked awesome or something, but everybody thought I looked really scary and like death. 'God I so rock'. God you kind of so do. ** Steevee, Hey. Yeah, like I was saying David, there's just too much noise and pollution around that film right now for me. I don't think I would be capable of seeing it without mostly just going through the claims for and accusations against it and checking them off (or on) while I watched, and that prospect has taken the excitement out, so I'm just going to wait until it's at least a little in the past. ** Billy Lloyd, Hi, Billy! Okay, I trust you on the 'not letting anyone hear it' thing. The artist always knows best. The French are good at that except when you want something official like a visa or a statement from your bank or an insurance form or whatever, whereupon they turn into the most complicated labyrinth. Weird. Oh, awesome, I can see the vid without even really knowing what Google+ looks like. I find that exciting for some reason. I'm not going to subject your video to the pellmell attention span that I have when doing the p.s., but I'll watch as soon as this gets launched. Everyone, the great Billy Lloyd has put together a video for his most excellent music track/song 'Stranger', and you should go watch it, I think, because Billy's stuff is like the coolest ray of sunshine. Click here. Yeah, the streets are treacherous here too. I walk around like the sidewalks are the surface of a thinly frozen lake or something. If I had the courage to look up from my shoes, I'm sure I'd see smirking faces everywhere. The new theater piece, let's see. Well, as far as what you see onstage, it's basically a dance piece. It stars a woman and a 12-year old boy. They have some kind of complicated, fucked up relationship that isn't totally clear until the performance part of the show is over and when the text part of the show begins.  I.e., the piece ends with the audience being given a book written by me, which they take home or to a cafe or wherever and read, and the text in the book kind of fleshes out what the performance part has already shown. It takes place in this kind of crazy set, which is a sort of abstracted-out representation of an Eastern European-ish techno club -- it was built and designed by a company in, I think,  Bulgaria that makes and sells portable techno clubs -- with walls and ceiling completely covered with led lights, and a mirrored floor, which will be creating this pretty wild, complicated light show/display during the performance. The themes, hm: abandon, depression, hallucination, incest, death. I guess that's the basics. Your February adventures are the London trip? What have you got planned out so far? The EP sounds like a great idea, of course. And you feeling so inspired and motivated is great, great news! Good luck with whatever the College throws your way today. ** _Black_Acrylic, Hi, Ben. Oh, I'm afraid I have some possible bad news. This isn't confirmed, but I was told yesterday that the Pompidou has cancelled the Mike Kelley retrospective because of money problems, ugh. I'll find out for sure, but, if it's true, that's pretty fucking infuriating news. Oh, man, I'm so very sorry to hear about the worsening MS. Does winter/the cold weather have anything to do with that? Yeah, do your exercises, please. Shit, Ben, I hope everything gets righted for you again as soon as possible. I send you immense love and hugs, my friend. ** Misanthrope, Emotions are best left for love, indeed. It's become so difficult to separate politics and emotion now because the fucking media and the 24-hour news, etc. in the US presents political news in an emotional way, or with a heavy emotion bait/manipulation aspect, almost all the time. You don't see that here in France, and the difference in people's reaction to and discussions of politics, at least partly as a result, is so different. Okay, your Saturday doesn't sound nearly as fun as I had imagined, but I don't think I could watch a hockey match without pulling out my iPhone and surfing the web or something the whole time. Curious and weird about your friend and her non-fetching ex. I'm glad you got to talk to David K. That's so sad. I guess, I don't know, it's good that the funeral is past now, not that that brings the end of the pain 'cos it can just get worse. Yeah, keep sending him love when you talk to him if you think that would help or matter. ** Bollo, Hi! Haven't watched the Melgaard interview yet. It's on the dock or docket or whatever they say for this afternoon. I know Alissia Bennet, or I used to. She is or at least was good pals with my pal Sue de Beer. Awesome, I'll go get the zine post-haste. Great! Everyone, super treat from the mighty artist and d.l. Bollo aka Jonathan Mayhew in the form of, in his words, ' a zine i designed last year but never had the cash to do a print version so here's a pdf version for consumption'. If you know JM's amazing work, and I think many of you do, you know you need to click that link and download that zine pdf, like, now even. ** Sypha, Hi. I'm avoiding that DM Max bio of David. I've heard from too many people I trust that it's a slanted and distorted portrait. But, if you read it, tell me what you think. Yes, 'Snow Country', beautiful. What happened to your plan to keep a diary? Are you doing that, or did you abandon that idea? ** Rewritedept, The man of the hour and quite a number of future hours! Thank you, kind sir. I dig, about the stress of letting your dad peek into your mind. I let my parents peek into my work/mind early on, and one of them refused to ever read another literary word of mine again. And the other one said he read my books, but, I don't know, I think he was just jawing. I do think it's great that your dad believes in you. That's very precious. I'm with you, i.e. I'm not much of a DeLillo fan. We are few and far between. Strasbourg: I'm reading some of the texts from 'I Apologize' while Peter Rehberg plays some of the music from 'IA'. Could be a disaster, could be okay, can't tell. My adventures are with a new friend. Well, a recent, by this point, great new friend. Of the '80s Wire, I really like the 'Snakedrill' EP a lot, and there are great things on 'The Ideal Copy'. There's a very good compilation of the 'best of' Wire's 80s stuff called '1985–1990: THE A LIST' that I recommend. I was in Lake Tahoe once. Yeah, it seemed pretty nice. Lake and trees and the old 'Bonanza' set and all of that. Like Lake Arrowhead on a grander scale. All right, thank you again for today, buddy. ** Postitbreakup, Ha ha, your brackets plus space break was an unsuccessful dam. I hear you about the job hunting frustration. I mean, yeah. And at a horrible time, contextually and externally. Sounds maybe like your dad was just trying to scare you or kick your ass, though. I don't know. You have to find a way to psyche yourself into thinking that the looking and interviewing part is a subversive performance piece or something? Predictably, I will now say it's far, far too early for you to x yourself out of future cool kid scenes and writing careers, buddy. That's just moping. Anyway, hope typing that helped. Here and I are very happy to help, man. ** Paul Curran, Hi, Paul. Slowly, slowly, but sort of steadily getting back on track. I'm being patient, diligent, and avoiding worry as best I can. Very happy that yours is making progress. That's fantastic! ** Okay. The Kids in the Hall want to make you happy, as does Rewritedept, and, obviously, happiness is not a gift horse to be looked at in the mouth, whatever the hell that means. See you tomorrow.