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I was lucky enough to get an advance copy of The Kids in the Hall Tour of Duty DVD. Since the show parts of the DVD are going to be airing on PPV tomorrow and the roomie and I have already ordered it, we decided to just watch the special features tonight. The special features were so excellent that I felt I needed to drool about them immediately, so I'm gonna do it invisibly. If you don't care if the special features are spoiled, then hilite the invisible text (addenda added):

First off, unlike Brain Candy and Same Guys, New Dresses, this DVD has a booklet inside. Granted, the booklet only contains two pages, but they're full of photos from the show. New ones, I think. Good stuff.

There are three "Special Features" choices: Bonus Material, Craig Northey Songs and Behind the Scenes. The Bonus Material consisted of an extra/alternate Bruce song, "Never Trust" (from his CD "Drunk Baby Project", which he sometimes performed instead of "Bob Seger" from that album-- so I assume that "Bob Seger" is included on the regular feature version that will air tomorrow night?), and the encore sketch they did on Tour of Duty, "Joymakers". Both were very exciting to watch, and brought back rushes of memories from the tour, which started almost a year ago. My favourite bit in "Never Trust" is Bruce's silly R.Crumb-character-esque walk ("Keep on truckin'"), although I was perplexed that they included a different line than one Bruce usually said: Instead of, "When you do get caught cheating and lie about it, never use as an excuse, 'But did you see her, honey? She's fuckin' beautiful!'" On the DVD, they used a version with him say, "Never use as an excuse... 'oops.'" What's that about?

And Nina from Joymakers was sublime. It was shot in Vancouver, I think, towards the end of the tour, so they had incorporated a lot of adlibs into the sketch, like Nina refusing to go down after being clubbed, Kevin scalping her, and Scott going apeshit with the balloons. The balloon bit was especially exciting to watch, as the sketch spun completely into the realm of the surreal.

I really liked how the sketches looked on video, too. It was, in my opinion, a great improvement over most of the on-stage camerawork done for "Same Guys New Dresses", no offense to Darren the camera guy. This one looked a lot more... I hate to say professional, but that's what I think.

The Craig Northey Songs were "Take a Hit off This" and "Giddy Up", of course, which I assume they don't include in the PPV/Feature because it's billed as a KITH thing and might confuse some casual watchers who wouldn't understand Craig's place in the show. I am so fucking glad that these were included on the DVD; they made me nostalgiac for the particular magic of that tour like nothing has in months and months, and now that I know the songs inside out, having become a Craig-girl in the time since last spring, it's really cool to have live versions of these. And it makes me REALLY want him to come do a show in New York. Pleasepleaseplease.

When we got to Behind the Scenes, we discovered that it was a feature you could only enjoy while watching the movie. With the behind-the-scenes feature turned on, a little bull's eye will pop up on screen during scenes that have behind-the-scenes footage available, and you can choose to exit out of the film and watch those (I guess). So we're going to save that for tomorrow night, after we've watched the PPV special.

I'm very excited.

Addendum: I can't believe I missed an entire Special Feature last night: "Q&A". That's where you actually get to see INSIDE the famous Tour Bus, which looks really fun although I suppose I would be mighty claustrophobic after awhile. But it looks like they had some wicked video-game equipment set up in there. And, once again, the grand tradition of Scott-as-comedic-whipping-boy continues.

Also, since the PPV special has aired, Gina and I watched the Behind the Scenes footage. When the target pops up, you select it and it takes you to, literally, the back-stage view of what's going on on the stage at that moment. There are two cameras showing different angles simultaneously. At first I didn't quite understand the point of it, as it seemed to be a bunch of people just walking in front of cameras, just out of microphone range, mumbling to themselves. But if you stick with it, and listen closely, you'll hear some very funny things. Mark is the best at the backstage banter; my favourite was when he said that Benny Hill was hiding inside Dave's belly during the film of Dave in his old-fashioned swimsuit. And there's a great scene of Craig rehearsing with Kevin and Dave as Dave gets his Hecubus makeup wipes clean. I can't imagine the Behind the Scenes stuff would be of remotest interest to anyone except the hardcore fans, which means that it's in there for us. And you gotta appreciate that. Everyone else in the world will go, "Huh?" but those of us who are fans will squeal, "Lookit Scott's tighty-whities!"

Why are you in Tavie's head? 10:27 PM | shower me with attention