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I was almost crushed to death tonight. I make it a point never to be in the Village on Halloween night, and somehow, goddammit, there I was, trying to get to the PATH from the wrong side of the street, and being crushed on all sides, unable to move, locking my arms around my ribcage so my lungs wouldn't be crushed, almost frozen from the panic, trying not to cry or hyperventilate, and the fucking police didn't help matters by crushing metal barriers against the people on the fringe to shove us even further back against each other. There were babies there, I was scared for them too. And a gang of kids almost got into a fight with another gang of kids, right up against me and I swear I thought they were going to pull out a knife. This after one of the longest and most stressful work days ever. (I am a very stressed-out koala.)

I survived it and made it to the F train, if not the PATH, and am crashing at my parents' place instead. I want to go to bed and not wake up for a very long time.

On a more positive note, I finally got that issue of Geek Monthly and read Kyle Lemmon's article about the KITH. I wish it was available online, or that I had access to a scanner right now, but since it isn't and I don't and I'm too wound up to sleep, I'm going to go ahead and transcribe it. Kind of a throwback to when I was a teenage geek (as opposed to the pushing-30 geek I am now) and had time to do nothing but sit around transcribing hard-to-find articles for fellow rabid fans. And if you read the article through to the end you'll see why I bother now:

The Misfit Heroes: The Kids in the Hall come to town.
words: Kyle Lemmon

Let's face it, the millennial culture is aching for nostalgia acts. The Dark Knight is grapple-gunning its way toward the top of the domestic gross box office charts, Weezer just released another self-titled/colored album, and this decade apparently proved to have a short shelf life when the oughts slid under the microscope over at VH1 this past summer. You can blame all this on the growing need for an anchor during these uncertain times, but you can't help but be seduced by the charms of yesteryear or yesterday. You can now add the Toronto 1990s comedy troupe The Kids in the Hall (KITH) to the list.
The critically acclaimed and relentlessly incendiary comedy act went on their first major tour in six years in 2008. The string of 30-plus dates winked at the fact that many of the "Kids" were approaching 50 in the tour's title, "Live As We'll Ever Be."
If beloved KITH characters like Buddy Cole, Cathy and Kathie, Chicken Lady, Gavin and the Headcrusher don't ring any bells, then "these are the facts we know, we know, these are the facts we know." Discovered by comedy mogul Lorne Michaels, creator of Saturday Night Live The Kids in the Hall are Dave Foley, Bruce McCulloch, Kevin McDonald, Mark McKinney and Scott Thompson. The name of the group came from Sid Caesar who, if a joke fell flat, would attribute it to "the kids in the hall", referring to a group of ravenous baby-faced writers loitering outside the studio. The sketch comedy group forever left a mark on our collective funny bones in America when their half-hour comedy show debuted on cable's HBO in 1989.
Since the last KITH episode aired, the five members have skittered off in various directions, coming back together for the ill-received 1996 KITH movie, Brain Candy , and nostalgic tours in both 2000 and 2002. In the interim, Dave Foley starred in the beloved NBC sitcom NewsRadio and continues to post sketches on superdeluxe.com. McCulloch released a few comedy albums and helmed a (most likely axed) sitcom called Carpoolers on ABC. McDonald extended his resume with guest cameos on That '70's Show and Arrested Development, as well as with brilliant animated movie voice work. McKinney was on Saturday Night Live for a few seasons after the Kids called it quits, and Thompson continues to be his flamboyantly funny self in his one-man show, Scottastrophe!
The troupe made a name for themselves as post-punk spokesmen for the dregs, loners and generally misunderstood denizens of society. The new shows aimed at recapturing the erstwhile spirit that hovered over the Kids during their heyday. Topics for the new show (filled with over 80% new material) are bits about demon spawn babies, death, American obesity, sex, homosexuality and, of course, religion. The punk aesthetic remains.
"Not everyone would agree we were post-punk, but Dave [Foley] would certainly agree with that," explains Kevin McDonald. "We wrote in a post-punk way about young things like girlfriends or boyfriends and first jobs when we were young people. We're taking that same post-punk attitude, if you want to call it, and applying it to having children or getting our first gray hair." Unlike other recent throwback acts, KITH aren't pandering to fans' memories.
The "least popular member" of the troupe acknowledges that it was a miracle that the group reassembled-- a sentiment echoed by founding member and lead writer Bruce McCulloch. "The writers' strike actually helped us because it gave us time to set aside some time to write out new sketches." That opening in their busy schedules created a domino effect and the ideas floated in. It resulted in two cinema verite sketches, one entitled "Car Fuckers", filmed by the cult TB show Arrested Development's Russo brothers. "Those guys pioneered that approach and it helped us get them done in one day," McCulloch says.
The new tour has ended, but the Kids are silent on what their next move will be. The internet movie community continues to buzz. A rumored movie title, Death Comes to Town, supposedly to come out in 2010 via Canada's Telefilm, turned out to be "absolute rumor, nothing more," according to the Kids' publicist, Nina Weissman. The group keeps their plans close to their chests, but McCulloch lets some information slide when prodded. "Part of this tour was to see where we were int he world. We didn't know if anyone would come. Geeks have powers but I'm not sure if anything has changed for us. We wanted the new movie-- if we do it-- to be less tied down to a narrative. Brain Candy was too narrative-driven, so this one will only have a narrative just for an excuse for sketches." McDonald stirs in some maybes concerning the future of the ensemble. "Next might be a miniseries or it might be a movie." Like old pros tossing back whip-smart lines like hand grenades, McCulloch finishes, "We may do nothing."
One thing's for certain: The Kids in the Hall are back and they are arguably better than ever. McCUlloch's cultivated his expertise behind the camera, a perfect segue into a possible director's slot for a KITH movie. Their writing remains fresh and topical, and it's helping the Kids move past their tiffs after the financial disaster that was Brain Candy. McCulloch is glad they took the time way from their day jobs for this reinvigoration and sometimes total disregard of old formulas. "Just to write keeps it fresh. By nature, if you're creating something, it does that. We kind of like our old sketches but we have a complicated relationship with them. We've all never wanted to be the Beach Boys, so we keep it fresh by writing and performing something you don't know that well."
KITH want to keep pushing and invariably eating the envelope. They just have to agree on what is tasteful. McKinney remembers a time when he was pleading for a sketch t the CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation). "The central premise was that a cat was being bounced from one side of the freeway to the other, slowly turning into a little scrap of fur while the owner was trying to call it in the backyard. You would get a little piece of whatever someone said when a piece of the cat hit them. It was kind of funny, but at the time our producer was a cat owner."
Though they're young at heart, the troupe realize their age. Some of the Kids have their own children and all of them are approaching 50. McDonald wonders what the group would be like in a parallel universe. "If we were 20 years younger and starting a troupe, I guess we would know everything. I would have my iPod, we would be shooting stuff in the interim, and we'd probably perform live a lot less. Who knows how good we would be on tours." Despite KITH's slow tread toward the Information Age, they enjoy some of the younger sketch comedy groups like Human Giant and Flight of the Conchords. The Kids work within their own twisted world. Gut Spigot salesmen walk alongside beer-guzzling Super Drunks, and McCulloch's hilarious take on the unrecognizable dance trends of the recent past is spot-on.
The past isn't an issue when you've got the present to contend with, though. During a San Francisco show in May, Thompson failed to gauge the drop into an orchestra pit and hurt his back. The troupe realized that though they might be middle-aged comedians working in an agesit industry, their loyal fans don't feel the same way. Several days later their MySpace page read: "Some of you may have heard that Scott fell off the stage on May 10th in San Francisco, during the encore. He was taken via ambulance to the local hospital after the show and checked out as a precaution-- he is doing fine and is planning on being onstage in Portland this evening." Thoughtful comments poured onto the site.
That update was posted by the Kids' Myspace page supervisor, a seriously dedicated fan who goes by the name of Tavie. The Kids don't consider themselves Luddites, but since they don't have an official site of their own they decided to let the New Jersey fan steer their internet presence. On Tavie's own site, the self-proclaimed "nerd" writes about her early introduction to KITH in an authorial third-person narrative. "At the age of 15, Tavie made two important discoveries: One, that she was not enjoying high school at all and would not continue to attend it; two, that Kids in the Hall was the best tv program ever made in the history of the world. Both of these discoveries would influence her life greatly in the years to come."
Tavie is the voice of a subculture that grew up watching KITH's sidesplitting antics and, like their icons, they grew up, too. Although the Kids can now appreciate how McCulloch's "He's Hip, He's Cool, He's 45" recurring character felt, the sketch's pang of loneliness (a KITH hallmark among characters like the Nobody Likes Us duo, the Axe Murderer or the Sizzler Sister) still rings as true.
Thompson agrees that the Kids still have that salving power for the misfits of the Youtube and Blu-ray generation: "There are a lot of geeky kids that come to our show. Most of them are socially awkward, like big girls and guys with very thick glasses, with heavy science fiction habits. I think a lot of people that consider themselves misfits identify with us. Our show is populated with people that in many other comedy shows would be considered losers, but in our show they're kind of the heroes." Hopefully those misfit heroes will have something to look forward to from the five comedic superman from the '90's.

Why are you in Tavie's head? 10:46 PM | shower me with attention