Please Do Not Eat This T-Shirt

That's why Kids in the Hall are great. Take an unplanned mishap and make it funny. Go and buy their [amazon.com] DVD's [amazon.com] if you want to really laugh. They're worth it.

In Response to Rich (#21323):

You realize now that I know for sure there are KITH DVDs, that fourty Helens are going to be agreeing with me quite a lot.

In Response to zamphir (#21324):

I'm married to a Helen; the idea that there are 39 more out there waiting to agree with her has haunted my dreams for the last ten years.

On the other hand, she's the most wonderful person on the planet, and easily meters out at 1400+ millihelens*.

   

  * millihelen: the amount of beauty required to launch one ship.

What is the UPC of? If I scanned my new t-shirt at the grocery store, what would I ring up as?

Actually, I thought the 'fucking Ikea' statement was funny on it's own; because anyone who has bought that stylish and affordable swedish crap has said that more than once.

Many an hour have I stood in line for spare parts to replace all the peices that were missing, or broke soon after assembly. That is, when the item I wanted was in stock and able to be purchased.

In Response to mrbeefy (#21332):

what would I ring up as?

"Terrorist"

Try it. It's fun!

In Response to zamphir (#21324):

That's a fact!

Really, I found it pretty amusing even without being 'in' on the joke. The idea of running around with Ikea instructions on your shirt is quite amusing.

... nutrative or gustatory manner.

???

a tasty manner? So... we can't eat it and we can't cook it into a t-shirt bisque?

Fucking IKEA.

In Response to Clan_Hanna (#21363):

It reminds me of the excellent children's book Grimble [robindey.com], by Clement Freud. (Illustrated by the excellent Quentin Blake [quentinblake.com].) Grimble's parents go on holiday, leaving him on his own at home. They leave him instructions all over the house, including some written in green ink on a Garibaldi biscuit:

Do not eat this biscuit as green ink is bad for you.

As it happens I'm in the middle of assembling a huge computer cupboard from IKEA. I thought I'd put the back and main shelf in wrong (after I'd finshed putting all the big stuff together), as the shelf was at the wrong height. I thought I'd have to take it apart, turn the back upside down and then re-assemble it. Turns out the back was OK - it was the whole cupboard that was upside down.

In Response to BobSalmon (#21374):

it was the whole cupboard that was upside down.

Yeah. Ikea's design department has been struggling for years with what kind of a little icon to use in the "needed tools" section to represent "spatial orientation".

When the CBC was airing reruns of Kids In The Hall late at night during 1991 and 1992, i videotaped them regularly and watched them all repeatedly. Scott Thompson was always my favorite-- not really because he was gay, but because his characters said the most wild things. I would audiotape some of Thompson's very best monologues, and use them as "bumper" material between sets when i DJed at WRUV. I could repeat a few favorites from memory. This is the best bit featuring Scott (in drag) as Brian's mother:

Well, I must admit that i was completely floored when my son Brian dropped his bombshell on me and my husband Gordon the other night. We were sitting around the kitchen table having a lovely cup of coffee, and I just asked Brian whether or not he wanted some more sugar, and why he wasn't married.

Well, he looked at me for the longest time, and then he said, "Mum, I want you to think of your very worst nightmare." So of course, I imagined losing my family in a fire. Well that wasn't good enough for him; he continued to look at me in an almost psychotic way, and then he said, "No, Mum, make it worse." So naturally I imagined setting the fire that killed my family...

So when Brian finally told Gordon and I that he was a ho... a hom... that he was shy, I was almost relieved: better that than killing my family in a fire for no apparent reason.

I suppose it's more difficult on the men, you know, because they wonder where they went wrong, question their own sexuality, their own manhood-- blame themselves. Of course, Gordon has found a way to blame me. He says that I smother Brian with too much affection! Well, if too much love is a sin, then I guess I'm going to Hell-- at least Brian will have some company there.

I told Brian that I don't want him to change now that he's... uh... well, you know... in show business; because I don't know what I'd do if I ever came home and found him in a dress-- there isn't enough volunteer work in the world to get a mother through that.

You know, it's just that, well, I... I just hope that he's practising no sex... like his father. It's not that I'm judging Brian; I'm not; it's just that I didn't know any of them when I was growing up. I had a good Christian girlhood! I didn't even know Christ was a Jew until i was twenty-one! The most exotic people in our neighborhood was a Dutch family... my mother called them "niggers".

Oh... I wish I drank. I wish, I wish, I wish, I wish I was one of those "Bingo Women", you know-- one of those Bingo Women with the bleached-blonde hair, unfiltered cigarettes, a hockey jacket, and a welfare scam. And all day long, I'd play Bingo! And I'd call it out, too, wherever I was, even when I wasn't playing: "Bingo!" I'd say, "Bingo! Hello, Mrs Morton... Bingo to you!... That was a lovely sermon, Reverend Wilson; Bingo to you and your family. Bingo! Bingo!" I'd to start to talk in a Southern accent... and they'd call me "that crazy women"... the one with the bachelor son... and the neighbors would throw rocks at me as I shuffled down the street, clutching coupons for soap, and hacking up blood.

Ooohhh... and Gordon would leave me for a younger woman... or a man... and I'd end up living in a shopping cart at the end of the block where the fields begin...

In the late '80s and early '90s, they seemed incredibly risqué for television. Remember Buddy Cole's "The Care and Training of Your Male Slave" (with Kevin McDonald in the ass-less chaps)? I suppose they might appear slightly dated and tame by twenty-first century standards, but they'll always make me laugh.

In Response to Teledildonix (#21379):

I suppose they might appear slightly dated and tame by twenty-first century standards, but they'll always make me laugh.

I disagree. The Kids never make any real "time stamp" references though they might have mentioned Bush or the Canadian PM once or twice. Otherwise it's all generic scenes and humor. That keeps it timeless. Your examples of Fran, Gordon, and Brian and the "male slave" skits will work in any time.
And the DVD's are uncut so you get the swearing and full length skits. No cutting episodes for syndication needs.

In Response to Rich (#21382):

Tell me, oh please tell me that they included "The Dr. Suess Bible". I read once that the CBC crew found the sketch so offensive, most of them refused to work the taping or contribute to the sets, and that young "Timothy Foo" was Dave's nephew, because the casting agents refused to send over child actors.

One day God said, "Here is what I will do:
I will send down my Son, I will send Him to you.
His name will be Christ and he'll never wear shoes.
His pals will all call him the King of the Jews!"

I swear, I never laughed so hard in my life as when I first saw that, except maybe the time Hecubus quit and Sir Simon replaced him with a puppet. Or Feelyat!

In Response to Rich (#21382):

Okay, you've convinced me: they might be mostly timeless, and not "dated". I thought about what you said, and i do remember the characters and the set-ups, but nothing at all placing them at an expact point in time.

Would you maybe agree that they were sort of spicy during those years when they were originally broadcast? In the USA, i'm pretty sure they were only on HBO; and in Canada, the CBC was typically only airing them after midnight, and Canadians were far less uptight about strong language, partial nudity, and adult themes than America's broadcasters and censors.

[Girl with pigtail-braids runs up to camera with choppy film technique]

"It's a fact: the Queen is senile and has forgotten her A-B-C's!"

[Pan over to Scott Thompson in full drag as Queen of England, standing under tree, smiling, holding purse, in conversative Queen-garb]

"Aaaay... Beee... umm... Ceee... aahh... Dee(?)... umm... Jaaay? umm... Helloooo!" [waves and beams at imaginary admirers...]

[pan back to girl]

"It's a fact!"

You were quite right: that works in most any decade.

In Response to gtyrrell (#21385):

"Screw you, Taxpayer!!"

In Response to gtyrrell (#21385):

Dave Foley shows up at the apartment of Chicken-Lady for a blind date, and she tells him about the other time she "went on a date-- well, it wasn't a date really... I was with a guy who lost a bet; his buddies locked him in the room with me for an hour. B'crawwwkk!!! Scarred for life!!"

... and the time Chicken-Lady is riding the mechanical pony at the shopping mall... riding it to the point of orgasm in front of a small child and various other onlookers... "Give me another quarter!!"

In Response to gtyrrell (#21385):

Tell me, oh please tell me that they included "The Dr. Suess Bible".

Yes, Season 1. I never saw it and was both shocked and humored by that skit and whole episode. It never aired on Comedy Central.

In Response to zamphir (#21324):

Forty Helens agree: the Kids in the Hall had numerous side-splitting monologues... but "Buddy Cole's autobiographical tales" were the ones that will stick in people's minds forever!

Forty Helens agree.

Honestly, there was a time when i could recite word-for-word some of Buddy's most outrageous schtick. If i hadn't already videotaped so many episodes during the early '90s, and if we didn't subscribe to Comedy Central, then i'd just have to rent or buy the DVDs. They contain some truly rare material; i.e., television which stands up to repeated viewings. In fact, i'm enthusiastically supporting Rich's and Jon's recommendations that you try to find some-- by far, they're the best of all Lorne Michael's productions, still outshining many of the best Saturday Night Live sketches in their excursions beyond tastefulness and sanity. Here's another one of Buddy Cole's whimsical stories:

[As always, Buddy is in a suave but slightly foppish ensemble, sipping a martini as he gesticulates, lisps, and smiles dazzlingly at the audience from where he sits atop his favorite stool, at a "Daddy's" gay bar...]

They sssaaaayyy... that the notion of "love at first sight" is an impossible idea. Now, I may have been born yesterday-- but I still went shopping!

It happens... well, it happened to me. Oh, it was years ago, when I was living in Baghdad. Mmmm... On the day in question, it was a sssexsssy, ssssunny, rrrocky day! Ooo!... And I was lounging about the pool at the Danish Consulate, wearing next-to-nothing. In fact, at one point, all i was wearing was a diplomat's hand. [bats his eyelashes] ooo, ooh!

Oh, it was a crazy, crazy time for me-- I was the top male-model for an Egyptian line of jeans, and my face and figure were plastered on billboards all over the Middle East... and still the fighting continued...

Serge, the man, came striiiding into the pool area, like the Colossus of Rhodes, and shot me a look of raw passion that heroes have been shooting at heroes for thousssands and thousssands of yearsss. I froze! ooh mmm ha ha... and buried my face in a copy of Omar Khayam's "Kubla Khan"... but it was upside-down, so I feigned dyslexia.

He saw right through my onion-skin charade, and he dove into the pool, fully-clothed. And in one clean, swift movement, he was there... beside me... a pepper-mill looking for his salt-cellar. Oh yes! Serge was black... which was odd, don't you think, with him being Danish and all? But I figure if the French can worship Jerry Lewis, and the Turks can invent the croissant, anything's possible in this crazy, crazy world!

I turned to Serge, and with the spontaneity of champagne in a slipper, i said, "I need a lover!"... and that was it! We were together for six months... which in heterosexual terms is three reincarnations with the same mate.

But Serge is dead to me now... they're all dead to me now... he walked out of my life, and smack! into the front of a bus. All my lovers have been killed by buses. I really must get a place in the country!

Oh, well... live and learn. You know, it's hard for a faggot to take risks nowadays, but you've got to try! For example: you know that feeling you get when you don't know whether it's going to be a shit or a fart, but you let 'er rip anyways? [Adjusts his pose meaningfully as he perches on the stool and winces coyly...]

I hesitated to use that analogy with a heterosexual audience, because any time you mention anything remotely anal, they always rush out to vacuum their car. It all reminds me of something that Molière once said to Guy de Maupassant, in a café, in Vienna: "That's nice! You should right it down!" [swigs down the rest of the martini with a flourish, treats the crowd to another charming smile, then turns back to the bar...]

So obviously, forty Helens agree... it's fabulous!

In Response to jettaboy20 (#21336):

Hell, yeah. Someone should put "Fucking Ikea" on a t-shirt.

That shirt is pretty cool, but I couldn't tell if the instructions are on the front or the back. Maybe it's somewhere and I just can't read. Anyone?

Alan, P.D.

In Response to AlanSmithee (#21452):

All designs are on the front unless otherwise noted.

In Response to jon (#21456):

Unless I wear the shirt backwards.

In Response to zamphir (#21458):

User error doesn't count.

In Response to Robonun (#21461):

User error doesn't count.

I wish that were true.