hi @liliana-von-k, thanks for the follow! i have answered this question before but i love talking about kids in the hall and my "origin story" with them so i'm happy to tell it again (jsyk it will be a long post bc i always have to tell the full story bc i love it so much)
basically my parents have both been kith fans since the 90s, so even before i had seen any of the show itself there were certain kith quotes that were just part of my family's vocabulary. the first sketch i watched was "these are the daves i know" when i was like 8 years old and i became obsessed with that song. i watched a few other sketches/the first few episodes from season one but i didn't truly get into kith until after their documentary "comedy punks" was released
see, my mom is a big documentary person so she was like "oh hey there's a new kids in the hall documentary! do you want to watch it?" and i just kind of shrugged and was like sure i'll be in the room while it's on, probably working on my own stuff or scrolling on my phone. but like not even five minutes in i was hooked. while i'd always enjoyed kids in the hall's comedy, something about hearing the very personal histories of how the troupe came together and survived for all these years was so affecting. i think it was scott specifically that really signaled to me that this show was something special, and the part where bruce talked about comforting scott while he had cancer by telling him how the rest of the troupe would die first was so powerful. honestly no individual movie has changed my life more than comedy punks did specifically bc it gave me that push to get into kith and approached it from such a human perspective, which definitely informed my approach to the rest of their work and them as people. i remember watching comedy punks for the first time and getting this strange feeling i couldn't pin down yet that was like this is important, not just referring to the show or the troupe, but like this feeling that i had just crossed a turning point in my life, and i remember feeling this pull towards toronto which seemed frivolous at the time but has been so heavily solidified as i'm now planning to move there in just over a year.
so i bingewatched all of the kids in the hall tv show in summer 2022, as well as brain candy, death comes to town, the amazon season, etc. basically as much kith stuff as i could find. but i needed more. so i started getting into side projects, which brought me to "mouth congress" (a queer-punk band scott thompson and paul bellini had in the early 80s that they've recently started putting out new music with again). i found a youtube channel with a bunch of recent live performance clips of the band and each video had like less than 10 views. so since i didn't have anyone to infodump about kith with irl (aside from my very patient mother lol) i started commenting on every video, complimenting the performances and pretending i was talking to a friend, confident no one would actually see it
after 2 weeks of this, turns out someone did see it. PAUL BELLINI HIMSELF. this led to a whole back-and-forth which eventually ended up with him emailing me a copy of the unreleased mouth congress documentary, i emailed back asking if he'd be interested in meeting on zoom (since i am a queer comedy writer myself so both he and scott are my biggest comedy inspirations), and yeah bellini is a delightful person to talk to and we very quickly became friends. i ended up offering to run mouth congress's social media, which can be found on both tumblr and instagram as @mouthcongress and posts both vintage videos from the 80s/90s and recent live clips. they're currently working on an album of entirely new material written in the past 2 years which is going to be released soon (we don't have a specific release date but the recording is completed and they've started filming music videos for it!! but i'm getting ahead of myself lmao)
a few months pass and mouth congress is set to perform at a new year's eve show at a local club in toronto. i'd never been to toronto before, never even left the united states, but paul says it would be so great to have me there and by some miracle my parents say yes to making the trip (they still can't believe this is happening either, since they were kith fans first!). the trip is wonderful, i immediately fall in love with the city, i get lunch with paul irl for the first time and get to have my very first face-to-face conversation with my number one comedy inspiration scott thompson. it's honestly a little awkward but in an adorable funny way. i also have my first legal drink at that show (bc canadian drinking age is lower than the us), specifically saying i want to have my first drink with buddy cole, which both scott and paul are very into
it's actually only a couple weeks until i'm in toronto again, because scott is debuting a new buddy cole show consisting of monologues that were all censored by amazon that he pitched during the revival season. this is my first time traveling a long distance without my family which my mom is anxious about so paul bellini lets me have him as my emergency contact. the show is amazing, i get to stay for the afterparty, and while i'm there i casually mention that i'm surprised no one has made a buddy cole documentary yet. like, this character has such a rich history even beyond the kids in the hall (which i can infodump about all day lmao) and is such an important staple of queer comedy that doesn't get the attention he deserves. the kith documentary is great, but where's my buddy cole documentary? paul accepts my pitch (that i didn't even realize i was pitching), passes along the idea to scott, and yeah now i'm legit directing a film with my number one comedy heroes and i haven't even graduated college yet. what the fuck. i expected this to be the type of thing i accomplish over 20 years into my career, not at twenty!! so yeah that's how the buddy cole documentary started. i'm still in preproduction on it but we're launching an indiegogo crowdfunding campaign for it in the next 2 weeks bc this has evolved into a full feature-length film with some incredible celebrity interviewees, both kith and otherwise.
anyway a few months later it's announced bruce mcculloch is bringing his one-man-show to the city i go to school in. not only that, but his theater is literally 2 blocks from campus. i ask paul if he'd give me bruce's contact so i can set up an interview for my school's newspaper, paul gives me bruce's assistant's email, and i set up a 30-minute zoom two weeks before bruce will be in town. the conversation honestly goes bizarrely well. like it's honestly surreal how close bruce and i got after only knowing each other for a half hour? he's such an easy person to talk to and literally by the end of that conversation he was already calling himself my mentor, asking about my comedy, and offering to let me meet him backstage after his show. which is exactly what i did, launching yet another incredible friendship-slash-mentorship with one of the kids in the hall.
bruce eventually signed on to executive produce the buddy cole documentary (alongside paul bellini), i've been up to toronto in january, april, june, august, and october this year (so essentially every 2 months, though it was slightly offset by going twice in january) and i'm planning on going up in december, every time not only do i find time to meet up with scott, paul, and bruce but they all deliberately try to reserve as much "jess time" as they can because i have a unique and powerful friendship with each of them, every time i finish a new creative project paul has to see it bc he loves how ambitious i am, i repeatedly wake up to texts scott sends me at 3am about the documentary and how excited he is to have me on tour with him to film it next year, bruce thinks it's hilarious he used to think i was "shy" bc i've gotten so comfortable going on infodumps and tangents about things i'm passionate about, and the three of them all feel like extended family. best of all, i actually have plans to graduate from college a semester early so that i can use the money (and time) i've saved to find a place in toronto and start making even more connections with the comedy community up there (also for the record: no i have not met mark, kevin, or dave yet. i know kevin is aware of my existence from bruce giving me a shoutout at a show they both did but that's about it. but i know i will interview all of them for my documentary)
so anyway that's how i got into kids in the hall. i know only the first 2 paragraphs answer your question, but at this point my love for this show has become so so intertwined with my relationships to bruce and scott and paul as humans that i don't really consider getting into kids in the hall and getting to know the kids in the hall as separate things in my life.
(also if you have any follow-up questions on anything mentioned feel free to reply or dm me, this goes for everyone else too!)
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A BLACK OUT/SLAM POEM based on the teletubbies (tv) tag on ao3
TRIGGER WARNING_MILK.
stray dogs literature clubs, the school for good and evil. ink sans angel—stranger things
horror sans guy—don’t hug me i’m scared. don’t hug me i’m scared, (don’t hug me i’m scared.)
free form plot twists. tragedy/comedy. alternate universe—high school. alternate universe—music.
the chaos unfolds each day, pristine, centuries ago, fight the many.
post divorce, living together, implied drug use, alcoholism. snippets from the end of the show, renunion, although it takes place a couple years before. we were the stars (but space was a void) by ponfarrpussyqueen.
corporate clash, bug, duck, the guardian pest, the prince, macarena, kissing, crack, as a joke, boys kissing, regret everything
underage julius caesar, emo napoleon, mating bond, tentacle dick, magic healing cock, holy water, holy roman empire, kissing in the rain, the battle of waterloo, a true story.
crossover, insanehappymealgiver, original character, original, simulator, mentioned, i’m at my limit, intentionally bad, wearing the other character’s skin, start praying because this sure ain’t holy, my dad went to get the milk because of this, sent to the void, put me in a coffin, rancid hope’s peak
we greet you with good luck and prosperity.
we love gay anal and lesbian smut and we hope you do too.
diminishing flame, not for kids, you’ll cry so hard you won’t have eyes, not sorry, commit a clarity, vaporized, freeform, sewer rat
2020 presidential election, spit as lube.
chaos bear, crack, crack, crack, has religious trauma, gay, gay, lesbian, lesbian sex, orgy, moist naked bodies rainbow is jesus, sex during tornado, this is NOT. finished.
there she was, in a new world. guess she’ll play the cards she’s dealt.
jesus confessed, sin shock, tears streaming down her face. “i fucked your sister.” crack. treated seriously, why did i write this. gay best friend—i can see that (i’m safe here.)
why did i write this!
crack. treated seriously.
slowly losing our sanity, we die.
crack, treated seriously. the moon of hope and the sun of despair LET IT GOOOOO LET IT GOOO.
crack, treated seriously, blue balls, orphan account
his little purse. what was once an inside joke is now taken seriously. crack. crack. fluff and crack. angst and crack. i am a man of my word, and i speak for the people.
a million other projects to complete
crack, crack, i dont know what’s going on, we’re idiots so we made this
it starts out all nice then it all goes downhill
satan, crack, this is a joke, please help me, please don’t hate me, i’m so sorry, i cannot think of anything else, please don’t read this. but. do, the author regrets nothing, the author regrets everything, why do i still exist? (discontinued, at least until further notice.) by even moderner prometheus
forbidden love, dead dove:do not eat.
so small in the midst of it all. rolling with the weird and unusual, traumatized teens to comfort, and an important decision to make
i came up with this, i will go down with this
i can’t believe i write this, why did i write this, i wrote this while listening to mother mother, sleep deprived, wrote this instead of sleeping, the guardian witnessed sex and is now scarred, touching, addiction, slut shaming
insufferable with apologies to all my followers, hell (literal), sewage
i got problems, so fucking random, pulled out of my ass, hard to explain, hard to word, each chapter will be posted, find me on wattpad,
near death experiences, major illness, declarations of love, love confessions, eating, marking, delay/denial, knotting, marking, mating bites, overstimulation, based on taylor swift songs, missing spleen
help me pleease, im scared, why did i write this?, just this really chill person who wants to take over the world, humanized teletubbies, my friend and i wrote this over the summer
you better not forgive me for this, im serious, vaginal fingering, a hushed voice, the contact making her shiver.
may your heart stay strong. torture, vomiting, blood and gore, self-indulgent, touch starved guardian, all characters are adults, electricity, suicidal thoughts, medical inaccuracies,
and yet… you lie again. i like noo-noo i hope he explodes, don’t show up
crack. i am so sorry. not in detail but it could’ve been so count your blessings
gods this can’t end well, good parent, to two children, bad parent, to the other one
IM SO SRRY BUT THIS WAS FOR THE GREATER GOOD, HAHA SUFFER,
attempt at humor, death, gore, i don’t even know, i’m so sorry, you have been warned, i posted this for my brother’s birthday
plague, companionship, through the fields we ran
it quickly turns into anti-demon propaganda
a play in one act, post-war, no sex, no killing
the prize of reading this is to meet god
help my poor soul this is a disgrace but it was my first fic so i refuse to orphan it, and the teletubbies followed
help, i was forced to write this and i’m sorry, i don’t even know what to call this monster, the southern pansy, aziphrale, the prince of hell, and the archangel gabriel
angst, satire, this is not serious, it’s meant to be funny
DO NOT TAKE THIS SERIOUSLY, IT WAS WRITTEN BY THREE HIGH THIRTEEN YEAR OLDS.
this is what you’ve been waiting for and hoping would never come
hearing voices, broken bones, emotional manipulation,
live, work, play, a simple life, protected, until a stranger comes.
i can’t give you a summary of the plot. that would ruin the story.
the eternal rioting continues as it always will (part one)
the eternal rioting continues as it always will (part seventeen.)
let me know if i forgot to tag anything!!
blame the painkillers. i blame the painkillers.
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