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Comment by davesque | Hacker News Reader

My favorite thing about Kids in the Hall was how it was somehow impossible to describe one of their skits to a friend and have it seem funny. And, to be clear, I mean this as a compliment.

By the way, a couple of my favorite sketches:

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w7ApuaJrtck (The Monkeys)

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cOQBXA5CPEM (Mouse Killer)

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Part of that I think is their humor is very niche, and I don't know how to describe the niche.

I had friends who absolutely loved them, and I never found any of their stuff remotely funny. There is something either in the context that people were introduced to them, or in some subtelness of people's sense of humor that seems to completely make or break how they get perceived. Sort of like the comedy equivalent of Rush

At it’s best it’s a very quintessentially Canadian sort of absurdism, but then you have to define Canadian. That said i think this is no less true of Monty Python which is really a very British kind of absurdism. Weirdly i feel like there’s no really good, singular American equivalent (certainly SNL isn’t it - Canada’s SNL is probably this hour has 22 minutes). Maybe like… In living color or something.

It rarely makes that Canadianyness explicit but then that’s kind of quintessentially Canadian too.

> Weirdly i feel like there’s no really good, singular American equivalent

What about The Whitest Kids U Know? For some reason they remind me a lot of the Kids in the Hall, and not just because both have "kids" in their names. There's the absurdist humor, but I also think they even physically resemble the other troupe.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Whitest_Kids_U%27_Know

Example skit: "Happier And With Your Mouth Open" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lwjmUWh-ymo)

Then there is the absolutely fabulous Key & Peele, I can lose hours just watching random sketches on YouTube. But they don't resemble the Kids in the Hall at all.

WKUK had its moments, but was definitely led by Trevor in a way KITH members could stand on their own. Personally, i felt it dipped a bit too much into contemporary politics (stuff like Bush being in Skull and Bones), which doesn't quite have the shelf life of KITHs high points.

We're a very in-the-moment people, in the US.

That's about as close as you can get.

Americans are too earnest to be into absurdist humor.

I do think there's kind of an element of truth to this, though it feels very broad to say so. American absurdism does exist, just maybe not as much on TV? Screwball comedy is very much a thing in film, and occasionally reaches for the same feeling.

Stuff like Airplane! or some of Mel Brooks' stuff or National Lampoons movies, and later the "Scary Movie"/"Teen Movie"/etc. things... but it's like when they go much deeper than an average SNL sketch they almost always go too far and suddenly reach into trying to offend or anger or even disgust (though the new KITH has a bit of that too).

Adult Swim has a lot of American absurdist humour, like Tim and Eric, The Eric Andre Show, Rick and Morty, etc.

I really love WKUK and had been watching their Twitch streams at the time of Trevor's passing. I'm really looking forward to them releasing their Mars movie, as bittersweet as it may be.

> Weirdly i feel like there’s no really good, singular American equivalent…

I recommend checking out The State: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8O9Eo-rlZZc

And now I have tape, all over my face.

One of the subtle cultural differences I notice whenever I cross the border down into the states, is that a lot of the implied humour in some of the absurd things I'd joke about just isn't received like I'd expect. Not even necessarily absurd actually, it could just be something mildly exaggerated for comedic effect in regular situations. Not all the time, but enough that I notice and dial it back depending on where I am.

Maybe something on Adult Swim? ATHF, Space Ghost, Harvey Birdman?

In the US, live action shows seem to be big productions, maybe not as well suited to making things that aren't universally appealing.

I saw a couple of episodes of Dr Steve Brule. Pretty good. And I guess "Too Many Cooks" really deserves some love. It was incredible. I guess this stuff is from Tim and Eric?

Yeah, I've heard their stuff is good, I think I missed the bus slightly on it. It seems, sort of, very out there. I couldn't follow the plot most of the time whenever I tried to watch it.

Now I'm watching old Brad Neely videos, he had some good weird stuff.

> Weirdly i feel like there’s no really good, singular American equivalent

“Portlandia” fit the bill for me.

Edit: if you pull certain sketches from SNL over the last 5-10 years you get a good through-line of American absurdism: David S. Pumpkins, Airport Sushi, Bodega Bathroom come to mind.

Isn’t portlandia more just Portland/pnw then all of America thou?

> Weirdly i feel like there’s no really good, singular American equivalent (certainly SNL isn’t it - Canada’s SNL is probably this hour has 22 minutes).

Given both are Lorne Michaels shows, Portlandia would be it.

Looking forward to the Portlandia reboot in 2041 :)

Lorne Michaels has his hands in everything (including SNL), so that doesn't necessarily mean very much. He's very good at finding talent though. That said, yeah portlandia is pretty close probably, not sure why it didn't occur to me (I guess I was thinking more 90s-contemporary).

Still I think the thing is none of these suggestions really rise to the top of the culture the way KITH does for Canada or Monty Python does for the UK, or the way (as a different but related sort of thing) SNL does for the US.

> certainly SNL isn’t it - Canada’s SNL is probably this hour has 22 minutes

Perhaps SCTV back in the day.

Personally I never got SNL.

I also love Rush :). And no, I'm not Canadian.

I am Canadian. Add our underdog band with the HUGE lightshow, Triumph. Rush managed to break through the American market, but Triumph only got a small taste by comparison. You can even take a sort of course with Lynda.com about what it takes to set up a Rush concert. One of the best Lynda courses I ever took just for fun. A lot of people forget who Triumph was these days. Nobody forgets Rush.

And then there's Max Webster. Kim Mitchell got better known outside of Canada on his own. But MW was really something that defied musical stereotypes (and arguably, the music was better). Closest I can think of for comparison would be Frank Zappa. Needless to say, nobody thinks of Kim Mitchell in those terms once he went solo.

In many ways we're similar to Americans. But it's easy to find areas where we really aren't.

Back to topic, I was absolutely a huge KITH fan. If you haven't seen it, wait 'til you get to the final episode. Hitler F*ing a Donkey was seriously shocking for the time. It would not have been allowed, but they were far from worried about being cancelled. It's the one KITH skit that is banned on YouTube! I've yet to see it again. It's exactly as it sounds. They catch Hitler F*ing a donkey. Also it's connected to the origin story of Chicken Lady. Pretty edgy stuff.

The Hitler blanking a donkey still appears to be on youtube, at least for me (another Canadian); it was part of a series of sketches that were "censored", so they showed what "they were allowed to show". Including the kid with cancer sketch, and .. something else.

My favourites are the 1) 'Arms in a Vat of Dead fish' sketch, which as a former factory-line worker hits all the checkmarks, and The "Fur Trappers", and ..

But Devin though. \m/

The viral coefficient must be higher for sketches that can be imitated in a few lines. SNL really specialized in this. KITH had a few such (like the Crusher) but as you say, most defied summarization.

The one they got away with, but is banned on YouTube: Hitler F*ing a Donkey.

The phrase is used a LOT in the skit because of course they're trying to explain why they're so frantic. What did they see in the barn? Hitler F*ing a Donkey! I saw Hitler F*ing a Donkey!!!

That was a catch phrase for some time after. But it might be lost to history thanks to censorship.

I think they left in the Chicken Lady origin story. It's not too different, and does explain why she keeps exploding when she gets excited.

They also had a lot of memorable song bits. Like "These are the Daves I know" and some really absurd spoken bits like "30 Helens Agree" that became part of the Canadian vernacular for a while.

It's not exactly like the American "bite-sized quote" but held a similar function.

The Hitler F*ing a donkey sketch appears to me ( in Canada). It was part of a bit on 'censored sketches' and what they were allowed to show. There was also another about a cancer kid's (last?) wish and a baseball player

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