Day: May 24, 2002

It’s a Mark’s Life

So while I was sleeping off the evening’s thrill ride, my old pal Mark had another outbreak of Scaroliosis (his unique condition that makes him so prone to occasionally comic but often catastrophic back luck).

You see, Mark had a long day and strolled outside his front door a little after midnight to give Buster, his sweet and playful Yellow Lab, a quick walk before bedtime. He and Buster were walking a few doors down on his quiet little street in Fort Greene when the cops pulled up and asked where Buster’s leash might be. Mark explained that Buster was just out to find a nearby tree before heading back inside, but the cops informed him that this infraction was a “quality of life crime” and not the sort of thing they could overlook. Since he had no I.D. on him, they asked him to run inside and get something to show. He brought Buster and came back down with his license, and was greeted with handcuffs and a ride down to the station.

The officers who later came by to bring him to a jail for the night were appalled at what had happened — getting arrested for walking a mushy blonde dog of the leash in the middle of the night — and apologized profusely as they brought him to his evening’s accomodations in a 10″ x 12″ cell shared by 10 other guys (at least one of whom had also been brought in for walking his dog without a leash).

So who thinks things are finally back to normal here in the city? Who thinks the terror warnings are no longer quite enough to keep the annoying police-state happenings at bay any more? And who thinks Bloomberg is going to have the same smarmy savvy that Giuliani did to keep things from really blowing up about it once and for all?

The Last Thursday Ever

Ah, another exhausting ride on the Kiki & Herb express train to madness. Brilliant as ever, last night’s one-night show at Knitting Factory (also featuring the hot and fun and sassy Scissor Sisters) was a little more off-the-cuff than their twice-yearly productions, but a performance of theirs never degenerates into a simple drag-based covers show. No, a night with Kiki & Herb will always leave you shaky and spent, twitching from laughter and horror and emotional shock.

Last night’s show loosely followed a theme of escaping from the endless grind and put-downs of life. (Very timely, to say the least, and I’m not just talking about this season of Buffy again.) Kiki made a lot of bleak jokes about this being our last weekend ever (“Thank you for spending your last Thursday night ever with Herb and I…What a Memorial Day this is gonna be!”) and they earnestly and ferociously launched into a set pulling together songs and medleys of songs that railed against the ongoing pain and misery of life, and pondering the various ways to escape it: “No More Drama,” “Heroin,” “Walk on the Wild Side,” “Creep,” “Boys Don’t Cry,” “Get and Stay Famous,” and an incredible reading of “Howl.” (And keep in mind, this is all incredibly funny at the same time it’s making you want to slit your own throat in a fit of existential anguish.)

Kiki & Herb are not just a drag act, or a cabaret covers act, or a novelty. They’re fun as all hell, campy and cutting and sloppy, but they’re also musical geniuses, and powerful performers. Every time I’ve seen them there’s something — some element of madness or pain or remorse — thay they suddenly suck you into, just when you’re laughing your hardest, and they manage to remind you that the world is a big, hard, messy place with no easy answers and a lot of confused attempts to find some. But at the same time, you can’t leave unhappy when they come on with an excore medley of Mary J. Blige, Wu Tang Clan, and Destiny’s Child, with some Kate Bush tossed on at the end for a note of weary hope.