Our Lady of Perpetual Hell

The awesome sight of Chris Leavins riding onstage to the tune of LCD Soundsystem’s “North American Scum” at the funky Theatre Centre on Queen St. W. on the back of a 40-foot puppy with fire shooting out of its anus was, alone, worth the $20 admission. Everything that followed was pure icing on the cake.

White icing. In his Steve Martinesque suit–with white and pink Nikes–Chris positively glowed before us. And the packed house lapped up every last bit, and was about as performer-friendly as it gets. We love Chris and there’s no mistaking it.

As expected, Cute With Chris Live in Toronto was a scream! When you love the four-minute weekly eps of CWC online, a whole hour was like dying and going to heaven.

What was nicest about Chris’ live show was how much more personal it was than the weekly online show is. Not only was the venue intimate–rising in front of the stage was a series of about ten risers upon which chairs had been set up for us, along with a row of stools on the upper level for rush ticket-holders–but the content of the show was intimate. He told us about his neighbours–two beer-swilling, football-watching, foul-mouthed brothers who live in the apartment below his (he showed us photos from the courtyard of the apartment building, circling first his apartment and then that of the brothers, below) who frequently interrupt his Sunday afternoon tapings with their boozy howling over football games that penetrate the ‘paper mache’ walls of their building. He noted that if he can hear them, then they can probably hear him. Talking to his plastic horses. He told us about the genesis of CWC. How it seemed to him that we are living at the historical apex of cute. How so much in our society is judged by how cute it is. Or isn’t. And how it wasn’t until he’d started making the eps that he realized he doesn’t actually like cute stuff.

Chris is, I think, struck by the absurdity of what’s going on each week… He uses a $300 digital camera and one old stage light to shoot a 4-minute video all about what’s cute and what’s not. He features Teen Letters, a Cutedown competition between viewer-submitted photos of their pets (and now some of the viewers, themselves, are getting into the Cute-Downs) and an on-going dialogue with his chorus: two plastic horses. No wonder his neighbours don’t want to get too close. But that little slice of absurdity is watched faithfully by thousands upon thousands (and sometimes over a million–dig on that a while!) viewers around the world each week. I don’t know if judging the cuteness of puppies and kittens was what Marshall McLuhan had in mind when he invisioned the global village, but, well, that’s what we got.

And there were lovely gifts! Buttons! Pens, bitch! And Van. Shirtless!