Tools
Street Eats
- The Stranger vs. Bumbershoot
- The Pixies vs. Fan Expectations: Everyone Has Their Own Reasons for Loving the Pixies
- Shut Them Down: A History of Public Enemy vs. the System
- Nancy Sinatra vs. Her Past: The Cool Chanteuse Remains in Style
- Tomorrow's Superstars Today!: Meet the Contestants for Pizzazz! 2004
- Fericito vs. Saddam Hussein: Fred Armisen Is Always Kidding
- Bring on the Gut-Busts
- Laugh a Minute
- People Die: Kiki & Herb vs. This Mortal World
- The Only Thing That Can Save You: My Event with John Hodgman vs. Everything Else at Bumbershoot
- On Being Jonathan Raban: Or, Jonathan Raban vs. Humbert Humbert
- The Future Is Here: Clear Cut Press vs. Daylight Hours
- Screw the System: Indie Comics vs. Respectability
- Short Films vs. You: The 1 Reel Film Festival
- Constantly Framed: Juniper Shuey vs. Juniper Shuey
- Who, When, Where: A Day-by-Day Comprehensive Rundown of Bumbershoot Oddities, Obstacles, and Outstanding Performances
There was a time when people killed themselves quickly. Even though Kiki & Herb will officially do themselves in later this month, in Kiki & Herb Will Die for You at Carnegie Hall, the pair has, in a sense, been dying from the beginning. Kiki (invented and embodied by Justin Bond) is a sentimental, post-sexy chanteuse and an accomplished dipsomaniac. Her piano player Herb (Kenny Mellman) is gay and Jewish and retarded, which explains why he was often raped as a child. Kiki's morbid, withering monologue of boating accidents, death by defenestration, and questionable career glory is punctuated by Herb's polished, piano-perverted renditions of hits by everyone from Belle & Sebastian to Eminem, which Kiki sings with throat-wrenching despair and arresting competence, even as she drinks herself blind.
This weekend's Bumbershoot act is their penultimate pre-death performance. Not that the world's foremost proponents of suicide are scared. "Ladies and gentlemen, people die," Kiki says in almost every show. "That's all you need to know."
Stranger Personals
Why are Kiki & Herb so big on suicide rather than flat-out murder?
MELLMAN: When you're carrying the weight of the world on your shoulders, you don't lash out at someone else. You lash out at yourself.
:Have you thought about what songs you want played at your funerals? BOND: Well, Kiki's favorite song of all time is "Mairzy Doats." If she could get Björk to sing "Mairzy Doats" at her funeral, that'd be nice.
MELLMAN: This is such an indie rock geek answer, but Low recently put out a three-CD compilation of their B-sides, and for a friend's wedding they recorded a version of Journey's "Open Arms," and it's one of the most beautiful, touching things because when he finally reaches for the really high notes, he starts laughing because he can't hit them. I want that played at my funeral.
:Are you looking forward to that day? MELLMAN: Oh, I pray that God will take me sooner rather than later. You know, it's the Kiki line: "If you're going to kill me, ladies and gentlemen, kill me before the end of the show, because I'm tired."
:What's the better way to die: falling down a well or being burned alive? MELLMAN: Those are the only options?
BOND: Being burned alive. I don't know, it seems like if you fall down a well there's still hope. I had a girlfriend who found out her husband was cheating on her about six months ago and went and set herself on fire in a park and died. It was kind of sad. That's drama.
:She went out with a bang. BOND: Well, with a big pfffff, kind of. That wouldn't make a bang. But it made the papers. I think no matter how you die it should always make the papers.
MELLMAN: Here's the thing. Being a 35-year-old man falling down a well? They'd just be like, "Fucking idiot!" You have to be a little girl if you want to fall in a well.... When I was 14 or 15 I read this story in a gay short-story collection about this guy who gets drugged and wakes up like a week later in a dungeon with an egg beater shoved up his ass. And ever since then I have this morbid fear that that's how I'm going to end up. But I figure that I'm old enough now that no one would really want to do that to me. I'll have to find some other new way to die.
:Are you worried about terrorists bombing Carnegie Hall? BOND: I am actually. I'm worried about terrorists bombing New York. I'm worried that we're never going to have our Carnegie Hall show because there's not going to be a city left....
MELLMAN: We're a little worried that the Republican Convention is going to make it so that we have to die before then. You know, I'd feel bad for everybody, but they'd probably be dead too.
:What about love? Does love make you want to live? MELLMAN: I sort of decided in the last week, around the time I decided that I'm only happy when I'm playing piano, that really I'm only going to develop crushes on straight men that can never be fulfilled, because I can't stand most gay men.
:You just want to kill them? MELLMAN: Well, back to it, mostly I just want to kill myself. Every once in a while I want to kill other people, but mostly I'm just like, "Ugh. Get me out of here."
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