Review of Buena Vista Social Club (1999) by Jerome W — 19 Nov 2005

[font=Garamond][size=3]So I'm going to try this journal thing one more time. I joined Netflix yesyerday so at least I'll have a steady stream of movies to watch. The most bizarre DVD I've seen lately is a little number called "Pupperts Who Kill". This is a Canadian cable show with slight ties to the venerable "Red Green Show". It's about four sicko puppets, a teddy bear who's a slut, a Cabbage Patch type doll who can snap at any moment and start picking off people from an apartment window with a telescopic rifle, a ventriloquist's dummy whose ventriloquists keep meeting with fatal accidents and a dog who used to work on a kiddie show and has become a complete thug. They all live in a halfway house with their counselor and they are every bit the perverted little desparadoes they sound like.[/size][/font].

[font=Garamond][size=3] This show points out something I've noticed about Canadian humor. All the Canadian shows I've seen, "Puppets", "Red Green", "Kids In The Hall", "SCTV", tend to be slightly more relaxed than their closest American counterparts like "The Simpsons" and "South Park". It's a more mature kind of raunch if that makes sense. The American shows always seem to pride themselves on being rebellious and "edgy" and throwing out a lot of pop culture references. You don't see that as much in the Canadian shows. They seem like they are more relaxed and taking their insanity in stride. The Kids In The Hall act like they cross-dress all the time. The Red Green crew is a bunch of lazy malcontents and petty crooks. The puppets don't even try to be cocky and hip. They're just unrepentantly evil little bastards. [/size][/font].

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[font=Garamond][size=3]I've also been going after CDs like there's no tomorrow, specializing in really underground "rock" people: No Neck Blues Band, Mum, Flying Saucer Attack, Dead Can Dance, Fire Engines, Lightning Bolt, The Fall, Tara Jane O'Neil, Toby Driver. I'm really turning into a slut about this stuff (the only thing I can be a slut about these days). I plan on doing a Brazil - France parley of Gal Costa and Jane Birkin CDs as soon as I finish this.[/size][/font].