Wednesday, Oct. 15, 2003 | 12:46 PM

If I could have been a part of any creative project during the past ten years it would absolutely hands down have been Mr. Show. I know I talk about it like every other day but I honestly have not been so excited about anything artistically in a long long time. I am of course a couple of years too late, but now that the DVD's are being released and I can watch them over and over again like the obsessive geeky fan chick I am, I have fallen head over heels in love.

Mr. Show trumps every single sketch comedy show ever on the air, and I�m including Kids in the Hall, Monty Python, and The State. There has never been a comedy show that is more subversive, more literate, or more acerbic. Mr Show is never glib and never goes for the easy laugh. And there is a certain pathos that cuts through the humor as well�there are characters who oddly enough you actually care about even as they are being skewered�like for example Nostradamus in the 3rd season (the improbable set up of the skit is that Nostradamus and an Isach Mizzrahi like fashion designer become lovers). Or Grass Valley Greg who�s based on Paul Allen�he�s such an insufferable hippie asshole (Work is play!!! Tofutti Break today!!!) but at the end of the show after he�s lost all of his money on investments like Nanadu, his million dollar goat ranch and hiring the entire country of Canada to sing him happy birthday, and he sweeps the spotlight with a broom until it gets smaller and smaller and then he picks up the sliver of light remaining on the stage. He cradles the light in his palm as the stage goes dark and there�s this look of joy and wonder on his face. It is a moment of such sweetness and sincerity.

And Mr. Show can get away with doing things like that because they are unmerciless and scathing in their parody.

Another great things is that everyone on the show can actually act-- there�s no schtick in any of the performances. Bob Odenkirk and David Cross and John Ennis and Tom Kenney etc. create actual human beings. It�s 180 degrees from Adam Sandler doing �Opera Guy�. They take their characters so seriously and shade them with such detail that the skewering of them is far more visceral and thought provoking than anything that passes for satire on Saturday Night Live.

The fact that Mr. Show refuses to be patently topical and instead creates its own universe with characters who occasionally bare a vague resemblance to real people, but aren�t hemmed in by being impressions, and more often than not are more relevant as archetypes than as facsimiles of someone who�s currently in the news (eg Senator Tankerbell the Dixiecrat from Georgia, The Fad Three, Ronnie Dobbs, Kedzie, Blueberry Head, Mountain Dougie, Talking Junkie, Van Hammersly�the list goes on and on) is just so ballsy. And I love that every scene is linked to the one before it, which consistently forces the writing into new territory and propels the show always along a definitive thematic arc. And best of all, I love the way that within one sketch Mr. Show draws from so many influences and makes fun of several different things at once. There�s no better example of that than Jeepers Creepers Semi-Star which makes mince meat out of bad rock operas from the 70�s (most obviously Jesus Christ Superstar) but also manages to cut down the entire slacker culture of the 90�s. Or the informational video for The Klu Klux Klan which begins with two guys in white hoods jumping into the air and slapping each other five, then taking off their hoods revealing one of them to be white and one black as a painfully cheesy jingle plays:

Hey check us out!
Have you seen us lately?
We�re the new Klu Klux Klan!
And we�re 100% hate free!

That skit is so fucking effective because it manages to pinpoint the glib backpedaling of hate groups who try to make racism more palatable by smoothing over its more destructive aims, But at the same time it�s equally effectual at taking the mickey out of the advertising industry itself by doing a note perfect take on exactly the sort of lame limp dick crap that passes for public service announcements or industrial instruction videos.

The world is a much better place because of Bob Odenkirk and David Cross (especially David Cross who one day I shall marry.) And seriously, if you are a remotely intelligent person and you like comedy and you haven�t seen Mr. Show you really have to rent it or better yet buy it. I typically watch an episode a day, or at the very least a skit or two. The show gets funnier and funnier with each viewing. Even after having seen a sketch five or six times I�ll pick up on a nuance I�d missed before.

Shit�just talking about it makes me want to go home and watch Bob and David right now.

And you should too.

This public service announcement has been bought to you by Obsessive Fan Chicks United, and by the letter A, the number 0 and the committee to re-elect Senator Tankerbell.