Monday, Nov. 10, 2003 | 3:29 PM

OK so the lamest thing on the planet just happened.

I went to check my mailbox and lo and behold, the season 4 bootlegs of Mr. Show were there. I was so excited I could barely continue standing up straight. I rushed back to my desk to open the envelope, and�

The fucking shithead I bought them from didn�t bother to wrap them, so the VCD�s were in millions of bits and pieces.

A what did I do? I started to cry. Yes, at my desk. I haven�t felt that disappointed in a long long time.

I know how lame that is, but I had been looking forward to this for sooooo long, and the fucking jerk kept telling me he�d mail the damned things �tomorrow��and this went on forever. Finally he mails them but doesn�t even bother to package them. So now I�m out 30 bucks and I don�t have any more Mr. Show material to watch. And I am SOOOOOOOOOOOO upset about this. It�s retarded. I�m more upset about this than I was about the whole stupid relationship shenanigans.

I wrote something awhile back about how special it is to be a fan, and how amazed I am when I really like anything, because honestly there�s so few things that I really like. All the stuff that everyone likes, that you�re supposed to like, I usually at best just appreciate or enjoy casually, but it�s once in a blue moon where something comes along�music or film or books or whatever�that I am just enthralled by and devoted to. And when this happens, I just have to envelop myself in it, you know? It�s almost like being in love. In fact, I can say with absolute certainty that there are very few people I�ve ever known who have influenced me as much as the various art type things I�m obsessed with. This probably points to some serious emotional dysfunction on my part, but it�s just the way I am. And I have never as an adult been so enthralled with anything as I am with Mr. Show and everything connected to it.

Most comedy is so lazy and so limited and so schticky and Mr. Show is the opposite of that. It works on so many different levels. It�s really one of the few things that can be watched over and over again because it�s just packed with ideas. I mean the meta-ness of it all is astounding. It�s the antithesis of boring crap like SNL (which is occasionally funny) where you may laugh at something the first time you see it, but with each subsequent viewing it�s less interesting. There are things on Mr. Show that I didn�t really like or get the first or second time I saw it, and then suddenly, I got it and it would slay me. It is truly groundbreaking and visionary. It really doesn�t pander at all, whereas most comedy, even GREAT comedy does because it has to in order to find a large enough audience to make it financially viable for a network/studio. For instance, something like Seinfeld which is a truly brilliant show with a lot of excellent ideas, had to have bits like Jerry always greeting Newman in the same way, or Kramer providing a �wacky� entrance each episode. I�m not saying those moments were bad or unfunny, but they were safe and consistent and were there to give the less intelligent people watching something standard to laugh at all the time. Another example is the Simpsons, which is so groundbreaking (or was anyway) and subversive, and manages to have a large mainstream audience because there are enough idiots who just think it�s funny that Homer falls down a lot and isn�t it cool that Lisa Kudrow is guest starring next week. The writers are smart enough to know here�s a certain mediocrity demographic they have to satisfy before they can serve up the obscure references and layered jokes for the big nerds (i.e. allusions to The Prisoner or homages to Hitchcock.) Lately the show�s become super hackneyed and although it still is consistently amusing, it�s gone the way of SNL�a tired bloated dinosaur looking to please everyone. The sensibility has been diluted. And it�s definitely not as nerdy as it once was.

Mr. Show didn�t pander. I mean it did use scatological humor sometimes and there was tons of silliness, but it was silly the way Python is silly. Mr. Show plays to the smartest people in the room. Whenever someone says they think Mr. Show is stupid, (and I know how judgmental this sounds) I write them off as not that bright. It�s comedy you have to concentrate on. And it�s not as easily accessible�which isn�t to say that it�s super esoteric or intellectual either�it can be very goofy. But it�s got a certain sensibility that you either have or you don�t. To me it�s like the Velvet Underground of comedy. If you don�t like the Velvets and you say something like, �Well Lou Reed doesn�t have a very good voice� or �That song heroin just goes on too long�, I know that you don�t really get it. And the �it� that you�re supposed to get isn�t something that can be easily explained.

Anyway, the vcd�s are all broken and I�m fucking broken hearted. What kind of cum guzzling gutter slut is dumb enough to put multiple discs in the mail without any packaging whatsoever? Fucking tard. God I am pissed.

But I will end this post positively. Nothing and no one has ever made me laugh as hard as Bob Odenkirk and David Cross. I mean screaming laughing. And I think that is the most valuable thing in the world. There is so much fucking grief in life, and so much of the time I feel terribly sad. Anyone or anything that can cause me to literally lose my shit giggling absolutely has my heart.

Thank you thank you thank you Bob and David.