I cannot stop listening to the new album from the Global Underground label, Sissy’s All Under. It is so killer. It sounds a lot like Portishead with a slight Nine Inch Nails influence, Goldfrapp’s first album without all of the Wagner/James Bond overtones. It’s moody and melodic, slow and reflective while still moving fast enough to have a groove. The lead singer’s voice is just beautiful and the beats fit it perfectly. Anyone looking for a great chill out album should be picking this up.

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Wonder Showzen is a gleefully demented kids’ show that, as the pre-show warning tells us, is definitely NOT for kids. If you’ve never seen it before, it basically takes the premise of Seasame Street–puppets introduce different segments, including cartoons and interviews with other children, with the goal of entertaining as well as educating–and twists that formula to such a great degree that no one could watch this show without being horrified. It isn’t just offensive for the sake of being offensive though. It often points out our own weaknesses and insecurities in surprising ways. Season one was hilarious that way. But I finished up the newly released season two today and it takes that humor to an entirely different level.

I was blown away by one episode in particular, one that was so perfect in its biting satire that I couldn’t help but be impressed by the creativity and ingenuity that inspired it. That episode was entitled Knowledge. In it Chauncy, the over-sexed asshole Big Bird of the show, introduces a new friend to the world of Wonder Showzen, Middle America. Middle America is basically a puppet of all the Red States that says a lot of stupid, made-up words mixed with “Texas” and sounds like George W. The Wonder Showzen crew keeps him around because he talks like a moron and they feel superior to him.

I forget why they let him do this, but the crew of Wonder Showzen let Middle America take over the rest of the show and create the show he wants to see. That show is called Horse Apples, a Hee-Haw type show featuring some of the most amazingly racist, bigoted things to have ever been said on television. It’s basically a bunch of rednecks talking about lynching black folk, beating their wives and marrying their relations. But wait, there’s more. We go back to Wonder Showzen land, where the Beat Kids segment (basically it is little kids acting like reporters, saying incredibly offensive things to adults and getting them to go along with it) is about a real focus group where a panel is asked to watch a new show called–you guessed it–Horse Apples. Not realizing that they were marks in on a joke, the focus group actually thinks the show is pretty funny and gives it high marks.

This reminded me very much of the Borat article in the latest Time magazine, where they discuss the comedic merits of Sacha Cohen’s acting like a real reporter from a foreign country in order to get Americans to let their guard down and say all of the idiotic, insensitive and racist things they think, just bubbling under the surface of a politically correct America. This focus group saw nothing wrong with a show that made fun of Southerners and talked about stringing up Mexicans.

There is a bonus feature on the DVD that is also must see. Basically, the original focus group is brought back in to watch the episode of Wonder Showzen that not only included Horse Apples but also the footage of them watching Horse Apples and discussing it. I think the stunned silence that follows the viewing speaks volumes. They don’t say much about the episode, but one of them does admit that they “looked pretty stupid.”