If you haven’t seen Cute with Chris, please do so now. Chris is Chris Leavins, a brilliant Canadian actor living in L.A. who writes, directs, films, edits and acts in a weekly internet show of videos and photos of puppies and kittens. Each week, his viewers are asked to vote on who is the cutest in The Cutedown. If you lose The Cutedown, all you dreams are dead.
A few weeks ago, he announced that there was to be a live version of the show in Toronto – at the same time that I was in Toronto. I was as excited as a twelve-year-old girl who wanted to phone a radio station to ask them to play a song that they’d play in fifteen minutes in their rotation anyway. After about an hour of hitting redial, I had my tickets, and I was the envy of millions of teenagers all around the world.
At the start of the show, Chris rode out on a forty foot puppy that shot flames out of its anus. The whole show was more than I ever hoped it could be. My cat, Asterix, was featured at the start of the cavalcade of pets with lasers coming out of their eyes. All my dreams were alive.
The Cute with Chris fans (some of them have a forum appropriately named Culty) are, well, fanatical. Tim dressed up like Chris. The thing that really stuck with me was the physical examples of user-generated content. They had made their own t-shirts. One fan was handing out candy outside the theatre. Half of my memorabilia from the show was distributed by fans. Everyone had name tags that everyone passed around. Before the show, Terri and Susan handed out buttons they’d made. I randomly chose one from the bucket (In case you can’t read my blurry photo, it says “Today’s asshole is…” – which I love). And, I had my pen, bitch.
