Vacant Lot

Lorne Michaels got them onto Comedy Central in the early days when they only had about 20 hours a week of content and just kept rerunning everything a million times (mostly Monty Python, Absolutely Fabulous, bad 80's comedy movies and two truly brilliant shows: MST3K and Short Attention Span Theater). They only made 6 episodes, so you could see their entire output in an evening. Because they were a Canadian troupe they were routinely compared to Kids In The Hall, Nick being the younger brother of Mark exacerbated this. This isn't really a reasonable comparison, as they are very different styles of comedy. Vacant Lot often did much more abstract and disturbing bits than Kids and had less of the "I'm playing a funny character" vibe (not that I'm slamming Kids, I think Kids are still the best comedy troupe around). On occasion Comedy Central would do a marathon interspersing episodes of each called A Lot of Vacant Kids. The group described themselves as playfully evil. They were purportedly the impetus for Exit 54 getting on the air, as well as Upright Citizens Brigade.

Some of the more memorable bits:

• Paul as a modern day Jesus, the most hated kid in junior high
• Intense arguments over the actual lyrics of Blinded By The Light. Ripped up like a douche, you're gonna throw away the night.
• Interpretive Dance. In which Paul and Rob in pink ballerina outfits do a modern ballet (very gracefully, at that) in a dusty loft.
• Loud party, in which a group of college kids have a wild party which keeps up their neighbor, a brain surgeon in spite of his repeated requests that they keep it down. He ends up botching surgery the next morning, rendering the patient a moron. It really is funny. Trust me.
• A song about how their song will make a great video. It did, in fact, make a great video.
• Chamber of Horrors.
• An autobiographical song about the Norwegian band Porridge and Biscuits and their impressions of their first visit to the US. Opens with the classic line "We hope it goes a little something like this". A sample of the lyrics:

  Goodbye Nixon
  Watergate
  Hope you found your roller coaster
  Joyce DeWitt
  Shampoo
  Jimmy Carter
  How de doo, doo de doo
  Kneeslap