There’s nothing that says Holiday Spirit like Macauley Culkin, 33. For all y’all that haven’t heard, the former child star and current Brooklyn degenerate has formed the Pizza Underground, a pizza-themed Velvet Underground cover band (big ups to Schuyler for the tip). They got songs like “I’m Beginning to Eat the Slice,” “All the Pizza Parties,” “Papa John Says.” Honestly, I can’t blame them for it because it sounds like the best idea.
So I went to see them on Friday while I was in Brooklyn visiting my sister. They were playing at Baby’s All Right, a bar no one had ever heard of but was about to see a whole lot more people coming in. Had to wait an hour to get inside. A middle-aged lady, looked like a mother, was trying to get in her building by where I was standing in line. She asked what all the fuss was about and I told her. I could hear her laughing all the way through her door and up the stairs to her apartment.
There was this little dog, about a foot long, walking itself by the line with its leash in its mouth. Its owner followed with his hands in his pockets. It was really cute. About twenty minutes later the dog came by again. It was dragging its leash, but the owner stopped it and coaxed the leash back into its mouth and the two of them walked by proudly once more. It was cute the first time. The second time around they were just showing off.
Then we got inside. My sister and her friends thought the bar looked pretty good. They might come back, they said. We smushed together in between muddled wallpapers in the venue. The curtains were red and yellow vertical stripes, which my sister told me was meant to confuse and disarm you, and it reminded me of the circus. The whole thing seemed all to much like a big joke. I mean, it was a joke, but I thought it might have been a sick joke. We wondered, was it a trap? Had they lured us all into this tight space so they could slowly leak in the gas? It was a little bit too sinister for the situation but it seems like something THEY might do. Our greatest fear tho was that it might have all been a hoax, that there really was no such thing as the Pizza Underground and that we wouldn’t get to see Macauley Culkin.
Then they came out with pizza. Let it surf its way out over the crowd. Eventually they just threw it out into the audience. There were too many people there and I didn’t get a slice but I did get a bite off someone else’s pizza.
The band came out all wearing black clothes and black wayfarers. Culkin, wearing a black wife-beater, looked the least like someone who would have been in the Velvet Underground. He flicked his shoulder-length blonde hair around and played the ham a bit on stage, while his bandmates played it cool, a little more in character. If he were someone in Velvet Underground, he probably would have been Doug Yule.
Macauley said one word during the show, besides his contribution to the vocals. He said, “Eargasms.”
They started with Papa John says, a classic. The main percussionist played the pizza box and played the instrument with as much difficulty as Maureen Tucker played the drums. Macauley played the shaker. The highlight of the set was the band’s take on Nico’s “These Days.” Phoebe Kreutz had a pretty good Nico impression on “Cheese Days,” (I don’t do much toppings these days / These days I seem to order cheese and don’t say please and then I walk away). The crowd laughed, even at the cheesiest jokes. It was good fun. The show ended after about ten minutes with a Macauley Culkin kazoo solo on “Pizza Day,” a much-improved version of Lou Reed’s “Perfect Day.” Everyone cheered. One more slice! they called in hopes of an encore, but the show was over. They rushed into the dressing room, some to catch a glimpse of Kieran Culkin’s older brother, some because they thought it was the exit.
Why’d you do it Macauley? Besides the fact that the Pizza Underground could be the best idea for a band, at least in theory. Could it have been an attempt to bring new life into a career that has been floundering for more than half of his life? Not only was Pizza Underground capitalizing on the recent death of Lou Reed, its creation also coincided with the time of year for the Home Alones, holiday classics. Or maybe Macauley had been planning this for years but was waiting for Lou Reed to die so Lou wouldn’t make fun of him for it.
My informant informed me, through connections to a poker racket that Mr. Culkin plays in every so often, that the guy smokes a lot of weed. I was glad to hear that. No comment was given on his poker skills.
I left as soon as I could after the show, along with most everyone else at Baby’s All Right. Lingering outside the door, the bar’s doorlady approached us. She had to ask, ‘How was it?’ ‘Oh, yeah. It was great.’ She smiled in disbelief. ‘Really, was it?’