Debaser Reggie Watts

People are always asking us to help plug something of theirs—an upcoming show, a new record, some book they wrote. Because we’re not in the pandering business, we think there should be a trade-off. Debaser allows these folks to plug whatever they want, with one caveat: They also have to tell us something embarrassing about themselves. This weekend, comedian Reggie Watts performs two shows each on Friday and Saturday nights at Mayne Stage so he shares a story about puffy pants, New Order, and the girl that got away.

The A.V. Club: You’ve got a run of dates coming up at the Mayne Stage, but all of your performances are improvised, so it’s not really fair to ask you to talk about what audiences can expect from you on those nights. Instead of some promo hype for the shows, how about you share an embarrassing story about growing up?

Reggie Watts: So, in junior high, I was really into a lot of breakdancing culture. I really loved the Fat Boys and the Breakin' soundtrack. I was also a big Miami Vice fan — I loved that whole aesthetic, and I used to try to dress like Tubbs. I also wore these stupid, big, billowy breakdancing pants, the genie pants.

AVC: Like MC Hammer pants?

RW: Yeah, but way before him. The principal would always make fun of me, because I would wear them to school. I always loved dancing, ever since I was a little kid, and I would wear this to the school dances. I wasn't a very athletic kid, so I couldn't do floor moves, but I could do the robot and pop-locking. And this is what I was into, until my friend John Thomas came along. He was the one who introduced me to underground music. He got me into the Dead Kennedys and Bauhaus and Big Audio Dynamite, and stuff like that. He was really into that music and would scour all the music mags and hang out in record stores, and at first I hated that kind of music, because I was all into breakdancing and Top 40 stuff. I used to call it “John music,” like, “Ugh, this is John music,” because he'd go around the neighborhood with a boombox blasting Dead Kennedys or The Vandals. But then something clicked for me, and I started really digging it.

I took a trip with him and his mom my last year of junior high — we went up to his grandma's house in West Glacier, Montana — and that's when I met his ridiculously hot cousins, Shawna and Shayna. One blonde and one brunette. They looked like Scandinavian goddesses. They were just so cool — they listened to Front 242 and Ministry and hardcore industrial music and punk rock, and I fell in love with them, so I started really digging on that music.

From there, it started. I ran into these other girls — these really beautiful girls with these half-shaved heads and crazy corsets and I just fell in love with that whole scene. I thought it was the coolest thing ever, and it reinforced my love of the music. And then one day, we went to see this show at a theater with Shawna, and we rode there in this Volkswagen bus that was spray-painted with DK and Samhain and Danzig logos all over it. Afterwards, there was a party at some older kids' house, and there were all these weirdos in trenchcoats and new wavers, and there was a record player. Someone pulled out a record by a band that I had never heard of called New Order. 

It was the Substance album, and they put it on, and it blew my mind. It was amazing. And there was this hot girl with half of her head shaved — she looked like she was in Bow Wow Wow, really beautiful but with a half-shaved head, and she was wearing this crazy corset top and a ripped skirt thing. I was listening to New Order and dancing to it, and she started dancing with me. And when the record ended, she left — but before she did, she reached over, touched my cheek, and said, “I love your skin,” and then she walked away.

I wanted to follow her, but my friends grabbed me and said it was time to go. I was like, “Wait, there's a girl!”

AVC: A girl who apparently loved your skin.

RW: Right! But they said that we had to go, so I never saw her again. My style changed a lot when I got back home. I started dressing like a cross between Robert Smith and Judd Nelson's character from The Breakfast Club. All the puffy pants went away after that.