The Revenge Of Mr. Hands

A couple of weeks ago when I posted that link to The Daily Show with Jon Stewart's website containing pretty much all of the segments and appearances from former correspondent (and decade-long hardcore Melpcrush Vance DeGeneres), it didn't quite strike me at the time that it didn't have pretty much all of the segments and appearances on the show from 1999 through 2001... it had ALL OF THEM. Including ones that I had been hearing about for ages but only had to take other people's word for it that they existed. I have about ninety-something percent of all his TDS segments on DVD-R, from soliciting fans from as far away as Alaska for tapes to mine for Vancey bits, but a lot of his earliest appearances apparently escaped these people, and as a consequence, escaped me as well. Most long-time readers would probably have some inkling of how exciting this is for me to finally be about to view these long-lost segments for the very first. Exciting and happy! And, er... and other more personal, more... regional sensations that remind me for the first time since meeting Vance in Vegas last May how much he still makes my pants tickle.

I've posted the links to just those never-seen segments from Vance's first year on TDS, more for the benefit of fellow fans Anita and Joe, but for my own link page to reference if need be in order to keep my bookmarks from getting more cluttered that they already are. Enjoy the deadpan, bone-dry comedic weirdness of it all.

01/14/99: You've Got Some Spleening To Do. Vance's very first TDS story on a Canadian who is researching the benefits of pig spleens to predict the weather, cure impotency, and reverse male-pattern baldness.

02/17/99: In Like Flynt. Larry Flynt opens a Hustler-themed coffee shop, juice bar, and martial-aid store all under one roof.

02/10/99: Speed 3: End Of The Line. A typically slanted neighborhood in San Francisco is having an issue with runaway buses smashing into people's homes.

06/08/99: A series of segments from a single episode where Vance reports outside the studio in New York's record-breaking heat wave, first lambasting those "nervous nellies" that are overly concerned about the dangers of 108 degree temperatures, then an increasingly-sweaty Vance begins advising people to leave their pets and their grandparents locked in cars with the windows rolled up, and finally dementia settles in before Vance loses consciousness. Or dies. Or going nite-nite. Either way, good times.

06/23/99: Bethesda Triangle. Vances takes a jaunt to Washington DC to investigate the mysterious disappearance of commuters on the Beltway that apparently seem to just drive off into the Great Unknown. Or just take another route back home. You be the judge!

07/15/99: There Goes Santa Claus. Poor Santa. He just ain't bringin' it no more. Commercially, that is.

08/02/99: The Blair Witch Project Project. Vance travels to Burkittsville, Maryland to do his own investigation on the Blair Witch mystery. I've been dying to see this one forever! Love the noise Vance makes when he goes running scared through the woods after being abandoned by his film crew.

9/14/99: Canada! Vance discovers that the US and Canada have a lot in common. Except of course, for GIANT CHOCOLATE BARS!

10/27/99: Hell, No We Won't Go. Vance gets to the bottom of who's responsible for the sudden, terrifying rise in exploding SUV gas tanks er, sorry... I meant toilets.