Short and Short

MINI-KISS
V2O, LONG BEACH
THURSDAY, OCT. 27

The little people anti-defamation league might not want to hear this, but there is a certain percentage of the population that believes anything anyone can do could be done with more entertaining results by somebody no taller than four and a half feet. And then there are some little people out there who figure that all they need to do to make it is slap on some makeup. That's right: Mini-Kiss is both short and short on talent.

It was laughably bad from the get-go. The drummer—er, the guy in the Peter Criss makeup who happened to be sitting behind a drum kit—counted off "one-two-three-four," but the backing tape hadn't started yet, so everybody pretended to play their instruments a little early. That was—like the bartender in the same makeup later described them—"cute." Cuter still when they would sing together (they did that much), which had an odd Partridge Family vibe going on. You wanted to put your palms out on either side of your smile and sway to "Shout It Out Loud," which was just confusing.

When the female singer—dressed like Kiss guitarist Paul Stanley to inspire more confusion—said she was getting hot and got down to her bra, the dude in the Hulk Hogan costume next to me almost lost it and joined in the bro-chant of "Show your tits," which was more confusing than you could possibly imagine. By then, most of the people in the massive club who had come for a costume party and the typical college Thursday scene had wandered off to the other wings of the club, and only the true connoisseurs of the vertically challenged stayed and laughed their drunken laughs. We're thinking this lot would've been just as entertained had they walked past the makeup-less members of Mini-Kiss at the mall, but we hope we're wrong.