When Cute Isn't Pretty: "Cute With Chris," the Web Show for Misfit Teenage Girls and Women in Their 30s Who Like to Knit

A ride-along on satirist Chris Leavins' Internet highway

Comments (0) By Steven Leigh Morris Wednesday, Jan 21 2009

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Back in his apartment, there’s a letter with a sweet, childlike drawing of a dog lying on a table. Both are a testament to the isolated connectedness that’s really the hallmark of Leavins’ remarkable enterprise. “Dear Chris,” the letter says, “thank you so much for the time and care you put into packaging my T-shirt! I’ve never been so excited to receive something in the mail!!! The stickers and note made it so special! Thank you also for posting my pugs Hollia and Rosie on CWC. I was ecstatic when I saw them there. I wanted to send you my ‘aht’ as my thanks. I hope you like it. Amber Hendricks.”

Such tenderness arriving in his L.A. mailbox from Ohio still can’t thaw the ice of solitude that hangs from the wires of the Internet, regardless of e-mails and Web sites and listservs. Computers may have made the world even more lonely and solipsistic than television.

Jessica Miller

Chris Leavins knows the cruelty of cute.

Jessica Miller

Behind Leavins’ perennial stubble, hangdog eyes, cryptic tone and meticulously droll timing lies a 40-year-old bachelor-satirist, toying with Internet celebrity while clinging to his privacy.

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“I’ve never felt so isolated in my life,” Leavins says right after I read that letter. “That’s got to change. I’ve been working alone for two and a half years now. It’s difficult to sustain because it’s become so insular. And, I guess, that’s why I did the live show. But it’s a solo show. It’s the same shit, different pile. I’d like to move back into television and have a production team, to facilitate ideas that I’ve learned from doing this project. We’ll see if that happens. What I learned from TV acting is that it isn’t about the show, it’s about the experience of making the show.”