Aug 25-31 Natasha Lyonne Week: There’s a new season of her weirdo mystery of the week coming out (I can’t remember the name rn, you can look it up), and she’s been steadily delivering chuckles for decades now.

Back when I worked in a Toys R Us building bikes, Saturday night at 9 on WDVE, they always played “Detroit Rock City,” which I think was to cue us to the fact that it was time to spray your hair up and go to Donzi’s. Why a Pittsburgh station would play “Detroit Rock City” is a mystery, as is why they made local favorites of songs like Kip Addotta’s “Wet Dream,” Coney Hatch’s “Monkey Bars,” and “The Scotsman” by Bryan Bowers.

The cover band Mystery — Hawk (Edward Furlong), Lex (Giuseppe Andrews), Trip Verudie (James DeBello) and Jeremiah “Jam” Bruce (Sam Huntington) — have one dream: to see KISS at the Fox Theater in Detroit. Jeremiah’s religious mother (Lin Shaye) finds out and sends him away to Catholic school, but the guys — this all happens in one day and night — get him out when they get Father Phillip McNulty (Joe Flaherty) high. On the way, they pick up disco queen Christine (Natasha Lyonne) and make it to the show just in time to lose their tickets, which causes — get ready — hijinks to ensue.

Directed by Adam Rifkin and written by Carl V. Dupré, this has fun roles for Melanie Lynskey and Shannon Tweed, as well as a general good hang feeling. Also, the two young girls’ names are Beth and Christine, so if you like KISS, you probably got that. And you probably got that the girls that they hook up with tie them to kiss: Trip wants to be Ace and gets the spacey one; Jam is Peter Criss and dates Beth; Lex gets Christine, a Gene Simmons song and Hawk, who wants to be Paul Stanley, gets the super model. Well, it’s Gene Simmons’ wife, so maybe this theory should have been left in the IMDB trivia page, huh? Paul was married to actress Pamela Bowen, who is one of the religious protestors in the movie, and is now married to Erin Sutton.

This was the first movie to be released on DVD before VHS.