Every day is like Saturday

A while back on a friend’s journal I was asked about my taste in cartoons, and the fact of the matter is that I would just about rather watch cartoons more than anything else on television. Or most movies, if it came to that. This weekend I was one of 15 people at the seven pm show of Disney’s “Teacher’s Pet” ( well worth your money, by the way: insane color use, great voice work by Nathan Lane and Jerry Stiller among others, and as is usual in Disney product, an anxiety filled parental child relationship, with homoerotic subtext thrown in. I also found myself strangely attracted to one of the lead character’s incarnations.)

I like to see drawings move around.

Some of this is undoubtedly because I am part of the generation for whom the Saturday morning cartoon was sacred, and who bounded home to catch the 3 to five children’s tv slots after school, where it was possible to watch old Warner Brother’s, Popeye and Terrytoons’ cartoons. After a certain point Saturday was pretty much ruled by Hannah Barbera, and while I despised their cheapness at the time, some of them now have a deep fascination for me.

All of this means that I spend most of my time watching either Cartoon Network, Boomerang, or one of the varieties Nickelodeon. Enough time in fact, to be able to identify many of the voice talents without credits.

Here, in no real order are some of my fave shows these days:

The Simpsons – the best thing on television. Even during a slow season it has more laugh lines than any live action show. I love it so much I get outraged when the local Fox affiliate doesn’t run it three times a day like they are now.

Cowboy Bebop – Recently slagged by some nitwit in the Sunday Times Magazine, this is the anime show that I would pick if I could only have one: Beautiful music scoring, cool tech stuff that doesn’t overwhelm everything else, funny elliptical characters. But you have to watch it in order.

Daria – A spin off from Beavis and Butthead that is about being the smart kid in highschool hell. The animation is very limited, but the writing is very sharp.

Spongebob Squarepants – Imagine a world where R. Crumb characters were just as horny and yet didn’t know what sex was. Spongebob has a lot of Harpo Marx in him and Squidward is the rebirth of Paul Lynde: a bitter, snide queen with endless pretensions to culture who still manages to be sweet and long suffering. It also has my fave villain these days in Plankton – a single celled organism with a Napoleon complex. The backrounds are beautiful

Thundarr the Barbarian – Shows up on Boomerang’s “Boomeraction”. There is a genuine mournfulness about this show. Set in a post apocalyptic America that has reverted to savagery, Thundarr rides the land accompanied by a sorceress and a mutant cat/wookie thing called a Mok. Everything has fallen apart. Generally anyone who has any working tachnology has set themselves up as some sort of evil wizard and is preying on their fellow survivors. Crappy animation, clunky dialog but still it haunts me so.

Duckman – Another motor mouthed, id-driven, yellow character (see Homer Simpson and Spongebob). Mostly driven by pop culture parodies and endless sex jokes, many of which actually come off.

The Wild Thornberries – Clasky_Czupo made Duckman and were the original studio for the Simpsons. I think this is their most beautiful series, with subtle coloring and and great lines. One of the successes of their character designs is how hard it is to turn them into cuddly toys: WT merch has bombed in the toystores (collector alert!). Another story about the alienation of adolescence.

Okay, that’s more than enough for now. I haven’t even mentioned any of Sunday Night’s Adult Swim line up, which I pretty much live for, or Futurama, or Powerpuff Girls, or any of the dozens of shows I’ll watch Just cause they’re on or quirky gems like ReBoot or Frankenstein Junior or the 13 Ghosts of Scooby Doo.

Since I’m a font of opinions, how about this: name a series and I’ll tell you what I think of it.

0 Comments +

  1. I was definitely one of those glued-to-the-tv screen kids on Saturday mornings. I watched The Smurfs and The Superfriends, Looney Tunes, and tons of other stuff I can’t remember. Actually, wasn’t Looney Tunes on in the early evening?

    As for The Simpsons, I would venture that every season has been a slow one since the seventh or so (that’s the last one I’ll buy on dvd). I still watch because there are good moments here and there, but I wish they’d cancel it. It’s like watching a prize horse very slowly bleeding to death.

    I discovered Spongebob Squarepants over the holidays, and I love its goofy/inventive vibe. I’d compare the style to a tamer Ren and Stimpy.

  2. I’m too old to have gotten into the Smurfs on the first go round. I can barely get through an episode these days, but I do have a disturbing (for some) erotic fixation on Poppa Smurf. One of my favorite pastimes is making dirty pictures of him. I think the whole “Marklar” thing on Southpark is a parody of the way the smurfs talk.

  3. Boomerang – cartoon network’s second tier channel, will shock you with how many Saturday morning nuggets they bring back. Shows that ran one season and are so bad you can’t believe it but are as lodged in your brain as the taste of Super Sugar Crisp. I don’t know how available it is in Cananda, however.

    Can’t agree with you about the Simpsons. But I’m a junkie.

  4. Started out as the most blatant Simpson’s rip off ever, but over time they found bits of their own niche, notably in the ferocity of their TV cheese referencing. On the visual end utterly boring, and they never have been able to develop memorable secondary characters, something the Simpson’s writers and artists are brilliant at. It’s been such a success on Cartoon Network that Fox is talking about bringing it back, which is frustrating because they aren’t talking about Futurama, which is a much better show.

  5. OK, I’m a kidvid freak, so here’s a list for you:

    Freakazoid!
    Jayce and the Wheeled Warriors
    Silverhawks
    Mission: Magic
    The Groovie Ghoulies
    The Young Sentinels
    Tarzan & The Super Seven
    The Secret Lives of Waldo Kitty
    Thundercats
    Return to the Planet of the Apes
    Lassie’s Rescue Rangers
    Biker Mice From Mars
    Animated Star Trek
    Perils of Penelope Pitstop

    …yes, I’m a Filmation nut. Did I ever mention that I got to meet Lou Scheimer at the San Diego ComiCon a few years ago — and in the audience was Tom Tataranowicz, the producer of Biker Mice From Mars who got his start at Filmation?

    Were you a fan of live-action kidvid? If so, here’s another list for you:

    Electra-Woman and Dyna-Girl
    The Lost Saucer
    The Secrets of Isis
    Dr. Shrinker
    Space Academy
    Ark II
    Land of the Lost

    What can I say — aside from the classic Warner and Disney animation, a huge chunk of my childhood was formed by Filmation, Sid & Marty Krofft, Hanna-Barbera and Rankin-Bass. πŸ˜‰

  6. Hmm, I hate Futurama actually, sorry. LOL. Huge Simpsons fan though.

    And I do like the Family Guy…what little I’ve seen. It made me laugh, something Futurama rarely does.

  7. I remember being totally into the live action kid-vid SHAZAM.I loved the idea of turning from a groovy teenager to a hunky older guy– and with just one word. On second thought, what was that kid doing riding around the country with the old guy in a Winnebago? hehehe

    Right now, I’m addicted to Justice League. Yep,I’m a geek.

  8. I agree with pretty much everything you’re saying. I watched the first episode of Family Guy and never saw another second of it, so I guess I missed the gradual improvement.

    I feel South Park had a similar arc to the one you attribute to Family Guy. I watched the very first episode and thought it was incredibly brainless (Oh, look, kids swearing! Ha ha ha!), but I checked it out later and found that it had gotten cleverer. I really liked the movie.

    And I love Futurama. That episode where they visit the Slurm factory kills me!

  9. Saturday Sugar Rush

    My short list, off the top o my head…
    Astro Boy – Innocent, inventive, inspiring; the reason I became an animator.
    Gigantor – Hey, with a title like that, who cared if the plots were all the same?
    Popeye – Everything Fliesher studios did had a surreal edge– what were they on?
    Herculoids – A bizarre mix of Sci-fi and Daktari, a “primitive” family and their animal friends repel wave after wave of aliens from invading their paradise planet.
    Space Ghost – Who wouldn’t want armbands that could blast bad guys and look butch with your cape? He also flew the coolest spaceship ever.
    Bullwinkle (and friends) – Jay Ward’s loopy, topical humor somehow remains timeless. Have you noticed that in early episodes, Mr. Peabody’s boy Sherman wore a studded dog collar as a belt? Hmmm…

    Cowboy Bebop is the finest fusion of elements in recent memory. Beautiful, well-written, haunting, and humorous– a classic.

    I worked on one of the shows on your list. Any guesses which one?

  10. One of the reasons I love Spongebob is that it provides work for Charles Nelson Reilly – just like Liddsville did!

    There’s so much here I barely know how to respond, but here are some random thoughts:
    Feakazoid – Yes! if only for the kilt wearing and the hilarious parody of Disney’s “Gargoyles” unfortunately they didn’t make enough episodes to get into syndication so it’s hard to find it now.

    I watched the groovie ghoulies religiously and was very into their hit “Chicka Boom”

    Thundercats – this is where I started to drift away – (probably why I’m not a furry) Things like this, and He-man, and Transformers, all of that stuff is opaque to me.

    I was a hard core Trekker, so you know I was watching the animated series all the time. It contains the only time Uhuru was in command of the ship!

    Boomerang shows Wacky Races, Penelope Pitstop and the show with Dick Dastardly and the Pigeon. When you watch them now, it’s shocking how they are barely written at all. True product (not that I don’t love em)

    Biker mice from Mars only barely made it onto my radar screen. Don’t think I’ve seen an episode all the way through.

    I can’t believe you left off The Banana Splits!

    Also I’ve recently rediscovered “the Adventures of Tom Sawyer” a series where three real life actors are completely surrounded by animation. It must have been a horror for them to shoot.

  11. Re: Saturday Sugar Rush

    I’m not going to cheat and look at your website – so I guess Wild Thornberries.

    The Herculoids are amazing, particularly Gleep and Gloop, who talk the same way Scooby Doo laughs.

    I forgot that one of the other staples of afternoon cartoons was dubbed Japanese series like ,Speed Racer, Gigantor, Kimba the white Lion, etc. That stuff is all seared into my brain as well.

    Rocky and Bullwinkle was my first experience of having jokes in common with my family. We would watch it together and crack each other up with references to it.

    OMG I just remebered that Hercules series with the prancing, nelly fawn and the two halves of the ring that would Hurk would have to join to become powerful.

    What do you think of Trigun, Lain, and FLCL?

  12. The Southpark movie is the best musical film in the past twenty years (since Hairspray)

    The shows have gotten way better as well. Some of the last season was incredible.

    Futurama dissapointed me at first as well, but now that I’ve watched it repeatedly I like it much more. Their “Star Trek” episode was brilliant.

  13. I didn’t watch cartoons on Sat. mornings (parents) but, I did on Sun. mornings. The ones I’d like to see are from the 40s or earlier. They have a farmer character and constantly mice are running out of the cracks. I remember at the end of the cartoons the farmer and a bunch of animals would be bobbing their heads while looking side to side and, again, mice running like water… Have you ever seen those? I might be older than you by more than a couple years. I’ll be 56yrs in a few hours. πŸ˜‰

  14. Did you happen to catch John Kricfalusi’s (sp? …of Ren and Stimpy fame) “Rippin’ Friends”? It was a hyperactive gross-out super-hero team cartoon. Made a brief appearance on Fox’s Saturday morning line-up before being relegated to Adult Swim for another 5 minutes. I think the Fox exec’s had a bit of a crisis when they realized they had THE most blatantly homo-erotic cartoon on their hands since He-man. I mean, there was no attempt at subtext most of the time, it was all right there for 8 year-old Johnny to see: bulging genitals beneath ultra-tight spandex, four grown men all sleeping in the same bed, spontaneous and unnecessary disrobing, frequent groping and grappling…I could go on. Not a subtle pleasure but rather a “Did you fucking see that? Is this happening?” delight.

  15. Hey clarkelane, since you’ve openly admitted to a comic book cartoon addiction, I won’t be outing you when I say: Hey! You’re on GLA!

    Justice League is quite well done. Geek me, too.

  16. Hmmm –

    I’d be more likely to go for Cotton or Bill, but this is great beacuse I can read your post about your sweetie Jeff, and see how he has a little Poppa Smurf, a little Sarge and a little Bobby Hill in him!

  17. Cartoon Network was running Ripping friends for a while in Adult Swim. I dunno, Kricfalusi is one of theose people who I know I should like – but then I never do. There’s tons to appreciate in his work, but somehow it never connects to me. It feels so labored, like every joke has an extra beat. I shouldn’t say “never” be cause I loved what he did with Mighty Mouse while he had it. Even “Ren and Stimpy” seems strained to me.
    There was a lot of bulging, though.

  18. I’m too old to have gotten into the Smurfs on the first go round. I can barely get through an episode these days, but I do have a disturbing (for some) erotic fixation on Poppa Smurf. One of my favorite pastimes is making dirty pictures of him. I think the whole “Marklar” thing on Southpark is a parody of the way the smurfs talk.

  19. Boomerang – cartoon network’s second tier channel, will shock you with how many Saturday morning nuggets they bring back. Shows that ran one season and are so bad you can’t believe it but are as lodged in your brain as the taste of Super Sugar Crisp. I don’t know how available it is in Cananda, however.

    Can’t agree with you about the Simpsons. But I’m a junkie.

  20. To coin a phrase -“Woof”! There is some Army surplus store here in NY that used to have Sarge and Beetle dolls. Now if it was Sarge and the Cook, I would be in bliss!

  21. Started out as the most blatant Simpson’s rip off ever, but over time they found bits of their own niche, notably in the ferocity of their TV cheese referencing. On the visual end utterly boring, and they never have been able to develop memorable secondary characters, something the Simpson’s writers and artists are brilliant at. It’s been such a success on Cartoon Network that Fox is talking about bringing it back, which is frustrating because they aren’t talking about Futurama, which is a much better show.

  22. One of the reasons I love Spongebob is that it provides work for Charles Nelson Reilly – just like Liddsville did!

    There’s so much here I barely know how to respond, but here are some random thoughts:
    Feakazoid – Yes! if only for the kilt wearing and the hilarious parody of Disney’s “Gargoyles” unfortunately they didn’t make enough episodes to get into syndication so it’s hard to find it now.

    I watched the groovie ghoulies religiously and was very into their hit “Chicka Boom”

    Thundercats – this is where I started to drift away – (probably why I’m not a furry) Things like this, and He-man, and Transformers, all of that stuff is opaque to me.

    I was a hard core Trekker, so you know I was watching the animated series all the time. It contains the only time Uhuru was in command of the ship!

    Boomerang shows Wacky Races, Penelope Pitstop and the show with Dick Dastardly and the Pigeon. When you watch them now, it’s shocking how they are barely written at all. True product (not that I don’t love em)

    Biker mice from Mars only barely made it onto my radar screen. Don’t think I’ve seen an episode all the way through.

    I can’t believe you left off The Banana Splits!

    Also I’ve recently rediscovered “the Adventures of Tom Sawyer” a series where three real life actors are completely surrounded by animation. It must have been a horror for them to shoot.

  23. Re: Saturday Sugar Rush

    I’m not going to cheat and look at your website – so I guess Wild Thornberries.

    The Herculoids are amazing, particularly Gleep and Gloop, who talk the same way Scooby Doo laughs.

    I forgot that one of the other staples of afternoon cartoons was dubbed Japanese series like ,Speed Racer, Gigantor, Kimba the white Lion, etc. That stuff is all seared into my brain as well.

    Rocky and Bullwinkle was my first experience of having jokes in common with my family. We would watch it together and crack each other up with references to it.

    OMG I just remebered that Hercules series with the prancing, nelly fawn and the two halves of the ring that would Hurk would have to join to become powerful.

    What do you think of Trigun, Lain, and FLCL?

  24. The Southpark movie is the best musical film in the past twenty years (since Hairspray)

    The shows have gotten way better as well. Some of the last season was incredible.

    Futurama dissapointed me at first as well, but now that I’ve watched it repeatedly I like it much more. Their “Star Trek” episode was brilliant.

  25. Hmmm –

    I’d be more likely to go for Cotton or Bill, but this is great beacuse I can read your post about your sweetie Jeff, and see how he has a little Poppa Smurf, a little Sarge and a little Bobby Hill in him!

  26. Cartoon Network was running Ripping friends for a while in Adult Swim. I dunno, Kricfalusi is one of theose people who I know I should like – but then I never do. There’s tons to appreciate in his work, but somehow it never connects to me. It feels so labored, like every joke has an extra beat. I shouldn’t say “never” be cause I loved what he did with Mighty Mouse while he had it. Even “Ren and Stimpy” seems strained to me.
    There was a lot of bulging, though.

  27. I’m not really “into” comic books, but every so often one comes along that just enthralls me — such has occurred with Phil and Kaja Foglio’s magnificent Girl Genius. It’s just stunningly wonderful.

    Of course, I’m a huge Foglio fan to begin with — I’ve got all the Buck Godot, Zap Gun For Hire books, for instance.

  28. That episode’s one of my favourites too! (Though I imagine it must have been even funnier to people more familiar than I am with Star Trek.) I was impressed they got all of the original ST cast to do it.

  29. I have to admit I was kinda going for overwhelm. πŸ˜‰ The scary thing is how many people look at me like I’ve lost my mind when I relate something in detail from one of these shows. I can *still* recite the opening narration to Space Academy and Ark II from memory, and both are reasonably complex… though of course, not animated. πŸ˜‰

    As for Freakazoid! – I have a complete set of episodes from when it ran on Cartoon Network, and one of my soon-upcoming projects will be to sluck them into my computer and make them come out on nice shiny DVDs.

    I kinda see what you mean about Thundercats; it was rather in the “HeMan” mode, though I thought it was significantly better written.

    Animated Star Trek is another DVD-transfer project — I have the LaserDisc set that Paramount put out some years ago. I did see mention of “Do you want to see Animated Trek on DVD?” on StarTrek.com recently, but I wouldn’t hold my breath. AST has always sort of been a thorn in Paramount’s side — they don’t consider any of it canon — yet there’s a huge amount of information about Spock’s childhood in the episode Yesteryear, written by DC Fontana herself. How can THAT not be canon? Yet you’ve also got the Larry Niven written Slaver Weapon episode, adapted from his short story The Soft Weapon (For those of you who are interested — Spock’s character takes the place of a Pierson’s Puppeteer in the original story.) The problem with that is that dragging the whole “Known Space” history into Star Trek — with the Kzinti, the Slavers, &c. would be incredibly messy. What I find interesting is that there are some Trek novels being written (Peter David’s New Frontier sub-series) that include Arex and M’Ress! (Displaced in time to the Next Generation era, but there. There was some nasty backfilling — the first time Arex is mentioned he’s described as a “Triexian” in contradiction to the AST series bible that said he was Edoan; one of the stories had to come up with an explanation for this… or they’d have to suffer the wrath of nit-picker fans for eternity. And yes — in the episode The Lorelei Signal it’s the one time Uhura takes command.

    I’m sorry to hear you didn’t get into Biker Mice; it was one of the cleverest, best-written things I’ve seen in recent years. W. Morgan Sheppard voiced the primary villain, and they had a lot of interesting guest “voices”. When I was talking to Tom Tataranowicz, he asked me what I liked best about the show, and I told him “Charlie.” (Charlene Davidson, motorcycle mechanic and human friend to the Biker Mice.) It’s incredibly rare for there to be a really well-formed female character in what is otherwise a male-dominated action animation show, but they managed it with Charlie. And the PUNS! The show was FULL of alliteration, puns and other wordplay that was just delicious.

    I didn’t intentionally leave out the Splits … besides, didn’t I give you more than enough to chew on?

  30. Re: Saturday Sugar Rush

    Bzzt!
    Nope, not even close.
    This show was one of those rare projects that combined widely desparate talents into a surprisingly cohesive whole. The main characters were designed by Alex Toth, who was responsible for Hanna Barbera’s, clean graphic look in the late 60’s and early seventies. The creatures and settings were the product of the fertile imagination of the late Jack Kirby, who dabbled in animation design after leaving Marvel comics. You can see a lot of his ideas came from his Kamandi series from DC.
    Guess yet?
    Of course, it was Thundarr the Barbarian, an amalgam of Conan, Star Wars, and Planet of the Apes that somehow overcame its derivative origin and established an identity of its own.

    I’d like to think it was the enthusiasm and hard work we put into that series that made it better than it could have been.

    I remember that old Hercules cartoon all too well! Nelly Newton the centaur– what a role model! I even recall the title song:

    Hercules
    hero of song and story,
    Hercules,
    winner of ancient glory,
    with the strength of ten
    ordinary men.
    Hercules.
    people feel safe when near him.
    Hercules,
    only the evil fear him.
    Mercy in his eyes
    iron in his thighs
    virtue in his heart
    fire in every part
    of the mighty
    Hercules!

    –sung by none other than Jonny Mathis

    God, we were doomed to be gay!

  31. Re: Saturday Sugar Rush

    Wow!!
    I thought Thundarr, but then I thought you were too young to have worked on it. It makes total sense that Thoth and Kirby would be involved. It really does have its own special feel. So I was a fan of your work before I knew you.

    Lords of Light!!!

  32. I have to admit I’m a sucker for the well-worn super hero genre, so I’m familiar with most of the books you mentioned but sadly not an owner of any. I did like some of the early 90’s Vertigo books DC put out. Stuff like “Flex Mentallo” and “The Extremist.” And I do like Chris Ware and “Eightball” on occasion.

  33. Cripes! So specific…

    Alright, how bout “Barbarino Begins at Home,” although I can’t imagine the need to ever discuss “Kotter” here.

    Instead, let’s use LJ usernames. Dibs on “The Boy with the Thornyc in His Side.”

    OK, I’m sorry I started this.

  34. Actually…

    I’d never really thought of it that way before — but Jeff has a sexy beard (like Poppa Smurf), a really great ass (just like Sarge!) and he is a very good boy (though in a slightly different way from Bobby Hill!).

    I hope you feel like a good samaritan — because your kind effort in putting these thoughts in my head will probably lead to some interesting twists in our sex life.

  35. Both Terry Toons, and Harmon/Ising made cartoons with ongoing farmer characters, I think. It could be you are remembering one of those. I couldn’t turn on the tv on Sundays until I got back from church, by which point sports was on until Wide World of Disney in the evening.

    In light of your last sentence: Happy Birthday!

  36. I suppose you could characterize Buck Godot and Agatha Clay/Heterodyne as “super heroes,” but I don’t think it’s a very close fit.

    Buck Godot is merely someone who grew up on a heavy-gravity planet so he’s naturally bigger and stronger than the average human on New Hong Kong, but he’s not bullet-resistant, nor does he have x-ray vision or anything like that.

    Girl Genius is more “Steampunk” than anything else; the subtitle is “A Gaslamp Fantasy with Adventure, Romance & Mad Science.” The latest issue (#10) pretty much cements Agatha and Krosp as partners in whatever is to come. (Krosp is a construct with human intelligence originally intended to be the Emperor of Cats; he managed to evade destruction as an embarrassment when it became clear that the average cat just didn’t care. πŸ˜‰

    Neither of these sounds like the comics you refer to, though….

  37. Re: Saturday Sugar Rush

    Wow!!
    I thought Thundarr, but then I thought you were too young to have worked on it. It makes total sense that Thoth and Kirby would be involved. It really does have its own special feel. So I was a fan of your work before I knew you.

    Lords of Light!!!

  38. Lord, we made it to abbreviated reponse lists, a first for me. Is there any doubt how much we love Nayland?

    Shucks, I just wanted to be #51. Viva la toons.

  39. Worst. Cartoon. Ever?

    Superfriends with 4 frames of animation per minute?

    Davey and Goliath?

    Winky Dink? (Oops, sorry, there’s that earwig again.)

  40. Wow. What a thrill to discover someone who actually likes the fact I obsess over this sort of thing.

    “Oh, Tut-Tut, cat of ancient lore — reveal for us the magic door!”

  41. Re: Worst. Cartoon. Ever?

    Oh there are much worse cartoons – I was thinking that that would be the subject of my next post: cartoons that I loathe. But right now I would put forward “Baby Loony Tunes” Time/Warner’s latest attempt to extend the brand whichis is horrible for so many reasons that I can’t even enumerate them right now.

  42. Both Terry Toons, and Harmon/Ising made cartoons with ongoing farmer characters, I think. It could be you are remembering one of those. I couldn’t turn on the tv on Sundays until I got back from church, by which point sports was on until Wide World of Disney in the evening.

    In light of your last sentence: Happy Birthday!

  43. Yow! How could I forget?

    The best series Hanna-Barbera ever did– Jonny Quest!

    trivia note: TV guide did a survey of the “best TV mom”. Who won? Race Bannon, of course!
    “He could serve up a hot meal or a karate chop with equal aplomb”

  44. Re: Worst. Cartoon. Ever?

    Oh there are much worse cartoons – I was thinking that that would be the subject of my next post: cartoons that I loathe. But right now I would put forward “Baby Loony Tunes” Time/Warner’s latest attempt to extend the brand whichis is horrible for so many reasons that I can’t even enumerate them right now.

  45. The first 2 seasons, plus Lisa going to Washington for the essay contest in the 3rd season, were so brilliantly constructed, but I feel that the humor in the Simpson’s has degenerated into something too conscious of itself, like a Phyllis Diller/Bob Hope movie.

    Spongebob, on the other hand, reminds me of the cartoons of the 30’s and early Warner Brothers, sweet-natured, yet with a balance of irony, intelligence, and a great deal of visual whimsy. Only 10 more months for the movie!

  46. No Dodo?

    DoDo, the Kid from Outer Space,
    DoDo can go, go any place,
    With propellors on his heels,
    Antennas on his ears,
    He’s the science-fiction pixie
    from a strange atomic race,
    DoDo, the Kid from Outer Space.
    DODO!!!

    (And you just know Nayland has jet propulsion on his heels…)

  47. Re: No Dodo?

    well I’ve been told that i had helium in my heels actually.

    Dodo hunts my memories as well. The fact that no seems to be rerunning it and that it has not been issued on DVD is proof that Allah is merciful.

  48. Re: No Dodo?

    well I’ve been told that i had helium in my heels actually.

    Dodo hunts my memories as well. The fact that no seems to be rerunning it and that it has not been issued on DVD is proof that Allah is merciful.

  49. Re: No Dodo?

    But for years I wanted to visit Zero Zero Island, suspiciously absent from any atlas.

    I wonder if that was some sort of post-McCarthy, pre-Stonewall coding?

  50. Howdy there. I saw your journal through a weird game of connections (from looking through interest in big bellied men, to finding some guys journal, to going to the gainer group, and then finding you), And I saw this journal entry and it definately caught my eye. Now, being the anime fan that I am (and I saw in your info that you are too, among with pipes and cigars, so that’s nice. πŸ™‚ ), I saw you mentioned Cowboy Bebop, which is an AMAZING series. However, there was a number of series I was curious if you’ve seen or what you think of them?

    Trigun
    Excel Saga
    Furi Kuri (AKA Fooly Cooly)

    Also, please tell me you agree that Dragon Ball Z, in the United States, is the biggest piece of crap on earth? πŸ™‚ Thank you.

    By the way, Jeff (briardad) and Eddie (cigarboyoh) from Columbus say hi. πŸ˜‰

  51. What about Road Rovers and Earthworm Jim, how’d you feel about those on the WB Animated line up? I personally though Freakazoid was amazing, and if you make those DVDs, I’d be more than HAPPY to paypal you some money to get a copy.

    Also, is it me, or was Waynehead one of the biggest pieces of crap to hit the market? πŸ™‚

  52. Road Rovers I never got into. Earthworm Jim was fun but it didn’t grab me quite the way Freakazoid! did. I mean, “Conversational Norwegian with Freakazoid!”?! Wow!

    EARTHWORM JIM!
    Through soil he did crawl,
    EARTHWORM JIM!
    A supersuit did fall!
    Jim was just a dirt-eating, chewy length of worm flesh,
    but all of that came to a crashing end, ha ha ha!
  53. Wow – what an odd chain of connection! I’m glad you made it over here. I have to admit that in many ways I am anime lightweight but about the series you’ve mentioned:
    Trigun is interesting to me, more for it’s conception and story arc than for its design. All the christian references are puzzling and intriguing, and I wish more folks get to see it all the way through, cause there’s such odd stuff in it.

    I’ve never seen Excel Saga.

    FLCL is one of the few series I’ve bought to have at home – it’s funny, well written and beautifully animated. It would look great on the big screen. Also it’s lenght is perfect.

    DBZ is another one of those things that leaves me scratching my head. The animators must be so bored – they either have to draw giant fireballs, or mouths with lips quivering and teeth clenched. It seems to go on for hours! Unfortunately I tune in from time to time since I have a crush on one character – that guy with the glasses and beard and the horns coming out of his head – and I’m trying to find out his name.

    Say hi right back to Jeff and Eddie!

  54. Wow – what an odd chain of connection! I’m glad you made it over here. I have to admit that in many ways I am anime lightweight but about the series you’ve mentioned:
    Trigun is interesting to me, more for it’s conception and story arc than for its design. All the christian references are puzzling and intriguing, and I wish more folks get to see it all the way through, cause there’s such odd stuff in it.

    I’ve never seen Excel Saga.

    FLCL is one of the few series I’ve bought to have at home – it’s funny, well written and beautifully animated. It would look great on the big screen. Also it’s lenght is perfect.

    DBZ is another one of those things that leaves me scratching my head. The animators must be so bored – they either have to draw giant fireballs, or mouths with lips quivering and teeth clenched. It seems to go on for hours! Unfortunately I tune in from time to time since I have a crush on one character – that guy with the glasses and beard and the horns coming out of his head – and I’m trying to find out his name.

    Say hi right back to Jeff and Eddie!

  55. *chuckles* No problem, I’ll make sure to tell them that.

    If you’re going to buy a series, I’d definately suggest Excel Saga. Kinda like FLCL, it’s all over the boards. It’s animated greatly, it’s VERY funny, it’s a great series to watch in general. Every episode makes fun of a different type of anime series.

    Also, I’ll make sure to tell them that. Congrats by the way on being PipeBear of the year at BriarBash2003. πŸ™‚

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