32 Glasses of Melonade and 147 Marshmallows

This is it, everyone. I firmly believe this is the best thing on the website, and I imagine that there are many people who agree with me. The past sentence was TOTALLY not sarcastic in the slightest. I’m not even going to provide a screenshot for this one, because it would spoil the absolute awesomeness that you are about to witness. Whenever you think you’re ready for it, just click the link and prepare to be blown away.

http://www.homestarrunner.com/legal.html

Truly magnificent. Ok, yeah, I’m not sure why I even bothered linking to that, since there’s nothing worth discussing about it. But anyway, as I said last time, today we’ll be looking at some quality material. I hope you like Marzipan’s Answering Machine, because there’ll be a lot of that, but also a couple other toons that still hold up pretty well today. I invite you all to The Luau.

http://www.homestarrunner.com/luau2.html

Maybe I’m just juvenile, but I find Homestar’s implied explanation for the wood not catching fire to be hilarious. It’s definitely the highlight of the toon for me, with Marzipan’s complete unawareness of her surroundings being a close second. Remember the bit from A Jumping Jack Contest where Homestar peed in the jar? I think this gag works way better, because even though you can tell exactly what happened, you don’t really see the …evidence. I do have to wonder how Strong Bad and company failed to notice that the wood was wet when they were stealing it though.

This cartoon uses the older animation style that we’ve seen a few times before, and was apparently supposed to be updated like Jorb was, but for whatever reason that never happened. I’m fine with this – like I said, I think that the fatter-looking Homestar from back in the early days is somewhat cuter than the current one (is it ok for me to call a male character cute when he’s decidedly non-human-like?), but some stuff like Strong Bad’s incredibly exaggerated walking animation does look a little … off.

At the end, we get to see yet another main page. Those things have been creeping up all over the place lately. I kinda wish this one was accessible normally, but I guess it really doesn’t make any sense out of context. (Who am I kidding, most of the other ones don’t either.) The main interesting thing about it is the fact that it’s incredibly out of date. Other “special” home pages like the Strong Bad one still use the same template as the rest, so the buttons in the top-right are up to date, and they include links to all the other pages in the bottom left. This one does not do that, so it cycles through some particularly ancient “new” material, and doesn’t go beyond the 10th main page. Weird fact – if you go to the page directly using this url, it actually shows more material than the one the toon links to. But it’s still really old and out of date.

I don’t think there’s much more to say about that one. I enjoyed it, but it’s nothing that I have a strong connection to, nor does it have any major place in history for the site as a whole. But that’s ok, I’d rather have little to say about a good toon than lots to say about a bad one. It’s definitely a classic, and one that I’ve enjoyed showing people in the past. And I can’t think of any good way to segue into the next toons, so whatever, have a bunch of Marzipan’s Answering Machine toons. Go ahead and watch all of them in a row, I’d rather just talk about them all at once.

Marzipan's Answering Machine - #2, #3, #4

Answering Machine #2 is kind of dull, in my opinion. The prank call left by Strong Bad was pretty good (not his best, but I laughed nonetheless), the series of messages left by the King were pretty … meh, and the other two weren’t particularly funny either. I can tell that the one with Pom Pom was attempting to bring in the type of humor where you can’t tell what he was saying, and the viewer is left to interpret it on their own. That sometimes leads to some funny situations, but I don’t think it worked that well here. I’d rather have someone intelligible start to repeat something terrible that Homestar said, and then have Homestar try to cover up for it, rather than just hear the second half.

Number 3 is a definite improvement, but oddly enough, Strong Bad’s obligatory prank call is probably the least funny part of it this time around. The rest of them form a nice little story of sorts, delving a bit into character interactions. It must be tough for the other guys to know that the only girl available is already taken, so you can’t blame them for trying. Poor Homestar of course is oblivious towards what’s going on until it’s already too late. I’m not sure why Coach Z had to ask for Marzipan’s number, since he should already have it from when he called about cheering Homestar up a while back. And while it’s possible that Strong Mad got the number from Strong Bad, I like to imagine that Homestar gave it to him, completely forgetting what just happened with Bubs and Coach Z.

Luckily, number 4 continues with the increased quality and sequential storytelling. Homestar fails to remember a TV joke, and also fails to dial the right number, since he was apparently looking for Pom Pom. I just like how even though he clearly already forgot what the joke was, he still felt the need to call Marzipan and tell her about it too. I’ve been in that situation too, where I attempt to explain something that I’ve already forgotten all the details of, and I just end up making an idiot of myself.

I don’t have much to say about Strong Sad’s calls here, other than the fact that I’ve been in that situation too, where I get some false hope that some girl I like might be contacting me soon, and I sit around for ages waiting for something that never happens. Yeah, I’m kinda pathetic that way. But somehow I ended up getting married. I’m not sure how that happened either.

And lastly, we have the great little bit with Strong Bad and the King of Town. Strong Bad didn’t seem to have his heart in it here. His impression pretty much consisted of speaking normally but saying “doo hoo hoo” a lot. The King’s impression was way better, and when you realize that Matt had to voice one character imitating another character, that’s pretty impressive. I would like to know how the King knew that Strong Bad framed him for the prank calls though. And then Strong Bad attempts to make the situation even weirder by convincing Strong Mad to try a prank call of his own, but that didn’t go quite as planned. Even though that call follows a similar format to the Homestar/Pom Pom one from machine #2, this one came out a lot better, I think.

There’s one more good toon that I’d like to cover today, but first, let’s get this lame one out of the way. There’s no proper way to set this up, so whatever – A Mother’s Day Message.

http://www.homestarrunner.com/mother.html

I kinda forgot this existed, to be honest. There’s really only one joke, and the screenshot of it pretty much gives it away anyway. Oh man, Strong Bad sure does look silly in that outfit. Tee-hee. Notice how this is taking place in the same auditorium as A Holiday Greeting (except palette-swapped), the title is practically the same, and both involve Strong Bad being not particularly funny? At least this one isn’t controversial, but then again, that at least made the other one somewhat noteworthy. The only reason I’m even covering it is because it exists, and I did promise to at least briefly acknowledge every part of the website. So now that we’ve got that out of the way, I can move on to the far superior Fluffy Puff Commercial.

http://www.homestarrunner.com/fluffypuff2.html

Of course, the major thing to address about this would be its similarities to the First Time Here cartoon, although this one actually predates it by almost a year. I’m not sure which one I’d say is funnier overall. “Bloopers” that consist of nothing more than someone forgetting their lines or saying them incorrectly are rarely funny to me, but I do enjoy it here because of Homestar’s attitude towards the whole thing. And then there’s the moments like the bird crapping on his head (ruining an otherwise perfect take) and Homestar just flat-out forgetting to speak. And what’s up with the terrible little ditty at the end?

This cartoon has a very bizarre easter egg in it. Usually, you can find these by holding down the Tab key throughout the toon, and it will highlight them in yellow. Don’t worry, you haven’t missed any yet. I’ll let you know when a cartoon has one, at least up until the point where there’s expected to be at least one per toon. But no, in this case, you access the easter egg by pressing the “L” key. Make sure you have caps lock off when you do this. I’m not going to tell you what it does, because it’s incredibly stupid and useless and I want it to be a surprise.

Alright. With the exception of some stuff that I’m intentionally putting off until later, I think I’ve managed to cover everything added to the website between its beginnings and August 22, 2001. Why is that date important? It’s because that was when a certain cartoon was added to the website. A cartoon that’s only 45 seconds long, features really simple animation, and honestly isn’t even that amusing. But it marks the start of a new era – the era of Strong Bad Email. And I’ve got plenty of things to say about those as a whole, but that’s going to have to wait until next time. I hope you enjoyed Homestar’s time in the spotlight, because it’s not going to last.