In which I review websites on my review website

So it turns out I didn’t die. I just haven’t had much of an opportunity to write one of these in a while, so hopefully this’ll be a pretty good one, and then I can get back into the groove of things again. Last time, I discussed Marzipan’s Answering Machine #7, as well as the ghosts email, which were sort of the supplementary Halloween toons for 2002. I’ve left the major toon of the holiday for the start of this post, which is good, because now I’ll have a great one to start off with today. So let’s take a gander at Pumpkin Carve-nival.

http://www.homestarrunner.com/halloween2002.html

Like the other Halloween toons before it (and the ones to come), this one has quite a lot going on, so I’mma go with bullet list format again on this. But first, I will say that this is a great example of a toon that’s even funnier the second time around, mainly because of the ramifications that the twist ending has. It makes absolutely no sense once you put any amount of thought into it, but who cares? It’s hilarious. Alright, so to start from the beginning…
 

• I like the pre-judging conversations at the beginning. I, like Strong Sad, have no idea what Coach Z is talking about (well, I didn’t before looking it up on the wiki, at least), but “The Pajama Jammie-Jam” is an awesome name for a thing. And then after that, Bubs has an easily-missable line in the background once Homestar takes center stage, which made me laugh out loud when I heard it.
• I was going to point out that there was lightning after the dramatic intro statement made by Homestar in both of the previous Halloween toons, but it actually didn’t happen in Sucky Treats. I think it still counts as a running gag though.
• Homestar’s “yeah, that’s gross” in response to the King saying that the pumpkin looked “particularly luscious” was pretty funny, and again, easily missble the first time through. And as a pointless bit of trivia, The Cheat says “The King of Town is so lame” in that scene. We know this because of a future email.
• Witches’ brew. I can’t explain why this is funny to me, it just is. I just like how Homestar brings it up not twice, but FOUR times in this cartoon. With absolutely no explanation. It’s kind of like “The Steve”. Just mention something enough times and it will become a running gag even if there’s really nothing inherently funny about it.
• I mentioned in Sucky Treats that The Poopsmith will be the key to unlocking Homsar in all the Halloween toons to follow, and that is indeed the case here, as you should probably know if you’re doing the Tab trick. Homsar’s scene in this isn’t one of his stronger performances, but it’s kind of hard to judge what’s funny and what isn’t when Homsar’s dialogue is almost entirely non-sequiturs.
• Couple things about Pom Pom’s scene – first of all, Homestar’s line has always been really memorable for me (again, for reasons I can’t really explain). Second, the pumpkin is carved in an impossible way (unless you use a piece of wire to hold up the floating piece). And lastly, I think “Second place” might actually be the best score he gave to anyone, unless “good,” “most improved,” or “not last” is considered better.
• After seeing Marzipan’s pumpkin and really thinking about it for a minute, I realize that there’s no way she would have done anything other than leave it on the vine. Most of the other characters also acted in a way that makes far too much sense. Stop and think for a second if the King would have actually carved something. Of course not, he would have eaten it. Same for Strong Mad – it makes perfect sense that he would have forgotten to carve it. I know I’m being kind of stupid and obvious right now, it’s like “yeah, Matt and Mike know their characters well and had them act in-character”, but I think this goes to show how well-defined their personalities really are, even this early in the series. It’s like a pumpkin personality test. Give someone a pumpkin, tell them to do what they want with it, and the results will probably tell you quite a bit about that person.
• Strong Bad and Bubs’s pumpkins fit their characters pretty well too, but for some reason I can’t help but feel like they’re a bit disappointing. I think that one of the characters (probably Strong Sad) should have made a really elaborate carving, but the closest to that was Pom Pom’s. I’m not sure what Bubs’s pumpkin is even supposed to be, other than some kind of weird engine that freaks out The Cheat way more than necessary.
• The ending. Oh god, the ending. I think that “Strong Bad as Homestar as Angus Young” and “The Goblin as Strong Bad as The Bee” are good enough punchlines on their own to justify the entire thing, but once you kind of analyze it a bit, there’s a few irregularities that make it even funnier. Knowing now that Strong Bad was actually the one judging everyone’s pumpkins, it puts kind of a twist on the way he treated everyone. At first it seems like Homestar is just being his usual clueless self, but it’s actually Strong Bad being a jerk to the people he doesn’t like (Marzipan, KoT, Homsar, etc). He also invented the witches’ brew running gag for some reason.
• But on the other hand, the DVD commentary for this cartoon mentions that the twist ending was actually a last-minute idea, and the toon wasn’t planned around it. I’m not sure how to react to that, honestly. So Strong Bad was actually supposed to dress up as “The Bee”? Sure, why not. Let’s go with it. Makes as much sense as imitating Homestar’s voice flawlessly. (And operating with no arms, for that matter)

The last thing I should say about this one is in regards to the Easter eggs at the end. There’s a freaking creepy one when you click on the moon, a funny one with Homestar, and an awesome one with the King. His life really is a joke. And I like how they apparently got so many emails about it that they had to flat-out say “no, Kingio Bros is just a joke” in the website FAQ.

Alright, well that took entirely too long, but it was a great toon, so it deserved it. You know what doesn’t deserve a long review? theme party.

http://www.homestarrunner.com/sbemail49.html

This isn’t as bad as some of the Tandy emails, but … I started this sentence with “this isn’t as bad as…”, so obviously it’s not that great either. The main joke of this, of course, is that their theme party should actually have no theme and just be a generic frat party. And since I’ve never been to one of those (nor would I want to), I can’t say I have any personal connection to this one, but it’s still kind of funny in its own way. The best part about this is the unauthorized use of copyrighted characters on the T-shirt (from the Easter egg). They should have given them mohawks and wheelchairs so they wouldn’t get sued.

This is not only the shorted Compy-era SBEmail, but it’s also the last one where the entire email consists of staring at the back of Strong Bad’s head with no variation. There’s still one other email I can think of that comes close to fitting that description, but it technically doesn’t count. I’ll point it out when we get there. And I guess I should say something about the Circles song, so … it’s a song that exists. I don’t know if it’s a parody of anything in particular, and I don’t think I’ve ever laughed at it, but I was able to remember the entire song when I rewatched it just now, so obviously it has some staying power. But overall, this email was probably kind of rushed, which is ok, because the next one makes up for it. Let’s celebrate 50 emails with 50 emails. Ready? Go!

http://www.homestarrunner.com/sbemail50.html

While not as momentous as emails 100, 150, and 200, this is still a nice milestone email, and definitely one of the classics. I kind of wish that he would have answered a few more emails at the beginning before getting distracted, but it works just fine as it is currently, so it’s not a huge complaint. At least we were able to get the “matt = MATT!!” joke before moving on. And then begins the Homestar section of the email, what with the fondue pot and all them good times. Maybe he was using it for witches’ brew. The secret to a perfect brew is to use an item that will also be showing up as a running gag in the future.

I would like to know exactly what was going on in that phone call, by the way. The most accurate thing anyone’s been able to come up with was Strong Bad was talking to poachers who were offering money for Strong Sad’s feet. Which is kind of concerning, but luckily nothing ever comes from that. The major thing that everyone remembers from this email is Homestar’s various failures to delete the email, particularly the first: “BALEETED!” It’s definitely worth a look at the screen full of failed commands. If you look it up on the wiki, you’ll get a complete list, including the ones that Homestar’s head is blocking. My favorite is probably “bubs”. The best part of this email is probably the Easter egg at the end, though. It doesn’t get much better than Lord Elsington Hallstingdingdingworth. Emtarkanderundersgunderson comes close though.

You’d think that I would have some more things to say about that one, but I guess the humor kind of speaks for itself. I’ve got one more email left to talk about today, and it’s one that I have quite a bit to talk about. So let’s spend a while looking at one of my favorite things on the website, website.

http://www.homestarrunner.com/sbemail51.html

I love really bad websites. With movies, games, and the like, it’s always entertaining to watch reviews making fun of the bad ones, but websites are kind of a different breed, because you can access them for free, and you don’t have to sit through hours of terrible material to find the parts worth making fun of. You can usually tell when a website is really poorly made right after first seeing it. Hence why people probably avoid my freewebs page. For any bad website fan, I suggest going to http://www.webpagesthatsuck.com/. But not until after reading this post, of course, because you’ll probably be there for a while.

Strong Bad’s breakdown of what makes a “good” website hits most of the important points here. I actually had the teacher play us this email in a web design class I had in high school just to stress what not to do. I’m not sure how common these types of pages are nowadays, but I know they were freaking everywhere in the late 90s / early 2000s, and I used to actually regularly visit a few of them. Which is kind of funny when you realize that most of these are abandoned as soon as they are made, so there’s no point in checking back, but alas.

http://www.homestarrunner.com/sbsite/

The highlight of this email of course is Strong Bad’s website, which you can access from the end of the email. Depending on what browser you use, you may or may not be greeted with the “WELCOME TO YOUR DOOM” sound clip (from Altered Beast). It’s got plenty of pointless animated GIFs and pictures of The Cheat (including one that will never load). Take the couple minutes it takes to look through all of it, and let yourself be taken back to the day when useless websites like these reigned supreme.

There’s a few links at the bottom, most of which do some pretty interesting things. First off is the “Enter” animation, which causes the page to load inside itself. I actually made a parody of this on my own website, because hey, why not. The mouse GIF leads to a weird little page called the Email Processing Room, which is just a looping animation of how Strong Bad processes his emails and decides which ones to reply to. This was apparently linked to in an automatic reply that you would get if you emailed Strong Bad back in the day, but this is no longer the case. Kind of similar to The Secrets That I Keep, actually. (Which is also linked to through the next thing I’m talking about.) Also worth noting are the “Pride, Detail, Ethics” signs, which link to a dead page. They used to link to something called “The Rumor”, but it got taken down. I’ve never bothered investigating this further, but archives do exist if you know where to look.

http://www.homestarrunner.com/sadjournal/

Finally, there’s this little gem, known as Strong Sad’s Lament. You access it through the F10 button on the bottom of SB’s page. I like to think of this page as the most obscure thing on the website that is actively linked to. Obviously you’ve got weird crap like Wireless Bizness that practically nobody has ever heard of, but that’s never been officially linked to, whereas this can be accessed if you know where to look for it. It’s also one of the few things that has been updated a number of times since its initial release, so even the people who knew about it when it first came out might not have checked it out since then.

Strong Sad is, of course, my favorite character, so I do appreciate this blog and the extra insight into his life. There’s not too many posts, so I definitely recommend reading through all of them (only took me about 5 minutes I think). I’m not going to go into a huge review of each of the posts or anything, because I think they pretty much speak for themselves, and this post is getting long enough as it is. So just give it a look, and let’s all hope that the dead state of his blog doesn’t imply anything about the future of mine.