A bit of everything

To follow up the previous post, where I took an in-depth look at two very popular emails, I’m going to try a different approach here. Usually these posts take me at least three hours to write, because I try my best (and usually fail) to make some sort of analysis or personal connection to each toon or email. I end up taking forever just to write a single paragraph because I want to make sure that I’m being thorough, but not overly wordy, and I also try to switch up my writing style as much as possible so you don’t read the same exact sentence structure over and over. I’m not a particularly talented writer, so I know I can use a lot of work in that regard, but I do try my best. And so this time, I’m going to at least attempt to get through a larger amount of material than usual, and not worry too much if I can’t say a lot about one particular toon. So to start off, we have an email featuring Marzipan, and it is called, generically, marzipan.

http://www.homestarrunner.com/sbemail59.html

I always remember this one as “that email that came out after dragon and was really underwhelming by comparison”.  Trying to judge it by its own merits, it’s really not that bad, but I also wouldn’t consider it to be particularly memorable. The only things I remembered from it offhand before rewatching it were the “oh yeah” song, Strong Bad’s quadruple negative, and Marzipan not knowing what a “scream name” is. Which is probably more than most people would remember from it, honestly, but I’m just weird that way.

I never really realized before that there’s a picture of a snake on Carol. What’s that all about? And of course The Cheat spells it “carl” in his little music video, which is kind of awesome. One final bit of trivia for this one (and no, it’s not the translation for the webdings, look it up yourself) – if you wait a few seconds at the end, Strong Sad sends an IM about vinegar toast (I actually didn’t know this until I just read about it), which is a reference to something that the Chapmans did in real life. Apparently Mike put toothpaste in cupcakes and fed them to Matt, who then retaliated with “vinegar toast”. Which I assume is just toast soaked in vinegar. But that’s enough for this one. Before the next email came out, there were actually two short toons that were released to explain a couple delays. Which is kinda weird, because the next email was actually only one day late. But anyway, first we have The System is Down.

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

This was released after a two-day website outage, which presumably happened thanks to Trogdor and his legion of sudden fans. I’m basically just paraphrasing the Wiki and DVD commentary here (since I wouldn’t have any other way of knowing this), but the website used to be hosted on Yahoo, and the server’s bandwidth got overloaded by the sudden influx of viewers, so it had to be shut down temporarily, until everything was moved over to another server, apparently called “Sagonet”. This cartoon was going to be hosted on Thorax Corp, and everyone subscribed to the website’s email updates would get an email telling them to go there and watch it, but then the problem got solved faster than expected and so there was no need to do this.

So that’s the history of the toon, which personally I find more interesting than the toon itself, but that’s not to say that it’s not amusing. I like weird off-the-wall stuff like this, and the concept of the characters walking around in a white void with an error page kind of makes your brain hurt if you think about it too hard, so I suggest not doing that. I also suggest not cram-a-lamming Swiss Cake Rolls into a computer. That sounds like something my brother Joey would do. (He hasn’t done that specifically, but he has peed on a keyboard before. Intentionally.) Speaking of tape-leg though, I must say that email is comic gold compared to Superbowl Dealie.

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

I’d skip this, but it is technically a thing that exists, so I have to at least acknowledge it. And unlike some other really short, pointless, and unfunny toons, this one is actually linked to on the site, as an official Holiday Toon alongside the Halloween and Decemberween ones. So to sum this one up, the characters say “Take it to the house” five times and nothing else happens.

I’m not quite sure why this was made, actually. Assuming the release dates on the Wiki are accurate, this was released on a Monday, which would have been the day following the Super Bowl. So I guess they were watching the game and then didn’t have enough time to make a SBEmail for the following day, so they made this instead. Which honestly seems a bit unnecessary. It’s not as if emails haven’t been late before, and especially with the server going down earlier that week (and getting an extra toon out of it), I think they had every right to be late by a day without making an explanation toon. But they did, and then presumably started work immediately on the next email, huttah!.

http://www.homestarrunner.com/sbemail60.html

I like how the name of this one explains absolutely nothing about the email. Though I’m not sure what else you’d call it, really. “cheat emails”? That could probably work. But despite the general … genericness of this, I do enjoy it a fair amount. Most of the ones like this where Strong Bad gets a bunch of different emails tend to turn out pretty good, and this one has more of a focus than spring cleaning, and actually features more than 50 emails did. Now that I think about it, all three of those featured the “how do you type with boxing gloves” email, and it was also mentioned in vacation, and will continue to be asked many times in the future. There’s actually an email sort of dedicated to it that’s coming up pretty soon.

I mentioned a couple posts ago that Strong Bad could have easily just backspaced his embarrassing reply at the end of lures & jigs, but the email was apparently being watched live or something. And there’s lots of emails where the typed reply would be a very incomplete response unless you assume that the person who sent the email also sees all the cutaways and insights into Strong Bad’s imagination. It’s never fully explained. But back to huttah!.  (Should there be a period after the exclamation point? Grammar is weird sometimes.) In this email, The Cheat is watching Strong Bad checking his emails as if it’s a livestream. Very strange. Again, try not to think about it too much. And I still haven’t said much about the email itself, so I’ll just say that the idea of taping the little paper over the screen was, though ineffectual, quite clever. And it was lucky that the subjects of the emails changed when he did that, otherwise there would be stuff like “Hey the cheat! i love The Cheat! can you ask him for me if he is taken? because i like him WAY better than you”. Problematic.

Oh right, and then there’s the little screensaver thing at the end . I actually forgot that was part of this email. And the terrible little sound effect of the Atari seagull flapping its wings is awesome. I’m not sure if I’m thankful or disappointed that the noise isn’t there in the downloadable version. Moving on, if these last two emails have been a bit too tame for your tastes, the next one should be significantly better. Even the name implies energy and loudness – monster truck.

http://www.homestarrunner.com/sbemail61.html

This is another one of those emails that is actually too good for me to really comment on. The Awexome Cross 98 ad is so over-the-top and energetic you can’t help but laugh at it, especially when it features things like The Cheat riding inside the tire and jumping over the King of Town eating a cardboard box covered in syrup. Everybody always likes the “Let’s do this like Brutus” line from Homestar, and yet I doubt anyone knows what it’s referring to. I know I sure as heck didn’t until I read the Wiki, and … I still don’t really know what it is. Some De La Soul thing. Really though, what else is there to say about this email? Well… a couple things, actually, but one of them is minor, and the other is technically not the email itself, so I’ll get to that in a second.

This email features the first actual appearance of Limozeen and their music. Now I’m going to admit something here – I’ve never been too crazy about Limozeen. Whenever they make an appearance in a toon, I generally find it amusing (and I do like the crappy Saturday morning cartoon they star in, which we won’t be seeing for quite a while), but whenever something is based around the band members in live action, I’ll either skip it or watch it once and then never again. I do know the names of the band members – Larry (the lead singer), Perry, Gary, and Mary, but aside from Larry, I couldn’t tell you who plays what, nor could I tell you if they have distinct personalities outside of Mary from the cartoon, who is intentionally singled out. And I certainly couldn’t tell them apart by looking, but that’s the joke. And they’re usually played by different people every time they appear. In this email, they’re all played by Donnie Chapman.

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

Anyway, hidden in an Easter egg at the end is a game called Awexome Cross 98 (the Wiki claims the “98” is not part of the title, but come on, it totally is). For what it is, it’s actually a pretty decent little game. Basically, you’re The Cheat rolling in the tire, and you have to jump over assorted Strong Badia-related junk, while collecting money and powerups that speed you up and slow you down. The main flaw with the game is the hit detection, which is really picky. Unless you get a bunch of speed powerups, you have to be almost pixel perfect with your jumps over some of the items or else you’ll hit it and lose a man.

This game was originally released with only one level and lacked the speed powerups (and the Strong Mad scenes between levels, obviously). The updated version came out at some point after Jonathan Howe joined the team to help program better games. His first project was a game that we haven’t seen yet, but I’ll be getting to it in a couple posts probably. If you want to play the original version, here’s a link to it. It’s your best bet at seeing the ending, since you only have to go through one level instead of seven. So once you’re done messing around with that, I’ve got one other email to go through – interview.

http://www.homestarrunner.com/sbemail62.html

Before you say anything, no, we haven’t looked at this one already. You’re thinking of The Interview, a toon where Strong Bad interviews Homestar. This is an email where Strong Bad pretends to interview Homsar. Totally different.

The first thing I have to point out about this email is the fact that Strong Bad (while imitating Homsar) said “I was raised by a cup of coffee”. Homsar never actually said it, and yet it has somehow become one of his more well-known quotes, even appearing on the T-shirt. It’s kind of a “Beam me up, Scotty” moment, and now that I took the time to check, I actually found that it is indeed listed on TV Tropes’s page of the same name. But yeah, that line and a few others are the main source of humor in this email, so if you like non-sequiturs, then here’s plenty of them. If you don’t, then you probably don’t like Homsar in general, so this email won’t be one of your favorites. Personally I think it’s pretty good. I think “Hey Reggie, is that rhinoceros around” is my favorite line from it. Either that or "Don't fake the funk on a nasty dunk". Strong Bad putting salt on his foot, ala island is a nice little callback too. And Kerrek is a nice little flashforward.

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

And finally to end this post, an Easter egg that is actually accessible from outside of the email (kind of like Awexome Cross 98, actually, but this one remains an Easter egg, whereas that one is on the Games page normally). If you click the floppy disk at the end, you’ll be taken to the Homsar Main Page, which is also accessible through the final digit of the copyright date on any of the normal main pages. It’s … well, it’s Homsar. It’s one of the better main pages on the site, but still, it’s Homsar. There’s not much you can say about the guy other than he’s funky looking and says weird things.

So, next time, stuff.