Random humor strikes back (not that it ever really left)

At this point, I think my main goal for this blog is to prevent any of the “articles uploaded in this month” counters on the right side of the page remain at one (or zero, for that matter). Update from the future: Yeah, I kinda failed at that goal. Oops. It’s been a couple weeks, and I have mandatory overtime yet again, but I think I can squeeze one of these out. So let’s start off the week with a good’n – crazy cartoon.

http://www.homestarrunner.com/sbemail72.html

This is another one of those emails that is pretty well-known for establishing a new aspect of the website, kind of like dragon and japanese cartoon. But the thing is, Sweet Cuppin’ Cakes isn’t really revisited that much in the future. If anything, this establishes The Cheat’s distinctive animation style. Yes, we’ve seen it already in a couple music videos, but this is the first one with The Cheat’s inexplicable voice acting and the self-glorification that tends to show up in his cartoons. I don’t want to completely glance over the actual email section of this, since the whole “I’m not even gonna call you ****** again” bit is pretty funny, but there’s a lot to talk about here, so I think that’s about all I need to mention.

So … Sweet Cuppin’ Cakes. I can see exactly why this never took off as a major spinoff of the website – it seems like it would get old pretty quickly. The “one character chases another” plot has been very successful in some classic cartoons like Wile E Coyote & Road Runner, Tom & Jerry, Sylvester & Tweety, and probably a billion others, but I’m not too sure about Sherlock (yes, that is the cowcopter’s name, according to DVD commentary) vs. The Worm and Eh! Steve! vs. The Wheelchair. I think it’s mainly because the typical Homestar brand of humor is primarily dialogue-based, not really slapstick. So yeah, I’m kind of glad it only shows up a couple times.

Personally, I find The Cheat’s cartoon to be the best part of this email, but I can see people thinking differently, since both parts are pretty solid. But you can’t go wrong with “I can do it. I will do it nine times”. I’m not sure why that line is so quotable, it just is. And then you’ve got the trophy obsession, randomly magenta Coach Z, and funky fake-out ending. It’s one of the many things on the websites that is legitimately funny, but doesn’t lend itself to intelligent discussion. One thing I will point out about it is the fact that, much like the original Teen Girl Squad episode, this cartoon got a de-SBEmailiarized version released. It was mainly to fill out the Powered by The Cheat section of the Toons page (which I still don’t see the purpose of, but whatever).

One last thing before I move on – despite me saying that Sweet Cuppin’ Cakes doesn’t make much of a comeback beyond this email, it did actually get a Main Page dedicated to it a few weeks later. It’s pretty standard fare for Main Pages, with some kinda interesting things like the HTML behind the background, but the main thing I want to point out is something I actually just learned about when I looked at the wiki page – after a site-wide April Fools gag, this page got a little glitchy in a few places for some reason. If you’re interested at all, I’d look at the wiki page, which links to a mirror of the old version. I don’t see the point in pointing out all the differences here, since they’re pretty minor and only super hardcore fans would care about it. So instead, let’s move on to the site’s best source of random, “crazy” humor – Teen Girl Squad (Issue #3).

http://www.homestarrunner.com/tgs3.html

I’m beginning to realize the futility of properly reviewing Teen Girl Squad (or any other random humor-based toons, for that matter), but that won’t stop me from at least pointing out which parts I think are funny. For this one, it’s definitely the possums. I don’t even know why, it’s just the way Strong Bad says it, and how the word just slides in from the side of the screen. The sun turning into a buzzsaw and killing the birds at the beginning is pretty great too. That now marks the third (and unfortunately, last) time that birds are randomly killed by something at the start of a TGS issue. I rather liked that running gag.

So for my attempt to analyze the un-analyze-able, I do have to question What’s Her Face’s exclusion from the rest of the group in this issue. It’s something that’ll happen a lot in future issues also. Having never been part of a squad of teen girls myself, I can’t claim to understand the mentality that goes into those kinds of things, but I just figured that if you’re going to be superficial and obsessed with looking SO GOOD, the character named “The Ugly One” is probably the one you’d exclude. I’d say it’s because she’s the smart one, but that’s actually So and So, at least if you’re talking about book smarts. What’s Her Face is just the logical one. I dunno, maybe she just doesn’t have enough money to hang out with the rest of them. I think that’s probably the best I’m going to get out of this. So maybe the next email will be slightly more intelligent. Spoilers – it’s not really. So here’s mascot.

http://www.homestarrunner.com/sbemail73.html

I’ve been staring at the screen for a good ten minutes now trying to figure out what to say about this email. I’m not the type to just write down the first thing that comes to mind, like “dumple”, and then just roll with it and see what happens. But maybe I should try doing that more often. It seemed to work out for the past few sentences, at least. But yeah, dumple. That’s an awesome name for a thing, and I always think of it when I fight the Water Dumple enemies in Pikmin. And then I end up thinking about the “really hungry and tired” Easter egg, which I always found funny for some reason.

So anyways, here we have The Cheat breaking a bunch of electronics, including an NES (I hope it was broken to begin with, otherwise that’s a complete waste of a quality piece of equipment). And Coach Z continues to confuse everyone by referring to both “The Chort” and “The Cheat” in the same sentence. Some people seem to think that he was referring to two different people, but I think it’s just Coach Z being his usual confusing self. It’s been hinted to in a few toons (not any that we’ve watched yet, from what I can remember) that his accent is pretty much bogus and done just for attention, so I see this as being one of those cases. It’s like slowbeef saying “Mare-io” specifically because it annoys viewers.

This email is somewhat noteworthy for the bit at the end that shows the notes for the CGNU fight song. I’m sure that influenced some high school bands to play the song while messing around. I say this because I know I certainly did that, and taught the song to a few other people too. And there’s a Quote of the Week from a few years later of a band playing it, so yeah, clearly I wasn’t the only one to make any use of it. And in the next email, we get to see The Cheat make use of some privileges.

http://www.homestarrunner.com/sbemail74.html

It’s nice to have a more normal SBEmail after the past few things I’ve had to review. Yes, I just called an email that involves relaxing in a crisper drawer “normal”. Compared to crazy cartoon, though… yeah. This one may have some wackiness in it, but that’s par for the course in this series. But I usually find the little things funnier, like The Cheat showing up on the wrong side of the stool and catching Strong Bad off guard. And the “hardest chord ever” Easter egg that requires eleven fingers to play. The weird “killer truck” movie that The Cheat is watching is pretty funny too. And I’ve gotta admit it – when I was younger, I went through a phase where I’d mute TV shows and just read the closed captioning. I don’t know why I did that, I just discovered the CC button one day and wanted to make more use out of it than necessary.

Well, I’ve got to ask eventually – what did The Cheat do to Strong Sad’s face and hands? Apparently nothing permanently damaging, since he’s fine the next time we see him, but still, that sounded like a drill or something, and all I can think of is a certain scene from the origins email. We haven’t gotten to that one yet, but some of you probably know what I’m referring to. But I don’t want to dwell on that too much, so instead, I’ll just ask what the “Strong Mad Bath” and “Strong Bad Math” privileges entail, and why The Cheat would want to take advantage of either of those. Or “braces”, for that matter. But alas, some things were not meant to be. So let’s see, will the next email be another sort of “reserved” one, or will it be more craziness? Well, it’s called funny, and you can see the screenshot of it right below this paragraph, so I think you can probably figure it out.

http://www.homestarrunner.com/sbemail75.html

Replace all instances of the word “funny” with the word “stupid” and I think this email would be more accurate. I was originally going to sum this one up with just the word “no” and nothing else, but after rewatching it, I don’t completely hate this email, I just hate part of it. Mainly the whole floppy disk / squee squaw / ketchup thing. I’m not going to act like this is offensively bad or anything, I just never cared for it much. So I’ll focus on the positives here.

First, the intro. It’s random, yes, but hey, I’m really not one to hate on random stuff, it’s just hard to write about. But I like little unexpected things like that, they’re usually pretty funny. And as far as the actual “funny” stuff goes, I did at least get a laugh out of the scene with Strong Bad dancing around like a complete spaz (well, that’s half of the email, but I’m specifically referring to the part with Strong Sad). And the whole bit with the ketchup bomb was kinda funny too. So overall, it’s not a terrible email, but it’s never been a favorite of mine either. Whenever I think of it, all I can think of is “Aunt Ruthie! Aunt Ruthie! There’s ketchup on the computer!”, which I always found to be painfully unfunny. And because I’d prefer to not end on a subpar email, let’s check out a couple more, starting with sibbie.

http://www.homestarrunner.com/sbemail76.html

I think this and trevor the vampire are the only emails named after the sender. Must have been pretty cool for Sibbie to see his/her email get answered, assuming they stuck around long enough to actually see the result – I sometimes wonder how many emails are sent by someone who discovers the site one day, and then forgets about it later that week. I don’t think this would be one of them though, since they knew about fhqwhgads. And I hope they remembered the cheat talk email too, because the callback to that in the Easter egg was awesome.

I’ve said a few times now that it’s very unclear how Strong Bad’s “email show” is actually being broadcast and viewed by people in-universe, but I can generally ignore this before it’s just a cartoon and doesn’t always have to make sense. But here, the song about Sibbie was recorded, remixed, put on the internet, downloaded by Strong Sad, and became a top-rated song on the radio within a matter of minutes. And then it happened again to “I Freakin’ Hate Sibbie” in about three seconds, with no recording equipment anywhere nearby. So it’s kind of hard to ignore here, but at the same time, that’s the entire point of the joke. So what’s there to say? I can’t complain about something making no sense if it’s not supposed to.

I’d also make some sort of a comment here about Strong Sad’s iPod, but I’ve never owned one, nor do I really know anything about them, so there’s not much to say. Forum posts in regards to this email were the first time I’ve ever heard of them, though, so I’m guessing they had just recently become popular. From what I can tell, they were first released in October 2001, and this email was from June 2003, so make of that what you will. Wouldn’t be the first time I hadn’t heard of something until years after it became relevant. Anyway though, one more email for today, and I don’t have any clever way of introducing it, so here’s suntan.

http://www.homestarrunner.com/sbemail77.html

I always remember this as the definitive “summertime” email, not only because of the subject, but because it was the first one to be released after summer vacation started. I had just graduated from Junior High, and many of my friends (who were also Homestar fans) were going to a different high school than me. I just remember having AIM conversations about the new emails when they would come out, this being the first of them. Judging this email by its actual merits and not my personal nostalgia for it, it’s still pretty solid overall, but that’s what I specifically remember it for.

My favorite part about this one is some of the little touches. Marzipan’s drink umbrella is an interesting design choice, and I like the Easter egg at the end that reveals that the Ab-Abber 2000 doesn’t actually include the marker. So apparently it’s just a box with instructions in it. Then there’s the matter of the cloitsterizer, which is a wooden piece of cheese on a string that the Chapmans actually saw a kid dragging around in a store once. I would really love to know the story behind that. Instead, the only stories we get out of the DVD commentary are regarding The King of Town’s sunglasses and Gooblies the stuffed lobster. But everyone knows that the best name for a lobster is actually “Hippo”.

This email also introduced the phrase “all up ons”, which is used many times in the future for a number of things, joining the ranks of stuff like “LLC,,.” and “b/w”. Except those two aren’t ever spoken aloud, so maybe they’re bad examples. But I just now realized that I haven’t really said anything about the main subject of the email. Do I really have to? Strong Bad draws fake abs on himself. That is such a Strong Bad thing to do that it doesn’t even really need to be talked about. So … yeah, I think I’m pretty much done with this one. And therefore, done with this post.

Update from the future! It turns out I actually missed an update from this timeframe - released on the same day as the sibbie email was Marzipan's Answering Machine 8.0. So let's take a look at that too.

http://www.homestarrunner.com/answer8.html

Here we have a mix of some of the usual Answering Machine staples: Coach Z being creepy, Strong Bad leaving pranks, and Homestar being dumb as usual. I'd say this particular version doesn't stand out in any huge way, but there's still some observations to be made. First of all, we have a follow-up to an older Answering Machine (4.0 to be specific) where Marzipan says that if Strong Bad is going to leave a prank call, it should be the one where she wins a contest, because that's her favorite. I can't say it's my favorite, since he's definitely had funnier material, but it was a solid effort. And I did like his stumbling over the word "stoop", though that was probably just Matt messing up and then rolling with it, rather than something actually written into the script.

This is also the first time that Marzipan receives a call from someone that doesn't exist within the same universe/timeframe as the main characters, in this case, Stinkoman. It's never fully established if the 20X6 characters exist in the future, or if they're just a show-within-a-show sort of thing. In fact, I think both explanations are given simultaneously. (I'm mainly thinking of the time capsule email for the "future" argument). But either way, it's just a joke, so who cares. Apparently I do, because I wrote about it. But one other thing that I'll bring up is that the Grape-Nuts Robot does exist here, which means that either Strong Bad wasn't completely making up that email in personal favorites, or that he decided afterwards that it was a good idea and commissioned Bubs to make one anyway. However, in that same email, Strong Bad claims that he left such a good prank call that it made the Answering Machine explode, which evidently did not happen here, unless canonically that email takes place after this.

Well, I've used the term "canonically" in reference to Homestar Runner, so I don't think there's any hope left for me to be taken seriously. So I guess I'll just head back to the future and write the second post of 2014. See you then!