A new update! No foolin'.

Bit of a quick explanation here: work has been terrible lately. Due to a ton of people quitting or getting fired, we’re severely understaffed and so we’ve been working 60 hour weeks for quite a while now. So free time has been limited and I haven’t gotten a solid chunk of time to dedicate to a blog post in a couple months. I’m not sure exactly when this will change, so consider the resolution to cover two years of material in one year to be officially broken. But I’ll see what I can manage today.

So first of all, holy crap guys, an update. I’m sure most people who read this are already aware, but there was an actual, honest-to-goodness update on homestarrunner.com on April 1st, and it wasn’t even lame like the previous April Fools update (Xeriouxly Forxe). I actually learned of this from the comment section on my previous post, because I hadn’t even bothered to check the site this time around. It doesn’t have a name other than April Fools’ 2014, but sure, let’s check it out. I’ve only watched this once so far, so I’ll be overanalyzing it like usual this second time around.

http://www.homestarrunner.com/aprilfools_2014_final.swf

So yeah, that was a thing. My first question is who asked Homestar to update “the best feature on the website”, as opposed to just the website in general. Also, and possibly a more important question overall - why was a crab shell stuck in his throat? But seriously though, this was definitely a decent revival, if you can call it that. I’m just gonna throw this out there – I don’t believe that this is an indication that the site will go back to updating regularly any time soon. It’s possible that a random toon or email could be added every few months or so, but even that is probably expecting too much. Overall I’m just glad that TBC (“The Brothers Chaps” – surprisingly, I’ve never used this abbreviation on the blog before) did acknowledge it in some way and gave the old fans something to talk about.

As for the toon itself, it was enjoyable. Not the best thing they’ve ever produced, but considering how long it’s been since a full-length toon like this, it was practically perfect. The animation and voice acting seemed spot-on to me, and the only thing that felt a little out of place was Homestar completely peeing himself over the “P.” Hairstyle Runner. I’ll admit it though, watching him laugh so hard at that made me laugh too, so it did its job. And of course, we couldn’t have an update without Strong Bad, and you’ve gotta admit the strongbad_eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee_windows98desktoptheme was kind of awesome. I can’t say I saw that coming.

And now, because I’m obligated to point this kind of crap out, here’s a couple things I noticed. First of all, Strong Bad is using the Compy here, even though it should be completely destroyed. Yeah, by the way, consider that last sentence spoilers for all two of you who didn’t know he eventually replaces it. I guess it makes more sense to use an older-looking computer with a Windows 98 theme, but the Compy was a text-based OS, so it still doesn’t really fit. Also, really, Strong Bad? You’re making fun of people for using Windows 98 in 2014 when your computers are consistently 20 years out of date? (Yes, I know that’s part of the joke.) And the last thing I wanted to mention was the fact that the song they sing at the end was the same as Homestar’s song from that really weird incomplete flash I mentioned that one time. Yeah, that one. But moving back to where I left off last time, we’ve got a little bit of everything in today’s update, starting with Teen Girl Squad Issue #5.

http://www.homestarrunner.com/tgs5.html

As always, it’s difficult to really “review” a Teen Girl Squad episode, because they’re basically a series of random happenings. I generally enjoy them, and this one is no exception. It’s a step up from the previous issue, which felt somewhat forced in places, and had weird voice acting. This one feels more natural, for whatever reason, which is a weird thing to say when it involves a violent sailing mishap, a skateboarding alien, and … whatever you call the series of events in the featured screenshot. I really couldn’t resist that one – it has The Ugly One wearing a three-piece bikini burying her head in the sand while a fat bird with its tongue sticking out is perched on her side. Meanwhile, So and So is inviting George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and Henry Rollins to go tandem parasailing, which they are happy to participate in. I’ll never deny that TGS is a weird, weird series, but I love it anyway.

Oh, and I forgot to mention – the reason the mailbox at the start eats the postcard is because it has birds on it. Remember how the first three issues all basically started out with a bunch of birds getting killed for no reason? Yeah, this was just a continuation of that. It doesn’t quite beat the helicopter gunning them down from the first issue (which was great because it was the first sign that this comic would be completely idiotic) or the buzzsaw from the third (which I just thought was funny in general), but it was still funny. So with that out of the way, let’s play a game. It’s called “can you find the funny part in Puppet Time,” and we’re starting… now!

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

So what did you find? Was it Homestar throwing the broken VHS tape on the ground at the start? Perhaps the noise that The Cheat made at the very end while he stole the floppy disk container? Both of those are decent guesses, but the real answer is “nothing in this was particularly funny.” It wasn’t horrible, but I can’t say it did much for me. So yeah, next? Oh boy, an Answering Machine. Those aren’t usually too bad.

http://www.homestarrunner.com/answer10.html

What this edition of Marzipan’s Answering Machine lacks in diversity is made up for in humor. You just have to kind of ignore Strong Sad’s calls. Sorry buddy, you’re my bro and all, but you were not bringing your A-game to this one. In fact, I’d say that you actually regressed somewhat to the 2001 era. Seriously, tell me that his “I’m a waste of space” line didn’t sound almost exactly like his baking chocolate/Necco Wafers lines from The House That Gave Sucky Treats or his whole “people started being friends with me because I had a pool” story from the Yello Dello commentary. Yech.

On the other hand, Homestar’s calls were genuinely funny. I don’t even care that they took up four of the six calls on this, it was worth it, especially the last one. If Homestar calling himself “sugarface” and suddenly breaking into song about getting “run over by a lawnmower blade” doesn’t make you laugh, then Strong Bad’s reactions should. And then once it’s over, you can find out what beat out the prank call lessons in Homestar’s “second-best $500 I ever spent” statement by clicking the tape. And there’s another Easter egg hidden there too, which I actually don’t think I ever noticed until now.

Alright, now before we move on to the next thing, I’m gonna have to take you back to 2004 for a minute. So here’s the situation. SBEmail 99, different town, came out three weeks ago. After getting TGS 5 and MAM 10, I was definitely looking forward to SBEmail 100, and figured it was probably coming soon. So it’s Monday morning before school, and I go to the website to see if it updated. Nope, still no new email yet. Well, maybe it’s actually there, but the main page hasn’t updated yet, or the cookies are out of date or something. So I manually go to http://www.homestarrunner.com/sbemail100.html, and get greeted by... well, Not the 100th Email.

http://www.homestarrunner.com/sbemail100.html

I’m not kidding, that’s actually what happened to me, and I am so glad that it did. This toon was made specifically for, what, maybe 1% of their audience? I don’t even care about its contents at this point, I can’t get over this. They seriously predicted that people in my position would manually try to get to the new email, and went out of their way to make this for that tiny amount of fans who would actually try checking it that way. That just completely blows my mind. It reminds me of something said in a Futurama commentary, where a joke was put in that only a fraction of a percent of their audience would actually understand, and they left it in because it would be completely worth it to that small group of people.

For everyone reading this who never knew that this page existed, there’s a good reason for that. It was never linked to anywhere on the site. I want to stress this again – it was made deliberately for people who were too impatient for it to get uploaded, and were basically staking out the url for when it came out. And it’s not like it was a long wait, either. The email actually got uploaded the following day. I’m not sure if anyone else who wasn’t in the same situation that I was can really appreciate this toon. Like I said earlier, I don’t even care what the toon is about. It’s honestly not that funny; I’d say that The System is Down was funnier, and that’s basically the same concept but not a secret page. But it doesn’t matter. The fact that this thing exists makes it one of the most memorable parts of the entire website for me. Nothing would ever match the surprise of seeing this that Monday morning, when it truly felt like this was made specifically for me. But now it’s time to check out the actual email that I was waiting for: flashback.

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

I’ve heard a few people say that this wasn’t really that great of a milestone email. Nuts to them, I say, I rather enjoyed this. If you focus on it purely as a milestone, then sure, it may not have accomplished anything huge, but I’m not sure what exactly people were expecting. The things that it did do as a milestone aren’t really the main focus here. There was a nice little callback to the original email at the start (and a decent song preceding that, for that matter), the somewhat unnecessary section of Strong Bad saying email 100 times (which I could have done without), and lots of good Easter eggs at the end. Seriously, be sure to check all of those out, most of them are pretty funny.

The main part of the email, the actual flashback/storybook bit, was a nice callback to the origins of the characters, and not only in the visual style. The “ten step footrace” was every bit as weird as the original “strongest man in the world” contest. There was no forced moral in this one, though. Apparently, it doesn’t matter if you find something (Homestar totally found the egg first) or win the contest to determine who gets it – all of that is completely arbitrary, and the person to come out on top is simply the one whose name is listed first in the title. Also making a comeback in this email are Mr. Bland and Señor, who contribute nothing (much like the original book), and the Prince of Town makes his first (and basically only) appearance pre-fishstick pile.

I’m not sure how or if I’ll be covering DVD material later on, so I figure I might as well mention a few things about the making of this email. The story was originally going to be done in the standard animation style, and would focus more on the duck shirt. Basically, Marzipan feels like Homestar has terrible fashion sense, and so she bought him a star shirt to wear instead. It turns out that Strong Bad had been wearing a star shirt up until then, and he refused to wear it afterwards because … reasons. I guess he just didn’t want to dress the same as Homestar or something. But basically, that would be the reason why he doesn’t wear a shirt any more. I guess that story would have been more … I don’t know, relevant, than the one we ended up with, but I have no problem with the giant egg story.

http://www.homestarrunner.com/main20.html

There’s also a new Main Page that was released a bit after this email, done in the storybook style. As with most Main Pages, there’s really not much to say about it, but Strong Sad’s line for the “email” button, with that specific delivery, is a favorite of mine.

That’s … about it. I feel like I should have more to say about this, but really, it’s not that much different from a normal email, and it’s not the best or funniest one they’ve produced, it’s just a bit above average. So I could end here, but there’s a couple other things I did want to look at. First off, there’s Thy Dungeonman II, which I talked about a little last time. I did record a video of that game, but I can’t seem to find the video anywhere, and I think it might have gotten accidentally deleted. I was going to post that in this update, but since it seems to be missing, I guess I’ll scratch that idea for today (I’ll probably record something on it later on, but I can’t be bothered to do it right now). And I was debating if I wanted to review the next toon in this post or not, but I guess I might as well, because I haven’t actually covered that much material yet in this post. So here’s Strong Bad Is In Jail Cartoon.

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

I’ve always enjoyed this one. In fact, I did a redubbing of it a few years back. It’s not that great, but here it is anyway. When I first started this blog and wanted to basically start out with a good toon that featured all the main characters, this was one that I had in mind (along with Where’s the Cheat?) but decided against it because it seemed to make more sense to just go chronologically and not really force new viewers into something with all the characters for the sake of… well, doing that.

This is the first toon in a while to portray Strong Bad as what he was originally intended to be – a villain. He’s always a jerk, and has certainly committed some theft and battery in his more recent appearances, but for the most part, he’s just kind of that one guy who cheats in contests a lot, exaggerates his coolness, and occasionally gets a bit violent. Here, he’s actually seen planning a robbery, and successfully kidnapping The Poopsmith. Not a huge shift in character by any means (he did steal stuff in the invisibility email, for instance), but a noticeable one. And on another note, apparently Homestar, Bubs, and Coach Z make up the law enforcement of Free Country, USA. Either that or they’re just the only ones who can be bothered to do it. It’s one of those things where the limited cast forces characters to take up a role that they’ve never had before just to make the story make sense. And now, a few unrelated things:

• I don’t really know what a baklava is, other than some type of dessert, but I love the way Strong Sad pronounces it. And I agree with Homestar about the whole tai chi thing.

• I’m not sure how putting a dash between Homestar and Runner would protect Marzipan. I mean, I kind of see where they were going with that, the whole “changing your name to avoid criminal activity” sort of thing, but it just seemed weird. Also, “Yeah, no. Is it?” is kind of an awesome line that doesn’t make any sense at all.

• Strong Bad gets kind of sidetracked a few times in this, first with the whole “sweet lady freedom” thing, then the “ransom money = retirement money = college fund” thing, and then the “powers of persuasion” bit. I do like when he rambles.

• Biscuitdoughhandsman is a thing. It’s been so long since I’ve first seen this, I can’t remember my original reaction to it, and now that I know about it it’s not really that funny anymore, but it certainly is … unusual.

I could probably go on a bit more, since this is one of my favorites, but I do want to finish writing sometime today, and there’s one more toon I wanted to cover just to bookend this post. We started with April Fools’ 2014, now let’s end with April Fools’ 2004, aka Professor Tor Coolguy Under Construction.

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

I doubt that this ever actually fooled anyone, so as an April Fools’ toon, it doesn’t succeed, but as a short and nonsensical Stinkoman cartoon, I have no complaints. It brings back memories of those Xiao Xiao stick figure animations, which were pretty awesome, and you can’t go wrong with the general weirdness that is usually present whenever Stinkoman shows up. Such as EATING PUDDING WITH A SPOON! And 1-Up dripping snot for some reason. Then of course, we have the Ninja Gaiden-style cutscene with Stinkoman actually saying “dot dot dot”, and really quick credits featuring the development team of the original Legend of Zelda, as well as Kevin, who did “cover-ups”.

There, I pretty much listed off all the funny parts of this in one incredibly badly organized paragraph. But sometimes, you’ve gotta just let that happen. So that’s it for today, hopefully I’ll be able to get back to making these semi-regularly again, but we’ll see. Thanks for still checking this blog, be sure to support the website, tip your waitresses, etc.