More standard SBEmails. Clearly nothing exciting will happen.

I’m only about an eighth of the way through the SBEmail archives, and already I feel like I’m running out of ways to introduce them. At least I can say the worst is behind us. As I mentioned last time, early-to-mid 2002 was sort of a transitional period of SBEmails, where the “respond in a cynical fashion” emails started to get replaced more and more often by some toons with more substance to them. And today I’ve got several more to go through from this era, starting with 3 Wishes.

http://www.homestarrunner.com/sbemail27.html

Looks like we’re back to the “never leave the computer” type again for this one. I guess they didn’t want to abandon that style completely yet. Of the ones from that category, this is probably one of the better ones in my opinion, but the email’s subject is probably the least funny part about it, oddly enough. The horns are great and all, but I find it more interesting that Brandon asks what specifically the second wish would be. I’m not entirely sure what the first one would be. Strong Sad and Homestar’s pain and suffering? Catapult that launches balls of cobras? Ali and Ali’s sister? The guy has a lot of interests.

I also enjoy the part at the end where he complains about “crapfully yours” and its various alternative forms. I do like using that as a closing to messages (and also “eat a steak”), but seriously people, it’s not that funny. I’m not even sure how that got started. But I digress, because I do enjoy seeing Strong Bad getting all cheesed off over it whenever someone says it. But anyway, there’s not too much else to say about this one, so let’s move on to 1 step ahead.

http://www.homestarrunner.com/sbemail28.html

I rather enjoy this one. I was never really into the choose-your-own-adventure books as a kid, though I did try a couple of them, I found them more irritating than entertaining. But it’s a nice touch added to this one. Apparently when it was first released, only the “take it in a different direction” part would play and there were no other options available. I never personally ran into this, but I do remember the “maybe” option glitching out the first few times I watched it. Instead of playing the usual scene, it would skip to about halfway through the “different direction” scene. That must have been fixed quite a while ago though.

Out of the three choices, I actually like the first one (“yes”) the best, and “maybe” the least. I don’t like the idea of covering Strong Sad in red ants, and the lack of an audible reaction to it is kind of upsetting. However, something is just funny about Strong Sad getting repeatedly pegged by dodgeballs and being unable to do anything about it. And then when you click on him at the end, you get a little minigame to mess around with. The only thing worth noting about that is that you can aim for the left side of his body, and then you’ll actually bounce the ball through the basketball hoop and get an extra point. And I guess I should probably say something about the last option… but too bad, I’m not going to. It sort of speaks for itself, honestly. And I’d rather just keep going and watch superhero name.

http://www.homestarrunner.com/sbemail29.html

This one’s actually kind of hard to talk about. It’s the introduction of Strong Badman, but if you’re looking forward to this character appearing a lot more often, don’t get your hopes up. He does show up in Easter eggs every once in a while, but unless I’m mistaken, it won’t be until after the 100th email that we see any of those, so yeah. It’s kind of a shame, because I think there is potential for a superhero comic parody on this website, but they never make it into a recurring feature. Oh well. At least we got “Stiny” out of it, that’s gotta be worth something.

I’ll just go ahead and say it – Stiny is an awesome name. I actually used it for my Basculin in Pokémon White 2, up until I replaced it with a second Basculin named Stinym’n, which was implied to be the superhero alter ego of the original. Yeah, don’t ask. Let’s just ignore that and check out 12:00.

http://www.homestarrunner.com/sbemail30.html

“Corey Dewey-Smith” isn’t quite as great of a name as Stiny, but it comes pretty close. I love the way that Strong Bad pronounces that, and the fact that he keeps going back to it.

And uh… yeah. The rest of this one is kind of forgettable. The solution they come up with is pretty ingenious, I have to admit, but not the most practical thing for people who are also having this problem. Which I imagine is the majority of people who still have VCRs. And car clocks, for that matter. I hate having to mentally subtract 3 hours and 34 minutes from the time displayed on the clock in our car, but screw looking for the user’s manual. I’d much rather just duct tape The Cheat to the dashboard.

This email also has an Easter Egg in it, which you may have picked up on if you remember how to access Homsar’s character page. Just hit the Eject button, then click on the tape, and repeat to keep getting different labels. I’m too young to get most of the references, but alas. Next up is … oh hey, it’s actually not a SBEmail for once. So let’s take a short break from those and watch the equally as Strong Bad-centric toon known as The Interview.

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

I’ve always liked this one. It’s pretty simple, but has a lot of memorable lines. So I might as well go with the standard ”bullet list of stuff that I feel like mentioning” to cover this one.

• I think Homestar walking by the window several times before coming in is probably my favorite gag in this. I don’t really know why, it’s just hilarious to me for some reason. Especially because he keeps coming from the same direction.
• And then right after that, the whole exchange with “I drove”, “yeah, you’re probably right”, and “brass tacks” is pure gold. This is exactly why I love Homestar.
• Homestar’s “resume” (pronounced incorrectly) is a grocery list that includes “five” and “dentifrice”.
• Strong Bad has an interest in baking (as we have seen before), as well as doing the Jumbles (as we will see in the future). Jumbles are a type of puzzle found in newspapers, for the record.
• Gotta love the fight between Strong Sad and The Cheat. It might even be more epic than the knife fight between Coach Z and Pom Pom on the stone bridge.
• *abruptly leaves and starts prancing around*

Trivia Time: This toon actually has an unfinished “beta” version available, which is almost identical, but lacks a few lines here and there, and the animation is a little different. For some reason, this unfinished one is called “interview 2” in the url. You can find it here. And also, according to the DVD commentary, this was originally meant to be a secret toon that you would only learn about by finding the url in a magazine called “Metro Pop”. They then decided later on to release it normally. So yeah, I’m not sure what that’s all about, but I felt like mentioning it anyway. That was a nice little distraction, but I guess it’s time to go back to the emails again. Next up is … *groan* sugarbob.

http://www.homestarrunner.com/sbemail31.html

I’d love to say that this is the last of the really boring, basic emails, but there are still a couple more I can think of that we haven’t reached yet. I mean, this one isn’t awful, but it’s a distinct step down from the previous few, and it’s not like those were a monument of excellence either. I’ve already said several times now that I never found Strong Bad’s claims that he’s popular with the ladies to be funny. And I’m sure this isn’t the last time you’ll hear me say that either. But yeah, this one is annoyingly similar to making out, which I still say is probably the worst email ever. And I really have nothing else to say about it other than the Tandy once again exceeding its technical limitations. Whatever the next email is, please, save me. It’s apparently flag day.

http://www.homestarrunner.com/sbemail32.html

It occurs to me that I haven’t really addressed the background music used in toons very often. Whenever there’s a major song like O Decemberween, I’ll talk about it, and I’ve mentioned that I like some other ditties like the song from little animal (which was reused from Where’s The Cheat, incidentally), but then there’s stuff like the Strong Badian national anthem. The lyrics are obviously the main thing that people are going to pay attention to, but there’s the little tune played on the old Casio keyboard also. Yes, it’s only 9 notes long and isn’t all that noteworthy, but it’s catchy enough for me to remember it years after the last time I’ve seen the email, and it didn’t write itself. Next time there’s some background music in a Homestar toon, just realize that they did have to write an original song for that and then play and record it. It’s easy to take little things like that for granted.

So as for the meat of the email, I don’t really have a whole lot to say about the song itself (other than I like it, and it fits Strong Bad and his little dirt patch quite well), but the flag does deserve some comments. The first few times I saw this, I never really paid much attention to the colors and design of the stripes on the flag, but once it was pointed out to me, I find it weird that I never noticed. The brown and white represent the dirt and fence of Strong Badia, and the red probably represents Strong Bad himself. Then of course you’ve got the tire, which is sort of a given, seeing as how it’s the entire population of the area, the big knife, and for some reason a snake. Which says “Snake” on it. Because snakes are cool, I guess.

Lastly, there’s a few Easter eggs in this one, in case you haven’t gotten into the habit of clicking on the toon and holding Tab the entire time it plays (which you will probably want to start doing at some point, but I’ll keep pointing these out until they become a regular thing). For this one, you’ll want to click on “Pablo Phoenix” once Strong Bad starts talking about the name, and also click on The Cheat after Strong Bad’s coin goes away. I could probably say a few other things about this one, but it’s getting kinda long already, and I do want to do one last email today, so let’s finish strong with gimmicks.

http://www.homestarrunner.com/sbemail33.html

First off, before I even talk about the major event here, I have to openly disagree with Mike W. Some of the basic emails were pretty funny, like trevor the vampire for instance, but on the other end of the spectrum, there’s junk like sugarbob and the basics. I’d much rather take a “gimmick” over just watching Strong Bad respond to an email and not do anything interesting with it. This is probably like the 12th time I’ve mentioned this, but it’s a point I really do want to drive home. Now, some might say that having too many cutaway scenes would make the humor too Family Guy-ish, but for this series, I think it works better, because they’re (usually) not irrelevant, and they’re not interrupting a larger storyline. Strong Bad Emails (and all Homestar toons, really) are short things to watch that don’t need to try to have a real “purpose”, as long as they’re funny. And if you can show something rather than just talk about it, then by all means, go ahead.

Ok, with that out of the way, the Tandy explodes. I know I just got done saying that there’s no story or continuity with this series, but Strong Bad’s computers are an exception to that. This is the beginning of the end of the Tandy era. The eventual switch to a new computer doesn’t really provide much of a difference in the way that emails are handled, but the switch does solidify the switch from the old simple style to the new, “gimmicky” one. It’s been slowly getting there for a while now, but this is an easily recognizable turning point of the series. And the delicious irony of all this is the fact that Mike W apparently did not want this change to happen, and yet it did in the most abrupt and unexpected way possible. I love it.

Well, I couldn’t ask for a better stopping point than this, so I’m going to take this opportunity to take a break from Strong Bad emails for a bit and focus on something else. Yes, it’s finally time to go back and look at some of the stuff I skipped over from 2000, plus some extra Museum junk and assorted riff-raff. Not all of it is completely boring, I think it’s actually quite interesting to see how the website has evolved over time. Hopefully most of you would agree with me, but if not, then look forward to some pretty decent SBEmails once I get back to the usual content. Just bear with me for a couple updates as I enjoy the inherent weirdness of the older material on the website.

Crapfully yours - The early transitional period of SBEmail

Today we get to start out with an email that acts as a sort of mascot for the early SBEmail era. (I’d consider the first 30 or so to be the “early” ones, which are a lot more basic than the more recent ones, though there are of course still some gems to be found.) I plan on getting through a lot of these today, so instead of building it up any further, let’s just prepare ourselves for the legendary tape-leg.

http://www.homestarrunner.com/sbemail19.html

Honestly, I don’t completely hate this one. It’s one of those “so bad, it’s good” sort of things. And making out and the basics are way worse in my opinion. This one is at least self-aware of its badness, as you can tell with Strong Bad’s comment at the end, which I think kind of validates the entire thing. Like I’ve said before, a good portion of these early emails are answered in a pretty direct way, and are not really meant to go beyond that at all. They’re just funny replies to stupid emails, with the occasional cutaway gag. Now as time goes on, the cutaways become the main focus, and sometimes the direction that a SBEmail will take is completely irrelevant to the original email received. But for right now, we’re sticking with this short and simple style of humor. And if you like that, then you’ll probably love spring cleaning.

http://www.homestarrunner.com/sbemail20.html

I can kind of relate to Strong Bad here. When checking my comments or private messages on Youtube, sometimes I hope that I get stupid stuff just so I don’t feel the need to reply to them. Which isn’t to say that getting an actual well-thought out message is a bad thing, but a lot of times I’ll get something, not know how to reply to it, and then I’ll put it off and eventually forget about it, which makes me look rude for ignoring it.

Overall, I’d call this one repetitive, but enjoyable. I can’t say any one of these emails is that great on its own (though the “crap” one was kinda funny, and I like the reference to tape-leg being pathetic), but having them all in a row like this worked out pretty well. I do like the “DELETED!” running gag, and it will definitely be seen outside of this email in the future. There’s just a simple pleasure that comes from the loud BRAAAAP noise, and I’ve somehow come to take it for granted and not think about how weird it would be if a computer actually did that. I just like how Strong Bad asked for some “good ones” at the end of the last email, and these completely failed to deliver. So does the next one, as a matter of fact. It’s the incredibly generically titled cartoon.

http://www.homestarrunner.com/sbemail21.html

The best part of this one is definitely the “moral” learned from it, which I try to apply to life far more often than necessary, even when it’s completely irrelevant. Other than that, the only other thing I feel as though I must point out is the closing of this email. "crapful, geroge" is really funny to me for some reason, as is Strong Bad's pronunciation of the name. But yeah, there’s really not a whole lot else to say here. It’s not a bad email by any means, but it’s somewhat forgettable. Later on, there will be several other SBEmails that could also probably use this title (crazy cartoon, best thing, the facts, and for kids all come to mind), and this is definitely the weakest of the bunch, but it’s also the oldest of the bunch, so this is not surprising.

The only other thing I could really say about this one is to point out the irony that most of these early SBEmails have featured Strong Bad as the only character, and they still came out pretty good. They didn’t have him doing commentary over it though, so there is a difference. I’m trying to think of cartoons I’ve seen with only one character throughout the whole thing, and usually they don’t turn out particularly good. If it’s just someone talking about something else, like what SBEmails do, then it’s fine. But if it’s watching a day in the life of some person without any interaction with others, then yeah, it’s probably going to be pretty boring. Alright, now prepare yourselves for some weirdness in this next one. It’s simply called sb_email 22.

http://www.homestarrunner.com/sbemail22.html

Technically I’m breaking chronological order by showing this one right now, but bollocks to that. This one is called “The Lost Email” by the page title not just because of the joke involved, but because it actually is a lost episode of sorts. No, there never was a version of this where Strong Bad makes fun of the British, what you’re seeing is the full cartoon. But it’s the lost episode because #22 was accidentally skipped over in the original run of SBEmails, and this one was actually made after #40. The idea of making the email about something that would have gotten it banned is simply part of the joke. I’m sure most of you didn’t think it actually got banned, but hey, just being thorough here.

I feel like this is almost more of a bonus episode than one of the normal run of SBEmails, mainly because of its extremely short runtime and abrupt ending. Now, if you haven’t seen it yet, there is more to this after the newspaper shows up. Click on “press conference” at the end to see an additional scene, and then you can click on the papers for an additional Easter egg. I can’t say I’ve ever found this one to be particularly funny (though the “screw all y’all” was a great statement, I have to give it credit for that), and I’m not British, so I can’t even pretend to be offended by this, so yeah. That’s pretty much my synopsis of this email. It has its place in the site’s history, yes, and it’s a nice little jab at actual banned episodes (which are often banned for stupid reasons, like the Family Guy episode that was allegedly anti-Semitic even though it really wasn’t), but it’s not laugh-out-loud funny. The next one, on the other hand, kind of is, at least in my opinion. So going back to the original upload order, here’s little animal.

http://www.homestarrunner.com/sbemail23.html

You know, as simple as this one is, I like it. The best thing about it, of course, is the incredibly silly chase scene at the end. All the elements come together perfectly here. Strong Bad’s expression, the music, and the absolutely awful looping animation in the background just fit together into something that I can’t help but laugh at. I don’t think it’s really a reference to anything in particular, just old cartoons in general. Not an OLD cartoon (if you want to see that, then click Strong Bad’s head during the chase, and say hello to Strong Man and The Sneak), but yeah, you know what I mean. This is just a highly exaggerated version of it, and I love it.

I’d try to say something else about this email, but this is another really short one, and there’s just not enough substance to commentate on. I do like the comedic timing on both of the kicks, and the futility of Strong Bad’s situation once Graw Mad shows up. Yes, I’m going to call him Graw Mad, you can’t stop me. But as I cannot stress enough, I am not a professor of comedy, and I have no place to critique it, all I can give is my own opinion. And my opinion is that this email is incredibly simplistic and kind of stupid, but funny. And next, we have an email about swearing. Kind of. Very classy. Whatever. the bird.

http://www.homestarrunner.com/sbemail24.html

Groan. So far, I’ve tried to come up with at least one positive comment about every toon (“tried” being the key word), but I’m not even going to bother with this one. It seems rather out of place when compared to the rest of the family-friendly humor on the website, and the only real joke is that none of the characters have fingers (or hands, or arms, as the case may be) so we can’t see them actually doing anything. But that doesn’t make it funny, at least not to me. I could mention that this email takes place outside (and is the only email to do so for the entire duration), but that’s pretty obvious and not all that interesting. Oh, and Pom Pom peeks out from under The Paper at the end. I guess that made me smile.

The one other thing I will bring up is the stupidity of this concept in real life. I understand that flipping someone off is the equivalent of swearing, but I don’t understand why the media feels the need to blur it out. With actual cursing, I understand the need to do it. It’s so offensive language can be cut out of the audio when played for a general audience, and so kids don’t pick up on the language. But here, it’s a finger. If they blurred out the whole hand to avoid having kids do it to each other all the time, that would be one thing, but usually they just blur out just the one finger. It’s not like there’s anything to hide there, it’s just stupid. But whatever, I’ve given this way too much thought. Why couldn’t this one have gotten banned for content instead of sb_email 22? Oh well. Let’s just cleanse our palettes with super powers.

http://www.homestarrunner.com/sbemail25.html

Here we have what I consider a good example of a “transitional period” SBEmail. These past few have been slowly shifting away from the “reply to a stupid or poorly thought out email” style, to the “respond to a fan’s question with a cut-away scene” style. There’s been some like this before, of course, but this is a nice round number, and it does feel more like a more current SBEmail than some of the previous ones. It’s still a bit on the short side, but it did its job well.

Strong Bad’s power here is never seen again, for the record. It would have been nice to see it come back once in a while just as an in-joke or bit of continuity, but I suppose there’s not much else you can do with it. Homestar and Coach Z are definitely the highlight of this one though. I like scenes like this where you’re hearing the second half of a conversation. Maybe it’s just because you can bring them up in real life and have it make no sense at all, but it never made sense in the first place, so it’s slightly less stupid than your average out-of-context statement. Ok, maybe that’s a bad reason, but I’m sticking to it. Alright, just one more for today, let’s finish up with CGNU.

http://www.homestarrunner.com/sbemail26.html

I certainly hope most people know what this is referring to. I remember these stupid commercials airing constantly back in the day. Not sure if they still do or not, but here’s an example of one just in case you want a comparison. This email pretty much relies on you being familiar with those, otherwise the joke is mostly lost. Just in case you haven’t seen them, they pretty much ALWAYS have “TV/VCR repair” somewhere in there, and always end with “or get your degree”. The art test thing at the end is actually from a different type of commercial, but one that also used to air pretty frequently around the same time.

But yeah, the reference to those old commercials is pretty much the one thing this email is leaning on for comedy. Some of the subjects were pretty funny too (I like “cutting ones” and “sending me a dollar”), but I imagine that some of the effect would be lost if you’re not sure what it’s referring to. All in all, I wouldn’t consider this one of the best emails, and I probably wouldn’t list it in my top 5 from the first 40, but it’s still pretty solid overall.

Alright, well that’ll do it for right now. I know I’ve still gotta go back and look at the crappy 2000 material that I skipped over, and I’ll be getting to that pretty soon. But next time I do still want to do some more SBEmails, because I have a specific stopping place in mind. I hope people aren’t getting too sick of these. If you’re like me and would rather watch the standard toons than these short, simplistic ones, then don’t worry, we’re almost out of the woods. I guess you could say that Strong Bad will stop simply answering emails and being funny without some sort of gimmick. And some people may miss those days. But I’m not really one of them, so bring on the gimmicks. We may be in for some explosive surprises.

The Cheat gets some attention. And Strong Bad is not funny.

In this, my 11th article and the first one being posted after the blog was actually created, I will be looking at … nothing. Sorry everyone, I decided there’s too much to review, and I’ve just given up.

Yeah, not really. Today is a cheatday of sorts, because I’ll be starting out with a couple of The Cheat-related toons, beginning with The Cheat Theme Song. Let’s give it a look before I say anything further.

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

Remember Main Page 15? Yeah, this is where that originally came from, and it’s not the last you’ll be seeing of it either. This particular animation style is called “Powered By The Cheat”. For some reason or another, it ends up getting its own category on the Toons page and everything, even though some other types of toons don’t get that special treatment. I’m not sure why this is, but my guess is that some people have expressed dislike for it in the past because of the extremely crude animation, and they try to keep it isolated from the other stuff. Personally though, I think it’s pretty funny. I can appreciate intentionally stupid things, and this falls into that category. But enough about the animation style, there’s other things to talk about here.

As stated at the end of the toon, this song was not made by the usual duo. It was written and performed by “The Skate Party”, a two-man band from Tennessee. After reading over the wiki page (and the transcript for the DVD commentary), I have now become aware that they actually just made the song as a fan submission, and then Mike animated the video to go along with it so that the song could be shared with the fanbase. I guess this makes more sense than them randomly commissioning some amateur band, but I always assumed it was just some people they knew previously. But nope.

As for the song, I agree with Strong Bad that it is pretty catchy, and I like the really dumb lyrics like “Who’s the man who looks like The Cheat? The Cheat.” Speaking of which, The Cheat does NOT look like Pikachu. But yeah, the song is good, the visuals are pretty funny, the ending was brief but got the point across (it had to establish that The Cheat animated the video), and overall, I don’t have anything bad to say about it. Nor do I have anything bad to say about the next one, either. Settle in for the longest toon so far (it’s about six minutes long) – Where’s The Cheat?

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

This toon is freaking amazing. I find it hard to believe that anyone would disagree with that, but still, I can’t let this one go without making a buncha comments on it. So… time to do just that.
 

• This is the first toon to feature all 12 main characters. I considered showing this one off in one of the first articles, because it could potentially be a great way to hook new viewers, but I decided against it because it does help to establish some of their personalities before being thrust into this toon. It also features Homsar, who I did my best to avoid early on.
• The first line of the toon makes me laugh no matter how many times I hear it. “Hey stupid, I brought you this stuff!” I should totally say that to my wife one day and see how it goes.
• I recently went to a hamburger place called “Five Guys” with a bunch of little notecards on the wall that people drew on, featuring various cartoon/game characters, internet memes, etc, except they all somehow related to the burger place. So I drew one of Homestar telling Marzipan to “put that fweakin’ Five Guys sandwich down”. Pointless fact, but yeah.
• Strong Bad’s prank call was a work of art. I just love how he’s calling for a legitimate reason and then decides, on the fly, to turn it into a prank. Involving Pom Pom’s death, for some reason.
• The Cheat and I play Jenga on Tuesdays. Tonight is my night to play Caaaaaaaaardinal Sins.
• “The Stick” is a great and well-defined place for people to meet. The previous sentence was both a factual statement and a sarcastic one. Take that as you will.
• Homsar has shown up again, and this time, not as an Easter egg. Since I saw this cartoon quite a while before ever seeing the homsar email, I never was quite sure what his deal was, but I figured it was just some random character that they invented on the fly and would never use again. I do like how Strong Sad tolerates his company though. Bubs apparently does not. (Though he does make a Where My Hat Is At reference)
• The ending raises more questions than it answers. Ok, so we found the Cheat, but why does he live in the grill? And if this was previously known, then yeah, I agree with Coach Z, why didn’t they look there first? I would have liked to hear Strong Bad’s explanation on that one. But I guess it’s funnier to just not know.
• Only certain children get prizes.

Well, now that Homsar’s made another appearance, I think it’s about time to finally address his position as the final main character. And yes, that is an official title, because he actually has his own character video. Remember the page with the VCR and stack of tapes? Well, it’s easy to miss if you’re not used to looking for secrets, but if you press the eject button, the Homsar tape will appear and you can click on it. As with the other main characters, I won’t review the video itself, but I will link to it here and give my thoughts on the character as a whole.

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

Homsar

When I was younger, Homsar was my favorite character, because I was totally into random humor at the time, and he is basically the embodiment of that concept. There are very few times when Homsar will say anything relevant to the current situation (the major exceptions being in his first few appearances). So basically, he’s a very quotable character, but not one that you would want to be the center focus of a cartoon.

Homsar is disliked by the majority of the main cast, with only Strong Sad and Marzipan tolerating him (and occasionally getting on even their nerves at times). He shows up in Easter eggs pretty often; I’m tempted to say more often than not, but I haven’t double-checked this. Of course, as I’ve established before, the character was born out of a spelling error. And so in many ways, Homsar is an outcast, both in terms of his relationships with others in the cast, and just as a character on the website as a whole. I’ve always felt that he is sort of “the bonus character”, and his place on the VCR menu supports this.

And just for the sake of completion, I suppose I should now include Homsar in my list of characters from favorite to least, which I posted in an earlier article. Rating these characters is difficult because most of them are enjoyable in very different ways, but I suppose if I had to come to a conclusion, I’d put Homsar between Bubs and The Cheat, in rank #6. No, I’m not going to repost the list, deal with it.

Alright, so now with that little distraction, it’s time to get back to our regularly scheduled programming, aka, a crapton of SBEmails. Let’s see how many more I can get through in my little unofficial length limit. Our next one is #15, the basics.

http://www.homestarrunner.com/sbemail15.html

Much later on, Strong Bad claims that this is his favorite email, and I can only imagine that he’s being sarcastic, because this is actually one of the least funny ones ever. It’s not completely void of humor, but it’s still pretty weak. I guess the humor of this one just comes from the fact that these pranks or whatever you’d call them are really lame. And usually I find dry humor to be funny, but the only part of this I found amusing was the “not like… organs” bit at the end. Also, because I’m obligated to point it out whenever it happens, TJ needs to learn how apostrophes work. Well anyway, next up we have band names.

http://www.homestarrunner.com/sbemail16.html

I’m the only person I know who doesn’t listen to music (like, at all), so a lot of these jokes are probably going to be lost on me, but overall, I wouldn’t say this is a bad email. Not by the standards of these old ones, at least. Now, as fans of the site are most likely aware, this was the origin of Limozeen and Taranchula (or the names for them, at least), which turn out to be actual bands in the Homestar universe. Though the funky thing is that Limozeen’s little sample from this email does not reflect their later style of music at all. Personally, I think the best part of this email was the name “invisible robot fish”, but that’s just me. Alright, two down, let’s see if I can do two more. Here’s studying.

http://www.homestarrunner.com/sbemail17.html

Ehh, I can’t call this one horrible, but it’s too similar to making out in my mind to really stand out. And since that email wasn’t funny, I usually think of this one as being pretty lame too. Now that I’ve actually gone back and watched it again, it wasn’t so bad. The ending was funny (be sure to wait a few seconds until Strong Bad comes back, the email doesn’t end when he leaves), and the Easter egg is pretty great too.

If you didn’t catch that, just click the orange text when it appears, or the area it used to occupy once he clears it off the screen. I don’t have anything profound to say about it, but I’ve had more experience than necessary with comments from stupid internet people (not on this blog, mind you, please go ahead and leave comments here) to appreciate a nice parody. Alright, I think one more will be good for today, so let’s end on a high note with stand-up.

http://www.homestarrunner.com/sbemail18.html

The last couple emails weren’t too bad (way better than the basics, at least), but this one is by far the best of the bunch. The humor sort of speaks for itself here – there’s not really any point in saying “it’s funny because his jokes were really lame and then his pants fell down”, so I’m going to focus on some other stuff. Like Coach Z’s giant afro. Somehow I’m not surprised that he looked like that when he was younger. And Strong Sad’s VCR is probably from the same era as Coach Z’s hair. That thing is freaking ancient looking.

Even though I do like this email, there’s not really much else I can think to say about it that isn’t just stating the obvious. I could go into some huge analysis about why Strong Sad would have that tape, and if he plans to use it for blackmail at some point, but that would not only be a huge stretch, but a completely pointless one. Strong Bad provides evidence for his own ineptitude all the time, there’s no need for a recording of it. I’m glad it was kept around, though. But anyway, I think that’s enough for now. Next time I’ll see if I can burn through another ten or so of these old emails. Hopefully I’ll have more than a paragraph to say about some of them.

Strong Bad: Everybody loves him

No point in building this one up at all, it’s time to review a bunch of SBEmails. I don’t have a specific amount planned, just enough to fill roughly three pages in my Word document, hopefully ending on a high note. Ready? Go. This is brianrietta.

http://www.homestarrunner.com/sbemail8.html

Eh, this one’s so-so. I’d point out how “awkward” it is to have Strong Bad acknowledging gayness, or how “mature” he handled the situation, but really, I don’t give a crap, and neither should you. The humor of this one isn’t the fact that Brian is gay (or is pretending to be), and Strong Bad rejects his invitation, it’s just the fact that he was so slow on the uptake. It’s good that Strong Bad didn’t make any sort of homophobic comments, but I wouldn’t expect him to. The website is, for the most part, clean and non-bigoted, so this isn’t a surprise. I’m sure there’s a few people out there who have issues with this email, but they probably also have issues with Ernie and Bert sharing the same bed, and are just looking for reasons to make noise. I don’t think this one really stands out in any major way.

However, it would be wrong of me to not mention that this was the start of a new trend in emails. Instead of the old format where Strong Bad’s head was off the side and you could see his mouth move in the reflection, this begins the style where his head kinda waggles all over the place and you don’t see the mouth. This was allegedly done to minimize animating the lip-sync, but it ended up taking way longer to animate, and it looks kinda silly after watching it for a long time. Not sure why they never switched back. Ah well. Anyway, let’s move along and check out i love you. No, it’s not the same exact thing but with a girl this time.

http://www.homestarrunner.com/sbemail9.html

This one’s short, but a classic. Fhqwhgads will be seen several times in the future, including a certain music video that may or may not be incredibly catchy, but for right now, let’s just focus on this email, and not what spawned from it later on. I think it’s pretty funny in a hard-to-explain sort of way. Mainly it’s just the fact that Strong Bad doesn’t entirely reject the email as a meaningless piece of garbage. He actually interprets it as a love note from someone with a really freaking long and unpronounceable name, and comes up with an awesomely blunt and accurate response to it. I’m not sure where the idea of painting a guy with a big knife came from, but it was indeed a better use of his time. And that too will show up a few times in the future. Man, this site loves in-jokes.

I guess I’ll address a debate of sorts regarding this email. Some people seem to think that this email was actually a virus, often known as the “i love you” virus, which infected a lot of computers back in 2000. This is most likely false, because I can’t seem to find any proof that the virus would contain random gibberish like fhqwhgads, and this was released two years after that particular virus had gone around. Also, as some people have pointed out, the “name” has a lot of letters grouped together in the same area of a keyboard, so it was most likely just made by some bored person mashing keys. Well, whoever you are, good job starting a nice little running joke. However, I think that trevor the vampire’s email is equally as baffling, and significantly funnier. Let’s take a look.

http://www.homestarrunner.com/sbemail10.html

I love this one. A lot of these early episodes focus on “troll” emails (though I hesitate to call them that, because that term is grossly overused and often misused), with the previous two being good examples of that. I think this one is the best of the bunch though. “Baffling” really is the best way to describe it, though I see no reason to believe that the email was actually sent with the ending accidentally cut short. None of the previous emails had the sender’s name and location in part of the main message (as opposed to a standard conclusion), and it seems fishy that this one would happen to do that and just so happen to be cut short mid-sentence. But hey, intentional or not, I still think it’s hilarious, and

http://www.homestarrunner.com/answer6.html

Oh, hey, it’s one of these. Yeah, just because there’s a lot of SBEmails, that doesn’t mean there can’t be other stuff mixed in with them, and I’m going by release date for the order here, so sure, let’s check this one out. It’s not one of the stronger Answering Machines, in my opinion, but it’s not terrible or anything. It’s just not as good as some of the previous ones, I think.

So we start off with Strong Bad’s obligatory prank call, which was kind of … meh. It wasn’t particularly clever or funny, so let’s just move on. Next is the King of Town’s call, which is self-aware, at the very least. Again, I don’t know if I’d consider it funny, but as I’ve mentioned a while back, the best thing about the King is that he’s kind of a useless character, and everyone seems to be aware of this. And now he’s become self-aware of the fact and trying to find ways to improve this. Then we have a call from Kevin, which oddly enough, is probably the highlight of this entire thing. If you’re wondering who Kevin is, well, he’s Craig Zobel. Who’s that? It’s one of Matt and Mike’s friends. Why is he calling Marzipan? I have no freaking idea.

Let’s just ignore that, and move on to Strong Bad’s second message, which is at least somewhat better than his previous one. As I mentioned before, I’m not a huge fan of Strong Bad trying to act like he’s a ladies’ man, but this attempt was tolerable, mainly because he did a really bad job of it. And I’m not entirely sure why he’s calling Marzipan about this in the first place. It’s not like he has anything to benefit from getting her to think he actually does have a girlfriend (unless it’s done to make her jealous, and he’s never been shown to have an interest in her, so probably not). Oh well, it at least makes for a decent lead into Homestar’s call, which is pretty funny. I don’t have anything in particular to say about it; it’s Homestar up to his usual cluelessness, which is always enjoyable. I kinda wish the other calls were as good as his, but oh well, they can’t all be winners. Time for more SBEmails – the next one is called i rule.

http://www.homestarrunner.com/sbemail11.html

Oh man, this is a really, really short one. And not all that funny, either, but it does introduce us to Strong Badia, which is a location we will see many, many times in the future. I guess it had to be established at some point. And I’ve never really given it that much thought, but it does fit Strong Bad’s personality perfectly to have a little area like this that he can consider his “domain”. It may not be much to look at, but it makes for a decent little hangout spot. And who never had a little area that they claimed as their own (or would have liked to, at the very least) while growing up? Strong Bad does have a tendency to act like an overgrown kid quite often, so it makes perfect sense that he’d claim ownership of some random plot of land somewhere. But here I am overthinking things again. Is the next email any better? *Checks list* Ah, credit card. It’s not too bad, I s’pose.

http://www.homestarrunner.com/sbemail12.html

This one’s got a decent enough concept behind it. It could have ended by just having Strong Bad taunt the people who sent the email by being all like “oh sure, like I’d really fall for that one, guys,” and then basically leave it at that, but nope, he goes the extra step to send the email to someone who legitimately does fall for it. I must say, the Tandy has some pretty advanced features for a terrible old monochrome, command-prompt-based computer. Not only can it load websites, but it can do so without you typing in a url, it displays a mouse cursor, and it knew exactly who to forward the email to without actually typing in their address.

I do have to also point out that “The Coolest Stuff Ever” used to be an old fan site back in the day, which is worth taking a peek at. You can find an archive of it here. The best part of this is definitely the “bag of money” that you could buy. For some reason, when I was a kid, I was convinced that there were stores where you could buy a bag of money that cost less money than the bag actually contained. I’m not sure where this thought came from, but it totally needs to be a thing that exists. And for those who have played my game, Bikdip’s Adventure 2, you may remember the part where you can buy 50 Rupees for 49 Rupees. That was indeed a reference to this old idea of mine. Anyways, the next email on our list is kind of a hybrid of two others that I just reviewed. So take a minute to watch i she be and see if can you guess which two I’m thinking of.

http://www.homestarrunner.com/sbemail13.html

This one’s totally just a combination of i love you and credit card. We’ve got the terrible, meaningless love letter from someone who probably shouldn’t even be allowed to operate a computer, and then once again, Strong Bad forwards the email to someone who could make better use of it. And then in a way, The Cheat sort of does the same thing by putting Strong Mad into a weird situation at the end. It’s kind of a weird reoccurring trend in these past two emails, and you could kind of count depressio in that number too.

And no, I’m not complaining about this, it’s just an observation. I think this one was pretty funny, even though the material wasn’t really anything we hadn’t seen before, it was still done well enough, and I like the little AIM scene at the end. Ok, just one more for today, and while it’s not as funny as trevor the vampire, it’s quite good in its own way. So let’s finish out with duck pond.

http://www.hrwiki.org/mirror/20020217_sbemail14.html

Now, the url on that one was different for a reason, and I’ll get to that in a minute. As for the email itself here, I’m not sure what to say. The whole thing is rather random. I’m not sure why Ron Kiwi would ask Strong Bad about this, or what sort of funny response he was hoping for. What he did get was Strong Bad having an odd little moment of tranquility, just enjoying feeding the green blocky ducks on his screen. With a simulator that he just happened to have.

The meat of this one, of course, is the fact that you can actually play the Duck Pond game by clicking The Paper at the end. Not that there’s much to it, but Strong Bad has a point. It is oddly relaxing to watch the ducks dart around the screen and eat the little squares you throw at them. Not enough to want to play it for longer than a couple minutes, but that’s all you need. Because once one of the ducks eats 10 pieces of bread, you unlock the Atari 2600 version of the game. And this is why I had to give a different url to this email – for some reason that I can’t find any information on, the second version of the game is no longer playable on the actual website. Instead, it just shows it for a few seconds and then the email loops back to the beginning.

Normally this wouldn’t be a big deal, but the Atari version actually has a few Easter eggs in it. First, press “8”. Then press “A”, a few times if you like. And then lastly, press “Y”. I’m not going to say what these buttons do, because I’d rather have it be a surprise. But yeah, I don’t get why they’d bother to code in these extra little things that very few people would ever discover, only to remove the playable version of the game later on. I didn’t even realize that it was ever taken off until I went back to play it again just now. Weird.

Alright, folks, that’s it for today. Next time, there’s actually a couple non-SBEmail toons (and no, they’re not Answering Machines either). And tomorrow, I might actually start the blog that you’re currently reading. Yes, I really have written this far in advance without posting any of them anywhere. I’m currently on page 40 of my Word Document, and apparently this is the 10th article. So I guess it’s about time that I stop being lazy and actually like, do something with all this material that I’ve written. So, see you next time! Literally. Kind of.

Homestar Holiday Classics (2001)

Happy whatever-day-it-happens-to-be-when-this-is-uploaded day! At the time of me writing this, it happens to be January 4th. Yeah, this was written quite far in advance.. Anydangway, today we’ll be looking at the rest of 2001’s cartoons, all of which happen to be holiday-related. First off, we have halloweener, the first SBEmail to clock in over one minute in length, and probably the funniest one so far. Not that it has stiff competition, mind you, but still, I enjoyed it.

http://www.homestarrunner.com/sbemail7.html

Not going to provide a non-generic screenshot here, because it would end up giving away the entire gag. Like a lot of these short emails, there’s not very much to talk about, but I did find this one amusing, and I’d like to see someone wearing this horrible attempt at a Strong Bad costume. There’s plenty of horrible Strong Bad costumes, of which we will see many in the future, but I don’t believe I’ve seen this particular one before.

Homestar’s first Halloween special, as you’ll recall, came out pretty good, especially given its age. For its follow-up in 2001, Mike and Matt decided to try something a little different, and presented us with an interactive experience with all the humor we’ve come to expect from the series, as well as replayability. I won’t give away the gimmick yet, but I’ll just say one thing – if you want to see everything this cartoon has to offer, you’ll want to go through it at least three times. Let’s make a visit to The House That Gave Sucky Treats.

http://www.homestarrunner.com/halloween2001.html

Since this is a fairly involved cartoon, naturally I have lots of stuff to say about it. First off, the major Easter egg. I doubt anybody ever found this on their first time through this, but you can unlock a secret character. When Pom Pom and The Poopsmith show up, give them the pumpkin on the ground instead of any of the other choices. You can probably guess who the secret character is, but I won’t spoil it yet in case you want to go back and try it yourself. And now, since I can’t think of any better way to share my thoughts on this, I’ll just go through all the parts of the toon in order.

Intro: Strong Bad’s Treat Snatcha is equally as lame as the mini-game from the previous Halloween toon. Oh well, at least with modern internet speeds, we’re not forced to play it while waiting. Also, I just love Homestar’s little entrance here, it’s awesome.

Coach Z: No idea who Humpty Hump is supposed to be, but it’s funny looking, and I love his little song. Preferred treat: Boston Baked Beans. I quote his response to that choice far more often than I should.
 
King of Town: I’m somewhat aware of Hagar the Horrible, but I can’t say I’ve ever read any of his comics. I do like the “Idaho” costume in the background too, even though I’ve seen practically nothing of The Simpsons, I thought it was funny even without getting the reference. Preferred treat: Stick of butter.

The Cheat / Strong Mad: Strong Mad’s costume is pretty generic, but seeing as how I’m from Illinois, and the particular football player he’s dressed as was from the Chicago Bears, I do vaguely know what that’s all about. And The Cheat is cute as always. Preferred treat: Rocks, because it makes absolutely no sense, especially if you choose it without having chosen Pop Rocks in a previous runthrough.

Marzipan: That song she sings at the start is embarrassingly lame, and being musically retarded, I don’t know who Joey Ramone is, so yeah, it’s pretty much lost on me. Preferred treat: Steak. Strong Bad’s kinda just wasting good (and probably expensive) food there for the sake of being a jerk. Well done.

Poopsmith / Pom Pom: Well, I’ve played Lazer Tag before, so I guess that counts as recognizing a costume, and I’m somewhat aware of who Michael Moore is, so … sure. Preferred treat: the pumpkin, but if that doesn’t count, then the Astro Pop. Fun fact: The Poopsmith will somehow unlock Homsar in all the Halloween toons in the future as well. Kind of a weird running thing they have going.

Homsar: I’ve only seen a little bit of Popeye, but I still knew who this was supposed to be, and I thought it looks quite funny on Homsar. Preferred treat: The wrench is pretty funny, but I like the taffy response too. I guess the wrench is my favorite, if only because it’s Homsar’s.

Strong Bad: I used to watch the old Carmen Sandiego game show all the time as a kid. Never played the PC games though. Preferred treat: Marshmallow bunny, with Butterfinger as a close second, if only for the aftereffects once Strong Sad shows up. Weird fact: clicking “kewpie dan” on the paper (if you choose the bunny) used to make a weird popup appear, but it no longer does.

Strong Sad: I know who Andy Warhol is, but I can’t say I’d recognize him by sight, so if someone did actually think to give him the soup based on appearance alone, then bravo. Preferred treat: Baking chocolate, because Necco Wafers are just terrible.

Bubs: Don’t know or care who Mars Blackmon is. Preferred treat: Bazooka bubblegum. His response to that one is another thing I like to randomly quote, and I like how it eventually spawned a never-released set of shorts making fun of similar comics. They were eventually put on a DVD, and I’ve read the transcripts of itthem, but never actually watched them.

Homestar: This costume has many new connotations to it now that I’m a fan of the Cinema Snob. I’ve never watched or heard of The Greatest American Hero prior to this, so that’s all I can think of. Preferred treat: Circus peanuts, definitely. Nothing compares to the epic Homestar circus dance.

Ending: Here we have the now-standard “stand around and critique each other’s costumes and also ramble about other crap” scene, which is always pretty enjoyable. Strong Bad’s ripping on the Lazer Tag costume is pretty funny, as is Strong Sad’s creepy experience. But of course, the best part of all this is the final line. I don’t know why they felt the need to have the dialogue constantly repeat, but it’s worth it. Also, if you actually do try to vote for one of the costumes, the email comes up with the text “I choose YOU, [character name]chu!” Kind of odd seeing a reference to something that a younger audience would actually understand, but sure, I’ll take it.

Alright, time to move on to something else. Now as a kid, Halloween and Christmas are the two big holidays of the year. Well… for families that celebrate Christmas. Sorry for generalizing there. And I always liked Easter as a kid too. But shut up. Point is, Thanksgiving is often overlooked, because it’s not as fun as the other two. It’s basically just a big dinner, and I guess normal families usually have some sort of reunion on that day, but mine rarely did, so yeah, I never cared for it much. And this next cartoon continues in that same spirit. Let’s just watch Some Stupid Turkey and then move on.

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

Yup, not much to say about that one. Instead of trying to come up with some original insight on this, I’ll just quote Matt from the DVD commentary: “I did this... on Thanksgiving. I didn't think of it until Thanksgiving, and put it up, like, at— at 11:00 p.m. on Thanksgiving.” That pretty much sums this one up. But I’ve got some good news! Unless I’m forgetting something, this is the last “Strong Bad sings a dumb song or does something stupid for the holiday” short. There’s still other unfunny, short cartoons, don’t get me wrong, but this is the last of that particular … genre. And that’s something that I am thankful for.  So let’s finish off the 2001 toons with a true holiday classic, known simply as The Best Decemberween Ever.

http://www.homestarrunner.com/xmas2001.html

You know, the title of this one is actually pretty appropriate, because in 2001, this might have been the best Homestar cartoon ever. And even now, when it has a lot of competition, it still stands up really well. I honestly don’t think there’s a single scene that I have any issues with. It’s consistently funny throughout, most of the characters get a nice role, and Homestar is at his absolute best here. I’ve been saying for a while that I love Homestar’s character because of his constant optimism and failure to realize that anyone could ever dislike him, and this toon shows that very well.

This cartoon has a number of Peanuts references in it. I’m not going to bother pointing them all out, because I’m sure most people are already able to pick up on them, and if not, then you probably don’t care. Knowing that, it’s kind of ironic how much this toon distances itself from “the true meaning of Christmas”. First of all, they don’t call it Christmas. There’s plenty of reasons why Matt and Mike may have decided to do this, not the least of which is to make it appropriate for viewers who don’t celebrate Christmas. Though to be fair, Decemberween does share far more similarities with that holiday than, say, Hanukkah. Overall, it doesn’t really matter, and I’m sure that most people are sick of the overly PC attitude of the media today, but here, I feel like it works. Calling the holiday “Christmas” would give it ties to Jesus, which the previous Holiday Greeting arguably did in a rather awkward and borderline offensive way, and it’s best to just have it be a generic gift-giving holiday. Besides, it’s a funny name.

I’ve got a lot of other things to say about this toon, but since they don’t really fit into any sort of narrative or meaningful reflection, I think it’s time to bust out the bullet point format again. I feel like doing it this way is kind of taking the easy way out, but it suits the shorts quite well. If I was reviewing a show with longer episodes and some sort of a cohesive, ongoing plot, then I’d probably stick to paragraphs more often, but I’m not, so I won’t. I hope people don’t mind.

• I think this is the third time that Homestar has been surprised by Strong Sad’s presence. It’s a completely useless running gag, but one that I find inexplicably funny.
• Strong Sad “getting locked in the bathtub” always kind of bugged me. Clearly he meant the bathroom, right? Actually, no. Many years later, in another Decemberween toon, we actually get to see what he was talking about.
• Homestar mentions that he might be able to get Strong Bad to like him again. I’m not sure if there was ever a time when they were friends, but then again, this is Homestar we’re talking about, who doesn’t seem to care or notice that Strong Bad doesn’t even like the gift that he picked out. So I won’t look into that too deeply.
• Coach Z makes a nice little callback to Yello Dello with his “sports play” analogy. I wonder how many other times he’s used that. And apparently Bubs is starting to use that advice too. I like how it kept getting brought up again throughout the cartoon.
• Another thing about Coach Z – this cartoon actually shows off all three main facets of his personality, which is surprising, given how early in the series this is. You’ve got the actual coaching side (his advice), the creepy side (Scratch n’ Sniff Calendar), and the pathetic side (gets drunk off Listerine). Well done, Coach.
• The rejected presents from Bubs’s store were amazing. We’ve got Tag Team Wrestling for the NES (the origin of Strong Bad’s name), monogrammed oven mitts (another Yello Dello reference), a freaking Strong Sad voodoo doll, and a Peter Frampton album that is, mysteriously, already signed specifically for Strong Bad. That one’s a bit obscure, but there were Frampton references on the Strong Bad main page and the making out email. So… yeah.
• You can click and drag the colored lights on Bubs’s store. I don’t know why you would want to do this, but there you go.
• I should totally get someone a Deep Impact DVD for Christmas one year, but it would have to be someone who would understand the joke. Unfortunately, I don’t think I know anyone who would.
• Speaking of that DVD though, I realized that Strong Bad wasn’t able to tell what the gift was before he opened it. If this really happened three years in a row, I think I would have probably caught on by year four. And actually, were DVDs even around in 1998? *goes to check* Huh. I guess they were, but most people hadn’t made the switch from VHS yet. And apparently, Deep Impact was released on DVD on December 15, 1998. That works out oddly well. I have now learned something today.
• The song at the end is a classic. I don’t really have anything in particular to say about it, but I like it. I just kinda wish that it made sense when singing it out of context. If you don’t realize that the lines are sung by different people, then parts of it are sort of odd.

And with that done, I’ve finished up everything from 2001. Mostly. Like I’ve already said a few times, there’s some stuff that I intentionally skipped over, and I’ll be getting to that at some point. But next time, we’ll be starting the material of 2002, which some call “the year of the SBEmail”. Okay, maybe nobody actually calls it that, but they should, because emails 8-56 were all released in that year. Holy crap, that’s a lot of emails. There’s a few other things scattered throughout the year too, but the vast majority of the content is going to involve us looking at the back of Strong Bad’s head as he stares at a computer monitor. Good thing most of it is legitimately funny. But if it does get too repetitious, then I at least have some other site features to cover when I feel it’s about time to take a break. So next time, viewers, join me as I’ll be making snarky comments about Strong Bad making snarky comments about his viewers. … Huh.