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.

The birth of SBEmail - Remind me again why this caught on?

Previously on Homestar Rerunner, we watched some of the last toons made during the website’s simple age, where Strong Bad reading text of a screen and making fun of viewer submissions wasn’t necessary for a good time. All that is about to change, for better or for worse, starting with a little something called some kinda robot.

http://www.homestarrunner.com/sbemail1.html

There you have it, folks: the humble beginnings of Strong Bad Email. If you’ve never seen any modern SBEmails, you may wonder why on earth these ever became popular. Well, let’s just say that things grew from this basic template until eventually, the only difference between a SBEmail and a regular toon is the fact that the idea for a SBEmail cartoon is based on a viewer submission, and they involve scenes of Strong Bad reading the email, replying to it, and making fun of grammatical errors along the way. I can’t say I really have a major preference for either type. I do like how generic toons can focus on other characters a bit more, but they show up in the emails also, and sometimes Strong Bad’s smartass comments are legitimately hilarious.

I’m not exactly sure where this email came from. Obviously, there was no “Click here to Email Strong Bad” option before this toon (Unless the paper on the old Games Menu originally did that, but I have no proof for this). If I understand the DVD commentary correctly, Abdi was one of a few people who had emailed Matt and Mike, and so I guess they sent out some replies to the effect of “hey, you should send an email to Strong Bad and we’ll pick one for him to answer”. I guess this was the best one from the original batch. It’s not a bad question (at least it’s not “how can you type with boxing gloves on”), but Strong Bad’s reply is a little lacking I suppose. Oh well, I can’t fault it too much, they did have to design the whole format of the toon from scratch, so obviously there was no desire to make anything extravagant out of it just yet. But now the prep-work is done, so all that’s left is to wait for some emails to come in and pick a really dumb one to have Strong Bad answer. What follows is history in the making. I present… homsar.

http://www.homestarrunner.com/sbemail2.html

This one email is a major reason why I wanted to stick with the chronological order when reviewing the material on the website. And then of course, the stupid Who Said What Now game kind of ruined that. But hopefully some of you took my suggestion and skipped that, and so this is your first exposure to Homsar, just as it was originally intended. I think this email is pretty straight-forward, but just in case anyone’s confused, yes – the email was supposed to say “Homestar”, and yes – Homsar was invented for the sole purpose of making fun of this typo, and then was immediately killed off. Except he gets better, somehow.

I think it’s awesome. Someone who has watched other stuff on the website where Homsar makes appearances might miss the point of this email, but that’s why I stuck to this format, so the joke could be appreciated by a new audience. Remember, I didn’t actually discover Strong Bad Emails until I had already watched everything else on the website several times over and assumed that there was no other material to see. It wasn’t until email #44 that I became enlightened. I think the only other place Homsar appeared at the time was in the Where’s The Cheat? cartoon, but I had mostly forgotten about that, so I did appreciate this joke for what it was.

There’ll be more on Homsar later on, once he makes some more appearances. For now, let’s just move on to some more emails. The next one is called butt IQ.

http://www.homestarrunner.com/sbemail3.html

Yeah, I’m not a huge fan of this one. A lot of these older emails are like this, but every once in a while a gem like homsar will show up to keep us interested. Really though, there’s not much to say about this. It’s the origin of “crapfully yours”, which gives it some bonus points I suppose, but otherwise, someone was just taking Strong Bad Sings a little too literally. Also, keep in mind how terrible the graphics were for the Homestar picture in this email though, because the next email is about to disregard that completely. Let’s take a look at homestar hair.

http://www.homestarrunner.com/sbemail4.html

I completely believe without a doubt in my mind that the Tandy 400 with its ancient, green-lined screen and text-based OS would be able to display a full-color image like this Hairstyle Runner screenshot. Don’t worry, I’m not going to be a stick in the mud and complain about it being unrealistic, it’s just funny that they followed up the previous email’s block graphics with this. Temple of Apshai has color in it too, but at least it has extremely primitive graphics that you’d expect to see on an old computer like this. For the record, the wiki says that this game is actually called “Chaos: Battle of the Wizards”, and that Temple of Apshai looks completely different. I’ll take their word for it. So anyway, not much else to say about this one (as simple as it is, I did laugh at his reaction to the attachment), so uh… making out.

http://www.homestarrunner.com/sbemail5.html

Oh hey, it’s the least funny email ever. I’ve never really been a fan of Strong Bad’s attempts to act like a ladies’ man, and this email is no exception to that. The one thing that could have saved it would be if he actually sang a bit of his “hit single”, but alas. So no point in dwelling on this one, let’s just move on. Before SBEmail #6, let’s take a look at Marizpan’s Answering Machine #5.

http://www.homestarrunner.com/answer5.html

I think this is the best Answering Machine yet. I do hope other people enjoy these as much as I do, because there’s a ton of humor to be found with this. I think that Strong Bad’s obligatory prank call was sort of weak here, but the rest of them more than make up for it. Coach Z’s call on its own is pure gold. I mean, there’s really nothing more you can say about that, but I find his downward spiral from just being sort of silly to breaking down and sobbing over absolutely nothing to be absolutely hilarious. I’ve never been drunk myself, nor have I associated with anyone who was, but I’m not sure if that matters. Bubs yelling about bananas in the background just makes it even better, because I for some reason find it funny whenever someone’s rambling in the background. And then of course, Coach Z calls back and offers a blanket apology for whatever it is he may have done. And yet somehow remembers that he claims to be a poet. Yeah, I’m not sure either.

Homsar’s back! Apparently being crushed by a heavy lourde didn’t kill him (I point the blame squarely at tight pants … or cartoon physics), so he’s able to make reappearances in the future as 12th main character. I’m still not quite ready to address Homar’s characterization yet, because he’s only had a couple lines, and neither of them indicate what he’s going to be like in future appearances. Right now he just has an extremely goofy voice, and that’s about it.

Now as for Homestar, his message is really not all that special or laugh-out-loud funny, but I do have to address it for some of the truths in telemarketing. In my personal experience working for AT&T DSL sales and U-verse retention, we are in fact supposed to address whoever we’re talking to with a gender-specific title, but oftentimes it is impossible to tell who you’re actually talking to, so I usually omit this and just carry on. We do actually do the “Mr. or Mrs. whoever” thing on answering machines, because we don’t know who will pick it up, but yeah, I wouldn’t be surprised if someone actually did the “sir or madam” thing. And I can also relate to him not knowing what the rates actually are. You have no idea how many times a customer will ask me “so what are these discounts you’re offering”, and I have no choice but to answer “well… I don’t actually know until I get your account open.” I mean, I know what we’re offering, but it really does depend on the customer, and we have to go through a ton of stupid mandatory statements and crap before we’re allowed to actually discuss what the customer is eligible for.

Whew, kinda went on a tangent there, sorry. So that just leaves us with Strong Sad’s message, which yes, does loop for all of eternity if you let it. That’s another thing with work – there are times when you hit an answering machine, and you’re about to hang up (we can only leave messages after 5 failed attempts to reach them), and then suddenly the person picks up the phone and catches you completely off-guard. It’s kinda weird that way. I haven’t had anyone pick up while I was leaving a message though. And I have been tempted to do Strong Sad’s continuous “Hello? Hellooooo....?” thing before. But I have resisted this urge. Alright, so one last email, and then that’ll be the end of today’s entry. And I saved a downer for last – depressio.

http://www.homestarrunner.com/sbemail6.html

I don’t think Strong Sad is dumb or a crappy guy. But that’s not really the focus here. While this email isn’t awful, it pales in comparison to the original Easter egg that was featured in it. This will no longer work, but when it first came out, if you actually did send an email to Strong Sad, you could get an automated reply with a link to something called The Secrets That I Keep. And it’s… well, I’ll link to it first, and let you form your own opinion before I say anything. 
http://www.homestarrunner.com/sadjournal/wonderyears.html

I know I can’t be the only one that finds this page to be legitimately sad. And by that, I mean that I actually got misty-eyed over this. I’m not sure if this was ever meant to be funny, but to me, it certainly isn’t. I’m sure there’s people who are going to tease me for getting all emotional over a stupid internet cartoon, and if it was any other page on the website, I’d pretty much agree with you. But just think about it: Strong Sad’s collection of happy memories consists of exactly four things: a photo and short film reel of him getting along with Strong Bad as kids, a card made (unwillingly, and very hatefully) by Strong Bad, and a snow globe. I’m going to assume that the snow globe was also a gift from Strong Bad, since it makes sense with the other items. So basically, even though the card is very mean-spirited, and the snow globe was probably an extremely cheap gift that he picked up just for the sake of having something to give (no matter how meaningless), Strong Sad still treasures them because they’re the only gifts he’s ever gotten from his brother. I don’t care if it’s just an online cartoon, this is some seriously depressing stuff here, and it almost kind of disturbs me.

The dynamic between Strong Bad and Sad is probably the most interesting between any two characters on the website. On the surface, it seems like Strong Sad pretty much accepts his fate as the constant victim, but at times like this, you can tell that once, the two brothers did care for each other, and that Strong Sad would like nothing more than for things to go back to the way they used to be. There will be far more evidence for this as time goes on, so it’s something to keep an eye out for. I do believe that at its base level, this web series is just about being funny, and the characters aren’t nuanced to the point where every line can be analyzed for motivation or some deeper meaning, but I feel like even Strong Sad’s sense of sarcasm and dry humor was probably picked up from Strong Bad, and he’s unconsciously doing it as a way to gain acceptance.

If this was a more serious cartoon (and if he wasn’t so funny all the time) I’d probably dislike Strong Bad as a character for being the cause of this much emotional pain. But luckily, I’m not THAT much of a Strong Sad fanboy that I’m going to harbor a grudge against a fictional character. And don’t worry, I’m not going to launch into some huge philosophical rant every time that Strong Sad is mistreated or shows his depression – he’s just a character, and his most defining trait (of which he is named after) is the fact that he’s sad. I just think that there’s a bit of subtext that is easily missed, and this one shoebox of memories speaks volumes.

Next time, we’ll cheer up a bit with some holiday toons, and if that somehow doesn’t manage to fill enough time, then I’ll continue with some more emails. Hopefully I didn’t scare anyone off with my over-analysis of that last bit.

32 Glasses of Melonade and 147 Marshmallows

This is it, everyone. I firmly believe this is the best thing on the website, and I imagine that there are many people who agree with me. The past sentence was TOTALLY not sarcastic in the slightest. I’m not even going to provide a screenshot for this one, because it would spoil the absolute awesomeness that you are about to witness. Whenever you think you’re ready for it, just click the link and prepare to be blown away.

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

Truly magnificent. Ok, yeah, I’m not sure why I even bothered linking to that, since there’s nothing worth discussing about it. But anyway, as I said last time, today we’ll be looking at some quality material. I hope you like Marzipan’s Answering Machine, because there’ll be a lot of that, but also a couple other toons that still hold up pretty well today. I invite you all to The Luau.

http://www.homestarrunner.com/luau2.html

Maybe I’m just juvenile, but I find Homestar’s implied explanation for the wood not catching fire to be hilarious. It’s definitely the highlight of the toon for me, with Marzipan’s complete unawareness of her surroundings being a close second. Remember the bit from A Jumping Jack Contest where Homestar peed in the jar? I think this gag works way better, because even though you can tell exactly what happened, you don’t really see the …evidence. I do have to wonder how Strong Bad and company failed to notice that the wood was wet when they were stealing it though.

This cartoon uses the older animation style that we’ve seen a few times before, and was apparently supposed to be updated like Jorb was, but for whatever reason that never happened. I’m fine with this – like I said, I think that the fatter-looking Homestar from back in the early days is somewhat cuter than the current one (is it ok for me to call a male character cute when he’s decidedly non-human-like?), but some stuff like Strong Bad’s incredibly exaggerated walking animation does look a little … off.

At the end, we get to see yet another main page. Those things have been creeping up all over the place lately. I kinda wish this one was accessible normally, but I guess it really doesn’t make any sense out of context. (Who am I kidding, most of the other ones don’t either.) The main interesting thing about it is the fact that it’s incredibly out of date. Other “special” home pages like the Strong Bad one still use the same template as the rest, so the buttons in the top-right are up to date, and they include links to all the other pages in the bottom left. This one does not do that, so it cycles through some particularly ancient “new” material, and doesn’t go beyond the 10th main page. Weird fact – if you go to the page directly using this url, it actually shows more material than the one the toon links to. But it’s still really old and out of date.

I don’t think there’s much more to say about that one. I enjoyed it, but it’s nothing that I have a strong connection to, nor does it have any major place in history for the site as a whole. But that’s ok, I’d rather have little to say about a good toon than lots to say about a bad one. It’s definitely a classic, and one that I’ve enjoyed showing people in the past. And I can’t think of any good way to segue into the next toons, so whatever, have a bunch of Marzipan’s Answering Machine toons. Go ahead and watch all of them in a row, I’d rather just talk about them all at once.

Marzipan's Answering Machine - #2, #3, #4

Answering Machine #2 is kind of dull, in my opinion. The prank call left by Strong Bad was pretty good (not his best, but I laughed nonetheless), the series of messages left by the King were pretty … meh, and the other two weren’t particularly funny either. I can tell that the one with Pom Pom was attempting to bring in the type of humor where you can’t tell what he was saying, and the viewer is left to interpret it on their own. That sometimes leads to some funny situations, but I don’t think it worked that well here. I’d rather have someone intelligible start to repeat something terrible that Homestar said, and then have Homestar try to cover up for it, rather than just hear the second half.

Number 3 is a definite improvement, but oddly enough, Strong Bad’s obligatory prank call is probably the least funny part of it this time around. The rest of them form a nice little story of sorts, delving a bit into character interactions. It must be tough for the other guys to know that the only girl available is already taken, so you can’t blame them for trying. Poor Homestar of course is oblivious towards what’s going on until it’s already too late. I’m not sure why Coach Z had to ask for Marzipan’s number, since he should already have it from when he called about cheering Homestar up a while back. And while it’s possible that Strong Mad got the number from Strong Bad, I like to imagine that Homestar gave it to him, completely forgetting what just happened with Bubs and Coach Z.

Luckily, number 4 continues with the increased quality and sequential storytelling. Homestar fails to remember a TV joke, and also fails to dial the right number, since he was apparently looking for Pom Pom. I just like how even though he clearly already forgot what the joke was, he still felt the need to call Marzipan and tell her about it too. I’ve been in that situation too, where I attempt to explain something that I’ve already forgotten all the details of, and I just end up making an idiot of myself.

I don’t have much to say about Strong Sad’s calls here, other than the fact that I’ve been in that situation too, where I get some false hope that some girl I like might be contacting me soon, and I sit around for ages waiting for something that never happens. Yeah, I’m kinda pathetic that way. But somehow I ended up getting married. I’m not sure how that happened either.

And lastly, we have the great little bit with Strong Bad and the King of Town. Strong Bad didn’t seem to have his heart in it here. His impression pretty much consisted of speaking normally but saying “doo hoo hoo” a lot. The King’s impression was way better, and when you realize that Matt had to voice one character imitating another character, that’s pretty impressive. I would like to know how the King knew that Strong Bad framed him for the prank calls though. And then Strong Bad attempts to make the situation even weirder by convincing Strong Mad to try a prank call of his own, but that didn’t go quite as planned. Even though that call follows a similar format to the Homestar/Pom Pom one from machine #2, this one came out a lot better, I think.

There’s one more good toon that I’d like to cover today, but first, let’s get this lame one out of the way. There’s no proper way to set this up, so whatever – A Mother’s Day Message.

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

I kinda forgot this existed, to be honest. There’s really only one joke, and the screenshot of it pretty much gives it away anyway. Oh man, Strong Bad sure does look silly in that outfit. Tee-hee. Notice how this is taking place in the same auditorium as A Holiday Greeting (except palette-swapped), the title is practically the same, and both involve Strong Bad being not particularly funny? At least this one isn’t controversial, but then again, that at least made the other one somewhat noteworthy. The only reason I’m even covering it is because it exists, and I did promise to at least briefly acknowledge every part of the website. So now that we’ve got that out of the way, I can move on to the far superior Fluffy Puff Commercial.

http://www.homestarrunner.com/fluffypuff2.html

Of course, the major thing to address about this would be its similarities to the First Time Here cartoon, although this one actually predates it by almost a year. I’m not sure which one I’d say is funnier overall. “Bloopers” that consist of nothing more than someone forgetting their lines or saying them incorrectly are rarely funny to me, but I do enjoy it here because of Homestar’s attitude towards the whole thing. And then there’s the moments like the bird crapping on his head (ruining an otherwise perfect take) and Homestar just flat-out forgetting to speak. And what’s up with the terrible little ditty at the end?

This cartoon has a very bizarre easter egg in it. Usually, you can find these by holding down the Tab key throughout the toon, and it will highlight them in yellow. Don’t worry, you haven’t missed any yet. I’ll let you know when a cartoon has one, at least up until the point where there’s expected to be at least one per toon. But no, in this case, you access the easter egg by pressing the “L” key. Make sure you have caps lock off when you do this. I’m not going to tell you what it does, because it’s incredibly stupid and useless and I want it to be a surprise.

Alright. With the exception of some stuff that I’m intentionally putting off until later, I think I’ve managed to cover everything added to the website between its beginnings and August 22, 2001. Why is that date important? It’s because that was when a certain cartoon was added to the website. A cartoon that’s only 45 seconds long, features really simple animation, and honestly isn’t even that amusing. But it marks the start of a new era – the era of Strong Bad Email. And I’ve got plenty of things to say about those as a whole, but that’s going to have to wait until next time. I hope you enjoyed Homestar’s time in the spotlight, because it’s not going to last.