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Television Will Never be the Same
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A Salute to the Cynics of Our Childhood
This post is a salute to the cynics of our childhood. Most characters in the cartoons and television programs we watched were narcissistic, foolish, and naive. I wanted to honor two specific characters that were realists and weren't afraid to tell you the truth. They weren't self-absorbed into the world of never-ending happiness and stupidity.
The first one is Oscar the Grouch from "Sesame Street". Nobody liked Oscar because he was mean. Big Bird and Elmo would ask him to play with them and he'd tell them both to piss off. Oscar had no respect for Big Bird because all he ever wanted to do was have a good time and he sure as hell loved to hog the spotlight in the eighties. To hell with that arrogant bird. Then, he had to go save his ass when he ran off from his adopted family and what thanks did Oscar get. They trashed him and criticized him all the time and who did they call on to save the stupid bird? Elmo just came in later on and just took over the show. That's why Oscar is mad other than living in a trash can.
Then, there's Rabbit from "Winnie the Pooh". Couldn't they just leave him alone. Tigger was always bouncing around breaking shit. Piglet was always asking stupid questions. Pooh, the free-loading fat bastard, was always eating his honey up and making a mess. Eeyore was always telling him his boring suicidal problems. Christopher Robin was always having him involved in some really bad make-believe skit. On top of all this, they would all somehow manage to jack up his garden in some way. All he ever wanted was to be left alone.
Is Andrew Koenig AKA "Boner" Dead?
I wanted to make a serious post since some of my spoofs involve the 1980's hit: "Growing Pains". Friends and family fear the worst as Andrew Koenig who played Richard "Boner" Stabone on "Growing Pains" has been missing since February 14. It was reported that he was suffering from depression before his disappearance. He is currently 41 years old. Kirk Cameron has come out and said that he is praying for his former cast member. Hopefully, Boner is alright, but the situation does not look promising at this time. We can only hope and pray that Andrew is okay.
Lifetime Movie Generator
You say writing a movie script is hard? Not if you work for the Lifetime Channel. It's simple. Take 4 of these 64 topics/cliches at random and there you go. You now have a Lifetime movie script. Go ahead and sell it!
1. abused woman
2. drunken husband
3. molested child
4. woman addicted to drugs
5. stalker ex-boyfriend
6. long drawn out court case
7. washed up TV mom from 70's or 80's
8. woman confused about her sexuality
9. gay son
10. suicidal woman
11. suicidal child
12. woman with cancer
13. child with cancer
14. woman with freaky rare disease
15. child with freaky illness
16. skeptical doctor
17. broken family
18. neglected child
19. Christmas miracle
20. gay daughter
21. kid on drugs
22. pedophile
23. murder
24. runaway kids
25. abusive husband/boyfriend
26. drug-addict husband/boyfriend
27. woman in prison
28. woman wrongfully accused
29. psychotic neighbor
30. oldest sibling raising orphaned brothers and sisters
31. family facing house foreclosure
32. feuding divorced parents
33. trouble-making kids
34. rapist
35. involvement in religious cults
36. estranged older mother
37. long lost parents
38. woman finds out she married a psychopath
39. drunk driving
40. kid dies from accident, mother becomes activist
41. woman goes insane
42. caring, loyal best friend
43. woman with anorexia
44. woman with bullemia
45. woman dying
46. woman with retarded child
47. husband/boyfriend with gambling problem
48. woman kills boyfriend
49. road trip evading police
50. unfair legal system
51. kidnapped or missing child
52. kid on drugs
53. kid bullied in school
54. house burns down
55. rags to riches story
56. teenage pregnancy
57. woman has abortion
58. adopted kids
59. cheesy Christmas family get-together
60. woman speeding away nervously in an ugly old car
61. poor single mom struggling to raise kids
62. woman thought her husband was dead, finds out he's alive
63. woman with hidden past
64. woman remarries, ex-boyfriend/husband comes and finds them
Inside The Suite Life of Zack and Cody: How to Come up with a Script
After seeing a few of these horrendously awful episodes of this show, I can picture how the writers are coming up with the script. It must go something like this. I'll just say there are two writers discussing a possible script.
Writer 1: Hey, I have this idea for the next episode. Zack is failing math and needs to cheat off of Cody to get the answers. They both get in trouble and learn a valuable lesson about how cheating is wrong.
Writer 2: That sounds great, make sure we throw in an over-abundance of laugh tracks and unfunny slapstick jokes. We'll have the Korean chick and the hotel manager running into each other in the hallway.
Writer 1: I see where you are going with this one. We'll do three stooges antics, but make them unfunny like "Full House". There's nothing like taking classic brilliant comedic timing and sucking the life out of it by making it "family friendly".
Writer 2: The mom will catch the kids at the end of the episode like hundreds of other shows have before us. We can go with the cheap payoff of an old and tired cliche. The kids watching this won't care. They watch anything you put in front of them.
Writer 1: Yeah, kids are sure stupid nowadays. You put someone taking a crap on television for 30 minutes while they were listening to rap music and they'd soak that shit up.
Writer 2: It's a good thing our job doesn't require any talent.
Writer 1: Yeah, then we'd be screwed. We would have to use our own creative minds to come up with a witty and clever script.
Writer 2: Can you actually believe people watch this crap?
Writer 1: I am amazed. This show is horrible; the only show comparable might be "Drake and Josh".
Writer 2: Yeah, they're right there on our level. They paved the way for spewing mindless dribble on television and getting stupid kids to watch.
10 Cartoons That Creep Me Out
Here they are in no particular order.
10. Fan Boy and Chum Chum: I'm not sure what creeps me out here other than the weird names and the fact that characters are supposed to be kids, but really don't look human. They are sort of living as their alter superhero egos, but their superhero egos have no superpowers. That's confusing to me.
9. Aqua Teen Hungerforce: Somebody must have been on some serious drugs to create this. You have a talking milkshake, floating french fries, and a rolling meatball. I'm not sure what to think here other than, "What the hell is this?"
8. The Wild Thornberries: The creepy animation made me change the channel quickly when this one came on in the late nineties. I could never get passed the animation.
7. Hey! Arnold: The football shaped head looks cool on Stewie, but looks freaking weird in this show.
6. Dennis the Menace: What creeps me out here is this the choppy animation. It's just an eyesore to watch for any length of time.
5. Dr. Katz: The shaky animation throws me off from the start. I can't get past it.
4. Pokemon: This acid trip anime experience should freak anybody out.
3. Rugrats: I never understood how this got so popular. The kids look retarded in this cartoon.
2. Richie Rich: The female robot really bugged me in this one with her raspy voice. The really awful animation didn't help either.
1. Recess: The kids are goofy-looking and their weird features are over-exaggerated. The show would have lasted longer if they had just toned it down with the animation.
Breaking Down Back to the Future
Alright, this going to get confusing, so pay close attention. I'm going to start with Emmett Brown's logic of how you skew into a different time line when you change the past. He said this in part 2 when Biff stole the time machine and gave himself Grey's Sports Almanac. Now, that in itself contradicts what Doc was saying about running into your future self and causing either fainting or a time paradox. However, I'll let that one slide.
Where I have a problem is at the end of the first movie, Marty significantly altered the past by making his dad tougher. This should have resulted in an alternate 1985 where there was another Marty and another Doc. Okay, so if we go by logic, there should be two Martys and two Docs by the end of the first film. Then, we'll start with the beginning of part two. They go into the future along with Jennifer. They fix their kids' problems. That's no big deal. However, Biff steals the time machine and goes back to the past with Grey's Sports Almanac. He gives it to his younger self altering history permanently. Then, how does he come back to the same future he just left from if he changed history and skewed into a different time line? He can't. Furthermore, when they go into the future and take Jennifer with them, Jennifer should cease to exist in the future because she has skipped that entire time period. Now, since there are two Martys and two Docs from that previously altered 1985, they each have another self that is in the future. However, it would be impossible for Marty to have a family with Jennifer cause she doesn't exist and now that Biff stole a time machine, they have no way of getting back.
Let's say to keep the plot going on a realistic level, the other Doc built a spare time machine. The next major problem is that they wouldn't go back to the alternate dimension where Biff is a billionaire in control of the entire city. They are stuck on their plane of existence. Traveling from the past to the future; one could conceivably go on an alternate time line because they physically changed the future. However, if you are in the future and return to the past; then all you can do is go back to past directly in that time line. You can't go into an alternate universe. To keep the plot going, I'll say that Marty and Doc went back in Doc's back up time machine to 1955 with Jennifer the same time Biff stole the other one. Now, if they go back to 1985, they will be in Biff's 1985 in which there should now be another Doc and another Marty. They also leave Jennifer here in which there are now two Jennifers in this plane of existence. The Jennifer from the hardcore George McFly plane of existence is now permanently stuck in Biff's existence because Marty and Doc abandoned her.
Now, Doc is right as far they have to go back to the past and fix this mistake preventing Biff from turning into a sadistic monster. However, when they go back and do that, they have now created a fourth plane of existence. We started with the original wussy George McFly plane; then, we had the hardcore George McFly plane; next, was Biff's world; and now it's the prevention of Biff's world. Then, Doc is in the Delorean when it gets struck by lightning sending him to 1885. This creates a fifth plane of existence in which there is no way Marty should have gotten that letter. Now, at this point, Marty is really shit out of luck. The only thing he could possibly do is work with Doc on building a new time machine and that might take several years. Even if he did, he couldn't get on the same plane of existence that the Doc went because the Doc has created an unreachable tangent. In the end, all Marty could do is go back to 1985 and deal with another version of himself constantly trying not to run into him.
Now, Doc could go into the future with Clara and his boys to visit Marty. However, the Marty he would be visiting would be from his dimension. The Marty that he left in 1955 would have no knowledge of such encounter. The Jennifer in Marty's new non-rich Biff 1985 would have no knowledge that the another Jennifer is permanently trapped in Biff's world with another Jennifer. She also wouldn't possess any paper saying "You're fired" or anything like that. Matter of fact, none of those photos would change because they are from a particular line of existence.
So let's start with the wussy George McFly plane. There is no Marty and no Doc after 1985. In the hardcore George McFly plane, there is no Jennifer after 1985. There are two Jennifers in the Biff plane assuming that Marty and Doc immediately followed Biff back to 1955 instead of after the fact like they did in Part 2. The corrected Biff world has one Doc, two Martys, and one Jennifer. The old west Doc 1885 future would have two Doc's once he is born until the one from 1885 dies. However; Doc created a steam powered time machine and who knows how many more dimensions he created by doing so.
A Sweet Pickles Drive By
This guy gets a phone call about an old debt his parents owed from 1983. "Mr. Smith, it seems that your parents never paid for your 8 installments of sweet pickles books.", said the caller. "And, that was 27 years ago bitch! What do I care?", says Mr. Smith. The caller replies, "You don't wanna make the duck angry. You won't like the duck when he's angry." "Get lost!", says Mr. Smith.
So, a few weeks pass and nothing happens. Then, one day, Mr. Smith sees a big green van rolling down the street. He realizes who it is and yells at his neighbor who is outside watering the grass, "Duck!". "Yeah, I see it's a duck.", says the neighbor. "No! Duck, fool, he's got an automatic. As the van drives by, the duck fires his AK-47 away at Mr. Smith making a big red splat against the garage door.
An Interview With Garfield
I got to sit down with cartoon cat legend Garfield this week and this is how it went.
Jason: So, Garfield what are up to these days?
Garfield: Well, I've got "The Garfield Show" on Cartoon Network.
Jason: That show really blows compared to "Garfield and Friends". I mean, I'd rather watch the U.S. Acres shorts.
Garfield: Ouch, not so harsh! I'm just trying to reinvent myself for a whole new generation of kids.
Jason: Let's cut the crap. The show sucks and your movies weren't very good either. Sounds like you sold out to me.
Garfield: Hey man, Cartoon Network offered me a lifetime supply of lasagna for doing this new show. I'm sorry, but I couldn't pass that up.
Jason: Now, that's the selfish, indifferent Garfield that I know and love. This isn't the first time that you just went in for a paycheck. "Cartoon All Stars to the Rescue" was the first time you sold out. Although, I have to say that you were the only one who stayed in character in that show.
Garfield: Funny that you bring that one up, cause that kid ended up overdosing on heroin or something. I saw the futility in what ALF, Bugs Bunny, Alvin, and other were trying to accomplish.
Jason: Doesn't surprise me. Speaking of Alvin, he sold out probably just as bad as you did.
Garfield: Can you blame him? We made next to nothing in the eighties as stars. Do you know how much Spongebob is getting paid? 30 million a year! We had to get involved somehow with that much cash on the line nowadays.
Jason: Do you hang out with any of the new stars or do you hang out with the older stars?
Garfield: I party with Alvin every once and a while. I've done some autograph signing with Heathcliff and Winnie the Pooh.
Jason: Heathcliff? Weren't you two bitter rivals in the eighties?
Garfield: Oh, we hated each other back then, but no point in that nonsense now. We're too old for that crap. He couldn't hang with me anyways. I had a CBS Saturday Morning time slot, the gold standard for network cartoons at that time. All he had was a spot before "Dennis the Menace" reruns on Nickelodeon. I'll tell you who I really want drug out to the street and shot though.
Jason: Who?
Garfield: Those no talent hacks from U.S. Acres. Orson, Wade, Bo, Sheldon, and the rest of them. They rode my coattails for years and I never even got one thank you, not even a pan of lasagna.
Jason: I always hated those shorts. I like variety shorts the way "The Pink Panther" did it with "The Inspector" and "The Ant and the Aardvark", but on your show, it just messed up the flow.
Garfield: Agreed.
Jason: Any closing thoughts?
Garfield: Yeah, where's the lasagna you promised me for this interview and it better not be that Stouffer's shit!
Jason: Rest easy, we had Olive Garden cater it.
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