[Some Noise]

I re-watched this episode of Harvey Birdman today because I knew that it was the episode which had Avenger pecking at Magilla Gorilla's head for having made a pun while in flight and while being rescued by Avenger and returned by the store keeper who had spent all of his episodes of that series trying to sell the gorilla.

Part of the 44 Nights of Moral Orel and the first episode of the series, I am kind of certain that I started to watch this when Cartoon Network first started to show it. At that time, there would have been no way for me to recognize the voice of the singer of the second song that was on the car radio on their way to church this episode.

The first episode in this series and one of the few television series I started watching at the first episode. I remember when I first saw it, I looked forward to the next episode. At the time I watched this, there were very few things that were being broadcast via satellite in an episodic format which I looked forward to -- and even in the absence of such luxury as real people, my stuff and companionship more close to my own age and experience (oh, and most if not all things that really matter to me), it is impressive how I only looked forward to episodes of Lucy and also of 30 Rock.

All of those cable stations, all of that network money and whatever and also, movie cable channels -- I was anxious to see only two episodic programs then and often thought that a week was too long to wait.

My third favorite episode. Not so much for the whole eleven minutes but for some of the parts. Sister, not liking the price of an item that she wanted and machine gunning the clerk down because of this was one of these things. If disappointment had a face and a gun, and a belief in a god-given right to kill -- that face should be the face of Sister and one of the reasons that this rendition of a woman might be my all time favorite animated character.

The duet of the Devil and the DJ singing the Pat Benatar song, ending in the three part harmony with sister at the end -- just beautiful. I have no idea what it is like to sing in character and then make those "other voices" harmonize and actually make old songs like this nice to hear again but I think it takes a good amount of talent.

My second favorite episode; I have no idea if it might have been my first favorite had it not been for the cover of the Alice Cooper song in the beginning of what I have called my most favorite. This episode has a story which is more like the bible from which the characters were supposed to have come from.

I wrote somewhere else that this episode is about biblical sin compared to more modern times sin. That was wrong and I am sorry I wrote that. This episode compares free sin with the sin that can be enjoyed from using credit to obtain material goods and experiences.

This is a good time to note that the character Becky (The Devil's Advocate) is the only character that gets their name printed on most of the frames they appear in. This character trait makes sense to me in my life and for many personal reasons, but what is the bigger picture that put her name and title always on those frames?

After writing of my love for this episode, I wrote a web log entry in which I quoted myself in due to how much I laughed at what I had written. Then I rewatched my favorites from this series and the first one.

The fact that the ascending order of my favorites occurs in a descending order of their episode numbers is, I think, an accident.

The rest of this is about how I wanted to show this episode to my mom. You may not want to bother with reading it.

They have a Phil Ken Sebben action figure set; for what I understand about the market and about supply and demand and about making items that would sell -- Metalocalypse action figure sets are almost a sure thing. For instance, I don't think that I ever wanted anything like this as much as I want these, and I am not even in the target market for this animation or for action figure sets. And I really want all five of them, Charles Foster Ofdensen and the motorcycle. Especially the motorcycle.....

Robot Chicken is usually not written for me, meaning it makes references to a younger culture than I am honestly knowing of and possibly never have been a part of. Not a problem either, as sometimes I honestly am not the audience and the other audiences want to make fun of the things they know and understand, yadda....

This episode had synopsis of popular movies. I enjoyed all of the synopsis I saw. I enjoyed two in particular. One because it was funny and the other because it was funny in a personal way.

Cowboy Bebop is perhaps one of the most beautiful animations I ever saw. The first time I called a televised animation beautiful was in the nineties when I first saw AEon Flux on Liqued Television. Like Cowboy Bebop and later like Metalocalypse I watched it for its beauty and eventually started to see the story and know the characters.

I am still unable to write anything original or insightful about this animation and while I have seen the series now perhaps four times, the beauty of the drawing and the interesting of the story is something that speaks for itself without any opinion of mine to help. It is beautiful. This episode the TiVO claims is from 2001, is being mentioned here now because of a reference to it in another more recent 'toon.

A quote, some opinions and recollections of versioning and really suspicious episodes, a pointer to this quote which starts this almost perfect episode, another quote and a mention of the homage to Cowboy Bebop which this episode also has.

I wrote something that was not thought out and served no purpose not even the purpose that was intended here. I was taken back by how much a few lines of Shakespeare had been delivered from a well known character and the character remain unchanged. My introduction for this was garbage where I "traded" actors playing Hamlet.

I apologize, I am sorry, it was not thought out, I regret it and no trading please.

There is no reason to trade actors that played Hamlet as long as the Phil Ken Sebben version exists, and it does, in this episode.

I have more to say about this episode.

One of the reasons that I had such a difficult time watching an episode of Moral Orel a day is how much I came to care about the characters in it. Compared to Metalocalypse which is obviously a fantasy and helped me to understand the music which it is from. Moral Orel is often really good at some of the same religous fantasies that have actually entered into how other peoples lifes are managed and how the well-being of a population has been mis-managed.

I had my own joke about this turn the other cheek idea. My years as a Christian active in an institutionalized version of it were kind of sweet in that it was like being employed with people and I got the chance to interact with people that I probably would not have in the way that the high school "who is who" system had isolated me from. Later, as an adult, the idea of always turning the other cheek to the face of wrongness was not so good and my joke was that this same God gave each human being four cheeks to turn, metaphorically meaning that you have two other cheeks whose turning them tends to mean something more like "Kiss my ass" which I always use to mean something like "your opinion is wrong" or well, now that I think about it, I am not certain what I mean when I say this and I probably don't say it that often. But the fact remains that everyone is born with four cheeks, not just the two they mention to the children at whom the lesson is aimed at.

Like that episode of Family Guy which was both my most favorite and least favorite, I really loved the opening and closing of this episode and was very uncomfortable with the middle part.

The end of the first season, a two parter, the first part of a season ending cliff-hanger.

The year 2004 was a very good one for the Venture Brothers.

The first Venture Brothers episode I watched. My favorite had not been made yet when I watched this the first time. Also, I had not reseen the 'toon from my childhood that was the inspiration or basis for this series. To be honest, I recognized it only as being a sarcastic re-take on things (ideas, images and television shows) from my childhood but not specifically about Jonny Quest. It made me laugh and it did nothing to prevent me from watching the rest of the series.

This time watching it, I have gotten over the shock of seeing Jonny Quest again. It had been a shock and it was a really good example of several of the ideas which were in my mind and that I needed to overcome between when I first watched it (and then re-watched it because truthfully, me and my brother had been entertained enough by this cartoon in the sixties and early seventies to watch the reruns when they aired on Saturday mornings).

That all belongs in the essay about how things have changed since 1962 along with the fact that a lot of children learned to read from the same set of books. The rest of this is not that essay, it is more like a too bad it is too late to include....

Lately, here, Adult Swim has been showing a 44 days of Moral Orel (something like that) with introductions of each episode by the creators (people with various titles). I have been uncomfortable with the chroma-key background (or whatever it is called, on the theatrical stage, it was called a scrim and was hand painted) that these creators are standing in front of but watching all of the episodes has not been as difficult as this task had been more than a year full of months ago.

Many of season threes episodes stood out to me and should be mentioned here, this one is being mentioned because I wanted to insert a quote in my new quote section from it.

This is their peepee episode and also interestingly enough, Orels first capitalistic venture which is unusually successful.

I recognize many of the characters that are in this animation. One group, to the best of my knowledge comes from the Tom Robbins tome Another Roadside Attraction which is (in my opinion) a book which was two thirds funny and one third full of overly ponderous hippy discussion of religion and the mentality of the 1950s (aka, unread by me, YAWN!). That group is the Vatican's assassin team.

Human Sacrifice is my favorite episode. Upwardly mobile political pagans always make for good comedy, I guess. The episode Temptasia might have perhaps been my favorite if it hadn't been for those first three chords contained in the music of the opening credits "Doom Deh Doom".

When I first watched this movie, I had very mixed feelings about it. I had already a great amount of respect for the characterization of Reducto. In the cast of characters which appear in and provide the content for Harvey Birdman, Reducto is not so flat of a character, a lawyer with a personal trauma (that of being small). I always enjoy Reducto, I was uncomfortable with the story.

The Phil Ken Sebben romance which is the other half of this episode was remarkable. As soon as I know what that remark should be, I will publish it here or somewhere.

EVERYBODY IN CALIFORNIA loved every part of this episode, or so he said.

I watched this episode, again, when it aired, the TiVO picked it up and I rewatched it when I took a break from working alone on a project that should have been accepted and joined by others at that web location. And then replayed it again when EVERYBODY IN CALIFORNIA entered the room.

Apparently, I have the tastes of a male age 18-34. I really really liked Metalocalypse. When they were showing it daily here, I felt surprisingly cheerful compared to other daily aired shows on the same network.

I spent part of the evening reading about Metalocalypse on wikipedia.

I watched this. I had a tough time with it.

A Phil Ken Sebben and Bear Action Figure 2-pack arrived in the place I have been staying today.

This is what wikipedia says about this episode: "Dethklok has a huge fight on stage, which prompts the record label to hire a performance coach to keep the band together. The band falls in love with therapy for all the wrong reasons, and deals with an addiction to 'banana stickers'."

Pee Wee demonstrated how to make a turkey doodle in one of the earlier episodes. I cannot remember which one.

Shin decides to eat enough sausages so that he can have enough stickers from the packages so that he can get the Bastard Action Belt.

I watched this the first time. My mind was a blank. I had no idea what it was I was seeing.

I don't do everything the bump says, but they mentioned that their jobs depended on me watching Shin Chan.

When I originally saw Pee Wee's Playhouse, I saw episodes of it mostly in the first year. I liked it. I used to say that Pee Wee could do in a half an hour what used to take the Captain (Captain Kangaroo) a whole hour.

There is nothing in these shows that children can't see. So, at least on this web site, Pee Wee's Playhouse is moving to the safe for 14 and below. It might actually be safer for children ages 14 and less.

She has pennies instead of eye balls. Unlike Harvey Birdman, she has pupils. She has a way of telling about her life. I think that what I wrote here can be blamed on hearing Penny again.

carol:

yosh, while you are on the plane to Munich, I would like you to use grep or whatever and find all the times on the irc that you kicked and banned someone.

carol:

i want to put it online -- sort of a Kick and Ban Montage.

yosh:

heh

yosh (poking online at things):

It says here that Laurence Fishburne was in this.

yosh:

heh

carol:

Yeah, didn't you recognize him?

yosh:

nope

carol:

cowboy curtis and othello. quite a career.

carol:

Yosh, do you remember -- when you saw this show the first time through, do you remember if you used to say the magic words with Jambi?

yosh:

[A giant video screen appears on his belly showing an enraptured little indian kid chanting along with the tv screen] I don't remember.

carol:

I admit, I might have. Those were some of the goofiest of my college days. Think back, you should be able to remember that.

yosh:

[The giant video screen appears on his belly showing a montage of the same enraptured little indian kid chanting along with the tv screen on several different days. We see the child start to mature and still chant along with the tv set.] I really don't remember.

PW:

[soars away on his scooter]

carol:

Would you look at that. Replace the scooter with a fluffy dog that has wings and you got the closing credits for Andy Milonakis!

yosh:

heh, you're right.

In each lifetime there are a few moments where you know enough to see and appreciate something that is perfect that is occuring where you can see it. Occassionally, these moments were written and recorded and will be available within a few years on DVD.

For me, the montage of all the different ways and times that Dean and Hank died which was shown in the season opener of Venture Brothers is one of those moments.

yosh:

This is the last Robot Chicken this season.

carol:

yeah, well they probably need to go out and invent some pop culture to lampoon here when they come back.

carol:

it really is nice that people are allowed to write the stuff they have content for and not have to fill a contract for 26 episodes, whether they suck or not.

It was a challenge for me to get the sound together with the visual for this online flash thingie.

It was worth it.

carol:

mitch. let me see if you might find this funny. There is a man who is working in an office. Whenever he sees his co-worker, the co-worker always says "Did you get that thing I sent you?"

One day, the man needs to go to the bathroom. He is sitting there imagining he is alone so he can get on with the business of being there.

The other guy shows up and says "Did you get that thing I sent you?"

The effort now is a failure. He must try again later.

Does this sound at all funny to you?

mitch:

nope

Now I lay awake wondering how to make this episode mandatory viewing when there is that whole second bathroom story that no one except an American would understand. And I wonder what sort of office potty culture the germans do have if they don't have one like this. And I wonder what will happen to Germany, and indeed all of Europe once they adopt an office potty culture like USA's.

I have a list of a few things I saw on television that just the thought or mention of them will cause me to start to cry, somewhat uncontrollably. Not uncontrollably like unceasing wa-a-as of tears. Uncontrollably like the tears are produced and escape the duct and it is difficult to stop them.

This episode of Boondocks is on that list. Another notable entry on that list is the REM video, Everybody Hurts.

If you never saw that painting guy on public television, it might not affect you that way though.

It is called Stop Motion Animation and to make the Alien vs Predator spoof, they used much more of the Stop than of the Motion parts of the art.

Back in the old days, before I was stuck in this life where all there is (mostly) is this television and its satellite dish -- before all of that, they used to have to filter the 'toons through some software and then display it onto a building which in turn a webcam would grab a stream of the building; the webcam output was then filtered into real player format and put online that way for me to see them. Them being the 'toons.

Thanks Ted! For making it all so much more easy now. Or something.

And remember to purchase and drive a mini.