The Drinky Crow Show - "Beer Goggles"

The Drinky Crow Show
Airing on Cartoon Network as part of Adult Swim
Appearing at the prime viewing spot of 12:15am on Sunday night (actually Monday morning)
Episode 1: Beer Goggles

Tony Millionaire is someone you may have heard of. If you haven't heard of him, then you are missing out on someone who makes well-drawn, aburdist comics called Maakies that mostly involve a drunken crow and a filthy ape and their disgusting adventures during the 19th century. This means you are missing out on a lot.

Now, for the second time ever (the first being a bunch of SNL shorts in the 1990's) the exploits of Uncle Gabby and Drinky Crow are animated on the Adult Swim series The Drinky Crow Show.

The animated show captures the art and wit of Tony Millionaire pretty well. The animation appears to be three dimensional computer animation that still captures the style of the Maakies comic strips very well. The story lines are completely bizarre, which captures the style of the Maakies comic strips very well. Will the average Adult Swim viewer bite, though? That remains to be seen.

The premiere episode involves Drinky Crow being depressed after losing his girlfriend. Uncle Gabby instructs him to lower his standards, and when that doesn't work, Uncle Gabby tells Drinky Crow to cut his eyes out and replace them with the almost magical "Beer Goggles" which make the entire world seem upbeat and beautiful. Now in a fake but overwhelmingly pleasant world, Drinky Crow is deleriously happy about everything, to the annoyance of Uncle Gabby who tries to keep Drinky Crow out of harm, but fails, and Drinky Crow blows the world up.

After the world is blown up, Drinky Crow is still happy and has sex with the Earth itself. The Earth gets pregnant and somehow everything turns out happy. Well sort of. Hard to tell.

I think it's fantastic, myself. The completely bizzare adventures of Drinky Crow and Uncle Gabby that often meander into the grotesque is just the sort of thing I want to see on television, and it appears to have been delivered. If this show does not survive another season (which it's very late Sunday night viewing time does not help) I can only hope that it appears in a reasonably-priced DVD box set. Perhaps there's a little suicidal Drinky Crow in all of us.

Spaceballs: The Animated Series

Spaceballs: The Animated Series
Airing on G4 television for some ungodly reason

Anyone ever have the experience of watching a stand-up comic who thinks they are hilarious but are anything but? That's about the experience of watching Spaceballs: The Animated Series, but is about a thousand times worse.

Mel Brooks, Joan Rivers and Daphne Zuniga have absolutely nothing to do as they reprise their roles in this absolutely shitty show. Mel Brooks sounds every bit of 82, Joan Rivers sounds every bit of terrible at any age, and Daphne Zuniga sounds okay but who cares.

The animation is terrible, like watching flash animation done by someone who just doesn't care about doing flash animation, except when breasts are on the screen. Then those bounce a lot.

The actual writing is by far the most horrifying thing about this show. It's like the murder of all that is funny since time began.

Take for example "The Lord of the Onion Rings." This is an episode in which Barf must take an evil union ring and throw it into a giant deep fryer in Frydor. On the way he gets taken in by the spell of the ring and actually has a conversation with himself not unlike Gollum from Lord of the Rings, complete with annoying voice, and a "Dork Army" is created by Dark Helmet due to a misspelling of the word "Dark."

There's another episode "Revenge of the Sithee" which has a villain named "Outlet Maul" and has about five breast jokes a minute, from a podracer with breasts to a customizable stripper whose breasts get larger with each button press.

Then there's errrrggghhhhhhgggggrrrrrggghhhhhhhhh

Sorry, my head hurts just thinking about how horribly unfunny this is. I think it may be an impending cerebral hemorrhage.

To sum up, never watch this show. It is the worst thing ever put on television since Two and A Half Men and makes me want to die. Especially since it's coming from Mel Brooks, someone who has done so much better in the past. Well, the 1970's.

Smodcast

Smodcast
A podcast featuring Kevin Smith and Scott Mosier

The SModcast is a podcast featuring Kevin Smith and Scott Mosier talking about random stuff. Occasionally there are other guests besides Scott Mosier like Kevin Smith's daughter Harely and his wife, Jennifer, but mostly it is Kevin Smith and Scott Mosier.

They talk about the film business some, like for instance, a recent episode talks about advertising problems with Zack and Miri Make a Porno in Philadelphia where they would not allow any advertising of the film whatsoever even if they had two stick figures and just called it Zack and Miri. Mostly though, they talk about random shit. Actually one episode has a discussion about that literally, where Kevin Smith talks about farting in his shower and accidentally shitting in the shower. Mind you it isn't a show that talks about shit and fucking and swear words - it's usually just a casual discussion from two very entertaining people that just happens to involve swear words and talks about shit and fucking. Also nerd stuff. Lots of nerd stuff, like a discussion about the movie Transformers and how it should have been just the effects shots and nothing else. Then a discussion as to whether people would pay nine dollars just to watch fifteen minutes of special effects - the consensus they came to was yes.

Actually, now that I think about it, the conversations are a perfect insight for you ladies as to what guys talk about when they are by themselves with no women around. It's talks about nerd stuff, gross stuff, and sex. Though Kevin Smith is a very funny guy and makes the discussions a lot more entertaining than the casual conversations you would probably have from your standard group of guys.

The production quality is good despite being recorded in Kevin Smith's house. Actually the recording in the house helps to lend the casual nature of the conversations. Occasionally, Kevin looks stuff up on the Internet or tells his dog to stop barking.

There is also some post-production work done to put music in at almost a subliminal level behind their conversations - for instance when talking about a moon astronaut, Major Tom plays, or less subtley, when Scott Mosier talks about an encounter with a shark, the theme to Jaws plays. It's a nice touch.

So yes, if you aren't offended easily, get this podcast. You won't regret it, and it's updated almost every week with about an hour of content.

Penny Arcade: On The Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness Episode 2

If you liked the previous episode of Penny Arcade: On The Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness then you will like this one, which means if you like funny games set in a steampunk-like 19th century fighting giant robots with fists, guns and hoes and has no replay value, then---yeah.

Compared to the previous incarnation of this game, this game has a lot more swearing. A lot of utterances of the word fuck. It also has slightly trickier puzzles, with one section involving the twisting of hexagonal pieces to make pathways through the brain to prevent insanity.

Like the previous incarnation of the game, it has your hapless custom character in search of a home, accompanying Gabe and Tycho in a fight against such foes as obnoxious lovers, rich people and fruit fucking robots.

It's certainly funny, with quests to obtain a million dollars so you can buy a bracelet and fights where your enemies hit you with such attacks like throwing a box of chocolates at you. I guess the only down part about it that it has the pitfall of any adventure-based game with humor attached to it in that it doesn't have much replay value at all. Sure, there's an option to play the game in "insane mode" for secret items and such, but really, when you go through it once and have heard all the jokes, there isn't much incentive to go through it again. Also, the quest should take you about ten hours to complete, so the game isn't very long to begin with.

It's available for PC, Mac, Linux and XBOX Live for $15. Pick it up if you want to be entertained for a short while.

Great White North

Bob and Doug McKenzie
Great White North
Published in 1981 by Anthem Records
Re-released on CD in 1996 by Mercury Records

Imagine if Beavis and Butthead made an album. Now imagine that instead of two dumb American stereotypes on the album, imagine you have two dumb Canadian stereotypes. Thus you have Great White North.

A little background: Bob and Doug McKenzie were created because Dave Thomas and Rick Moranis were told by the CBC that SCTV needed more “Canadian Specific” content, which sounds dumb. This isn't true - that is an idea that is fucking stupid. This isn't done and is dumb, so Bob and Doug McKenzie were created as a kind of ‘fuck you’ to that idea by making segments with the most stereotyped idiotic Canadians they could think of, improvising their segments and putting not a huge amount of effort into it. Through the funny way the world works the characters became an accidental huge hit, and spawned the movie Strange Brew, some later Molson Ice and Pizza Hut commercials, and the embarrassing talking moose characters in Brother Bear.

It in particular, spawned this album, Great White North. The album is essentially what one would expect where Bob and Doug McKenzie make an album and thus a lot of it them, drinking, smoking, eating unhealthy food, giving their opinions of everything, and drinking some more.

It’s also very meta. They talk about themselves making the album and the process of making albums themselves. They talk specifically about how albums (in this case, the old vinyl discs) are made by taking old albums, erasing them, and then putting new grooves on them.

The highlight of the album has to be the song "Take Off" which is sung by Geddy Lee of the band Rush, in which Geddy Lee sings about taking off to the Great White North and Bob and Doug talk over a lot of the song.

There are also some really great bits in it, like Peter’s Donuts where they “go to a donut shop” but are aware that they aren’t really in a donut shop. Then they get a ticket for parking in the street and try to get out of it by giving the police donuts.

There’s the 12 Days of Christmas song which is full of replacements for the normal gifts the "true love gives" like instead of "a partridge in a pear tree" it is "a beer...in a tree," and "five golden tuques."

Overall, a fine album, even if the references to the album being on vinyl are a bit dated.

Available for purchase at Amazon.com or any other store that I am shamelessly not trying to earn revenue from.

Back Cover



Really small "Daily Hoser" that was part of the inside cover and difficult to read on the CD release. Obviously meant to be read as the inside of an LP.