The Year Without Homestar Runner

I have been a long-time follower of the Flash Animations done by brothers Mike and Matt Chapman on their website, www.Homestarrunner.com.

For the uninitiated, this is Homestar Runner. Some say he is a terrific athlete. Homestar was the creation of the brothers Chaps for a kids’ book that they wrote in the mid-90s, just for fun. They later used the character in some flash animation experiments and began posting the cartoons online on January 1, 2000. They began to develop a following, and started selling T-Shirts through an online store, and eventually started selling enough merchandise that they quit their day jobs and made these cartoons full time. They do clothing with the characters on it, quotes from the site, even DVDs of the cartoons and figurines of the characters.

Their website really picked up steam when they gave the anti-hero character Strong Bad (left) his own section of the site, in which he answers email questions from fans. The majority of the content soon became “sbemails” and other cartoons became less of a focus for the site. In the site’s intro video, Strong Bad informs the viewer that he is the reason for their visit, rather than the site’s namesake, something that Homestar cheekily agrees with.

Matt and Mike had produced cartoons for the site regularly for nearly a decade. Their annual Halloween cartoons were full of their characters dressing up mostly as obscure 70s, 80s and 90s pop icons, everything from rappers and punk rockers to Andy Warhol.

The brothers have had a steady following of fans in recent years, and even produced a series of video games that were released on PC and Nintendo Wii through the Wiiware service.

Occasionally, the brothers started to take breaks from their project. They had been periodical but short. In December 2009, the brothers announced the birth of a very special Mini-Chap, and that they were going to be going on a short-term hiatus. In 2010, only about twenty updates were made to the main page, half of them notifications of sales or special promotions through their online store. For Christmas of that year, they posted their “Decemberween” costumes, with all of the characters dressed as characters from Rankin-Bass holiday specials or other Christmas themed getups, having missed out on Halloween entirely that year. Strong Bad even dressed as the Leg Lamp from A Christmas Story.

2011 has been even more sparse. With only 4 updates, three of them being for specials in the store, one being for an announcement of a concert the Brothers Chaps attended and performed a couple of special songs as Homestar Characters. Not a single new cartoon has been posted since December, 2010, which to some feels long enough to call it dead. Even updates about the store stopped completely in May.

For many fans, visits back to the site to check for updates becomes more disappointing the longer we go without, and people will check back less and less often as their RSS feed remains bare and they remove their H*R bookmark from the toolbar.

I am sure that the brothers continue to see dwindling store numbers as fewer and fewer people come back. I understand spending time with their new daughter/niece, but Hollywood actors return to work and people with real jobs only get 12 weeks (or less!) maternity leave.

I hope that they return soon. The absurdity of the website and the weekly dose of the World According to Strong Bad have been a highlight for many. But for me, when looking for a 3-minute break from whatever I am doing, the random cartoon button at Homestarrunner.com seems to produce cartoons I’ve already seen what feels like a dozen times each. I have found every easter egg and visited each secret page. I've even contributed to the Homestar Runner Wiki.

I only hope that when they return, there will be fans to come back to.

So in honor of Homestar Runner, I have made a list of my favorite ten Strong Bad emails from the site, in order of their appearance.

1.      Trevor the Vampire- The first sbemail I ever heard about, before I had ever visited the site. I remember Chris Walljasper telling us all about Strong Bad’s madcap reaction when an email send button was pushed way too soon.

2.      Dragon- This email asked Strong Bad to draw a dragon, and using words that he could only have learned from those commercials that ask you to apply for art school, teaches us his method.

3.      English Paper- A reader asks Strong Bad to write his “Englilish” essay for him. Strong Bad obliges with his own take on the 5 paragraph format.

4.      Kids’ Book- Strong Bad shows us a children’s book that he wrote. On. Wrote on.

5.      Local News- This email shows Strong Bad’s displeasure of poor punctuation and spelling. And he does a silly local news show.

6.      For Kids- We are shown why Strong Bad is not on regular television. (Don’t worry, it’s safe for work, he is just intolerant of the Dora the Explorer set)

7.      Bottom 10- Strong Bad’s countdown of the 10 things he likes least in the world. Some of the items on the list are on my Bottom 10.

8.      Strong BadAthlon- The Wrestleman tells us about his own, special, Olympics.

9.      Hygiene- A reader requests that S.B. make an educational film on personal hygiene. He makes a staggeringly spot-on 80s-esque public educational film.

10.   Videography- Actually, the most recent sbemail produced. Strong Bad offers his services as a Videographer for some moron’s wedding.

This is by no means a comprehensive list. With over 200 Strong Bad emails, those are just the ones that I really enjoy. There are tons of other cartoons and games to play on the site as well, for if/when you are tired of Strong Bad making fun of readers, which I never am.

Share your favourite cartoons and condolences for HomestarRunner.com in the comments below. Or start sending letters to the Brothers Chaps, asking if they plan to be on break until the kid is in college. If you are new to Homestar Runner and Strong Bad, you can go directly to www.homestarrunner.com or watch the orientation film to get started. Also available are character introductions for the confused.

All the pictures featured are from the Homestar Runner Wiki, www.hrwiki.org if you want more information than you ever wanted to know about the Stupid Animal Show.

Your cat will kill you over something like this

There is something seriously wrong with our society.

It isn’t just our overspending/ credit crisis.

It’s not only the educational system where we train our students to take standardized tests instead of bringing them up to be critical, creative thinkers.

It isn’t even Jersey Shore that I am talking about, though you can see the previous two points and they will ultimately lead you here.

I am talking about how we treat our pets.

This has been growing concern of mine as of late. Not as much of a concern as, for example, whether I still have any Goldfish brand cheese crackers in the cupboard, but it troubles me nonetheless.

Now, I am not talking about people who are abusive toward animals. I am talking about a slightly different class of individuals who treat their pets well. Too well. Owners who buy Purina Healthful Bountiful Organic Premium Kibble for Bootsy and eat store-brand “Macaroni and Cheez- now featuring 30% real noodles” themselves. People who took out a second mortgage on their home so they could pay for all of Mr. Whisker’s medical care: the pills for his arthritis, kitty cataract surgery, cat chemo, feline-pattern-baldness-correcting hair transplants, and pet psychiatrist trips where he can meow for an hour a week about how he isn’t feeling fulfilled enough. Seriously. Look it up on Bing. The only one I made up was the hair plugs.

This sort of behaviour for me is highlighted whenever I visit department stores. First of all, on a recent trip to Target (motto: the Wal-Mart you get dressed up to visit) I passed by the Halloween section. They had almost as many costumes for pets as they had for children. Some of the costumes for your dog that you may purchase:

A hot dog

Darth Vader
Princess Leia
Batman
Vintage Batman
Superman
Squirrelman

A velociraptor

Spongebob Squarepants (Nickelodeon gets a nickel for every item sold with his yellow mug on it)

A princess riding a unicorn

A jockey

A bullrider

A pimp (I wish I was making this up)

All of these costumes feature dogs on the packaging, because cats spend most of their time plotting how to best kill their owners while they sleep, so it is best not to give them a reason.

Now if you would like your dog to be more of a conversation starter as you stand around with the other parents, our Canine Costume Correspondent Chris Walljasper has come up with some timely dog costumes that are sure to get people talking:

Dressing up your pet for Halloween is a big decision, and one that should not be taken lightly. Before you go wrapping your Dachshund in a faux hot dog suit, or covering your Chihuahua in green yarn and calling it a Chia Pet, consider these timely pop-culture and political inspirations for your four-legged friend:

Maybe it is the uber-conservatism that Boston Terriers portray. Maybe it is the mild confusion that this presidential hopeful exuded during the 2008 election. Either way, the Mike Huckabee costume is the way to go for your googley-eyed pooch.

 

If you prefer to pay homage to the queen of the Russian guard, dress your pooch as a ferocious grizzly, and dress yourself as the Governor of Alaska, and show your true “Mama Grizzly” ferociousness. I guarantee you will be the most scary thing at the party.

For those Apple-Fanboy’s out there who are looking to pay homage to the late, great, Steve Jobs, there’s the iPooch. Be careful where you put the collar—it could affect your dog’s reception.

And if you want to dress your dog as the 44^th president of the United States of America, I would not recommend the costume that this pooch has chosen. I would maybe opt for a simple blue shirt, and maybe a flag pin. And if you’ve got the fit, muscular arms for it, you can go as Michelle.

Chris Walljasper’s regular ramblings and rants can be found at his blog, Musings of a Renaissance Man in Training.

Links to places to purchase some of these costumes is found below, unless you are handy with a sewing machine, glue gun, and tranquilizers to keep your pet calm as you stuff it in a 3 piece suit. Then you can make your own.

You may have noticed, most of the photos have the dog models looking rather glad to be dressed as Spongebob, the complete opposite of how animals usually look when they are strapped into stupid outfits. I suspect that they aren’t real dogs, or at least they are taxidermied. I can’t wait until the Field Museum puts on their display of preserved falcons dressed as Strawberry Shortcake and Optimus Prime.

Just so you know, these dog costumes all have “for pet use only” stamped across their labels. This is probably because they don’t meet safety guidelines for flame retardancy in children’s articles or something. Once PETA finds out about this, pet costumes will be more flame retardant than children’s clothes. We can send firehouse-employed Dalmatians into a burning fireworks factory and they will come out unscathed, still wearing that Batman costume and trying to figure out how to get it off. PETA, of course, will also lobby for the dogs’ right to wear the costume the dogs prefer, like a giant can of Alpo.

Even when they are made safer, costume marketers will probably still display “for pets only” because they don’t want people to dress their toddlers as tiny pimps. People will, of course. At least he won’t be yet another kid dressed as Spongebob.

Happy Halloween

http://www.target.com/c/party-supplies-holidays-halloween-pets-costumes/-/N-5tf58

http://www.ioffer.com/i/medium-dachshund-boston-terrier-dog-tuxedo-tux-clothes-196272594

http://www.artfire.com/ext/shop/product_view/poshpoochdesigns/1862414/dog_sweater_and_hat__-_teddy_bear_costume/handmade/pets/clothing/dogs

http://www.baxterboo.com/catdogblog/post.cfm/apple-ipad-tested-by-dogs-and-cats

http://blog.deleteyourself.com/post/56746904/obama-dog-costume

Loads of LEGO

I wanted to put up some pictures of LEGO models I have created. As it says in my title header, among other things, this Blog will be occasionally about LEGO.

I write LEGO in all caps because the LEGO people have it copyrighted that way.
Apparently, most people get their brand concept wrong. I didn't know this until I became much older and began researching the LEGO Group and the LEGO community at large, which is called AFOL, or the Adult Fans of LEGO.

A quick primer of things I have learned:
LEGO is pretty much always capitalized like that.
Also, LEGO is a brand, and not a product. Like Kenmore. You don't say that you need to put your clothes in the Kenmore or that you have to get two brand new Kenmores. It's a Kenmore Washer and Dryer. So the LEGO folks would prefer that people call them LEGO bricks or LEGO models.
LEGO bricks, and the entire LEGO system of tiny plastic modular pieces and LEGO men (they call them Minifigures, fans shorten it to Minifigs) are just one of their products. It's their most famous product. Other products are considered to be different lines such as Bionicle and the LEGO Mindstorms robotics kits, which still tend to use the standard LEGO pieces along with fancier items. There is also a LEGO training division, which does corporate training seminars to help other companies become as awesome as LEGO.

Honestly, these are things that some people are huge sticklers about. Many are the kind who make sure that the little LEGO logo that is printed on each piece is facing the same direction when they put together a model. I have better things to spend my time on.

LEGO pieces are commonly known as "Legos" to the majority of the public, and it is not something I ever correct when people say. I love them either way, I grew up "Playing Legos" and still enjoy them, as a relaxing and creative hobby.

One more thing. AFOL hate MegaBloks, and all of the other cheapo LEGO knockoffs. They are inexpensive alternatives, but LEGO is definitely of the highest quality. LEGO pieces are engineered to two micrometers to ensure a snug but detachable fit, unless you are dumb enough to stick two huge base-plates together. MegaBloks and others are generally made of inferior plastics or with imprecise molding, and as such tend to warp and fail to fit together properly.

On to my creations! Click on any image to see it bigger.
This is the shelf above my desk. These are where I keep all of the models I refuse to take apart. It is not all of them. There are far more in a tote, but I need more shelves, and not fewer models.

This is a tower that I built. It is about 5 feet tall. I built it with the intention of making it a dual-purpose skyscraper/spaceport. 

Detail showing the tower, the lower garden, and the upper landing pads.

Closeup of one of the two arches. This entire tower started with me fiddling with getting these pieces to fit together at odd angles, and I thought "this belongs on the side of a building." So I built a building to put them on.

More detail of the mid-level landing pads. 

Lower garden area, and a familiar looking ship is parked on the ground level. Notice the scorpion gargoyles.

View downward, I put a "chronometer" on the side of the building. It's slightly after noon. Forever.

View underneath the tower. The entire structure is held up by those four gray columns, each about 1/2 an inch wide. There's a piece of modern art there, and an arrivals/departures board hanging from the red beam behind it. I figured that the transparent column in the center is a lift tube for those going up into the tower. The fluorescent green things are fountains. 

Some of the shuttles I had docked at the tower. A couple are based on the Rebel Blockade Runner (that's princess Leia's ship) from the beginning of Star Wars: A New Hope.

Back view of the same ships. I gave them color codings (the lime green and orange bits) to denote local and outbound transports. There are also color markings on the landing pads on the tower.

Some small local transports. Two made to look like tiny Clone Gunships from Episode II. One is like the helicopters from Avatar. The one with the blue cat people, not the Last Airbender. The rotors on the helicopter are LEGO steering wheels mounted sideways.

Three ships that may look familiar to you. The first is an tiny Ebon Hawk from Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. The second is a slapdash Millennium Falcon I made from spare parts. The third is a mock-up of a Firefly transport. It uses a tiny LEGO barrel for the engine.

 This is a Star Destroyer that I built. On a trip to the LEGO Store, they had a bunch of angled plates in Republic Red. I got as many as I could fit in their container so I could build these. This Star Destroyer is about 9 inches long.

Aft view of the Star Destroyer. I ended up with an extra wing piece of one angle and not the other, so I turned it into a vane. It looks pretty cool, between the engines.

















Side view. It looks like the ship is ascending, but it is really that I can't hold the camera level.

Long front view. 

This is the second Star Destroyer I built. It is longer than the first and incorporates more pieces, many on the inside for superstructure.

 Long front view. Very long. This one is about 14 inches from stem to stern.

Top view, this one has a unique taper toward the back.

View of the bridge (on the tower) and the turbolasers on the sides. They are the same ones from the earlier ship, so I didn't re-design them.

Aft view of the engines, which are just LEGO wheels and tires. 

Side view, I turned the extra wing into a ventral fin on this model.

Final shot, in all its glory.

I hope you enjoyed all of my LEGO creations as much as I have enjoyed building them. More ships/buildings as soon as I take some of these apart!

Quick Summary- Burn Notice

Click on the image to see it full size.

Annoyvertising- Does anyone really think that it works?

We are bombarded by ads every day. 7.5 minutes of every half-hour of television are dedicated to them. 15-20 minutes out of every hour of radio they broadcast them. There is an ad at the bottom of your email: “Do you Yahoo?” Only when in the Swiss Alps.

Billboards. Newspaper. Sponsored events. Magazines. Free games on your phone. Magazine ads with a little barcode that takes your smartphone to more ads. Banners on the top and sides of web pages.

Companies turn you into walking billboards. That $30 T-Shirt (it cost them 30 cents to make) that says “American Eagle” on it in huge letters, really defines your style and announces your sense of taste (namely, none).

That Sunoco bumper sticker you put on your car in the hopes that you will win free gas reminds everyone else: Buy gas at Sunoco.

An advertising department’s wildest dream is to create a culture for their product where individual fanatics will “evangelize” on behalf of their brand, for nothing. Beneficial to a company without any personal return. For more on this, see Evangelism Marketing and also one of its most successful uses, Apple Evangelism.

I am not saying that I am against advertising. It is a critical part of our economy. I don’t think dropping a cool million per 30-seconds during the SuperBowl is necessary, but the market thrives on getting the word out on your product.

However, there are advertisers who are deliberately annoying. A couple of examples of what I consider Annoyvertising:

On the Internet:

When you watch a video on YouTube, sometime during the first 10 seconds of the video an advertisement will take up between 30 and 50% of the viewing area, and refuses to yield until you manage to locate and click the little X in the corner. The intention is that you will have spent time focusing on their ad and you had to make a conscious effort to avoid it, and the time spent searching for a way to disable it embeds their product in your brain as though they had written “Crest Whitestrips” on a cinderblock in Sharpie and surgically implanted it there.

This is the same intention for Popup ads and PopUnder advertising, in addition to the ever annoying Hover Ad. These advertisements obscure what you want to be doing on your computer, and linger after you have finished your primary objective. I have no need to see singles in the greater Ft. Wayne area, thank you.

Something else that annoys me about YouTube lately is that it makes me watch a 45 second commercial before a 30 second video clip. Why? Ads should be proportional, so if you watch a half hour of content, you get 7.5 minutes of ads, so 30 seconds of material should merit 7.5 seconds of commercial.

Another thing that annoys me about most places that do television online, like Hulu, is that their advertisements seem to be in higher quality than the content you want to see. Sure, you can’t make out the finer details while watching last week’s CSI: Manitoba, like plot critical evidence or whether the principal actors have, in the strictest sense, noses. It takes 10 minutes to get through that darn commercial where Sarah McLachlin wails over scrawny cats and dogs, by which time the Winnipeg Wringer will have claimed at least one more victim.

On Television:

I don’t watch television too often, but here I will say any ad where Carrot Top has been the spokesperson. Future ones also.

On the Radio:

In the Toledo area, there is a particular commercial that has given me tennis elbow from having to lurch for my radio dial. It is for a local electronics superstore called Car Stereo One. The radio ad always starts with some creep called “Steve” pronouncing the name of his store as Caaaaaaaaaar Steeereoh Wwwwoooooone. He does that about four times in 30 seconds. I wish that Seal Team Six would make him their next major priority, because as far as I can tell, he is the cause of most automobile accidents and traffic delays, tennis elbow complaints, and probably high blood pressure in the tri-state area.

Steve doesn’t get a hyperlink.

Also, another local ad, this one for David Fairclough Jewelers. I don’t think that he is intentionally annoying, I just find that Mr. Fairclough doesn’t know how to use a microphone, as he speaks as though he has a damp washcloth stuffed into his cheeks. You can hear him squelch his mouth directly into the microphone during every commercial and it drives me up the wall. They call their location in Toledo “The Castle” as in “[squelch] Come on down to The Castle and [squelch] see our selection of engagement rings [squelch]”

The point of all of this is that do they really think that Annoyvertising is an effective marketing plan? I know that personally, I have pledged to never, ever go to Car Stereo One for any of my electronics needs, and additionally I always say disparaging things about the store whenever I drive past it, which in turn annoys my Fiancé and makes her never want to ride in the car with me. Obviously Steve has to go.

Many of the things advertised on YouTube I will never, ever give money for, almost especially because they had to pester me and force me to make them go away. Banner ads and commercials are one thing, but being intrusive on what people consider to be recreational is not the way to go.

I hope Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups will never get the word out through Annoyvertising. I don’t think I can take swearing off their peanut-buttery chocolate goodness.