When people suggest shows for us to watch, I often say that our plate is full in terms of watching stuff. The list below is what we watched in 2008, but the list of shows that we own and still need to watch is even longer. And meanwhile we’re watching a TON of movies. We watched 193 in 2008 (42% comedy, 20% high def, 10% animated). We also watched dvd-extras during every dinner we ate. So this list of shows is just what we watched in-between the 193 movies and 365+ meals worth of dvd extras we watched. :)

AND THE “BEST METAL MOMENT IN CARTOONS” AWARD (not counting seeing Dethklok in concert) GOES TO:
Codename: Kids Next Door – S4E2 – Operation F.O.O.D.F.I.T.E. – 2 Gwar songs?!?! Transformed into a cartoon for 7 year-olds?  “How in the world is that wholesome for kids? It was awesome!” -Carolyn.  Several GWAR fans have now viewed this, including John The Canadien (who blogged about it here), Andy, Radha, as well as some unfortunate non-Gwar fans who were nonetheless subjected to this (Parthena). It’s spaz-tastic. It came out a few years ago and I only just discovered it via a strange  set of circumstance: GWAR comes for concert; I get GWAR discography; discography includes non-released mp3s of audio from a cartoon; I go “WTF?”; look up the cartoon; find out GWAR did the music for it; look around and can’t find it; ask a reliable online buddy to find it for me which he did in 30 minutes. And the rest is history.  This is the best metal moment ever, not counting Metalocalypse.

AND THE “SECOND BEST METAL MOMENT IN CARTOONS” AWARD GOES TO:
Duck Dodgers - 38_S3E12_1_In Space, No One Can Hear You Rock (guest-MEGADETH) – watched this a 2nd time to show John The Canadien Dave Mustaine talking to Daffy Duck. Yes, Daffy Duck is a space pilot. And the only way to save the galaxy is for Dave Mustaine to play a Megadeth song. In a cartoon. For 7 year-olds. Wow. Unlike the GWAR cartoon adaptation, the song played was an actual Megadeth song sung by Dave Mustaine, not sung by the cartoon characters. Wow.

THE BEST STORY AWARD GOES TO: Avatar:The Last Airbender. Possibly the first 65 episode serialized story that we’ve watched since watching Gargoyles in the 1990s. And to then find out that this story will be the next three M. Night Shyamalan movies? Really made us feel cutting edge :) (More on Avatar below.)

BEST POLITICAL SATIRE: Lil’ Bush
RAUNCHIEST UNKNOWN ADULT COMEDY CARTOON: Free For All
SHOW MOST LIKE BEING ON DRUGS: Tim & Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!
BEST COMEDY, LIVE: Tim & Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!
BEST COMEDY, ANIMATED: South Park, but Robot Chicken and Metalocalypse might be tied with that
BEST SUPERHERO SHOW, LIVE: Heroes
BEST SUPERHERO SHOW, ANIMATED: Wolverine & The X-Men
MOST AWKWARD MOMENT: Besides everything Tim & Eric do, it would have to be Andy Kaufmann’s appearance on Fridays. (More info below, but.. wow. Just.. wow.)

AND HERE’S THE ACTUAL LIST OF WHAT WE WATCHED…

CARTOONS: CURRENTLY AIRING: COMEDY: (our favorite genre): LESSER-KNOWN:

  • Frisky Dingo – brilliantly funny. Will The X-Tacles spinoff ever get past episode #2?  This show is incredibly quirkly and strange.
  • Kevin Spencer: S7E05 – alas, our supplier of Canadian Kevin Spencer episodes no longer exists. This show — the most subversive, evil, sociopathic, white-trash afterschool-special-like show in existence — is what happens when you combine Beavis & Butt-head, South Park, and Canadians. NEED MORE. One of the best toons ever. It’s a damn shame we only got to see one new episode this year.
  • Lil’ Bush – brilliant political satire. Cheney always eats raw animals from his lunchbox, like the satanic demon that he is. And “Tiny Kucinich” (even smaller than the rest of the kids) is great. The show seems to have been missed by most people.
  • Lucy, Daughter Of The Devil - first season – twice (again at Evan’s cabin) – see my major review HERE
  • Metalocalypse - most brutal cartoon ever – We even saw Dethklok in concert — and unfortunately lived! What cartoon can throw you in a real-life mosh pit? Only Metalocalypse aka Metalliclops aka Metal Taco Lips!
  • Robot Chicken – brutally funny with more references than Family Guy, and as little reverence as South Park
  • Tripping The Rift – The 3rd season (”Who will voice Six this time?”) kept up the strong trend of an incredibly funny show! The aninimated-scifi-spoofed-as-comedy genre is pretty small — it more or less contains Futurama, and Tripping The Rift. Of course Futurama is better, but Tripping The Rift is still airing!
  • Venture Bros., The – the “superhero spoof” genre is also a small genre. The Tick, Stripperella, Space Ghost Coast To Coast, and The Venture Bros., and Frisky Dingo represent the top 5 superhero spoof cartoons ever made. But The Venture Bros. is the only one still airing. The 1st 4 out of 13 this season were not funny to me, but the last 9 out of 13 more than made up for it. Perhaps I had just lost my Venture Bros. groove and needed to get back into the swing of things.

CARTOONS: CURRENTLY AIRING: COMEDY: (our favorite genre): WELL-KNOWN:

  • American Dad – as funny as Family Guy, but in a different way. Smith is sooo over the top.
  • Aqua Teen Hunger Force – still going strong. There are 4 episodes on DVD that haven’t aired on TV yet. See them.
  • Family Guy – of course
  • King Of The Hill – always suprises me that this is still funny. On the right week, KOTH > Simpsons.
  • Simpsons, The – Still going. 1 in 5 episodes is frickin’ hilarious. 1 in 5 episodes is boring. The rest are ample.
  • South Park – as strong as ever! about the best comedy still airing

CARTOONS: CURRENTLY AIRING: SUPERHERO/ACTION:

  • Batman, The – After 5 yrs, this excellent superhero cartoon is finally gone. There has been an animated Batman pretty much from 1980s (SuperFriends) to present — what will the future hold? (Update: The future holds the new Cartoon Network series, “Batman:The Brave And The Bold”. It is inferior to every Batman series since SuperFriends.)
  • Clone Wars, The - new cgi animated Star Wars cartoon with Annakin Skywalker … cool in 720p, but the villains are annoyingly juvenile. It gets old fast. This could have been so much more. This might be the most missed potential in any cartoon this year
  • Secret Saturdays, The – #1-#5 – a disappointment – seems like a combination of Jonny Quest (paranormal science exploration, scientist leader), Jackie Chan Adv. (paranormal magic, swords, an awakened mystic beast that is searching for several pieces of something to become more powerful), Scooby Doo/Flintstones (2 anthromorphosized creature companions that can sort of talk). Very derivative. The mom’s voice is SUPER familiar — I thought she was from MTV’s Downtown, but it turns out she’s the voice of Joan Of Arc in MTV’s Clone High cartoon. At least I got the network right.  Anyway, this show is kind of juvenile and derivative and should probably be avoided. There’s nothing super wrong with it — it has decent production values. It’s just very VERY derivative and non-unique. We had to stop watching after the first 5 episodes.
  • Spectacular Spider-Man – a new Spider-Man cartoon after 3 or 4 years of having none? Awesome. Closer to the canon than MTV’s Spider-Man CGI series (2003ish), and on the real earth, unlike Spider-Man Unlimited (2001ish) which occurred on a parallel earth. This has the potential to match or exceed Fox’s 1990s Spider-Man animated series, which is the bar that I measure Spider-Man series by.
  • Wolverine & The X-Men – Definitely the best animated X-Men series to date. X-Men Evolution wasn’t canon (they were never all in the same high school together!). X-Men:TAs (1990s, FOX) is the bar that X-Men series are to be measured by. And this is actually exceeding that bar. They aren’t limiting themselves to 7 team characters just to save animation budget — everybody gets animated if the story calls for it. Jubilee is not a core team member, which was the major non-canon thing that FOX’s series tried to pull off.

CARTOONS, RECENTLY AIRING BUT NO MORE:

  • Amazing Screw-On Head pilot – very strange AdultSwim pilot that a lot of people mention liking. It really just confused us the first time we watched it.
  • Avatar:The Last Airbender – WOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! BEST STORY! This is going to be adapted into the next *three* M. Night Shamayalan movies! Really?!?! What a coincidence! I’m glad we watched this. This was aruguably the best story we watched all year, as it was a 65-episode-long serialized story. Although it falls into TV-Y7(FV) (fantasy violence suitable for 7-year-olds), this entertained us and held us in suspense more than anything else we watched all year
  • Drawn Together: Super Nannny episode only – we didn’t remember that one
  • Free For All – read my full review here – a great TV-14 cartoon that aired on Showtime several years back. You can’t say “fuck” on normal TV….
  • Korgoth Of Barbaria: PILOT - 22 minutes?! This is like a primitive Venture Brothers with more ultra-violence, and less comedy. I heard it got picked up for a full AdultSwim season. Yay!
  • Grim Adventures Of Billy & Mandy, The: The Underfist Halloween Bash special movie, a few straggler episodes, and the Irwin Hearts Mandy shorts. Love this show!!! Absolutely our favorite non-AdultSwim Cartoon Network series. Really, the only non-AdultSwim cartoon that makes us laugh. A LOT. It’s a shame it finally ended after season 6, but the Halloween special was an unexpected treat
  • Invader Zim: Gaz, Taster Of Pork – somehow, we hadn’t seen this one. What a treat!
  • Ren & Stimpy Adult Cartoon Party (click for past review) – in a blaze of glory, we finally said ‘fuck it’ and finished watching these masterpiece R&S episodes. We’re both damn sick and tired of the predictable naysayers who somehow liked R&S before, but suddenly DON’T like R&S now that John Kricfalusi is no longer being censored by Nickelodeon and can do whatever he wants. Now that the show is actually the artist’s true vision, less people like it. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. Us? We like seeing R&S finally unbridled and uncensored (including self-censorship). Yes, they are a gay couple. People say they used to like the subtlety of the other episodes, because they would go so far without slipping past the censors. Suddenly you remove the censors, and people don’t like it as much. WTF! It’s like you people NEED your censors, so that you can feel like you’re “slipping under the radar”… I prefer the feeling of freedom to the feeling of being a bad boy.  A joke is a joke! Having someone try to censor it doesn’t make it funnier. Nasty thoughts are still funny even when they are not being actively suppressed.   Maybe they were right in The Matrix. Maybe you puny humans really do need to struggle to feel happy. Me? I’m quite happy for John Kricfalusi to finally be FREE OF INTERFERENCE, and able to draw WHATEVER THE FUCK HE WANTS!! It’s a shame this ended so quickly.
  • SeaLab 2021 – ‘Waking Quinn’ – so psychedelic i think it may have had something to do with why they didn’t air it. Unaired episode found in DVD extras…

CARTOONS, EVEN OLDER:

  • Avengers (1999) – absolutely an awful piece of shit. Made in 1999 in response to the awesome Batman Beyond cartoon, yet is worse than SuperFriends. Read my full review here.

CARTOONS, SHORT EPISODES:

  • Y’All So Stupid 1-4,6-7 – related to the creators of Cartoon Sushi (ex-Liquid Television), these 3- to 5-minute episodes were psychedelic, out there, nonsensical, and very stimulating. I recommend. Available on SuperDeluxe.com.

LIVE-ACTION COMEDY, CURRENTLY AIRING:

  • Delocated pilot - from PFFFR, makers of Wonder Showzen and Xavier:Renegade Angel, comes an even stranger idea: A reality TV show about a family in the witness protection agency. Now, I personally came up with the idea for a “animated reality show” as “most ridiculous show concept” a good 6 months before I’d ever heard of Drawn Together. This idea, however, is even more absurd. The main characters all had surgery to have voice disguisers permanently attached to their larynx, so the voices of the live characters do not match up, so that they can star in a TV episode without being killed by whoever they are running from. The wife now has a male voice. And they all wear black ski masks at all times, due to being on camera. The dad got mad because they did not get a nice loft as the government promised, but a studio apartment. “You think I’m going to risk my family’s murder for a studio apartment?!?!?!” The wife left, and the dad started dating again. (This was literally within seconds of her leaving.) It an utterly ridiculous for an 11 minute pilot. Thank you PFFFR (which is actually a musical / performance art group who branched into television with the critically-acclaimed, most-subversive-show-ever Wonder Showzen).
  • Human Giant - some of the most brilliant sketch comedy since Mr. Show!  I’d rank my 5 favorite sketch comedy shows as: Monty Python’s Flying Circus, Mr. Show, Kids In The Hall, In Living Color, and the good episodes of Human Giant.
  • Sarah Silverman Show – everyone’s watching this. Her special brand of self-absorbed obvious comedy is refreshing!
  • Tim & Eric Awesome Show, Great Job! - I can’t believe there are people out there who don’t like this! The most frenetic, cracktastic, strange, hurty TV show EVER. These guys are comic geniuses, and I hope they are still making comedy 50 years from now. This show is a send-up of  bad public access television, with tons of awkward and psychedelic moments.  The pacing is as insane as Wonder Showzen, the subject matter as random as AdultSwim cartoons. But it’s live. Really the only live show on Cartoon Network.
  • Tim & Eric Nite Live – Tim & Eric’s 30 minute live show. 12 episodes. Hilarious. Awkward comedy becomes even more awkward when it’s live. You used to be able to watch this on SuperDeluxe.com, but AdultSwim just bought SuperDeluxe (a good move) and it’s currently not available. You can, however, see lots of various bits of Tim & Eric at SuperDeluxe.com.
  • Tim & Eric – A Vodka Movie – parts 1-3 – Ridiculous parodies of Absolut commercials, also starring Zach Galifianakis. Watch all 3 parts HERE.
  • Tim & Eric – Junior Christian Bible Lesson Teaching Program with David Liebe Hart – OMG they totally hijacked David Liebe Hart’s public access Christian show. They would wait for him to talk, and then would just talk over him. They’ve kind of exploited David Liebe Hart throughout Tim And Eric Awesome Show, Great Job. They bring him on the show to sing ridiculously bad songs that nobody in the viewing audience actually takes seriously David Liebe Hart, as a public access star, thinks he is all that. He’s obvious to his own exploitation. So Tim and Eric go onto his show and basically steal it. They randomly play their keyboard, sing, sit in silence, wait for David to talk, talk over him, etc. SOOOOOOOOOO painful… SOOOOOOOO painful!!!

LIVE-ACTION DRAMA, CURRENTLY AIRING:

  • 24: Season 7 prequel - Wow. Did not see that coming. Just… wow.
  • 24: Japanese “Jack Bauer” commercials – OMG… This is the FUNNIEST 24-RELATED ANYTHING EVER!!!!!!!!!! Find ‘em on YouTube…
  • 24: Redemption – Stop teasing us. I want a season.
  • Heroes – totally usurped Smallville as the best superhero show. (It did this in 2007.)
  • Smallville + the 3 animated webisodes “Kara & The Krypton Chronicles” about SuperGirl – Wow, Smallville started out giving me what I thought was the strongest season in years. Bringing things closer to the canon; having Clark finally move to Metropolis and work with Lois Laine at The Daily Planet. And then it all fell apart. Why are we watching some stupid ambulance driver? Why is Chloie now a supercomputer? Why wont they kill her? Where is Lex? Why is Doomsday coming now, when in the comics he killed Superman while Superman was in uniform. It’s all falling apart. I disagreed with Kier’s accessment at first, but now totally agree.

LIVE-ACTION, RECENTLY AIRING:

  • That 70’s Show – Series Finale with audiocommentary (Clint only, and I wasn’t actually in the same room, I was just listening)
  • Watching Ellie: #9-10,14,16,18 – filler with ‘Elaine’ from Seinfeld. Not that great, really. Very generic NBC sitcoms, complete with the trademark NBC compulsive lying by main characters. NBC’s sitcom writers seem to have failed to have learned any new tricks since Friends and Seinfeld first aired. Very sad. I used to watch 5-10 NBC sitcoms; now I watch 0.

LIVE-ACTION, VERY OLD:

  • The Bugaloos - Video Jukebox – various music videos from the show “The Bugaloos”, which I was never exposed to. I only knew about them from the cover of the theme song on the INCREDIBLE album “Saturday Morning Cartoon’s Greatest Hits”, one of our favorite albums of all times. Anyway, these music videos, featuring 12-to-14-year-old kids lipsyncing to hippie music, with 1960s/1970s-quality “effects that aren’t very special”, only lends one conclusion to me: People did a lot of drugs back then, and they wanted to inspire their children to do the same!

DOCUMENTARIES:

  • BBS (by Jason Scott) parts 2…and more. Getting through all 8 hours of this is going to take awhile.
  • Scientology – ANONYMOUS – The Authorities (2008) (1h44m) – A Scientology Film from ANONYMOUS… Mostly protest footage that I skimmed through, but it did include Anonymous’s message to Scientology, as well as a message created by some person(s) claiming to speak as “the superego of anonymous”, which was quite interesting. It’s almost like abstract concepts are talkign to each other through the creation of these computer-voice-generated anonymous videos.
  • Fitna (Clint only) – scanned through in fast forward, since it was mostly an exercise in reading subtitles. Couldn’t agree with the movie more. While the Christian bible says to kill people, Christians today generally are not killing people in the streets, firsthand, over literal interpretations of their dogma. They at least hide behind an army, for the most part. But Muslims like to get close and personal, stoning and beheading people personally, and their clinging to literal interpretations of documents. (Christians don’t do Kosher, even though the Old Testament says so, because they managed to, at some point, re-interpret their religion to drop some of the oldest dogma — which Muslims still cling to. Not eating pigs is ridiculous. I hope everyone religious starves to death.)  And of course, it was important to see what all the fuss was about. Muslims have written much worse things than were in Fitna, and had Human Rights Comissions (in Canada, for example) declare this to be okay. But when the situation is reversed, and you dare to even imply that Muslims are terrorists (which they are. Not all of them, obviously, but the terrorists running in-person terrorist attacks [not counting terrorism performed by armies] on this planet are primarily and disproportionately Muslim), it’s perfectly okay for your webhost to illegal pull your website, and gets a U.N. resolution saying “don’t make fun of religion!” passed. Nevermind free speech. Anyone railing against this who hasn’t seen it is a sheep following the orders of their flock.

SHORTS/SHORT CLIPS:

  • Ken Ishii Vs. FLR – Space Invaders 2003 - quick 3-minute music-only Space Invaders-style animation depicting the societal cost of war – for the Space Invaders. Quite an intersting idea. Those poor invaders! :)

…many more, but I’m bad at catalogging them

MUSIC VIDEOS:

…and more.

CELEBRITY APPEARANCES:

  • Andy Kaufmann – Fridays – the Andy Kaufmann episode – bad VHS download, but this is the EPIC FAIL of all live performances, as seen in the movie Man On The Moon. I mean, the part where he comes on stage and is inexplicably bleeding from the nose — before he tosses stuff at Michael Richards (who, let’s face it, is known for his temper).
  • Andy Richter – pack of late night TV appearances – All Conan O’Brien, except for one Jay Leno appearance. Funny guy.
  • Brian Posehn - pack of Conan O’Brien appearances. He sure ends up talking about his penis a lot! It was a mistake to watch these before seeing Posehn do live stand-up, however, as about 30% of his set was recycled from his late-night appearances, so it ruined some of the laughs for us. Brian Posehn also wrote a Space Ghost Coast To Cosat episode back in ‘95, and a comic book (”The Last Christmas”) that came out this year: About a post-apocalyptic Santa. He’s a big metal fan and liked my Slayer shirt that I wore to his show.

DVD EXTRAS:

…and others probably not listed

WATCHED BY CLINT, BUT NOT CAROLYN (Carolyn was on a business trip):

  • Justice League/Batman Beyond cross-over – Epilogue – This is a very necessary epilogue to the 4-season Batman Beyond series, which did not have a “real” finale. It is also the origin of Batman Beyond, explaining how Terry McGinnis is actually Bruce Wayne(Batman)’s son (!!!!!!), via genetic tampering with his biological (but not genetic) father. The story was actually touching, and also showed the good side of the woman in charge of CADMUS – a government organization interested in security-at-any-cost featured in the Justice League episode called “Patriot Act”. This is a good final moment for both Batman, Batman Beyond, and the CADMUS woman. It may not be considered official Batmancanon by all fans, but I consider this the final chapter of all things Batman. (Re-watched while Carolyn was out of town because I fell asleep when we watched it a few years ago.)
  • Malcolm In The Middle – S7E14 – Hal Grieves – When this first aired, I definitely didn’t make it to the George Takei appearance! I fell asleep.
  • PowerPuff Girls – Shut The Pup Up. Something else I fell asleep during, years ago.

…View lists from previous years via my Media Consumption Lists category.

Mood: ready for the new year?
Music: Ministry – The Angel (Original Mix)