This post is quite long, but chock full of good recommendations — especially for animation lovers. Plenty of live shows too. If I had time, I’d post each one of these as a separate review. But I’ll never have that kind of time.

I’ve started to move towards listing weirdest/rarest stuff first, and more common stuff later… After all, everyone can guess that I watch South Park…

As far as awards go? Not sure. Best superhero endeavor is definitely Heroes. Best drama is Weeds. Funniest show is Tim & Eric, Awesome Show, Great Job!. Funniest cartoon is South Park — but Xavier:Renegade Angel has South Park completely beaten in ridiculousness, and Code Monkeys has South Park beaten in terms of freshness. As for live comedy, Sarah Silverman is funnier than Human Giant. Barely. But most of the good cartoons were funnier than anything live-action would have to offer.

CHRISTMAS SPECIALS:


Shrek The Halls (720p) – what you would expect for 21 minutes of Shrek? If you like Shrek, you should see this. It takes place in continuity after Shrek 3, I believe.

Star Wars – Holiday Special ( 1978 ) – 2 hours condensed to 5 minutes version – just enough to get a glimpse of Bea Arthur and Carrie Fisher singing horrible, horrible Star Wars songs. It is possible to get the complete 2 hours in underground videotrade circles. Believe me, it’s horrific.

INSTRUCTIONAL VIDEO:

Scything – a 16 minute video on how to use a scythe. It was surprisingly interesting and ridiculous to watch at the same time. “Did you know scything is coming back in style?” Neither did I. It also is apparently a good source of exercise, and popular in groups! But make sure to stop every 3 minutes and sharpen your blade, and once a day you have to peen the jig! Peen the fucking jig! There are multiple peening methods, y’know. Yea, this was ridiculous. But Kipp had just arrived and we watched it while talking and beginning to get wasted.

VIDEOGAME FOOTAGE:

Mortal Kombat Fatalities (22m47s) – spread out over possibly more than a year, we eventually watched every fatality. There were a LOT. And now we’ve seen them ALL. For EVERY Mortal Kombat game.

MIXTAPE/MEDIA BARRAGES:

Forbidden Transmission: World Bazarre (30m) – possibly our least favorite mixtape ever, but it was also only a half hour, so tolerable. Weird Japanese clips, as always! Will try the holiday episode…
Forbidden Transmission: Christmas Special (28m) – better than the other one; a fun holiday watch. The homicidal Santa clips were good too.

Retard-O-Tron MixTape – watched half of it last year, finally finished it. Nice how they mixed in music in there, and had disgusting quick clips in between longer, more interesting clips… The strange thing is I had seen a LOT of the obscure clips they used. Far, far, far too many, without ever knowing where they came from. It disturbed me that I seem to have seen all the strangest stuff in existence already.

CARTOONS, AIRING, LESSER-KNOWN:

Code Monkeys – absolutely BRILLIANT in its style; the most unique style I’ve seen in awhile. Nintendo (original) style of animation. A score that goes up during the episode. Health meters that go down. Guy hits a desk? The top changes to “PLAYER: DESK” and the desk loses some health. Someone takes a bong hit? The score at top goes up… 420 points! (Took me awhile to catch on to some of the subtlety here.) These are the types of jokes that merely comprise the periphery of this excellent made-for-adults cartoon. G4 TV?!?! Who’da thunk… This show may as well be Grandma’s Boy – The Animated Series. It seems very inspired from the drug + videogame culture shown in that movie. The only thing that’s missing are old ladies.

Fantastic Four (2006) – 13 episodes of a NEW Fantastic Four series. Much better than the passable 1990s FF series. It has that “anime-ish” type style that a lot of new cartoons have — which I do not care for. But the stories and voice-acting were good, and it’s kind of hard to go wrong with such cultural icons.

Frisky Dingo – S1 & S2 – AdultSwim – Okay, this was damn, damn strange and weird. It was funny, but very disconcerting. Trying to figure out where it is going is actually a waste of energy. For example, figuring out why the show is called “Frisky Dingo” is pointless, as it is not apparant until the last 30 seconds… Just sit back and enjoy the quirky ride. This was made by the makers of SeaLab 2021, and the animation is very obviously the same production team. But the show itself is not that much like SeaLab… “Harumpf!”. Many things are just inexplicable. If you follow the link through to the wikipedia page, and read the plot synopsis, you’ll know what I mean. The dialog, situations, and characters are all excellent. The first 2 or 3 episodes introduce the chracters, so the hard part is that it’s not really funny at first. But once it builds up, the humor is amazing!

Grim Adventures Of Billy & Mandy, The: Still going strong after 6 seasons, this show is going on stronger than ever. If anything, quality of episodes has greatly improved since Evil Con Carne spun off into its own series. Evil Con Carne stayed lighthearted, and this show became darker. We were extremely happy to discover the existence of this 6th season.

Kid Notorious – 108_Pilot – nice to pick up a missing episode, with a focus on the kitty. This series was great, and never shoudl have ended so soon.

Minoriteam – good comic-book styled, dialogue-driven ridiculous superhero comedy, with every possible racial stereotype being used pretty much constantly. One of the villians is literally a ladder, “Corporate Ladder” — this would be something that would represee minorities, you see. Some of the plots were quite ridiculous, and then of course there was the season finale, a parody of the “Galactus” character in Marvel Comics (devourer of planets) — this time it was “Balactus”, and he was a 400-foot black guy. It’s full of stuff like THAT. It’s drawn in comic book style, with bright colors and simple backgrounds. We couldn’t quite manage to find every episode, but saw 10 of these.

Moral Orel – hilarious show that makes fun of religious people who live in “Moralton, Statesota”. Claymation style patterned after the old Davey And Goliath wholesome tunes. But this is anything but wholesome. For example, in episode #1, Moral goes to church and misinterprets the sermon such that he ends up finding and smoking crack cocaine. He gets his ass whipped by his father’s belt at the end of every episode. His father drink. A lot. His parents swapped his brother out for another kid without noticing. But you will hear “God” mentioned 20 times in every episode. It’s all about misdirected following of faith, and quite a good send-up of religious people.

Slacker Cats – ABCFamily brings a rated TV-14 ‘adult cartoon’?!?! I mean, kids could totally watch it, but they do talk about porn, powerful mind-altering drugs, having sex with 3 females, as well as have a plot involving a cat going inside the corpse of another cat to trick a little girl into thinking her dead pet was retruend alive, in order to get money to party in Mexico. ABCFamily?! Really?!?! Not as edgy or mature as AdultSwim, but certainly better than most anything on Nickelodeon or Boomerang. If I was a parent, I might be offended by them try ing to slip this under the radar, except that they only air it after 10PM. This show doesn’t quite fit on ABCFamily, so, much like Code Monkeys (on G4), this slipped under the radar of animation aficiados everywhere. Cats are cool, and the “Tabbitha” (crazy homeless cat) character has an AMAZING vocal performance — insane voice for an insane cat! Glad to hear this has been renewed for a 2nd season on 2008.

Xavier: Renegade Angel (every episode at LEAST twice) – Take the creatofs of Wonder Showzen, add the rambling crazy metaphors of Gary Busey, coupled with the mis-guided need to help of The Tick, done in a machinma style, seemingly written while on LSD, and you get Xavier: Renegade Angel. John The Canadien‘s blog covers this show as well. AdultSwim has a long history of taking absurdity to new extremes, and you’d think after Space Ghost Coast To Coast, SeaLab 2021, Aqua Teen Hunger Forrce, and Tim & Eric Awesome Show Great Job, that we’d be desesitized to new levels of absurdity. But in a matter of months, AdultSwim has done us over and made us realize we can indeed still see new shows that freak us out with incredible levels of strange stimulus and new, novel absurdity, coupled with absolutely unpredictable and bumbling plots. The pacing is fast too. Many things happen at once. Therea re things you wont notice until the 2nd or 3rd time you’ve watched an episode. Unfortunately there are only 110 minutes of Xavier, but Season 2 begins in October. This is possibly the show I am most excited about seeing again.

ANIME:

Hijikata Toshizo – Shiro No Kiseki (The White Path) (32min) – a 1-shot anime by Studio 4oC, who produced of the incredible anime movie Mind Game (which I gave a rare 10 rating to), as well as well-known anime movie Tekkon Kinkreet. This surprised us by being historical fiction about events that occurred in the late 1800s in Japan, such as the Meiji Reformation. Something like that. The jumping back and forth between time and between characters made it a bit hard to comprehend at times–but that’s anime for ya. It was disturbing how that one guy was cracking jokes and smiling, knowing he was about to be killed. That freaks me out. I do not understand Japanese honor, or anyone willing to sit there and be killed by a friend while smiling to him that it’s the right thing to do. Pretty messed up.

Cosplay Complex #1-#3 – WTF. That’s all we can say. WTF. Cosplay contets? So like.. wearing clothes is a talent in japan? And what’s with the lesbian child molesting character? Japan is fucked up, I tell you! Fucked up!!

LIVE ACTION, COMEDY, LESSER-KNOWN:

Greg The Bunny – Independent Film Channel short episodes (~6-10 minutes) – these were mostly awesome – post-FOX series, and only with Greg, Warren, and Count Blah (no Seth Green). This run was more about the characters in Greg The Bunny than about the show they were “starring” in in the FOX version of the series. It was sort of a behind-the-scenes mockumentary to a show that no longer exists. Many episodes were complete movie spoofs of things such as Eraserhead, Easy Rider, Pulp Fiction. One or two bad eps, but most of these were pretty damn funny. And plenty of profanity too.
Halfway Home – a decent Comedy Central offering. Good characters, interesting situation/premise, funny topics. This was great while it briefly lasted.

Saul Of The Mole Men – not necessarily that GOOD, but quirky as hell and definitely unique. That guy really looks like Weird Al! Live-action humans projected onto CGI/puppet backgrounds, with a deliberately odd plot.

Tim & Eric Awesome Show Great Job! – crack-tastic. This is a frenetic, psychedelic, sometimes-tediuos, insane show full of colors, absurd randomosity, and awkward moments. Incredible show, though some episodes weren’t quite as incredible. Watching this show is like being on some kind of drug; it is so random you aren’t quite sure what is going on the whole time. A lot of the show consists of “pretend” clips, and fake commercials. It is basically a parody of bad public access television, and they recruit several actual bad public access ‘talents’. I had covered this show before on my blog to celebrate how happy I was that it was renewed for *30* more episodes after its initial run of only 10 episodes. They still have another 20 to go. This is in our top 5 favorite shows of the year. If every episode was a good as the top 50% of episodes, this WOULD be my favorite show of the year. Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim have a place in our hearts as the most brilliant new comics coming of age. Their style is surreal and unique, redefining comedy itself. Everything they touch is gold, from their Live podcast show, to their pre-recorded podcats, to their fake commercials for Absolut Vodka posted on YouTube. These guys have a hard time doing anything bad. Unless they are TRYING to be bad, which they frequently are. They are masters of awkward pauses, and purposefully bad timing, designed to make it painfully funny to watch. They even do things like trying to make certain sketches look like they are on low quality VHS tapes.

CARTOONS, RECENTLY AIRED:

AdultSwim pilot: That Crook’d Sipp – an interesting mix of hip-hop and urban-influenced plotlines and sound, set to 1960s-looking animation (complete with fake film effects). Watched this with Dave & Lacey & Evan while most of us were somewhat trashed.

AdultSwim pilot: Superjail – kind of ultraviolent at the end .. this got crazy. Need to watch it again.

AdultSwim pilot: Drinky Crow Show – an alcoholic crow. we need to watch this again.

12. Oz. Mouse – Now, this is one of the strangest 11-minute cartoons ever. They are deliberately going for a very abstract, dry, wtf kind of humor. This confuses even me. We’re not even sure if we like it or dislike it — we think it’s both at the same time. One thing for sure, is that it’s strange. And that makes it interesting. It’s almost a cross between Monty Python’s Flying Circus (for the absurdity) and David Lynch (for the damned confusion). In an interview with the creator, he cites Lynch as one of his influences. Also, the squirrel character “Skillet” (who just makes those weird noises) got Misfit the cat’s attention one night, and he stood in front of the tv and watched it for around ~3 minutes; it was very strange. We did not even realize it was serialized until episode #4 out of 20 — THAT’s how abstract this show is. Even by the series finale, episode #20 (that’s about 3hrs 40min) not much is really explained. Although there is some closure and quite the twist — many questions remain unanwered, possibly irrelevant. Characters that don’t know who they are (“Am I still a fireman?”) also remind me of David Lynch‘s fetish for changing characters.

Brak Show, The – #30 – A web-only release of a show that was cancelled? I LOVE it when good cartoons come back! This was just as absurd as the “actually on TV” days. Never my favorite show, but always an entertaining 11 minutes.

Cow & Chicken: Buffalo Gals – the banned episode. Literally a bunch of grunty-voiced lesbians who break into peoples houses and literally start munching people’s carpets. Among other things. Um….. Yea, I guess I can see how even Cartoon Network might be anal about this, but it was one of the funniest episodes ever. “Wanna play on my team?” Her name was “Munch Kelly”! Totally not appropriate to kids. At the end, The Red Guy comes on, and says, “There’s a moral to this story… But it’s a secret!” This show has always been subtly disturbing; ever-so-slightly morally off-kilter in a very subtle slip-under-the-censors’-radar manner.

David Lynch: Dumbland: 8 episodes totaling 33min, Lynch made these flash animations all by himself. They are crude, there are farts, the main character is this retarded-ish brute who is like Percey Spencer from Kevin Spencer mixed with Mike Tyson on steroids. 12 Oz. Mouse did cite Lynch as an influence, so this could be considered a direct influence. Had similarly tedious moments, and a song, similar to other Lynch productions. We are reminded of both the screaming baby AND the dancing chicken from Eraserhead.
Harvey Birdman – Attorney At Law – remaining 3 or so episodes upto and including the series finale – an ABSOLUTELY AMAZING GRADE A show; very, very, very sad to see it go. And they brought Steven Colbert back for the finale too…. Also: 2 Season 1 eps with audiocommentary

Robot Chicken – Season 2. This show RULES! We got behind. That was a mistake.

Space Ghost Coast To Coast GT – Eleven ~5-minute eps of a series we all thought was long gone. FIFTY MORE MINUTES! Yes! SGCTC was the *original* AdultSwim cartoon. Much like The Critic, we thought this was over, and then a series of mini-episodes popped up out of nowhere. This needs to happen more often!

Spider-Man-TAS (2003) – #7-13 + extras – MTV’s cgi-but-made-to-look-cell-animation-ish series. Neil Patrick Harris as Spider-Man, Lisa Loeb as Mary Jane. Not quite as tride and true to the original as the previous few Spider-Man animated series, but still entertaining. It had an MTV feel to it, which could be considered a disadvantage. It didn’t feel like part of the real canon of Spider-Man as they invented a new main character.

Superman-TAS (1990s) – Braniac Attacks (2006) – this was a movie, technically — see ‘movies’ section for the full review

CARTOONS, OLD:

Beavis & Butt-head: SPECIAL: Decade Of Power (2005) – 21-minute VH-1 full-length commercial for the dvd box set, with new animation of B&B being interviewed by Billy Dee Williams. While mostly just a commercial, this had a few unique moments of B&B that are very laughable, at at least one very surreal moment involving Billy Dee Williams’s eyes being digitally altered to look demonic. Either way, it was the first *NEW* B&B animation in well over 5 years! + Taint Of Greatness – 1.2-hr 3-part special with interviews by Mike Judge and others who worked on the show — good stuff!

Big Guy & Rusty The Boy Robot (1999) – Co-created by Frank Miller (Sin City,300), this Fox Kids cartoon takes the character design of Astro-Boy (but in reverse; the ‘kid’ is a robot and the huge robot is a human in a robot suit), a bit of the feel of Men In Black:TAS (in terms of the feel of the action), and a tad of the youthful folly of…Morel Orel?? Add that together, and you get this TV-Y7 toon. Decent watching for all ages; if you like cartoons you could deal with this as a secondary diversion. Interesting voices: Rusty the boy robot’s voice is the same voice as Bobby Hill from King Of The Hill/The Debbies from The Oblongs; the idiot rich-guy selfish corporate boss [Donovan] is played by the guy who’s voice is Bill Dauvetreve in King Of The Hill/He was the boss in news radio/In Office Space he was the guy who was supposed to take care of the rat problem; the Legion Ex Machina was played by Brother Justin from Carnivale/Lex Luther from Superman/Justice League toons; the General Thorton was played by the sergeant from Full Metal Jacket. Anyway, this was cutsey compared to other shows. Most definitely corny, but that is some of the appeal; The Big Guy’s ultra-patriotic and wholesome battle cries are always laughably ridiculous. Best quote: “For the love of Mike!”

Richard Williams commercials – not actually a cartoon show, but 27 minutes of commercials. Commercials animated by the famous (but not to me) animator Richard Williams. This video was probably 2-3 times better than we expected it would be. (We only watched 2-4 minutes at a time, over many sessions.) Not only was the animation somewhat interesting, but it was all very retro, and international as well. They weren’t all american commercials. A Heineken commerical based on The Big Bad Wolf? (You can’t huff and puff THAT well, until you’ve had a Heineken.) Commercials encouring people to use the phone (you don’t see that “reach out and touch someone” crap nowadays). A snowman melting slowly, talking to his friend. “Use the phone to talk to somebody before they die” was the basic tagline at the end (they said it more nicely). It was severely depressing for an animated commercial encouraging phone use! They were pretty interesting.

Spiral Zone #1 (1987) – okay, this was utter 1980s crap! thought it might have been old-school cool, but it wasn’t. BAD BAD BAD BAD. Stay away!

Toxic Crusaders – #1-#4 – Guess we’ll have to wait til 9/5/2007 to see episodes #5-#13. (UPDATE: Troma did not meet their own release deadline!) This is pretty much the same show as Attack Of The Killer Tomatoes:TAS, which we watched most episodes of, and absolutely adored. Anyway, Toxic Crusaders is based on the Troma Toxic Crusaders movie. Corny jokes that somehow are *actually* funny, which is something that most 1980s cartoons can’t do. Subtleties in humor that would escape most people, or not make them laugh. Cheezy. Campy. Most people would not like this. We loved it. We want more. Someone please let me know when the Attack Of The Killer Tomatoes box set comes out, because I will gladly purchase the dvd of the 13 episodes of this series which is supposed to be included.

The Mask:TAS – 7 eps we never managed to see when we originally watched this around 1996. Great, great, unknown show. Rob Paulsen is extremely talented as well. If Mark Hamill hadn’t played The Joker in Batman, I’d say: Give it to Rob Paulsen.

CARTOONS, AIRING, COMMON:

American Dad – every new episode. GREAT show.
Drawn Together – so sad to see it go! This was just about the funniest show on TV, sometimes even topping South Park! And I had the idea for an animated reality show before the show ever started! :) Alas, Comedy Central doesn’t run most series (except for South Park) very long.
Family Guy – all new episodes. also: Family Guy – Up Late With Stewie & Brian – #1 (twice,oops)
Futurama – Futurama movie:Bender’s Big Score. Counting this as a show because the movie is simply 4 episodes done widescreen. It was AWESOME for this show to follow in the footsteps of Family Guy by returning to us with new episodes! I hope this happens with all my old favorite shows! :) The plot was great, the convoluted time-travel mindfuck was even better, and many loose ends were tied up. Good stuff.
King Of The Hill – all new episodes. the sad thing is, on select nights, KOTH will be funnier than The Simpsons
South Park – Duh. This is practically required watching. Still going strong. Let’s hope it lasts as long as The Simpsons.
The Simpsons – all new episodes. Plus: s9 audio-only dvd extra – a 22min farewell from Bill Oakley & Josh Weinstein – did not realize that the guys who did Mission Hill (and other good cartoons) originally came from The Simpsons. Definitely insightful. S18E15=good. The dragon! Plus: Simpsons Culture Show BBC special, with many interviews about Simpsons, including Matt Groening and Ricky Gervias. Plus: Simpsons – The World According To The Simpsons (48min), another BBC special about the show.

LIVE ACTION, COMEDY (MORE WELL-KNOWN SHOWS):

Absolutely Fabulous – 33_S5E4_Huntin’ Shootin’ & Fishin’,36_S5E7_Exploitin’,29_SPECIAL-Gay (54min). Very nice to see unwatched episodes again. Thought we’d seen them all. Usual laughs by the end of the episodes. Also: 1.5 hrs of extras – a huge clip show that we watched over 10 sessions or so, providing a ‘refresher course’ on the whole series. Many other dvd extras too…
Curb Your Enthusiasm – 00_S1E00_Larry David Special (pilot, sort of) (1hr) – this was sort of like an extended episode about Larry David making a comeback to standup comedy. Not formally part of the series, and I’m not sure if this would be on the dvds or not. It’s awesome, though. So nice to find a “forgotten episode” after burning through all 5 Curb seasons in a month or so.
Curb Your Enthusiasm – Season 6 – we thought the series was over! Nice of this to unexpectedly plop out onto our TV. As good as ever!

Human Giant – promo dvd (Illusionists, 3 Shutterbugs episodes, Worst MixTape Ever) – wow, I gotta see this show! This promo DVD reminds us of the Stella promo DVD, in the sense that it was a damn funny production by a show that we have yhet to watch. [CLOSURE: In 2008, we did]
Office, The (US) – frickin’ hilarious, one of our favorite shows! Why does he hate Toby so much?? WHY?? AWWWWKWARD! And the finale blew my mind.

Sarah Silverman Program, The – very funny, as always. She has perfected the self-centered persona. The plots are quite ridiculous and absurd as well, which is always a plus.
Young Ones – including two full-length shows with Rick, Vivian, Neil – Filthy Rich & Catflap, Bottom Smells. Both very funny.

LIVE ACTION, COMEDY: 1-SHOT SHOWS:

Outtakes: World Leaders (27m) – Many leaders can be made to look stupid. Of course, George W. Bush is the easiest. “Subliminable!”

LIVE ACTION, DRAMA/SUPERHERO:

failed pilot: Batgirl (spinoff of Adam West Batman series) (7min) – My God was this awful. And the laser effect was not very special. The Bat-Lockpick-Ray was just about the worst plot advancement device I have ever seen. Gee, how do we unlock the door? With a lockpick *RAY* of course. Because an actual lockpick would not be… “batty” enough? If you thought that pun was bad, it is an absolute gem compared to this failed pilot.

failed pilot: Gay Robot – This was a crazy show! Kind of a “b-pilot”; zany; pretty funny. The professor accidentally spilled some wine cooler on the robot when constructiong him, so he came out gay. Yup. A gay robot. Very funny, actually. Not conventional enough for American mindset, but I could see this working in the UK.

24 – Good season, better than the last! Also: 24 Conspiracy, the cell-phone series. TRIVIA: so when Kim Bauer ran into the cougar in the woods… in real life it actually bit through her hand!

Heroes – OMG this ruled so much! We watched the 1st season in the space of 2 weeks or so! And then season 2 as it aired. Also, Heroes Unmasked #1-#10 or so have been watched as well — it is a UK ‘behind the scenes’ series of 9-to-16-minute “episodelets” about each Heroes episode.
Smallville – all new episodes. Also: listened to audiocommentary for “Thirst” (vampire ep from a few seasons ago), where all the producers talked the entire time about how ashamed they were that this episode was so terrible.

Weeds – S2 – Damn this is a GREAT show; an incredibly refreshing break from your typical banal live-action dramas (not our favorite genre). Things that don’t usually happen in TV shows happen in this show, and it is quite the good show. The mere premise of a widowed soccer mom who deals pot to maintain her childrens’ lifestyle virtually guarantees the show to be great… And the potential is completely fulfilled. We held off on season 2 until after the normal network 2006-2007 season was over. That didn’t stop us from burning through it in under 2 weeks, WE. WANT. MORE. The cliffhanger for S2 was far more suspenseful than for S1. The show in general is a lot crazier in S2 than in S1. We GREATLY look forward to S3!!

LIVE ACTION, REALITY:

Carmen Elektra’s Naked Womens’ Wrestling – watched 2 fights w/Nathan & Kipp. Kind of ridiculously fake, but no one’s complaining :)

Dice Undisputed – Andrew Dice Clay‘s 2007 resurgance. This time, he is having a reality show for modern PR purposes. Only 7 episodes, but still interesting. Clint had decided, with Glen‘s help, in early 2007 (Feb/Mar?), to be Dice for Halloween. Having no idea that this series was out, it was quite cool to find it. Also, we had managed to see his appearance on the Howard Stern show in late 2006. One of the Dice Undisputed episodes was about him going on that show, so it was the first time we’ve ever seen the same thing from to different angles IN TWO DIFFERENT SHOWS.

Kenny Vs. Spenny – we finished watching S3 as it aired, and the S2 (dvd) episodes that we had previously missed. Now that it’s over, Carolyn doesn’t gag every night watching it. A great reality show (compared to the typical american reality shit!), previously reviewed on my blog.

Will It Blend – a series (about 40?) of ~1-minute infomercials really, but worth it – A $400 blender that destroys anything. They did some ‘gorillaa avertising’ by posting a torrent to MiniNova.org that contained 40 or 50 ‘webisodes’ of “Will It Blend”. They were awesome!! At about 80 second each, we watched 2-5 a night for a few weeks until we got through them all. Then we checked out the website http://www.WillItBlend.com and they even have an RSS feed!! So… One address-paste later, we are subscribed to a lifetime of watching things get pulverized in a $400 blender. It’s better than I’m making it sound. He blended the wooden handle off an entire rake in less than 30 seconds. And they have a quirky sense of humor — the Janet Jackson doll during SuperBowl Sunday, for example.

LIVE ACTION, CLASSIC:

The Twilight Zone – pre-pilot – Time Element (unaired) (1958) (Desilu Playhouse) (52min) – written by Rod Serling, and with a similar surreal, eerie feel, one can easily see why this was picked up and made into The Twilight Zone. It’s wonderful to get a hold of unaired rarities — TZ fans eat your heart out.

LIVE ACTION, TALK:

Diggnation #88,#105 – dinner-watching fodder… these guys are so disorganized. Interesting way to get some internet “news”, though.

LIVE ACTION, GAME SHOWS:

Price Is Right – Million Dollar Spectacular
Price Is Right – Bob Barker – A Celebration Of 50 Years On Television (2007) (43m27s) – He looks old! It’s time. Sad to see him go. He was awesome. That girl who won was freaking out the entire episode, so it was funny that she won.
Price Is Right – Final Bob Barker ep

LIVE ACTION, SKIMMED/PARTIAL:

Adventures Of Brisco County, Jr – episode guest starring Timothy Leary & Debra Jo Rupp (That 70’s Show’s Mom) – Leary was hilarious. The whole time it was almost as if they didn’t need to write lines for him. I’d never seen him as a actor, only as a guest on Space Ghost Coast To Coast in its pre-adultswim infancy days. So, these select moments were quite a treat.

Bob Ross – This year and last, skimmed several seasons (4 or so). Skipping forward 1 minute every 5 seconds works VERY well with this show. You can “watch” a whole season in under 20 minutes.
Caroline & The City – Yes, we watched all 4 seasons when they originally aired. Kinda re-watched 75% of S4E1 and the final few episodes for some closure feelings.

Giligan’s Island – MOVIE – Rescue From Giligan’s Island (1h34m35s)

Moonlighting – last ~15min of the series finale — it got VERY strange and surreal at the end
Soap – S2 & S4 – watched about 2min from each episode to get a refresh on the story and characters — how twisted a show it was!!

Star Trek – original series remastered episodes – skimmed thru a bunch to see the effects, ended up getting sucked in to quite a few of them for more than a few minutes :) Does it count as skimming if you watch 90% of it?

Twin Peaks – European Version – This was a 2-hour movie that was the Twin Peaks pilot, but with a different ending. We barely noticed the difference… Thought it would be more obvious. They shoot “Bob”, and solve the crime, basically. Just watched it twice in 2006; you’d think we’d remember…

CELEBRITY CLIPS:

Steve Carell – appearance – Craig Ferguson – 20071030
Matt Groening – appearance – The Daily Show
Matthew Perry – appearance – Jay Leno – 20020815
Howart Stern – Gary Busey – what a freak!! he wrestled Robin to the ground and thrust into her. Currently celebate.
Howard Stern – Jenna Jameson – I have to say hearing that she did it with Jenny McCarthy is some of the best. news. ever.
Howard Stern – M. Night Shyamalan – very interesting stuff about his movies, and his new movie Lady In The Water, and his problems with Disney
Howard Stern – Marilyn Manson – girl who wants to lose her virginity to him (10 min)
Sex Pistols – Steve Jones & Johnny Lydon – Craig Ferguson Show 20071031 – interview & ‘Pretty Vacant’ – They’re back, 50, and fat!

SHORT CLIPS:

Album Cover Wars – hilarious 2.5min “war” between many famous album covers – we recognized Jane’s’s Addiction & Violent Femmes, among others. But why the hell do I know what a Boston album cover looks like? Why would I recognize it? I’ve never listened to Boston. I don’t understand. Help.

Americans Are NOT Stupid (5m48s) – people on the street, asked obvious questions, given stupid answers

Animator Vs. Animation 1 & 2 – 5 minutes of “battle” between a computer programmer and his flash-authored symbol-gone-wild. These were awesome, and I know enough Flash to appreciate the subtleties. This would have been a great video game, were something like this at all possible.
Anna Nicole Smith – Dead Booby Dance (2m11s) – ha ha ha ha ha… dead booby

COMMERCIALS: 15 minutes of vintage UK commercails … board games, shows, magazines, toys I’ve never herad of… strange taste of culture.

COMMERCIAL, FAKE: Bunch-A-Cunch – office massacre, seemingly-retarded guy who only hears his food being chewed (1m52s) – funny!

Don Hertzfeldt – The Meaning Of Life (2005) (12m26s) – kinda interesting, and a bit crazy at the beginning with everyone talking at once and repeating the same line over and over

Elephants’ Dream – HDTV CGI, but that’s about all it had to offer. 10 minutes.

Grand Theft Auto Nerd Interviewed at E3 (2006) (6m42s) – This was rather painful to watch. His pants are falling down at the end. Seems like he has Aspergers Syndrome or something. His reaction when they called him a nerd was just about the best part!

Grateful Dead Movie – psychedelic intro sequence only – 7.5min – pretty damn cool

He-Man Disco! – 4 Non-Blondes, covered by He-Man, in disco style?!?! Who could resist?!

Helpdesk aka I.T. Pro – sent to me by Dad AND Greg Z, though Greg beat Dad by 5 weeks :) – actually a really funny short about the “first” I.T. helpdesk professional. It is a monk explaining books to another monk who has only used scrolls. It’s pretty funny, because to me this is exactly how people who aren’t good at computers seem to act!

How To Talk Like A Pirate – 6m30s

Incredibles, The – Jack-Jack Attack (4.5min) – must have come on the dvd with the movie or something … Carolyn saw it twice

Jeff Foxworthy roast – Bush impersonator (7m6s) – decent

Le Montage (9m2s) (with Missy Peregrym) – too bad there wasn’t more Missy Peregrym :) This was pretty funny in the same way the South Park “Montage Song” is.. but with licensed music. The ending in particular is funny. Decent clip.

March Of The Beers – 5-minute March Of The Penguins parody using beer bottles. Poor little beer bottles, trying to get home to the bar. :)

Matrix Reloaded parody – MTV Movie Awards 2003 (9min) – hahahahhhaha!!! concordantly!

Mike’s New Car (Monsters, Inc.) (Pixar) (2002) (3m35s) (cgi)

Mosquito – Firefly parody – not that great, but they did a good job at parodying every character, and the theme song as well

Red’s Dream (1987) (Pixar) (4m15s) – pretty pointless

Star Wars-related – George Lucas In Love – finally watched it after all these years; pretty funny

Requiem For A Hero – Kronos Quartet – Lux Aeterna – the last song from Requiem For A Dream with Transformers-Beast Wars finale clips – wtf? who came up with this? (10m36s) – many internet memes from the Internet Power Hour compilation video – sadly, it was an *edited* montage, so I still need to hunt down some of the originals. I never did make it all the way through Beast Wars back in the 1990s…

MUSIC, FULL-LENGTH MUSIC RELEASES:

Type O Negative – After Dark – excellent, containing many Type O Negative videos I had never seen, very insightful interviews, comedic clips, live clips, interviews of fans – way above par for a music-related full-length vid!

MUSIC VIDEOS:

– watched many old 80s songs videos
Atari Teenage Riot – Kids Are United, Destroy 2000 Years Of Culture, Rage, Revolution Action, etc
Bananarama – Cruel Summer – this song I’d never heard. OH LOOK they’re eating bananas! I get it. Ha ha. It’s a banana-Bananarama-rama. Say that 5 times fast–I command you.
Celtic Frost – A Dying God Coming Into Human Flesh, Cherry Orchards, live German talkshow appearance, Third From The Sun, live appearances, etc
Descendents – many, including a full OLLLLD concert (from right when the ‘All’ album was released)
Gwar – many
KMFDM – many
Sabbat – several, including a full concert – live Sabbat was an impressive find considering the Dreamweaver album was $54 on Ebay when I got it (and $26 when it was remastered) (of course I have the vinyl and cassette too), one can imagine how rare video would be. Yay YouTube, yay eMule.
Tiamat – many, including Church Of Tiamat dvd (and extras), a full concert (Moscow)
Type O Negative – many

DVD EXTRAS (SHOWS & MOVIES):

Absolutely Fabulous – 1.5+ hrs (clip show) and other extras,
Arrested Development – deleted scenes
24 – various seasons’ deleted scenes, makings of, interviews, etc
… AND MANY, MANY, MANY MORE.
… INCLUDING, BUT NOT NEAAARRRLY LIMITED TO:
40-Year-Old Virgin,
Clerks:The Cartoon,
Dilbert:TAS,
Family Guy – you know, the comeback season has more of the S1 and S2 writers than season 3 had!,
Fawlty Towers – 1.5 hr PBS special by Iowa PBS, with Manuel as the host (with a normal English accent, nothing like his character)
Friends – incl 1.5 hr farewell special
God, The Devil, & Bob – such a shame that the religious freaks caused this show to be cancelled; so great that the unaired episodes (over 50% of the season) are on dvd now. GET THIS SHOW!
Happy Tree Friends – really funny live-action mockumentary extra!
Harold & Kumar Go To White Castle,
Harvey Birdman: Attorney At Law – particularly unique extras,
In Living Color,
King Of The Hill-Making Of-lots of Mike Judge, other interviews, table read excerpts, etc(24min)
Larry Sanders – it’s funny how they ascribe all these ‘groundbreaking’ traits to this show, saying it made HBO, as if “Dream On” never happened! I guess they say the same self-congratulatory things on every show’s dvd extras…
Moonlighting – 30min “In Memory Of” extra
Mr. Show (funny!!),
News Radio
Repli-Kate
Samurai Jack – his voice actor was black?! So, he’s an asian, drawn like a white, voiced by a black. What a great show, too bad it’s over. ALSO: 25-min biography on Genndy Tartakovski, the animator of Samurai Jack/Dexter’s Lab/Clone Wars (among others).
Seinfeld – bloopers, 1hr ‘How It Began’ was very interesting, lots of Larry David
Smallville
Six Feet Under – interviews (~50min)
Titus – Did not realize almost every episode was based on real-life events!
Wedding Crashers

Mood: ready for vacation!
Music: Testament – Allegiance