Month June 2017

What The Funny #6: Dance of Doom

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Finn-the-Human

“WHAT TIME IS IT? WHAT TIME IS IT? WHAT TIME IS IT?!?”

It’s time for another installment of What The Funny!

-No, I’m not the usual guy for this. Jason did the first set of What The Funnies, which I enjoyed. In fact, I enjoyed them so much that I decided to take a stab at a WTF miniseries myself. (This is my first time, so bear with me.) The show we’ll be spotlighting in this WTF is….Steven Spielberg Presents Freakazoid!

Freakazoid

Freak-a-me! Freak-a-you!

For those who don’t know, here’s how WTF typically goes: I’ll be showcasing an assortment of my personal favorite episodes of Freakazoid!, listing my favorite moments from them, and rating them accordingly. I won’t be going through every single scene and line blow by blow, I’ll just be listing my favorite and funniest moments from each story. I won’t be covering entire episodes, just shorts and segments from various episodes. Also, I won’t be going through every single episode (as that would take a while) and these won’t be in any particular order. Feel free to disagree or have your own personal pics, but these are my personal favorites, and since I’m the one doing the segment, there ya go.

Now, on with the Funny!

The first Freakazoid! episode we’ll be looking at is in fact the first episode, Dance of Doom.

Dance_of_doom-0

Starring Leonard Rhombus, Kipton Tang and Weena Mercator as the Hopping Woman.

Premise: Super villain Cave Guy, a ‘Primordial American’, a big hulking blue skinned caveman who’s actually very erudite and refined…

Cave_guy

“I subscribe to the New Yorker!”

…is fresh from a crime spree and is unable to hide out at his usual digs in the Hamptons, so instead he holds Harry Connick Jr. High School hostage during a dance celebrating Daylight Saving Time. Nerdy Dexter Douglas is home, having been unable to obtain a date; however, upon learning of the hostage situation, he turns into Freakazoid and saves the day.

It’s worth mentioning that Paul Rugg auditioned for the role of Freakazoid by recording this entire segment. Tom Ruegger encouraged him to improvise extensively around McCann’s written lines. Most of Rugg’s dialogue in this short was improvised entirely in one take.

Gag Credits:

Weird Guy: Emmitt Nervend

Find Emmitt Nervend: Six Times in this Episode

Tag: “Wake up your folks and tell ’em you’re hungry. Go!”

Highlights:

We first see Freak’s alter ego Dexter Douglas at home, toiling away on his computer. Dex’s mom Debbie looks in and asks him why he’s not at the Daylight Savings Time Dance. We are then treated to the following exchange:

DoD Gif 1

Cut to a montage of Dexter receiving one rejection after another. First, from hot chick Valerie (voiced by Tress MacNeille)…

DoD 1

“Sure, I’d love to go to the dance with you…if I were ugly and dead!”

Then nice girl Steff (voiced by Tracey Rowe)…

DoD 2

“Sorry Dexter, I think that night I’m, uh, washing my hair!”

And finally, from tough girl Jill (voiced by Cree Summer).

DoD 3

“Nah, can’t do it, Dex. I’m gettin’ something removed!”

Utterly defeated, Dexter is spending the evening typing out his retirement plans.

Dod Gif 2

When Dexter replies that computers are “his whole life”, Debbie responds with:

Dod Gif 3

Line of the episode, right there. (Well, one of them anyway.) Tress MacNeille’s reading of the line knocks it right out of the park.

MEANWHILE…

f-jeepers-01

We briefly follow a man named Jeepers, a creepy, giggling little weirdo who owns a magic watch that can turn beavers into gold and was kicked out of California for being too strange, which should tell you something. Only to realize that Jeepers has absolutely nothing to do with the story. Shortly thereafter, we get our first glimpse of announcer Joe Leahy, here depicted as a marionette being operated by Freakazoid himself (!), who then says:

This line, incidentally, is a quote from Bela Lugosi in the Ed Wood directed “classic” Glen or Glenda?. Before writing this segment, the Freakazoid! writers had just seen the Tim Burton-directed biopic Ed Wood, which recounts the making of this scene. Rugg is playing Freak impersonating Martin Landau impersonating Lugosi.

In due time, Freakazoid arrives at the school gymnasium, where Cave Guy is holding the students hostage and leaps into battle…but first he does this:

Then it’s time for a little retribution.

DoD 4

“Steff, you fibbed to Dex about washing your hair. If this were an afterschool special, oh, you would pay a bitter price for your dishonesty, like getting big oily zits or eating from the same plate as David Lee Roth!!”

DoD 5

“OH!! It’s food on a plate! And HE’S been EATING off of it!! Don’t you see?!? DON’T YOU GET IT????? OOOH!OH!OOOOOH!”

DoD 7

POINGGG! “Hi, Mom!” And Jill, you said you were having something removed! Maybe that something was YOUR HEART!! Just kidding. It’s probably a mole or something! Pfffft!”

DoD 6

However, Freak can’t bring himself to dress down Val, because, you know, teh hotness. (Incidentally, in this short the writers seemed to be setting up a sort of Betty and Veronica dynamic with good girl Steff and bad girl Valerie, but apparently those plans were scrapped since neither Val nor Jill appeared again after this episode, though Steff refers to them in “Mission: Freakazoid” and Val regularly appeared in the opening titles, during the part of theme where the singers sing “He’s here to save the nation/so stay tuned to this station”.)

After some more cyber-babble with Cave Guy (Freakazoid: “I love you.” Cave Guy: “Oh, my.” Freakazoid: “Not just ’cause you’re Cave Guy, no, but because you’re part of the whole cosmic mankind-whale-tree thing!”), plus a basketball net to the head, Freak wins the day, but even as things wrap up, the jokes just keep on coming.

Freak finally tries to get some love as Dexter, only to be immediately get rejected by Val, who wants “the guy with the lightning in his hair.” Freak changes back into superhero mode and lands a kiss.

Freakazoid: That was shallow and based solely on hormones. Works for me!

Thoughts:

“Dance of Doom” doesn’t offer much in the way of plot, but the jokes and gags are fast and furious in this short. Initially the show was going to be more or less a straight superhero show with some comedic overtones, and one can see traces of that here. Personally, I’m glad the producers went the wacky-zany-nutty route.

My Rating: 3.5 out of 5.

Next up is “Mission: Freakazoid”. Don’t forget to Freak out!

Emmitt

FIND EMMIT NERVIND ONCE IN THIS BLOG POST

State of the Blog: Here Comes the New

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I’ll keep things brief. This will be my final What Up? post before I resume production here, I promise.

First, I’d like to thank you guys for sticking with us and being patient. I know the level of productivity here has been kind of an elevator ride lately (as in up and down), so we appreciate your patience as we continue to evolve and refine this thing that we call Twinsanity. The reason I’m posting this is because we’re FINALLY about ready to resume putting up actual posts here again. I’m compiling images and information and writing jokes and stuff even as I type here; I don’t want to reveal what specifically we’ll be putting up right here and now, as I don’t want to spoil the surprise, but those who have been keeping up with us may have some vague idea as to what to expect. I hope to get at least 1 of these new posts up sometime this month.

I will say that the upcoming posts and new segments that we’re working on will be slightly different than what we’ve been doing in recent years; the What the Funny, Pop Dream and Neat Stuff entries (more of which are coming) are an indication of what to expect from us in the upcoming weeks and months. Like WTF and Pop Dream, these new bits will focus on a specific franchise, cast or concept and will extend across multiple posts as opposed to random one-and-done posts like the average Ad Nausea or Talkin’ Nerdy. I’ve been looking for something that’ll stretch my writing chops and contain more detail and finesse.

Does this mean that we’re done producing entries for the established segments? No. It’s just that Twinsanity is a variety blog, it’s always been a variety blog; we try to do a variety of things here to keep things interesting; I’ve never wanted to cover just one thing over and over, I’d just get bored and burned out doing that. The only things I’m actively avoiding here are Highly Opinionated, 2 Funny, anything involving comic book superheroes and the posts which consist of nothing but video embeds with a brief description of them. The former I’ve admittedly grown tired of and would like to move on from, as they represent a period of the blog’s history (and a time in my life) that I wish to put in the past and distance myself from, the other (superhero stuff) I feel like I’ve devoted too much time here to and that just isn’t where my head’s at creatively right now (presently I’m on more of a kick for the 70’s through 90’s Saturday Morning experience, toons–as in the Bugs Bunny, Mickey Mouse, Tom & Jerry and Roger Rabbit variety–nuclear families and animals. I don’t ask questions, I go where the muse leads me), and the latter just aren’t as creative or imaginative as I’d like (I try to put my own creativity and effort into everything I do, and just embedding a video didn’t really accomplish that), plus I feel like I’d become too dependent on those, especially in the past 2 years or so. Nerdvana and Toons & Tunes are still OK, provided they contain actual context like the Cooking with Toons, Driving with Toons, Down on the Toon Farm, Wild Cartoon Kingdom and The Future Rocks! Nerdvana installments and the Ewoks/Droids Adventure Hour, ChalkZone and Fantastic Four show openings Toons & Tunes posts. The other segments are still fair game, especially Cartoon Country, since it’s very versatile and covers a lot of ground (Cartoon Country is probably the closest thing we have to a general segment); if I come up with an idea for a new Retro Bin or Cartoon Couch or Beyond the Background or whatever, I’ll most certainly do one, but as of this writing I haven’t been inspired to do a new entry for any of those yet and I’m past the point where I feel like I have to just put something, anything up for the sake of keeping post counts high; Twinsanity just turned 7 as of February (we first launched Twinsainty in February 2010), so after 7 years I think we’ve accrued a comfortable enough backlog of entries in those segments that we can take time off to explore new and different stuff. I’d rather take the necessary time to make just 1 really good, detailed post than grind out a bunch of cheapies; like I’m always saying: quality over quantity.

So while the other segments won’t be going away, right now the stuff from our current mindset, hereinafter referred to as the ‘New Groove’ (e.g. Neat Stuff, Pop Dream, What the Funny and the new segments which will be revealed in time) will be taking precedent; they’re what’s currently in our heads right now, and we’re itching to get those started.

Despite the slight change in style and delivery, the focus of Twinsanity will remain the same: cartoons, comedy, pop-culture stuff, fun stuff and geek stuff. That’s never going to change.

Well, I’m done rambling now. The next post you get from me will be a real post with actual content, images and funny stuff in it, I promise. New posts are coming up very shortly, so stay tooned, but now it’s time for me to….

Benson

‘GET BACK TO WORK!!!”