Cartoon Country: Krillin VS Pintar

Before I start, I’d like to once again apologize for the low output here lately. We’re not happy about it either, but we’ve been working on evolving the site in various ways (most of which we’ve already covered previously, so there’s no need to repeat ourselves)  and things are indeed beginning to happen, so thanks for sticking with us during this time.  OK, enough of that, on with the nonsense.

Today we’ll be looking at one of my favorite moments from Dragon Ball Z, focusing on everyone’s favorite short stack, Krillin.

Krillin

“Mondo cool!”

In this scene, Krillin is competing in one of the many, many, many fighting Tenkaichi Budokai fighting tournaments present in the DBZ universe. Krillin is sporting hair on his head because by this time in the series, he hasn’t fought in a while and has been instead doing the family thing with his wife Android #18 and their young daughter Marron. Anyways, Krillin’s opponent is a mountainous blowhard named Pintar (a pun on pinto beans, maybe?). There is a noticeable size, height and weight difference between the two combatants, and for this reason, Pintar immediately begins relentlessly taunting Krillin for being vertically challenged. Then the match starts and this happens:

Yep, that’s right; Krillin plants one in Pintar’s bread basket, knocking the big schmo out of the ring with a single punch, thereby winning the match by a TKO.

One thing that I like about this moment is that while Pintar relentlessly taunts Krillin both before and at the start of the match, Krillin never once engages Pintar personally. We hear some of his inner thoughts, but Krillin never says a single thing directly to the guy, and as we learn later on, there was no need for him to; he let his fist do the talking for him. For all of his bluster and trash talk, Pintar never lays a finger on Krillin. The match doesn’t even last three minutes. And after he’s declared the victor, Krillin just turns and walks away, as if to say this match was just another thing that happened. Speaking as someone who is shorter than the average guy (5′, 6″, in case you were wondering), I liked seeing ol’ Krillin get a moment of superiority for a change. I’m sure that fans have different interpretations/opinions regarding this scene, but for me, this is right up there with the “Hulk owns Loki” moment in the Avengers movie. It’s just like what Buster Bunny is wont to say:

Buster Bunny

“Never underestimate the little guy!”

What The Funny #5: Popcorn Pandemonium

howdy-doody

“Hey, kids! What time is it?”

Time for more What The Funny!

Well, this is it, folks. The last of my Rocko’s Modern Life favorite short breakdowns.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DYvbkzt2RX8

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Yeah, I know that there are many more Rocko shorts that I could cover here, but as I said back at the very first segment, I don’t want to get bogged down with doing every single episode of RML; I’m only doing my absolute favorite shorts. I’m about ready to move on to another show or franchise to cover, and I think that 5 is a good round number to stop on. Now just so we’re clear, this isn’t the last WTF; it’s just the last one that I’ll be doing for this particular series. We don’t know what the next one will be just yet, although we have some ideas. And it may be myself, or Damon or even both of us doing the next crop of WTFs.

Anyway….on with the merriment. Here’s Popcorn Pandemonium

POPCORN PANDEMONIUM

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Synopsis: In this episode Rocko dreams of going to a drive-in movie, but he and Heffer settle on the local movie theater.

Highlights:

The short starts with Rocko and Heffer in the car watching TV through Ed Bighead’s window. Rocko is annoyed because this is not tantamount to watching a movie at a real drive-in. Heffer uses a remote control to change the channel to a scary movie and Bighead changes the channel back to his program. Soon, Heffer and Bighead continuously flicker the TV channels back and forth, which cause Bighead’s TV to explode.

Heffer suggests that he and Rocko should go to Googa Plex Cinemas, a local movie theater that offers numerous amount of movies. The two pay roughly $100 for two tickets and buy their refreshments (while waiting hours in a long line). Heffer is caught sneaking his own snacks into the theater.

The Googa Plex Cinema has many theaters, all of them showing the same movie: “Lethal Odor IX”.

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They enter a movie theater, only to find that they mistakenly entered a restroom. I hate it when that happens!

One running gag that I like is that the staff at Googa Plex are all wearing shirts identical to Rocko’s, and because of this, Rocko is continually mistaken for an employee.

Rocko: (to the cashier) Might I say, that’s a very dapper shirt you’re wearing!

Cashier: Yeah, management makes us wear these stupid things!

Rocko and Heffer go to theater #42, where we’re treated to this exchange:

Rocko (to an employee): Excuse me, where’s theater #42?

Employee: You should know, man. You work here!

Rocko: I don’t work here.

Employee: Me neither, unless the boss is watching.

Rocko and Heffer see the a preview of the family movie “The Cuddly Little Poots” Guest starring the super hero Really, Really Big Man.

RML - Really, Really Big Man.gif

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Then there’s a preview withing the preview telling the audience to watch for the Cuddly Little Poots on a World War II submarine, in the feature “Das Poot”! This pun is so bad that even the characters in the theater collectively groan at it.

Next, we get a trailer for “Garbage Strike: The Musical”, which is a parody of the Disney feature, Newsies, a 1992 musical about striking paperboys.

There’s also a preview for the movie “Lang Chow: Gerbil of Death” complete with bad dubbing. We also see Lang Chow eating breakfast.

fei-long

“For a Shaolin monk, you’re Kung-Fu is really lousy!”

After a preview of a movie about Dracula’s demise, the movie blurs out before it shows the feature presentation. Filburt, the movie director, listens to the guests’ complaining and hit his head on the top of the opening of the window, causing his glasses to fall off his face and reflect the light of the movie projector to start a fire, which trails through the carpet and into the popcorn storage room. This causes the popcorn to overflow through the building and Rocko and Heffer run out just in time to make it to the car. But when they find that the overflowing popcorn has caused the building to collapse, they find that it has become a drive-in and stay to watch the film. As the popcorn continues to overflow, the Garbage Rats from the film appear and sing their strike song.

Popcorn Pandemonium wasn’t a complicated plot. Rather, it was mostly a series is spot gags with a continuing theme. This short had an old-school Looney Tunes feel to it, and I’m a big enough Looney Tunes nerd to appreciate that.

My Rating: 4 out of 5.

Next time: A completely different show! Stay funny.

What The Funny #4: Who’s For Dinner?

It’s that time again! Time for another breakdown of one of my favorite Rocko’s Modern Life shorts!

Before we start, let me once again apologize for the loooooong wait. I planned to do this one last month (December), but I never got the time and space to sit down and work on it. Also, I wasn’t able to find a ton of images for this one. Even GIFs for this particular short are scarce, so I’m just going to have to make my descriptions of certain scenes as entertaining as possible.

Now that’s out of the way, on with the fun!

Who’s For Dinner?

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This short’s title is a play on the title of the 1967 movie Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner? starring Sidney Portier.

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“Been there, done that.”

Synopsis: In this episode Heffer invites Rocko to have dinner with his family. Rocko accepts, much to Heffer’s relief. When he arrives Rocko is stunned to find out Heffer lives with a family of Wolves.

Highlights:

Heffer: My grandfather hates wallabes, but don’t worry, because he’s really nearsighted.

That should have been a red flag right there.

When Rocko meets Heffer’s family, he (along with us, the audience) is surprised to discover that Heff’s family are a pack of wolves, and they’re a colorful pack, to say the least. The Wolfe family consists of…

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Heffer’s grumpy father George…

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…his perpetually upbeat mother (with a nervous tick) Virginia…

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Trivia Tine: Heffer’s parents get their names from “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” – a 1962 play by Edward Albee, examining the breakdown of a marriage of a middle aged couple, Martha & George.

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…Heff’s teenage siblings; sardonic, rebellious brother Peter and over sensitive drama queen sister Cindy…

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…and his cantankerous, racist (or would be “speciesist”) grandfather, who we learn in a later episode that his first name is Hiram.

Rocko, expecting Heffer’s family to be bovine rather than lupine, gets a gift for Virginia, an udder warmer, which Virginia puts on her head and is seen wearing it for the remainder of the short.

Initially, Heff tries to pass off Rocko as a coyote, but Grandpa Wolfe insists that Rocko must be a beaver, which he goes on believing for the remainder of the series.

Virginia initially continually calls Rocko by the wrong name, referring to him as “Jocko”, “Crocko”, etc.

Inside, we get a glimpse of the Wolfe family’s home life, such as the following exchange:

George (to Peter): So, son, how was school?

Peter: I quit school two years ago.

George: What?!? VIRGINIA!!

Virginia: We were afraid to tell you.

Peter: See? I told you he’d get mad.

Cindy: Stop fighting! I…can’t…TAKE IT!!!!!

Virginia: No one’s fighting, dear.

Grandpa: Eh, sounds like fighting to me!

George (to Peter): You’re a loser! Why can’t you be more like Heffer?

Peter: What? a 500 pound cow?

George: He’s a steer!

bundys

Putting the “fun” in dysfunctional! Yahoo!

Grandpa: I hope you’re not lettin’ the beaver eat off’n the good china, otherwise we’ll have to smash the plates!

Evidently, He’s not crazy about beavers either.

The wolf jokes continue as Rocko excuses himself to go the bathroom, where he opens the closet door and notices a group of Little Red Riding Hoods being kept there. Then he discovers the Three Little Pigs bound and gagged in the family’s medicine cabinet!

While the family chows down on their meal (a dead moose), Virginia asks Rocko (finally getting his name right) if he and Heffer have known each other for a long time. Rocko responds with…

Rocko: Yes, and it’s quite interesting. In all the years that I’ve known Heffer, he never once told me that he was adopted.

We then hear the sound of a record scratching and everything goes grimly silent.

Heffer: Is that true???

Virginia: Well, yes. We found you under a tree in Brandwynn Farm. You were skinny, so we decided to fatten you up, but then we grew to love you!

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But what about my birthmark?

Peter: Dad used to call you “steak”.

Basically, the Wolfes were originally going to eat Heffer before they grew fond of him and later adopted him. What’s really funny is that Heffer never knew that he was adopted until Rocko inadvertently spilled the beans at that particular moment.

Confused and hysterical with emotion, Heffer runs out of the house to parts unknown. The family (plus Rocko) set out to find Heffer.

I’ve always liked the following line:

Rocko (on the phone): The Bigheads haven’t seen him (Heffer) either. What’s that? And they don’t care!

Heffer is seen drowning is sorrows in a bar that looks suspiciously like the one the Nighthawks painting. Eventually, he comes across what he believes to be his biological father’s tombstone (in actuality, it belongs to a big wet cat). Heff gets a vision of his real father over the tombstone.

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How he’s able to astral project like this when still alive is anyone’s guess.

Heff’s Real Dad: That’s not my tombstone! I’m not even dead! I’m living in Canoga with Joyce here.

Joyce (who looks and talks like Heffer in drag): Hi! You should visit some time!

Heffer: Mom??

Heff’s Dad: That’s not your mom! Your mom’s a car seat in Illinois! Listen, I’m sick of you kids coming around here looking for your daddy! I’ve had a million kids that look just like you, UGLY! Joyce come here and clean up after me!

It seems as though Heffer’s real dad is crankier than George and Grandpa Wolfe combined. A farmer notices Heffer “Hey, aren’t you that guy on the milk cartons? There was a family of Wolves lookin’ for you. Seemed real upset. Matter of fact, they had a beaver with ’em!”

Eventually, Heffer comes back to the Wolfe’s house. The short ends with a shot of the Wolfe family on top of their roof howling (or in Heffer’s case, mooing) at the moon in silhouette.

“Who’s For Dinner?” is one of Joe Murray’s favorite episodes, and one of mine too. In addition to delivering a lot of laughs, this short actually manages to be pretty touching, albeit in a sick, twisted way. Murray said that he partially based Heffer on an adopted friend and used his friend’s emotions to sculpt Heffer’s role and actions.  I liked how the premise of Heffer being adopted by a family of wolves was never altered throughout the course of the series. You don’t get too many adopted children in cartoons, and I like how this premise was handled here.

My Rating: 5 out of 5.

Next Time: We wrap up our Rocko’s Modern Life celebration with Popcorn Pandemonium. Stay funny.

Twinsanity’s New Groove

This is a sort of addendum to what was discussed in the 2016 Yearly Wrap-Up. I just wanted to explain where where at as far as where this blog is going and (hopefully) will be going in 2017.

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This won’t be in any way cryptic or final. However, I may ramble a bit, which I plan to address a little later on.

Both Damon and myself will explaining our plans for Twinsanity’s future, so to avoid confusion, after this passage, Damon’s thoughts will be posted in blue, while mine will be typed in purple.

First, let me say that overall, I don’t plan on making any dramatic changes to the blog. Twinsanity will still be comedy focused. It will still be animation focused and it will still be geek culture focused. None of that will change. However, I’m going to be taking a vacation from typing stuff about comic book super heroes for a while. I just feel like I’ve been talking about that particular subject far too often and I just want to to blog about other subjects besides that. I haven’t written a Cartoon Country in a while. I was on a roll there for a while, then I just kind of stopped. Not to boast, but since I pretty much saved that segment from oblivion, I really would like to get back into writing those. They’re enjoyable.

A couple of years ago, I planned to start a 2nd blog that I was going to call The Mash-Up, in which I would basically blog about whatever was on my mind at the time. Some of the current segments here, such as Toons & Tunes and Nerdvana were originally planned for that blog, but I decided that it would be easier to simply write the stuff that I planned for The Mash-Up here at Twinsanity, and that worked fine for the most part, except that as of late I feel as though far too many of my posts here have just been me picking a subject and giving a series of random thoughts about it, as opposed to Damon, who pitches TV show pilots, imaginative settings and mini synopses for animated movies and franchises. The random thoughts posts are OK, but I don’t want that to be the main thing that I’m known for doing because I know that I can be more creative than that. The random thoughts posts were only intended to be filler segments to keep the blog active while we were working on something bigger or for when each of us has an idea for the same segment in the works and we don’t want both of them appearing back-to-back. I fell into complacency with the random thoughts posts because they’re so easy to make, but they don’t require a lot of creativity, so from now on, I’m going to put a limit on the amount of time that I post the random thoughts posts. The 2 Funny, Toons & Tunes and musical Nerdvana posts won’t disappear from the site entirely; I’m still going to do them, but now they’re only going to be utilized as filler, the way that they were originally intended to be.

On a semi-related note, in regards to that Talkin’ Nerdy installment titled “What the What, PPG Reboot?!?” that I did a few months back, I hope that you enjoyed that, because that’s the last time that I’ll be talking about Powerpuff Girls 2016 on this blog. I haven’t been watching PPG 2016 after the initial 2 weeks of it’s debut, and after dedicating three posts to the show, I’ve literally run out of things to say about it. I’m tired of talking about that damn reboot!  Plus, I was never a PPG fanboy to begin with, so please stop asking me what I think of it.

This year, I’m going to find some new subject matter to focus on (hereinafter referred to as the “groove”) and these will among the main things that I’ll be writing about this year. I don’t know what it is is that I’ll be grooving on as of right now, but I’ll know what it is when I find it, or more accurately when it finds me. The What The Funny segments that I started last year is an indication of what’s to come (incidentally, I’m not done with those, not by a long shot. I’m going to cover two more Rocko’s Modern Life shorts before moving on a to a different show or franchise. I wasn’t able to write WTF #4 last month the way I had intended to, but it will definitely be written in January). The more imaginative posts take longer to make, but they make for a better end result.

So to sum up: I plan for my 2017 posts to be more focused and creatively driven. The random thoughts posts will kept to a minimum and only used as filler segments and no more comic book super hero stuff, as least not for a little while. Maybe after I’ve done a sufficient amount of other stuff, I’ll revisit that subject, but only afterwards.

Finally, with luck, 2017 will be the year that we finally began the process of transitioning Twinsanity from a blog to a website. It feels like we’ve been talking about doing that forever, but I’m hoping that this year we can at last put those plans into effect.

I’ve already outlined several of my plans for Twinsanity 2017 in the Yearly Wrap-Up, but nonetheless there are a few specifics which I feel I probably missed that need addressing.

Like how Broadway types feel about theater, I view Twinsanity as practically a living, breathing entity, something which needs to be nurtured and cared for in order for it to be its’ best. While I don’t wish to lose sight of Twinsanity’s overall focus–a site wherein Jason and I joke about, goof on, examine, comment on, analyse and generally geek out on animation and geek stuff–I’ve been wanting to expand this blog, its’ range of subject matter, its’ style and my own personal contributions to it, for some time. There are things I’d like to do more of and things I’d like to do less of.

While 2016 was notably not a very good year for me (not just for the reasons it wasn’t a good year for the planet as a whole, but for my own personal reasons as well), there were some bright spots: I don’t like to toot my own horn, but some of the posts I made in the last year or so that I’m particularly proud of were ‘Superhero City: A Visitiors’ Guide’, ‘A Touch of Magix’, ‘Hero: 108 – Fast Forward’, my recent Videots entries, the Cartoon Country I did on “Mysterious Mayhem at Mutant High!”, the TV Special Showdowns on Tabitha and Adam and the Clown Family and Nickelodeon’s Thanksgiving Fest and of course the Pop Dreams. (And no, I haven’t abandoned those: I still have 2 more Barbie Sisters Pop Dreams left to do, the former I plan to put up sometime this month, and the latter hopefully in February, after which the plan is to launch another series of Pop Dreams but center on a completely different show, franchise and set of characters.) I would like to do more posts like those aforementioned (again, I’m itching to “GO BIG” this year), realizing that the more detailed posts take time, so it may be at the risk of reducing the number of posts that I make in an average month, but that’s OK if it results in a better quality end product. Like I’m always saying, Quality over Quantity. I’d be fine with only making 1 post a month if said post kicked a lot of ass; I’d rather be brilliant and infrequent than forced and regular. (It also helps that there are 2 of us contributing material to the site, if Jason does a post a month and I do a post a month, that’s still 2 posts, which is the minimum number of posts we try to make.) Also, I haven’t done a Cartoon Country in a while, I’d like to get back to doing more of those.

Second, you may have noticed that I haven’t put up a 2 Funny, Toons & Tunes or a music video embed (hereinafter referred to as a Musical Nerdvana) in a while; my last Toons & Tunes was in September and my last musical Nerdvana was in October; this is intentional. Over the past years or so, I feel that I’ve become too dependent on those, a trap that was easy to fall into since those are so much simpler to make, so I would frequently posts those just to keep the site active and keep post counts high, but no more. I will no longer just be putting up video embeds with minimal descriptions and passing them off as my content for the month; those segments were intended to be filler segments between the bigger posts and a way to prevent 2 of the same segment from being posted back-to-back, and that’s solely how I’ll be utilizing them from now on. Expect less of those in the future, except as buffers between larger segments.

Finally, if there’s one thing I’m genuinely disappointed with myself about is that so far I haven’t been able to escape doing posts about superheroes, despite my wanting to expand my horizons from that. Last year I made a post called “The Animal Factor” which I had planned to be a tad more ambitious, sort of a Hero:108/Littlest Pet Shop/Animal Crossing kind of thing with a sci-fi twist, but it ended up being yet another superhero-wanking post. (I may make a 2nd attempt at “The Animal Factor” if I can properly get my thoughts together on it.) This coming year I’m going to make a conscious effort to reduce the number of superhero-themed posts I make; as of this writing, I’m taking a self-imposed break from superhero posts, effective until ????. I may do another one somewhere down the line, but right now I’d like to branch out and explore other subject matter. Ideally, I’d like to get a comfortable backlog of non-superhero posts, say, about 3 to 4 months worth, before I do another superhero themed post.

As a sidebar to that, as of this writing I won’t be devoting any more posts to DC Super Hero Girls. I still like the show and I’ll continue to watch it, but I won’t be doing any more blog posts about it here. As previously stated, I’m trying to expand my subject matter beyond superheroes, plus I’ve given that show enough free publicity already; I was starting to feel like this was becoming a DCSHG fan site, which was never my intent.

I’d really like to find some new, interesting subject matter to make decent posts about, i.e. a New Groove. As of this writing I don’t know what the new Groove will be, but I’m hoping it can help take Twinsanity to an all-new level, which has been my overriding goal for a while now.

Talkin’ Nerdy: Sing – Why Animals?

For a moment, let’s talk about Illumination Studios’ latest (at the time of this writing) movie, Sing.

sing-movie-title-cardJust a quick heads-up; This isn’t going to be a review of the movie. We don’t do movie reviews on this site, and I couldn’t review the film anyway, since I haven’t seen it yet. This isn’t a movie review, it’s just pointless rambling.

Now I’m sure that we all know the story of the film by now; a singing competition, contestants each have their own little drama going on, yada-yada-yada, but the one thing that I’ve been wondering since I saw the first trailer for the movie…

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Why is the cast made up entirely of animals?

This is especially curious considering that Sing was released right after Illumination’s last movie, The Secret Life of Pets, in which the animals were, well, pets owned by humans. Compare this to Disney’s Zootopia.

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In Zootopia, the animal society made sense because the producers were using different animal species to represent different races and classes, and to show how those different races and classes reacted toward each other.

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In Sing, by contrast, this seems to be a parallel to our society, except that everybody’s an animal, and there’s no reason for them to be animals. They just are because it’s a kids movie and kids like talking animals.

Plus, the Sing animals wear shoes. I don’t like it when cartoon animals wear shoes.

My guess is that Illumination felt that kids wouldn’t want to watch an animated movie about humans. I might have, but at this point I’d be willing to sit through any Illumination movie that didn’t have the Minions in it.

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We get it. You’re Illumination’s biggest cash cow, but we can’t miss you if you don’t go away.

There’s a belief among my friends and colleagues that I dislike anthropomorphic animals. This isn’t the case. I like anthropomorphic animals, there are just a very specific set of conditions in order for me to enjoy them. Generally, I prefer it when animal characters are in a recognizable human environment as opposed to just turning human characters into animals for no reason. I prefer when the people are people and the animals are animals and you don’t mix the two. First, I’m OK with animals that talk or occasionally walk like humans, just as long as said animals don’t live under the delusion that they are human! Referring to other animals as “animals” as though they’re something different and such.

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I’m looking at you, Beary Family!

Second, if you’re going to have a society where there are no humans and the characters are essentially human characters in animal guise, then don’t have them interacting with “real” animals!

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Anthros and non-anthros existing in the same universe is just plain weird. It’s impossible for me to get my mind around it.

Another question comes to mind: In a universe where all of the animals are intelligent, what do they eat?

I think that ideally, I prefer a world like the one in Warner Brothers’ movie Storks

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In which the animals live in a recognizable human environment and  are acknowledged as animals, despite their being intelligent and being to talk directly to the humans.

So it’s not that I dislike anthropomorphic animals in cartoons, it’s just that the situation has to make sense. I still may see Sing at some point. I’ll probably rent it when it comes to Blu-Ray. Also, from a personal observation…

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Judy Hopps is far cuter than the rabbits in Sing.