By now, I’m sure most of you have seen this ad from Discover Card’s “We Treat You Like You’d Treat You” campaign, titled appropriately, “Twins”.
Now far be it for me to nitpick about a quirky spot featuring cute twins, but….
Sorry, but this would never happen. Why? Allow me to enumerate:
I used to work in customer service (worst job I ever had, but I digress…) and when you work in customer service, the very first thing you’re supposed to do is get the caller’s name so you can bring up their account information, so there’s no way the twin working for Discover would be speaking to her sister for that long without knowing who she was.
You know how when you call a company, the voice on the phone will often say, “Calls may be monitored for quality assurance”? Well, they usually are. Most companies don’t permit their employees to wait on their relatives, as they’re concerned that the employees will give them special treatment. And…
They should have recognized each other’s voices right away. You don’t grow up alongside of someone for your entire life and not be able to instantly recognize their voice over the phone. I’m a twin and every time my twin has called me or vice-versa, we recognize each other’s voices in a nanosecond:
Me: Hello, Mr. Goldstar. My name is Ackbar Mackbar, and I have a wonderful opportunity for you. All I require is $50.
Goldstar: Silverstar, I know it’s you. I already told you, I’m not giving you $50 for that statuette of Big Barda!
So yeah, this ad’s totally busted, but I can still give it a marginal pass since Lisa and Julie are total cutie-pies.
When I’m discussing animation with people, and whenever the topic shifts to shows such as Sofia the First, Miles from Tomorrowland, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Littlest Pet Shop, Looney Tunes, Uncle Grandpa, Scooby-Doo or Hanna-Barbera, someone pipes in with….
“Pfft! I don’t watch that kiddie crap! Those shows are for babies! I only watch mature, grown-up cartoons like Batman, Yu-Gi-Oh! and Beyblade!”
“Really??”
OK, confession time: I lied when I said that I find statements like these to be funny, at least partially. The truth is that I would find attitudes like this funny…if they weren’t so pathetic.
When people say to us about shows such as My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic and Uncle Grandpa “That’s for kids!” Our response is usually “Yeah, so are Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Batman Unlimited, Adventure Time and Gravity Falls. I don’t see your flipping point!”
“I do not watch cartoons! The shows I watch are grown-up, mature, dark edgy fare! Anime and action shows like Justice League are NOT cartoons! They are ANIMATED SERIES!”
Sure they are. And G.I. Joe isn’t a doll, it’s an action figure. The difference between a cartoon and an ‘animated series’ is the exact same difference, that is, none at all, save for a fancy name change which was only concocted in a boardroom to pacify fragile egos. Most of the people who try to claim that shows like Beyblade, Bakugan and Justice League are somehow something other than mere cartoons usually tend to be insecure teenagers and young adults who are too embarrassed to admit publicly that they watch cartoons, so they try to invent this delusion that the shows they watch are in fact something different. Well, you might want to sit down for this one: if something is drawn and animated, then it’s a CARTOON, so you’re watching and enjoying CARTOONS. Deal with it.
Folks, here’s the skinny on super hero cartoons: We’re talking about athletically fit dudes and chicks who don brightly colored pajamas and capes and then use their magical powers to run around beating up mad scientists and would-be world conquerors. Am I saying that these shows aren’t cool? No. Am I saying that these shows aren’t enjoyable? No. But at the same time, I fail to see how these shows have any more depth to them than 5 teenagers and a talking dog who travel around the world in a psychedelic van unmasking fake ghosts, or a one-eyed sailor man with enormous forearms who clobbers bad guys by eating raw spinach straight from the can, or buff dudes giving passionate speeches about the Heart of the Cards, before screaming at the top of their lungs in order to summon enough ki energy to wipe out a town square. Batman: TAS, Superman: TAS and Justice League are still kids’ shows, awesome kids shows, but kids’ shows nonetheless.
And I’m really failing to see how a show about battling spinning tops is somehow more mature than a show about a goofy magical shape shifting guy who’s the uncle and grandfather of everyone in the world who lives in a magic RV with a deadpan dinosaur and a slice of pizza wearing shades. Like it or not, we are all fans of cartoons, and ALL cartoons are equally inherently childish. If you’re ashamed of that fact, then you’re demonstrating the very thing you’re opposed to. Refusing to watch Friendship is Magic because it has colorful, magical talking Ponies in it, refusing to watch Looney Tunes because it has shameless slapstick, refusing to watch Uncle Grandpa because it has silly nonsense,…refusing these things doesn’t make a person mature, nor do they make one appear to be an adult.
Are we saying ALL cartoons are for kiddies? No, of course not. But the ones made for corporate children’s networks like Cartoon Network, Disney Channel and Nickelodeon?….
You bet your sweet bippy they are.
I instinctively sneer whenever I hear or read statements such as:
“Every time I tune in to Cartoon Network nowadays, the shows on it get more and more juvenile and infantile.”
-Wow, juvenile and infantile shows airing on a CHILDREN’S network. Who’d-a thunk it?
“Well. How about that??”
If you seriously think that focusing on humor equals “dumbed down for kids”, then you might need to develop a sense of humor yourself.
Or:
“Disney needs to grow up and start making movies for adults like Saw and Friday the 13th!”
Um, no, they do not actually. Not at all. That’s just something you’d personally like to see happen; it doesn’t need to happen by any stretch of the imagination. Let’s not confuse your wants for the studio’s needs. The Mouse House has forged a boo-billion dollar empire by making family-friendly movies, TV shows and theme park attractions, they’re not about to toss all that aside and topple said empire just because Xxxevilemodood666xxX wants to see Disney release a Zombie Apocalypse movie. FTR, Disney does make more mature films, just when they do it’s under one of their psuedonyms. If you’re honestly expecting to see some Saw ripoff about a homicidal Satanic traveling dentist who gets off on torture porn preceded by that animation of Mickey Mouse whistling in Steamboat Willie, you need to put down that bong and come down from that high, ’cause that’s never gonna happen.
Look folks, you’re entitled to prefer whichever genre you prefer, but don’t hand us this BS that your favorite genre of kids’ cartoons is innately more mature or substantial than any other genre, ’cause BS is precisely what it is. Young Justice, Star Wars: The Clone Wars, Bleach and Beware the Batman are no more substantial than Regular Show, Tiny Toon Adventures, Animaniacs and Uncle Grandpa.
Sometimes when I point out that these shows are in fact, for kids, some smart-ass will occasionally hit back with:
“Ahem, one should never bring ‘It’s a kids’ show’ as an argument to support what a show or channel does.”
No, I should, because that’s exactly the point. Adults on message boards or social media sites tend to present the erroneous argument that the “majority” hates the shows that networks like Nick and CN specialize in when reality the “majority” they speak of are people whom these networks don’t care one whit about and who by all statistical evidence, haven’t done much of diddly-doo-squahoo to hurt said shows’/channels’ success. It’s like a vegan complaining about the opening of a new steak house: of course you’re not going to like something that was specifically made to appeal to a demographic other than yours and whose popularity is already helped by other factors.
I can’t sum things up better than one of Toon Zone’s senior staff members, Mr. Edward Liu, who said this:
“I find it ironic in the extreme that a self-selected audience that believes cartoons are worth watching and discussing as adults is also more than happy to relegate everything in the kids’ block as juvenile and not worthy of their attention, even though that’s the same attitude that the overwhelming majority of adults still have for ALL cartoons.”
To clarify, it’s perfectly fine with us if adults want to watch TV shows and channels that are tailored for kids. We’d look like jerks if we said otherwise since we do that ourselves, but at the same time, we don’t get where these same adults get off expecting channels that are tailored for children to be responsive to their particular tastes and desires. Adults complaining about kids’ shows on a personal level is pointless and absurd. If you’re old enough to complain about a children’s show, then you’ve already outgrown it. Your favorite cartoons don’t have to grow up just because you did. The true mark of maturity is just watching and enjoying whatever the frell you like and not caring what others think.
There is no ‘kid stuff’. If you like something, you like it. It doesn’t matter how old you are.
Here’s a thought: instead of expecting shows like Looney Tunes and Phineas and Ferb to “grow up”, why don’t YOU grow up and watch something that was actually made for you?
Like many in my age bracket, my teenage to young adult years were spent watching MTV, back when the channel used play these things called music videos. (We’re going way back here.) However, while I enjoyed several of MTV’s musical outings, my favorite things to watch on MTV were episodes of BBC’s The Young Ones (we miss you, Rik Mayall!), The State, Liquid Television, Remote Control (the first game show for geeks, even before Comedy Central’s Beat the Geeks) and those weird little animated bumpers they used to show between videos and commercial breaks, several of which were done by some biggies in the industry like Fred Siebert and R. O. Blechman’s The Ink Tank. These would’ve gotten me into animation, if I hadn’t been a cartoon devotee already, that is.
I’ll be showcasing a crop o’ MTV bumpers (as well as Nick at Nite’s early bumpers) later on, but for now I’d like to spotlight one particular set of MTV bumps. Only Music Television would think to produce a series of bumps for a music video channel under the guise of cheesy kid-vid breakfast cereal ads.
There were 3 of these in all. First up, “Calamari Cereal”.
Next up, “Military Cereal”.
Finally, yes, they went here, “Death Cereal”. Even Susie was a bit taken back by this one.
Say, you noticed how the characters never actually said anything about MTV in these spots? You just noticed the channel’s logo printed in the cereal boxes. It was this sort of artistic weirdness that made spots like these fun and strangely intriguing. We’ll be taking a deeper look at spots like these later this month.
Everyone has a favorite Christmas song. For some it’s “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas”, for some it’s “Santa Claus is Comin’ to Town”, for some it’s “White Christmas”, for some it’s “Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer”, for some it’s “Jingle Bells”…
“That is NOT a Christmas song! It’s a WINTER song! They don’t mention Christmas anywhere in the lyrics! Just like “Winter Wonderland” and “Baby, it’s Cold Outside”!
Yeah, we’ve covered that. Anyway, typical of my Aquarian nature, my favorite Christmas song is one that rarely gets played on Top 40 radio stations and has yet to be featured in a Rankin-Bass special: a little ditty called Pat-A-Pan.
“I’D like to pat a Pan, if ya know what I mean!”
“Whoa, TMI, man!”
MEANWHILE, BACK TO THE POINT…..
For those who don’t know, “Pat-A-Pan” is a French Christmas carol in Burgundian dialect, later adapted into English. It was written by Bernard de La Monnoye (1641–1728) and first published in Noël bourguignons in 1720. Its’ original title is “Guillô, Pran Ton Tamborin” (“Willie, Bring Your Little Drum” or “Willie, Take Your Little Drum”).
The carol revolves around the birth of Jesus Christ, and is told from the perspective of shepherds playing simple instruments—flutes and drums—the onomatopoetic sound of which gives the song its name; “patapan” is meant to mimic the sound of the drum, and an accompanying lyric, “tu-re-lu-re-lu,” the flute. This is similar conceptually to the carol “The Little Drummer Boy”, with its chorus of “pa-rum-pa-pum-pum.”
“Uh, Gee Big, I don’t dig!”
Try to keep up. Anyway, here’s a traditional rendition of the song:
And now, a slightly more contemporary version courtesy of vocalist David Archuleta:
And finally, my personal favorite version of “Pat-A-Pan”, as well as the one that introduced me to the song, the version from Mannheim Steamroller. This version, originally recorded on their 1995 album Christmas in the Aire, is instrumental, so I wouldn’t hear the lyrics until later; as a result, I didn’t initially realize that this was a Christmas song, so my mental imagery for “Pat-A-Pan” has nothing to do with Christmas, Jesus or shepherds. I always envision an elf lady playing a pan-flute throughout a forest and getting the forest animals to dance to it. I honestly had no idea that this was holiday song until I later heard the lyrics.
Now that we’ve cleared that up, here’s my all-time favorite version of “Pat-A-Pan”.
So there you have it. My little tribute to a lesser known holiday song. Incidentally, I realize that Christmas was yesterday; think of it as an After Christmas sale.
This is earlier than we usually do the annual Wrap-Up, I know, but since it’s Christmas Eve and I honestly don’t know how often I’ll be able to post in the next couple of days and weeks, what with the holidays and all, I figured I’d do the yearly summation now while I’ve got all my thoughts together.
First, let’s address the elephant in the room…
‘Sup, ‘yall?
Those of you who know us from Toon Zone may have noticed that neither Jason nor myself have made a post there since November 10th (yeah, we marked the date); that’s because we’ve both basically retired from TZ, and message boards in general. I don’t wish to drum up a lot of high-school mud-slinging BS–we don’t do that here, not anymore–so I’ll spare you the ugly details; the short story is that we’ve been unhappy there for some time and for the sake of my own sanity and happiness I needed to make a drastic change in my life and daily routine; most of the people who we came to know as friends and allies on the boards have since moved on, either started other venues, gotten busy with their own lives and responsibilities in real life or just plain left, and I was really getting tired of having the same debates with the same people over the same subjects again and again, and I’ve gotten far too many slaps on the knuckles from people who at this stage in my life I really don’t feel like I should have to be taking guff from. I’ve had to bite my tongue so much over there that it now looks like a dog’s chew toy. When I got raked over hot coals just for pointing out a few spelling errors, I knew my time on Toon Zone was over. Something had to change, and the Powers That Be over at TZ made it crystal clear that they were never going to change, so I had to change myself. I knew the day when I separated myself from message boards altogether was coming, and I couldn’t have gotten a bigger sign if it had been blazing on a burning bush. It was just time for me to move on.
And now you know.
Now on to more pleasant news: thankfully, we don’t have any major changes in the works for Twinsanity at this point; 2015 has been a good year for the site and the content we’ve been producing now has been pretty good, if I do say so myself. I’ve had a lot of fun posting here this past year, and I’ve really enjoyed the style and subject matter we’ve been tackling. There haven’t been that many Highly Opinionated articles this year, and I for one am glad; don’t get me wrong, schooling the ignorant, ill-informed, confused and unwashed can be cathartic, but I’d be upset if that were all we were doing. I never wanted the rant posts to become what this site is known for. I’ve always wanted Twinsanity to be a fun place where we can geek out over the cartoons and media that we love and share that celebration with like-minded individuals, and that’s the path I want to stay on.
This is another reason why I’m currently not on any message boards: I’m really starting to get tired of the same rants from people who cry that the sky is falling (“Oh noes! Warner Brothers is dying!” “Cartoon Network is dying! 2D animation is dying!!”) whenever they don’t like certain shows or movies or when something they do like gets canceled, when these things happen on TV and movies all the time. It always just degenerates into the same people nostalgically pining away for “the good ol’ days” instead of actual intelligent discussion. Over time, I’ve come to realize that I/we don’t have to respond to every single insane statement or opinion that someone spews out; no matter what you do, some people are always going to remain stubborn, some people choose to remain secured in their tiny bubbles of ignorance, and these people are simply beyond help. Some people just want to bark at the moon, and those people are best ignored. If a topic or opinion grinds our gears significantly enough to inspire a Highly Opinionated, then we’ll post one, but I’m no longer actively seeking those out, I’ve stopped doing that a while ago; I really don’t have the passion for or interest in those sort of topics that I used to. I just plain enjoy the humorous and creative posts more, and in 2016 and beyond I plan to continue doing more of those over taking fools to school. These days I’d rather spend my time geeking out over things I enjoy than snarking about things I don’t.
This is probably the only time you’re going to get a sports metaphor out of me, so you might want to mark this day on your calendar: I think Jason (Goldstar) should be named MVP of Twinsanity this year. It was his decision and machinations that led to the resurrection and restructuring of the defunct Reviews on the Run segments and the subsequent renaming of that segment to the much better Cartoon Country; this will go down in the annals of Twinsanity as one of the single best moves either of us have made here to date. The Cartoon Countries both pop and rock, and I actually look forward to doing them as opposed to Reviews on the Run, which I dreaded having to do and would have to practically fist-fight myself to research and type them. I enjoy these new non-reviews, abridged reviews and quasi-reviews far more than I ever did the actual reviews. Now that we’ve come to realize that we don’t have to review every new cartoon that comes down the pike, now that we only cover shows that we’re genuinely interested in, now that the subject matter need not be about a new show, or even a currently running show, that they can be just about a single episode of a show, or just a single scene or act from a particular episode of a show, we can do a lot more with Cartoon Country; it covers a lot more ground, it’s far less repetitive and it allows for shorter, less essay-like content, which I just plain do much better and enjoy much more. The numbers speak for themselves: there have only been 7 Reviews on the Run (not counting the early ones we did on Blogger which were so bland and uninspired that we didn’t feel the need to port them over to WordPress) and to date there have been 23 Cartoon Countries in just the one year since we started doing them. Overall, I’m enjoying the free-form style we’ve been doing here lately, and in 2016 I plan to continue going this route with the articles, only bigger and better.
I’ve started some (very) rudimentary attempts at videos; the webcam I have now sucks, so I’m going to get a better camera as well as more professional lighting. I don’t half-ass anything; when we’re ready start making videos for this site, I want them to look as good and be as professional as possible. So, yes, that’s happening.
Finally, you may have noticed that this year in the articles we’ve been making the odd foray into original characters and premises here; this is most evident in the ‘Flip the Script’ articles (which is actually reminiscent of an idea for a segment I had a few years ago called “If We Made It”, where we would entail our spins on already existing shows) and miscellaneous articles such as Superhero City: A Visitor’s Guide. This ties into and may hopefully lead to something that I’ve wanted to do for some time: post original works of fiction, complete with original illustrations. If all goes well, Twinsanity could start boasting some original works of fiction, in fact both of us are currently working on ideas (which could possibly become a single idea depending on what happens) about a family unit who reside in a unique residence in a toyetic cartoon world; each of us have been wanting to do something with a kooky family and a crazy house for some time….well, it’s a work in progress; hopefully something will come of this idea sometime in the next year.
So that’s it. Expect no major changes to occur on Twinsanity, just for things to get bigger and better and for the production values here to increase. The ultimate goal is still the same: for Twinsanity to to expand and shed its’ blog skin and emerge as a full-blown website. We’re tentatively calling this dream project TWINSANITY 2.0.
Oh, and one more thing: by January 14th, the URL thetwinfactor.com will expire, and twinsanity.co will become the only URL that directs you to this site. If you haven’t done it already, make sure to bookmark us as twinsanity.co, because that’s going to be the site’s only URL very shortly.
Nothing else to say, except Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Happy Holidays, Happy Winter Solstice, Happy Festivus for all you Seinfeld fans, Happy New Year and we look forward to you joining us for more nonsense and nuttiness next year.
Twin Images 
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