This has always been a favorite WB short of mine; it stars Daffy Duck (bonus). A blase hillbilly couple purchase Tom Turkey with plans to fatten him up for Thanksgiving dinner, but fellow barnyard resident Daffy swoops in and fast talks his way into grabbing Tom’s grub for himself. Hilarity ensues.
This short was directed by Arthur Davis, arguably the least celebrated of the boys of Termite Terrace, one reason for this could be because he didn’t do many shorts starring big name Looney Tunes stars (Davis only directed 1 Bugs Bunny cartoon, “Bowery Bugs”), but I always thought Davis did good work; he also directed another favorite short of mine, “What Makes Daffy Duck”, so I guess it’s safe to say that I enjoyed Davis’ take on Daffy. Here’s “Holiday for Drumsticks”.
This is hands down my all-time favorite song from the band Primus. Like Radiohead’s “Street Spirit” the music is very beautiful with a whimsical, almost dream-like quality to it, not to mention some truly kick-ass guitar riffs. The video for it is…interesting, but not what I personally picture. When I hear this song, the mental imagery I picture doesn’t in any way involve airplanes or clay-animated hunters in mini-tanks; the video I envision for this song is like a cross between a children’s book and a Raul Del Rio painting, think Rudyard Kipling meets Maurice Sendak meets Dr. Suess. Also, my imagery for this video takes place entirely at night, with lots of stars in the sky. Yeah, that’s the ticket. Enjoy “Southbound Pachyderm”.
Let’s wax about Out of Jimmy’s Head for a bit, shall we?
For the uninitiated, Out of Jimmy’s Head was a live-action/animated television series. It was Cartoon Network’s second live-action/animated television series, the first being Space Ghost: Coast to Coast, and was based on the live-action/animated telefilm Re-Animated that aired on December 8, 2006. It was about a kid who after a trolley accident at a cartoon theme park, receives the brain of a deceased legendary animator via a brain transplant (why or how a trolley accident would require a brain transplant is beyond me); the animator happened to possess schizophrenia, and as a result, our young hero ends up with cartoon characters residing inside his noggin which only he can see. The show also featured such hee-larious characters and tropes such as Jimmy’s astronaut mother, who tends to walk around the house in her spacesuit, dispenses dehydrated food pills for dinner and whose daily routine consists of such tasks as blowing up random moons and laser-blasting alien invaders, his father who was like if Goofy came to life as a human being, his adopted sister who was a green skinned space alien, complete with My Favorite Martian style antennae, the mad scientist son of the deceased animator who was hell bent on murdering Jimmy and obtaining his father’s brain so he may gain notoriety as a cartoonist (his companion is bag of money with a dollar sign painted on it which he talks to), and take over the world, as well as stuff like the alien sister’s werewolf boyfriend, cyborgs, criminal grannies, a septuagenarian junior high school student, a preteen animal lover who brings his menagerie of critters to school with him and an opera singing duck. All of that’s fine and dandy except……
MOST OF THESE THINGS HAD ABSOLUTELY NOTHING TO DO WITH THE [BLEEP]ING PREMISE OF THE SHOW!
The show was allegedly about a kid who had cartoon characters living in his brain. That’s already wacky. You don’t make the ‘real world’ around him also a zany cartoon, because that only makes the cartoons seem unnecessary and redundant by comparison. If the human world is wacky, nutty and cartoony, then why even have the cartoon characters at all? I personally think the only reason why the Appleday Gang (the toons in question) were on the show at all was to justify the show’s presence on CARTOON Network. The Appleday Gang would typically just pop onto the screen at certain intervals, engage in some little bits o’ business and then literally disappear until they were needed again; rarely if ever did the toons actually play a major part in the stories. There was no reason for the separation of human and cartoon at all on the show, as OOJH was just silly stuff on top of other silly stuff.
Why am I talking so extensively about Out of Jimmy’s Head when that’s not subject of this article? Because it’s necessary for context.
“I know yer thinkin’ ‘Well, when’s he gonna stop beatin’ round the bush? Well I’ll get there when I get there, so there ain’t no need to push!”
You see, years later in 2009, Teletoon, the Cartoon Network of Canada, released a pilot of their own with a similar premise entitled Cartoon Gene, about a teen whose wacky scientist father invented a way to bring cartoon and video game characters to life and somehow got biz-zay with one of them, a hardcore video game heroine named Kitty (played by Karen Cliche–if you watched a lot of bad syndicated TV in the 00’s you may remember Ms. Cliche as Lexa Pirece on the 3rd and last season of Mutant X) and as a result of this odd tryst, is half-human, half-cartoon. (I can relate.) The highjinks ensue whenever Gene’s cartoon half kicks in at given moments, resulting in stuff like idea light-bulbs, rain clouds and hearts sprouting out around him depending on his mood and the situation. AFAIK, Cartoon Gene was never made into a full series, all we have of it is this 3-minute pilot trailer.
Granted, “surviving the high-school” (TM) shtick was very, very cliche (the ’emerging toon powers’ thing was meant to be a metaphor for adolescence, after all, see also X-Men), so while it’s not too surprising that this didn’t get bought, Cartoon Gene did one thing very right: it actually incorporated the cartoon angle into the main premise, whereas OOJH felt like a generic tweencom with some cartoon characters in it, and also unlike OOJH, Cartoon Gene had a more real world-ish setting, so the cartoon style gags stood out more. Plus I liked what I saw of Kitty. (Rawr-rawr.) Also, think about it: Gene’s dad managed to develop technology that enabled him to not only bring cartoon and video game characters to life and into our world, but also make them 3-dimensional, to the point where he could have sex with one and produce a child. How is this guy not a billionaire?? In the real world, nerds and geeks would be beating down this guy’s door for this formula so they could fulfill their lifelong dreams of making love to Wonder Woman, Wilma Flintstone and Judy Jetson.
Was Cartoon Gene a master work? No, but had it actually been made, it looks like it would’ve been a better Out of Jimmy’s Head than Out of Jimmy’s Head turned out to be.
It’s been a long time since I’ve sat through an episode of NBC’s Saturday Night Live, but this is one of the few sketches from SNL’s recent years that I found to be funny. Primarily because of how bizarre and goofy the whole thing is. Kudos to Bill Hader’s over the top performance here as Daniel Day Lewis’ character from There Will Be Blood. Enjoy “I Drink Your Milkshake”.
If the above embed doesn’t work, you can view it from the site here:
11:30 AM to 1 PM, this is a bittersweet time for Saturday morning viewers. It’s generally the start of the time when the cartoons die down and the kids are forced to relinquish control of the TV back to the adults who’ll begin their own weekend rituals of watching news, infomercials and especially sports programs. Of course, we here at Twinsanity are huge geeks who would much rather watch cartoons than sports, but thankfully, there have been some instances where we didn’t have to choose. A number of professional athletes have found their way into Saturday morning cartoons, and these mergings have generally been…ridiculous. Nonetheless, in this Retro Bin, we’ll be taking a look back at some of Saturday morning’s Jock Jams.
The earliest one that comes to mind is the SatAM cartoon starring The Harlem Globetrotters, which was produced by Hanna-Barbera and CBS Productions and ran on CBS from 1970 to 1972 and was later re-run on NBC under the title Go-Go Globetrotters.
“Right on! Jive Turkey! Keep On Truckin’! Give a hoot, don’t pollute and other phrases!”
In this animated incarnation, the titular basketball superstars (which included animated versions of George “Meadowlark” Lemon, Freddie “Curly” Neal, Hubert “Geese” Ausbie, J.C. “Gip” Gipson, Bobby Joe Mason, and Paul “Pablo” Robertson) would travel would travel the globe in their funky fresh van having random misadventures along with their bus driver and manager, a little old lady from Pasadena called Granny and (because this was a Saturday morning cartoon made in the early 70s) their mascot; a goofy, sneakers wearing dog named Dribbles (Get it?). Exactly why H-B felt that the jesters of dunk needed to have a comic relief mascot is beyond me. The Globies have always kind of been their own comic relief, so giving them their own Mr. Cool (see Fonz and the Happy Days Gang) seemed kind of unnecessary. The series worked to a formula where the team travels somewhere and typically get involved in a local conflict that leads to one of the Globetrotters proposing a basketball game to settle the issue. To ensure the Globetrotters’ defeat, the villains rig the contest; however, before the second half of the contest, the team always finds a way to even the odds, become all but invincible, and win the game. In 1979, H-B would try this formula again, only with the Globetrotters as super heroes in a series titled The Super Globetrotters, which has already been covered by Damon (Silverstar) in the very first Retro Box. At least the opening theme song was catchy. Check it out:
Trivia Time: Coach Leon Hillard was originally planned to be on the series, but was cut out of the cast prior to the start of production.
Fast Forward to 15 years later to our next series; a Saturday morning cartoon titled Hulk Hogan’s Rock ‘N’ Wrestling, which ran for only a single season (1985) on CBS. This series was animated and produced by DIC Entertainment. It featured animated adventures of popular WWF stars from the time. Yes, I said “WWF”. This was before the World Wrestling Federation lost it’s years long battle with the other WWF (the World Wildlife Foundation) over use of the initials and was forced to change it’s name to World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) in 2002.
“Suck it, World Wrestling Federation! Suck it long and suck it hard!”
Anyway, Hulk Hogan’s Rock ‘N’ Wrestling focused on animated versions of the Hulkster and his slam banging buddies having random adventures all while always wearing their spandex outfits even during everyday situations. None of the WWE wrestlers provided the voices of their cartoon counterparts, but some of them would be featured in live action wraparounds which would air between segments, including some who weren’t featured in the cartoons themselves, such as Terrible Terry Funk and manager Jimmy “Mouth of the South” Hart . However, Rock ‘N’ Wrestling did boast some appearances by some notable voice actors before they were famous. Cartoon Hulk Hogan was voiced by the pre-Everybody Loves Raymond Brad Garret, while cartoon “Rowdy” Roddy Piper was voiced by the pre-Tiny Toon Adventures Charles Adler. Interestingly, one thing that the characters were almost never shown doing was actually wrestling. I remember one episode has Hulk and friends in a deep, dark jungle wrestling some crocodiles, but that’s about it. The wrestlers would attend rock concerts, have run ins with bargain based mad scientists, petty criminals, typical Saturday morning stuff. This, I think, is the primary reason why Hulk Hogan’s Rock ‘N’ Wrestling didn’t last beyond one season. In comparison to the “real” WWE shows, which boast such memorable moments as chairman Vince MacMahon wailing on a differently abled teenage fan with the kid’s own prosthetic leg and an ancient lady wrestler (ironically named Mae Young) giving birth to a human hand, the goings on in Rock ‘N’ Wrestling seemed completely tame. It’s ironic that the actual WWE manages to be more of a cartoon than the actual Saturday morning cartoon from which it spawned. Anyway, here’s the show’s intro:
Notice how the animated Hulk Hogan looks to be about 20 years younger than his live action counterpart. Apparently, steroids isn’t something that exists in Cartoonland.
Incidentally, one of the wrestlers featured on the show was “Captain Lou” Albano, and while Mr. Albano didn’t provide the voice of his animated counterpart, he would later go on to voice another popular animated character on another TV show that you might have heard of.
Next we come to a series titled ProStars, which was produced by DiC and ran on NBC for only a single season (1991).
“ProStars, it’s all about helping kids…and endorsements.”
The show centers on Michael Jordan, Bo Jackson and Wayne Gretzky fighting crime and helping children, often protecting the environment as well. These three were chosen to represent the pinnacle of all four major American professional sports in the early 1990s. While Jordan and Gretzky are broadly associated with their respective sports, Jackson was included since he could represent both football and baseball and was a high-profile celebrity off the field as well. A reference to his “Bo Knows” Nike ad-campaign was worked into almost every episode (“Bo Knows Repetition!”)
“Oh, he said it again. That never gets old”
Trivia Time:ProStars was originally slated to air on ESPN, but I guess that there are enough animated characters on that network already.
“That;s awesome, baby, with a capital A!”
This last one gets an honorable mention, because it’s not actually a show, but rather its one episode of a show. I’m talking about the famous (or infamous, depending on your point of view) episode of Kids’ WB Static Shock titled “Hoop Squad”, which originally aired on February 8, 2004. This is considered by many Static Shock fans as the single worst episode of the series. Basically, “Hoop Squad” was Static Shock‘s equivalent to ‘I’ve Got Batman in My Basement”. Below is the episode’s synopsis, courtesy of the DCAU Wiki:
“Hoop Squad” is the seventh episode of the fourth season of Static Shock. It depicts the appearance of a giant robot created by Nanites in Los Angeles. To stop the nanites Static and Gear join up with the Hoop Squad: a team of basketball players, Tracy McGrady, Karl Malone, Yao Ming and Steve Nash outfitted in power suits used to fight crime.
The Hoop Squad’s roster consisted of:
Tracy McGrady – Spin Drive
Karl Malone – Pulverizer
Yao Ming – Center Force
Steve Nash – Point Man
Man, I wish I had some nachos, so all of this cheese wouldn’t be going to waste.
The Hoop Squad were recruited by the National Biotech Authority, a secret government agency dedicated to preserving world peace and stability, to operate new bio-enhanced suits designed by Dr. Mason Andrews. They were chosen by the NBA to become a superhero team because they were the ones who had the strength and skills needed to operate Dr. Andrews’ Bio-Enhancer suits. I wonder if this National Biotech Authority only recruited basketball stars, or did it have a baseball, football, tennis and golf division as well? Yeah, like you wouldn’t want to see Tiger Woods and Jack Nicklaus suit up and bop bad guys with atomic powered exploding golf balls.
Trivia Time: Even though all of the Hoop Squad were based on real life athletes, only Karl Malone provided his own voice, and frankly, hearing Karl Malone trying to act was funnier than any of the jokes that were used in the episode.
It remains to be seen if any more sports/cartoon mash-ups are looming over the horizon, but let’s just hope that we’ll never get anything like this ever again:
Twin Images 
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