My sincerest apologies, ye denizens of the wonderful, monstrous Ecto-Nation, for the deplorable lack of content over the last few days. Your outrage at the passing of a Monday unmoustachioed is, of course, understandable. Had I been able to drag myself to my computer I would have most assuredly fulfilled my duties however, due to the fact that I am a young man in possession of the body of a centenarian, I could not. No, dear readers, the past three days have been spent on my back, the muscles of my lumbar gripping the delicate nerves of my spine in a vise-like death grip. Only through sheer willpower — and 10 milligrams of Cyclobenzaprine — have a been able to lurch over to the keyboard. I pray this will serve as explanation should my normal, typo-laden musings be more…laden…than usual.
That out of the way, on to the clip. The above is an ad for Nike Women featuring Nicola Sanders, who I assume is a runner of some repute and whose organs and muscles all have mouths which they use to spit gibberish at each other. Also, her brain wears a monocle, an image which is so fitting that I dare say I will be unable to look at a brain ever again without superimposing the eyepiece upon it. The whole concept is extremely simple and the animation takes it just far enough into weird territory to work without coming off as horrifying. That’s how it strikes me at least, your unmedicated mileage may vary. Creativity has the hi-res version.
Sweet dancin’ Moses, it’s flashback to my formative years for this week’s S.M.C.s! It’s time to tight roll your denim jeans, get your Member’s Only jacket out of storage, and grab your Ray-Bans! Prepare yourself for ridiculous theme music, Public Service Announcements, and product placement, product placement, product placement! Come with us as we travel back to a time before the sight of anthropomorphized animals didn’t make you shudder with thoughts of creepy, stuffed-animal-humping shut-ins! Return with us to THE 80s! Exclamation mark!
• Thundercats:: “Exodus” and “An Unholy Alliance”. A group of nobles, including Lion-O the young heir to the throne, escape from the dying planet of Thundera. During their escape they are attacked by Mutants from the planet Plun-darr and both land on Third Earth. The Mutants encounter an ancient evil inhabiting the planet, the accursed Mumm-Ra. Together they hope to obtain the powerful Eye of Thundera, which Lion-O possesses. Thundercats holds up much better, animation-wise, than most cartoons from this generation and is one of the few 80s cartoons not based on a toy line.
• He-Man and the Masters of the Universe: “The Cosmic Comet” and “Diamond Ray of Disappearance”. Did you know that, while “The Cosmic Comet” was the first episode of He-Man aired, “Diamond Ray of Disappearance” was meant to be the first episode in terms of story? I did not. Watching these now I wonder what kind of drugs my parents slipped into my Lucky Charms when I was a child.
• G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero: “Cold Slither”. Unfortunately I couldn’t find the first episode of G.I. Joe (or Gobots for that matter) but “Cold Slither” is a worthy stand-in. To be honest I could never get into this cartoon, however, I did have a literal fuck-ton of the toys. The plot of this episode may explain why: facing bankruptcy Cobra Commander is forced to borrow money from mobsters. Meanwhile a ploy is concocted by Destro and The Baroness to embed subliminal messages into a record album in order to hypnotize and hold the masses hostage. Zartan and the Dreadnoks are hired to pose as a heavy metal band called “Cold Slither.” Wow.
• Gobots: “Time Wars”. Alas, poor Gobots. Even though you beat Tranformers to the market, you never received the same respect. Why? Perhaps it’s because you were so, so bad and your toys had transformations that mostly consisted of turning the figure over. Yes, that could be why.
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: “Turtle Tracks”. Formerly dark, violent comic book heroes turned pizza loving, tag line spewing kid’s cartoon. Oh, how I loved TMNT. This show is one of the few from my childhood where, having watched it again, it is exactly as I remember it. Even then, I knew it was campy, but I loved it anyway.
This particular anthropomorphized dessert treat strikes me as decidedly untrustworthy. There is something about his shifty look, his leering lean, and his perverse, lecherous moustache that is off-putting. Needless to say, I would not trust the cone around my children, unless I was hoping to be rid of them, in which case he seems like an ideal candidate for a babysitter.
I don’t want to alarm anyone, but we have just made a shocking discovery: Ross Rosenberg, erstwhile Ectomo blogger, is a Jew.
DON’T PANIC. While this is pretty much the worst thing Eliza and I could have possibly imagined when we began the hiring process for part-timers, there is a contingency plan in place. But slathering all planar surfaces in raw bacon takes time. In the meantime, I’m sure you’re all wondering what you can do to prevent Ross from stealing your babies in the night and selling them for a profit on the Hassidic black market… a profit which will undoubtedly be used for the procurement of the most decadent and kosher of snortable nostrums. And I’m sorry to say, the bottom line is we just don’t know.
So we turn to Hamas in our hour of vulnerability. Like a vast army of Buffy the Vampire Slayers, Hamas knows a thing or two about fighting Jews, and through their avatar — an anthropomorphical rabbit named Assud with a jones for Mohammed — we can learn how to beat the Armies of Zion at their own game. After all, Assud’s got a point: Ross can’t eat us if we eat him first.
Early in the 22nd Century the recently formed World Government passed legislation declaring there could exist only one fast food mascot. The reasoning behind the decision remains a mystery to this day, though conspiracy theorists and rational thinkers suspect it was simply a display of power by an infant government. The tyrannical government’s method of pairing down what had become a veritable orgy of brightly colored clowns and cows with opinions on our dietary habits? Gladiatorial combat.
Long and hard they fought, showing bravery and cowardice in equal measure. Finally, from the viscera strewn pits of endless fighting emerged a victor. A relative unknown in his world, yet no less savage and cunning for his lack of infamy. This man, nay, this hero goes by the name of McClucksky. May his epic never be forgotten.
At first glance these may just seem like wacky, but unsettling, commercials for potato chips featuring a small boy and a creepy anthropomorphic dog….thing. It’s only after watching it a few times that one gets the impression that this is a recurring, if not daily, situation and that, perhaps, Mr. Dog has informed his young friend to never tell his parents about it because they would be very mad. Indeed, it appears that Mr. Dog and his young friend have a secret. At least there are potato chips though because, as Mr. Dog seems to know all too well, kids will do anything for potato chips.
While in America chains like Pizza Hut® and Domino’s® advertise their consumables with footage of slathering, half-starved, middle income families, clawing hungrily for the new Cheese Injected Deep Dish Obscenely Large Meat Fister’s Pizza With Cheese And Meat™, the Japanese chain, Pizza-La®, takes a different tact. In their ads, animated, anthropomorphic pizza ingredients dance behind a boy with a slice of pizza for a head. This is all well and good until the end where, having extended thanks to his topping friends, said dancers turn their backs on Slice Boy, condemning him to a lonely, black existence. Food can be so cruel.
Is this Freud? These bearded Austrian types all look the same to me without their glasses or mottled lips wrapped around slimy, phallic cigars. Let’s just say it’s Freud. Is it really all that shocking that a man who advocated mutilating rhinoplasty in menstruating women spent his off hours at Alpine resorts, cavorting with gigantic teddy bears and the most gormless of imbecile cats?
1. Potapych: Bear Who Loved Vodka
Why is it easier to make friends than keep them? The fable of Potapych and his pet hobo teaches us to be good, drink milk, and think of Russia.
2. Gnap-Gnap
The power of foley sound grants flight to an inflatable monster, who bears his Moebius-inspired master aloft.
3. Sam and Max Hit the Road: Intro
The animated lead-in to the classic LucasArts adventure. I desperately miss these voice actors.
4. Sam & Max: Our Bewildering Universe
A more recent Steve Purcell short, done in his inimitable style and perfect pace.
5. Sam and Max Episode 13
“Nice wedding so far!”
“I think the commissioner would support our decision to employ rubber ammo and tear gas at this point, ha ha!”
6. The Running Man
A short from Liquid Television that made an immense impression on me as a child. I still couldn’t give you a reliable synopsis, however.
7. Ergo Proxy: Episode 1
A newish anime that has more style and grace than anything I’ve seen since FLCL. After the first three episodes, it devolves into typical anime mush and become unwatchable, but until then it’s brilliant. The plot revolves around a wireless virus that impregnates androids with self-awareness. In a society built on the tireless backs of ubiquitous service drones, programmed into selfless slaves, a taste of freedom is civilization-threatening. Pay special attention to the costume designs and sound effects, which even on YouTube, have real panache.
8. Memories: Magnetic Rose
A crew of freelance space salvagers stumbles on what looks like a lush haul. I think saying a ything more would endanger the horror and sensitivity of what follows. You can thank Stickypig for this. This is part of a full-length anime with three different stories within, only one of which, this one, have I seen. And it is positively some of the best science fiction currently on film.
This video (and stupidly enjoyable track) must have cost at least a cool million, but the Backstreet Boys didn’t care. They were riding high on Lou Perlman’s buggery adoration, they had legions of teenage girls at their beck and call, and it was the nineties, so nobody bothered telling them (to their faces) how stupid they looked, acted, and sounded.
When you’re that rich, that vaunted, and that young, what can you do? Why, a Thriller rip-off that will live in infamy for a chosen few, of course. Namely, me and the rest of the malcontents who were impressionable youth during that cursed era.
And by impressionable, I mean we thought backflipping werewolves were pretty much the golden apex of comedy. We still think that.
Why am I posting this on Cthursday? Pay attention to the gangly gentleman in the deceptively intellectual glasses, with the briefcase and the obsession with staring away from the camera at exactly a ninety-degree angle. I assume he’s supposed to be some sort of Jekyll/Hyde manifestation, but his bifurcation is less monstrous than it is piscean. My hypothesis is that some concept artist snuck that one past the board, giggling into his dog-eared copy of the Compleat Works of Lovecraft the while.
But I don’t think backflipping werewolves had to be snuck past anyone.
In the dim history of my mumblings there are mentions of a property called, intriguingly, Ranklechick and His Three-Legged Cat. I first read this and wrote about it back at Table of Malcontents, mentioning it in a post on comic book MBQ. The post earned me to scorn of an entire generation of American manga fans (”white, fat, mousy-haired, wire-framed and lacking in personal hygiene”), and perhaps was not the best venue in which to introduce Rankle.
Allow me, instead, to quote from creator Rosearik Rikki Simons:
Ranklechick and His Three-Legged Cat is about a child Ghoul named Ranklechick. Ranklechick lives near Jupiter’s moon, Europa, within a sentient space station called the Europan Zoo. He lives with his three-legged cat, Pumpernick. Since birth, Ranklechick has been accused by his father of murdering his mother and now the sad little Ghoul thinks he can make everything right if he can just talk to his mother’s ghost. This is Ranklechick’s obsession, and every Ghoul on board the Zoo must have an obsession in order for the Zoo to survive. Being that he is of the inventor class of Ghoul, Ranklechick invents an absurd collection of devices in his quest to speak to his mother, like his Bliss Extractor, which he uses to try to get an autograph from the ghost of Charles Dickens, or his Sphere of Belligerence, a spacecraft propulsion system that literally insults physics. All Ghouls are social idiots trapped in a society that thrives off of absurdity, like a vast population of Asperger’s patients. Ranklechick spends his time living in the densely populated Europan Zoo, building necrotic communicators when he isn’t being interrupted by the the strange and unnatural — and he has many interruptions: running from handshaking lessons, avoiding being made into candy by the evil android Nathan Burblepinch, getting repeatedly decapitated, suffering the company of oniomaniac children, being possessed by the Spirit of Failure, suicidal disembodied brains, melancholic ham, a sardonic talking three-legged cat for a best friend, and all the while Ranklechick continues to believe he is becoming a comic book character. When all is quiet and he has time to think, he wonders if he’ll ever get to tell his dead mother that he loves her. This is a comedy.
I was so taken with Ranklechick’s cast and setting that I penned two pieces of fanart, something I never, ever do, one of which can be seen to the right. That is Sister Toovibohnes (I’m iffy on the spelling), a straight-laced space nun that lives aboard the Europan Zoo with the rest of the gang.
Ranklechick has been generously made available for free on Simons’ website, along with Super Information Hijinx: Reality Check! (which I have not read, but I believe it involves catgirls and also “the internet”).
Proclaiming the tag-line “Clean as a wet shoggoth!” and containing both Unholy Herbs and Eldritch Spices, Elder Clean Soap is Ectomo’s soap of choice. Just one of the many wonderful fake ads and beautiful illustrations by Ursula Vernon. Best part? These soaps are available for purchase.
Ectoplasmid Joshua Normal sends harrowed missives from the front lines of the Internet made flesh: a Furry-on-Trekkie bowling tourney, hyped to the level of ridiculousness by BoingBoing, Fark, and the rest of the usual suspects. Happily for me and the rest of the irritable old guard, the furry menace was defeated in honorable combat:
The Trekkies and Klingons won. Which wasn’t really a shock to anyone watching. The Furs did their best but seemed to be a bit handicapped by the fact that they were wearing giant masks that I can only assume made seeing down the lanes difficult at best and well nigh impossible at worst. Add to that the lack of fursuit sized bore holes in the bowling balls and you had the inevitable. Half blind people granny rolling the balls down the lanes. With the exception of a few very talented furs the gutters saw more actions that night than the pins.
Literally. Just a couple of lumberjack lesbians in their bras and panties, chopping down a grunting anthropomorphic tree until it ejaculates its sweet, sweet fructose syrup.
In sheer defiance of the World Wide Web Consortium's will, Ectomo was designed using a non-web-standard font. Luckily, it is included in the excellent font pack released by the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society, which can be freely downloaded in Mac and PC formats here. Ectomo should still look fine without it, though.
