Before the epic meme of doing crazed things with Garfield strips put Fatal Farm in the upper echelons of internet stardom they had previously worked on a number of reworkings of classic televison intros; none of which were nearly as disturbing as their reworking of DuckTales in which Webbigail “Webby” Vanderquack meets a hottie on myspace. Unfortunately said hottie is, in reality, a Beagle Boy cruising for underage ducks to exploit for child pornography. A harrowing tale with a twist that will stay with you long after the clip has ended; most likely a queasy, empty feeling from having watched your beautiful childhood memories perverted and degraded. On a web-cam. In a basement dungeon.
Eliza put out a call for suggestions and the Ectomite Hive Mind responded with a bevy of bizarre links and nostalgic requests leaving us with a hodge-podge of old childhood favorites and surreal art-house films. Thanks to everyone who took the time to post and if you don’t see your contribution here, rest assured it will make an appearance in the very near future. Now, go Ectomomites! TO THE JUMP!
Our deepest apologies, dear readers, for having fallen down on the job as of late in regards to one of our most sacred traditions. Needless to say, we are filled with a great sense of shame and assure you it will not happen again. If, in the future, one of us is unable to fulfill their obligations our newly acquired team of Korean animators will leap into action, producing original cartoons for your enjoyment, although in all honesty I personally cannot guarantee this. You see, by “team of Korean animators” I actually mean a Korean family that Eliza met — and subsequently forced into her windowless van — while running errands at Home Depot. They have tried to reason with her, explaining that they are involved in other professions, the father is a salesman for a lighting manufacturer and his wife works as a bank teller. The children are, well, children.
Eliza would hear none of it however, either assuming that they were lying or under the impression that all people of Korean descent have an innate ability to animate. The rest of the staff has done their best to ignore the situation, knowing full well that once Miss Gauger has set her mind on something, one has little chance of ever changing her opinion. It is for this reason that we do nothing when she insists that her aforementioned van has the ability to travel through time or that Qais is, in her words, “a spy sent by space Turks to steal her chocolate secrets.” Regardless it has been uncomfortable, the tired and nervous familial unit has taken up residence in our break room where they were horrified to find only four items : coffee, tea, pipe tobacco, and squid chips. It would be worse when they found out that these items were our sole sources of sustenance. The children, unsurprisingly, did not take well to the tobacco. Perhaps we should send out for food.
Ah well, I’m sure they’ll be fine, besides it’s cartoon time! Click through, loyal Ectomites, and witness their triumphant return!
P.S. Also, remember that if you visit the YouTube page for a particular video you have the option to watch it in high quality. Especially well suited to the anime.
When life throws you a terrible curse in which you vomit squid, make calamari. Thanks, Michael!
Yeesh, lady, don’t play with your food. Set is NSFW. Thanks, Karenw!
The beautiful Anna Lucylle sent us a photo of her fantastic, Lovecraftian tattoo; as well as photos of it in its various stages. The ModBlog post contains a wonderfully heated, pedantic discussion on the correct pluralization of “octopus” as well.
From Tom Horacek’s new book “All We Ever Do Is Talk About Wood“, a cavalcade of horrors, hydrocephalia, and hopelessness wrapped up in a darkly humorous package that features each of its characters at a moment of existential crisis. This is Ectomo’s kind of humor, rife with the bitterness and misanthropy we’ve all come to know, love, and assimilate.
As you know yesterday was Brownlee’s birthday which meant that today I had to take an extra long shower. It’s no use though, no matter how long I scrub I just can’t get clean. In any event here is a nice little animated sandwich of spoof-tastic Fox Kids and Kids’ WB cartoons between two, moist slices of anime. I hope they will entertain you, our loyal readership, and I pray that, perhaps, they will help me to repress the events of last evening. Please, God…
• FLCL: We’ve entered the final half of this spectacular mini-series, and only two more to go. Will you just look at those eyebrows.
•Eek! The Cat and The Terrible Thunderlizards: Eek! did a number of film spoofs during its run and the two that stand out, to me, are “Lord of the Fleas” in which Eek is trapped in a shopping mall with some penguins — one of whom hysterically exclaims “Shut-up, Piggy!” — and this episode entitled “Eekpocalypse Now!, which thoroughly hits upon every major joke one could make about Coppola’s film. This one is for the adults, unless you were an eight year-old who loved movies about Vietnam. The Terrible Thunderlizards was its own show but was later merged with Eek! to create a variety show more like our next two entries.
•Tiny Toons: “A Quack in the Quarks” is the second episode of this seminal show and features a loose parody of Star Wars and a plethora of fourth wall shattering humor. In this episode Plucky Duck is kidnapped by aliens to Planet X to save it from the nefarious plot of Duck Vader. This was the beginning of a real golden age of Warner Brothers cartoons in the late 80s/early 90s that include Animaniacs, Freakazoid, and the Animaniacs spin-off Pinky and The Brain. Oh, and a Watchmen reference!
•Animaniacs “Super Strong Warner Siblings” is a brilliant send-up of the Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers which always marked the end of cartoon time. Animaniacs also did an Apocalypse Now parody which, while excellent, did not follow the plot as closely as Eek!. Next up is one of the many “Good Idea, Bad Idea” clips followed by my favorite, Pinky and The Brain. In this episode, entitled “Battle for the Planet”, Brain once again acknowledges his Orson Welles influence by attempting to fake an alien invasion ala the Mercury Theater’s broadcast of War of the Worlds.
•Paranoia Agent: Someone has some unpleasant secrets…
Freakazoid in “Candle Jack”: Broadcast in patented Scream-O-Vision for the first time in network history, I just want to point out that the first kid’s idea of the scariest thing in the world is pretty terrifying. All the air in the world, turning to wood simultaneously? One day, you’re just respirating with all the swagger of a carbon-based-lifeform, just showing off your lungs, not a care in the world. The next thing you know? You are encased in a wooden sarcophagus on all sides, enormous logs crammed down your throat and up your bowels, your lungs tearing themselves apart as they try to breathe splinters. Terrifying indeed. Thanks, Professor Robot!
The Wonder Twins in “Drag Race”: Despite their godlike transformation powers, the Justice League’s most useless members are incapable of stopping a typical teenage drag race. “An eagle? Carrying a monkey? *Crash*”
A Random Car Chase Scene from Mind Game: Though both physics and plausibility defying, perhaps the best animated car chase in cartoon history. Thanks, clevetheripper!
Episode 24 of the ongoing Meth Minute 39 addresses the Japander, a western celebrity who shills products in Japan, a pastime made famous in Lost in Translation. Here then is a compendium, a “Best of” if you will, of famous Japanese commercial insanity.
Ren and Stimpy in Mad Dog Hoek: Due to the endless legal prowling of both John Kricafalusi and Nickelodeon, Ren and Stimpy episodes don’t last long on YouTube, and the ones I want like Space Madness are never there. It doesn’t matter: seasons 1 and 2 of Ren and Stimpy were unmitigated brilliance as a whole. It’s a shame that John K. has become the Harlan Ellison of the cartooning world: an undeniably talented artist but so utterly cantankerous and up-his-own-ass that all he does is spend all day raving about those talentless kids of today who can’t wait to sell out.
The Human Torch Raps from The Fantastic Four: This is totally for real. From the 1990s Fox Saturday Morning series.
Spongebob Squarepants in Sailor Mouth: I have to apologize for this one. This episode in which Spongebob and Patrick learn how to swear is absolutely hysterical in its original incarnation, with all obscenities bleeped out by the braying sounds of dolphins. It’s perfect. Unfortunately, no one will upload that version: the only versions that are available are ten thousand re-dubs in which some anacephalic mouth breather moistly shouts “FUCK! SHIT! PUSSY!” into his mike whenever Spongebob and Patrick utter an expletive, or the version I’ve chosen to use here, where the dolphin noises are replaced with network-style bleeps. Hopefully the cartoon will still work for you if you haven’t seen it.
Droopy Dog in Droopy Dumb-Hounded: The single, perfect example of the surrealist Hollywood cartoon chase, in which one character begins to fray around the edges as he tries to escape a slow, lumbering but utterly inexorable pursuer. Directed by Tex Avery, natch; this is also the first appearance of Droopy.
Wallace and Gromit in The Wrong Trousers: Not the whole thing, just the chase scene at the end. I worry that not enough people saw this in the theater when it came out: this one scene had every single person in the audience standing up and cheering when they saw it. It’s unfortunate that Wallace and Gromit, while always sublime, never managed to top this.
Big Guy and Rusty the Boy Robot in Patriotic Games: Another episode of Geof Darrow and Frank Miller’s curiously overlooked cartoon series. After an accident test piloting a prototype time machine sucks Big Guy into a vortex into the past, Rusty and Lieutenant Dwayne Hunter return to a future in which humanity is ruled by cephalopodic squid creatures and every American speaks with a British accent. The twist in this episode is great.
Aeon Flux in A Last Time For Everything: The Aeon Flux half-hour episodes were never up to the standard of the sublime Liquid Television shorts, this is one of the better episodes. Trevor develops a method for creating human duplicates. After Trevor copies Æon, the real Æon conspires with her doppelganger and switches places with her, but finds her loyalty to Monica challenged; meanwhile, the copied Æon prepares to kill the original. Dig the Russian assassin with the hands for feet.
Kenshiro Kasumi in Fist of the North Star: Just a little palate cleanser, as Ken explodes some post-apocalyptic mutant’s heads through the lightning-quick jabbing of certain key pressure points.
O-Ren Ishii in Kill Bill: A lecherous pedophile yakuza boss is taken down by a young, almond-eyed Lolita.
A study was recently released that compiled survey data from English children. The purpose of the study was to determine the most comforting, entertaining, and healthful decor for children’s hospitals, which in my experience has ranged from vomitous pastels to vaguely confusing jungle scenes.
A University of Sheffield study of more than 250 children, aged four to 16, found the images were widely disliked.
[…]
Researcher Dr Penny Curtis said: “As adults we make assumptions about what works for children.
“We found that clowns are universally disliked by children. Some found them quite frightening and unknowable.”
This study surprised me in the same way that studies showing a correlation between soft drink consumption and obesity confuse me: jesus freaking shit, NO DUH. Clowns are only enjoyed by adults, who are either perverse, facetious, or political enough to use their fearsome greasepainted rictuses (rictii?) for some purpose, such as sexual gratification or internet humor. I can safely say I have never loved a clown. Much less wept for one. Especially not a simpleminded, gape-faced horror of a clown.
Until now.
Something Awful goon Gaspy Conana, pixel artist, posted the preceding few panels in a thread titled “They are kicking Dropsy out of the circus. Please help him.” Using inspiration from the thread’s reader suggestions, oldschool LucasArts adventure games, and the gently probing finger of God Himself, he brought the story through dozens of episodes, several animations and songs, and thirtysomething pages of comments, cementing Dropsy firmly in the goon consciousness as friend and hero, and solidifying his own internet stardom. It was awe-inspiring to see hardbitten goons begging, literally begging, Conana to never draw Dropsy crying again. And the story wrapped up today.
This is a new kind of participatory media, my friends. Something lovely and funny and entertaining, something that combines nostalgia, art, and originality. I could not love Dropsy more.
My father and I have long maintained a correspondence of epic intellectual proportions. Usually these take the form of discussions on science and science fiction, Rick Gauger being an award-winning science fiction author, and all-around life of the party.
Recently I sent him a link to a collection of cartoons on the fashion wars of the early 1800s, which were as vicious as they were short-lived. Men and women abandoned the stiff, straight-laced wardrobes of the 1700s and briefly adopted a more modern, flowy, comfortable look. This was the famous Regency era, in which Jane Austen lived and wrote. Unfortunately for fashion, it was quickly destroyed by the severe repression of the Victorian age’s corsets, high heels, and silly hats. Dad, armchair fashion historian, elaborates [with my notes appended, thusly]:
Yes, I’ve always thought it odd that women went out of, and back into corsets in the early 19th Century. In our own time, the 60s got over in a hurry, as women went back to makeup and hairdos in the early 70s. In my century [Dad is 64], I think that the corporations panicked as they saw hair styles, makeup and tailored clothing apparently becoming obsolete, and they put on a major propaganda offensive. The majority of people (including women) never understood the 60s anyway, so they were ready to buy into it. We had a last hurrah of big cars, just at the moment when we should’ve been changing our ways.
Another reason for the quick loss of those styles was that a woman really has to be very good-looking [such as my mother, 54, who to this day refuses to learn how to use an eyelash curler, probably because she’s too busy beating men away from her door with a stout stick] to be able to go without makeup and tailoring. There were a couple of girls among the grad students of 1965 that made me froth at the mouth; most others, however smart and sweet they might be, just didn’t have what it took. One of them was the girl who welcomed me back from my first tour in Vietnam. She came out in a nightie that made her look like a joke. I would have rather died than hurt her feelings at that moment.
A slightly different format this weekend. Oscar nominations have been announced and while the pithy award show is as much an indication of cinematic excellence as one of Eliza’s massive bowel movements, it does draw attention to films that may otherwise have gone unnoticed. With that in mind Ectomo presents the nominations for Best Short Animated Film. Hit the jump for enough embedded video to make your browser weep.
Paramount Studios released a series of shorts between 1932 and 1934 under the umbrella title of Hollywood on Parade in which they exhibited nearly every star they had in their stables singing, dancing, or playacting. In this particular clip, from 1933, Mae Questel gives a rare on screen performance as Betty Boop, the animated minx she voiced for eight years. She’s set do a song routine with a couple of mannequins but Béla Lugosi, revisting his role as Dracula, cuts the performance a bit short, proclaiming, “Betty, you have booped your last boop.”
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.
