Welcome to Ectomo’s 33rd Mostly-Weekly Saturday Morning Cartoons Show. Today we present to you a smorgasbord of delectable animated dishes; a smattering of drama, horror, humor, and vintage erotica served up steaming hot for your enjoyment. So sit back, relax, and prepare to have you senses assaulted with ‘toonage!.
• Don Hertzfeldt. welcomes you to the show!
• Transformers: “”More Than Meets the Eye Parts 1-3″. Over an hour of thinly veiled toy commercials masquerading as a children’s cartoon. Learn how the Autobots and the Decepticons came to Earth and which plastic and die-cast metal action figure to beg for! Seriously though, while the cartoon doesn’t hold up particularly well and while it is just a glorified toy commercial, I still can’t shake my love for Transformers.
• Comedian Louis C.K. uses animation to explore some of his father issues.
• Eveready Harton in Buried Treasure: A piece of animation history; the first pornographic cartoon. Rumor is that it was made for a private party in honor of the great Windsor McKay and that such visionaries as Max Fleischer and the Mutt and Jeff studio were involved.
• The Real Ghostbusters: “The Boogieman Cometh”. One of my favorite episodes of this show, the design for the Boogieman is just brilliant, his oversized head, replete with glass-shard like teeth, and cloven hooves makes for a great image.
• Intermission, by Don Hertzfeldt.
• Welcome To Eltingville: “Bring me the Head of Boba Fett”. The first and only episode of this cartoon based on Evan Dorkin’s Eisner-Award-winning “Eltingville Comic-Book, Science-Fiction, Fantasy, Horror, and Role-Playing Club” published in the pages of Dork. Featuring four gentleman — Bill Dickey, Josh Levy, Pete DiNunzio, and Jerry Stokes — who are friends of a fashion, but geeks to the fullest. In this episode a battle erupts over the ownership of a Boba Fett figurine and hilarity thus ensues. Cameo by MC Chris, which I’m pretty sure was a prerequisite for [adult swim] cartoons for a while.
• Paranoia Agent: “The Holy Warrior”. Detectives Ikari and Maniwa interrogate Lil’ Slugger who confuses his realities and believes that the world around him is a medieval-style RPG while his quest is to defeat the evil Gouma who possesses other people to fight. Ikari and Maniwa follows Lil’ Slugger through his “journey” and see that it does coincide with all of the attacks — all except for Tsukiko Sagi. However, Lil’ Slugger points the detectives to where the old lady is who may posses the truth.
There’s two ways you can take this advertisement for Fred’s “Video Movie” and animation services. The first is as a hilariously perplexing display of the kind of human tragedy lurking within the seething morass of “normal” people. That interpretation is really more than enough to keep you amused as you watch the rest of Fred’s inexplicably edited and composed videos.
There is however, a second, far more insidious (and I think more accurate) interpretation. You see Fred is no ordinary Canadian man with a video camera, computer, and delusions of film-making grandeur. Fred is a monster, an evil man that has conducted horrific experiments in the unspeakable regions of science that no self-respecting man or woman gives any thought to lest they run shrieking into the night. That lifeless lump of audibly monotone flesh is not his wife, but an automota created in his hideous lab simply to see if he could accomplish the feat.
She was probably once a beautiful woman, rife with vim and vigor, full of the promise and untapped potential our parents and Disney have led us to believe we all have inside. Now the poor thing is nothing more than a shapeless mound atop a wheeled stool (adjustable in height of course, even mad scientists need their rocks off once in a while) shuffled around to be put on display as Fred’s greatest accomplishment. You can almost hear the screams of a shattered psyche echoing in her mind as she mumbles the speeches Fred has programmed her prior to show time.
Part of me feels that the title should read S. Petersen’s Field Guide to Cthulhu Monsters!!! as the exuberant enthusiasm that the phrase “Cthulhu Monsters” evokes is deserving of the additional punctuation.
For some reason bear skin rugs seem fairly popular here in the Pacific Northwest. My daily net-based bargain hunting usually brings me across at least one, although often I find several of varying sizes and description. Now while the pelt of an animal that could easily rend me limb from limb gracing my floors is an appealing prospect the compulsory indoctrination of all Seattle residents to be animal-loving waterheads took root long ago and I simply can’t bring myself to buy a bear skin.
But that’s ok; for while killing a bear for its pelt is a horrendous thought to me, the idea of a horrific, child-eating monster meeting justice as my rug is just fine. I will sleep well at night, my belly full of “cruelty-free” faux-chicken and green tea, secure in the knowledge that these hideous freaks simply must be destroyed.
Say what you want about organized religion, but if the birth of Christ had featured the original members of the Monster Squad with The Bride of Frankenstein as the mother I’d be rolling in the aisles with the best of them.
Kudos to the Japanese television program Ultraman for standing up and saying what we have all been afraid to say but know to be true, namely that the physically handicapped are all maniacal villains who, given the chance, would destroy us all. Witness what happens when this crutch-bound gentleman gets his crippled hands on a strange stone, with the ability to turn into a man in a monster suit with trowels for ears. You’ll never go in a hotel pool again once you’ve seen said monster, in a bikini, frolicking in the water. Simply horrible.
Filipino artist Avid Liongoren spent 2007 incorporating monsters straight out of the imagination of Hiyao Miyazake into random snapshots of daily Filipino life. What’s amazing to me is how the addition of monsters manage to emphasize the tranquil beauty of a Filipino’s everyday life.
Seeing as some of my most popular work has involved parasites, it was with great excitement that I watched this video put together by the folks at mental_floss using footage from various sources in the public domain, much of it gleaned from the Prelinger Archives. A truly terrifying trailer for a feature film that is sure to scare you senseless!
• Mmmm, girls with blue lips and porcelain skin. Wearing octopi. Oh yes. Thanks to Nadya, she of the ruff!
• For the Victorian videogame enthusiast of good breeding there is no substitute for Pac Gentleman. Assist in the toothsome devouring of ruffian spirits inside a diabolical maze. Thanks Cleveland!
• George Barbier’s frontispiece illustration takes care of the “issues” one is presented with when confronted with a gorgeous, nymphet mermaid in towering wig. NSFW for illustrated breasts. Thanks yhancik!
As boys grow to be men often times they are tempted to give up things with which their masculine maturity might be called into question. Thankfully, the members of Ectomo bearing a broken chromosome are not such men, reveling in such things as cartoons and toys. However, as we have matured so have our tastes, turning to things more eldritch in nature such as the above stately Cthulhu.
Sadly, the creator of what is arguably the best Cthulhu statue/toy/what-have-you I’ve ever seen is no longer making them. Though I suspect that with some clever ebaying one might be able to find the perfect Christmas gift for their friend, loved one, or basement dwelling cultist.
A fantastic eleven inch Krampus figurine on ebay. The item is a promotion for Dark Carnival, a comic being published by Fantagraphics in 2008 and is hand sculpted and painted by the artist Miss Behave a.k.a. Summer Boothe. Alas, the auction has ended but perhaps it will be relisted, in which case I order all Ectomites (or, perhaps, just one Ectomite with some disposable income) to chip in and purchase it, at which time you may mail it to my hovel deep in the forest.
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 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.
