The Stuff

Have you seen the new Cinco phone? It’s amazing.

BTW, what happened to Ed Begley Junior’s career? I’ll tell you what happened: it’s better than ever!

A scene from the recent season of Metalocalypse.

Here’s one way to spend 40 minutes:

Peep Show season 5, episode 3: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3. New personal lows for the boys.

And the latest episode of Metalocalypse is up on Adult Swim for the next 6 days. Don’t bother clicking the link after May, 23rd. The episode is called Dethwedding. Pickles must attend his degenerate brother’s wedding, much to the amusement of the rest of the band.

As I’ve said before, the 3rd season of the Venture Bros. starts on June 1st. The Quick Stop website has a season 3 teaser video which features spoilers, but it will definitely whet your appetite, so it’s worth watching.

Last week I went to an evening with the creators of the Venture Bros. at SVA in NYC, invited by my friend Cliff who belongs to ASIFA East and runs their Blog. The panel featured Venture Bros. creators Jackson Publick and Doc Hammer, as well as Liz Artinian (color supervisor) and Stephen DeStefano (storyboard & design director). The night featured about 2 hours of Q&A, and a full episode from season 3 (featuring Dr. Henry Killinger, and it was mind-blowing).

Some facts:

• The show is written, planned, designed, storyboarded and edited in NY, but animated in Korea. The animation comes back from Korea with about 100 defects per episode (such as eyes pointing the wrong direction). About half the defects are fixed in Korea, and half in NY during editing.
• There’s no cool merch for the show (my words, not theirs) because Adult Swim owns the show and all the characters entirely, and they (Adult Swim) don’t do such a good job with merchandising.
• Season 3 will be in High Definition. I did not know there was an HD version of Adult Swim.
• They’re currently writing season 4 and editing the last episodes of 3. They really don’t get a break, and it seems like they work 12-16 hours a day non-stop.
• Season 4 might be the final season.

I added a Google translation widget to the side bar for shits and giggles, and after running the site through a French translation I discovered that Google thinks Adult Swim (the late night cartoon show on Cartoon Network) equals South Park (you know South Park). See for yourself. Did I discover an Easter Egg planted by one of their coders, or an educated glitch?

OK, that was boring.

Adult Swim is featuring another live action TV show. This time it’s Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace, a British comedy that spoofs hospital and horror shows. This show doesn’t seem to be as bad as other live action shows they’ve featured lately, probably because Adult Swim didn’t produce it. Darkplace comes from Great Britain, features Matt Berry (from the Mighty Boosh and the IT Crowd) and Richard Ayoade (IT Crowd), and is rated a 9.4 out of 10 on IMDB. The lead character is played by Matthew Holness, a chubby Bam Margera look alike. It’s interesting to note that comedian Carlos Mencia’s birth name was Ned Holness: I wonder if they are related; two brothers with a different mother.

Fans of Animation, whether they are Japanimation fans or fans of the low-tech Flash stuff, will probably vomit at the notion of more live action on Adult Swim and Cartoon Network. Cartoon fans are right for the most part, but this time they’re less right.

The big question: is Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace boring? The concept is amusing, and the actors are certainly quality stock. There’s plenty of gags and spot-on 1980’s parody. Hmmm… I’m going to call Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace “situationally not boring”. If you’re alone and in a bad mood with lots of crap on your mind, you’ll likely acknowledge that the show is clever, but ultimately toggle between it and checking email or some web site where you think you’ll meet women but never will… in that case it is boring. If you’re watching TV drunk or just giddy on life with a bunch of friends, then Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace is funny — LOL funny. So, depending on the situation, Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace is definitely not boring (especially if you’re in your 30s and get the 80’s jokes).