I Know What Ya Thinkin

It's always a good episode whenever they bring back this guy.

In celebration of his recent return, we'd like to propose a 9-episode marathon collecting his appearances over the years.

Best Things That Happened on TV in 2015

Extremely hastily thrown together list that must be finished and posted within 9 minutes or else. Don't expect any deep commentary, we only have 8 minutes left fuck.

There are probably a few amazing moments that we're forgetting but whatever.

MUSIC PERFORMANCE OF THE YEAR: D'ANGELO ON SNL
I MEAN DUH


Best Halloween Episode: Bob's Burgers
Mostly because it climaxes pretty early, and then the last 6-7 minutes are all an extended epilogue which could only still be dope on Bob's Burgers.

TV MOMENT #10: Celebrity Jeopardy Reunion
We thought this special was gonna suck, but it was actually ok.


#9 The Eric Andre episode that was all "Bird Up" stuff


#8 The Jinx Last Episode
No spoilers. Although this does happen:


#7 Nathan For You Suing Best Buy
We think he sued them. Did that happen? Was this the one where he went on a craigslist date with the mall goth? That probably all happened.


#6 The last 20 minutes of the 9th episode of Fargo.
The last episode kinda sucked, but mostly because the episode before that left everyone being all like "no fucking way." No spoilers.


#5 Tweek and Craig


#4 Zoot Suit
I mean come on. Zoot suit.


#3 "Stakes"
8-part mini-series/story arc thing. No spoilers, but we will say "Fuck The King Of Ooo, that dude sux"


#2 Bojack "Escape from LA" Episode
We forget the deer family's name, but this is one of the best episodes of any show from this decade. Can't post videos or else there will be spoilers.


TV MOMENT #1: Mr. Poopy Butthole
The last thing that happened in the whole season after the credits of the last episode. "Come and get it kitty."

coming to a head

South Park's enjoyably predictable culmination of the previous 9 episodes was actually way more insane than we had thought it would be. While not as crazy as the Occulus Rift episode from a few weeks back, those two episodes are probably some of the most densely constructed episodes in years.

As much as we'd love to indulge the plotlines any futher, we're already kinda bummed that the episode has shown up in headlines on 50 different websites already and it hasn't even been out for 5 hours. And it's 3AM. Couldn't they at least have waited until the morning? No, of course not. Firstness, you guys.

i mean come awn.

there's no such thing as a social issue without a hashtag

This is probably an ok time to get into stuff like this... None of the past few months of posts on this page have received more than 10 views, and I don't feel comfortable posting my opinions in a forum where everyone I've ever met will see it. If a handful of people I know see this, then fine. I just wish more of my friends would opt to post their opinions on unpopular blogs, because it sometimes makes so much more sense than displaying it so openly. I'll never understand how so many people, including many of my best friends, can constantly crave that type of exposure. Sometimes for their jobs, and I suppose that makes sense. Usually it's for simple validation. Often times it's out of perceived loneliness. "If my social media post about the opinion that I'm currently perceiving to be unpopular garners at least 3 or 4 people clicking 'like' then it means that I was right all along and I'll be able to sleep soundly tonight."

I haven't purposely been avoiding social media posts for the past two weeks, but I just don't have any words for what's been happening that would be any more profound than what everyone else has already been saying. I suppose the hurt, disappointment and frustration have been echoed throughout my specific online community, and there's comfort in knowing that you have acquaintances smart enough to match everything you're feeling. To some extent, the shitty news has strengthened our fight.

The "trending" box on Facebook has been particularly annoying as of the past 6 months or however long it's been there. They want every user to grow an addiction to clickbait so they can follow our trends. It's so transparent, and 9 out of 10 of those stories are so fucking stupid that it probably makes others - not just myself - wish that the box could just go away. But it's always there, at the top of our newsfeeds, staring at us, telling us which news stories are the most important ones based on algorhythms or whatever. If you click "x" to make it go away, it asks why you want it go to away, and I usually respond "offensive." And then it's infinitely replaced by other stories that are equally stupid.

The Jon Stewart story from today only stood out to me because I just happened to see The Daily Show for the first time in over a year last night, not because I was interested in their perspective but because I missed South Park due to the Nets game going into overtime. So I just got some work done while keeping on Comedy Central for the rest of the night waiting until the rerun at 12:30. And today the top headline on my "trending" box was regarding Jon Stewart's "serious" tone last night. I mean, I saw it last night on TV. It wasn't any more serious than any other time I've seen The Daily Show. He looked up at the sky and screamed the word "Fuck." And it was awesome, because that's basically exactly how I feel about everything that's been happening. He's basically just echoing our frustration and hurt. And they did play a really good video of two cats massaging each other to break up the awkwardness of discussing such a bummer on a comedy show.

But Facebook wants people to click, so they leave everything open-ended. "You'll never believe what happens next." Jesus, just shut the fuck up already. Whoever invented that sentence should seriously get dragged into a shark tank and left for dead.

It's not like these lynchings are a new thing. Hundreds (probably even thousands) of them since Rodney King have taken place but never gone to trial just the same as the big news stories from the past few weeks. Because the system isn't working. It breeds bullying, racism and other disgusting patterns. Even I get that, and I'm an idiot.

Hell Yes to the "Sorta Cliffhanger But Not Really" Motif
South Park did not get into serious subject matter last night. Lorde (a.k.a. Randy Marsh) played a "Women of Rock" concert along with Miley, Iggy and. Nicki. The only one out of those three who Trey and Matt spared from trashing was Nicki Minaj, who almost seemed as if she was about to befriend Lorde in one brief moment just before Lorde look the stage. It appears as though next week episode might be a large culmination of all 9 previous plotlines from this past season.

See, this is a case where it MAKES SENSE to leave shit open ended. I'm actually excited to find out what happens next week, whereas using these tactics for quick-click ad revenue kinda just leaves everyone feeling used.

I was thinking of going deeper into this but there's too much going on right now.

The Year Is Not Over Yet
Speaking of open-endedness, we're pretty psyched for the next month of releases from J.Cole, Charli XCX, Lil Wayne, Nicki Minaj, and the possibility of releases from Kanye and Kendrick. Among all of these forthcoming albs, we find it somewhat inconceivable that there won't be a few jams hot enough to immediately enter Hot Mix's Top 20. In fact, we're counting on it.

Although thinking back to 10 years ago, late 2004 was strong enough of an era where a similar trend took place. The era of "1 Thing" and "Since U Been Gone" wasn't quite immediate enough to make its impact prior to January 2005. So it's not like it's the end of the world to see a few post-EOY-results releases missing out. But if we're truly speaking about "the best of 2014," why wouldn't more people just want to wait it out?

The obvious answer is "firstness," but hey look what happened to our albums of the year? It wasn't posted until August. We cornered the market on last-ness and it actually ended up helping.

"I Am Lorde"

Good afternoon. Feelin' good on a Monday. We just watched the last two South Park episodes.

We didn't expect South Park to kill it so hard over the past four weeks, especially since the 2012 and 2013 episodes seemed to signal the beginning of a depressingly bleak era akin to every Simpsons episode that happened after 1998's "Lisa Gets An 'A'" (which many fans consider the final classic episode of The Simpsons).

But instead, Trey and Matt's first true extended hiatus (throughout the first half of 2014) seems to have allowed their creative engines to chill and rejuvenate. As a result, this has been their freshest string of episodes since at least 3 years ago.

We found it somewhat predictable that the 2013 season would contain at least one self-contained trilogy. Sure enough, episodes 7, 8 and 9 from last year included the unnecessarily stretched-out 3-episode arc inspired by Game Of Thrones - the one that essentially introduced the versions of the characters that appear in The Stick of Truth.

This time around, however, they seem to be allowing continuity to progress WITHOUT a self-contained mini-series. There's no "Part 2" or "Part 3." The 2nd episode picked up exactly where the first episode ended, and so on, but every episode is its own contained story. There are no cliffhangers, which may have assisted in giving the show an intriguing dopeness that hasn't felt as fresh since at least 2011, if not earlier.

Oh wait a sec... AV Club already wrote something about this, and reviewed it more eloquently than we just did:
http://www.avclub.com/tvclub/south-park-cissy-210288

See, this is why we don't have as much energy for posting here anymore. Everyone in the entire fucking universe has a blog now, and there's no interesting topics that haven't yet been discussed. (Even quick observations of ours as simple as the similarities between "Marvins Room" and Pinkerton have been getting expanded with fully illustrated annotations.)

Perhaps Hot Mix 2014 is the only reason we're still keeping this alive. Hot Mix is fun. The rest seems less fun at the moment. Whatever.

Three quick points about the South Park/Lorde connection:

#1 It seems like the whole reason why they ended up continuing the Lorde joke was to defend themselves against SPIN, who totally took the joke the wrong way and assumed Trey and Matt were anti-Lorde:
http://www.spin.com/articles/lorde-south-park-spoof-comedy-central/
Despite that they're clearly bummed about SPIN, they actually gave the fated non-magazine their best publicity in years. What other sitcoms have actually mentioned SPIN anytime recently? And plus, Stan states that "Lorde is really good" in the follow-up episode, which appears to be Trey and Matt's official statement on whether or not they appreciated her as a pop star to begin with.

#2 The fans were into it, and their Lorde parody is now trending widely enough that the demand has yielded a full-length version:

South Park fans, you got it here first -- download the song "Push" for FREE here http://t.co/bLqNi8s7Kv

— South Park (@SouthPark) October 16, 2014

#3 On a personal note, Lorde's huge hits have yet to stick in our heads. A LOT of people seem to really appreciate her music, and it's probably good once you allow the hooks to steep, although we have yet to recognize any hooks. The other day we heard Charli XCX's "Bang Pow Clang" or whatever it's called, and we were all like "this must be Lorde. Finally, we can say that we've heard and remembered a Lorde song, even though it's somewhat mediocre." But it wasn't Lorde. Maybe it will happen soon.

This feels like the opposite of what happened throughout 2001 and 2002 when we made a conscious effort to avoid Creed's "My Sacrifice," a song with actual strong hooks that we DID NOT want stuck in our heads. We wrote about these events pretty extensively a couple years back: http://tastemykidsblog.blogspot.com/2012/09/10-year-anniversary-of-my-sacrifice.html

dope plane reviews: South Park, Simpsons, Eric Andre, Adventure Time, Fooly Cooly, Rocky III

Reporting live from layover in Iceland. We just watched a lot of TV for the entire ride over here. Here's what we saw:

Good Times With Weapons

Episode 1 from Season 8 of South Park, March 2004. We're guessing this was the first episode after Janet Jackson nipple thing, which was all very silly in retrospect. Our favorite part was hearing the original audio of Professor Chaos (Butters) grunting "Let's see how you like dealing with me. Mwah hahahaha!" which is used anytime you select the Professor Chaos option in The Stick of Truth. The best joke here might be the anime depiction of Cartman, whose grotesque obesity is more detailed than usual.

Das Bus
Episode 14 from Season 9 of The Simpsons. 12 or so kids from Springfield Elementary, including Milhouse, Bart and Lisa, are trapped on an island where some Lord of the Flies shit goes down. Meanwhile, Homer starts an internet-improvement business from home. We only vaguely remember this one, and the jokes are not as classic as we remembered. Our favorite joke was probably Milhouse saying something to the effect of "Come on grapefruit!" while watching it roll down the isle of Otto's bus. It presents some early examples of the stale and more formulaic jokes that would become more commonplace in future seasons, although the storyline is decent.

The Eric Andre Show, Episode 2, Season 2

Titled on Wikipedia as "Krysten Ritter; Dominic Monaghan." We watched four episodes of this show on the flight, and they all kinda blend into each other, so we won't bother reviewing them individually. Definitely best editing out of any show on TV right now, and the best editing since Tim & Eric. Fucking unreal and very funny.

Furi Kuri
The first episode of Fooly Cooly or FLCL. Dope as hell, and dense enough that it definitely requires a second viewing. So far, we gather that it's some sort of strange coming of age story with really bizarre images and an intentional attempt to confuse the viewer, like if a 3-hour David Lynch movie were condensed into 25 minutes.

Princess Day

Episode 14 from Season 6 of Adventure Time. We actually watched episodes 11 through 14, but this one (the most recent) is the one we liked the best, mostly because LSP and Marcy join forces, although they don't really accomplish a whole lot other than establishing a bond and acting like assholes. But they're both very lovable characters who we the viewers have grown to adore, like so many of our other friends in the Candy Kingdom. This may be the main reason why we haven't gone full-on rage quit on this show just yet. It seems like Season 6 may be falling into the same pit as Season 9 of The Simpsons - starting out with a bang, but almost entirely losing steam by the halfway point. Like, how much longer are we gonna have to wait to see another actual adventure featuring Finn and Jake?

Like a few episodes back, there was a story about Maja The Sky Witch stealing Princess Bubblegum's prized possession, a rock band t-shirt that was given to her by Marceline. Maja plans to use the emotional power within the t-shirt to wreak havoc on the Candy Kingdom. This seemed like a pretty compelling story, especially after the sudden resolution of the whole thing with Finn's arm. But the last we heard of that story was like 6 episodes ago (a.k.a over 2 months ago since these days it takes Cartoon Network like three weeks to air anything new).

Okay, we're exhausted and rambling, so let's move on...

Quest For Ratings

Episode 11 from Season 8 of South Park. We thought we had seen every South Park, but this was a rare fresh oldie that we only just now caught for the first time. It's not the A+ we were hoping for, although the robo-tripping sequence was dope as fuck.

The Joy of Sect

Episode 13 from Season 9 of The Simpsons. This is the one where Homer gets brainwashed by a cult after they sing "Nananananananana Lead-er" to the tune of the '60s Batman theme. It brought back some memories. Mr. Burns also tries to start his own religion during a mid-episode mini-story-arc.

Rocky III

We didn't finish it yet. The last thing we saw was Mr. T yelling at Rocky and saying he's gonna go fuck his wife and offering her the opportunity to be with a real man. For some reason, we recall Hulk Hogan's part being way more violent. Mr. T is so pissed at Rocky. But Rocky just wants to stay soft and doesn't wanna train hard like the way Mickey's been pushing him. Things are gonna get tough before they get better for Rocky.

The Stick of Truth's 5 Bitchiest Enemies (with spoilers)

Part of the reason our hiatus took slightly longer than usual was because fucking Geek Squad took 38 days to replace the monitor of the laptop that was storing this website's content. (Our backup drive made no difference since we had no computer.) We've been told the turnaround is normally around 14-21 days. How did we get so lucky to have ours returned in 38 days, especially since the entire process of assigning a tech, getting the screen replaced, and shipping it back to the store took Geek Squad LESS THAN THREE HOURS?? The moral of the story: "Queef Squad is doody, and they drink peepee," and always use local independent computer techs whenever possible.

In addition to no new content, we were also deprived of The Stick of Truth for an entire 38 days, which is pretty uncool once you get to the point where you're playing this game every day. It's probably the best new videogame of the past few months, and the jokes are good enough to redeem Trey and Matt after their weak ass 10-episode season that mostly depressed us (and assisted our conversion to Adventure Time worship) during the last few months of 2013.

We love The Stick of Truth so much that we wanted to ensure its place as the first post-hiatus topic after getting our materials returned. We haven't beaten the game yet, and we have no clue how far we've progressed. But in either case, we're gonna take a guess that these are the game's toughest enemies.

#5. Shelly Marsh

Well this just goes to show how much we still have left to play of this game, because Shelly's not that hard if you're powered high enough. But it's not like she's a cinch either. And they kinda force you to use Stan as your friend or else Shelly's just like "who the fuck are you" and makes you leave her room without fighting.

#4. Khloe Kardashian's aborted fetus that was bit by a nazi zombie

This is mostly here because it's our current point in the game. That's one tough baby!

#3. Al Gore

Seriously, FUCK Al Gore. We fucking hate him. We hate his bitchy little power point presentation on global warming. We hate how he tricked us into going on his stupid little missions just so he can keep sucking his own dick. We hate how he harasses us and posts so much shit on our facebook walls and just won't leave us the fuck alone, but he's just too hard to beat, and so you're forced to simply continue getting 25 new dumb messages every 10 minutes until you have enough power to fuck him up. And even after all that, you haven't REALLY beat him yet...

#2 Manbearpig

We kinda just gave up after finding Manbearpig and haven't beaten him yet either.

#1 Al Gore

Whatever, let's just make Al Gore the entire Top 3, because that's how much we hate him. Fuck this dude.

south park marathon

Comedy Central has (possibly) been airing a marathon consisting of every episode (that they're legally allowed to show) of South Park, which has lead to some upsetting daytime censorship, but it's the thought that counts.

Spring 2013 was just a bit more of a bummer than usual, since there's been no new South Park so far this year. This is the longest we've gone without our dear friends. Tomorrow marks the start of their only 10-episode run (unless one of these happened at some point between season 1 and 4) which is possibly leading to the release of The Stick of Truth on November 19th.


Get excited!

sometimes, dead is better.

this is our new favorite guy on the show. we have no idea what his name is.

(Also "Marjorine" from 2005 is probably the best episode ever.)
So then we noticed the same guy finally returned two weeks ago after a long absence...

"Homo Rainbow"

The Chef Aid episode of South Park was viewed in a college dorm room along with fans of virtually every alt-band who appeared in the episode, and none of us had any warning that they would be appearing. "Holy fuck, what Rancid song is that?" "Dude, Primus was just on TV."

The episode's 5-second teaser of "Homo Rainbow" (also known as "The Rainbow") kinda blew minds apart, and waiting those few weeks for the CD to be released seemed like an eternity.

sooo fuckin high right now LMAO

i dont even know whats goin on right now

songs that sound like cartman

White Fang "Grateful To Shred" is in the same key and has the same melody as "Make, make it right, 'cause Jesus wants me to have a clean slate."

Decent video anyway...

80's Guilt #41: Kajagoogoo “Too Shy” (1983)

Fun fact: The singer from Kajagoogoo was the same guy who explained superhero origins on South Park a few months back... (to avoid spoilers do not click on the image)

By the way, is it just us, or was the Coon & Friends trilogy the best thing on TV in the past two years? (At least since John Lithgow was on Dexter?) Moving on...

People dislike this song for some reason, but we've always been into it... Awesome production and way fucking catchy.

costume suggestions

If I had 8 friends and was drunk enough I would allow myself to be Mint Berry Crunch for Halloween, as long as the rest of Coon & Friends were present.. actually it would have to be me plus 9 others because I almost forgot about General Disarray. Yeah anyway, someone should do this...

TV Stuff: We want more Jimmy / Beavis&Bieber premiering soon / Wonder Showzen news

This is one of those rare times when TV is briefly getting interesting again. It's been years since the last one of these happened...

We're two episodes deep into the current half-season of South Park, and this appears to be the most feelings-based and depressing bunch of episodes they've thrown together so far. But we're remaining hopeful... and while we LOVE the expansion of Clyde and Craig's characters over the past 3 years, we def want/NEED more Jimmy:

Wow. What a great audience.

As of tonight, we have eight days until B&B, re-titled this time around as Mike Judge's Beavis & Butthead. As we've stated earlier, 50% music videos doesn't sound as bad as it could have been, although there's no way they're going to comment on any music from over a year ago, and the first few episodes will probably include easy targets like Gaga and Bieber just to appease meatheads. Also, Judge reportedly has over 20 episodes ready to go, even though MTV is insisting on airing it once-a-week this time around, as opposed to how they presented new episodes in the 90's five-days-a-week, Monday through Friday. This means the premiere episode airing on October 27th will likely be re-ran at least 14 times (probably around twice a day) leading up to the premiere of the 2nd new episode on November 3rd. It might be in MTV's best interest to air a few classic B&B episodes alongside the new ones, so people don't get tired of the same jokes too quickly.

This will never happen though... Instead, they made an equally wise programming decision to launch their first new animated show since possibly as far back as 2003 when they were airing Clone High and 3 South. Without at least one other cartoon show, the new B&B would seem incredibly awkward drowning in a sea of Teen Mom's and I Used To Be Fat's. The new show is called Good Vibes, and here's a huge shocker: It's about Jersey Shore surfers who chase around cartoon chicks for 30 minutes. Imagine that... On the positive side, there's some talented people doing the voice work, and David Gordon Green is executive producer or something... So it might be funny. Who knows...

And finally, remember remember the 6th of November...
Wonder Showzen temporarily pulls Patton Oswalt out of his path of family-oriented Pixar flicks for some more darkness and insanity for The Heart, She Holler. (this was the only youtube clip we could find)...

South Park is not ending / Beavis update

Unemployment is amazing. Recommended to anyone.

Somehow, this turned into a semi-big news story - South Park Renewed for Two More Seasons Through 2013 - probably because everyone thought it was ending. The world is remaining hopeful that Trey and Matt can pick up some momentum in the joke-writing department, as there were only 2 or 3 good episodes among the last 7. The more recent versions of the standard (and beloved) "Randy goes crazy," "Cartman plans to take over the world" or "Butters is naive" episodes may be losing some steam... The last season suggests they've pushed those ideas to their limit, proven with characters uttering "shit" and "fuck" more often than ever. The super-depressing and amazing mid-series-finale from last May seemed to suggest they'll be moving in some different directions... Maybe this will be a good thing...

Also we won't be embedding a video of the Mike Judge interview from Comic-Con, but here's the link: http://www.mtv.com/videos/news/676714/mike-judge-talks-beavis-and-butt-head-return.jhtml

His justification for B&B's expanding beyond watching videos is pretty solid... They were watching MTV in the 90's, and now they're still watching MTV. Plus, Judge is a huge Jersey Shore fan, which suggests they'll be watching it in more than 1 episode. Music videos will be shown as well, but we're concerned that it will consist of only multi-million sellers like Lady Gaga and Bieber, whereas 90's B&B provided commentary on the million-sellers of the day (TLC/Coolio/Green Day/etc) alongside Flaming Lips, Ween and Dead Milkmen, exposing those bands to kids and helping them sell records in the process... Perhaps those days are over. There's 14 years worth of un-commented music videos which could have provided some outstanding joke opportunities, and it might have been great to see them rocking out to something like No Age or Tyler The Creator... (No Age could use the promotion.)

More Judge interview: http://collider.com/mike-judge-interview-beavis-and-butthead/104226/

sadness in South Park

South Park Studios currently lists 11.16.11 as the final episode for this year, and possibly the final episode of the series, if news reports and the recent direction of the show is proving accurate. It's not often that a cliffhanger suggests the end of a series in the last episode of the 2nd-to-last season (although I suspect that someone like Oprah might have done that, since she made a big deal about the end of her series super-fucking early.. like over a year in advance if I'm not mistaken).

Anyway, we're saddened by the news, suggested by Trey & Matt plainly within the dialog of "You're Getting Old." It's not on the website for streaming at the moment, so we don't have exact quotes, but it included lots of the typical stuff we've heard on other shows as they're coming to a close: "How much longer can we do the same thing every week?" And the question remains, why bother making fun of everything in current pop culture when it's all shit anyway?

And just a quick aside, I do strongly disagree that becoming super critical and "negative" is a cultural thing that happens to people when they get old. It's 2011 - there is no generation gap anymore. Old people listen to rap. Kids listen to Zeppelin. I've heard of cases where families gather around to watch Teen Mom marathons. That's not a generation gap; that's just an example of people who love watching exceptionally shitty TV shows. There's plenty of great current film and music and TV shows to go around. But the best songs right now are not charting on Billboard.. The best movies are not the big box office blockbusters.. And the most creative shows on TV are ALL on Cartoon Network. This doesn't make anyone who agrees "old." Bruno Mars and guido-douche-party dubstep actually IS incredibly awful music..

It took me a minute to figure out why "Landslide" was used in the outro montage, but the lyrics seem to sum up what I'm assuming Matt & Trey are feeling regarding the show.. We've been counting on them for years to make sure they stopped before it turned into a shitpile like what happened with The Simpsons, who left behind a legacy of brilliance only to have it trampled to death by about 10 straight seasons of horrible cliches... So the pending South Park finale is actually a positive thing in this respect.

Also thanks is in order for actually saving one of the songs that got fucked in the ass by Glee.. At least Rumours now has 1 song that was used on TV in a tasteful manner this year...

South Park "201"

It's looking like episode 201 might never become available for streaming at their website. While southparkstudios.com is still one of the best things on the internet, and South Park has now entered their newest season, many of us, the fans, had expected the issues to be resolved by now. Six months later, it seems like viewing this episode illegally might be the only way to watch it ever again.

So I decided to use this as a topic for a paper I'm writing for a class, and I found this to be a nice explanation of what went down beforehand...