Discussing the awesomeness and craziness that is Adult Swim.
Buckle up kids, this is a long one!
This is all for entertainment!
All my links in one convenient place: linktr.ee/steamedhams81
Discussing the awesomeness and craziness that is Adult Swim.
Buckle up kids, this is a long one!
This is all for entertainment!
All my links in one convenient place: linktr.ee/steamedhams81
What do you do when you have a channel that caters exclusively kids but it's past your target audience's bedtime? Do you go off the air for the night? Do you use infomercials? No, you air shows that feature talking, food products in New Jersey, stop motion shenanigans and superhero talk show hosts. Then you use them to entertain the weirdos like me who don't have a bedtime Because we're adults and we can do what we want Kids out of the pool and out of the room. It's time to talk about adult swim today on the unforgettable luncheon. Hi, it's your pal, steamed hams. I hope you're ready for an unforgettable luncheon.
Speaker 1:Adult swim is the nighttime programming block on Cartoon Network that features shows geared more towards young adults and older teenagers, showing comedies, action and anime and a lot of weird shit. Adult swim premiered on September 2nd 2001 as a late-night block of programming on Cartoon Network meant for older teens and young adults who might be watching after like 10 or 11 PM, when all the young kids were in bed. The first adult-oriented show produced by Cartoon Network was Space Ghost, coast-to-coast in 1994, running until 1999 and being revived in 2001 when adult swim premiered. The premise of the show was Space Ghost, former superhero of the 60s and 70s, now a late-night talk show host. His crew is managed as manned by villains Zorak, who's now his band leader and general foil for a lot of his shenanigans, and Maltar, who's now a director producer for the show. These villains are there as punishment for their crimes on the previous series, space Ghost, which meant they caused trouble for Space Ghost during the show, doing everything they could to undermine him. Space Ghost would interview celebrities believing them to be superheroes, not realizing they were just common folk, and Of course, first question was always what's your superpower? Most of the time the guests answers would be edited to more humor, humorously match Space Ghost's questions and later on they were able to actually interact with the characters. You know the animation was reused from the old Space Ghost cartoons, with a joke being about how crew the animation of poor lip-syncing of the Dialogue was on the current show and basically the movement making him look like paper dolls on popsicle popsicle sticks. Now, I didn't catch this very often during its original run but caught up years later with on-demand services and with it, you know, showing in reruns on adult swim. This show actually had a few adult swim spin-offs the Brack show, aqua teen, hunger force, harvey Birdman, attorney at law, and Perfect Hair Forever. Not never really watch Perfect Hair Forever, but I watched the other three with great interest. Each of these shows were just as surreal as Space Ghost, coast to coast.
Speaker 1:Now, in December 2000, a few adult swim shows made stealth Debutes between 4 and 5 am Under a special programming block on the Cartoon Network channel lineup. These were aqua teen, hunger force, harvey Birdman, the Brack show and C-Lab 2021. One of my personal favorites, adult swim initially aired on Sunday nights from about 10 pm Eastern time until 1 am, with the same block from Sunday being rebroadcast on Thursdays. Its first broadcast featured the series home movies, a show prematurely cancelled by upn, who, of course, is no longer around, and the anime cowboy bebop, which is one of the very few animes I actually legitimately enjoy. The following week, aqua teen hunger force premiered.
Speaker 1:Now, most of the original programming shows they they followed an 11 minute episode format because, well, most of the people watching have a short attention span be included. Oh Shiny, oh, sorry, yeah, I'm still doing this. Hmm, yes, so often to fill a 30-minute block you get two episodes back-to-back plus commercials. It became common for the adult swim block to be a bit of a home for animated shows that have been prematurely cancelled by other networks like Mission Hill. The oblong future on my family guy oftentimes to was to burn off episodes that had been produced but not shown on the Parent, the original network, the parent network. So like if someone had like, say, 10 episodes that were never shown, we get to see them on adult swim and, believe it or not, adult swim was responsible for the revival of family guy and of also also a future drama, so you can thank them for family guy being brought back twice and now being on for like 20 seasons. Ish, I've lost track. I barely watch family guy anymore and I used to love the show.
Speaker 1:Now adult swim has since expanded to seven nights a week, starting around 7 pm Roughly and going all night. Their usual MO was to air the tame stuff first, such as King of the Hill, bob's Burgers and family guy reruns. Well, when they had family guy and the later into the evening it went, the weirder shit got. But around 3 am they would usually start showing the tame stuff again, leading back to the show and leading back into Cartoon Network, because I'm sure the last thing a small child waking up at 5 am from a bad dream is to turn on Cartoon Network and Not see the amazing world of Gumball, but see your pretty face is going to hell. Yeah, that's what that kid needs. Now.
Speaker 1:Notes from Saturday nights consistent with an anime action block called to Nami. Now, I'm not a huge anime fan so I don't watch a lot of to Nami and and before I got married, saturday nights were reserved basically for partying and Sven Gully. So there, adult swim also has a history of April Fool's pranks, ranging from the sullen nature like broadcasting normal programming with random mustaches animated in, or showing full metal alchemist with fart sounds dumped in, or the promise of showing the aqua teen hunger for us colon movie film for theaters, only to show the first two minutes, which have been readily available online for ages, and show the rest of it they small muted box in the corner for the rest of the night. Now adult swim has had some amazing original programming. We're gonna talk about some of it here, and I apologize in advance if I don't get to your favorites. I've not seen everything adult swim has ever produced and some things just never clicked with me. So we're gonna go through some of my favorites.
Speaker 1:We're gonna start with the Brack show. The Brack show is one of the spin-offs of Space Ghost Coast to Coast, starring former Space Ghost villain Brack. This is more of a prequel and it takes place in a small town called Spacetown which looks like an your average, like Relatively 1950s-ish neighborhood. And that was the point of the show. It was a parody of those old sitcoms. You had Brack and his family mom, who was of his same space cat species but dressed and acted like a 50s housewife, and Dad, who was a human much smaller than them. That was part of the gag. He was a Cuban immigrant named Javier, who was I would say he was like kind of a Ricky Ricardo knockoff. But the joke was he was chronically unemployed, had done a job since the 80s and most of his day was spent sitting around reading the newspaper, dispensing fatherly advice or what he thought was fatherly advice. And the reason he was smaller than everyone is actually when they were making the animation file for them, they come. They meant to compress it the same space and it ended up shrinking the character down and they just went with it because it was funny as hell. And he also hangs around Zorak, who is actually not a high school student, he's 40 and just hangs around with high school student Brack, usually to, you know, rope him into causing whatever trouble he was in. And he had a very how do I put this? For the current generation, but for the old people listening he was like an Eddie Haskell from leave at the beaver type, you know very selfish, sociopathic and had a more than platonic interest in Brack's mom. They also had a neighbor, thunder Cleese, who was basically like a big Gundam robot and him Asking it, brack, to watch his fish For an episode brought one of my favorite bits.
Speaker 1:He was telling him that you know, hey, feed him three grams of this food Every you know, like three times a day. And he says whatever you do, do not feed this goldfish three hams, because three hams will most definitely kill him. And then he proceeds to sing a song that goes Three hams will kill him, three hams will kill him. Do you know how to go? How go, shit. It's like three hams will kill him. Three hams will kill him. Please don't feed him three hams. To which, when Brack was trying to remember it, the song went three hams will fill him, three hams will thrill him. Why don't you feed him Three hams? Yes, I know, my singing voice is bottom tier, I'm sorry. So of course he feeds a goldfish a three ham omelet, because I don't know where anybody would even know that. I'm sure one ham would probably kill a goldfish. Why three?
Speaker 1:That's, that's the bragg show, it's. It's surreal as all hell. And they get into other trouble, like wanting to play a video game but realizing that they needed to do homework. So they use a time machine to go back in time and say, hey, don't play this game, do your homework first, that you can play the game all weekend. Which turns into hey, they're playing a video game and they keep wanting to play. So they keep going back in time and more and more Brax and and Zorax keep showing up and they're all piling in just wanting to play the games and eventually is fighting with each other. Because, well, the bragg show it was. It was a terrific show and I think just about every episode, all the early episodes, I tended to parody Sitcom tropes from the 50s, but of course the plot eventually just dissolved entirely and became just Weirdness. It was a great show. It lasts about three seasons, I believe, and if I'm not miscounting and it's one of you got to catch, I Think, like a lot of adults from content. It might be on max. So check it out, it's a lot of fun.
Speaker 1:Well, next we're gonna talk about another show that's spun off from Space ghost coast to coast aqua teen hunger force. Now, the aqua teen hunger force actually appeared as the teen hunger force and on Space ghost coast to coast, and their appearances pretty much varied, along with personalities Varied from space ghost to aqua teen hunger force, with fry lock having arms and legs that looked like crinkle fries and, you know, then being a little more crazy. Aqua teen hunger force follows the three of them living as roommates and and somewhat getting along with their human neighbor. New Jersey stereotype caricature, and I'm sorry if I miss Brown's name, carl Brutanan on the lusky, who was always seen basically wearing a wife beater, sweatpants and flip flops. He was balding, with a mustache and he had a very thick New Jersey accent and, and you know, he was just never really Enthusiast to see. You know those guys, you know the fry man and the meat guy and you know it was a funny show.
Speaker 1:It started out as like a superhero show but of course, like the Brack show, quickly devolved into absolute craziness. They had very few referring recurring characters. The first season, at least, started out with these weird, almost non sequitur openings for a character named dr Weird, who was a supervillain, and he would always start the episode with some weird-ass invention that he created that would either mutilate his lab assistant, steve, or Cause chaos in town. In fact, the first, I think, three, four episodes whatever his dumb ass experiment was would be the catalyst for the episode, and it would always start out with gentlemen Behold. And then he'd bring out some wacky-ass invention. I Think there was even one where he just straight said I'm not wearing pants. So I looked at that like they're just not trying, but I also think he might be losing it. Yes, a man named dr Weird eventually losing his mind because he was super sane to begin with.
Speaker 1:Now the show did go through title changes without actually changing the premise, from season 8 on to things like Aqua Teen Patrol, unit 1, to Aqua Teen something, something To you know, just going on, because the creators thought it was funny as hell and it was like a little bit of something to generate buzz, because people were like, hey, they've changed Aqua Teen hunger force, and then they find out that it hasn't changed, just the title. There was a movie in 2007 my, the early 2000s are really just a mess for me. I'm sorry I don't remember like half of them past the military Called Aqua Teen Hunger Force colon movie film for theaters. When it was released on home media it was Aqua Teen Hunger Force colon movie film for theaters on DVD. I Shit you not, that is the actual title. If you find in the store that basically involved an Exercise machine that was meant to be used to take over the world, along with other just absolutely weird shit, including introducing a fourth Aqua Teen Hunger Force member, chicken Biddle, who was a chicken nugget voiced by Bruce Campbell. I mean, you had a character voiced by Bruce Campbell. How did this not win all the Academy Awards? Like seriously, you put Bruce Campbell in something. You better win the awards because Bruce Campbell is awesome. Okay, I'm getting off track because I will spend the entire podcast talking about how awesome Bruce came.
Speaker 1:This was another great show. I have, like the first few seasons on DVD. They did get celebrity encounters. Like I know, glenn Danzig was looking to buy Carl's house. At one point they dealt with Ted Nugent, who they mistook for Jesus because Meatwad had seen Jesus in his peanut butter, which was just a smiley face drawn in a damn peanut butter, you know. But the characters were fun. Master Shake was like just just lazy, selfish, scheming milkshake who Basically constantly bullied meatwad, meatwad being an amorphous blob of ground beef, unknown as to whether he was actually cooked or raw, but he could shape himself into things like a hot dog and igloo. He had arms and he did sleep on a grill. So we're not entirely sure on that one.
Speaker 1:I Used to do meatwad's voice just to aggravate one of my co-workers when I worked on the ambulance, because he played country music for like 13 hours a day and it drove me nuts. And I says look, we change the station. Says no. I said okay, fine, I'm gonna start talking like a newt wad for the entire shift, include in in front of patients and hospital staff. Do you really want me to do that and embarrass you? It didn't work and so I sounded like meatwad for an entire 13 hour shift, for it was fine, because that got funny when I recall hospitals yes, this is urinate number 53, coming in with a patient, 42 year old male, with chest pain Substernal. We've given him 324 milligrams of aspirin and we have started cardiac protocol. Our each day is five minutes. Yeah, that sounds great.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and then there was frylock, who was like the Sane member of the group you would call it. He was a floating goateed Box of fries, like just like he looked like a like a large fry from Mickey D's. Okay, you know, he was a scientist, he was the sensible one and he was usually the one Correcting any sort of shenanigans that generally shake got them into. I Always, I always, just like I felt bad for Carl having to live next to them, even though Carl was a bit of a you know how do we put this Kind of a scumbag himself to a point. But you know, living next to three mutant food products who constantly destroy your car and or house and always decide they're gonna go swimming in your pool, I'd be mad too. I I was a great show.
Speaker 1:In addition to the movie they had in 2022 released another movie called plant gas. Now, I haven't seen plant gas me yet. I haven't had a chance to, but when I do, I'll let you know how I thought. You know how I liked it. Okay, moving on, we're gonna talk about Harvey Birdman, attorney at law. Another space coast, coast to coast. Spin off. I swear to God, that's like the last one I'm bringing up. Okay, I Swear. Now I Harvey Birdman. Oh god, did I love this show? Basically, it's more or less a sequel to Birdman and the galaxy trio, which was a 60s superhero cartoon produced by Hannah Barbera and he now run. He's now an attorney for the law firm of seven and seven Was just run by his maniacal Boss, phil Ken seven, who is a parody of Birdman's Like commander in Birdman, the galaxy trio, falcon seven.
Speaker 1:Now it was Phil Ken seven. He was voiced by Stephen Colbert and he top notch. I am not gonna lie, it was hilarious because he was, he was like he was like he had, he had fuck you money, okay, phil had fuck you money and he did whatever he goddamn pleased, okay. And he always managed to have like a double entendre. You know, in the barrels you know loaded and you, you know they seem like enjoyment things of that nature.
Speaker 1:And and you had other attorneys at the law firm and defense counsel and whatnot, who were other bird man and Hannah barbaric characters. So you had Even even the judges were Hannah barbaric characters, like you had two judges, one judge my tour who's kind of like a cone on the barbarian spoof who never got bird man's name right. Yeah, mr Boomnut, proceed. Mr Beanbag, mr Buttock, you know. And then you had my personal favorite, mentec the mind-taker, who Despite having telepathic and psychic abilities, still had to listen to the case. But he would still mind. Take you and he'd make his little sound going as he made his little powers and he decided case right there.
Speaker 1:You also had Myron Reducto, who was basically the bird man villain, reducto, who was extremely paranoid and Threatened to shrink everybody. He like a you'd like an itchy trigger finger and he was always sick I'll shrink you, I'll make you a teeny-tiny. He was also voiced by Steven Colbert, so that man carried that show. Now, bird man, my tour and a few others were voiced by Wow, why can't I think of his name? But oh, gary Cole, because that's the guy that played Bill Lumberg in office space, one of my other favorite movies. Yes, the show Was hilarious and you always had Harvey's little catchphrase. Oh, take the case, he had his assistant who was kind of like his paralegal, who was like Like a junior bird man. His name was peanut, yes, peanut, and Peanut was, you know, like a lot of sidekicks on these shows. You know, kind of scheming, selfish, but also kind of did his job.
Speaker 1:Now there was a spinoff to this show called bird girl, which is based on Phil's daughter, judy Ken 7, who was secretly bird girl and Nobody ever figured out that she was bird girl, even though she kind of made it obvious that she was fucking bird girl. I think bird girl only lasted for two seasons, which kind of sucks. I don't know if a third is coming along, I haven't heard, but it's hilarious. It was hilarious. She had her own little group, you know, and she was now running seven and seven because, well, phil died. You know, I'm sure Steven Colbert is kind of busy right now. He probably didn't have time to voice Phil anyways.
Speaker 1:Oh, there were other great characters on this show. You had Peter Potamus who was always asking did you get that thing I sent you? Did you get that thing I sent you? It's all. It's a lot of what he has like he'd have actual conversations, but he was basically, like you know, usual fat, letcherous lawyer that you know, kind of doofy but good nature, you know, meant well, but the same time he was, he was always. He was always looking for something to eat and he wanted to make sure that you got that thing he sent you. Did you get that thing I sent you?
Speaker 1:And a lot of the cases involved Hannah Barbera, characters in various legal predicaments, such as Apache chief from the justice or from I'm sorry, super friends, not just asleep super friends. Now, for those of you who don't know Apache chief, he's like a B or C level character from like the 70s. His whole thing was he had this magic ability to say a magic word and he turned into like a giant and, you know, fight bad guys. Now he ended up spilling coffee on his lap and Lost the ability to Expand if you catch bedrift, which meant he also couldn't use his powers. So there was the whole lawsuit against the coffee joint. There was the Flintstones being a mob family.
Speaker 1:There was I believe it was the, the the characters from like show jabberjaw, which was about a bunch of kids and a shark who were in a band and, of course, like Everything in Hannah Barbera in the 60s, drove around its all mysteries. They were suing a Japanese band that was knocking them off, named show you weenie, and nobody ever really got the fact that the band was named show you weenie, which you know what? It's Birdman. So that was a fun show. I loved it. I Still use a lot of the stuff like in real life where I say, get that thing I sent you, or I do the the Philkens 7, followed by some double entendre or something just wrong that I will. I will relate. Nobody gets it and it's sad Because more people need to watch Harvey. Freakin Birdman of turning it long. All right now, oh, one of my other personal favorites, c-lab 2021. Now this, oh this was gold.
Speaker 1:It was a show that was based on a very short-lived Hannah Barbera series from the 70s called C-Lab 2020, which was an educational show about an undersea Science lab and the crew that ran it. Now, the premise to this is it's a year later and the crew has basically gone insane, especially captain Murphy. Oh, captain Murphy, how he was lazy, he was incompetent, he was probably bad shit crazy, and he spent most of his time just being lazy on the bridge and getting into schemes and shenanigans that would, you know, eventually probably destroy C-Lab, which was one of the running gags of every episode. At the end, c-lab would explode. Next episode, it was like nothing happened, and there were various other characters on there, like sparks, the comms guy, who you never saw out of his chair and Nobody ever explained as to why he never left his chair. He literally just rolled around in his chair. He wasn't disabled or anything, he's just how they animated him, because the character from the cart the original cartoon was always shown in his chair.
Speaker 1:You had Marco, voiced by Eric Estrada, who was like the big name for the show and and captain Murphy didn't like him. Captain Murphy called him mailbox head. He didn't even call him Marco, he called him mailbox head because I guess his head was shaped a little bit like a mailbox. You had Stormy, who was kind of a doofus and had no real job around C-Lab other than being handsome and being a complete fucking doofus who would get himself into a lot of predicaments. You had Debbie or is it called her white Debbie because there was a white Debbie and a black Debbie. I don't know why they needed to call her that, but then again it was like the early 2000s and, shock value, she was dating one of the other Crew members, dr Quinn, who was a robot, well, a human robot, hybrid of cyborg, but of course she was hot. So every time they were having their little relationship, woes, all the other guys would decide they want to get on her good side. You know, hey, here on the odds of Quinn, you want to come back to my, to my barracks room here? Yeah, I know Captain Murphy had this weird disdain for the jerks in pod six, always. He always, though we never went to pod six, but he always had like this hatred for everybody in pod six. Yet they never, they never really mentioned what the slight was that made him hurt or like made him hate pod six. He just remember, he just talk about those jerks in pod six.
Speaker 1:Now, as I said, captain Murphy was completely batshit crazy. He actually sent Crew members out on what was essentially a suicide mission to retrieve his easy-bake oven that had been somehow Lost in the ocean. Or he used their emergency radio transponder to broadcast a pirate radio show. Unfortunately, around the third season the voice actor, harry guys, unfortunately passed away. His son, michael, took over as a completely new character, tornado shanks, who just In my opinion wasn't as funny as Captain Murphy. He was More self-aware. So you kind of figured out he was in a TV show, but he wasn't as insane as Captain Murphy. So it just didn't never clicked with me. Now they explained Captain Murphy leaving as going to fight in the galactic spice wars and I said, yes, spice. So I'm assuming he thought Dune was real. The man was crazy.
Speaker 1:So it was a great show, had an excellent theme song and I just, I absolutely love the running gag of how, like you'd have a catastrophic Explosion that would destroy the entire C lab, next episode, like nothing happened, people would get injured, maimed, transformed into robots next episode. That never happened, but that fits along with the MO of a lot of adult swim shows. Ooh, now we're gonna move on to one of my favorite ones, robot chicken. This is now. This show is still going on. It's basically a stop motion animation, like little short skits, you know, of course it's one of the 11 minute shows and they have very few recurring characters. Like they had the nerd, they have the, the mad scientist and the chicken who show up in like every opening and things get progressively worse for the two of them. What, eventually, I think, the nerd becoming a robot? At some point there was also a robot that like to hum things most let, mostly, you know, washing machines.
Speaker 1:That was an early gag and basically this spawned from a Little section in Toy Fair magazine, which itself was published by wizard. Yes, wizard used to be a magazine back in the 80s and 90s and even early 2000s. It was pop culture, comic books, and they always had an awesome price guide in the back Telling you how much your comics were worth back in the 90s. Because, well, the comic book speculation boom. I'm sure some of my comics are worth a pretty penny now and some are more worth of probably about a penny. But we're getting ahead of ourselves.
Speaker 1:There was a small little Section in Toy Fair magazine which was all about toys, action figures, all that called twisted Toy Fair theater and that had no real running plot, obviously, but they used a lot of the same characters. They were these me go figures which were essentially like Barbie, like early gi Joe, 12 inch figures, and they generally used spider-man, thor and Hulk along with a few others. And Spider-man was just as usual, lazy, greedy, letcherist type of guy, just he just wants to sit on his couch and chill. And he had his best friend and, I'm assuming, roommate, hulk, who was a good natured doofus, who was kind of like Lenny from of mice and men because he didn't know his own strength and he was kind of a doofus, you know he was, he was, you know well, not all there mentally, and then Thor was just oblivious to you know how the world worked and all that you know. And my one of my favorites was the fact that you'd have dr Doom and every time he got slated you were on the list. So that ended up growing into Robot chicken, which was all stop motion.
Speaker 1:So they use more than just the me go figures. They used various other toys, action figures and even claymation, and it would be these short little like 10, 15 second skits that would Usually end just very serially, just shit that you would, you would think of like this would be funny if it happened to this character and somehow it happens. You know. Now, obviously they didn't use spider-man, hulk, thor, stuff like that. They went with other characters and they would have things such as the game of life. The characters you know experience the little pegs from game of life, experiencing life, you know, unwanted pregnancies, job losses, that sort of thing. Or they did one where it was Michael Moore trying to catch up with the toys of yesteryear, so finding you know Lionel from Thundercats living with Cheetah and a in a trailer park and basically becoming white trash. Or or, um, you know, he, man just doing his thing, skeletor doing his thing, stuff like that. They even had a behind-the-music with electric mayhem, the Muppet band. That got pretty funny. Now robot chicken is still on. They've had some specials Like, you know, dc superheroes on vacation. These are all hilarious.
Speaker 1:It's a great show. It's still running, as far as I know. You know I catch it when I can. If you haven't checked it out. I've got like three seasons on DVD and then once again you could find this on max.
Speaker 1:You know Rick and Morty. We're gonna go into that very briefly, because if you don't know Rick and Morty, then what the fuck are you doing on my podcast Besides well, getting now learn about Rick and Morty? So Rick and Morty basically started out as a way to no joke, get a cease and desist letter from the producers of Back to the future by calling it the adventures of Doc and Marty. And you know it was like very adult, very fucked up, and that basically became Rick and Morty, with Rick being Morty's grandfather, being a drunken scientist who is basically invented, interdict interdimensional travel. And he does travel the parallel dimensions where it finds out there are other ricks, other Morty's, and that becomes a running plot point of the series and then you have, you know the rest of Morty's family, his sister, summer, who gets it, the whole family basically is involved in the adventures at at by about the third, fourth season you have his father, jerry, who's just a complete loser at one point, his parents separate, or Morty's parents separate, and his mother, beth, is a Veterinarian, specifically like large animals, like horses, cows, stuff like that, and she works at a horse spittle where she does surgery and the show is very authoriles.
Speaker 1:It is such a cultural impact that they made an offhand reference in season three to the McDonald's Szechuan sauce that they offered in the 90s as kind of like a tie-in to the Disney movie Mulan. Now I was around for that. I like the Szechuan sauce. It was excellent. Szechuan sauce in general, if it is well made, is very good. Real Szechuan sauce has a bit of a spice to it.
Speaker 1:Obviously they weren't going for that with Mickey D's because they were trying to market into kids and you don't want to market spicy shit, the kids. So because it's offhand comment, people started saying, oh, we want Szechuan sauce back with Mickey D's. So McDonald's kind of started working on it. They did a couple of test markets just for laughs, like just to see what this worked. I mean when people from adults, when people who watch an adult swim show, are begging you to bring back a sauce and some of them weren't even around for we're literally not even alive for Because an offhand comment on a show it's gonna work. But the thing that bothered me the most was so they only had it in a very few like obscure locations. People were driving for hours to get a fucking sauce. They weren't even alive for when it came out and then throwing Having I I'm not even kidding, there were grown ass. We'll call them men because legally defined their men. But they act like fucking children, throwing temper tantrums, kicking and screaming and swearing at McDonald's staff who ran out of the sauce because everyone wanted the goddamn sauce.
Speaker 1:That made Rick and Morty fans look terrible. I'm a Rick and Morty fan, but it made us look like a bunch of immature douchebags. I Mean, I know I'm immature, but I'm not. I'm not a douchebag, at least not professionally, you know. And the other controversy that came along with this was unfortunately last, earlier this year or was last year. It's everything's blended together with me between work and doing everything. Justin Royland, the co-creator of the show, also the voice of Rick and Morty had assault charges filed against him by a former girlfriend, so of course he's off the show and there was the whole controversy with that. They are. I believe they have recast the characters. I'm looking forward to seeing what they did. I guess they got a sound alike for Rick. You know, I'm hoping the show can continue, just without someone who was so unfortunately problematic.
Speaker 1:All right off from Rick and Morty, we're gonna go to one of my other absolute favorites, metalocalypse. For those of you who not seen or heard of metalocalypse, you need to get out from under that rock you're living in. Even if you hate heavy metal, it is a genuinely funny show. The show revolves around a heavy metal band called death clock, who is basically the world's most popular, most influential, richest Band, and they are all a bunch of dumbasses. The characters, the members of the band, are singer Nathan explosion, lead guitarist and world's fastest guitar player, squizz gar squiggle, from Sweden, and Then you have world's second fastest guitar player and rhythm guitar player, toky war tooth from Norway. You have drummer pickles, or pickles the drummer from Wisconsin, because he's got that Wisconsin accent to him and he's also he's got read, he's red hair and he's got dreadlocks and a dreadlock comb over. No joke, he has what they call a skull it and Base player, william Murderface.
Speaker 1:Now, the first season of this show, at least, revolved around a secret tribunal of Government leader, government, military and religious leaders who are out to stop death clock because they felt that death clock was gonna bring about the Apocalypse. Which kind of spoofs how you had like the satanic panic of the 80s, and how parents and government officials were always like we have to censor music. Yet these are the same people who grew up watching Elvis shake his hips on TV and like, oh my god, that was scandalous. Now death clock themselves are like the 12th biggest economy in the world. They make their fans sign pain and death waivers before going into concerts because there is the chance of them being injured and or killed a high chance, in fact. In fact, the first episode was them flying out to the middle of the Arctic to play a coffee jingle. People were first crushed by the stage, being dropped by the helicopters, and then, during the song, large vats of Hot coffee and cream were being poured on to the crowd. People getting burned, drowned, you name it. But again, the band are a bunch of idiots. You know, they the only thing they're smart with is their music.
Speaker 1:The first episode also revolved around they accidentally kill their other personal chef by setting off fireworks and their giant as helicopter they're riding around it and he gets hit by one of the rockets, gets put up through the roof and chopped up by the blades and of course they're keeping all the separate parts of him alive throughout the episode on life support. And they decided we have to cook for ourselves. You can imagine how well that goes. They go to a grocery store called Fin trolls, which in one of the many different heavy metal References, just like going to Dumu Burger, which is a play on the name Dumu bourgeois. And they go to a grocery store and toky and squizgar sitting there like what is this place? And squizgar says I believe it is called a food library. And him and toky are like food library. To which of course pickles response it's called a grocery store. Yeah, fucking douche bags, it's not a food library. So then of course they're splitting up to the list to say hey, we got, we each got to buy certain food, you know. So we can cook for ourselves. And Nathan says and remember, booze is not food. To which murder face replies what do you mean boozing food? You tell me boozing food.
Speaker 1:They got in all sorts of different shenanigans, like Deciding to record underwater for their song Mermaid, which is about mermaid murder, or actually committing murder underwater, because that's where you can get rid of all the evidence. And they end up Meeting with a psychologist turned record producer named mr Twink lettuce, which if you look at how the name was spelled, was actually twinkle tits, but you know. And he ends up trying to escape the submarine Drives to leave too fast and the pressure explodes his eyes and later he gets cool robot eyes. They also do other things, like they sign an agreement for a phone endorsement. They each get these cool ass phones. They only get like 300 minutes between between all of them and they share all through all five phones, share one goddamn line which spend the episode is spent being tied up by murder face just chatting on the phone. So and that episode? I believe they had to fight A finished troll that they released while singing an apology song for destroying a town that they got from a book of ancient spells. So they decided to sing this ancient spell as a song because they're idiots and Made this troll arise that they had to battle. Now, eventually they do get attacked by the tribunal directly during a concert and they're also being tailed by an assassin hired by said Tribunal, which their CFO, charles Foster Offensen, who's also like their manager and keeps basically keeps them in check Defeats this assassin in hand-to-hand combat.
Speaker 1:Now, metal occluses ran for about five seasons and had a rock opera called Requiem for a doom star, which was really good. By the way, if you haven't seen a, check it out. They've released three albums with I just found this out yesterday a fourth one on its way in like two weeks. So look them up there on like Spotify, amazon, apple, apple music and all that. Look up death clock. It is whole. They're hilarious. It's a great show, very bizarre, excellent music done by some amazing musicians and and you have to have a strong stomach for kind of gore, gross jokes and all that but Check it out, it's great. They get a lot of great cast stars on that.
Speaker 1:Now we can't talk about surreal on adult swim without mentioning Tim and Eric, while they did get their start on Tom goes to the mayor, which was an animated show Basically, where all the characters were more or less animated Xerox pieces of people, the show. I really fell in love with them with was Tim and Eric. Awesome show, great job. That is the actual title of the show. It's just a bunch of loosely connected skits with some recurring characters and bits like Cinco Corp and Zach Elfinac is playing an actor named Terry Green and these were all just very non sequitur, bizarre, surreal humor, hard to explain. They even had an episode that was supposedly directed by Tommy Wiseau, where he guest starred. If you don't know who Tommy Wiseau is, you're a not a rift tracks fan and be Kind of be glad you don't know who Tommy Wiseau is. But he was also the focus of the movie the disaster artist, where he was played by James Franco, which was about his Extremely critically panned but cult classic to a 2003 film, the room, which, if you haven't seen that just Before, warned you will need alcohol.
Speaker 1:Tim and Eric, you know not much I can say about them. That would make sense, but they're Masters of absurd. In fact, if you've seen some of those really really bizarre old spice commercials, that was them. They're really funny. I enjoy all their projects. I've caught some of Tim and Eric's bedtime stories, which is I'm scared to live in. Shit out of you, but I was not a big fan of beefhouse. I tried, wasn't that great, but I'm hoping they bring back some more.
Speaker 1:Now the last show that I'm gonna talk about once again a very surreal, bizarre show that was live action called three busy debras only lasted for about two seasons and it started. It was about three women, all named debra, all housewives in the very affluent but disconnected from reality Connecticut suburb of lemon curd. All three of them wore white, and it was. They all had varying outfits one debra wearing a dress like she's kind of a housewife, like a fifties housewife. One dressing in more of a cocktail dress, one in a pantsuit. Of course they were rich, they were Very out of touch with reality, much as was most lemon curd, and they got into shenanigans, such as when the town's milk supply was diverted to strictly them because there was a milk drought so they decided to divert all the milk to themselves so they could do whatever the hell they wanted. Or competing to join a traveling cartwheel game. Competing to join a traveling cartwheel club, which was just simply a performance group that did nothing but cartwheels, which involved one of them getting into it and the other two being upset and trying to take steroids to, or no, none of them got into it. So two of them decided to do steroids and of course had all the bad side effects of steroids happen, and the third one Deciding to create a curse to curse the other two once they got on to Cartwheel Club using their damn steroids.
Speaker 1:It was a very funny show three very funny actresses who are all still working in the comedy scene. I do recommend checking it out. It's just weird as shit. Be prepared for some kind of gross and shock humor, but it's to me was funny as hell. Now I know I talked about shows that may not have been everybody's favorites and I missed a few that were Probably a lot of people's favorites. I know I'm gonna hear about it for not talking about venture brothers. I wasn't a big venture brothers fan when it was on. I might give it a shot, you know, seeing as I'm older and wiser, but Sorry, I didn't talk about it.
Speaker 1:Now, adult swim did have some hilarious like one-offs and shorts, like a mini series called the greatest event in television history. It was a four-episode series starring Adam Scott who would basically do. Each episode was a mockumentary behind the scenes about him doing a shot-for-shot remake of various 70s and 80s TV show openings with other comedians, like doing Simon and Simon with John Hamm or doing bosom buddies with Paul Rudd, which I mean you do anything with Paul Rudd, it's gonna be a masterpiece. And it would be like this whole 11, like 10 minute build-up doing behind the scenes, talking about filming it, and Then it would end with the whole like, however long the actual opening was usually like the 30 seconds to a minute that a show would open back then. So, as an 80s child who grew up with about three of the shows they parodied which they did Simon Simon too close for comfort, heart-to-heart and bosom buddies. Now I grew up with Simon Simon too close for comfort and I did see some bosom buddies. I never really watched heart-to-heart as it was more of a 70s TV series and I was born in 1981, so a little hard to kind of catch it. I found it hilarious. I believe it's on max. Check it out. If not, you can always look on YouTube.
Speaker 1:Now, speaking of TV intros, we're talking about this one. I don't fucking hear what you say. We're talking about this one viral sensation too many cooks. For those of you don't know. You know too many cooks. It was just this 2011. It was a short to that parodied 80s and 90s TV shows. I Won't spoil it. Looking up on YouTube, trust me, the intro is the best part.
Speaker 1:Now, adult swim was a cultural phenomenon From its humble beginnings as a way to just fill programming and hit reach a new demographic to the pop culture Icon. It is now. It's just amazing. I'm 41 years old and I still watch it most nights, even past the tame stuff. You know I watched other shows like smiling friends and the Eric Andre show, which, trust me, I didn't get into those shows because they are way too bizarre to explain. Well, that's it for another unforgettable luncheon. I hope a good time was had. By all. You can find me on a social medias Twitter, or X as it's now known as steamed hams 81, instagram, twitch and YouTube, as, of course, steamed hams 81, or Facebook as the unforgettable luncheon. Don't forget to check out my merch store, steamed hams merch torium. The link will be in the description. You actually do get a small discount if you are a twitch subscriber, which I know. I haven't been on twitch in a while, but I'm getting back to that Now. Join me next week when the topic will be something nerdy.