Inexplicable Book Review: Meth is bad, mmkay?

We All Fall Down by Nic Sheff is the follow-up to his debut, Tweak, and it’s a semi-riveting and completely frustrating book about drug usage and addiction. I imagine that’s kind of the point, but please note this going in. It results in a disjointed and intentionally odd narrative at times. (And a heads-up – Spoilers follow on this book, and his other works.)

First, the background – Sheff is the son of David, who did one of the best video game books of all-time, Game Over. It’s since been done a bit more in detail by Stephen Kent and others, but his book came out in 1999, when I was 15, and I remember it being one of the few non-industry (magazine) tomes about video games.

After Game Over, he wrote Beautiful Boy, which was released in 2008. It was all about Nic’s addiction to drugs – primarily meth – and how he was coping with it as a father. The book ended on a somewhat hopeful note, as David noted that Nic had about a year of sobriety at the time of the book’s publishing.

From there, Tweak by Nic Sheff came out in January 2009. If you’re looking for a scary, frantic, haunting book about drug usage, then jeebus, this is what you want. My skin literally itched while reading some portions. It was an Oprah Book Club choice, and they excerpted some of the tamer aspects of the first chapter.

Tweak is a remarkable novel on its own, but Nic produced a follow-up in April 2012, We All Fall Down. And to make a completely random comparison – At one point in his Dark Tower saga, Stephen King writes that the story is done and resolved, at least the happy bits, and if you don’t want that image to be spoiled in your mind, don’t read on. Well, We All Fall Down basically takes that concept and runs with it.

We learn that Tweak basically came about because Nic managed to manipulate his way out of rehabs in Arizona and New Mexico, latching on and living with a southern gal in Alabama. Once he’s there, he’s almost immediately drinking and smoking pot daily, while he’s writing Tweak.

While reading, it made me feel, well, odd. Like that entire last quarter of Tweak is basically a lie. Obviously, We All Fall Down is a bit of an attempt by Nic to set the record straight about his addiction, and to also document and layout the thought process of an addict. It’s shocking how crassly manipulative he is at times, and he also writes in a way that obscures this, presenting his logic as it occurs in his mind.

The overall result is an interesting book, but one that’s really hard to read, and there ain’t no heroes in the tale. To steal from the wonderful TV Tropes, most of the book is an exercise in black and grey morality or grey and gray morality. Who do you find more sympathetic – the unreliable narrator who is always thisclose to doing meth, his shrewish and co-dependent girlfriend, his constantly relapsing former lover or the well-meaning but pressuring father?

The image is watermarked, and I used it to inject a little levity here.

Reminder!

Pig and elephant DNA just won't splice.

Family Guy gets real in season premiere.

I love me some Family Guy. Although I feel like it should be required watching if you live in Rhode Island, it's still funny if you don't. I can understand how others might get sick of the show and its somewhat formulaic humor, but hey, what else am I gonna watch? And as Peter Griffin would say, what do you want me to do, read a book? ... you go read a book.

Anyway, last night's episode was another experiment much like the bank vault from last season. There were echoes of both Clue (which I'm a big fan of) and Twelve Little Indians (which I'm also a big fan of) throughout, so not surprisingly, I liked the episode. And unlike a typical show, there were barely any "manatee jokes," as South Park would say. I counted about four in the entire episode.

The premise: All of Quahog is invited to a late night dinner at a mansion at the edge of town. Once there, Family Guy villain James Woods reveals himself, but proclaims to have turned over a new leaf. The guests are skeptical, and the plot thickets as Quagmire's (very, very ugly) date gets killed during dinner, while Woods is out of the room.

I won't spoil the rest of the episode, since I doubt most of you watched it. However, while I liked the first three-fourths of the episode, the final quarter really fell apart for a variety of reasons. The episode itself it still worth watching because of how different it is from a typical Family Guy, but don't expect any sort of magic at the end.

At least Adam West is awesome throughout. And yes, he is heavily featured, along with Carl the Video Store Clerk (H. Jon Benjamin) and the other popular side characters. They definitely have the funniest lines in the episode.

Colbert can't hang with his buddy Muhammad :(

I guess everyone is now kind of immune to images of Muhammad being censored out. It happened again on Thursday's Colbert Report, as he was trying to show a picture of himself with his buddy Muhammad, resulting in the image to the right. There was then a quick editing cut to Colbert just sitting at his desk, which makes the small percentage of my brain devoted to conspiracies wonder if he had said more, and it got cut by Comedy Central.

Speaking of Comedy Central, they are still cowards. And hypocritical, given their stance on Jesus and their attitude toward other religions. I'm an atheist, so I don't have a dog in this fight, but Comedy Central is letting the extremists win when they decide to censor images of Muhammad because they're offensive as opposed to anything else. You know, like when they had Buddha doing lines of cocaine in episode "201".

And predictably, this has emboldened nutty fanatics of other religions to point out the hypocrisy. I imagine at some point, either they'll make a threat in an attempt to get something removed from an episode, or Parker and Stone will quit the show or bring it to another network. Their current contract runs through 2013, and it wouldn't surprise me if they abruptly quit after that, or tried to give Comedy Central a big "F U" finger on the way out.

Programming note: I'll have a late entry tonight, since Betty White is hosting Saturday Night Live. Woohoo! I'm hoping it's a good episode, and between her and Jay-Z, there is a lot of potential here.

The cliche of Towelie finally stale

When South Park is on, like it was last week, few shows are better. However, some episodes of the show just fall flat to me, and this week's with Towelie was definitely one of those. While the show still had some laughs, there was nothing special about it to elevate it past an average episode plucked from the show's back category.

As with most episodes, there were two simultaneously plots going on that kind of weaved together. First, shows like Intervention and Celebrity Rehab were mocked a bit, as Towelie was shown doing ridiculous things in order to get money to buy weed, crystal meth and other drugs. And second, there was a slight spoof of Warner Brothers, as all of the Looney Tunes were re-cast as retarded kids at a summer camp.

Unfortunately though, both plots felt stale to me. Every episode Towelie is in deals with his love of marijuana and how it interferes with his life, and this episode wasn't that different, except that he was now using hard drugs as well. (Note: Comedy Central has no problem with Towelie tying off his arm to do heroin, yet won't let South Park show Muhammad. Good times, good times!) On top of this, the whole addiction thing was tackled in the first episode of the season, with Tiger Woods.

As far as the second plot goes, the summer camp kids were on two different teams vying for a statue for the camp... which is suspiciously like "Up The Down Steroid" minus Cartman.

Although Jimmy and Timmy were the good guys this time, and the episode cribbed quite a bit from Looney Tunes while mixing in Intervention stills, but the whole thing just felt too close to previous episodes. Excluding the "200" and "201" episodes, this season of South Park has been a bit disappointing, and this episode doesn't buck the trend.

Grade: C-

TV Review: Everyone returns for incredible South Park

Last night's South Park? Simply incredible. It was the second part of a continuing story about all the people the boys on South Park had double-crossed and tricked getting revenge on the boys. The chief factions were the Celebrities, led by Tom Cruise and the Pope and others, and the Gingers, who Cartman had offended in the past.

The episode was South Park at its most self-referential best. For example, the middle of the episode features Kyle and Stan arguing with Cartman about what's more important - whether Muhammad can be shown in South Park (wink wink) or the true identity of Cartman's father.

Anyway, I won't spoil the big reveal at the end, but it's definitely worth the wait. The second part is the best episode of the season so far.

Grade: A+

Ack, flooding!

Once again, I was busy at work with some flooding stories. As a result, I didn't have time to type a proper entry about yesterday's (awesome!) LOST episode. Please accept my forgiveness, and realize that it will be posted at a later time tonight, whenever I'm done covering a town council meeting. Lates!

The photo is from this site.

Celebrating Easter with Paas, Patton Oswalt, South Park and the Hare Club For Men

Happy Easter, folks! In celebration of the holiday, which surely means that there will be far less eyeballs on my blog, please instead read an old entry I did here. While it is one of my old school iTunes running diaries to start, skip down to the Patton Oswalt section in order to get to the relevant discussion about Easter and Paas.

Also, no mention of Easter would be complete without a reference to the greatest Easter-themed television episode, the South Park episode "Fantastic Easter Special." In that, Stan and Kyle learn about the true history of Easter, and the Hare Club for Men. For much, much more talk of South Park, check out the Tag Team that Danielle and I did last year.

The South Park photo comes from this discussion forum. The Paas pictures come from this blog.

TV Review: The rest of Thursday night, and inexplicably, South Park

I'm lumping in South Park with the rest of my Thursday night reviewing, since I forgot to write about the episode until now. Don't like it? Well, start your own god damn blog. As Butters would say, don't be such a phony.

- Even though I aggressively started off this entry by mentioning South Park, and included a photo from it, I still enjoyed Community more, even if it wasn't as good as Parks and Recreation. But hey, that was so good that it deserved its own entry last night. Maybe Community can reclaim its belt with its performance this coming Thursday.

I mean, it's not like this week's episode sucked. While Pierce got the most obvious sight gag of the week (Community loves sight gags, and I love them for it), the best storyline involved Annie and Shirley each trying to prove that they were "harder" than people thought. They were both asserting their dominance as a "bad cop" kind of character, and thankfully, Abed was there to spur them and the bald dean on.

Unfortunately though, their whole plot was based upon a premise that a prank gone horribly wrong caused Brita to frame Jeff for the crime. This fell kind of flat for me. It was enjoyable, but the cop dynamic between Annie and Shirley and Abed was better, and Troy and Pierce were wasted after the initial comic wizardry scenes. This could have been another A or A+ episode, but it fell just a bit short because the Jeff storyline was surprisingly stale.

Grade: A-

- Likewise, I would have given South Park a higher grade if they could have just reigned in the vomit a little bit. Seriously, there is projectile vomiting going on for about a quarter of the appropriately-named "The Tale of Scrotie McBoogerballs."

The underlying message of the episode is actually great, as it is subtle criticism against all of the people who try to assign ulterior motives to books like The Catcher in the Rye, or say, programs like South Park, that simply aren't there. The boys learn from Mr. Garrison that The Catcher in the Rye, the next class reading project, has been chosen for the class because it has been banned in so many classrooms. Unfortunately though, they're disappointed by the lack of swear words.

As a result, they collaborate to write the most disgusting novel of all-time, which shares its title with the episode. However, when they think they're going to get blamed and punished by their parents for it, they say that Butters wrote it... only to find out that the adults love the book, because they think it is an allegory for their own personal beliefs.

If you exclude all of the vomit, a gross-out device that has been used in countless South Park episodes, then this is a strong episode. (Hey, I'm a mark for anything with Butters in it, especially if he's threatening to kill John Lennon and calling people phonies.) Unfortunately though, like "Smug Alert" and "Canceled", the episode veers a bit too much into the gross out shit (or vomit) to really appeal to me fully.

Grade: B+

- Unsurprisingly, The Office still brings up the rear, although this week's episode was much better than last week's effort. The focus has started to shift away from the boring corporate crap and staff drama to where the show made its money: burgeoning relationships and Michael's "aw shucks" buffoonery that makes you cringe while fighting the urge to give him a big hug. It also helps that Kevin was doing Kevin stuff throughout the episode, such as being very, very enthusiastic about seeing Pam, and making thrusting motions in the direction of Andy and Erin.

Tackling it in reverse order, Pam the New Mom is desperate to get out of the house, even if it means hanging out with the crew from the office. She even brings Michael a friend, so that they can do a bit of a double date. Things are going great until Michael finds out it is a date, at which point, of course, he freaks out and almost gets thrown out of the bar. The episode's bartender kind of reflects the viewer's general point of view, in my opinion; she goes from wanting to throw Michael out because of his boorish behavior to taking pity on him, and throwing her hat into the ring for his affection on the sly.

The episode's other plots mostly revolved around the various romantic tendrils of the office's tree. Very minor plots included Oscar hoping to hook up with a potentially gay guy in the warehouse, and the continuing oddness of Kelly and Ryan. Andy stupidly downplaying his relationship with Erin got plenty of screen time, which is a shame, because I've decided that she is the second secretly hottest character on NBC Thursday night, after Annie on Community and slightly ahead of April on Parks and Recreation. He makes amends at the end of the episode though, which is nice of him. Meanwhile, Dwight chooses Pam's freakishly tall bridesmaid to pursue instead of Angela.

Frankly, all of these storylines are retreads from past seasons of The Office - Michael has had a string of stupid love interests, Kelly and Ryan are a sick joke of a couple at this point, and Dwight is now the focal point of a love triangle as opposed to Angela. I guess the Erin and Andy stuff has a kind of fresh feel to it in terms of The Office plots, except that both are so freakin' weird that I can't imagine them having anything resembling a normal relationship. All of THAT being said though, I still enjoyed the show this week.

Grade: B

- And finally, I forgot to mention last week that the 10th episode of the season was the final one for Archer. It'll return at some point next year, which is a shame, since I was just getting used to its greatness. So, sorry, but I won't be able to include silly pictures from it in the foreseeable future.

As pennance, please except this picture of billionaire playboy Xander Crews from Frisky Dingo. See, back before they did Archer, the creators had a show on Cartoon Network's Adult Swim called Frisky Dingo. While it didn't hit quite the high notes that Archer does - the voice talent isn't quite as good, since you didn't have H. Jon Benjamin or Jessica Walter - the show did have its own sort of continuous anarchy that made it wonderful. You can buy the combined season one and two pack, 25 episodes in total, for about $37. The individual seasons go for about $10 each. If you like Archer, or anything like Space Ghost Coast to Coast or Sealab 2021, then you'd also love Frisky Dingo.

Frisky Dingo overall grade: A-
Archer first season grade: A+

TV Review: South Parks starts season 14 on strong note

Ah, South Park. Good times as always. “Why would a man who is rich and famous try to have sex with lots of women???” The episode also starts with a great spoof of the Thanksgiving night event.

Butters freaks out about seeing a vagina for the first time, which is great for his reaction. Various Butters' quotes from the episode: “Did you see the bush on that lady???” “It was just so big and bushy, sir! Why does it look like that?” “Are there berries in it?”

Unfortunately though, it means that Kenny, Kyle and Butters have sex addiction, and are ordered to be separated from the rest of the students. And of course, Kenny dies from auto-erotic asphyxiation. And at his funeral, Butters tries to trim a bush into what he saw between the lady's legs.

From there, the episode is mostly about a Wizard Alien that is casting a spell on all the men in the United States, making them cheat on their wives when they have lots of money. Outside of a segment with monkeys, this portion is less successful, but the Butters quotes alone make this episode worth watching.

Grade: B+

Staying sunny with Always Sunny

In addition to recently watching every episode of Lost, I also undertook another project a bit more quietly and successfully - Watching every episode of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia. Forget about the people who proclaim that any other comedy is the best on television. Always Sunny is so consistently funny that there really is no competition. If it was on HBO, people would be so busy fellating each other about how great it was, and it would have about 500 Emmy nominations.

But, it's on FX, which is a weird network that has absolutely no focus. They have a couple well-regarded dramas in their lineup - The Shield, Sons of Anarchy, Rescue Me - which may or may not still be on the air, since I don't regularly watch any of them. They also have a new show about fantasy football called The League, which followed Always Sunny this year. (The League is pretty good, but it only had a six-episode trial run, and its humor isn't as broad as Always Sunny.)

Anyway, back to the show itself. It recently released a Christmas-themed DVD, which is absolutely awesome. And, hey, ladies - You get to see Danny DeVito's bare ass in it! How can you resist purchasing now?

The basic outline of the show is fairly simple. I'll try to make it into a math equation: Seinfeld + smut + immorality = It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia. On Seinfeld, you had plots about Jerry and George scheming to pull off the best friend switch, and contests about who could go the longest without masturbating.

On Always Sunny, you have Frank (Danny DeVito) kicking people out of their homes and his son threatening to rape the family, and one of the characters trying to sell kitten "mittons", and the gang tries to get an intervention for Frank because he's trying to have sex with his dead ex-wife's sister at her husband's funeral.

The most recent episode focused on the gang trying to get revenge on their former rivals, the team that beat them 10 years ago in Flipadelphia, a city-wide flip cup tournament. Dennis tried to recruit a fourth member of their team from his old fraternity, only to get repeatedly tazed along with Frank.

I'm making the show sound lowbrow, and it most definitely is. However, there is still a sophistication and intelligence behind it all - Think South Park or Family Guy as opposed to something completely without thought, like an Adam Sandler or Rob Schnieder movie. Check it out Thursday nights on FX.

The picture comes from this image site.

Dear Comedy Central, stop sucking

[Right] An image from Let's Bowl, the best dispute-settling bowling game ever broadcast on cable television.

Once upon a time, I remember when Comedy Central didn't suck. To be fair, they still do have some great shows. South Park, The Daily Show and The Colbert Report are all still awesome, and I am excited to check out more of Michael and Michael Have Issues, and Tosh.0.

But the rest of their shows and what they choose to show is severely lacking in originality or taste. For example, The Sarah Silverman Show varies wildly in quality; maybe I'm just tiring of her “I say offensive things!” schtick. There is still too much blue-collar comedy crap and iffy stand-up in general. I'll go months without seeing Mitch Hedburg or Zach Galifankis or Todd Barry.

However, there are two especially egregious things Comedy Central has indulged in lately – shitty movie selection and an inability to get creative with programming.

Speaking on the first point, I can do without Dane Cook's Employee of the Month being shown on weeknights. Employee of the Month is the type of dreck you convince yourself into renting from the local video store when you and your girlfriend want something on the background while you make out. Dane Cook is to college frat guys what Larry the Cable Guy is to rednecks. Whatever wit their acts originally possessed has been pimped out to relentless commercialism.

If you are Comedy Central, how are you not showing a bunch of classic, great comedies on loop? I'm not even talking about stuff like Duck Soup with Groucho Marx or Dr. Strangelove, which would be artsy and daring selections. I mean simple stuff like letting Caddyshack, Ghostbusters and Stripes slip to AMC, not showing This Is Spinal Tap and Best In Show and Waiting for Guffman, and letting VH1 and MTV show a bastardized version of Wayne's World. I just rattled off seven awesome comedies, and I can't remember seeing any of them on Comedy Central, and all of them are old enough that the viewing rights probably aren't that expensive to procure.

Lastly, I wish Comedy Central would take some more risks with what they do chose in terms of original programming. They have tried the talk show format about 50 million times, and unless it is The Daily Show or run by a former Daily Show staffer, it inevitably fails. If you blinked, you might have missed the shows hosted by David Alan Grier, D.L. Hughley, Adam Carolla, Lewis Black and Colin Quinn.

Back in the day, Comedy Central would at least attempt more original programming. An example would be Let's Bowl, a show that seemingly only I loved. It featured bowling matches between amateurs to settle petty disputes with snappy and snarky MXC-style commentary. It predated Dodgeball and MXC and Ninja Warrior, so I feel like it was a little ahead of its time.

Once upon a time, Comedy Central took a chance on a show that just had two robots and a human lost up in space commenting on shitty movies – It was called Mystery Science Theatre 3000. And another time, they greenlit a show with very mature elementary school students that cussed a lot – South Park. And another time, they let a guy who had a very popular cult movie about weed have his own show with almost no oversight – Chappelle's Show. These risks seemed to pay off quite a bit.

Tag Team: Danielle and Steve on Butters, South Park and Disney

Butters - Greatest character ever, or just the best one?

To rip-off the disclaimer for Bill Simmons' BS Report, Tag Team is a free flowing discussion between two adults that sometimes touches on mature subjects. Today's correspondent (I haven't thought of a good term for it yet) is Danielle Membrino, a photographer, Corcoran College and Rogers High School alum, and a friend of a friend from college. Also, her mom apparently loved reading my police reports when I wrote for The Newport Daily News. Topics this week include how awesome Butters on South Park is, the best worst Cartman moments, Disney's slide and possible redemption, and the success of Pixar. Want to do your own Tag Team with me? Send me an e-mail or leave a comment.

-----

Steve: Butters is probably my favorite South Park character, because he's really the only naive and innocent person on the show. The four lead characters are all super-aware for their ages, and Butters is kind of the innocent counter to them all, especially Cartman.

The difference is especially profound in "AWESOM-O." You know, the one where Cartman pretends to be a robot. It was after South Park had made the switch from a straight-up "gross out" show (the first couple seasons) to its current style, which is to mock trends getting headlines. It is also one of the few episodes where someone really does get the better of Cartman, although it takes forever to get to that point.

Also a strong episode from that season - "Woodland Critter Christmas," another Cartman creation, revealed at the end. The reveal in the middle of the episode probably makes it my favorite South Park episode of all-time, just narrowly beating out "The Jeffersons." Both of these, and "AWESOM-O," are from season eight, probably the best of all the seasons. Also in that season - "Good Times With Weapons," "Douche and Turd," and the Paris Hilton episode, another strong Butters' episode.

-----

Danielle: I remember the first time I saw a glimpse of South Park was when I was like maybe about 13. My dad was watching it and I walked in the room, and I don't know what episode it is, but they're in class and Kenny tells Mr. Garrison (this is pre-sex change) that he has to go to the bathroom. So he lets him, and the bathroom door is in the classroom and Kenny goes in and you can hear him having REALLY bad diarrhea.

Then my dad noticed me in the room and changed the channel, saying, "You're too young for this." I was just like, whatever, looked pretty gross to me anyway, so what did I care?

I didn't get into South Park until my sophomore year of college. We only got like 20 channels in our dorms and one of them was Comedy Central. One weekend they were doing a south park marathon, so I watched it. And it was the episode I was telling you about before [on Facebook], where Cartman thinks he's a ghost. I fell in love with the show after that.

Butters is definitely my favorite character as well. He's the most innocent and child-like, and I love him for it. Even when an episode isn't about him, if he just has like one or two lines, it's hilarious.

There was the episode where Cartman tries to run away from home, and when he asks the other boys if he can stay with him, they keep saying no. So Cartman's like, "FIIIINE. I'LL JUST STAY WITH BUTTERS THEN!" and Butters replies, "No. My mom says I'm not allowed to bring homeless people home anymore."

I can't get over the adorableness of Butters. He tries so hard to do what he thinks he's suppose to do. Like when Cartman ends up getting him sent to that camp where they make kids "not gay" and Butters has no idea what's going on and admits he is "confused" but was really only confused about why everyone thought he was confused. Or when they take a class field trip to the 1800's town but Cartman wants to go to the amusement park next door and Butters is his field trip buddy, so Butters refuses to let go of his hand the ENTIRE time until they're back on the bus.

I love the naivety of all the characters sometimes too. It helps you remember that they're only suppose to be 4th graders. Like in season four when Cartman tries making "mature" friends online and ends up bringing his friends along to a NAMBLA convention. Amazing.

I'm also partial to season 10. I have it on my iTunes and I'm looking through it and I love so many of the episodes. "Make Love, Not Warcraft," "ManBearPig" ("I'M SUPER SERIAL!!!") and "Tsst" (the one where the dog whisperer comes to train Cartman, so good!), and of course, "A Million Little Fibers." Who doesn't love Towelie? "Don't call me shoeless, you're shoeless!" The episode involves one of my favorite characters and makes fun of that ridiculous incident of the guy who wrote the book that wasn't 100 percent true and people freaked out.

I also like how a couple times the creators have predicted things that would happen in pop culture. There was the episode with Britney Spears, like a season ago I think it was, and the media is OBSESSED with her, even after she blows half her head off. And then at the end the paparazzi explain to the south park kids that they don't want to harass Britney, they have to. It had something to do with they had to have one sacrifice every year in order for the crops to grow, or something ridiculous like that.

So then at the end after Britney dies, all the paparazzi are at a grocery store and the news comes on about Miley Cyrus being the next big thing, and the paparazzi are all ominously looking at it going "oooooo." And I found this funny because the episode came out only days before Miley was all over the media for that "scandalous" photo of her in a bra, and then she was in the news all the time for a while for stupid little things that no one really cared about. I thought it was pretty funny South Park put that episode out and then it actually happened.

Going back to Butters... Did you see the episode about vampires in the new season? I saw most of it, but I enjoyed it because Butters thinks he is a vampire and sneaks into Cartman's room to "bite" him and Cartman wakes up with Butters on him and shouts out, "Mooooooooooom (although it's really more like maaaaaaaaam) Butters is in my room trying to kiiiiiiisssss meeeee cause he's realized his sexualllllllity!" And when Cartman's mom comes in, Butters hisses at her and goes back out the window. I was laughing so hard.

I feel like I'm not making any points here really... Just kinda talking about how awesome Butters is, haha. But I definitely loved "Awesome-O" too. I loved it every time Cartman had to do something he didn't want to do, or something bad happened, and he would just say "weeak." And Butters is just SOOO excited for his robot; jumping up and down and clapping. I want Butters as my child.

Hahaha, probably one of the most memorable episodes for me, is when Cartman is (I think) getting revenge on some bully or something, and is pulling pranks on him. The last prank he does to this kid is to invite him to a chili cookout and after the kid eats it, Cartman tells him he killed the boys parents and made them into the chili. It's so funny, but so incredibly wrong at the same time.

-----

Steve: Okay, sorry about the slight delay in responding to this. To switch gears for a second, I saw The Hangover earlier tonight, and it was as awesome as everyone else is proclaiming it to be. What are your thoughts on it? We seem to skew scarily close in terms of pop culture taste, so it wouldn't surprise me if you liked it a lot, but it is more of a "guy" movie in the vein of Old School as opposed to something like The 40-Year-Old Virgin, which both sexes seem to like equally.

But getting back to South Park, I vaguely recall seeing the first
season as it was broadcasting. Even at the time, I recognized that this was something weird, bizarre and special, and the first couple seasons were nothing but the kids acting like assholes toward one another. The social commentary didn't come until later, once they exhausted most of the "Cartman's mom is a slut" jokes. Also shocking - Mystery Science Theatre 3000 came on after South Park, within a few hours on Sci-Fi, so that was always a solid block of television for me
growing up.

As far as favorite episodes go, as you point out by naming several, there are just so many great ones that deserve to be mentioned. It might be easier to name ones that aren't that great. For example, I thought the April Fool's Joke, "Terrance and Phillip: Not Without My Anus," was pretty bad. While I loved the fact that Trey Parker and Matt Stone gave the shaft to their own fans, the episode itself stunk. The same goes with this season's episode about the Queef Sisters.

Standout episodes that we haven't mentioned yet: "Deathcamp of Tolerance" features the triumphant debut of Lemmiwinks. Right before "AWESOM-O" they hinted that another Lemmiwinks episode was coming in some promos, but we're several seasons past that point and still nothing. "Cartoon Wars" is interesting and unique with its criticism and defense of Family Guy, which I found spot on. Yeah, Family Guy is full of ridiculous non sequitors, but sometimes it is good to just laugh instead of having to watch a show that gets all deep and preachy.

And finally, you can't go wrong with the ultimate Professor Chaos
episode - "Simpsons Already Did It" from the sixth season. I'm also a
big fan of The Simpsons, so seeing South Park skewer them a bit was
hilarious, and Butters being involved made it all the better. And in
the words of Cartman, Sea-people + Sea-men = Sea-ciety.

-----

Danielle: You know, to tell the truth, I'm not all that interested in seeing The Hangover. It doesn't look like something I'd find as hilarious as everyone else does. Wouldn't pay to go see it, but I'll probably add it to my Netflix. Even though they're completely different movies, the hype around this movie was the same for Anchorman - Everyone thought it was soooooo funny. And I hate Anchorman. I wanted to see Anchorman, I was excited to see it, my dad and I went to go see it in the theaters, and I think I laughed like twice.

I honestly don't think Will Ferrell is all that funny. I liked Stranger Than Fiction, and Kicking and Screaming. That's about it. And really I only liked him as Alex Trebek on SNL. So, as for The Hangover, I will reserve final judgment til I see it months from now on Netflix.

I did go see Up yesterday though. I loved it. It also is as good as everyone says it is. I always have to commend Pixar for getting emotions across in non-speaking scenes. There's a montage in the beginning of the movie of the life of the old man and his wife that is just heart-wrenching. And the freakin' huge ass bird in the movie doesn't speak but is hilarious. And the talking dogs are really funny.

I love almost every Pixar movie. The only two I can say I was only meh about were Cars and Ratatouille. Cars was cute, but didn't really do anything for me. Maybe a little too kiddish? And Ratatouille just lacked the normal spark their movies usually have. It wasn't bad, just not as endearing to me. I also always love their film shorts they put before the movies. Did you ever see the Jackalope one? My family went to go see The Incredibles, and my mom and I were hysterical with laughter watching this short. We were pretty much the only ones laughing, which was slightly embarrassing because we were laughing pretty loud. Finding Nemo is definitely my favorite of all Pixar movies, but Monsters Inc. is up there too.

I also saw an interesting preview before Up that got me excited. Disney is making another actual cartoon movie! The Princess and The Frog. Now I'm super excited for another animated film. I'm kind of in love with classic Disney, if you weren't aware. I liked the computer animated movies, but it's just not the same. There's just so many memories attached to the classic Disney movies for me. Plus I do love my Disney songs.

I do like how Disney is trying to update their image though with this cartoon movie by not having it be just another white girl princess and white boy prince. Although they did have Jasmine and Mulan. But who are most famous? Ariel, Snow White, Sleeping Beauty (Aurora) and Cinderella. But anyway, for this movie they have a black princess and the frog, who is a cursed prince, that I believe is supposed to be Spanish.

... Wow, none of that had anything to do with South Park, but I don't think I have much else to say about it. You're right that there are fewer bad episodes; I can't even really recall any because I generally forget things I don't like! I'm glad they're keeping up the good work though and keeping Butters as cute and naive as ever.

-----

Steve: Well, ideally, the conversation should kind of ramble and get random, and not talk about just South Park, so we're doing well so far.

As far as The Hangover goes, yeah, if you weren't into Anchorman and Old School, then this probably wouldn't appeal to you. It is that sort of behavior, straight down to a performance by The Dan Band . I am a bit shocked that you hated Anchorman though - No love for Steve Carrell either? You don't love lamp? I haven't seen Stranger Than Fiction - I've wanted to, but never gotten around to it - but Kicking and Screaming, really? I saw that and was pretty bored throughout. There were only a couple laughs for me. A lot of Will Ferrell's films are hit or miss, yes.

The Bruno movie is coming out soon, yay or nay to that? While I liked Borat, it did make me cringe in so many parts that I never re-watched it.

Up looks awesome, and it has gotten awesome reviews, so I wouldn't have minded seeing that either. All the Pixar movies are good, although I admittedly have been slacking with my viewings of them; I haven't seen Cars or Ratatouille. For some reason, I only seem to get the urge to watch them as date movies, and normally watch other things before I get to them - North by Northwest, This Is Spinal Tap for the 40th time, The Brak Show and Space Ghost: Coast to Coast.

I'm glad that Disney is getting back into the traditional animation game, though. As great as the Pixar films are, there is just something about the classic Disney animation that is timeless. One of
my "writer's block" entries is a comparison of the shitty Rugrats in Paris vs. the awesome Pinocchio, both of which I had to watch while substitute teaching. Even though Pinocchio was in Spanish, it was still much more watchable than Rugrats, which already seems horrible and dated.

I will hold my judgment for the new film until I see it, although I'll add the qualifier that Disney stopped with the whole animation thing because they had made so many clunkers. Even with this one, you should be fearful that they'll do something stupid like cast Miley Cyrus or Raven the Cosby Girl as the black princess, instead of a real voiceover artist.

-----

Danielle: Well, Steve Carrell was the only person I found amusing in Anchorman. The few times I did laugh usually involved scenes he was in. I know Kicking and Screaming isn't a very good movie, but they showed it on TBS so much when I was in college, and that was one of few channels I had, so it grew on me. Plus, since I've worked with kids a lot, I get a lot of that humor. I don't really have any interest in Bruno either. I saw like the first 10 minutes of Borat and that was enough for me.

Pixar movies are great date movies, I have to agree with you there. In the theater for Up, there were actually almost no children. Mostly adult couples. Or a group of teenage friends. Or me.

Rugrats in Paris was pretty lame. I did use to like that show though. Nickelodeon was soooo freakin' awesome! I still enjoy a couple of their shows; SpongeBob Squarepants I still find amusing, and the little girl I nanny loves it, so it's a show I can watch with her and tolerate. I also find Drake and Josh fairly amusing at times too.

Don't worry about the new Disney cartoon - they've got some random people doing voices, not anyone too famous. Only name I recognized was Oprah Winfrey. What were the animated flops? Hmm, Atlantis was only OK. So was Treasure Planet. I did really like The Emperor's New Groove though. I think they don't do so well because there are no good songs! But The Emperor's New Groove was funny enough it was okay without songs.

Ok, I'm tired, so I'm done. Hope this was good enough!