Where do I even start with Ren & Stimpy? How do I handle the Faustian tale of its fallen creator, John Kricfalusi, without getting overly personal and acrimonious?
Continue readingTag Archives: Canada
Screamin’ Lederhosen
Comments Off on Screamin’ Lederhosen
Filed under Animation Analysis, Bad Influences, Faint Signals, Girls of BIUL, Idiot's Delight, Nostalgic Obsessions, Thousand Listen Club, Unfairly Maligned, Worst Of All
Black Crowes
OMG LOOK! I’M DRINKING OUT OF A SOLO CUP AT A HIGH SCHOOL KEG PARTY AND VOMITING! OMFG! FIRST PANEL! DON’T TELL THE F.B.I.! THEY MIGHT START CRYING ABOUT IT!
Comments Off on Black Crowes
Filed under Bad Influences, Comix Classic & Current, Don't Know Don't Care, Faint Signals, Nostalgic Obsessions
Neil Young
Comments Off on Neil Young
Filed under Bad Influences, Comix Classic & Current, Don't Know Don't Care, Faint Signals, Girls of BIUL, Movies You Missed, Saturday Movie Matinee, Thousand Listen Club
Cheap Trick
Whatever happened to all this season’s
Losers of the year
Every time I got to thinking
Where’d they disappear
Comments Off on Cheap Trick
Filed under Animation Analysis, Bad Influences, Comix Classic & Current, Idiot's Delight, Movies You Missed, Nostalgic Obsessions, Saturday Movie Matinee, Thousand Listen Club, Unfairly Maligned, Worst Of All
Career Immolation: A User’s Guide
They say there is no such thing as bad publicity. Of course there is, when the public asks;
“Whatever happened to that guy?”
And then the public remembers, “Oh yeah. That happened.”
(l-r:) Glenn Humplik and Tom Green, with one of Canada’s accursed “milk bags”. Hopefully I won’t be legally pressured to remove this photo.
In the late 1990s, MTV gave Canadian public access personality Tom Green his own show. It was a raucous, prank-filled half-hour wherein Green literally abused and humiliated every single person he encountered, while affecting an oblivious, addled mien. It was for the most part very funny. Continue reading
Comments Off on Career Immolation: A User’s Guide
Filed under Animation Analysis, Bad Influences, Don't Know Don't Care, Faint Signals, Idiot's Delight, Late To The Party, Nostalgic Obsessions, Saturday Movie Matinee, Worst Of All
The 10 Best Kenny vs. Spenny Moments
From 2002 to 2010, two childhood best friends competed for dominance in a Toronto apartment house. Those friends are Kenny Hotz and Spencer Rice, and on the Canadian reality show Kenny vs. Spenny, these competitions and their outcomes would be recorded for posterity. Each program, the loser would be subjected to a humiliation of the winner’s choosing. It provided a clearer picture of the male psyche than anything on television before or since.
Men think in terms of winning and losing. We see humiliation as undesirable but often inevitable. This runs counter to the “everyone gets a trophy” mentality. You want a trophy? You better walk through fire to earn it. Otherwise, what does it mean? And why should your trophy be on the shelf with the others?
Even though the competitions in KvS are often simple, they become psychological endurance tests, and because Hotz and Rice have such magnetism as a team, we get a complex picture of the struggle for victory. Kenny is conniving and will resort to cheating; Spenny is guileless and strives to compete honestly and respectfully. They’re a compelling yin and yang, and since they’re Canadians, they are to funny what birds are to flying. There are cameras trained on them because they are funny simply being. Continue reading
Comments Off on The 10 Best Kenny vs. Spenny Moments
Filed under Bad Influences, Faint Signals, Idiot's Delight, Thousand Listen Club
Skinny Puppy
There are a handful of things I’d change if I were to redo this strip.
- I’d rephrase what “intrigued” me in the caption atop the first panel; my sarcastic quotation marks on “texture” are easily mistaken for a misspelling of an actual Skinny Puppy song, “Testure”.
- I would reevaluate my appreciation for them, because these days I find myself turning to their music regularly, like a balm.
Comments Off on Skinny Puppy
Filed under Bad Influences, Comix Classic & Current, Faint Signals, Late To The Party, Nostalgic Obsessions, Thousand Listen Club
Rush
What better proof of the niceness of Canadians could you ask for, than three dudes getting along well enough to perform together for forty years?
This song in particular got me through some lonely teenage nights:
As did this one:
And for crying out loud, to any red-blooded man, this song is utterly indisputable:
That’s why guys like me and Bubbles look beyond the songs about trees talkin to each other and the wordy 90s stuff. You’re lucky I outgrew my “Show of Hands” phase, however.
Comments Off on Rush
Filed under Comix Classic & Current, Nostalgic Obsessions, Thousand Listen Club
You must be logged in to post a comment.