This Week in Satire

Yo, remember This Week in Baseball with that Mel Allen? That show had such a good theme and a good host. Oh, man that was a good show.

This blog post is called "This Week in Satire" and we shall be exploring two pieces of satire created this week (or close enough to this week, anyway) by satirists. One case of satire is extraordinarily well done whilst the second case of satire is a hunk of bull crap.

You should read this article while listening to the "This Week In..." theme song linked to in the link above....because it is one of the greatest musical arrangements known to human man and it has no words so it won't bugger up your mental faculties while reading because it's just instrumental. It goes on for 8 minutes in that video linked above so it should last the whole read-through.

Case 1: Legends bein' Legends

I watched an episode of South Park the other week that I thought was a masterpiece in the satire genre. That show is in its 18th season now and it's still cranking out the good shit.

It was entitled "Gluten-Free Ebola" and it detailed the small town's hysteria in regards to a "gluten" epidemic.

It starts with that guidance counselor Mackey (mmmm-kay) bustin' into a teacher's lounge meeting and bragging about how his bitch ass is "gluten-free" to the dismay of the other teachers who can't stand hearing this piece of bitch talk about this bitch ass shit any more. Apparently, Mackey feels wonderful after cutting gluten out of his diet and urges others to do the same.

A few scenes down the line, a nice scientist man from the USDA politely explains what exactly gluten is and the statements within are correct. Gluten indeed is protein condensed from wheat, barley, or rye. That's it, that's all it is and it is not bad for you.

In almost Fortean nature...wait...I don't want to compare it to Charles Fort...no one knows who that is and it makes me look like some kind of hipster weirdo if I commend their style by comparing it to some writer from the fucking 1910s.

Oh No! His Dick flew off!

Ok, so that correct yet boring explanation of gluten won't make a full 30-minutes of television and it is quite boring....the simplest and correct answers are in fact boring. So, next thing you know....people are eating gluten and their fucking dicks start literally flying off! Holy crap.

In wake of everyone's dick flying off (I wonder what happened if a female South Parkian ate gluten), the USDA sends out guys in hazmat suits to quarantine and contain any instances of gluten. Sadly, many people weren't aware just how many common food items contain grains in them, such as bagels n' beer for example, and many South Park residents failed to remove all gluten from their residences. These unlucky fools were quarantined off at the local Papa John's pizza hut.

Fortunately, After Cartman is visited in a cottage-esque dreamscape by Aunt Jamima and given the solution to solve this terrible gluten problem...all becomes well again in South Park. Yay.

Key Quote - USDA official: "If it wasn't for us telling people what to eat...people'd be eating chairs and dirt!"

Ok so if you're wondering about gluten, the very bottom line with gluten is actually this:

1. If you have been diagnosed with coeliac's disease: Limit or cut out gluten.
2. If you HAVE NOT been diagnosed with coeliac's disease: Eat all the grains you want.

Before you go jump off the deep end you should know that less than 1% of North Americans have coeliac's disease. Yes, more people are allergic to peanuts than there are people allergic to grains...it is not very common at all. In fact, more than 99% of humans in North America can eat grains and enjoy them, yet if you'd ask a person who is on a gluten-free diet you'd think grains were some sort of damned helll-fire poison which is waiting to destroy your innards...and make your dick fly off.

This is literally what happens in society almost every week now, some made up problem is blown out of proportion and sends everyone into a mass hysteria. Thankfully, the legends over at the South Park studio know how to satire this shit properly and make us all laugh.


Case 2: Jabronies bein' Jabronies

Movin' along in our next segment of This Week in Satire, we shall be looking into a bit on the newly formed "Last Week Tonight" hosted by foreigner John Oliver. If you haven't seen this show yet, Oliver, takes subjects in the news and satires them....sometimes they are cute but sometimes they are the asinine babblings of a heavily inbred outlander.

In the wake of the release of that horrible Sociological Horror Film entitled "Fed Up" narrated by jabroni-extraordinaire Katie Couric, it looks like all of society is in a big ol' fashion hysteria over sugar. In one of Oliver's latest opinion pieces (likely written for him by a gang of pasty-faced nerds for him to read on air), this man from an obscure island nation in Europe which stills practices Monarchy as its official form of government, weighed in on the whole Sugar Hysteria.

Unlike a hilarious romp of masterful comedic story-telling that you'd find on South Park, it appears John Oliver's satirical style leaves much to be desired. Instead of laughing at society's unrational fear of sugar...Oliver totally embraces the hysteria and jumps on the bandwagon.

In the coup de gras of his diatribe, he orders all food manufacturers and retailers to put a "circus peanut" sticker on the food item's label for each 5 grams of sugar contained in the foodstuff. So, if the item has 15 grams of sugar...it would have 3 big circus peanuts on the label for all the retarded people to know that this item has sugar in it.

For example, if I were to sell an apple picked right off any old tree....

Average apple = 5 ounces or 100 grams

Sugar in average 100 gram apple = 10 grams 

Every 5 grams apparently needs one stupid circus peanut on the label...So if I, theoretically, sold 1 apple to 1 human.....I'd need to stick a sticker with 2 circus peanuts onto the apple. Wow, what a good idea.

1 Apple = 2 Circus Peanuts. Okay......

Yes apples have sugar in them, they contain the chemical compound C6H12O6 to the weight of 5 grams. Does that scare you? That spooky C6H12O6 edible substance that is found in fruits? You know what else is in apples? Magnesium, potassium, phosphorous, calcium, iron....and other Heavy Metals. 

Is it polite to talk about common things like apples in this manner? Not really, but it's fun and it scares stupid people. Here watch this, I'm gonna write a paragraph in the style of your average organic food bozo about apples, you ready? Here goes...

"My heart, body, mind, and soul want only natural god-loved essences to touch it. That's why I avoid eating dangerous toxic chemicals. I have replaced all chemicals with non-threatening nourishment. I once bit into something which almost ruined my qi flow...

This monstrosity of an abomination contained the chemical compound C6H12O6! It held that series of letters and numbers that I can't even understand deep within it's skin and flesh. It even contained IRON! YES IRON! The same iron they use to make the bars of prison cells. It was this iron that I ate when I bit into this abomination of nourishment! I felt that iron in my body! I felt that heavy metal in my bones! I even felt it in my blood! I felt the iron...the same iron they use to imprison people...I felt that iron imprisoning my own blood. I quickly vomited, de-toxed myself with a wire-brush, and cast the vile C6H12O6 and heavy metals out of my body. Can you imagine eating a food that contains the same metal they use to hold humans confined in cells? What world is this that we live in where someone would eat food like this?

I implore all my HeartMind children...please STOP EATING APPLES!"

-(Me, Doing an Impression of a Silly Hippy)

You could scare people about anything using this method, you really could. The dumbest version of this shtick I can recall was done by another British clown named Oliver, that jabroni Jamie Oliver, who used to always do a bit on talk shows where he compared ice cream to human hair and beaver anuses. He'd make an ice-cream sundae and then he'd fill up another bowl with hair, shit, and anus...and he'd tell the talk show host..."hey, you know ice cream is hair n' anuses, right...here have some hair and anus!" and then the talk show host would wimper away and vow never to eat ice cream ever again.

If I was hosting a talk show and Jamie Oliver made me two bowls of ice cream...one which was real ice cream and one which was a bowl of human hair and anus...and he asked me if I'd still eat the ice cream...I'd throw the hair n' anus all over his stupid face and then gladly eat every single last bit of the delicious ice cream! Why? Because I'm smart enough to know the difference between a bowl of ice cream and a damned bowl of hair and anus!

As for the other British Oliver, that John Oliver, if he thinks I need two circus peanut stickers on an apple to let me know there's some fucking sugar in it before I bite into it...then there's another British guy who needs a face full of anus.

Bottom line with sugar...

1. If you have been diagnosed with type 2 diabetes: Extremely limit intake of all forms of sugars.
2. If you HAVE NOT been diagnosed with type 2 diabetes: Enjoy eating sugar....but don't go crazy.

Unlike coeliac's disease that we mentioned above, type 2 diabetes is far more common and almost 10% of people have it in varying forms of severity. One out of every ten people has to extremely limit their intake of sugars (glucose, fructose, sucrose) and regularly test their blood to see if their blood sugar level went out of whack after that bowl of Lucky Charms they just ate. Still, 90% of people in North America do not have blood sugar levels that will fly off the charts if they eat even a large amount of sugars due to their pancreas' ability to create insulin to meld with the sugars and turn it into energy for their human bodies. One thing to still look out for is cavities though...anyone who goes buck overboard with their sugar and does not regularly brush their teeth may develop holes in their teeth. Also, when your insulin converts sugar to energy you'll get pretty pumped...so if you're a parent and you have kids who won't sit the fuck down and shut the fuck up then you might want to take the Pixie Stix out of their lunch.

Honestly, the worst thing about this attempt at satire is it comes almost a week before All Hallow's Ween, the fucking festival of fucking candy. This is not at all what we need right now, we do not need a big sugar hysteria. I guarantee this ill-advised bit ran by foreigner John Oliver's program will lead to more soccer-moms giving out fucking plastic bags full of carrots this coming Halla-Ween.

Back in my day, "Trick or Treat" used to mean "give me some fucking candy or me and my friends are gonna throw rotten eggs at your dumb house," yet kids these days are lackluster and lame...if they get a bag of broccoli from some Oprah-watcher's house they won't even do shit. I think it's up to the parents to teach their kids how to be cool and how to not suck. Parents of the modern age, you should take some rotten eggs with you this Hallow's Ween as you chaperone your spawns around the suburbs and if your kid gets a plastic baggie full of cauliflower then you best teach your sweaty kids how to egg a fucking house.

Gimme Candy or Fuck Off. Oh, and while we're at it...I got a bone to pick with that Sesame Street too...why is my man Cookie Monster eating a bunch of fucking vegetables now? He's the COOKIE MONSTER for crying out loud. He eats cookies for goodness sakes! That's the guy's whole prerogative, that's what the dude does, he eats cookies, that's his thing...if he's not eating cookies anymore then he's not The Cookie Monster.


Conclusion

A big thumbs up to the Legends who make South Park...that show knows how to run a satire down the middle for some big yards. No one can hold a candle to these guys when it comes to making fun of dumb shit. Still got great material even after 18 friggin' years, my word, this show blows me away sometimes. Props.

A big thumbs down to This Week Tonight and foreign gaijin John Oliver for delivering one of the most sucky things I've seen in a while. I think he's running out of ideas though. If you watch the other two guys who run this shtick, Johnny Stewart and Stevie Colbert, you'll notice that they just read weird news items (usually about dumb politicians)  and then make a couple jokes about it, it's all bing-bam-boom, which is a more sustainable shtick. Oliver, with his show, always has to make these huge long-winded fusses about something, and there really just isn't something every week that you can make an over-the-top long-winded fuss about and eventually you'll simply run out of material for these bits.

Look at Doctor Oz, (who Oliver did a good job making fun of after Oz's brush with senate over his green coffee bullcrap, by the way)...Oz used to have quite a normal show in the fist season, which dealt with actual health issues, but after he ran out of material he devolved into being a total non-functional retarded asshole. I think the structure of Oliver's show will lead him down the same path...I think he's destined to wind up being a sack of crap with the way he's taking this show...I believe this recent sugar fuss is a shark-jump point that is unrecoverable from and it is sad because his show has only been on for like half a year...not even one season yet.

For the the crime of trying to ruin Halla-Ween, foreigner John Oliver should be successively suplexed in the modulation of 10....that means someone should suplex him over and over ten times in a row, yo.



(End Note: Too hard on John Oliver, his show's actually pretty good but that sugar bit was pretty crap)

(End Note II: Don't egg houses, I never actually egged a house, it was a joke) 

(End Note III: John Oliver doesn't really deserve successive suplexes in modulo 10...he's a cool guy...plus he couldn't sustain SSM3 let alone SSM10. Jamie Oliver on the other hand...that guys needs successive suplexes in modulo 12) 

Edge-Pushing Cartoons: Cartoons with No Bounds or Bars

Certain comedy cartoons which are not aimed at the little child target market have developed massive popularity over the last thirty years or so. These certain cases of cartoons achieving mass appeal has categorically been due to the program's satirical qualities and its ability to make fun of the real universe in its cartoon meta-universe.

The world of Omni-popular cartoons aimed at everyone except little babies is a small historical sample size to work with. We shall be looking into the four cartoons which have garnered mass appeal over the last few decades (shows which have generated huge audience, movie deals, etc.).

We shall give these shows a final tally and rating based on....um....I dunno.

You can rate stuff with numbers, obviously, but it's not an all encompassing variables rating system by any stretch. You can assign something a 5 or a 77 or even a 88.125 but what does that really tell anyone? It's just a dumb number.

You can use letters and assign something an A+ or a C- or a D, but again, they are just dumb old letters. Some people try and use "stars" like gold ones because they look cool, and some folks use "thumbs up" or "thumbs down" but that is only a two-variable system which leaves no room for any details. You either have a gold star or a upward thumb or you don't...pretty shoddy system.

I believe I shall use a geometric rating system. Yes, the shows shall be rated using standard geometric shapes. Each component of the cartoon show which improves it will be shown with a face/vertex/frequency/side. Whilst each bad component of the show shall materialize itself within the shape as well.

So, yeah. Our rating system for this review shall be geometric in nature. The final grade shall indeed be a shape.

The Simpsons

Everyone is familiar with this show, it does not matter whether you live in Kathmandu, Podunk or North Haverbrook. This is the first show which exploded into an all encompassing target market behemoth which rained down comedy on the masses. An instant success.

I was in the first grade (age 6.5) when the Simpsons came on the scene and its culture bomb invaded my elementary school in a decisive wave of popularity. Every kid had Bart Simpson shit...t-shirts, lunch boxes, stickers. Yo, one time I was standing in line in like grade 3 and this girl wanted to look at my Bart Simpson t-shirt where Bart is dressed as a Ninja Turtle (combined marketing appeal) and I couldn't turn to show her. I felt really sick that day and she was getting mad at me for not turning to show it to her....and then I puked. Everywhere. It was the only time I ever puked at school. I puked a lot though and the teacher gave me a blue rectangular container to puke in. It sucked and was embarrassing but when I think about it now...I laugh. I remember it pretty good for something that happened like 22 years ago.

Anyway, the Simpsons was very well written when it first came out. The creator Matt Groening was the mind behind Life in Hell and ran the Simpsons as a short on the Tracy Ullman show before hitting it big. The early shows were heart felt and down-to-earth and very likeable. They were the most loveable dysfunctional unit of humans on T.V. and they weren't even real people. Shows about how they got their dog or how Lisa coped with her obtuse opinions were very well received with audiences.

As tame as the 90s Simpsons is by today's standards....it was hated by parents/teachers/church/etc back in the day. Early Simpsons did indeed push the edge, it made fun of our society by exaggeratingly mirroring it in their yellow tinted universe. The good part about old Simpsons episodes can be summed up with one word...subtlety. The satire and rebellious nature wasn't as in your face as the shows that came after it but it was always there.

Take a look at the authority figures in the Simpsons for example. None of them are presented as being competent or regarded as upright citizens. The Mayor is a crook, the chief of police is a pig-faced moron, the owner of the nuclear power plant (the richest man in town) is down right evil and sadistic. There's nothing wholesome or heroic about these people....these aren't your Leave it to Beaver friendly people in your neighborhood types. Yet they are more realistic that's for sure. It was not common in programs watched by young people in this era to find authority figures being presented in this realistic fashion.

The Simpsons was the original Edge-Pusher and it broke ground subtly, left a huge mark, and was the trail blazer for future Edge-Pusher cartoons. Sadly, the Simpsons got really horrible at some point and never regained composure.

I've been trying to pinpoint where it officially jumped the shark, and I think I have the answer.

NO FONZE DON'T DO IT! THERE'S NO WAY BACK!

Where exacty did the Simpsons jump on water-skies and attempt to publish a show to the airwaves so unforgivably retarded that they crossed shark infested waters and had no way of ever getting back to where they once were?

For me personally, I remember when it happened, and I remember well. In Season 9 they ran a show so pointless and convoluted for no apparent reason other than that they had literally NO ideas left. The show in question is where Seymour Skinner reveals that he is not Seymour Skinner but is actually...Armin Tanzarian.

Never has a story line been so pointless, never has a cliff hanger been so stupid, never has an idea been so convoluted and inherently pointless as the Armin Tanzarian episode. I remember sitting there after the show was over and having an inner dialogue with my stupid ol' self that was like...

"Wait, that was really bad..."

"But, the Simpsons is cool...how can something cool be bad? It's a fallacy"

"No, but this was shit. This episode was total shit. Why did they go with this idea?"

"You're crazy. The Simpsons rules and it always will!"

"You're wrong self. The Simpsons sucks. It's terrible. It's the WORST EPISODE EVER"

"...but, if the Simpsons sucks, what else is cool that actually sucks?"

"I dunno bro...probably EVERYTHING EVER"

(Me, inner monologue, circa 1997)

The idea that "The Simpsons Sucks" smashed my rosy-colored view of the world and left me feeling very cynical. Next thing I know...everything sucked. Like, I watched an episode of Saturday Night Live (which the previous week was ok)...but after Armin Tanzarian water-skied over a sea of venomous sharks...SNL started to look like total shit too. I couldn't even watch it, I wanted to jump into the screen and tell Kris Kattan to stop making a mockery of comedy and find something better to do. I haven't watched either of these shows in 15 years.

So to whoever wrote that episode of the Simpsons back in 1997 (Ken Keeler), way to go man. Thanks for ruining the Simpsons dude.

Rating: Thanks to nine good seasons (1989-1997) The Simpsons has some good depth to its shape. Nine sturdy lines, nine healthy and witty vertexes. Yet thanks to 16 horrible seasons to its name the shape is represented differently. It's nine-sided nonogonic nucleus of sturdy good qualities is overshadowed by an entwining 16-sided uncomfortably cumbersome hexakaidecagon. The final tally of the result of its rating is:

Nonogonal Nucleiic Hexakaidecagon

As you can see the nine-sided nucleus is well connected and sturdy...yet the additional 16 sides of the polygon are cumbersome and unnecessary. The only logical geometric rating to give The Simpsons is the Nonogonal Nucleiic Hexakaidecagon, obviously and undoubtedly. 

If making some cartoons is like building a house...then who would want to build a house shaped like a Nonogonal Nucleiic Hexakaidecagon? Probably Ken Keeler.

Beavis and Butthead

 
Okey-doke, so naturally moving along chronologically in our compendium of cartoons we arrive at the hit 1993 cartoon show...Beavis and Butthead.

I've written before about my enjoyment derived from watching this program so the rating may be a tad biased but it's just a stupid blog about my opinions so that's all you're gonna get. You're gonna get heavily biased views. Thank you very much.

This show had a million times more controversy than the Simpsons ever generated. From Senators denouncing it on the house floor, to Carl Sagan denouncing it in Demon Haunted World. This show got up everybody's trouser legs and just like the Simpsons it took a great deal of subtle (well not so subtle) satire up there with it.

 Now who is dis here Beevo and Buffcoats what-have-ya?

Previous entries on Beavis and Butthead: 

1. Beavis and Butthead are Back

2. Dear Carl Sagan Who art in Somewheres...

Rating: Beavis and Butthead had 1+6+1 seasons. Yet the first season was of notoriously poor quality and offered no subtly (straight out shock 'til you drop style). So in essence it is 6 core seasons + 1 notoriously bad one (1993) + 1 late-addition REALLY GOOD add-on (2011). It is in essence a hexagonal base structure yet it's core has so much depth that the lines are not flat. In fact it is a six faced structure...a cube to be more precise. 

The first season acts as a rough nucleus of non-concentric circle wavelengths radiating at the core of the six-faced core-cube. The first season acting as the most offensive season thus a radio-wave catalyst and driving force...yet still very unrefined. The 8th and final season in 2011 acts as a second wavelength of concentric circles which merges with the non-concentric circle wavelengths to create Pi (π)  and smooth out the core into a smooth sphere. Yes, Beavis and Butthead's most accurate rating variable in regards to this review is the Sphere-Nucleus Cube.

 Sphere-Nucleus Cube

South Park 

Our next sequential entry is the take-no-prisoners tour-de-force known as "South Park." Its first episode aired in 1997 and I remember it well. 

A station in my region bought the original 6 shows in 1997 and aired one...then waited for the complaints and ensuing damage-control needed before airing any others. Meanwhilst, in 1997 the internet was going strong and I had already figured out how to stream videos and watch whatever the fuck I wanted.

So, lo and behold...all the kids at my high school were talking about how funny that ONE episode of South Park was and I dropped a bombshell when I stated that I had already seen six shows. Naturally no one believed me so I took the time to storyboard out the shows at lunch period and said to the naysayers...

"Ye who doubt that I have seen 6 episodes of South Park lest only watch when the other 5 finally air and ye shall see that all my divine prophecies ring true. For in the next installment, Kathie Lee Gifford is parodied and Cartman gets very very fat!" 

Obviously when the station in question did finally air the second episode my prediction rang true and all the two or maybe three people I told it to thought I was pretty friggin' cool and everything.

As far as controversy goes...honestly it didn't get as much as Beavis and Butthead because Mike Judge had kinda plowed a good deal of chillness (in regards to cartoons) into society by this juncture. 

Though South Park had to always do more and more and more to push the bar so low that not even fucking James Cameron could fish it out of the abyss. Yet through all the bar lowering the show stills has an acerbic deadly wit behind it. It's shock and awe, all the time, but when you burrow underneath the surface there's a lot of really intelligent stuff going on with this show.

Even after SEVENTEEN FUCKING YEARS the new season is looking strong. The tour-de-force has never lost its drive and there's even still potential in this show. Unlike the Simpsons which jumped the shark and died soon after...South Park has managed to find a way to be shark proof.

  As Shark Proof as The Batman

Maybe it was in Season 2 where they depicted Fonzie jumping over a shark...and then the shark caught and devoured Fonzie that broke the curse for them. Maybe they've been shark proof and free and at ease since 1998. Either way, alls I knows is, South Park is still good after 17 years.

Rating: It's a clean 17-sided Heptadecagon, no doubt about it. Each point of the Heptadecagon intersects geodesically with each other point at roughly 60 degree angles. Yes, South Park is undoubtedly a 60-degree intersecting well-made Heptadecagon. 

 60-Degree Intersecting Heptadecagon

Yes, yes it is. Oh and, since South Park has had 17 good seasons and The Simpsons has only had 9...

17 - 9 = 8

South Park is 8 units better than The Simpson mathematically. South Park is thus quantifiably Octahedronically better than The Simpsons.

Family Guy

It's becoming hip to rag on poor old Family Guy, but I want the record to show that I've never really been huge on this show and I'm not one of these band-wagonning anti-Family Guy genres of people. I believe Family Guy jumped the shark and began being pretty crappy at this juncture...

Yeah, Okay, he hurt his knee. What a cute joke. Okay, okay...good for fucking him. These types of jokes are the core of the show which is shrouded in an impenetrable wall of stolen bits. That basically is what Family Guy is. It was bad from the first season, right from the get-go, and will always be bad. There's no blips in the wavelength of shit...just shit...forever and ever.

Its geodesic shape is that of actual inertia. A straight line of never-ending/never-altering crap.

"Inertia is the resistance of any physical object to any change in its motion (including a change in direction). In other words, it is the tendency of objects to keep moving in a straight line at constant linear velocity, or to keep still." (wiki) 

Family Guy is a straight unchangeable line. What's more is they gave this show TWO clones of itself...American Dad and Cleveland. Meaning this straight line has two identical clones of it in its universe.

Rating: What do three straight identical measuring and angled lines give us?

Equilateral Triangle

Family Guy (and Family Guy ' and Family Guy '') are an equilateral triangle....of crap. Okay, it's not that bad, it can be funny sometimes but I think this rating variable really fits snug-like-a-glove in this case.

Conclusion

We have successfully concluded our geometric ranking of Edge/Boundary Pushing Cartoon shows and I believe it went well. Maybe I should go back to rating things with numbers or letters though.

I wanted to include good shows like Futurama and Ren and Stimpy (I think Ren and Stimpy has a big place in history honestly)...but these two are not omni-popular like the Big 4 Edge-Pushers are. Only 4 cartoons have had massive appeal.

Thank you and good night.