FINGER LICKIN' GOOD: Tim Heidecker (left) and Eric Wareheim
Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim are human beings. We can all agree on that. But does that disqualify them from being honorary cartoons?
True, they’re not particularly exaggerated in appearance. Tim looks like the towheaded, pie-faced boy next door all grown up, while Eric’s a bespectacled, sideburned galoot with plenty of height and a crooked smile. They were both born in Pennsylvania in 1976 and would draw little attention as white-collar employees alongside the water coolers of Middle America.
The late-night TV audience first glimpsed the duo’s animated alter egos when they played the title characters in “Tom Goes to the Mayor” on Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim programming block. Since 2007, they’ve appeared in the flesh as the stars of Adult Swim’s “Tim & Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!” a surreal but emphatically not-animated sketch comedy series. Using green-screen technology to plop themselves into seemingly any environment, Tim and Eric play a host of weirdos, including tone-deaf singers whose faces drip with eczema, half-deranged corporate pitchmen, and would-be swingers obsessed with shrimp and white wine. (more…)
Not surprisingly, those animated, Atlanta-based elves responsible for the Adult Swim programming on the Cartoon Network make merry with extreme prejudice at the holidays. The “Aqua Teen Hunger Force Star-Studded Christmas Spectacular Starring Rhon Geremi” will be broadcast Christmas Eve, but a sleighful of holiday-themed shows air tonight, Dec. 19, including “Robot Chicken’s Half-Assed Christmas Special;” “A Huey Freeman Christmas” on “The Boondocks;” “Rebel with a Claus” on “Squidbillies;” and “A Very Venture Christmas” on “Venture Brothers.” The latter features James Urbaniak and is a real favorite among my friends. Watch the cold open from the show (pictured) and see how many references to classic Christmas movies and shows you can count.
Adult Swim has actually compiled its own Ten Best Christmas Moments, with video clips all cued up. The likes of “NORAD vs. Santa” and “Santa’s Drug Lab” (a “Rudolph” parody) from “Robot Chicken” or “Horror Claus” on “Aqua Teen Hunger Force” get pretty darn dark.
The Cartoon Network goes back “not long ago, in a galaxy not far enough way” with “Robot Chicken: Star Wars, Episode II,” the second all-Star Wars themed episode of the animated comedy series. Created by actor Seth Green and Matthew Senreich, “Robot Chicken” uses stop-motion animation — frequently of familiar action figures and product tie-ins — to lampoon pop culture. In 2007, “Robot Chicken’s” its first wide-ranging goof on the Star Wars franchise earned the some of the show’s greatest acclaim, and even an Emmy nomination.
Airing Nov. 16 on Adult Swim, “Episode II” offers more sketches and “one-liner” gags about Jedi, the Galactic Empire and even the maligned Ewoks (who someone escaped direct assault the first time around). In addition to comedy voice talents like Green and Bob Bergen, the special features cameos from Star Wars alumni, including Carrie Fisher and Ahmed Best (the voice of Jar-Jar Binks). Billy Dee Williams offers a particularly amusing lampoon of his own performance as Lando Calrissian. Part of what makes the “Robot Chicken” treatment so amusing is the way Green and company have such a good grasp on how to mock George Lucas’s iconic characters. Middle finger gags, for instance, prove hilariously “wrong” in a context of robots, Sith Lords and space stations. Evil Emperor Palpatine comes across like the most jerky, exasperated boss imaginable, while bounty hunter Boba Fett is like a cocky braggart at a sports bar. This new promo gives a taste of how the show treats Darth Vader.
The king is dead, long live the king! Hot on the heels of the Fox Network’s Oct. 31 announcement that the current, 13th season of “King of the Hill” would be its last, Atlanta’s Cartoon Network declared that the animated sitcom set in the heart of Texas would anchor a new hour of Adult Swim programming:
Starting in January, 2009, “King of the Hill” will kick off Adult Swim every night at 10 p.m… “With ‘King of the Hill’ joining ‘Family Guy’ in our Adult Swim lineup, we now have two of the greatest animated series ever made,” said Mike Lazzo, senior vice president of programming and production for Adult Swim.
The second longest-running animated series in history (behind, of course, “The Simpsons”), “King of the Hill” has been one of television’s most underrated programs since its debut in 1997. It didn’t help that Fox so frequently bumped “King of the Hill” for football and sports events that even a die-hard fan like myself lost track of when it aired, but with luck it’ll find a new audience among Adult Swim fans. “Beavis and Butt-Head” creator Mike Judge and Greg Daniels (who has found new success with NBC’s American version of “The Office”) offer an extremely affectionate portrayal of “Red State” America, with propane salesman Hank Hill serving as a middle-American everyman at odds with the excesses of the 21st century. Compared to Archie Bunker’s reactionary buffoonery on “All in the Family,” Hank proves to be more sympathetic and open minded, “I tell you what.”
The first scene of “King of the Hill’s” pilot name-checked “Seinfeld” as “a show about nothing,” and “King of the Hill” followed suit as one of the most deadpan, realistic animated series ever made, which should provide a welcome counterpoint to the aggressive surrealism of the original Adult Swim shows. My favorite “King of the Hill” regular remains conspiracy-buff Dale Gribble, one of the strangest, funniest characters of any animated sitcom, who rather resembles “Doonesbury’s” Uncle Duke, if the character were a security-obsessed, cuckolded exterminator in Arlen, Texas. In this recent clip, Hank, Dale and their pals discuss the MySpace phenomena:
Aqua Teen Hunger Force co-creator Dave Willis has produced a profoundly odd PSA encouraging North Carolinians to vote in next week’s election.
What’s odd about it?
It’s as if a real PSA and a fake PSA were unintentionally edited together.
Some among you might recognize actors Rene Dellefont, George Faughnan, Mary Kraft, Matt Stanton, and Dan Triandiflou, as well as musician and performer Jim Stacy.
