It was summer of 2008.
Not dougie monty! 
Now who’s digging up old threads? :rolleyes:
Unless I’m mistaken I recall that the main point I had in mind with that thread was the “bad trips,” and death, of the brother of the girl I attended high school with. And I am not interested in continuing with that thread now.
As for “sense of humor,” I sense that “parody” or “satire” is not the objective, what you tell me notwithstanding: It’s the use of characters someone else created (why use your own creativity when you can steal someone else’s?) to extend baser passions (case in point: Velma and lesbianism) that have stayed the same since the junior-high-school years of whoever came up with The Venture Brothers?
I resent the assertion that “sense of humor” means I should consider TVB funny. At best I would consider them a nuisance likie a tiny pebble iin my shoe, or a cold.
Then again, maybe I don’t have a sense of humor by your standard, but since when am I supposed to care what you think?
Venture Brothers is pure liquid awesome.
And it isn’t so much that you don’t have a sense of humor, as you seem to be humor impaired. Someone without a sense of humor would at least understand what a joke is, and would be able to recognize it even if they didn’t get a laugh out of it.
It isn’t that you grok the satire and get the joke but just don’t find it funny, it’s that your ass is clenched so tight that you’ve gone beyond being simply humorless. You really cannot understand the function of such humor, at all.
That you still seem to think that the episode was about “baser passions” is, weird.
To say the least.
You simply do not understand what humor is or how Venture Brothers uses it. For God’s sake, certainly don’t watch any of the Johnny Quest episodes. Or any Harvey Birdman. Or Robot Chicken.
Hell, cartoons are probably a bit too difficult for you, period.
Question, dougie_monty - do you find thisfunny? (Warning - parody).
I just realized that this thread was started by mobo85. mobo pitting someone for caring too much about a cartoon show? The irony is so thick you can cut it with a knife and spread it on your sandwich.
(This isn’t intended as an insult–really!–there are things I care way too much about that other people aren’t into at all.)
I remember seeing that and thinking, “Maddox is gonna be SO pissed.”
As someone who’s been on a lot of drugs in my time, I can assure you that high doses of caffeine are frightening. I’d be way more worried if I found out my friend was on caffeine pills than amphetamines, because caffeine is considered a legitimate/licit substance and thus it’s pretty likely for people to string along massive doses one after the other, thinking, “It’s just caffeine!” Really, I’ve seen more destruction in my life and others from caffeine than from any other upper.
Mostly because caffeine is just that much more common, but still.
Thank you. I was wondering when the voice of reason would come in!
I was going to say that I’ve been hospitalized on less, but then I realized that I was on at least 2-3 grams a day back then. Yep, you’re right. Grams of caffeine, especially coupled with stress, can really fuck a body bad.
As for the DSM, caffeine addiction and withdrawal is already in there, and has been for at least a handful of years. I remember reading about it in 2004 in the DSM itself.
Hostile Dialect,
Hostile Dialect, Narcissist
To Alessan: I have “What’s Opera, Doc?” on a DVD. I’ll have to refer to the book (I have an excellent anthology of Warner Brothers’ cartoons) to get the synopsis. I’ll answer your question tomorrow night.
To FinnAgain: You are over-generalizing. I don’t look at things like South Park and assume all cartoons are like that.
Dude, it’s six minutes long. Just watch it and tell me if you smiled.
Naw that’s your answer right there.
He needs to consult the book and read the synopsis to discover if he’s supposed to curl the corners of his mouth upwards and/or produce a ‘chuckling’ noise in his throat.
You’ve got a point there- I like cartoons a lot. A lot of people do. But I- and they- realize that they aren’t really something to be defended with a passion- especially if you don’t even like the cartoon in question.
The “characters” being “stolen”- Ted Bundy, David Berkowitz, Valerie Solanas, and Patty Hearst- already had base passions- murder and theft. But, as I’ve frequently pointed out, a lot of parodies involve “the use of characters someone else created…to extend baser passions.” Jokes about, say, Velma being a lesbian or Shaggy being a pothead are quite frequent- and the Shaggy-as-pothead idea was even jabbed at in the authorized live-action adaptation of the Scooby-Doo characters. The main function of parody is to take something and make it into something it isn’t, thus commenting on both what it is and is not. Son of Sam et al. are not a bunch of teens solving mysteries, nor are Scooby and pals a team of cold-blooded killers- Scooby and pals inhabit a bizarre universe in which murder does not even exist, and the most frequent way people attempt to get other people out of the way is not to murder them, but rather frighten them by dressing up in an elaborate costume, which seems to me possibly the point of the parody of depicting murderers as a gang traveling in a van Scooby-Doo style, much as Ensign Edison similarly commented. Parody in general usually involves “the use of characters someone else created”- be they actual people created through the act of childbirth or fictional characters created through pen- and looking at them in a different way, which frequently involves “baser passions.”
By this reference to “baser passions,” I am made to wonder if dougie-monty thinks the parody we’re talking about involves lascivicious scenes of hot girl-girl action or something.
To be clear: It doesn’t.
You’re just hitting the wrong web sites.
If all The Venture Brothers did was snigger about Velma being a dyke you might have a point. That would be a cheap, easy shot.
But the character of “Val” isn’t just any generic lesbian. She’s Valerie Solanas, the woman who shot Andy Warhol and the author of The SCUM Manifesto. In fact her dialog in the episode is entirely composed of direct quotes from Solanas’ own writings. How many junior high school students are familiar with The SCUM Manifesto?
The entire point (if humor can be said to have a point) of these juxtapositions is to subvert both the Scooby Doo characters AND their real-life counterparts. A band of teenagers aimlessly roaming the country in a van are not really a great set of role-models when you think about it. In the real world they would be treated as creepy, suspicious characters. And in the cartoon world of TVB, a monster like David Berkowitz struggles to convince everyone around him that his dog really can talk, which is funny because in cartoons talking dogs are completely normal.
The first time I saw “Viva los Muertos!” I didn’t even get the specific serial killer references. I just thought the groovy gang depicted what the scooby gang would become if they kept at their teenage antics for way too long.
Dougie Monty, I have to say you’ve got some peculiar obsessions. More power to you I guess. They sure are entertaining to read!
You’re making me want to order the Venture Brothers DVDs from Netflix again. (And don’t spoil Season 3 – haven’t seen it yet!)
ETA: dougie_monty, if you’re doing some kind of meta-satirical performance art, it’s a piece of genius.
To be clear, I didn’t mean to imply there are no such images out there. I was just characterizing the parodies we’re talking about in this thread.
-FrL-
Is Ventures Bros. available on youtube? I think I have to watch that Scooby Doo ep tonight.
The episode title is “Viva Los Muertos.” Only a couple of short excerpts are available [adult swim] via Hulu. At one time, you could watch the whole thing on [adult swim], but not now :(.
Here’s the Scooby gang from that episode. And from the same episode, here’s Venturestein. Well, Venturestein’s POV. The reason Brock looks skeeved out is because he killed that guy (TWICE!!!), and Dr. Venture brought him back to life, intending to enter the cheap labor market.
All excerpts that had been posted to youtube have been deleted for copyright reasons. It can be purchased on itunes through this site.
I’ve got every Venture Bros. episode on my DVR. If you were in Anaheim instead of NY, I’d invite you over. 
Anyway, good luck finding it somewhere.
Yeah well, when someone accuses you of disparaging the RL death of a friend, it tends to stick with you.
Actually, VB continually parodies things that its audience, Gen X’ers like myself, grew up watching. I assume the creators are also of that age as well. It’s not a matter of not being creative, it’s parodying things that the audience is familiar with, which is more humorous than parodying the unfamiliar.