Yakko Warner has something to say about his show's Producer.
Now, if you're already familiar with most of these toons, just fast-forward scroll down to the compilation of cool Links below! If you're still a novice, read on!
The Best Shows--According to Reardenmetal:
Cartoon Planet
Where: (Turner's)Cartoon Network
When: Fridays 11:00 p.m. and Saturdays 8:00 a.m. E.S.T.
Premise: Features Brak, which makes it my favorite automatically! A lighthearted spin-off of "Space Ghost Coast to Coast," "CP" is more a variety show than talk show and is a bit gentler, and more appropriate for children. Lots of great songs and parodies of popular music and poetry. After a few viewings, you'll know all the songs by heart, which just makes it even more fun the next time around. I could drive around in a GTO muscle car tearing up the road listening to "Smells Like Cartoon Planet" any day, and "Don't Touch Me" is too funky for Hammer. This is pure condensed silliness.
Space Ghost Coast to Coast
Where: Cartoon Network
When: Fridays 11:30 p.m. and Saturdays midnight, E.S.T.
Premise: Space Ghost, the square-jawed hero of his own 1960's Hanna Barbera cartoon, has been given a Letterman-style late-night talk show. Due to budget constraints and what have you, the network hasn't been able to procure paid supporting talent for the show, so the villains he vanquished thirty years ago are enlisted to be his television sidekicks and are pardoned from their imprisonment solely on the contingency that they fill these duties. The staff is less than enthusiastic about the show and less than supportive of their old nemesis Space Ghost. Moltar the molten-lava villain is the show's technical director, while Zorak the evil mantis is the band's frontman. They are both extremely incompetent, as is the hopelessly square Space Ghost. The constant struggle between "Space Cheese" and his unwilling cohorts fuels the humor of the show, and an astonishing number of famous real-life guests are good enough sports to endure the non-sequitur interviews. Edgier than "Cartoon Planet." One of my favorite episodes, "Jacksonville," has the henpecked Moltar running away and taking a bus to Florida.
Animaniacs
Where: WB
When:Saturdays, 11:00 a.m. E.S.T.
Premise: Spielburg is a god! Isn't it amazing that the same man who gave us "Schindler's List" is behind this zany toon? The Warner brothers, Yakko and Wakko, and their cute sister, Dot, run amok on the WB studio lot (and everywhere else.) Because of their destructive hyperactivity, they have been banished to the studio's watertower, but they escape frequently. Because they live on a movie lot, they are savvy Hollywood insiders who lampoon and roast all the hoi palloi of tinseltown, including their own producer. The animal Warners are wildly silly and their antics delightful. Yakko singing the names of every nation on earth is already a cult classic. My fave moment so far: the scene is Yalta, site of the famous treaty ending WWII. Stalin, Roosevelt, and Churchill are sitting somberly at the table.
Stalin: "Can I have Poland and Czechoslavakia?"
(Yakko, Wakko and Dot appear.) Y,W,&D (to Churchill): "Can we bounce up and down on your belly?"
The Simpsons
Where: Fox
When: Sundays, 8:00 p.m. E.S.T.
Premise: Everything. Life in America at the end of the 2oth century. This show is the grand-daddy of them all, the greatest cartoon and possibly the greatest TV show ever. Those of you who still think it's all about Bart being a smartass, you just don't watch the show, do you? Matt Groening's masterpiece is about all of us. The Simpsons share the spotlight with the whole city of Springfield, which stands in for Anywhere, USA. The show makes fun of our foibles relentlessly, but I've never seen more love for the human race than is evidenced in this show. And, if an immigrant from some obscure Eastern European country came off the boat wanting to know what it's like to be an American, The Simpsons is the primer I would use in citizenship class! For almost a decade now this show has given us popular catchphrases, lampooned pop culture and layered cultural references of every level on us in big loving gulpfulls. Where else can you get Bart scrawling on the blackboard "I do not have power of attorney over first-graders" next to "DOH!" next to McBaine's action flick "You Have the Right to Remain Dead" next to Maggie crawling out of the Ayn Rand School for Tots?
South Park
Where: Comedy Central
When: Wednesdays, 10:00 p.m. E.S.T.
Premise: Hmmmm.... I think the premise is that they're getting away with this show! Ain't it great to live in a free country? I didn't even bother to post any pics of the roundheaded kids of South Park because I know you've already seen 'em, unless you live in a cave. Gotta love the call-in TV show "Jesus and Pals," which started the whole thing for the creators! Gotta love cherubic Kenny being eaten by rats. Gotta love the outraged parents protesting naughty cartoons and calling for censorship by catapulting their bodies against Comedy Central's hq building like bugs on a windshield! This show is not for anyone who has ever considered filing a harassment claim. I have just one thing to say to you:
"Hidey-ho!" Mr. Hankie the Christmas Poo is the single most offensive thing I've ever seen. I loved it, naturally. And so did most viewers.
The Angry Beavers
Where: Nickelodeon
When: Saturdays, 10:30 a.m. E.S.T.
Premise: Daggett and Norbert are kicked out of their parents' den when their mother conceives a new litter of beavers. The two zany brothers, still almost babies themselves, are left to fend for themselves in their own bachelor dam. Naturally all sorts of mayhem ensues. In many ways, Dag and Norbie are living the plot of 90% of all sitcom pilots. They just make it seem funny. I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE this show! They're funny looking, funny acting, funny talking beavers. What else do you need?
King of the Hill
Where: Fox
When: Sundays, 8:30 p.m. E.S.T.
Premise: Hank Hill is Every-Man, U.S.A., and if you don't identify with him you must be some kind of freak! (I'm just kidding...but you do identify with him, don't you?) Hank's a good guy and he doesn't ask too much: he just wants to be a good husband and father, drink beer with his buddies, maintain a lawn he can be proud of, and make a decent living selling propane and propane accessories. Oh-and to avoid the mortification of seeing his niece LuAnne naked. And, if at all possible, he'd like his son Bobby to turn out okay, without any weird or scary character disorders. That's all. Doesn't everyone know a Dale or two, spinning black helicopters and silly conspiracies out of the air? I almost choke whenever Peggy speaks her overenunciated grade-school teacher Spanish. And living in NY makes it even funnier for me, because these fools up here really don't understand a word that Boonhower says! This is a great cartoon and the show you always knew Mike Judge could make if he killed off those two ass-munches.
Rocko's Modern Life
Where: Nickelodeon
When: Saturdays, 12:00 noon E.S.T.
Premise: Rocko is a twenty-something wallaby who just graduated from college. He and his sweet-but-dense best friend Heffer help each other get through scrapes and are generally one of the most loyal and loving couples on TV. Rocko always wears a Hawaiian-print shirt, which is appropriate since he does seem like a tourist in his own life. The humor is subtle (lots of homoerotic nuances-which I get a huge kick out of, though they're too subtle to be inappropriate for children) and wry. Occasionally, though, Rocko or Heff say something that makes me fall right off the couch!
Dexter's Laboratory
Where: Cartoon Network
When: Saturdays, 11:30 a.m. E.S.T.
Premise: Dexter is a little misfit science genius with an inexplicable Slavic accent (his parents and sister don't speak with it.) He prefers solitude but his sister DeeDee is a noisome terror in pigtails and pink who can't or won't leave him alone in his lab. Dexter builds; DeeDee destroys. Sometimes the simplest premise is best. Creator Genndy Tartakofsky is way cool. Some of the smallest physical details are hilarious, like the way Dexter walks in his creepy high-heeled boots. One of he funniest recent episodes had Dexter followed around relentlessly by a lovestruck anime' moppet with disturbingly large eyes.
Johnny Bravo
Where: Cartoon Network
When: Tuesdays, 8:00 p.m. E.S.T
Premise: Johnny Bravo is the most endangered of the species of the macho male. He never lets his optimism flag, though, even when it really should. He's been rejected by everyone from aliens to animals to the Scooby Doo gang, but Johnny has Gump-like luck (and brains.) Delivers the chuckles even though the premise is stretched thin. You should watch it at least once.
Links to Cartoon Coolness
Each of these sites is way cooler than mine in the toon department, and well worth visiting!
- FIST--To Stop the Assault on Fan Pages Everywhere, Click Here for FIST!
- SIMPSONS-- Brad's Simpsons Page
- SIMPSONS-- MMmm...The World According to Homer
- ROCKO-- Bobby's Rocko's Page
- ANIMANIACS-- Animaniacs Sounds & Pictures
- ANIMANIACS-- Tom Madden's Watertower Page
- OF THE GHOST PLANET--Really Cool Unofficial Homepage of Cartoon Planet
- OF THE GHOST PLANET-- All Hail Brak!
- OF THE GHOST PLANET--THE BEST I'VE FOUND!! Zorak's Homepage of the Apocalypse --Check it out-this one, created by Mr. Eron Garcia, is the choicest, cleverest SpaceGhost-related page I've seen!
- SOUTH PARK-- Stabber's South Park Page
- OFFICIAL SITE-- Cartoon Network
- OFFICIAL SITE (worth seeing for more than South Park, though- they do a better web page than most networks)-- Comedy Central
- OFFICIAL SITE-- Nickelodeon
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