Good Job, Brain! - 28: We're All a Little Looney

Episode Date: September 10, 2012

Watch out for those ACME anvils because we're transporting everyone into the world of TV cartoons this week! Brief history of animation, why you have to thank the government for the 80's cartoon explosion, mind-blowing origins behind our favorites, Villains quiz, cartoon bands, how Simpsons was created in a moment of panic, and more! ALSO: "What's in a Name?" quiz Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to an Airwave Media podcast. Welcome, well-wishers and well-doers, not wenches, weirwolves, or weanies. This is good job, Brian, your weekly quiz show and off-beet trivia podcast. No weenies. No weenies, never. Today's show is episode 28, and of course, I'm your humble host, Karen. And we are your saloon goons of loons, tunes, and buffoons.

You're righty this time. Change it up a little. I'm Colin. I'm Dana. And I'm Chris. Woo. Very quickly, let's start off here with the answer to a follow-up question that we had from last week. It was very popular college.

Good. I'm happy to hear that. We want some listener participation. So the question that we gave was part of a quiz called One Letter Off. And so we were looking for a triplet of answers here, all of which are off by one letter. So the clue was... In the same position. Correct. So the clue was a light coating, a clearing in the woods, and a bright light. And as many listeners wrote in, we were looking for glaze, a light coating, glade a clearing in the woods, and glare a bright light. Congratulations to all you who sent in the right answer, and a lucky few of you will be getting some swag packs coming

your way. Yep. I'm going to also accept glaise as a light coating, which is almost the same word. All right. What, G-L-A-C? We'll allow the accent mark. We'll allow that. It's like candied fruits coated with sugars, glisset. So it technically works, too.

All right. Good job, everybody. Yeah. They're so smart. So smart. Let's do our general trivia segment. Pop quiz, hot shot. Everybody get your buzzers ready.

And this is a good car. This is a good trivia for Sukar. I was very, very happy with it, even though I just picked it randomly. Here we go. Blue Wedge. The Chinese flag. has one large star and how many small stars? We had this in a quiz before.

I believe we did. It's four smaller stars. Correct. Pink Wedge for pop culture. Whose Anaconda don't want none? Unless you got funds, hon. Dana. Sir Mix a lot.

Correct. Yellow Wedge. What watchdog organization proclaims itself are nation's guardian of liberty? The ACLU? Correct, American Civil Liberties Union. Purple Wedge. What is both the name of a line of books and a nimble masked character from Italian comedy?

Harlequin? Correct. Lady books. Good? Yeah, ladybooks. Green Wedge for science. What is the world's largest bird? Is it the ostrich?

Correct. The ostrich can grow up to nine feet tall and weigh up to 350 pounds. That's a big old bird. Big bird. And lastly, orange wedge for sports, but most likely leisure. What are Quackers the Duck, Chili the Bear, and Bongo the Monkey? Are they animal crackers? No.

Are they mascots? No. are they Michael Jackson's pets You know This sounds like Chucky Cheese characters You know this We talked about it in a previous show They're names of beanie babies

I didn't notice because of the literation Right right If you would said Humphrey the Camel I would have got it Yeah Chocolate the Moose Yeah these are not They're not that clever

All right chocolate the moose is the best one That's pretty clever So today's show Man we're pretty excited Actually, we got a lot of letters and messages requesting for a show dedicated to cartoons. Yay. And it's frame by frame to the extreme. One by one, we're making it fun.

And it's a big topic. We are the ones who are going to last forever. We came out of a crazy life. And it's a big topic. So I think for this show, we're going to narrow it down to television cartoons and the history and our favorites and other interesting factoids. So I want to start off by asking guys, what is your all-time favorite cartoon on TV? You can only pick one. Well, for me, it's no contest then.

I'll have to pick The Simpsons. Simpsons. Oh. So you're not even letting, like, childhood nostalgia. I mean, it would be close, you know, I mean, if I had to go back to a child. But in terms of over my entire life, if I had to pick one, it's the Simpsons. I would probably say The Simpsons too It's tough

I mean the thing with childhood nostalgia And we can get into this a little bit later But like you know the cartoons I watched when I was a kid Were really bad You know what I'll play along I'll play along I'll go the Smurfs As in terms of childhood memory

I loved the Smurfs absolutely Hmm I say let's do childhood Oh okay then He-Man He-Man and the Masters of the Universe I mean I watch that every single day So I would say Jim and the Holograms I really...

Girl cartoon. She was truly outrageous. Truly, truly, truly outrageous. Truly outrageous. I think she was faking it. No, she really was. It was true. Yeah, I watched it again recently, though, and it did not hold up, but I remember it funnly.

And Gemma and the Holograms, they were the rock band, right? Yeah. They were the, yeah, doing good through the forces of rock. Her boyfriend was a race car driver, and she was a philanthropist. She was kind of the Batman. She was kind of the Bruce Wayne for girls. Lady Batman. I actually feel like the Smurfs holds up.

When I've seen some of the reruns of it, and I mean, again, it's not quite as sophisticated as I remember. But I think it holds up pretty well. Some weird social dynamics on there. Yeah, you're right. There were a lot of weird social dynamics. Was the Smurfs like a Saturday morning cartoon where there was one a week? So, I mean, we have the shows that are one show every week on Saturday mornings.

They're going to be of higher quality than, like, He-Man or Gem and the Holograms, which are actually syndicated shows. that would have to fill five of a week. What about you, Karen? Oh, I don't know. I mean, you know, I didn't grow up in the States, so a lot of, most of the cartoons I watched on TV were from Japan, and they're all dubbed. And, you know, later we had some Disney cartoons, but they're all dubbed.

So it was a different experience, but I would have to say animaniacs, and I would have to be my relatives from America to send them to me. I think for a lot of us, animaniacs hit the right kind of places, because we're all trivia nuts. And you sit there and just fun songs. songs about wacky facts. And it was a show, again, didn't condescend to its audience. It was for kids, but it assumed that they were smart.

They had a reference to Bill Clinton playing the sax in the theme song. Still, even today, whenever we're stuck on a state capital, Karen will run through the Animaniac State Capitol song. I will sing that song. And did you guys know that Animaniacs? Animaniacs are the Warner siblings, right? There's Yako, Yeah, Yako, Waco, and Dot. And they're modeled after old-timey 1920s, 1930s cartoon characters.

Yeah, the sort of vague. What are they? Well, that was the conceit, right, that they had been frozen on the Warner lot for all these years and years, and that's why they looked old-timey. I forgot that was the backstory for them, yes. Okay, well, so speaking of old-school animation, I think we got to just at least start by laying the groundwork for where did animation come from. The early history of film and animation are pretty similar, because it was just about, well, how do we make static images look like they're moving? There are so many of these old-timey devices throughout the history of animation. Like, we love throwing out these words.

I'm not going to describe each of these in depths. Oh, do you have any velociraptors on Velocytes? Oh, absolutely. This is that class. Dandy horses. Well, you know, so I think most of us have probably heard of the zoetrope, which is the drum with the slits in it, and you spin it and you look through. And there was also the phenocistoscope. Nice.

There was the praxisoscope. The zoopraxoscope. It just rolls off the top. It really does. It really does. So concise. Why they feel so medical? Yeah, they do sound like medical.

Well, it's so. funny. I imagine this age of like introducing products where it's, you just assume that your customers have a knowledge of Latin and Greek and they'll, oh, of course. Or it's the opposite. I know what this does. Or it's they're trying to make it sound super like high tech and be like, wow. And really it's just put it. The dandy horse. Pictures on a like real and spin it in front of your face. Right, right. You know, I mean, and then we all have sort of the image, the machine with the person looking into the machine and cranking the handle on the side. There were really sort of two machines. There was the

Caniscope, which was an Edison, actually an Edison invention, our old buddy, Tom. That really was pretty close to an actual projector. But it didn't project onto a wall. You were just looking through a little eyepiece. But then the other one is the mutoscope, which was really a lot more like a flipbook, sort of a perpetual flipbook mounted on a reel. And as you turn the handle, you would look through and see the pages of the flipbook. Pretty smart, actually. So yes, same goal. And you know, you would pay a penny or whatever to watch your 30 to 90 seconds is animation. But what's funny is that really the most low-tech one, it was really the flip book that sort of branched off into into hand-drawn animation. Yes. Because it's so easy.

Anyone can do it. You do a little stack of papers. You know, I think we all kind of did that, you know, like in school when you're bored. Yeah. And a lot of animators say that that had a lot more influence on them than any of these other high-tech devices. So they all rely on persistence of vision. You need to get around 10 to 12 images a second. I thought it was 24. Well, so you need around 24 to kind of look smooth, and that's what we've settled on now. Below about 15 is where it starts to get choppy, but it's above about 10 or 12 where you can't start counting them anymore. Like, you know, that's when it starts getting fast enough that your brain isn't like, oh, I'm seeing a sequence of images. It's, I'm seeing motion. Yeah, yeah. Right, right, yeah,

right around 15. And then those old-timey, jerky films, they look sort of jerky and have that quality to us because those were only, for the most part, around 18 frames a second. But 24 is nice and smooth for most frames. But, yeah, relies on the fact that you see an image and your brain holds onto that image for about 15th of a second. So as long as you put another image in front of your eye while it's still in your brain, it'll look nice and

smooth. And that's where they sort of took the science of animation, is how to make static look moving. Well, so originally, cartoons were shown on newsreels. Coming back to a topic that we hit a lot here on Good Job Brain, in history days, there was nothing to do, right? So like, movies were like four hours long.

That's the only thing to do. Go back to your humdrum life. No, of course not. So you go to the movie theater. So before the movies, you know, they would play like newsreels or animated shorts, Mickey Mouse's, if you will. And so you'd be there for a long time. And so that's early cartoons were played before movies. Because people were like paying for tickets to go see these things, they actually had pretty high budgets. And that is one of the kind of central conflicts is like animation moved to TV. The economy was different. And like that's kind of why Disney struggled a little bit because like Walt Disney was used to spending a lot of money to make

cartoons that were actually played in the theaters. It's not like they just took cartoons from movie theaters and went, Plop, you're on television now. No, it was actually quite different. A lot of the early shorts were paired with the movies that were showing. So we all know the Warner Brothers, awesome great cartoons. Those would be shown along with Warner Brothers pictures as well. Oh.

So, I mean, it made a lot. And same with Universal and, you know, with the other big studios. The company that first devoted exclusively to doing animation for television was Hannah Barbera. And they were doing cheaper stuff, essentially. for TV. I can't quite bring to mind what the first one was. First, like, TV cartoon is kind of obscure and you probably never heard of it, but very early on was actually Huckleberry Hound. Oh, Huckleberry Hound. Yeah. That is why that character is kind of so popular because it was like first, like, big TV only cartoon. And so here's the thing, right? So, Walt Disney did not

make his cartoons for kids. They were actually, it was for all audiences. Animation was still so novel that people liked seeing it. That's why, you know, those early Mickey Mousees, they were violent you know like um you know you watch especially someone like the early like oswald the lucky rabbit cartoons like they're they're kind of dark yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah weird social commentary yeah and so we have this mentality of like cartoons are you know or for kids or we did for a while but that that was not true at the dawn of the early age right right right which is probably why hannah barbara you know their first really you know huge hit was the flintstones which was a sitcom like the characters were very close to like the honeymooners right you know

Suspiciously close, one might say Yeah. And it was... I never put... Oh, yeah. Yeah. Like even down to the neighbors, even down to Barney. Yeah. And we actually just had this at Trivium. The Flintstones was aired for the first couple of years in very early 60s in black and white. Right, right. But then

you said, Colin, that... I mean, I had always heard that the Flintstones was really sort of the first prime time cartoon. As you said, you know, Hanibur, a big hit. But I had assumed it was the first one in color. And we got this wrong. It was, in fact, the Jetsons, also another Hannah Barbera. Which was apparently the first show aired in color on ABC. But the Flintstones, they were making the show in color. Because they were painting it all and doing it all in color. Yeah, why wouldn't they? Yeah. No, that's the thing. I think they were looking forward, you know, looking ahead to a time, because color TVs were not that

far off, you know, or the adoption of color. It would be foolish to actually animate these in shades of gray. Right. Exactly. Then the Flintstones was, of course, a very early piece of color programming, but it was not, as it turns out, on that particular network the first. That was a good question. That was very tricky. It was tricky. It actually, it makes sense the Jetsons being such a futuristic show that they would be

the first in a cartoon broadcasting color. All right. So, I have a cartoon villain quiz for you guys. Wow. The witch of the West and the witch was booty dancing with Manson and Ganon right next to side show. Bob. A bit shot from Blackbears can. That's when I knew that tonight I'd be chilling up in the dance club party

And with all these villains I can't keep partying round So I'm going to name the villain name And you have to tell me what cartoon they're from Excellent, excellent All right, and these are all TV cartoons Yes Okay, all right, all right

Gargamel Chris The Smurfs Smurfs Okay, bonus question Gargamel had a animal As well how to come on you can't just no come on you got to play

She said bonus question That doesn't mean don't buzzed no it means part B You have to do that means I answered it correctly so then I can Oh you have first right of it yeah okay I see all right Well asrael which is named after the archangel of death And also what country did the Smurfs come from Belgium Yes yes yes they were originally written in French

Yeah, and they were, I believe in French, there were Les Strumpf. Yes, yes, yes. Smurfs is, so much fun to say. So, yeah, it sounds like a pastry. Strudel. So many more letters. Strumpfette. Here's another villain.

The peculiar purple pie man of porcupine peak. Dana. Strabber shortcake. Correct. Very good. Okay. Professor Coldheart. The Car bears.

Correct. Oh, that's sense. Starby Shortcake in. care bears were created by the same company. What company was it? American greeting card company. Yes. Both character lines were made originally to sell greeting cards. Yeah. And obviously, you know, with very good foresight, they're like, oh, we can branch this into tools. And mugs and calendars and into cartoons. Kenner that we've talked about in our toys episode, Kenner turned the care bears into the plush teddy bears, the people carried around. So very good foresight. But it's weird because it's a greeting card

company. All right. Crang. Oh. Teenage mutant ninja turtles. Yes. If you grew up in the UK and some countries in Europe, they're actually not called Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

They're called what? Teenage Mutant Hero Turtle. Yes. Ninjas was considered very controversial. They were ninja, so they kept it away from children's programming. Oh, the 80s. It was too violent. Well, mostly because a ninja related to Nunchucks.

Nunchucks at that time was a weapon, and they didn't want to advertise. It's still a weapon. In the cartoon, they all have like knives in Nunchuk. Somehow, Nunchucks was compared to the Catanasaur. Right, or the size are far more dangerous. But one of them has Nunchukes. Yes, so this is what happened to. In the intro sequence, they actually heavily edited.

First, they have to change the logo. Yeah. Because in the original logo, it's like a big blob and it turns into the Teenage Moon Ninja Turtle logo. They had a digitally faded new logo. And then they edited out scenes when Michelangelo had his nun chucks. That's so funny. You know what? Actually, that makes sense.

I think about when I was growing up, all the kids with their fake nunchucks, like, swinging them around. Because it's so fun to swing them around and, like, hit yourself in the face with the nun chucks. Exactly. Right. Here's another villain. His full name is Peter Pete Sr. Chris. Mickey Mouse?

Yes. He's, that guy's name is Pete. Pegg-leg Pete. He's also called Black Pete Peter Pete Senior He's that fat cat He's a technically a cat Oh he's a cat

He's like a big, I thought he was a bear Or a dog for a long time Or an indiscriminate blob Yeah exactly But he was the captain from Steamboat Willie In a lot of classic cats And later he was in the goof troop And a lot of the other goofy franchise

All right Snidly Whiplash That was Dudley do right Correct Dudley do right Okay This one's a little bit

bit tough. Duke Sigmund Iggthorn. Duke Sigmund Igthorn. From a cartoon with a very catchy theme song. Is it the rescue rangers? No. Was it Duck Tales? No. Is it Darkwing

Duck? It is. Adventures of Gummy Bears. Oh. Oh, yes. Duke. Duke. Yeah. I've not seen that one. I will have to hop online. You haven't heard the gummy bears? No.

Oh. I feel like we should. That is, I know, that is one of the best cartoon theme songs. All right, Mumra! Chris. Thundercats. Yeah. Angelica.

Rugrats. Correct. Wow. You're so good. Come on. All right. Lastly, beagle boys. Ducktails.

Yeah, that's duck tails, right, right. They're the bandit, the mask beagles. Right, right. And they don't look like beagles at all. Again, they're like weird animal. And they're always trying to. They're always trying to steal Scrooge's money, right? Yes.

Okay. He just swims in it. He doesn't just swim in it. Sometimes he spits out coins out of his mouth. How many kids back in the day wanted a room, a swimming pool of gold coins? I totally did. But that would hurt. Oh, yeah.

But we are kids, you don't think that much. I think the only thing preventing massive injuries was the fact that as kids, we couldn't amass enough coins to actually try and dive into them. Otherwise, we have broken fingers, broken noses, inhaled quarters. Snarge. All right, that was, that was my villains quiz. Good job, everybody. Nice, good quiz. So, we have actually been talking around this during the show, but we've been talking about, you know,

cartoons based on toys and based on greeting cards. And so here's why these things, it didn't exist for a long time. And then suddenly, it seems, kind of exploded into vogue. Money. Yeah. The government, actually. So in, so in 1969, 1969 through 1971, Mattel produced a cartoon, a Hot Wheels cartoon, and people complained to the FCC, rival television

program makers and things like that. They were like, this is not a television program. This is advertising. Like, this is all about Hot Wheels cars. The FCC actually agreed, and they made, I think basically, like, Mattel had to pay for some of the time or designate some of the time as being advertising, whatever. But the end result of this was that nobody really pursued this for a long time. throughout the entire 70s.

No one wanted to get smacked down. Yes, producing a cartoon that was based on a toy line that would essentially be seen as advertising. You know, in the early days of television, even now, people are very concerned about advertising to children, what the content of children's programming. And so this is a big thing. So in the early 80s, with the Reagan administration, there was deregulation of children's programming. The major change was that what detractors referred to as program length commercials, these became okay. And the floodgates were open.

And the floodgates were open. So we all have mentioned things that kind of hit us. Like you had Gem and the holograms. I had He-Man. I mean, you know, college. G.I. Joe. G.I. Joe. Gere bears.

Gummy bears. Like all these cartoons from my little pony. A lot of these things were paid for out of the marketing budget of the toy companies. That's what these things were paid for by. I mean, a lot of them were produced by either the toy company themselves or a wholly owned subsidiary that they bought an animation company. or like the PR company or the marketing company or the ad company that they had hired. A lot of them were done by a process called barter syndication by which they just give the show to the networks in exchange for advertising time. A lot of times actual cash would not exchange hands.

They'd be like, we just want to advertise the toys. Now, typically, they would not go so far as to advertise the toys during the show. There was no legal reason I don't think that they did that. I believe it was just to avoid it. It's tacky. It's tacky. You don't want parents, you don't want to be crass about it. And they really crank these things out.

And they actually use a lot of techniques that were used very heavily in Japan because Japanese animation, they were cranking out, you know, a show a day. Right. And they pioneered in Japan a lot of limited animation technique. When you were watching a cartoon and there's like one mat painting, they pan across it for a long time as people are talking. Or the classic example of just when they're running and you see the same background features come into focus again

And then again, again. Or just somebody's, like, just a mouth is moving, cutting us any corners that you could to crank things out. Man, this is so depressing now. I know. Well, and so... I think it expanded the conversation. Like, it was just Hannah Barbera for a long time. And then it was like, oh, now we can...

But now it's all to sell things. Well, the thing is, they became so, so very popular. The idea of just cartoons that were either, A, focused on a very certain brand, like, you know, Tiny Tunes or, you know, things that were kind of done by a big shop or things that were only meant to sell toys. And that's why, like, in the 1990s, you had this sort of, like, resurgence of creator-driven animation. Versus merchandised-driven. Yeah. And that's, I mean, cartoons have actually gotten so much better since then because people had really pushed for, like, high, high, high-quality, believing that kids would watch better quality content if it were given to them. And actually, one of the really, the pioneering examples of this in the early 90s was Nicktoons. When Nickelodeon first introduced Nicktoons, which were original animation produced by and shown on Nickelodeon.

What were some of the shows? Rugrats and Renan Stimpy all debuted on the same night. They began with a cartoonist or a pair of people who were, like, passionate about these characters. Especially Renan Stimpy, which I should throw in there because, like, that was huge for me. As like an 11-year-old, it was like, oh, my God, it's gross and it's funny, and it's so, so, so funny. They have so many fake commercials in it, too. And I wonder if that's, like, a response to the previous versions of the cartoons that were. It was certainly, oh, yeah, it was certainly done by people who were fed up.

up with commercialism. Yeah. You're pushing the boundaries. Even when we're thinking back, we're like, oh, man, we watch He-Man now, and you're like, man, that was really bad. Yeah. But then yet, we still remember Animaniacs. You can go back and watch anime.

Yeah, exactly. There's room for both. I mean, even as grown-ups, I think we both have some commercialism and some high art in our diets as well. This episode is brought to you by Square. You're not just running a restaurant. You're building something big. And Square's there for all of it.

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A couple of episodes ago when I did the quiz about the Muppets, that was really fun. I did a bunch of research. Oh, that's awesome. I researched Dr. Teeth and the electric mayhem. That same week in trivia, we had a question. It was, the drummer in Dr. Teeth and Electric Mayhem was inspired by what rock musician? And I didn't talk about it on the podcast,

but the answer is, so Animal is the drummer. in Electric Mayhem. And you knew this right away. He was inspired by Keith Moon. And I read it. I want to talk about cartoon bands. And I'll give you some trivia that I think would come up in pub quiz. So I'll have some questions mixed in.

And then at the end, I'll have a lightning round. So you can show off. Are there that many cartoon bands? There are quite a few. I'm going to start with one of the proto versions of the cartoon band. Alvin and the Chipmunks. Of course. Oh, you have to talk about Alvin and the Chipmonds?

Oh, they did sing. They had songs. Oh, yeah. They were a band. Well, they were a cartoon show that came from the fake. They were a novelty record. There was a novelty they existed only as like the fake singing. Exactly.

Do you know, Alvin and the Chipmunks was the brainchild of this novelty songwriter. What was the song? It was Witch Doctor. Yeah, witch doctor. Yeah. Uh-e, uh-a-a-a-a-Ting, wala, bing bear. And that was not the Chipmunks, but he had used that technique of speeding up his voice. Right, you sing slowly and then speed it up.

So that gets grouped into compilations of their albums, even though that wasn't really the chipmunks doing it. And for all the kids out there, we literally mean he sang slowly into a tape, recorded, tape. Blue people's minds. It was a big hit. So what was the first chipmunk song? Do you know that one?

It was the Christmas song. Yeah, I'm trying to think of what the name of it is. Is it Christmas Don't Be Late? It's the Chipmunk song, parentheses, Christmas Don't Be Late. but do you know what what toy does alvin ask for in that song a hula hoop yeah and so that was the it toy of the year that that song came out okay so what cartoon band scored a number one billboard hit in 1969 i gotta go with the archie i believe it was the archie's sugar sugar

honey yeah that's a cartoon band yeah they're trying to make a My brain is, like, leaking out from my ears. They're as real as the monkeys. Yeah. It was really the Archies, like, Archie, Betty Veronica, they sang that song. Yeah. Yeah. Not the real, because they don't exist. But those characters, that band. Yeah, they were setting out to make pop hits, yeah. They were proto-garillas.

What? What? There was a dog in that band named Hot Dog. Hot Dog. Yeah, he was in the band, though. Do you know what he did in the band? Did he, like... Play the triangle. Press, like, a kick drum or something? I don't know.

He was like, the conductor of the band. Oh, okay. All right. Okay. Well, that's fine, because dogs can't play instruments. Oh, so the Archies were such a big hit that it inspired Hannah Barbera to make their own kind of version of a band that had a dog in it. And this was during the concepting phase. What cartoon did it become?

Is that Josie and the Pussy Cats? No. No, Josie and the Puskey Hats were in the Archie. Yeah. Oh, that's right. That's right. You're right. No.

It started out as a TV show about a band of kids with a dog, Scooby-Doo. Oh, they were a band. No, they were originally a band? Yeah, they were going to make them a band, and I think Scooby was going to... Oh, they're touring around in their van? Oh, yes. That makes so much more sense than solving mysteries in a psychedelic van.

Okay, so you said Josie and the Pussycats, and then they kind of were the marriage of those two concepts, because they solved crimes and were a band. So I thought this was just interesting trivia. Valerie on Josie and the Pussy Cats was the first African-American female character. to be on a cartoon like a regular cartoon yeah yeah okay so now we're moving on to the lightning round of band oh so I'll give you a member of the band and you tell me the band and the cartoon that's such a disadvantage no no I think well we'll start it super easy Jim Aaron holograms Jim and the holograms yes muchmouth oh oh that was Fat Alberg yes the gang what was the name of their band

I believe it was, oh, wait, the band. What's the name of the band? Is it the Cosby Kids? No. What was it? The Junkyard Band. The Junk Yard Band. That's right.

And it had all the instruments made out of junk. Yeah. I'm getting the show. Was it Daria? Yeah. I forget the name of his band. Oh, man. It's Mystic Spiral.

Mystic Spiral. Yeah. I love Trent. I love Trent. I kind of had a crush on Trent. I knew a lot of girls actually who had a crush on a cartoon character. Yes, Trent. Nathan Explosion.

Oh. You're going to feel. No, I know that. What is that? It's, uh, ah. From metal oculapse. Yes. Oh, my God.

It's Death Clark. Oh, God. Yeah. Totally blankets, it's death clock. Apu Nasapimans. He had a band? He was in a band. He was the B-sharps.

Yeah. From the Simpsons, of course. And the last one, Timmy Birch. Would that be Lords of the Underworld? Or Timmy and the Lords of the Underworld? From South Park. Yes, that is very tricky. Nice.

All right, well, so speaking of the B-sharps and the fact that I jumped all over that question, yes, I am a huge Simpsons nerd. like I'm sure many of our listeners are. I heard before it was a TV show was a cartoon segment from the Tracy Olman show back of the days. So in terms of its animated...

Yeah, it started its animated life on the Tracy Olman show. Yeah, right, which was in the mid-80s, yeah, 87 on Fox, one of the first shows on Fox when it started as a network. It was Fox's first hit, I think. It was their first show that actually... It was certainly, like, in the same era as married with children and around then. Yeah, you know, a lot of the Simpsons fans sort of fondly recall how crude they were.

Yeah. I mean, you look at them now. Very squiggly. Very squiggly and very crude. But they looked like Matt Grainings' characters from Life and Hell. So Matt Grainning, who basically got his start, got attention producers, was doing his comic strip, Life and Hell, which was a black and white, pretty simple drawing of the rabbits. There's Binky and Bongo, and, you know, a lot of them are just single panel. Yep.

So he was drawing this in L.A. in the early 80s. It basically came to the attention of James L. Brooks, famous producer. And he asked him, basically, come in. I want to work with you. I want to do a show specific. in mind for something to do with Fox. Matt Graining was ecstatic. He's like, this is great.

I'm going to be on TV. This is awesome. So he goes to meet James O'Brooks. He's sitting in the waiting room, and he's freaking out thinking, like, oh, my gosh, what if I make this cartoon with my rabbits? And then the network owns it and it flops. Then it takes my comic down with it. Oh.

He's being very cautious. Yeah, he's being just a moment of self-doubt as well. So sitting in the waiting room, literally, waiting to meet with Jim Brooks, he draws out a new set of characters and is like, okay, it's not about rabbits, it's about this family instead, this dysfunctional family, and hurriedly draws these out, he sketches them before he goes into the meeting so he can pitch this idea instead, thinking, well, if it flops, it flops, I can go back to my comic in the paper. So he named this family after his own family. Matt Grainings' parents are, in fact, named Homer and Margaret.

No! Yes, Homer Graining and Margaret Grading. And his two younger sisters are Lisa and Margaret, Maggie or Margaret. So he sort of substituted Bart in his own plays. He thought that would be a little bit too much. I mean, Bart was an anagram of brat. That's what he says. Yeah, exactly. He does have two older siblings who sort of got left out. On the show, there's Grandpa Simpson now, who's Abe, Abraham Simpson. So when it came time to add Abe Simpson, Matt Groening said to the writers and the producers, all right, look, I don't want to name another character after my own life. You guys come up with the name and just let me know what you want. So they're like, oh, okay, hey, so we named him Abe Abraham Simpson. And that is

Matt Grainings' grandfather's name. He's like, he just took that as a sign of good for it. He's like, he can't escape it. It was Abraham Graming. Yeah, so it fits. In Homer Simpson are Matt Grainings initials. Right. He puts in the M in the G. So the M of hair above Homer's ear and the ear is a G. We alluded to them looking really crude on the early shorts and even a little bit into the show. And so Matt Grinning talks about how he does. did these kind of rough sketches of what he wanted the family to look like. And, you know, for TV animation, you know, you turn it over to the production studio. And he really thought, like, oh, I'll be able to clean these up in post-production.

But he wasn't. They came back and they're like, no, this is what they look like. And he really, he's like, well, I would have made them a little more fine detailed if I had known they were going to look like that. And so this is one of the reasons that Bart and Lisa and Maggie are really some of the only characters that don't have a hairline. Because he just drew them in line drawings, you know, so their hair is the same color as their skin, which looks a little weird. Yeah. Among many things that he just figured, well, I'll have a chance to clean these up later. Yeah. But they literally traced his drawings that he gave them in for the sketches.

So that's why the early Tracy Olman shorts looked just so wild and weird and jaggy. Well, they kept a lot of it. Yeah, but they were outsourcing. Yeah. Just one of the other things that I always loved about The Simpsons is the itchy and scratchy cartoons, which are the cartoons within a cartoon. These are the sort of parodies of Tom and Jerry, the cat and the mouse that Bart and Lisa are always watching.

Now, just as a side question here, do you guys know which one's itchy and which one's scratchy? Karen, I think... I think itchy is the rat. Itchy is the mouse. Yes. You can just remember cat scratch. Yes.

Itch is the mouse. Scratch is the cat. Uber violent, making jokes about the violence in Tom and Jerry. One of the things I love about them is they always have these horrible pun names about famous movies or TV shows but with violence jammed in there somewhere these are a few of my favorite itchy

and scratchy episode titles within the show oh puns okay esophagus now skinless in Seattle that one's good Scar Trek the next laceration that's so nerdy You know a bunch of nerds are writing the show

So that's a burst of my Simpsons love for you guys You just totally geeked out Oh yeah You can get out for five more hours I feel like we barely scratched the surface That is the iceberg Well I want to talk about something that I would geek out about And Colin you actually told me that you've never heard of this show

So growing up in Asia I had only dubbed versions Disney cartoons But they all came like a year later Than their airing day in the US But one of the shows I was really into, it was called Gargoyles, and it was kind of in the climate of cartoons where there were for kids, but they're a little bit more darker in themes like Batman the animated

series. Gargoyles was basically about a bunch of gargoyles in modern New York. And modern New York is not a awesome place. There's a lot of crime, a lot of corruption. And what I loved about it was because they really wrote in a lot of classical mythology, not Greek mythology, but in European mythology. So they had a lot of Shakespeare episodes around Shakespeare characters coming into this universe, then into this kind of half-magic, half-real gritty life universe. Macbeth characters, a lot of Midsummer's Night Dream characters. And there was also a whole story arc surrounding King Arthur and, you know, they go on quest and stuff.

So it was really, really interesting. It was kind of nerdy in a way. But I realized I watched this all in Chinese, all in Mandarin. So I never got the American voice acting thing. And when I was researching and reading about this, oh, my God, there's so many famous actors, not just voice actors, but actors. Yes, in this cartoon. And actually, there's a weird overlap with people of the alumni of the Star Trek franchise. Deanna Troy and Riker from TNG were voice actors.

Uhura, Nichols from the original Star Trek, was also a voice actor. And also I have a quick list, speed round of famous actors who are in gargoyles. I'm going to give you what they're known for, and then tell me the actor. Okay. Wadsworth, or known as Dr. Frankenfurter. Tim Curry. Wadsworth being the butler from Clue. Yep.

Data. Oh, my God. I'm forgetting his name right now. So you know the character, Data. No, wait, wait, wait, wait, Brent Spiner. Correct. Brent Spiner. He was actually the voice of Puck from Midsomer's Night Dream and Gargoyles.

Gimley Jonathan Rees Davies John Rees Davies, correct 90s heartthrob and detective Dennis Booker on 21 Jump Street Richard Greco I'm so ashamed that I jumped in faster for Richard Greco

than Jonathan Rees Davies This Scottish actor known for playing The MC and also Nightcrawler Oh Alan Cumming? Correct. Alan Cummings. And lastly, monk. Tony Shalube.

Tony Shalube. This is just a small list. The list goes on and on, and they're all real actors. Yeah. Other kind of... People you would have... They're all real actors.

Yep. Very interesting. I'm Chris Hadfield. I'm an astronaut, an author, a citizen of planet Earth. Join me for a six-part journey into the systems that power the world. Real conversations

with real people who are shaping the future of energy. No politics, no empty talk, just solutions-focused conversations on the challenges we must overcome and the possibilities that lie ahead. This is On Energy. Listen wherever you get your podcasts. Oh, man. And obviously, you know, we can dedicate so many more shows to cartoons, but this is kind of our maybe prologue.

Let's just call it our prolog cartoon. To be continued. episode yeah and calling you have a last quiz for us i do let's close things out today switch tears here i have a general trivia quiz for you guys called what's in a name all of these questions are about names of things very general Well, you know, I like to kind of go all over the map here. Okay. But that's...

So unpredictable. Yeah. I like to keep you guessing. You don't know me. You think I'm going to zig out to my zad. Oh, my God. All right. So Hurricane Isaac just passed through the southeast.

Do you guys know what the rules are for naming hurricanes? Chris. They alternate between men and women. That's one part of it. Alternate between male and female names, that's right. Alternating? They are just alphabetical. They name.

Oh, yes, sorry. Yeah, you got it, though. They name them, so at the beginning of each hurricane season, which starts in June, they start with A, and they have a list of names that alternates male, female, and they go through them. And so not all of them turn into full-blown hurricanes, but the ones that do. Right, right. So we got up to I this year before there was one that really started causing a lot of damage. Right.

So the one after Isaac would be Joyce, and then it's Kirk. And it's the same name for every year? No. Every year they pick the room. They rotate the list, I guess, every six years. And then if there's one that causes a lot of damage, they retire the name. So like, there's never going to be another Hurricane Katrina. That's right.

That's right. This is a three-part answer. So each of you guys is going to have to name one of these answers here. Shakespeare wrote three plays where the title is a pair of lovers names. All right. I think Dana went first. So she gets crack at the easy ones. Okay.

Romeo and Juliet. Romeo and Juliet. Karen Anthony and Cleopatra Anthony and Cleopatra It means Chris gets the hard one It's like Troilus and Cressida Exactly

Troilus and Cressida Wow Well done guys That's right That's right I waited for the hard work Yep another tragedy Right it's a good one

So the name of the president's airplane Is Air Force One And more accurately That's its air traffic control call sign What is the name of the president's helicopter Karen Blades for Force one.

Blades forced going. It's a truck, like Air Force 2 or something. So Air Force 2 is another plane. Air Force 2 is what Vice President flies on. So Air Force 1 for the President. The President's helicopter, the call sign is Marine 1. So the Air Force is responsible for flying the President's plane, and the Marines are responsible for flying as helicopter.

I have heard that. That makes sense. The Air Force 1, Marine 1 doesn't actually refer to any specific plane. So whatever plane he's on. He's on is Air Force. one. Right. Despite being the smallest U.S. state in physical size, Rhode Island actually has the longest official name. What is the full five-word name of Rhode Island? Something plantation. Yeah, you're on the right track. Really? You're on the right track. Rhode Island,

something, and plantation. Oh, you're so close. All right. It's Rhode Island and Providence plantation. Possibly. And that is its full official name. Yeah. plantations has nothing to do with slavery at all. It just, it was like an old term for a colony. But some of the lawmakers there were a little worried that they had this public image. So they actually put it to a vote a few years ago. And voters in Rhode Island, no, we want to keep the name. It was a Rhode Island and Providence Plantation.

If it were the 1700s and I asked you for directions to New Holland, what modern country would I be looking for? Chris. The United States of America? No, not the U.S. Oh, okay. New Holland. So much be a Dutch colony.

Oh, man. What's a Dutch? Is it New Zealand? You're so close. You're so close. Australia. It is Australia. Yes, Australia.

All right. Last one here. This one's a little tricky, but I think fun. All right. There are three chemical elements that share a namesake with planets in our solar system. What are they? And I'll give you a little nudge. There used to be four until, like,

a certain planet was downgraded. So, I think it's, okay, so uranium. Yes, for Uranus. I want to say, um, well, I mean, that one would not be. Plutonium was one until Pluto was downgraded. I want to say Neptuneium. Neptune. Yes, that's the tricky one, yes.

Uranium, Neptune. One more. Um, earthium. You guys are going to kick yourselves. No, no, no, no. Hold on, hold on. Yeah, we can figure this out, you guys. All right.

Oh, Mercury. Mercury. Mercury. Burp. It's always the easy ones. You know what it is? Well, you know what it is because it doesn't follow the pattern of the other ones. Right, right. Cool. That is what's in a name.

So that is our show. Lots of knowledge there. And thank you guys for joining me. And thank you guys, listeners, for listening in. Hope you learn a lot about cartoons and cartoons as advertisements and how much Colin geeks out over The Simps and how much data geeks out over Gem and the Holograms. You can find our show on the Zoom Marketplace. on iTunes and also on Stitcher and don't forget to also check out our website which is good job brain.com

and our sponsors, our lovely sponsors bonobos at bonobos.com and we'll see you guys next week. Bye. Bye. Can we recommend another one? It's called Big Picture Science. You can hear it wherever you get your podcast,

and its name tells part of the story. The big picture questions and the most interesting research in science. Seth and I are the host. Seth is a scientist. I am Molly, and I'm a science journalist, and we talk to people smarter than us, and we have fun along the way.

The show is called Big Picture Science, and as Seth said, you can hear it wherever you get your podcast.