Saturday, September 17, 2011

Smells Like Senior Spirit

Here's something guaranteed to make you feel old: Nirvana's Nevermind album and Ren & Stimpy both turn 20 this year. Oy gevalt!

That can't possibly be right, can it? It seems like just a couple of years ago that I was listening to Nevermind over and over again, trying to figure out what the hell they were singing in Smells Like Teen Spirit. And I'd swear it was just yesterday that I was watching Ren & Stimpy and trying to figure out why the rest of the world was going gaga for them, while their antics failed to elicit any response whatsoever in me. How time flies.

Please excuse me while I go take my rheumatiz medicine and yell at some kids to get off my lawn.

4 comments:

  1. Oh wow, I figured you a big Ren & Stimpy fan! Maybe not for the humor, but at least for the show's aesthetics.

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  2. R64: Yeah, I don't hate Ren & Stimpy, I'm just sort of indifferent toward them.

    I think it's because when they first came out I lived in a rural area where it wasn't possible to get cable TV. So for a year or more I'd hear about how funny and awesome the show was, but I couldn't actually see it. Finally I bought a bootleg DVD of their show and set down and watched it, and... meh. I thought, "That's it? That's what all the fuss was about?" It wasn't necessarily the show's fault, nothing could live up to a year of solid hype.

    As for the show's aesthetics, it always bugged me that R & S's appearance varied wildly from scene to scene. Their proportions and even their scale would change dramatically, often within the same scene. They must not have used model sheets. For some reason that lack of consistent style greatly offended my eye.

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  3. Ha — that's what I always found so appealing about the show. The absurdity was not only in their humor (someone knocks the "door" of the tent they're in, and Ren says "Stimpy, go answer the flap") but also visual. One second Ren is as tall as Stimpy, and another he's inside Stimpy's mouth, without any explanation as to why the scale changed so drastically. I personally loved this inconsistency.

    But I understand what too much hype can do to expectations. Besides, there was big difference between the first episodes and later ones, what with all the creators/writers leaving/joining soap opera going on.

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  4. I forgot about Ren being inside Stimpy's mouth. I guess that part was funny.

    I remember reading about all the behind the scenes drama. All that stress and strife over a cartoon!

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