Mongo Nation

New “Frisky Dingo” spin-off premiers

By Jeremy Azevedo

Last night was the premiere, of “The Xtacles”, a new show on Cartoon Network’s popular late night Adult Swim program. Xtacles is a spin off of Frisky Dingo, from Matt Thompson and Adam Reed, creators of Sealab 2021.

At the end of Season 2 of Frisky Dingo, billionare playboy/superhero and leader of the Xtacles, Xander Crews (sort of a cross between Tony Stark and Tom Cruise at his gayest) vacates the planet for good (?) leaving his army of quite possibly retarded cybernetic super soldiers without a leader.

Enter President Stan, the megalomaniac President of the United States who seeks to manipulate the Xtacles to become his own private army… Which doesn’t prove to be too difficult because they’re often drunk by 11AM and spend most of their day sexually harassing their foxy holographic supercomputer, A.L.E.X.

Xtacles is voice acted by some awesome talent, including Marshall Bell, Rachel Harris and Michael Ian Black. The humor is very similar to that of Sealab 2021, very bizarre and generally centering on events that spiral completely out of control due to the overwhelming stupidity of the characters. For those that found Sealab a bit lacking after the real life death of Harry Goz (Captain Murphy), Xtacles serves as a second chance for the humor that made the original show so great.

Check out the premiere episode of the Xtacles on AdultSwim.com and be sure to catch new episodes at midnight, Sunday nights on the Cartoon Network.

“Yo Momma so stupid she spent all day saying ‘Am not!’ to R2!”

By Jeremy Azevedo

The Robot Chicken Star Wars special was just released on DVD, strangely a full six months after the corresponding Family Guy Star Wars special was released on DVD and a whole year after Robot Chicken Star Wars’ original airdate.

Not that all this matters really, as the subject matter being lampooned here is roughly thirty years old and thusly not particularly time-sensitive.

It never ceases to amaze me how fully Star Wars has permeated popular culture to such a degree that there is even anything left to say about it today. But something about Star Wars just lends it an evergreen status that is taken full advantage of here by Seth Green and the cast of Robot Chicken.

Although the runtime is short, Robot Chicken Star Wars manages to pack more laughs in to its 23 minutes than most comedies get in two hours. I caught myself doing that annoying thing people sometimes do in which you loudly repeat a line that just happened to the person next to you, as if they hadn’t just heard it five seconds ago, my obnoxious laughter smothering the next joke. So really it seemed like at least 35 minutes considering all the times I had to rewind back to the previous scene.

The special features on the Robot Chicken Star Wars DVD are a lot of fun, particularly if you have any interest in how the show is written and animated. If you’re not at all interested in the special features, you might find RCSW more of a rental than a purchase, were it not for the fact that it was so reasonably priced. If you are a Star Wars fan, or a Robot Chicken fan, or especially if you are a fan of both, just buy it already you cheap bastard.

Popular Internet video site shuts its doors

By Jeremy Azevedo

Anyone that spends any amount of time watching videos on the Internet is probably at least somewhat aware of Super Deluxe. For about a year and a half now, SD has been bringing us some of the best live action and animated work from a number of notable entertainers, from Bob Odenkirk and Norm Macdonald to Brad Neely and even Master P.

Sadly, Super Deluxe was not able to compete with the many competitors in the online video arena, mostly for the same reasons that everyone else is having trouble: the traffic and ad revenue doesn’t justify the amount spent on talent. Further compounding the problem is the fact that Super Deluxe is owned by TBS, who also owns Adult Swim, in essence creating two competing entities in the same network. And so it stands to reason that obvious course of action would be to combine the two properties.

It really is too bad that a lot of the shows on Super Deluxe never saw the breakout success that they rightly deserved, but hopefully we will see some of these series resurrected on Adult Swim’s site, and possibly even airing on the Adult Swim programming calendar on regular television. But for now, do yourself a favor and head over to Super Deluxe and check out some really great stuff before it’s gone for good.

Psychedelic dirty puppets and Beaver Boys, anyone?

By Jeremy Azevedo

Of all the silly things in this world that beg to be mocked, few are as untapped as public television. Where else can you see the batshit crazy musings of people that have no business being on television (or even the radio, for that matter) than public access?

And who better to capture this raw, unfiltered awkwardness than Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim, perhaps two of the most uncomfortable performers on regular TV?

Tim and Eric are already (sort of) well known for their (sort of) animated show, “Tom Goes to the Mayor”. Their new show, “Tim and Eric, Awesome Show, Great Job!” transfers that same kind of humor into a live setting, sprinkles in a few amazing guest stars (John C. Rielly, Michael Cera, Jeff Goldblum, etc.) and cranks the weirdo dial up to 11. Season 1 is available now, so if you haven’t yet been acquainted with Tim and Eric, now is as good a time as any.

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Engage in homicidal blasphemy on your lunchbreak at work!

In the tradition of such great flash games as “Orphan Feast” and “5 Minute to Kill (Yourself)”, Adult Swim brings us “Viva Caligula”, a celebration of offensiveness and gore starring one of history’s greatest sociopaths, Caligula!

The object of Viva Caligula is to collect 26 different weapons (one for each letter of the alphabet) in order to unlock the “Orgy Room”. Some of my personal favorites include a beehive that can be thrown at opponents, a necromancy ability that brings the corpses of your fallen enemies to life, and a dead bear that you use to claw people’s faces off. You can even freeze enemies by exposing your manhood!

Chopping the citizenry of Rome into pieces is a scream, and speaking of screaming, Viva Caligula supports a microphone function that allows you to scream in order to power up Caligula’s rage meter, rendering him a furious and unstoppable homicidal maniac. A useful map feature makes sure that you don’t get lost, and cries of terror ring out against the pleasantly exhilarating music.

If you’ve got a few minutes to kill (and kill, and kill…), I strongly recommend that you check out Viva Caligula.

The stars of Metalocalypse finally get their own album!

Metalocalypse: You should watch the show while you’re at it.

If there was even one metal band on the face of the earth that had both the talent and the sense of humor that fictional band Dethklok has, metal might still be the driving force in music that it once was. On their debut album, “The Dethalbum”, Dethklok prove that they can make shredding metal that rocks your face off while mercilessly mocking the genre at the same time.

Based on the Adult Swim cartoon, “Metalocalpse”, and written/performed for the most part (astonishingly) by one man, Brendon Small, The Dethalbum may be the best metal album of all time. The problem with really heavy metal has always been that they start off with really ridiculous subject matter, and then they express it without a shred of humor or self-reference. This album finally bridges the gap for people that like heavy music but find the substance rather corny.

Typical Dethklok fan.

Dethklok exists to lampoon the genre while also paying metal its due respect. There is no doubt that Brendon Small has done his homework, the music is so heavy and the subjects are so spot-on you almost wouldn’t know that this is kind of a comedy album if you didn’t know it was all music from a funny cartoon. (If you’ve twisted your fingers into pretzels playing “Thunderhorse” on Guitar Hero 2, then you know exactly what I’m talking about). The humor is just subtle enough not to ruin the enjoyment of rocking out to the music just for rocking out’s sake.

It speaks volumes for the quality of the album and for the show that it can garner huge ratings on Adult Swim while sharing airspace with mostly hip-hop flavored shows like The Boondocks. Even if you don’t think you have the stomach for loud and crazy deathmetal, or even if you don’t like weird cartoons and anything that has to do with them, I suggest that you put your perceptions aside and buy this album. If you don’t find yourself smiling and bobbing your head while listening to “Murmaider” and “Birthday Dethday”, it’s probably because your head already exploded from awesomeness.

Why watch for free when you can pay for it?

Xbox 360 users will have something new to get excited about next week: Microsoft has struck a deal with Fox to provide episodes from the first two seasons of Family Guy over their Xbox Live service, at a cost of $2 per episode. Now you can watch episodes of a TV show that’s on two different stations twice daily for free only now you have to pay for it!

The Simpsons+more dick and fart jokes-tidy moral messages=Family Guy!

Family Guy is one of the most popular shows with the Xbox’s male, 18-34 target audience. Other seasons will probably become available soon afterward. It’s a great idea in theory, but I’m not really too sure that there is a single person within that demographic that hasn’t already purchased the show on DVD.

If Microsoft really wanted to be cutting edge, they might have done better by signing Cartoon Network and getting episodes of Frisky Dingo and Metalocalypse on there instead. For now, they’re playing it safe. Additionally, it’s a finger in the eye of iTunes, who has been trying unsuccessfully to secure the rights to Family Guy for some time now. And you can’t really fault them for that.