Late Nite JengaJam Interview - 4 Oct 2007
From Homestar Runner Wiki
The Brothers Chaps did an interview for Late Nite JengaJam. They talk about sequels, killing off characters, puppets and Mellow Mushroom.
Running Time: approximately 67 minutes. Interview starts at 4:30.
Transcript
| Warning: Language that may be considered offensive by some readers follows. To view a censored version of this page, see Late Nite JengaJam Interview - 4 Oct 2007 (censored). |
JENGASHIP: But, without further ado, we have one of our two guests today. Matt Chapman is the man who does the voices for most of the, quote/unquote, "dumb animal characters" that comprise the Homestar Runner. Matt, how're you doing? {pause} Hello, Matt?
MIKE CHAPMAN: I'm here, I'm Mike.
JENGASHIP: Oh, Mike, hey. How're you doing?
MIKE: I just called in, like, thirty seconds ago.
JENGASHIP: Oh, wow.
MATT CHAPMAN: Matt's here too, I had muted my phone, and forgot to press unmute.
JENGASHIP: Wow, so we have Matt and Mike Chapman, Mike being the one who does half the animation, and Matt does the voices, and together they make what is arguably the most popular Flash cartoon, or cartoon of any kind, on the World Wide Web.
MATT: Hey, well, thanks for saying that. I have no facts to back that up...
MIKE: Sounds right to me.
MATT: Yeah, but the more you say it, the more it, uh...
MIKE: I believe it.
JENGASHIP: It's a self-fulfilling thing, the more we say it becomes true.
MATT: Exactly.
JENGASHIP: I'm sure you get this at every interview that you guys do, but it started out... more than 10 years ago, in '96, during the Olympics, Mike and Craig Zobel worked on a children's book?
MIKE: That's correct. We were bored one day and went to a bookstore on our time off, and thought that we could probably do something better, so we wrote the original children's book that day.
JENGASHIP: Hello?
MIKE: Just... no color, just Sharpies on typing paper.
JENGASHIP: Hello?
MIKE: We didn't really have computers... Hello? Hello? Can you hear us?
JENGASHIP: Oh, sorry about that, I...
OBOECRAZY: {overlapping} Yeah, we can hear you.
MIKE: Someone was saying "Hello, hello".
JENGASHIP: Oh, that was me, I apologize, I had a momentary lapse of reception.
MIKE: Oh, gotcha. Anyway, yeah. We just made copies at Kinko's, like, 10 copies for our friends, and there was no color or anything like that, it was just old-school Xerox stuff. And then a year or so later we scanned it in and colored it, made a souped-up version, a little bit. It was like '97. And then we started the website in 2000.
JENGASHIP: And, you know, that children's book motif sort of occurs in your work... I mean, you did something for the 10th anniversary last year, and then every now and again you'll see a children's book written by Lem Sportsinterviews?
MIKE: Yes. Leomard, for long.
JENGASHIP: You get a lot of these recurring..., I guess, site gags, or inside gags, for people who are following the site for a long time, almost rewarding them to keep up.
MIKE: Yeah, exactly. It pays off to look at... to watch all the stuff we drew, and a lot of stuff for people who've been watching for a long time, and 90% of the the people, they don't know what it means, but for the 10% that do, it's hopefully good for them.
MATT: That's something that I feel like I learned from Mystery Science Theater, I felt like they were always dropping... either references to a joke they had already made that was totally exclusive to the show, or making some weird reference to a commercial from the late '70s or something, that... they knew that only about 10 people were gonna get, but they made that joke anyway, so it was just sort of like... "This is for you 10 dudes that're gonna like this joke." I thought that was very cool, and just sort of... the way that it gets that kind of homey, grass-rootsey feel, and so we like to keep those... and it's also a part of creating the universe of the Homestar characters. Having stuff like, there's a weird children's book author inside the Homestar universe, and there's this guy who writes all the episodes of Cheat Commandos, and other things...
MIKE: The children's book author's wife writes weird...
MATT: Beverly Cleary.
MIKE: ...junior literature. It's been a while since she's written anything.
MATT: {overlapping} Beverly Sportsinterviews... I'm pretty sure she's "ex-wife", too... I don't know if we've...
MIKE: I'm sure Lem couldn't hold down a woman for very long.
{laughter}
JENGASHIP: It seems to me that you've fleshed out this universe quite considerably. I remember in the past, like, people have asked you, "Hey, you guys planning on doing other kind of projects?" but anything you can think of has almost sort of..., I wouldn't want to say shoehorned, but you've found a way to incorporate it into the larger Homestar universe.
MIKE: Yeah, exactly. Making bad metal songs and crappy, drawn on notebook paper comics; we can find a way to work into Homestar.
MATT: Yes, there really isn't anybody to not tell us to do that stuff. It's sort of, almost, the curse of Homestar Runner, where it's like, you know, there are other projects we'd love to do, but then it's, "Oh, we can just do it for this website." So why start another project when we can just do it for the cartoon? So it's like the double edged sword of we'll never get out of this... {laughs} we can just keep expanding.
JENGASHIP: Yeah, it sort of goes with a testament to your guy's creativity. Not only do you have the regular citizens of Free Town, USA, but now you have that metal band Limozeen and more recently that not so metal band, Sloshy.
MIKE: That's right.
{pause, and then all three try to speak at once}
JENGASHIP: Go ahead, I'm sorry.
MATT: Oh, no, I was going to say exactly. It's very easy to keep it going and actually work on it, especially things like that, you know... Strong Bad's favorite band was Limozeen, and it just kept developing its own thing. Teen Girl Squad started off as just a one off thing that Strong Bad did. Now Teen Girl Squad has its own characters that keep recurring and crap. We recently made up this hip-hop character named Peacey P for a Teen Girl Squad, and we probably going to make.... We probably going to make a Peacey P song. Peacey P and Coach Z might do a duet.
JENGASHIP: Aw, man. I'd love that.
MIKE: {simultaneously} All of the weird stuff like that.... {laughs}
MATT: So, it's just weird things like, okay this one character made this comic called Teen Girl Squad. And inside Teen Girl Squad he made up this rapper character that the characters in Teen Girl Squad like, and now that character is going to do a duet with one of the main characters. I dunno know. It's all ridiculous.
JENGASHIP: I think one of the reasons have managed to be successful— to be able to extend it so much is you don't play necessarily like... I mean I guess there is a continuity with Strong Bad's technology and Cardboard Homestar and Marzipan, and you can get those gags. But, for the most part, it's not an ongoing arc story. You are able to pretty much go in there fresh, and people who've never seen Homestar Runner before and go in there an understand it because there's no continuing story line.
MATT: Right, the relationship between the characters is really the only on going thing. Like, when you watch a cartoon you get Strong Bad is a jerk and...
MIKE: Yeah, it's pretty easy to figure out which characters, what role that they play.
MATT: Yeah, so that's sort of the thing. There's that story that slowly develops, things like Strong Sad has obviously gotten bolder and you a couple times when Strong Sad actually lashes out at Strong Bad. Which never used to happen. But, there's these slowly slowly moving arcs that people have been watching it for a long time.
MIKE: Coach Z has gotten a lot—
JENGASHIP: {simulatenously} —character development.
MATT: {laughs} Yeah, so, you know... there's that, and there's at the same time— Yeah, it's sort of fun to not mess with that. Occassionally... we just recently did this cartoon called "The DNA Evidence" that sort of tied together a running gag that we've been doing, just as sort of a background thing in a bunch of cartoons. And we thought it'd be funny to try to tie it all together. We sort of, there's not a lot of plot holes. At the same time, it was hard enough, it'd be a pain in the ass to try do that every week.
JENGASHIP: Oh, yeah, absolutely. Like, I remember some series— Well most of my audience comes from roosterteeth.com, which is the home of Red vs. Blue. You guys heard of it?
MIKE: Yeah. We've met those guys.
JENGASHIP: The reason Bernie gave for ending the series- the regular one- because they were doing an ongoing story, for a six minute off, six minutes a segment, whatever, episodes. It was sort of collapsing under its own mass. You couldn't incorporate all of that continuity after a while.
MATT: Right, right. And it makes it easier to those... to do those off shoot things when all we're doing is a sorta three to five minute cartoon every week. It's way easier to do like, "Okay, we're going to do a commercial for this fake brand of marshmallows this week." That doesn't need to follow any continuity. It's kinda of nice to jump completely out of any continuity.
JENGASHIP: You guys have been at it for like, what, seven years now. The Flash animation, right?
MIKE: Yeah, this will be eight years, I guess, at the end of this year?
MATT: Yeah.
MIKE: That's pretty crazy.
JENGASHIP: I think I've been watching for five.
MIKE: Wow. Nice work. I haven't been watching that long.
JENGASHIP: Like, I remember the first time I ever had any experience with Homestar Runner was a sticker on a tunnel, underneath the train tracks, where I went to school. It was Strong Mad. "Strong Mad Has A Posse." And it had the homestarrunner.com URL.
MIKE: Nice, that was an old sticker.
MATT: Yeah, I don't know who that would've been, unless someone made their own.
MIKE: Well, we have a thing on the page for a while, a download where it just had a layout of— so they could've made their own. Yeah, that was the first Homestar Runner product we ever made. I got a hundred of those printed at stickerguy.com, I believe, I think in 2000.
MATT: It was such a big deal.
MIKE: We didn't have an online store or anything. So, we got a hundred of those printed and just gave them to our friends. If you've got an actual vinyl sticker, there's not too many of those around. I don't think I have one of them.
MATT: Tried this thing right when I moved to New York and stick them all over the cool bars in Brooklyn. And they'd be like down the next day. {Mike laughs} So much for our street team.{laughter} So the fact that you actually saw one somewhere and it made you go to the website, that's pretty awesome. Yeah, somewhere it worked.
JENGASHIP: Yeah, sure. You gotta thank your contacts out in Villanova, Pennsylvania, I guess.
MIKE: Yeah, but I don't know who those are.
JENGASHIP: But it sorta goes back to what I was saying with community. Back in the day, the way that you heard of me, I was shocked that you heard of Jengaship from the old Strong Bored. You had the old message board, you had a community there. And I remember a bunch of names, like InvisiblePedestrian and Taryn and...
MIKE: Oh, yeah, Taryn.
JENGASHIP: Yeah, you made the game for her.
MIKE: Taryn got immortalized in that, yeah, Taryn game where you kick— you just kick her around the screen, I think? And her head came off maybe? Yeah.
JENGASHIP: And a bunch of other people like Carter and Emiwy, I don't know you remember her or not...
MIKE: Emiwy, I remember Emiwy. Eh, Steve, was there an Eh, Steve? No, what did he call himself?
MATT: StrongSteve.
MIKE: He called himself Homsar, but yeah StrongSteve or Homsar, I forget which. Yeah, it was kinda funny. It was this terrible, when we were hosted on Yahoo! at the time and they didn't support PHP or any sort of backend stuff. It was just called NivaScript {?} and it was so not robust.
MATT: Do you remember what we called it when the board would crash?
JENGASHIP: I'm trying to remember.
MIKE: I don't.
MATT: Somebody, I remember who, I think there was one time when it crashed, I put up the word "BONK!" up at the top.
JENGASHIP: BONK! Oh, my goodness, I remember that!
{laughter}
MATT: So it crashed constantly, yeah, a people started call it "Bonk" and even a couple people had their screen name as something Bonk. It was kinda fun. It was fun to be that involved. You know, we read emails from folks- all the Strong Bad emails are all real- but at the same time not quite as hands on. And it was fun, too, I never really posted as me but I would usually post as Strong Bad. So, it was nice to do that.
MIKE: Yeah, wasn't your avatar Dennis Franz for awhile?
MATT: Yes, it was several different pictures of Dennis Franz including the one from when he was on The Simpsons.
MIKE: Yeah, that's right.
MATT: As playing Homer in the sexual harassment TV movie.
JENGASHIP: {quoting the episode} Mr. Simpson, that's a living creature!
MATT: {as Dennis Franz} I don't care... {laughter} I'm gonna get me something sweet. {all laugh}
JENGASHIP: Oh, man. And I guess it comes a natural question is, what happened to the site?
MIKE: It's still up, actually.
JENGASHIP: Well, yeah, homestarrunner.com, but I mean board had that little Easter egg to it, but I mean the actual message board was the meeting place for the site.
MATT: Uh, well, that Yahoo! one was really hard to maintain, obviously, and it kept breaking and stuff. That became more of a hassle, and then, we switched web hosts when the traffic got to be pretty bad, er good rather. And so we tried another message board at one point and it got really overloaded, which is a good thing, Within an hour, there was a thousand users, but it was just crawling, and at the time we didn't want to have to pay for the bandwidth, and we looked into, whatever, lots of message board suites you could get like free message board hosting services, and crap like that. I don't know. It was the sort of thing where, "Yeah, it's too much trouble." And we're doing Strong Bad emails pretty regularly. We love being in touch with the fans and the website —
MIKE: {overlapping} It's mostly technology.
MATT: Yeah, mostly it was about technology and some laziness. But, yeah, it'd be nice— and at that point, the other thing was at that point there was two or three pretty big Homestar fan sites already and they were all run really well. Like, they had their own moderators and all of this stuff, eventually when the Homestar Wiki appeared it was like, "The fans are doing this for us, they've got the community, so we'll let the fans run the community, and we'll keep doing the cartoons." So, that's kinda why we don't host our own message board.
MIKE: I remember—
MATT: {overlapping} The fans are doing it way better than we could have.
JENGASHIP: Like Dot.net and homestarfreaks and....
MIKE: There was one, the-coolest-stuff-ever.com, that was one of the early ones that was really good for awhile.
MATT: Yeah, homestarrules, there was a homestarrules for a while.
MIKE: Yeah, again that's super cool, too, just the fact that the fans are doing that for us. It's crazy too, and they're really great about policing stuff. I mean, if somebody is links to somebody trying to sell our merchandise without our permission or if there is an eBay thing, the community will go after these people for us, so we don't even have to pay lawyers to do it. That's pretty awesome.
JENGASHIP: Wow.
MATT: The community, that's a perfect example of the community. They've become like, uh, whatever, their own police force for Homestar.
JENGASHIP: Then, I've taken a one off gag from Homestar Runner and spun it off into a successful online identity.
MATT: Yeah, exactly. And speaking of that, you'll be hearing from our lawyers shortly.
JENGASHIP: {laughs} Well, I was wondering about that.
MATT: It's such an obscure thing, and that's what's great. You know, the Strong Sad journal has never been directly linked to it. It's always been linked from that one Easter egg.
MIKE: Is JengaJam just from the journal?
MATT: Homsar refers to it as "Late Nite JengaJam." JengaJam is from that one cartoon, but it's the invite for, I think that's what it's called.. I forget. It's some party that Homsar is throwing.
MIKE: Yeah, it's um, "I'm a-creepin' and I'm a-creepin' and I'm a-creepin'"?
JENGASHIP: That's right.
MATT: {unintelligible}
MIKE: Nice.
MATT: Yeah.
JENGASHIP: So I found it, I think I found on the Strong Bad website and you click— I'm giving out an Easter egg now... Go to the Wiki if you want the Easter eggs, man. Find your own way. I had to do the hard way. By clicking, by pressing tab you find where yellow things were highlighted. {laughs}
MATT: It was hilarious, it was way— I don't know how many years, you been doing it before even I knew the tab trick. I found it out by reading one of the fan sites. Like, "Wait, really? You can just hit tab?" Our dad was very happy to hear that because we'd catch our dad watching the cartoons and he'd be just clicking on everything. Going through the entire cartoon, clicking a thousand times.
MIKE: Clearly not watching the cartoon or paying any attention to what anyone was saying, just clicked on every word and every object on the screen.
MATT: Like, "Dad, that email only has one Easter egg." I don't know...
JENGASHIP: Well, yeah, that brings up another point: the whole interactivity of the cartoon. The fact it's on the web, like if you were watching it on TV, you really can't click things on your TV. One cool thing with the DVDs are you still have some interactivity in there.
MIKE: Right.
JENGASHIP: Not necessarily all the freedom, but I think it's kinda cool that you do that sort of fan service when you hide something. And something hidden as an Easter egg will become as part, in the fan's mind, as, you know, the actual continuity of the story you are trying to tell.
MIKE: Yeah, there are sometimes when we, you know, if there is an Easter egg at the end of a cartoon, we are really tempted to put it into the main cartoon if it's really funny and we really like it. It's a good part of the cartoon, and there is always the temptation, "Why don't we put that at the end of the cartoon?"
MATT: Yeah, there's really {unintelligible}
MIKE: {overlapping} But, knowing that most people are going to see it either way, and you know... Keeping the Easter eggs, I dunno ... It gives the fan the feel of something a little special.
MATT: Four or five years ago, I feel like we'd meet people that would say, we would tell them, yeah we hide the stuff. "Wait, you hide stuff in your cartoons?" And, so we were like on Strong Bad email number 60 or 70, so they would get all excited to go back and check out all things in our cartoons. But, I haven't heard that from anybody in a long time. So, if you watch the cartoon, it's probably common knowledge that there is hidden crap and ... I think that Easter egg culture just sort of is a thing with DVDs and just sort of stuff in general, just in Flash cartoons, they're kind of prevalent.
JENGASHIP: Oh, yeah, definitely. Now, I remember you were doing DVD commentaries way before most people had DVD players in their houses.
{laughter}
MATT: Yeah, you know it's so funny, we do it on our own actual DVDs, but back then we did the DVD commentary on those cartoons, it was like a joke. Oh, right, DVD commentary. Like DVDs were a funny novelty fad that was happening. {laugher}
MIKE: Deleted scenes.
MATT: Yeah, that was all just a funny thing that we thought... I figured DVDs would stick around, but I totally thought that was a fad. I didn't think we'd be doing it legitimately five years later.
MIKE: DVDs do still advertise "interactive menus." though which should be illegal.
JENGASHIP: Oh, yeah, you already bought the DVD.
MATT: Of course, it's interactive! I have to— Interactive menu, all that means is that you have to press up or down and hit enter.
MIKE: And then "scene selection." That was another one that they'd list. Scene selection. Wow! Bonus.
MATT: I can actually select which scene I would like to view.
JENGASHIP: Whoa. What a modern age we now live in. And now, they're looking to replace these DVDs with HD-DVDs or... really, more online downloadable content. And I'm wonderin', like I know you have Podcast Runner and everything, but have dabbled or looked into anything like Xbox Arcade or Xbox Marketplace or anything like that?
MATT: There is, you know... we've considered that sort of thing. But for us, I don't know, we just enjoy doing it the way we are doing it now, and it's free, and I know that's... I know you can essentially do it free on Xbox Arcade but if some is savvy enough to use Xbox Live or Arcade and downloaded content from it, they can probably get on the web and watch it for free. Especially now there is all these plug-ins like a Google, iGoogle widget that like it's an RSS feed and it will automatically, when you go to homestarrunner.com it will make it full screen. But not show you the crap outside of the viewing area that you are not suppose to see. It auto-formats it and all this stuff. So, I feel like if it's your desire... Because one of the complaints we get occasionally is we'll have those cartoons in that tiny default size for Flash that it had in 1999 we started making the cartoons. We have it that way. There are plenty of ways to watch it full screen now.
JENGASHIP: True, and all encompassing as it has been, for the past seven years of your lives, you guys have managed to do some outside projects. I remember a certain episode of Sealab, where Sharko is like training, and I hear someone singing. I'm thinking to myself, "That's not Chapman!"
MATT: Our friend Christian works for Seventy-Thirty, who made Sealab and who makes Frisky Dingo. So, they just said, "Hey, what we're trying to do, we need—" ,and it's funny because right, almost in tandem when were do our email that was making fun of montages, so we also had a training montage in our cartoon right around the same time. But, yeah, you know, I tried to do more of a Jon Bon Jovi voice, but then they said, "Can you be squealier?" So, it just wound being Larry from Limozeen. He's actually credited, or I'm credited on IMDb or someplace as Larry Palaroncini is credited for singing that song for Sealab, which is pretty hilarious. Only furthering the myth that Limozeen was actually an 80's metal band.
JENGASHIP: Wow. That's pretty cool , andI remember the one side project that you did where I checked it out and it really wasn't, I mean— the MellowMushroom.com website.
MIKE: That wasn't a side project.
JENGASHIP: {overlapping} Specifically because you guys did it.
MIKE: That was, that was... I did that in 2000?
MATT: Right when we were starting the site.
MIKE: 2000. 2001, maybe, and that was purely business.
MATT: That wasn't— that doesn't count as a side project.
MIKE: {overlapping} That doesn't count as a side project, that was just work.
JENGASHIP: Oh, work.
MIKE: Yeah. That was just paying the bills. And it was... you know, they basically... At the time, I wasn't— Homestar Runner didn't have, wasn't anything to worry about, so I didn't feel bad about ripping myself off, and ripping ourselves off and making the site to be very similar.
MATT: It's so great because it still says "Toons" on it and still is only one "toon" on it.
MIKE: {laughs} Yeah.
MATT: I wanna like talk—
MIKE: {overlapping} 'Cause we just—
{silence}
MIKE: Sorry, Matt.
MATT: {simultaneously} Go ahead.
MATT: I was just going to say that I want to call them up, tell them and call them, "Hey, I recorded a new sound for that guy just saying 'Toon'. Will you change the button so it just says 'Toon' now?"
MIKE: 'Cause they originally, I did the site as it is now, I just looked it today randomly, and it's pretty much the exact same. The idea was we would continue to make cartoons and make stuff for it, but right about that time we did that site, we started to focus more on Homestar Runner, so we didn't have time, and they never found anybody else to do much on the site.
JENGASHIP: It's a smart move on their part. I live, I'm in the North, Philadelphia. So I'm probably at least 100 miles from the nearest Mellow Mushroom. But, if I'm ever down there, I'm going to visit them specifically because you worked on the site.
MIKE: Cool.
JENGASHIP: You guys should be collecting some royalty checks.
MATT: {laughs} Yeah, come on.
MIKE: It's pretty good, it's pretty good pizza.
MATT: Yeah, it's good pizza.
JENGASHIP: {gives information about calling in} ...And I have a couple callers in the room right now, but before I get to them, I want to hear, I guess we talk about the characters. But it occurs to me that we can hear from themselves and let them speak for them.
MATT: Oh, I didn't know they were suppose to come. They're not here right now.
JENGASHIP: Aw, man.
MATT: {laughs} I'm just kidding. Uh, who do you want to talk to?
JENGASHIP: Well, I guess I should— There's sort of a metatexual moment. I can talk to Homsar for a minute?
MATT: Oh, wow. He's really hard to locate. Hang on a second. I'm also walking around my neighborhood, talking on a phone, so my neighbors are going to get freaked out.
JENGASHIP: Wow.
MATT: Well, ask away. I'll see if I can find him.
JENGASHIP: Well, you know, Homsar, I'm wondering, like, um... Did your Jengaship ever get repaired?
HOMSAR: My paste is overwhelmed since Twelvesday.
JENGASHIP: {laughs} Oh my goodness. Wow, he called my bluff. That was a metatextual moment where I meet my creator. Sort of like those moments in fiction where they meet the author.
HOMSAR: If you don't step away from the car, I'll chop your fingers on.
JENGASHIP: Wow, that's got to be the most violent thing I've heard you say, Homsar.
MIKE: He's got a mean streak. Don't push him, man, he's got a mean streak.
JENGASHIP: Okay, I guess thank you for your time, Homsar. We'll get to our callers in a little bit, but we've got one person— but I should give my co-host, Oboe, the first crack at you guys.Lauren, did you have any questions for Matt and Mike?
OBOECRAZY: Yeah, I want to know why Trogdor is so hard to play on Guitar Hero.
MIKE: {laughs} I know. It's so much easier to play in real life.
MATT: Yeah, we suck at it. We immediately cranked it up to expert thinking we'd be so great at it, and we were just... yeah, we suck too. Talk to Harmonix or Activision or who ever is doing it now.
OBOECRAZY: So I guess my related question is did you have guys have anything to do with that besides saying, "Yeah! Go for it."?
MATT: Well, yeah Alex Rigopulos, the dude that was the president of Harmonix— I guess he still is, of Harmonix still making Guitar Hero. He's just a fan and he emailed us and said "You guys want to put a song on here?" Yeah, so basically, basically, we said yes. And then they put it on, and there is actually a Limozeen song on Rocks The 80s or whatever— the Encore one that just came out over the summer.
JENGASHIP: Oh wow.
MATT: We tried to do, we tried to get something together for Rock Band, but I just had a baby so we didn't really have enough time to get something going to sneak in some sort of Homestar reference in Rock Band. Sadly.
OBEOCRAZY: Oh, congratulations.
JENGASHIP: Congratulations on that, by the way.
MATT: No, no, we didn't get anything in Rock Band.
JENGASHIP: One of the cool things about that track being on Guitar Hero II was it actually was the track from the album. It's not like they have people covering it, and it doesn't sound like Mike singing. In Strong Bad's voice. I wonder what that would sound like...
MIKE: {laughs} What, me singing Trogdor?
JENGASHIP: Yeah.
MIKE: No no no.
JENGASHIP: As Strong Bad.
MIKE: No no no no no no.
JENGASHIP: I don't want hurt yourself.
MIKE: There's a reason why I don't do voices on the site.
MATT: What if The Cheat made it, though, Mike? The Cheat had Strong Bad singing Trogdor.
MIKE: I think of a...
STRONG BAD: {Powered By The Cheat} I can do it, a... {off key} Trogdor was a man, I mean he was a dragon man.
MIKE: That's all I can do. {laughter} It's really bad. I told you.
JENGASHIP: But I think that's the first time I heard that cover, anyway. I remember I used to see the Powered By The Cheat stuff like all the time, and now—
MIKE: We're probably due for some Powered— There's been a lot Easter egg and small bits in emails where there will be Powered By The Cheat stuff, but there hasn't been any full Powered By The Cheat stuff—
MATT: Yeah, Powered By The Cheat and Marshie were two things that really polarized folks. Those were two things that— and Old-Timey stuff.
MIKE: {overlapping} And Old-Timey stuff. Yeah, a lot of people loved it, but a lot of people really hated it.
MATT: Yeah, so Powered By The Cheat we relegated to appearing in— He'd do stuff in the context of a cartoon, but not solo cartoons. But, yeah, we should probably, probably not listen to what people say and just make a Powered By The Cheat cartoon. Because I love them. They're some of my favorite things on the site. Mainly because Mike does them all. {Mike laughs} And I don't have to—
MIKE: You do not need to help with those.
MATT: I can go out of town.
JENGASHIP: Well, I have a caller from Michigan that is unmuted. You're on Late Nite JengaJam.
MIKE: Hi, Michigan.
JENGASHIP: Michigan? Are you with us?
OLDSCHOOL: Oh, hello? Hi, Dick, this is OldSchool.
{JengaJam, Mike and Matt all speak at once}
OLDSCHOOL: How's it going? Yeah, I called in late. I didn't specifically have a question, but I do love the Homestar Runner. So...
MIKE: Well, great!
MATT: {laughs} That's awesome.
JENGASHIP: Well, Michigan, thanks for your call. Keep listening in.
OLDSCHOOL: I'll keep listening.
MIKE: We're from Indiana, that's close to Michigan.
OLDSCHOOL: Pretty close.
MIKE: Yeah, we've got relatives in Michiana. That's what they call the northern part of Michigan, I mean Indiana, right?
JENGASHIP: Wow, small world. I have friends in Michigan, actually.
MIKE: Is the southern part of Michigan called Michigana too?
OLDSCHOOL: I'm not sure. I have a sister in Anderson, though.
MIKE: Oh. I don't know where that is. I only know about Winnemac. It's a really small town, but it's really cool.
OLDSCHOOL: It's on the other side of the state from that area, I think.
MIKE: Yeah.
OBOECRAZY: This has been Geography Talk on the Late Nite JengaJam.
MIKE: {laughs} Yeah.
JENGASHIP: That's very appropriate since your host, JengaShip, is a two time geography bee winner. If I knew where Three Mile Island was, I would've competed in the nationals. Or at least the state levels.
MATT: {overlapping} Awwww.
MIKE: Really?
JENGASHIP: It turns out it's in Pennsylvania, where I live, but I thought it was in Tennessee. {Matt and Mike try to speak at once, but cut each other off.} It was a history thing.
MATT: You thought an island was in Tennessee?
JENGASHIP: Yeah, there's rivers and stuff.
{Mike laughs}
MATT: I was just kidding.
MIKE: We're laughing—
JENGASHIP: I was a kid. What do you want from me? Actually, I have someone in here I know has a question. Trav, you're on Late Nite JengaJam. How are you doing?
TRAV: Oh Jesus Christ, I'm unmuted. Yeah, what's going on?
JENGASHIP: You're on the air with Matt and Mike Chapman.
TRAV: Hey, what's goin' on?
MIKE: What state are you from?
TRAV: I'm from Massachusetts.
MIKE: Well, that's not very close to Indiana.
TRAV: No. No, not at all.
MIKE: I've never been to the fine state of Massachusetts.
TRAV: Oh, it is fine.
MATT: You've never been to Boston, Mike?
MIKE: No, I never have been to Boston.
TRAV: Never?
MATT: {simultaneously} Are you in Boston?
TRAV: No, I'm not. I'm actually north of Boston. Up in the North Shore of Massachusetts.
MIKE: Oh, okay.
TRAV: But I've been there.
MATT: So what's going on?
TRAV: Ah, not much. It's nice to finally talk to you guys, I must say. I've enjoyed Homestar Runner over the years. It was actually Mr. Jenga over here that got me involved in it some years ago.
MIKE: Nice.
TRAV: And I have to say one of my favorite things that you guys did was the Strong Bad Sings album. And I was curious to know if you guys had a sequel in the works, so like another album comin' out, 'cause I'm really interested to hear more Limozeen.
MATT: {laughs} We were talking about that just the other day, and, uh, yeah, especially... I don't know, but home recording is so much easier— not that it wasn't easy when we made the first CD, but you know, Garage Band and all this stuff, it's so much cheaper to do and do it in less time. There's kinda no excuse we haven't made another CD at this point, especially since we probably have three albums worth of new songs we've made on the website since we've put out that CD. We want to do one, but it's just a matter of getting off our asses and doing it.
MIKE: That's the one thing. Before, you know, in the early years of the site, the songs we did would be pretty short. And so the album really fleshed out a lot of these songs that on the website were only ten or fifteen seconds long. But now, we tend to make the songs more full featured anyway.
MATT: Yeah, we'd have to try harder to try to soup them up for the CD.
MIKE: Yeah.
MATT: Make it worthwhile to buy it.
MIKE: Yeah, and the versions on the website were really half-ass because we didn't have Garage Band or any access to any decent sounding programable drums or anything.
MATT: It was just Mike and I sitting at two computers in our apartment, holding up a microphone to an amp or something.
MIKE: Yep.
JENGASHIP: Well, thanks Trav. We'll catch up with you later. See you later.
TRAV: All right, man.
MATT: {simultaneously} Watch out for that, we'll— that's a good— we'll mark that down as another person who gives a shit about a CD and we'll get working on one.
MIKE: That makes five of you.
JENGASHIP: Oh, six!
MIKE: Six? Okay. {laughs}
Count3D
LMay
Stinkoman L10
Vicki
John1974
Chatroom
Joss Whedon
Fame/Puppets
Senor Cardgage
Strong Bad/Closing
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