high school

From Homestar Runner Wiki

Revision as of 21:50, 9 January 2006

Debating the Existence of Mysterious

Strong Bad Email #140

Strong Bad talks about his younger years.

Cast (in order of appearance): Strong Bad, Homestar Runner, Marzipan, Strong Mad, Coach Z, Strong Sad, The Poopsmith, Pom Pom, Bubs, The Homestar Runner (Easter Egg), Old-Timey Strong Bad (Easter Egg), Don Knotts (Easter Egg), Sickly Sam (Easter Egg)

Places: Computer Room, Abandoned Pie Factory, High School, Middle School, Free Petry Dish USA, Bubsamecium's Protazoa Stand, Rome (Easter Egg)

Computer: Lappy 486

Date: January 8, 2006

Running Time: 3:01

Page Title: Lappy 486

Transcript

STRONG BAD: {singing} It's the email baby lunch juice.

Subject: high school

Hey Strong Bad!
What were you like during highschool?
Sincerely,
Patrick Cowiche, WA

{Strong Bad stretches out "Hey Strong Bad!", can't seem to be able to pronounce "highschool", and reads "Cowiche, WA" as one word, pronouncing it so it sounds very much like "konichi-wa," which means "hello" in Japanese.}

STRONG BAD: Well, cowichewa to you too, Patrique. Now, I have an extremely unphotographic memory. So, I guess that'd be more like a drawing, or a doodle. Like a doodle memory.

{Strong Bad clears the screen.}

STRONG BAD: But I would hazard a guess that we were probably just like other cartoons were in high school, i.e. we were a team of super sleuths.

{Cuts to a splash screen titled "The Homestar Runner Mysfit-steries" with "story by Youdbetterbelieveit Chimendez" in the lower right. Crudely drawn Homestar Runner, Marzipan, Strong Mad, and Strong Bad stand abreast in the center. Dissolve to Marzipan.}

MARZIPAN: Scampers! My long lost uncle's abandoned pie factory sure is mysterious.

STRONG BAD: Ah, there's no such thing as "mysterious".

HOMESTAR RUNNER: I don't want to take any chances. We should play in a band, just to be safe.

{Cut to Strong Bad, Strong Mad, Marzipan, and Homestar Runner playing the keyboard, the drums, the tambourine, and the guitar, respectively.}

HOMESTAR RUNNER: {singing} Having fun with my friends. Words about a mystery. Shaking hands with my man.

{Cut back to the Lappy 486.}

STRONG BAD: And when we weren't debating the existence of mysterious, Strong Mad and I were all the time trying to liberate Homestar from those ridiculous striped {pronounced stripèd} pants.

{Cut to Strong Mad, Homestar, and Strong Bad in high school. Strong Mad and Strong Bad hold ropes attached to hooks in the ceiling and floor, which then run through hooks on Homestar's waistline. A magnet lies next to Homestar's feet.}

HOMESTAR RUNNER: And you guys are sure this won't emancipate me from my ridiculous striped {pronounced stripèd} pants?

{Cut back to the Lappy 486.}

STRONG BAD: So that's what highschool was like. In, um, middle school we were a bunch of melon-headed babies with gigantic eyes and enormous...

{A baby-sized Coach Z tosses with a box marked "NOT A BALL!", with a plush football beside him. Strong Bad continues, voicing over.}

STRONG BAD: ...imaginations.

BABY COACH Z: {high-pitched, childish voice} I'm pretending I'm the captain of the football torm!

{As Coach Z says this, the nursery-school style background is replaced with a black and white image of a football field.}

{Push pan to a baby Strong Bad in a diaper with a small blue cap on his head. He sits holding a joystick.}

BABY STRONG BAD: {high-pitched, childish voice} I'm pretending I'm playing better video games! Aw, man! That freakin' duck swallowed both of my pixels!

{Push pan to a baby Strong Sad and a baby The Poopsmith. Baby Strong Sad has a pink bow in his hair, long eyelashes, and a frilly divide between his torso and trunk. Baby The Poopsmith wears a blue baby bonnet and holds a stained rattle, with a large pile of dirty diapers behind him.}

BABY STRONG SAD: I'm pretending I'm not sitting next to The Diapersmith.

{As Strong Sad says this, the background, including The Poopsmith's diapers, is replaced by a black and white image of a bi-plane.}

{Baby The Poopsmith turns to baby Strong Sad and blows a raspberry.}

{Pan to the legs of Homestar, who is wearing puffy red and white pants and holding a broom.}

HOMESTAR RUNNER: Now you children skedaddle. {pushes sweeping end of broom at baby The Poopsmith and Strong Sad.}

STRONG BAD: {voicing over, in normal voice} And going even unnecessarily further back, {as Strong Bad says this, baby Pom Pom bounds by the screen, with a Bumble Ball body form and no distinguishable head.} we were all a bunch of plucky parameciums living in Free Petry Dish USA.

{Cut to a petri dish with a liquid inside resembling the shape of the United States of America.}

{Cut to a paramecium Bubs floating in a box marked "BUB5AMECIUM'S PROTAZOA STAND". A paramecium Homestar floats up.}

HOMESTARMECIUM: Hey there, Bubsamecium. I need to buy some embarassing items for my embarassing body parts.

BUBSAMECIUM: Certainly! Six tubes of rear-end cream coming right up!

STRONGBADIOPHAGE: Oh ho ho! Whatcha buying there, Homestarmecium?

HOMESTARMECIUM: Uh oh, it's Strongbadiophage. Um, uh, these are for my twin brother! {divides into two} These are for my twin brother! {divides into four} These are for my twin brother! {divides into eight} These are for my twin brother!

STRONGBADIOPHAGE: Aaaaaa!! {he runs off}

{Cut back to the Lappy 486.}

STRONG BAD: And then, of course, before that we were {pause} Romans living in Roman times. And Don Knotts was always showing up. So there you go, Patrice. Just the facts. {types the score on different lines} Strong Bad Emails: 1, Not Strong Bad Emails: 0. {stops typing} You guys keep score at home. I'll see you next time. {runs off singing} Oh, having fun with my friends!

{The Paper comes down.}

Easter Eggs

• Click on the word "unphotographic" to reveal a photographic memory of the jumble caper.
  • Click on the resulting image to reveal the doodle memory version of the same event.
• Click on "Roman" to see what those times were like.

{Cut to The Homestar Runner and Old-Timey Strong Bad in an black and white Roman land. The Homestar Runner is dressed as Julius Caesar and Old-Timey Strong Bad is dressed as a Roman legionary.}

THE HOMESTAR RUNNER: Oh... aqueduct.

OLD-TIMEY STRONG BAD: Hm... yes! Vomitorium!

DON KNOTTS: {pokes head in} Andy?

{Pan to Sickly Sam wearing a sack reading "OLIVES" instead of his usual "POTATES" sack. He vanishes, and an Ionic column takes his place.}

Fun Facts

Explanations

• A popular misconception is that the Romans made use of a room called a vomitorium for the express purpose of vomiting between meals to make room for more food. Only a very small minority of the highest classes indulged in the practice of deliberately vomiting. A vomitorium is actually an architectural feature -- a passage situated below or behind a tier of seats in an amphitheatre, through which the crowds could "spew out" at the end of a show.
• Homestarmecium, being a paramecium, likely replicates himself using the process of binary fission.
• Strongbadiophage, which has a hexagonal head, appears to be a type of bacteriophage. These viruses attack a host cell (actually bacteria, not parameciums) and force the cell to create copies of the virus by modifying the cell's DNA.
  • One interesting though likely coincidental fact is that just as "bacteriophage" means "one who devours bacteria," "Strongbadiophage" may be taken to mean "one who devours Strong Bad".
• The Homestar Runner mentions aqueducts. The Roman Aqueduct system is perhaps the most famous ever built, running over 250 miles across their empire and supplying over a million gallons of water a day to ancient Rome alone.

Trivia

• When this email was released, the main page button read "new strong bad email" and "nothing else!". The site had just experienced an unusually long hiatus, 35 days, since the last major update.

Remarks

• "Cowichewa to you too" is a misrepresentation of "konnichiwa", a basic Japanese greeting.
• Strong Bad breaks the fourth wall by acknowledging the fact that he is a cartoon character.
• Highschool Strong Bad looks very similar to Senor Cardgage.
• Baby Coach Z wearing green pajamas supports the theory that he wears a green body suit, as Strong Bad questioned in labor day.
• In his flashback, Strong Bad recalls Coach Z being up to 2 years older than himself, but in the stand-up video Strong Sad showed, Coach Z was already an adult when Strong Bad was a little kid.
  • This is similar to record book in which the outdated record book showed baby Strong Bad and an adult Coach Z.
• Homestar plays a left-handed bass guitar.
• Petri dish is misspelled in "Free Petry Dish USA" as a reference to Free Country USA.
  • The puddle in the petri dish is vaguely shaped like the United States of America.

Goofs

One assumes that The Brothers Chaps did not depict Strong Mad's fist between Marzipan's thighs intentionally.

• When the email was released, Strong Bad's reflection went outside of the Lappy's screen as he got up. This occured due to lack of using a masking effect. This was corrected shortly after it was released.
• Originally, on the Mysfit-steries title screen, Strong Mad's fist was visibly protruding from between Marzipan's thighs. This has since been fixed.

Inside References

• The photo from the "photographic memory" Easter Egg is a screen shot from caper.
• There is another reference to Homestar's Pants.
• The "Pie factory" was originally mentioned in stunt double, though the location bears a strong resemblance to Eustice Pietimer's estate in That A Ghost.
• The horizontal lines on the wall of the middle school may be a reference to the lines on the wall of Strong Bad's Basement.
• Homestar manages to play the guitar and Marzipan is able to play the tambourine even though they do not have visible arms.
  • Also, during his song, Homestar mentions "shaking hands with my man," lending credence to the belief that Homestar has hands, but they are invisible.
  • It is also possible that this is just another instance of Homestar not realizing he doesn't have arms.
• "Freakin' duck" is a phrase used by Homestar Runner in In Search of the Yello Dello and Strong Bad on Main Page 13. It might, as in that main page, refer to the Atari Dragon.
• Strong Bad's left eye has a star-shaped reflection, which is also seen in the Old 404 page.
• The multiple Homestarmeciums make this an instance of twin characters.
• Mysfit-steries was written by Youdbetterbelieveit Chimendez.

Real-World References

• The entire part about the characters' high-school selves is a reference to many Hanna-Barbera cartoons from the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, including Scooby-Doo, Jabberjaw, Josie and the Pussycats, Speed Buggy, The New Shmoo, and various others in which a gang of teenagers solved mysteries.
• "Dampers" is a parody of the ubiquitous Scooby-Doo exclamation, "Jeepers!"
• The entire part about the characters' middle-school selves is a reference to Jim Henson's Muppet Babies cartoons.
• The black and white picture behind Baby Strong Sad and Baby The Poopsmith, is the first flight, made by the Wright brothers in 1903 at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina.
  • Live action backdrops such as that and the football field behind Baby Coach Z were used in Muppet Babies when the babies would use their imaginations.
• Don Knotts is an actor best known for playing Barney Fife on The Andy Griffith Show. He also twice guest-starred in the New Scooby-Doo Movies cartoons.
• The Old Timey Romans Easter Egg may be a reference to "The Roman Holidays", a Hanna Barbera animated sitcom from the 1970s. Like "The Flintstones" and "The Jetsons", the basic premise was "funny business in another time period".

External Links

• Watch "highschool"
• View the Flash file for "highschool"
• View "highschool" (Mirror)
• View the Flash file for "highschool" (Mirror)
• Forum thread re: highschool