high school

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Revision as of 08:47, 9 January 2006

Unphotographic memory

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)

Computer: Lappy 486

Date: January 8, 2006

Running Time: 3:01

Page Title: Lappy 486

Transcript

STRONG BAD: {singing} It's an email, baby.

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.}

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: Dampers! 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 stripéd} 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 stripéd} 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 played better video games! Aw, man! That frickin' 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 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: Oh, Strongbadiophage. Um, 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!!

{Cut back to the Lappy 486.}

STRONG BAD: And then, of course, before that we were 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. {without typing} Go ahead and keep score at home. I'll see you next time. {runs off singing} Oh, I'm 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 wearing a wreath and Old-Timey Strong Bad is holding a gladiator shield.}

THE HOMESTAR RUNNER: Oh... aqueduct.

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

DON KNOTTS: {pokes head in} Andy?

{Pan to Sickly Sam. He vanishes, and a Roman 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 prokaryotic process of binary fission.
• Strongbadiophage, which has a hexogonal head, appears to be a type of bacteriophage. These viruses attack a host cell (for example, a paramecium, like Homestar), and force the cell to create copies of the virus by modifying the cell's DNA.

Trivia

• Besides "new strong bad email", the only other item on the main page button read "nothing else!" (The site had just experienced an unusually long hiatus of 35 days since a major update.)

Remarks

• "Cowichewa to you too" is a misinterpretation of "konnichi wa", a basic Japanese greeting.
• Highschool Strong Bad looks very similar to Senor Cardgage.
• Strong Bad breaks the fourth wall by acknowledging the fact that he is a cartoon character.
• 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.
• Homestar plays a left-handed guitar.

Goofs

• When the email was released, Strong Bad's reflection goes outside of the Lappy's screen as he gets up. This occurs due to lack of using a masking effect.
  • This was corrected shortly after it was released.
• Petri dish is misspelled in "Free Petry Dish USA"

Inside References

• The photo from the "photographic memory" Easter Egg is a screen shot from caper.
• There is another reference to Homestar's Pants.
• "Pie factory" was originally mentioned in stunt double.
• "Free Petry Dish USA" is a reference to Free Country USA.
• 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 arms.
• Baby Strong Bad makes a reference to the Atari Duck/Dragon.
  • He's also got one starry eye, which may be a reference to the old 404 page.
• The multiple Homestarmeciums make this an instance of twin characters.

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.
• Don Knotts is an actor best known for playing Barney on The Andy Griffith Show. He was also frequently featured in the Scooby-Doo cartoons, often for no apparent reason.
• The Strongbadiophage's name and appearance are based on the Bacteriophage.
• Similarly, the Homestarmecium and Bubsamecium's names and appearances are based on the Paramecium.

External Links

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