Wow, what a week it’s been, huh? It seems like just the other day that our three day, week long series of posts about Smarkus & Co. began. If you missed the others and are too lazy too scroll down (let’s face it, you are), then click here and here but do not click here. Well, I warned you. And that will teach you to do exactly what I say. Just like Little Joey here, who screwed with Smarkus, the animated, Satan-Cast-In-Silicon, and got what was coming to him in the dead of pajama-pissing night

More on the creators of Smarkus and Co. when the skin on my space bar thumb heals and it doesn’t hurt to type. I chew the skin off my fingers when I see videos like Smarkus and Co. I’m not kidding.

One final note: I’m incredibly disturbed/delighted that Ron Hall, the voice of Smarkus, went on to star in a movie called InterneTrix (which, disappointingly, is not about an Internet-flavored, fruity cereal, ) which is ridicuolously similar to the plot of Smarkus and Company. But instead of people getting sucked into a laughably outdated computer to learn about blind kids playing baseball…

Shown: getting sucked into a computer, artist rendition

…people are getting sucked into a laughably outdated computer to flip around to a song by, one assumes, DMX’s kid brother. Ron Hall, you’ve come a long way, baby!

By the way, I encourage all my readers to please post my Smarkus videos, the only ones online I think, on Ron Hall’s MySpace page. He’ll either love you for it, or deliver high kicks. Whatever the outcome, be sure to let me know how it goes.

All week I’ll be posting clips from Smarkus and Company, and educational cartoon/live-action/technological nightmare sent to me by my man in the field, Junkstore Jesse T. 

Let me set the scene: a mankind-hating blip creature appears one day inside these kids’ computer—which is a hybrid of an Apple II, Radio Shack TRS-80 and a small lawnmower engine. If you were a kid, and an 8-bit genie appeared promising to tell you about the secrets of the universe (or, in this case “How do blind people play baseball?” asks the slackjawed girl. Dumbass.), you would probably be pretty excited. Not this kid who, upon realizing Wikipedia is in excess of 10 years away, would rather just have the goddamned information he’s looking for than go on an adventure. This boy’s response is one of my all-time favorites. Bite me, Smarkus.

How does Huey Lewis and the News factor into all this? Click More to find out!
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I’m hard pressed to call 1947’s “Tubby the Tuba” a bad cartoon. Terrifying? Yes. Boring? Sure. Say what you want about the historical importance of this cartoon, but my copy came from a Jesse “Junkstore” Thompson’s bargain bin, crammed onto one VHS with an atrocious 3 Stooges cartoon (more on that later). Yes, George Pal escaped from the Nazis as a boy, and over 60 years later some smart-ass is making fun of his Oscar-winning creation. Seems fair.

Animation buffs are already pretty familiar with George Pal, who helped pave the way for Pixar with tons of stop-motion animated shorts such as “Shoe-Shine Jasper,” “Jasper and the Watermelons,” and “Jasper’s Minstrels.” Ok, so George Pal’s most famous character—Jasper—might have tarnished his legacy a tad bit. I, for one, fail to see the offensiveness of an adventure though watermelon land by a white-lipped, large headed black child. Only time will tell if history disagrees with me.

Pal’s wikipedia an IMDB entries kind of gloss over all this. Actually, they just sweep it under the rug completely because Pal apologists preach about what a nice guy he was, and how he never saw the offensiveness of his work. He also never called a cop “sugar-tits.” Pal also did “The Gay Knighties” and “What Ho, She Bumps” if minstrel humor isn’t your thing.

I had a hard time making it through Tubby the Tuba, a pretty predictable ‘toon even for anthropomorphic brass instrument flicks. Tubby wants to play more melodic songs, he’s laughed at, a spiritual frog finds him and shows him the way, he proves everyone wrong, he becomes rich, divorces his wife, buys a newspaper chain, and dies alone. I’ve re-edited the short in a more pleasing manner. Enjoy.

My boy Jesse sent this videotape over to Worst Cartoons HQ, and I immediately punched the postman in the face. He thanked me. What you’re about to see is a “bonus feature” tacked on to the end of the Computer Warriors Pilot Episode (the only episode ever created), created to tie into the 1989-1990 toyline. Since it’s nearly as long as Stairway to Heaven, and only mildly more irritating, I’ll list the highlights after the jump!

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