Cartoon Dump
CD had previously existed as a live show in L.A. and a set of online episodes, but on January 8 the show came to the East Coast for the first time; and there will be new shows on February 19 (this Tuesday) and March 11.
The January show was really fun. The premise is much like the online version: Erica Doering plays the host, Compost Brite, of a warped cartoon "children's show". She's a perennially cheery and perky character with an optimistic outlook; as the old joke goes, if you gave her horse droppings as a gift, she'd say "Wow, a pony!" And she needs it, since everybody else is completely neurotic, and full of problems that would never see the light of day on a real kiddie show. The most depressed of the supporting characters is, naturally, Frank Conniff's Moodsy the Clinically Depressed Owl. Although he wears a brightly colored anthropomorphic costume, he's also alcoholic and suicidally inclined. And of course, Compost Brite always tries to extract kiddie-friendly lessons about things like sharing and making a difference, even if she's really just driving Moodsy into even deeper depression. For instance, in the third online episode, after watching an atrocious Bucky & Pepito episode, Moodsy says, "There was something about that cartoon — the harsh, barren landscape; the empty, faceless characters; the overall tone of sorrow and regret — it was like a snapshot into my soul." and Compost Brite replies, "Well, I hope your soul said CHEESE!!!"
Unlike the online version (and presumably the LA version, where the online episodes were filmed) which takes place beside a dumpster, this version has no set. So, stretches of live comedy alternate with bad cartoons chosen by Jerry Beck (who introduced the cartoons and the show as a whole, but didn't act in the comedy segments). Contrary to what one might think based on Conniff's MST3K role, the cartoons are presented without any MST3K-style riffing or commentary while they're running, but the abundant laughter from the crowd is accompaniment enough (it alone makes them work much better than the online version).
The venue is pretty cool, too: a combination of comedy club and eatery, with a bar that's separate from the performance area, which doubles as a restaurant. Each of the menus features a picture of somebody who's performed at the club, such as Sarah Silverman (one of many famous comedians who have performed live there). The food is good too (if a bit pricey).
The cartoons themselves? Jerry Beck has really drawn on his vast experience to dig deep into the bottom of the animated barrel. As a result all the cartoons are really old (Jerry pointed out that they're actually old cartoons, in case anybody thought they were modern ones like the Ambiguously Gay Duo made to look old), obscure (they make the crummy formulaic cartoons that air on Boomerang look good) and cheaply and poorly designed and animated (one particularly bad sequence stood out, in which the villain and his henchman dance to celebrate their evil plan of turning people to stone; it's hard to explain in words, but the drawings just didn't flow the way they should). They do tend to be lame rather than actively painful, but still definitely provide a lot of unintentionally funny moments. And the premises are as hilariously lame as one would hope for. For instance:
Mighty Mister Titan (also in the first online episode): an exercise superhero. Really! He does jumping jacks and the like (with 4 or 5 drawings per rep) while enjoining us to join along; some of the exercises are performed in equally jerky fashion by a tip-dispensing stick figure named Tipso.
Super President: a DePatie-Freleng production (!) about, well, a superhero who's also the president of the United States. I'll just quote the show's intro for his awe-inspiring powers:
His power was born in a cosmic storm! Every molecule charged with might! Powers that enable him to change his molecular structure to steel! To granite! To whatever the need requires!The Adventures of Sir Gee Whiz On The Other Side Of The Moon (also in the sixth online episode; since only one pilot episode of the series was ever produced, this is identical to the version the show used): This time, in one of the last pieces of animation that Hugh Harman and Rudolf Ising ever produced (!), the main character is not a superhero, but a leprechaun (voiced by Ising himself) who lives on the moon who takes a little girl (who is so poorly designed that her face looks more like that of a blowup doll) there. One of the biggest laughs came from one of the "aliens" on the Moon, who doesn't exactly put the Selenites of H. G. Wells's The First Men in the Moon to shame, Señor Ropo:
Here are the six episodes so far of the online version:
And more info:
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