Giant Robot Invasion! – Home of Comedy Writer Matt Willard

Didn’t catch my roast of Noah Antwiler, AKA The Spoony One? Now you can watch it right here!

This monologue was an epic project in the making. Since I didn’t have a video camcorder like the other roasters did, I knew the monologue had to be the strongest point of my roast. Here’s a basic play-by-play of how it came together:

1. I wrote down as much as I knew about Spoony, citing references to his work and other facts. I organized these into categories like People, Places, and Things for a better overview. These facts were written down as normal statements, which I could then tinker with to provide setups for my jokes. This is partly the reason why some jokes may seem strange when compared to “normal ones” – they were tailored for the audience at the Spoony Experiment.

2. I then picked 25 good facts to turn into jokes. Thus began a long process of finding the right kind of wording for each joke to match my style of humor. Joke writing takes a while – the right words will determine if your joke is passable or a real gem.

3. Once I had my jokes, I organized them into a point-by-point monologue, where one point transitioned into the other. This meant I had to cut a few jokes I rather liked. You can’t just slap any old joke in there – it’s gotta be coherent.

4. I rewrote each joke into a conversational tone to make them sound more natural during recording. This meant saying the jokes over and over again until, again, I stumbled on the right wording. Spoken humor, like stand-up comedy, is a far different beast than written humor, so it has to be treated accordingly.

5. When I was satisfied with the new rewrite, I recorded each joke as a seperate line to mix together into the final product.

6. I gathered a bunch of images and a background song, then mixed them all together with the recordings in my movie editor. After that, I outputted the final video and sent it off to the roastmaster for integration into the full roast.

This roast, while not as involved as my Space Quest 5 series, was still challenging in its own way. I had a blast, and I’d love more opportunities to do this kind of work in the future. (Feel free to drop me a line if you know anyone who needs to get burned!)

The TSE Forum Club’s Roast of Noah Antwiler

I join forces with several prominent forumgoers of The Spoony Experiment to roast Noah Antwiler (The Spoony One) for the three year anniversary of his website! I really enjoyed writing this roast, and I’d love opportunities to write more in the future. Thanks for all the years of entertainment, Spoony!

After Sonic the Hedgehog came out, many other video game companies tried to cash in with their own animals of attitude. Bubsy the Bobcat is probably the king of that crop. Not because he was good, mind you – he failed just as much as the others. It’s just that his fall from grace was far more satisfying. Kinda like that plane crash where all the passengers were villians from Christmas specials.

But Accolade (the guys behind Bubsy) really wanted their mascot to succeed. To that end, they decided that a full-fledged animated series was just the thing Bubsy needed to capture the limelight. If it worked for Mario and Sonic, why not him?

Of course, Accolade failed to account for two major factors:

1. Mario and Sonic landed cartoons because their games were popular, fun, and competent.
2. Except for the Saturday morning Sonic cartoon, the Mario and Sonic shows BLOW CHUNKS.

Bubsy was no different. Only one episode of his crappy cartoon was made, shown on Thanksgiving Day and promptly forgotten. The only way you can see it now is on video sharing sites. But here’s the Challenge of the Superfriends: can you actually sit through it without feeling disgusted afterwards? Don’t worry, everyone! I’ve already watched it for you. And now I know what I’m getting you for Christmas. Here’s a hint: after it knocks down your house, they’ll have room to build a highway.

Fortunately, Bubsy is one of those cartoons that you will instantly hate after watching the intro. Really, how are you going to take him seriously after he tries to brush his teeth with a handheld grinder? It gets worse at warp speed – after Bubsy eats breakfast, he goes down a slide and does…well, this.

That’d better not be a rain dance. Last time Bubsy did that, it started raining men. And since my god makes people by throwing them away, I got a religious holiday.

So the episode is actually called “What Could Possibly Go Wrong?”. It’s also Bubsy’s catchphrase. Would you be surprised if I told you that Bubsy quickly destroys any charm this catchphrase might have by saying it over and over? Then again, it’s not like Bubsy isn’t good at ruining things. Apparently, after he uses the bathroom, the toilet gets a Purple Heart.

Speaking of lack of charm, Bubsy himself is an asshole. Even though his “sidekick” Arnold the Armadillo doesn’t want anything to do with him, Bubsy is insistent on being an obnoxious and completely unlikeable “hero”. Even worse is when Bubsy’s nephew and niece come over to celebrate their birthday. Bubsy promptly tells them that Arnold is hiding under the couch, and the twins start pulling on him and rolling him into bowling pins.

Seriously, I have never felt more sorry for an animal than I do for Arnold the Armadillo. All throughout this cartoon, he is abused and humiliated by Bubsy, who is too much of a dense jackass to realize what he’s doing. Plus you’ve got the twins who treat him like utter crap. Look, Arnold, food and shelter are not worth this abuse. Besides, I know other Batman villians who need childhood abuse more than you do. Don’t be selfish.

So Bubsy is watching a TV news report about a helmet that makes the wearer’s thoughts come true. Naturally, this is the best thing to put in the hands of an idiotic bobcat, so he decides to go the inventor’s lab and test it. Meanwhile, the report gets the attention of some fat cat lady across town, who wants to use the helmet for her own selfish needs. I guess hard work is too much of a hassle, huh? Sounds like the kind of person who hires a guy in India to buy Baltic Avenue for her.

Bubsy, Arnold, and the twins swing over to the lab where they meet up with inventor of the helmet, a Vergil Reality. (OH GEE THAT IS QUITE CLEVER.) Vergil tells Bubsy to make sure his wish is specific, but paying attention and counting are things Bubsy has difficulty with.

“I wanna fly!”

“I’M SORRY, MY TEXT PARSER DOESN’T UNDERSTAND THAT PHRASE. DID YOU MEAN ‘PLANE THAT VANISHES MID-FLIGHT’?”

Eventually Bubsy wishes everyone back into the lab after some hijinks. The twins announce how bored they are and ask to play with the helmet, but Vergil cuts that noise short. Unfortunately, while Bubsy is blindly placing the helmet on a chair, Male Twin switches the chair with Girl Twin’s head, and they sneak out with the helmet in their possession. Man, is Bubsy’s ENTIRE family a bunch of unlikeable douchebags? I can just imagine Halloween. “Trick or treat! The one you choose will determine if you find your dog before he runs out of oxygen.”

Outside the lab, Fat Cat Lady’s minions fly overhead – a vulture carrying a shrew. (They have names, but I would have to actually care if I was to learn them.) They see the twins fighting over the helmet, so they divebomb right at them. Apparently divebombing is really slow, because while they’re doing it:

1. The twins wish for ponies, speedboats, and giant birthday cakes. (It’s their birthday, by the way.)
2. The shrew is hit by lightning and a passing plane.
3. The vulture READS A COOKBOOK to find the best recipe for cooking bobcat twins.

Come on, guys! I know it’s a cartoon, but that doesn’t mean you can skimp on logic. These guys are right above the lab, not a thousand feet in the air. It shouldn’t take that long to swoop down. We wouldn’t tolerate that with planes. Ever been on a plane that took five hours to land? I’m just saying – if you didn’t fly female planes next to the males, then the males wouldn’t keep losing focus.

So when they land, Vulture walks up to the twins and demands the helmet. Male Twin responds by wishing for a roller coaster and taking them all on a crazy ride. Meanwhile, Bubsy and the others go outside to find that all of reality has been changed into a massive theme park. When the twins shoot by, Bubsy grabs on the end of their car along with Arnold. They ride for a while until Bubsy tells them to “stop it this instant”.

Bubsy and Arnold are hurtled all the way back to their house. (Somehow.) After landing, Bubsy then walks into Male Twin’s giant toe, because now the twins are suddenly Godzilla-sized. They accidentally step on Bubsy and Arnold, and shrink back down to normal size because they figure they’re in trouble. And you’re damn right they are! Look at all the trouble you caused, you little snots! What do you have to say for yourselves?

“But it’s our BIRTHDAY!”

“AND NOW IT’LL BE YOUR FUNERAL”

Unfortunately, before I can kill these little assholes, Vulture drops Shrew on the twins. Shrew grabs the helmet and burrows through the dirt Bugs Bunny style, but Bubsy stops him with a shovel. Fortunately, Shrew is even dumber than Bubsy, so he agrees to trade the helmet for a stick of dynamite disguised as a corn dog.

Okay, mission accomplished. We got the helmet back. Now, where were we?

Ah, yes.

DIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIEEEEEEEE

But once again, my triumph is spoiled when Vulture flies past and grabs the twins, along with the helmet! Get back here, you crazy bird! Look, you can have their flesh – all I want is their bones!

So Vulture and Shrew give Fat Cat Lady the helmet, and she starts wishing for expensive stuff while the two minions go off to cook the twins. Meanwhile, Bubsy goes back to Vergil’s lab and starts moping about how much he screwed up. He picks up Arnold and beats himself in the head, then lets him fall into some random electrical field, which somehow helps Bubsy cheer himself up. Boy, that was fast. God knows I can’t cheer people up that easily. The best I’ve done is telling someone, “The good news is that your house is on fire.”

Okay! Now that Bubsy is back in the game, he needs a cunning plan to figure out the address to Vulture and Shrew’s hideout! And what is this great plan?

“I’ll just look ‘em up in the phone book!”

He just CALLS Shrew and basically asks him where his address is. Shrew, being a total dingbat, doesn’t think twice of it. Still, there’s no reason for Bubsy to do this. Why? Well, last time I checked, ADDRESSES WERE ALSO PRINTED IN THE PHONE BOOK.

SO ANYWAY, after the twins escape Vulture and Shrew, Bubsy and the gang bop over to Fat Cat Lady’s place to get the helmet back. What ensues is a dragged-out scene where everyone fights over the helmet, and the thing jumps around on everyone’s heads like a horny flea. Eventually it lands on Bubsy, and at this point, the thing is shorting out, so Bubsy makes one last wish to stop the bad guys.

Hooray! These extremely lame and incompetent villians were easily defeated by what amounted to magic. What better way for this episode to end than for the helmet to explode and ELECTROCUTE EVERYONE TO DEATH.

…okay, that didn’t happen. But it might as well have! It’s easy to see why this show wasn’t picked up. The animation was terrible, the characters annoying, the physical comedy weak, the source material doomed to failure, the sentence overbearing, the patience running thin, the reader gasping for air, the commas happy for work.

Just remember – for all of the awful things you see on TV these days, it could’ve been a lot worse. I just know that if this show was picked up, I would’ve dropped it like a bad habit. You know, like aiming before you shoot a squirrel.

Dancin’ Bubsy GIF procured from Femmegasm, which has just wrapped up a storyline involving the ghost of Bubsy. It pleases me, because I like to think Bubsy did himself in with a Hemingway special.

I’ve been a bit tardy, but trust me, I’ve got some new stuff to make up for it. First off, I continue with my Nights Into Dreams comic book review over at CBO Productions . Even the joy I get from insulting bad comics doesn’t make me feel better about how long it took to get this review out. I guess I should try harder to focus on my work and finish what I

Next, we have a guest post about the Sega Master System over at vintage tech blog Retro Thing. Yes, I was one of those children who had a Master System instead of a NES. It’s not my fault – my dad bought it when I was real young. It’s not like I could set up the situation before I was born. “Yeah, we’re gonna have to get an NES instead of that Master System deal. Oh, and when I get to elementary school, I want everyone to be my friend so I don’t sit alone at lunch.”

Enjoy, and stay tuned – I’ve got a lot more stuff in the works, and I’ll always let you know here when something new comes up. (At least, when I remember to update.)