So here we are, the end of 2020!
This year blew. I think it's safe to say that.
We lost a lot of good people this year. I lost my grandmother back in September. She was 90 and she'd been in poor health for the past few years, so this didn't come as a surprise. But it still hurt.
We also lost, among others: Alex Trebek, Sean Connery, Squiggy, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, John Lewis, the guy who voiced Peppy in Star Fox 64 (Robert May aka "Do A Barrell Roll!" himself!), Kobe Bryant, Jeremy Bulloch, David Prowse, Whitey Ford, Chadwick Boseman, Diana Rigg, Kamala The Ugandan Giant, Regis Philbin, Eddie Van Halen, Carl Reiner, Fred Willard, Jerry Stiller, Little Richard, Gene Deitch, James Lipton, Kenny Rogers, Olivia de Havilland, Bill Withers, Jim Lehrer, Terry Jones, Kirk Douglas...
And just in the past few days: MF DOOM (back on Halloween, no less), Jon Huber (aka Brodie Lee), and Dawn Wells.
Yes, we lost Mary Ann from Gilligan's Island thanks to Covid. The show was a childhood favorite, and I know I'm not alone in that. It was a Nick @ Nite staple back in the day. I always liked her more than Ginger. And speaking of which, that leaves Tina Louise as the last surviving castaway.
Luckily Dawn Wells was a fixture at autograph shows like Chiller Theater, so finding a signature on ebay is both easy and relatively cheap, so that's where I went the moment I heard the news. I wish I could've met her in person, by all accounts she seemed like a lovely person.
And when 2020 comes to a close, so will Flash. What would early 2000s internet be without it?
Kids today will never know the pain of having to wait so long for Mario Twins (a four minute video!) to load that you could play a separate minigame while you waited.
This was the pinnacle of comedy in the early 2000s. Poorly drawn cartoons about video games with lots of poop jokes.
There was also this classic from Lemon Demon:
This was probably the first BIG viral cartoon, but I'm more familiar with this video by him:
Colin Mochrie was the Chuck Norris of Animutation. I have fond memories of that one.
And then there's the grandaddy of them all: Homestar Runner.
I jumped in during my later years of High School, which places it around 2003 or 2004. Right before the 100th Strong Bad Email, and I've been a loyal follower ever since. Most of their catalogue migrated to youtube, but not all of it. The flash version of Halloween Potion-ma-jig was a terribly hard loss, since it integrated a Choose Your Own Adventure-style algorithm that had three different endings, and that video only has one of them. (the youtube version is embedded above)
Thankfully some kind soul uploaded the other two endings.
I think HSR picked the funniest options, which was for the best. I still don't know what "Powdered Thanksgiving" is.
It just sucks since they were one of the last hangers on for Flash, and while they have a plan to migrate to a post-flash world, it's no longer gonna be the same. Seriously, it's the only internet cartoon that I'm aware of that had easter eggs in them, and now most of them aren't accessible.
With that out of the way, time to share what I got for Christmas!
Not much this year, but when you're 33, you don't really want much to begin with. I got another bottle of my favorite barbeque sauce, the new Hyrule Warriors game (it's pretty sweet), the Steven Universe box set, and of course gift cards. And it wouldn't be Christmas in 2020 if I didn't get new masks. Not pictured were new work clothes, stocking stuffers like deodorant, and toothpaste. Everyone in my house got more toothpaste for Christmas.
I also got new pajama pants:
Christmas Vacation themed! They're comfy.
Oh, and I have to highlight an early Christmas gift:
Izzy's Quest For Olympic Gold has finally been found and uploaded to Youtube!! I've mentioned before that finding it had been my White Whale, and the week before Christmas a kind soul had been going around Twitter and showing it to anyone who ever tweeted about it, especially me. And not only is the special here fully intact, it has all the commercials, too! What's notable is that those very commercials pinpoint to when this special aired, which was in August of 1996. I'm more than certain that THIS was the very broadcast I saw back in the day. A few of the commercials brought back some strong memories, especially the one for Rice Krispies Treats Cereal.
So what did I think after not seeing it in almost twenty-five years? Well..it's okay. It wasn't the godawful trainwreck I'd been expecting, but it's not good, either. I knew I didn't watch until the end, but I got farther into the special than I thought. I remember tuning out after the gymnastics portion, but there were only five minutes left after that.
The Olympics are usually super strict about promoting its brand when any other kind of media tries to talk about it, so it's kind of off putting to watch this special and it does not stop reminding you that this is about the Olympics. Sports, ambition, brotherhood, good sportsmanship, bribery and corruption, and basketball. That's what it's all about.
Other than that, the plot is very basic. Izzy wants to go to the human world to compete in the Olympics, but he has to earn the five Olympic rings first to do so, which are mainly symbolic. He has only twenty two minutes to do it, so it's rather rushed. Spoiler alert: He earns all five rings before his Torchworld is torn apart by his friends and family bickering at each other about whether Izzy was worthy in the first place, Izzy gets to compete, everyone lives happily ever after. Izzy has a good heart, but he's kinda annoying. I think he's supposed to be a young teen at best? They don't specify his age, but he's probably around that magic age of 6 to 11. It worked for OK KO.
Would I recommend watching it? Yes, if only for the novelty of it. If the special wasn't known for being lost in the first place, it's not really surprising that it was forgotten. There's way better sports cartoons you could be watching instead, but none of them actually involve the Olympics.
And it was pretty easy to find where my cel is in the special!
It appears at roughly seven minutes and forty seconds in. This was the best screengrab I could get, but it's more or less the exact frame.
And so comes to what I do every year and plan out a resolution. Usually I don't have one since I never follow through on them in the first place, but I actually have one this year:
Make it to 2022.
Simple, yes, but getting here to 2021 was a challenge in and of itself. But we're not out of the woods just yet! If nothing goes wrong, I'll see all of you for January's entry.
Happy New Year, everyone.
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