I’ve mentioned before Pokemon Abridged Version, written and performed by HomeStarRunnerTron on Youtube.  It had excellent voice acting (for a parody) and a quick wit, very in line with “Abridged Series.”

The idea of “Abridged Series” is to take a 30 minute cartoon and shorten it to about 10-15 minutes, overlaying new dialog that somewhat matches the original intent of the show whilst changing the exact words to be much funnier.

HSRT’s Pokemon Abridged videos were pulled from YouTube, apparently due to a mix of using Pokemon footage and some clips of some fameous songs.  DCMA takedowns for a parody?  OF COURSE!  Welcome to the new free world.

Various clips I’ve found of the video around are of random quality, don’t stream well, or (shock) are pulled for DCMA violations.  So I’m hosting my own streams on my own server of this excellent PARODY.  Enjoy.

Thanks to Dreamhost for your servers.

I’d have to say, my all-time favorite cartoon as a kid has to have been Inspector Gadget.  I loved both Sonic the Hedgehog series, watched Super Mario Brother Super Show when I could find it, and even watched some Captain Planet when I had to.  But the all-time favorite slot belonged to Inspector Gadget.

However, due to some bad editing in the end credits, I spent most of my whole young life with a strong, incorrect, belief.  See, everyone I knew had no idea who Dr. Claw was.  But I knew.  I knew who it was, and nobody believed me.

Dr Claw was Chief Quimby!

Oh sure, “Chief Quimby” always seemed to help Inspector Gadget foil Dr Claw’s schemes… but it was the truth.  I didn’t know why Dr. Claw would constantly foil his own plans, but then again, I’m not an evil supervillian now am I?  Maybe Dr. Claw wanted the terror and attention of a supervillan without ever actually having to produce an evil plan that worked?

Like Clark Kent and Superman, Chief Quimby and Dr. Claw never appeared on screen together.  Coincidence?  We only ever get to see the back of a chair and a gauntleted hand.  That’s no kind of indentifying mark!

But I had even better proof than this.  And it was right in our face! Everyone could see it!  It was right there in the ending credits, about 30 seconds in:

PROOF!  Dr. Claw’s voice, and Chief Quimby flappin’ his gums!  It had to be true!

For years I believed sincerely that Chief Quimby was Dr. Claw.  Arguments took place between me and best friends about who Dr. Claw was.  But I knew.  Just look at Chief Quimby’s face there, in the last take, just before we see his Clawmobile fly off!  He’s giving Gadget a very dangerous look.

I couldn’t believe that Penny and Brain never picked up on it.

To this day, I’m not totally convinced of Chief Quimby’s innocence.  Does he like cats?  Has smoking that pipe given him a raspy voice?  Why does he keep giving Gadget stupid missions written on exploding paper?  Perhaps the world may never know.

As a side note, I had such a little-kid-crush on Penny.  She was so pretty, and she liked computers.  ‘Course, I’d never tell anyone (girls have cooties and all that).  In fact, if I was totally honest, I watched Inspector Gadget to see Penny save Gadget… never really to see what stupid mistakes Gadget would make.  That… and I always knew, if I watched hard enough, the Chief would slip up and tell us about his secret identity!

A celebration of Friday with a videogame flair.

Back at one of my old jobs, the awesome boss (That’s you, Steven!) let me slack off during slow friday mornings by making a video game themed Friday sign to post in my office’s window.

The entire archive of “Friday Signs,” including explanatory text, and print ready PDF files, can be found here:  http://friday.autodmc.org .  Take a gander, print ‘em out, hang ‘em up, and celebrate the best day of the week other than Saturday and Sunday!

My sister handed me a link to this video… it’s like a scene from a horror movie. It’s great.

This was great. The cat has an interesting stalking procedure: the Bugblatter Beast procedure… or something similar… if you don’t see the cat move then **the cat didn’t move**.