The System is Down

From Homestar Runner Wiki

Current revision as of 21:09, 3 June 2025

This article is about the toon. For the song, see The System is Down (song).

"The system is down, yo."

In January of 2003, homestarrunner.com suddenly and inexplicably went down. Patient viewers then saw this short toon, cleverly disguised as an error page.

Cast (in order of appearance): Homestar Runner, Strong Bad, Bubs

Places: Error Page

Date: Wednesday, January 22, 2003

Running Time: 1:05

Page Title: 404 Doodoo Error

DVD: Everything Else, Volume 1

[edit] Transcript

{A typical Internet Explorer error page appears. The whistling of the wind is heard. Homestar Runner enters from the right.}

HOMESTAR RUNNER: {walks in and looks at the error message} Ummmm... what's going on here? What happened my website?

{Strong Bad enters from the left.}

STRONG BAD: The system is down, yo.

HOMESTAR RUNNER: Ohh... the system... Right, right.

STRONG BAD: Yeah, I think too many people tried to log on. {scratches his head} Uh... sorry about that.

HOMESTAR RUNNER: What are you sorry for? It's my website.

STRONG BAD: Um... I don't think they're coming to see you, Homestar.

HOMESTAR RUNNER: What, you think everybody's logging on to watch "tape-leg"? Yeah, that's a good one.

STRONG BAD: Hey, shut up! The tape-leg is cool. {Stretches his hand out and to the right}

HOMESTAR RUNNER: Well, when do I get my website back?

STRONG BAD: Oh, anytime now. We've got our top men working on it round-the-clock.

{Bubs enters from the left holding a motherboard.}

BUBS: Well, I found the problem. Looks like somebody tried to cram-a-lam a Swiss Cake Roll into the disk drive.

HOMESTAR RUNNER: Oh, really? {leaning toward Strong Bad, eyeing him suspiciously}

STRONG BAD: Uh, what are you looking at me for? I did— hut— wut— nany— huit— {runs off quickly}

{A handwritten sticky note, which is supposed to be a system alert message, is slapped onto the screen, that reads:}

This is real.

System report:

Everything is fine. Nothing
is ruined.

ok

HOMESTAR RUNNER: So, Bubs... What are you gonna do with that Swiss Cake Roll?

(The page automatically redirects to the TV Time Toons Menu.)

[edit] Fun Facts

[edit] Explanations

• This cartoon was made in response to actual server downtime on homestarrunner.com. As explained by The Brothers Chaps in 2006 and in 2014, at the time their Yahoo web hosting had a 20-gigabyte bandwidth limit. Unbeknownst to the brothers, the site's popularity drove the bandwidth well into the terabytes; though Yahoo employees that were fans turned a blind eye to the overage, eventually an outage resulted (hence the origins of the toon). This situation led the brothers to shop around and switch web hosts.
  • Note that the store was still run on a Yahoo storefront through 2015.

[edit] Trivia

• The TV Time Toons Menu preview has Homestar running past the 404 error. He does not do this in the toon.
• The YouTube description for this toon is "In the early days of homestarrunner.com, Strong Bad's popularity overloaded the server and brought the site down."

[edit] Remarks

"Well, I found the problem."

• There are actually two Swiss Cake Rolls "cram-a-lammed" in the computer's innards.
• The error page is specifically for Internet Explorer 6.
• Bubs is actually holding a motherboard, not a disk drive. The design was copied from this image (comparison shown at right).
  • The motherboard appears to be of the ATX form factor, with six PCI slots and an ISA slot (all vacant), a single empty CPU socket, and three RAM slots.

[edit] Inside References

• The note that appears on the screen is from 50 emails.
• "The system is down" is from the Strong Bad Email techno.
• tape-leg is a Strong Bad Email, and a running gag.
• Swiss Cake Rolls are another running gag.

[edit] Real-World References

• "We've got our top men working on it 'round the clock," said by Strong Bad, is a reference to what the government representative says to Indiana Jones about the status of the Ark of the Covenant at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark.
• The phrase "cram-a-lam a Swiss Cake Roll" is an approximate paraprosdokian on the phrase "Rama Lama Ding Dong," which originated in a Doo-Wop song of the same name by The Edsels in 1958, the connection being that a Ding Dong (made by Hostess) is a similar type of snack cake to a Swiss Cake Roll (made by Little Debbie); however, the Hostess analog of a Swiss Cake Roll is a HoHo, not a Ding Dong.

[edit] Fast Forward

• The inquiry "What happened my website?" has reappeared in similar contexts.
• A similar setting would be used for the secret toon Sbemail 100 Fakeout.
• The hidden page localhtmell www.homestarrunner.com/localhtmell features a hidden Swiss Cake Roll hiding in a server.

[edit] DVD Version

• The DVD version features hidden creators' commentary. To access it, switch the DVD player's audio language selection while watching.

[edit] Commentary Transcript

(Commentary by: Mike Chapman, Matt Chapman)

MIKE: So, this is "The System is Down", and we made it when the system really was down.

MATT: It was down for two whole days.

MIKE: In January of 2003.

MATT: That's right.

MIKE: So we made this cartoon, and we were going to put it on a different website, ThoraxCorp.com... um, and email— uh, send out an email to everyone telling them that the system was down and to watch this cartoon.

MATT: To all fifteen people.

MIKE: To all fifteen people that were watching the site. But by the time we got done with it, the site was back up, so we just put it on there, and it ended up being a nice little, uh, cartoon.

MATT: A humor piece. A humor— A nice humor piece. We call these humor-toons, some of these.

MIKE: Homestar's got a little sass, and also—

MATT: Sass dackery.

MIKE: There's also a period where Homestar's dress/shirt was a slightly more magenta than red.

MATT: Yeah.

MIKE: Like look at the bill of his hat versus his body.

MATT: I don't like it. I remember we found a— we did a Google Image Search for "motherboard" or something and that's what, uh...

MIKE: {mumbles}

MATT: Yeah. Not a disk drive at all, is it?

MIKE: {laughs a little}

MATT: It's a motherboard.

[edit] Fun Facts

• The website for side project Thorax Corporation is mentioned as where this toon was originally planned to be hosted.
• A mailing list was used to notify fans of new toons prior to the site adopting a weekly update schedule in 2002.
• Matt suggests Homestar is sassing back.
• As observed, the color of Homestar's shirt in his seventh design occasionally varied.

[edit] External Links

• watch "The System is Down"
• watch "The System is Down" on YouTube
• watch "The System is Down" on the old Flash site
• view the Flash file for "The System is Down"