Homestar Runner Wiki - User contributions [en]

Marzipan's Answering Machine Version 17.2

2016-04-01T13:36:21Z

24.192.11.206:

{{mamnav|17|Marzipan's Answering Machine Version 16.2|Version 16.2|Marzipan's Answering Machine Version 1.0|Version 1.0}}
[[Image:dangmuffinspie.png|thumb|"OH DANG MUFFINS PIE A LA MODE!"]]

Marzipan checks her answering machine after seven years of wandering about.

'''Cast (in order of appearance):''' {{Film|Strong Bad}}, {{Film|The Cheat}}, {{Film|Strong Mad}}, {{Film|Marzipan}}, {{Film|Homestar Runner}}, {{Film|Coach Z}}, {{Film|Bubs}}, {{Film|Strong Sad}}, {{Film|Homsar}}, {{Film|Kevin}}, {{Film|Visor Robot}}, {{Film|The Poopsmith}}, {{Film|The King of Town}}, {{Film|sloshy}}, {{Film|Puppet Homestar}}, {{Film|Litigation Jackson}}, {{Film|Larry Palaroncini}}, {{Film|Humidibot}}, {{Film|F-Sack}}, {{Film|Senor Cardgage}}, {{Film|Marshie}}, {{Film|Horrible Painting}}, {{Film|Balding Man}}, {{Film|Stinkoman}}, {{Film|Pan Pan}}, {{Film|1-Up}}, {{Film|The Homestar Runner}}, {{Film|Blue Laser Commander}}, {{Film|Crack Stuntman}}, {{Film|Old-Timey Strong Bad}}, {{Film|Sickly Sam}}

'''Places:''' [[House of the Brothers Strong]], [[Marzipan's House]]

'''Date:''' Friday, April 1, 2016

'''Running Time:''' 31:09

'''Page Title:''' Just think of it as a podcast!

== Transcript ==

{{transcriptinprogress|SRMX12}}

''{The scene opens with a phone hook lying on the floor; the receiver is offscreen. It has a funnel on top of it, and in the funnel are two bottles of "Cheez Wheez" and a bottle of "Lite Em Up Dan" lighter fluid. Two more bottles of Cheez Wheez are nearby.}''

'''STRONG BAD:''' ''{offscreen}'' Oh dang!

''{The camera pans across the phone's cord, to a part that is entangling more bottles of Cheez Wheez and some batteries, which are connected by wires.}''

'''STRONG BAD:''' ''{offscreen}'' Oh dang muffins!

''{The camera pans more to an axe suspended from the ceiling, with two speakers attached to it, all entangled by the phone cord.}''

'''STRONG BAD:''' ''{offscreen}'' Oh dang muffins pie!

''{Cut to Strong Bad, Strong Mad, and The Cheat, in the same room as all of the previous. The phone's receiver is dangling from the ceiling.}''

'''STRONG BAD:''' OH DANG MUFFINS PIE A LA MODE! This is gonna be the best April Fools Day prank call ever!

'''THE CHEAT:''' ''{The Cheat noises}''

'''STRONG BAD:''' Now you're sure the science is sound? The battle axes and Cheez Weezes will actually get through the phone lines?

'''THE CHEAT:''' ''{The Cheat noises}''

'''STRONG BAD:''' Oh... fiber optics... makes sense, makes sense... Marzipan won't know what hit her! Alright, Strong Mad, dial the number!

'''STRONG MAD:''' ''{picks up the phone}'' Uh... Um...

'''STRONG BAD:''' ''{snatches phone}'' Never mind, I'll dial the number. Um... Never mind, The Cheat, you dial the number.

'''THE CHEAT:''' ''{Takes the phone from Strong Bad and dials Marzipan's phone number as he makes some The Cheat noises. He hands the phone back to Strong Bad as it rings.}''

'''PHONE OPERATOR:''' We're sorry, the mailbox of the answering machine you're trying to prank is full! Please try again later.

'''STRONG BAD:''' What? Why the crap is her mailbox full?

''{Cut to Marzipan's answering machine, which appears to be in poor condition. The display shows glitchy symbols throughout the toon.}''

===Marzipan's Greeting===

'''MARZIPAN:''' Hi, this is Marzipan. I'll be out and about for about seven years, so I'll give you a call back after that. Thank you! ''{beep}''

===Message 1===

'''AUTOMATED VOICE:''' Message 1 from: June 17th, 2009.

'''STRONG BAD:''' ''{falsetto}'' Oh, hey, Marzipan! This is Joanie Allthetime, uh, your acupuncturist. Calling you to tell you, I, I had a new do-it-yourself-from-home program. That means you don't have to come to see me no more to stick needles in you! So I want you to wander around your house, uh, reciting your— this new mantra that I will give you. Which is, um, Yoplait, Fage, Oikos, um, Activia. So you just say that over and over again, and then pick up any sharp or even blunt objects around your house and just jab them right, right into you! Um, I would work the kidneys first, and then from there, move on to— to the eyes. Okay, namaste, have yourself a real nice day! Ha, hey, that's a new mantra! Don't use that one, though; use the yogurt one.

===Message 2===

'''HOMESTAR RUNNER:''' ''{in a halting voice, like a stereotypical robot}'' Hey, Marzipan. This is Homestar Runner. I heard that you got a new smartphone, so instead of leaving you a message, I'm texting this to you. Smileyman, winky smileyman, wineglass wineglass 90s camcorder, send.

===Message 3===

'''AUTOMATED VOICE:''' You have a call from: Free Country USA Penitentiary.

'''COACH Z:''' Uh, surprise, surprise, Marzipan! Guess where I ended up! The hoosegow! They only give ya one phone call here, so I couldn't think'a anyone better to blow it on than you, Marzi. Uh, I'm gonna— I'm gonna be away for a while, I think, here. You're— you're gonna hear a lot of stuff comin' out on the news. I want you to ignore seventy-five to ninety-eight percent of it, if you could. Uh, the part where they say that my name is Coach Z? Uh, you can listen to that. The part where they say I'm mostly green? That— that's a— that's a fact. That's a police fact. The rest I would just ignore if I was you. Anyways, Bubs is gonna represent me, so that'll be fun. Hey, and get this: they say I'm a flight risk! That sounds like somethin' you'd see on a trophy, doesn't it? "Coach Z: First Place Flight Risk! Two hundred thousand dollar bail!"

'''AUTOMATED VOICE:''' Call ended... for being ''way'' too depressing.

===Message 4===

'''HOMESTAR RUNNER:''' Oh, man, Marzipan! Have you heard about the new internet craze, planking? It is gonna be around forever, and I'm gonna be doing it forever! Etched into the halls of history!

===Message 5===

'''BUBS:''' Hey, Marzipan, it's Bubs! Look, I been thinking that maybe I need a catch phrase or something. Seems like everybody else got one. Strong Bad says "holy crap", Homestar says "seriously", Coach Z can't speak English. But what about Bubs? All anybody remembers about me is how I once stole an aircraft carrier. What kinda legacy is that? So I got a list here of some catch phrase candidates. Lemme— lemme try 'em out on you, see whatcha think. "Zabbledoo!" Huh? "Zabbledoo"? I'd say it like, "Zabbledoo, Marzipan! What can I zabbledoo for you?" I think that sounds pretty good. I can also go with something classic, like yellin' "Scarborough Fair!" Whaddya think of that? Or like somethin' that sounds like it's from the fifties or sixties maybe? "Put it to me!" Huh? "Put it to me"? I dunno. If you think of any ideas, gimme a shout! Poppodoplous!... Naw, that's terrible.

===Message 6===

'''STRONG SAD:''' ''{speaks with an obvious lisp throughout the message}'' Uh, happy New Years, Marzipan. It's Strong Sad. It's, uh, January first, 2011. And, uh, I've decided to try something new this year. It's gonna be a whole new Strong Sad. Can you guess— can you guess what it is? I feel like people don't notice my personality, so I'm trying to give 'em something to grasp onto. Have you guessed what it is yet? Hmmm? Marzipan? Anyways, I think this is the dawn of a new day for old SS. I'm thure I'm gonna keep this up for thhh— for many years to come. This is not just one of my phases, like the eye patch, or the cane, or the monocle, or the bowler hats, or the jodhpurs. Oh, those were dark times, those jodhpurs days. Anyways, this is the new Strong Sad signing off!

===Message 7===

'''STRONG SAD:''' ''{without the lisp}'' Hey, Marzipan. It's January second, 2011. Disregard my last message. I don't— I don't know what I was thinking. What a surprise, I've already backtracked. I couldn't even go a whole twenty-four hours! "The new Strong Sad"... Maybe— maybe the jodhpurs weren't such a bad idea. I'm gonna go see if I can find those!

===Message 8===

'''STRONG BAD:''' ''{in a smooth and smarmy voice}'' Good afternoon, Mrs. Pan. This is Vince Napmaker from public radio's "The World is my Butt". We wanted to call you to thank you for being a continued supporter of public radio. But we wanted to ask you if you'd be willing to increase your support. Every dollar counts. Do you have any idea how much it costs to ask like you're this much better than everyone else? And furthermore, our uppity podcasts aren't going to create themselves. So please, as always, for the sake of tote bags everywhere, put a bunch of cash in a paper and/or plastic bag and leave it on the doorstep. ''{The public radio jingle plays over his next line.}'' This is Vince Napmaker for public radio. And now here's a supercut of Robert Siegel saying "I gather."

'''ROBERT SIEGEL:''' ''{at various different pitches}'' I gather— I gather— I gather— I gather— I gather— I gather— I gather— I gather—

===Message 9===

'''AUTOMATED VOICE:''' You have a call from: Free Country USA Penitentiary.

'''COACH Z:''' Hey, there, Marzipan! We won our first victory in the long fight to justice! I had my hearing yesterday, and guess what? They're gonna try me as a minor! Bubs tells me that's a good thing. So anyways, I'm celebratin' with a batch of jail terlet melonade! I wish you was here to clink glasses with me. Well, these aren't glasses so much as they're, uh, the little slippers they give us. They don't exactly clink. They just sorta s—slop together. Ya end up basically suckin' the melonade outta the— the sort of foam Dr. Scholls situation. Ya know what, after sayin' that out loud, I think I'm gonna skip this round. But anyways, ''{chanting}'' free Coach Z! Free Coach Z!

===Message 10===

'''HOMSAR:''' AaA, hey Marzipa-yan! It's Homsar! I was just calling you because, for some reason, I seem to be more articulate on the phone! I hate to hang up, knowin' as soon as I do, I'll be back to "AaAaA, you're a pork rind's president!" Or maybe like, "DaAaAon't get chipsy with the chalk sauce!" Y— you know, the kind of garbage that I spout! Anyways, gimme a holler if you ever wanna have a constructive conversation. OoOoOokay, bye-dee-bye!

===Message 11===

'''BUBS:''' ''{Soft tone}'' Hey Marzipan, it's Bubs. You know, the defense lawyer on the Coach Z case. I've been starting to have some pangs. Pangs of... this is a really terrible idea. Pangs of... he's totally guilty and you shouldn't be a lawyer. Pangs of... just what exactly is a charcuterie board, and why is it so expensive? Anyways, I think Coach Z did it, and I don't know if I can defend him anymore, whatever it is that he is accused of. I haven't really gotten around to asking anybody yet. I'm supposed to be in the court room defending him right now, but I snuck out to read some John Grisham novels to give me an edge, only I mixed him up with Michael Crichton, and now my defense is based around ''{Stretched out and delivered in a growl}'' DINOSAURS! Ba doo da dum, bo!

===Message 12===

'''HOMESTAR:''' Oh man, Marzipan. Kickstarter sensation the Ouya, they're gonna make games for that thing for the rest of eternity! Mark my words, every game that comes out from now until the end of time will also come out on the Ouya. Gonna outlive Sony, Nintendo, Coleco, Canseco, Jaleco, all of the heavy hitters. Anyways, I can't wait to be playing Ouya games in fifteen years, or even like, five months! Written in Sharpie on the bathroom wall of history!

===Message 13===

'''AUTOMATED VOICE:''' You have a call from: Free Country USA Penitentiary.

'''STRONG SAD:''' ''{Depressed and in fear}'' Uh, hey Marzipan. The jodhpurs did not work out! They did not work out! Why, jodhpurs? Why'd you do that to me, jodhpurs? How could you do this to me, jodhpurs? ''{beep}''

===Message 14===

'''STRONG BAD''': Hey Marzipan, it's Strong Bad. Look, I just wanted to run something by you, um... Everybody else I've talked to says that this is the worst idea I've ever had, and that my career will go down in flames if I do this, so you're my last hope to tell me that this is a great idea. As you know, it's June of 2012, which means we're coming up on the ten year anniversary of Everybody to the Limit, so I want to celebrate in grand fashion, and I figured what better way than to make a sequel! It's like... Fhqwhgads Revisited! Let me just play a little demo right here over the phone. ''{Singing}'' Let's fhqwhgads again! Let's fhqwhgads again! Let's fhqwhgads again! Let's fhqwhgads again! You remember that song, from that one summer. It was really good, and you emailed it to all your friends. Let's fhqwhgads again, so you can email it to all your friends! Let's fhqwhgads again, and now email your friends. Guess who will be there? Probably Joe and Jake. You remember Joe and Jake? I mentioned them in the first song. Th- this is the sequel. Let's fhqwhgads again! F-H-Q-W-H-GADS. F-H-Q-W-H-GADS. F-H-Q-W-H-GADS. So that's great, right? I mean, it's even better than the first one! So anyways, call me back, and tell me it's a great idea, so I can get The Cheat to work on a music video. Okay, bye! ''{Whispering}'' Let's fhqwhgads again! Let's fhqwhgads again! ''{beep}''

===Message 15===

===Message 16===

===Message 17===

===Message 18===

===Message 19===

===Message 20===

===Message 21===

===Message 22===

===Message 23===

===Message 24===

===Message 25===

===Message 26===

===Message 27===

===Message 28===

===Message 29===

===Message 30===

===Message 31===

===Message 32===

===Message 33===

===Message 34===

===Message 35===

== Fun Facts ==
=== Explanations ===
*[[Wikipedia:Jeremy Lin|Jeremy Lin]] is an [[Wikipedia:NBA|NBA]] player who famously began his career by leading the [[Wikipedia:New York Knicks|New York Knicks]] to a large winning streak, only to later struggle once signed by another team.

=== Trivia ===
*This is the first toon uploaded to [[homestarrunner.com]] to not have a [[Flash]] file; instead, the [[YouTube]] version is used.
*At 31:09, this is not only the longest toon on the site, but it's nearly four times as long as the next-longest, [[I Killed Pom Pom]].
*This is the second time [[The Poopsmith]] has broken his vow of silence, and the first time he has had spoken dialogue. [[Wikipedia:John Linnell|John Linnell]] reprised his role as the voice of The Poopsmith from [[email thunder]].
*[[Craig Zobel]] reprised his role as the voice of [[Kevin]], who initially appeared in [[Marzipan's Answering Machine Version 6.0]].

===Remarks===
*The answering machine in this toon is the [[PhoneTime XL8]] instead of the [[PhoneTime XL800]], which was used in the [[Marzipan's Answering Machine Version 16.2|previous answering machine toon]]. Oddly, the XL8 has a "record" button in this toon.
*Homsar still spoke nonsense on his answering machine message in [[Homestar Ruiner]].

===Inside References===
*Homsar speaking "more articulate on the phone" is in reference to [[Marzipan's Answering Machine Version 5.0]], which was created before Homsar's tendency to spout non-sequiturs had been established, and thus had Homsar able to create a coherent monologue while calling Marzipan.
*The King of Town mentions [[Old Characters Page|being the father]] of Marzipan at one point in time.

=== Real-World References ===
*[[Wikipedia:Yoplait|Yoplait]], [[Wikipedia:Fage|Fage]], [[Wikipedia:Stonyfield Farm|Oikos]], and [[Wikipedia:Activia|Activia]] are all brands of yogurt.
*[[Wikipedia:Robert Siegel|Robert Siegel]] is an American radio journalist.
*Homestar is excited for the releases of both the [[Wikipedia:Ouya|Ouya]] game console, and the [[Wikipedia:Google Glass|Google Glass]] headset. Both of these products underperformed in sales.

== External Links ==
*[[HR:answer17.html|watch "Marzipan's Answering Machine Version 17.2"]]
*[[YouTube:DQO1RHETKy4|watch "Marzipan's Answering Machine Version 17.2" on YouTube]]
*[[http://forum.hrwiki.org/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=37796|forum thread re: "Marzipan's Answering Machine Version 17.2"]]

{{Marzipan's Answering Machine}}

[[Category:Marzipan's Answering Machine]]

{{Template:aprilfool}}

Marzipan's Answering Machine Version 17.2

2016-04-01T13:34:28Z

24.192.11.206: Added Forum Discussion

{{mamnav|17|Marzipan's Answering Machine Version 16.2|Version 16.2|Marzipan's Answering Machine Version 1.0|Version 1.0}}
[[Image:dangmuffinspie.png|thumb|"OH DANG MUFFINS PIE A LA MODE!"]]

Marzipan checks her answering machine after seven years of wandering about.

'''Cast (in order of appearance):''' {{Film|Strong Bad}}, {{Film|The Cheat}}, {{Film|Strong Mad}}, {{Film|Marzipan}}, {{Film|Homestar Runner}}, {{Film|Coach Z}}, {{Film|Bubs}}, {{Film|Strong Sad}}, {{Film|Homsar}}, {{Film|Kevin}}, {{Film|Visor Robot}}, {{Film|The Poopsmith}}, {{Film|The King of Town}}, {{Film|sloshy}}, {{Film|Puppet Homestar}}, {{Film|Litigation Jackson}}, {{Film|Larry Palaroncini}}, {{Film|Humidibot}}, {{Film|F-Sack}}, {{Film|Senor Cardgage}}, {{Film|Marshie}}, {{Film|Horrible Painting}}, {{Film|Balding Man}}, {{Film|Stinkoman}}, {{Film|Pan Pan}}, {{Film|1-Up}}, {{Film|The Homestar Runner}}, {{Film|Blue Laser Commander}}, {{Film|Crack Stuntman}}, {{Film|Old-Timey Strong Bad}}, {{Film|Sickly Sam}}

'''Places:''' [[House of the Brothers Strong]], [[Marzipan's House]]

'''Date:''' Friday, April 1, 2016

'''Running Time:''' 31:09

'''Page Title:''' Just think of it as a podcast!

== Transcript ==

{{transcriptinprogress|SRMX12}}

''{The scene opens with a phone hook lying on the floor; the receiver is offscreen. It has a funnel on top of it, and in the funnel are two bottles of "Cheez Wheez" and a bottle of "Lite Em Up Dan" lighter fluid. Two more bottles of Cheez Wheez are nearby.}''

'''STRONG BAD:''' ''{offscreen}'' Oh dang!

''{The camera pans across the phone's cord, to a part that is entangling more bottles of Cheez Wheez and some batteries, which are connected by wires.}''

'''STRONG BAD:''' ''{offscreen}'' Oh dang muffins!

''{The camera pans more to an axe suspended from the ceiling, with two speakers attached to it, all entangled by the phone cord.}''

'''STRONG BAD:''' ''{offscreen}'' Oh dang muffins pie!

''{Cut to Strong Bad, Strong Mad, and The Cheat, in the same room as all of the previous. The phone's receiver is dangling from the ceiling.}''

'''STRONG BAD:''' OH DANG MUFFINS PIE A LA MODE! This is gonna be the best April Fools Day prank call ever!

'''THE CHEAT:''' ''{The Cheat noises}''

'''STRONG BAD:''' Now you're sure the science is sound? The battle axes and Cheez Weezes will actually get through the phone lines?

'''THE CHEAT:''' ''{The Cheat noises}''

'''STRONG BAD:''' Oh... fiber optics... makes sense, makes sense... Marzipan won't know what hit her! Alright, Strong Mad, dial the number!

'''STRONG MAD:''' ''{picks up the phone}'' Uh... Um...

'''STRONG BAD:''' ''{snatches phone}'' Never mind, I'll dial the number. Um... Never mind, The Cheat, you dial the number.

'''THE CHEAT:''' ''{Takes the phone from Strong Bad and dials Marzipan's phone number as he makes some The Cheat noises. He hands the phone back to Strong Bad as it rings.}''

'''PHONE OPERATOR:''' We're sorry, the mailbox of the answering machine you're trying to prank is full! Please try again later.

'''STRONG BAD:''' What? Why the crap is her mailbox full?

''{Cut to Marzipan's answering machine, which appears to be in poor condition. The display shows glitchy symbols throughout the toon.}''

===Marzipan's Greeting===

'''MARZIPAN:''' Hi, this is Marzipan. I'll be out and about for about seven years, so I'll give you a call back after that. Thank you! ''{beep}''

===Message 1===

'''AUTOMATED VOICE:''' Message 1 from: June 17th, 2009.

'''STRONG BAD:''' ''{falsetto}'' Oh, hey, Marzipan! This is Joanie Allthetime, uh, your acupuncturist. Calling you to tell you, I, I had a new do-it-yourself-from-home program. That means you don't have to come to see me no more to stick needles in you! So I want you to wander around your house, uh, reciting your— this new mantra that I will give you. Which is, um, Yoplait, Fage, Oikos, um, Activia. So you just say that over and over again, and then pick up any sharp or even blunt objects around your house and just jab them right, right into you! Um, I would work the kidneys first, and then from there, move on to— to the eyes. Okay, namaste, have yourself a real nice day! Ha, hey, that's a new mantra! Don't use that one, though; use the yogurt one.

===Message 2===

'''HOMESTAR RUNNER:''' ''{in a halting voice, like a stereotypical robot}'' Hey, Marzipan. This is Homestar Runner. I heard that you got a new smartphone, so instead of leaving you a message, I'm texting this to you. Smileyman, winky smileyman, wineglass wineglass 90s camcorder, send.

===Message 3===

'''AUTOMATED VOICE:''' You have a call from: Free Country USA Penitentiary.

'''COACH Z:''' Uh, surprise, surprise, Marzipan! Guess where I ended up! The hoosegow! They only give ya one phone call here, so I couldn't think'a anyone better to blow it on than you, Marzi. Uh, I'm gonna— I'm gonna be away for a while, I think, here. You're— you're gonna hear a lot of stuff comin' out on the news. I want you to ignore seventy-five to ninety-eight percent of it, if you could. Uh, the part where they say that my name is Coach Z? Uh, you can listen to that. The part where they say I'm mostly green? That— that's a— that's a fact. That's a police fact. The rest I would just ignore if I was you. Anyways, Bubs is gonna represent me, so that'll be fun. Hey, and get this: they say I'm a flight risk! That sounds like somethin' you'd see on a trophy, doesn't it? "Coach Z: First Place Flight Risk! Two hundred thousand dollar bail!"

'''AUTOMATED VOICE:''' Call ended... for being ''way'' too depressing.

===Message 4===

'''HOMESTAR RUNNER:''' Oh, man, Marzipan! Have you heard about the new internet craze, planking? It is gonna be around forever, and I'm gonna be doing it forever! Etched into the halls of history!

===Message 5===

'''BUBS:''' Hey, Marzipan, it's Bubs! Look, I been thinking that maybe I need a catch phrase or something. Seems like everybody else got one. Strong Bad says "holy crap", Homestar says "seriously", Coach Z can't speak English. But what about Bubs? All anybody remembers about me is how I once stole an aircraft carrier. What kinda legacy is that? So I got a list here of some catch phrase candidates. Lemme— lemme try 'em out on you, see whatcha think. "Zabbledoo!" Huh? "Zabbledoo"? I'd say it like, "Zabbledoo, Marzipan! What can I zabbledoo for you?" I think that sounds pretty good. I can also go with something classic, like yellin' "Scarborough Fair!" Whaddya think of that? Or like somethin' that sounds like it's from the fifties or sixties maybe? "Put it to me!" Huh? "Put it to me"? I dunno. If you think of any ideas, gimme a shout! Poppodoplous!... Naw, that's terrible.

===Message 6===

'''STRONG SAD:''' ''{speaks with an obvious lisp throughout the message}'' Uh, happy New Years, Marzipan. It's Strong Sad. It's, uh, January first, 2011. And, uh, I've decided to try something new this year. It's gonna be a whole new Strong Sad. Can you guess— can you guess what it is? I feel like people don't notice my personality, so I'm trying to give 'em something to grasp onto. Have you guessed what it is yet? Hmmm? Marzipan? Anyways, I think this is the dawn of a new day for old SS. I'm thure I'm gonna keep this up for thhh— for many years to come. This is not just one of my phases, like the eye patch, or the cane, or the monocle, or the bowler hats, or the jodhpurs. Oh, those were dark times, those jodhpurs days. Anyways, this is the new Strong Sad signing off!

===Message 7===

'''STRONG SAD:''' ''{without the lisp}'' Hey, Marzipan. It's January second, 2011. Disregard my last message. I don't— I don't know what I was thinking. What a surprise, I've already backtracked. I couldn't even go a whole twenty-four hours! "The new Strong Sad"... Maybe— maybe the jodhpurs weren't such a bad idea. I'm gonna go see if I can find those!

===Message 8===

'''STRONG BAD:''' ''{in a smooth and smarmy voice}'' Good afternoon, Mrs. Pan. This is Vince Napmaker from public radio's "The World is my Butt". We wanted to call you to thank you for being a continued supporter of public radio. But we wanted to ask you if you'd be willing to increase your support. Every dollar counts. Do you have any idea how much it costs to ask like you're this much better than everyone else? And furthermore, our uppity podcasts aren't going to create themselves. So please, as always, for the sake of tote bags everywhere, put a bunch of cash in a paper and/or plastic bag and leave it on the doorstep. ''{The public radio jingle plays over his next line.}'' This is Vince Napmaker for public radio. And now here's a supercut of Robert Siegel saying "I gather."

'''ROBERT SIEGEL:''' ''{at various different pitches}'' I gather— I gather— I gather— I gather— I gather— I gather— I gather— I gather—

===Message 9===

'''AUTOMATED VOICE:''' You have a call from: Free Country USA Penitentiary.

'''COACH Z:''' Hey, there, Marzipan! We won our first victory in the long fight to justice! I had my hearing yesterday, and guess what? They're gonna try me as a minor! Bubs tells me that's a good thing. So anyways, I'm celebratin' with a batch of jail terlet melonade! I wish you was here to clink glasses with me. Well, these aren't glasses so much as they're, uh, the little slippers they give us. They don't exactly clink. They just sorta s—slop together. Ya end up basically suckin' the melonade outta the— the sort of foam Dr. Scholls situation. Ya know what, after sayin' that out loud, I think I'm gonna skip this round. But anyways, ''{chanting}'' free Coach Z! Free Coach Z!

===Message 10===

'''HOMSAR:''' AaA, hey Marzipa-yan! It's Homsar! I was just calling you because, for some reason, I seem to be more articulate on the phone! I hate to hang up, knowin' as soon as I do, I'll be back to "AaAaA, you're a pork rind's president!" Or maybe like, "DaAaAon't get chipsy with the chalk sauce!" Y— you know, the kind of garbage that I spout! Anyways, gimme a holler if you ever wanna have a constructive conversation. OoOoOokay, bye-dee-bye!

===Message 11===

'''BUBS:''' ''{Soft tone}'' Hey Marzipan, it's Bubs. You know, the defense lawyer on the Coach Z case. I've been starting to have some pangs. Pangs of... this is a really terrible idea. Pangs of... he's totally guilty and you shouldn't be a lawyer. Pangs of... just what exactly is a charcuterie board, and why is it so expensive? Anyways, I think Coach Z did it, and I don't know if I can defend him anymore, whatever it is that he is accused of. I haven't really gotten around to asking anybody yet. I'm supposed to be in the court room defending him right now, but I snuck out to read some John Grisham novels to give me an edge, only I mixed him up with Michael Crichton, and now my defense is based around ''{Stretched out and delivered in a growl}'' DINOSAURS! Ba doo da dum, bo!

===Message 12===

'''HOMESTAR:''' Oh man, Marzipan. Kickstarter sensation the Ouya, they're gonna make games for that thing for the rest of eternity! Mark my words, every game that comes out from now until the end of time will also come out on the Ouya. Gonna outlive Sony, Nintendo, Coleco, Canseco, Jaleco, all of the heavy hitters. Anyways, I can't wait to be playing Ouya games in fifteen years, or even like, five months! Written in Sharpie on the bathroom wall of history!

===Message 13===

'''AUTOMATED VOICE:''' You have a call from: Free Country USA Penitentiary.

'''STRONG SAD:''' ''{Depressed and in fear}'' Uh, hey Marzipan. The jodhpurs did not work out! They did not work out! Why, jodhpurs? Why'd you do that to me, jodhpurs? How could you do this to me, jodhpurs? ''{beep}''

===Message 14===

'''STRONG BAD''': Hey Marzipan, it's Strong Bad. Look, I just wanted to run something by you, um... Everybody else I've talked to says that this is the worst idea I've ever had, and that my career will go down in flames if I do this, so you're my last hope to tell me that this is a great idea. As you know, it's June of 2012, which means we're coming up on the ten year anniversary of Everybody to the Limit, so I want to celebrate in grand fashion, and I figured what better way than to make a sequel! It's like... Fhqwhgads Revisited! Let me just play a little demo right here over the phone. ''{Singing}'' Let's fhqwhgads again! Let's fhqwhgads again! Let's fhqwhgads again! Let's fhqwhgads again! You remember that song, from that one summer. It was really good, and you emailed it to all your friends. Let's fhqwhgads again, so you can email it to all your friends! Let's fhqwhgads again, and now email your friends. Guess who will be there? Probably Joe and Jake. You remember Joe and Jake? I mentioned them in the first song. Th- this is the sequel. Let's fhqwhgads again! F-H-Q-W-H-GADS. F-H-Q-W-H-GADS. F-H-Q-W-H-GADS. So that's great, right? I mean, it's even better than the first one! So anyways, call me back, and tell me it's a great idea, so I can get The Cheat to work on a music video. Okay, bye! ''{Whispering}'' Let's fhqwhgads again! Let's fhqwhgads again! ''{beep}''

===Message 15===

===Message 16===

===Message 17===

===Message 18===

===Message 19===

===Message 20===

===Message 21===

===Message 22===

===Message 23===

===Message 24===

===Message 25===

===Message 26===

===Message 27===

===Message 28===

===Message 29===

===Message 30===

===Message 31===

===Message 32===

===Message 33===

===Message 34===

===Message 35===

== Fun Facts ==
=== Explanations ===
*[[Wikipedia:Jeremy Lin|Jeremy Lin]] is an [[Wikipedia:NBA|NBA]] player who famously began his career by leading the [[Wikipedia:New York Knicks|New York Knicks]] to a large winning streak, only to later struggle once signed by another team.

=== Trivia ===
*This is the first toon uploaded to [[homestarrunner.com]] to not have a [[Flash]] file; instead, the [[YouTube]] version is used.
*At 31:09, this is not only the longest toon on the site, but it's nearly four times as long as the next-longest, [[I Killed Pom Pom]].
*This is the second time [[The Poopsmith]] has broken his vow of silence, and the first time he has had spoken dialogue. [[Wikipedia:John Linnell|John Linnell]] reprised his role as the voice of The Poopsmith from [[email thunder]].
*[[Craig Zobel]] reprised his role as the voice of [[Kevin]], who initially appeared in [[Marzipan's Answering Machine Version 6.0]].

===Remarks===
*The answering machine in this toon is the [[PhoneTime XL8]] instead of the [[PhoneTime XL800]], which was used in the [[Marzipan's Answering Machine Version 16.2|previous answering machine toon]]. Oddly, the XL8 has a "record" button in this toon.
*Homsar still spoke nonsense on his answering machine message in [[Homestar Ruiner]].

===Inside References===
*Homsar speaking "more articulate on the phone" is in reference to [[Marzipan's Answering Machine Version 5.0]], which was created before Homsar's tendency to spout non-sequiturs had been established, and thus had Homsar able to create a coherent monologue while calling Marzipan.
*The King of Town mentions [[Old Characters Page|being the father]] of Marzipan at one point in time.

=== Real-World References ===
*[[Wikipedia:Yoplait|Yoplait]], [[Wikipedia:Fage|Fage]], [[Wikipedia:Stonyfield Farm|Oikos]], and [[Wikipedia:Activia|Activia]] are all brands of yogurt.
*[[Wikipedia:Robert Siegel|Robert Siegel]] is an American radio journalist.
*Homestar is excited for the releases of both the [[Wikipedia:Ouya|Ouya]] game console, and the [[Wikipedia:Google Glass|Google Glass]] headset. Both of these products underperformed in sales.

== External Links ==
*[[HR:answer17.html|watch "Marzipan's Answering Machine Version 17.2"]]
*[[YouTube:DQO1RHETKy4|watch "Marzipan's Answering Machine Version 17.2" on YouTube]]
*[[Forum:http://forum.hrwiki.org/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=37796|forum thread re: "Marzipan's Answering Machine Version 17.2"]]

{{Marzipan's Answering Machine}}

[[Category:Marzipan's Answering Machine]]

{{Template:aprilfool}}

User talk:That'sBupkis

2015-10-09T17:33:34Z

24.192.11.206: /**/Thanks!

{| class="infobox" width="270px" style="float:right;border:black solid 1px;padding: 0.5em; margin: 0.5em 0.5em 1em;"
|-
! align="center" | '''That'sBupkis''' talk archives
----
|-
| '''[[User talk:That'sBupkis/Archive09|2007-2009 talk]]'''<br>'''[[User talk:That'sBupkis/Archive10|2010 talk]]'''
|}

==Userboxes==
Hey That'sBupkis, great userboxes, can i ad them to the userbox page? --[[User:Jfilesguy|that guy who is Jfiles]] 01:45, 23 June 2011 (UTC)
:Sure, go ahead. Wow, your comment is from over a year ago... sorry about that. I've been away for a while, mostly because of the hiatus. Once that sbemail206 thing rolls around I'll probably be more active here. {{User:That'sBupkis/sig}} 18:42, 13 September 2012 (UTC)

== Technical issue ==

Actually, technical issues usually go under "Glitches", though Strong Bad is enough of a grammatical hypocrite to justify moving that fact to "Remarks" anyway. --{{User:Jay/sig}} 23:16, 13 December 2012 (UTC)
:Okay, I should have said that more clearly. By "goof" I meant like an animation mistake or oversight... [[Teen Girl Squad 10|or something like that]]. {{User:That'sBupkis/sig}} 02:37, 14 December 2012 (UTC)

== Thanks! ==

Thanks for taking that copy/paste nonsense and knowing what to do with it. It only just occurred to me that some crazy fans have been faithful to the Wiki all through the hiatus and actually know how to write up articles and such.

Interviews and Public Appearances

2015-10-09T15:44:58Z

24.192.11.206: Added Vox Interview

{{about|real-world interviews}} {{foremail|interview}} {{forshort|The Interview}}

[[Image:BBinterview.JPG|thumb|[[The Brothers Chaps]] being interviewed at Dragon Con 2005]] Besides heaps of publicity through word of mouth, [[The Brothers Chaps]] also promote [[homestarrunner.com]] through '''interviews''' on TV and radio, and through '''presentations''' hosted by themselves. These are some of them.

==Interviews==
===Television===

*[[The Screen Savers Interview - 24 Jan 2005]]
*[[Media Television - 22 May 2004]]
*[[Pulse Interview - May 2004]]
*[[Pulse Interview - 1 Aug 2003]]

===Radio===

*[[Ron & Fez Show Interview - 5 Jan 2009]]
*[[All Things Considered Interview - 8 May 2005]]
*[[Wired News Radio Interview - 23 Jun 2003]]
*[[UMFM Interview - 20 May 2003]]
*[[R!OT Radio Interview 2]] — Mar 2003
*[[R!OT Radio Interview 1]] — Late 2002

===Magazines and Newspapers===
*[[Nintendo Power July 2008 Interview]]
*[[Zoinks! Magazine Interview]] — October 2006
*[[Giant Magazine Interview]] — Early 2005
*[[Daily Eastern News Interview - 23 Apr 2004]]
*[[The Boston Globe Interview - 9 Aug 2003]]
*[[HOW Magazine Interview - Aug 2003]]
*[[Atlanta Journal Constitution Interview - 21 Jul 2003]]
*[[The Brunswickan Interview - 4 Apr 2003]]
*[[Wonkavision Magazine Interview]] — Spring 2003

===Internet===
*[[Vox Interview 6 October 2015]]
*[[Bumperpodcast Interview - 25 Jun 2015]]
*[http://www.rollingstone.com/culture/features/homestar-runner-returns-inside-a-cult-classics-comeback-20141003 Rolling Stone Interview - 3 Oct 2014]
*[[The Jeff Rubin Jeff Rubin Show Interview - 7 July 2014]]
*[[CollegeHumor Interview - 15 Sep 2008]]
*[[Nintendo Voice Chat Interview - 3 Sep 2008]]
*[[Kotaku Interview - 13 Jun 2008]]
*[[IGN Interview - 14 April 2008]]
*[[Late Nite JengaJam Interview - 4 Oct 2007]]
*[[Flashforward Interview - 10 Feb 2006]]
*[[Cold Hard Flash Interview - 1 Dec 2005]]
*[[Bobby Blackwolf Interview - 5 Sep 2005]]
*[[Moron Life Interview - 5 Sep 2005]]
*[[Adventure Gamers Interview]] — Late Aug 2004
*[[Inkhole Interview]] — July 2004
*[[Club Aquatica Interview - 29 Oct 2003]]
*[[Run Devil Run Interview]] — Summer/Fall 2003
*[[Tastes Like Chicken Interview]] — Jun 2003
*[[Penguin Brothers Interview - 26 May 2003]]
*[[retroCRUSH Interview]] — Late 2001
*[[l33t Interview]] — Early 2001

==Public Appearances==
*[[Dad's Garage & Friends - 13 Jun 2015]]
*[[Dad's Garage & Friends - 11 Jul 2014]]
*[[W00tstock - 18 Jul 2013]]
*[[Aquabats Concert - 18 Jan 2011]]
*[[TMBG Concert - 5 Mar 2010]]
*[[ROFLCon - 26 Apr 2008]]
*[[The Lucky Yates Show - 3 Nov 2007]]
*[[Georgia Tech - 26 Apr 2007]]
*[[TMBG Concert - 3 May 2006]]
*[[Flashforward 2006 Seattle - 28 Feb 2006]]
*[[Paste Rock 'n Reel Festival - 22 Oct 2005]]
*[[Alamo Drafthouse - 10 Jun 2005]]
*[[SXSW Panel - 14 Mar 2005]]
*[[NYU Talk - 1 Mar 2005]]
*[[TMBG Concert - 25 Sep 2004]]
*[[University of Central Florida - Apr 9 2004]]
*[[University of Saskatchewan Talk - Mar 25 2004]]
*[[FSU Talk - 7 Nov 2003]]

==See Also==
*[[The Brothers Chaps' Fansite Acknowledgments]]

[[Category:Interviews and Public Appearances| ]]

Vox Interview - 6 Oct 2015

2015-10-09T15:41:31Z

24.192.11.206: /* Transcript */ I still have no idea what I'm doing.

Matt and Mike discuss ''Too Many Eggs'', ''Gravity Falls'', and getting back to work after the hiatus.

'''
== Transcript ==
'''
Mike and Matt Chapman, also known as the Brothers Chaps, also known as the Chapman brothers, hadn't really disappeared. It just sometimes felt like they had.

The two had been web video pioneers, their animated shorts proving so popular that they landed in the pages of mainstream publications like Entertainment Weekly and got hat tips on Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Starring a wide variety of colorful, brightly designed characters, the cartoons stripped storytelling down to its most basic elements. From baseball-cap-wearing naif Homestar Runner to Mexican-wrestling-mask-clad Strong Bad (well-known for answering his email), the brothers came up with a strange, comic-strip-like world that proved enormously popular.

And then they seemingly went away.

In the long, fallow period between 2010 and 2014, their website sat dormant while the two of them wrote for kids' television. They always planned to make more Homestar cartoons. It just didn't happen.

But the past 12 months have proved incredibly productive. The two have returned to the world of Homestar, but they've also launched a series of animated shorts for DisneyXD called Two More Eggs, which allow them to experiment with new characters and ideas. (The latest of these shorts premieres today on Vox.) Between the two, there's more Chapman content than ever before, and it's a great reminder of why their whimsical riff on the weirdness of humankind caught on in the first place.

I recently talked to the Chapmans about their creative process, what's changed from the early Homestar days to the Two More Eggs days, and what working in episodic TV taught them about writing shorts for the web. This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

'''Todd VanDerWerff''': Your style of humor is very whimsical and has been, I think, pretty influential on other shows and videos. What would you define your sense of humor as?

'''Mike Chapman''': I always think about family vacations. There were five of us kids, Matt and I were the two youngest, and we had a big van. There were no TVs or iPads or anything. We just had to entertain ourselves when we would go on 12-hour drives. Making people crack up and having these little jokes that you associate with a time and a place — for some weird reason that element of our childhood formed our humor a lot.

'''Matt Chapman''': Inside joke humor, where if there's an element of it you get, it feels special to you even if a bunch of other people feel the same way. It's like, "Oh, that joke is for me!" Mystery Science Theater 3000 was a thing like that. There would be these jokes in that that I was just like, "No one else in the world gets that joke but me." I feel like that's something that we really love. Either intentionally or unintentionally, that's what we're doing: family vacation, inside joke humor.

'''Todd VanDerWerff''': What's at the core of a great animated short?

'''Matt Chapman''': These being so short. That's what's nice. If there's one thing you come away with, it's like the hook in a song. If it's a weird way this guy says something, maybe it's an awesome gag that you end on, maybe it's a song that's in it. It's like having some little thing that afterward you might accidentally say in conversation because you heard it one of these shorts earlier. If we can get some sort of brain earworm out of it, even if it wasn't like, "That was the funniest thing I ever saw!" but it's like, "I can't stop thinking about the way that weird guy said 'continue,'" that's all we're really looking for.

'''Mike Chapman''': Getting in and out as quickly as possible. We'd like to think it'd be hard to bore someone in 90 seconds.

'''Matt Chapman''': You know what? Give us time.

'''Mike Chapman''': Yeah, we can try.

'''Todd VanDerWerff''': If you think about the great characters from animated shorts, they had certain consistent things, but their occupations or other biographical details could change wildly. Do you think pinning down that stuff is inherently hard to do with this format?

'''Mike Chapman''': For us, it's one of those things where you could argue that we've been doing the same thing over and over and over again. We don't want to repeat ourselves too often. Even though we've made maybe the same kinds of jokes, we don't want to do the exact the same thing over and over again. It's a way to keep it fresh, where it's like the Three Stooges. This week they're sign painters, and the next week they're delivering ice. What's consistent is those characters and how they interact.

'''Matt Chapman''': It's hard to nail that stuff down arbitrarily early on and just decide these things. You put the character in situations, and then that stuff happens naturally. You discover the nuances of the character. Whereas when you're writing a [show] bible, when you've invented these characters, you're like, "All right, I guess this will be the guy who likes food, and maybe this will be the guy that's real nervous."

'''Mike Chapman''': Eventually, those things get worked out by putting them in a bunch of situations to get there.

'''Matt Chapman''': When we were working on [other television pilots], Mike and I would finally come to the thing of, "All right let's put [the main characters] all in the back of a cop car." This isn't the plot of an episode. It's just asking, who are these characters? Put them all in the back of a cop car and write a scene, and that became the way we would try to find out what these characters were like. Usually that cop car scene was funnier than the pilot we were trying to write.

'''Todd VanDerWerff''': You've been making animated shorts for the internet for 15 years now. What's been the biggest change in your process in that time?

'''Matt Chapman''': There's not a whole lot of difference, which is actually really cool. That's what's unique about the relationship we've got with Disney — what they're letting us do, or get away with, depending on how you look at it. Mike and I come up with an idea, and then we just start barfing it out. Originally we were submitting little springboards or little synopses, and we'd say, "Hey, here's five, which one do you like?" Now they just let us have freedom: "Oh, just surprise us, let's see what you do next." We've sort of been able to let these organically grow, which is exactly how we used to do Homestar.

'''Mike Chapman''': We write something in a day, record it the next day, and then make it in the next three or four days, and give it to Disney. That is pretty much the way we used to do things with Homestar, which is really good for us. It's our strength. Get the lightning in the bottle. We live and die by the sword, as opposed to sitting on things and rewriting and overthinking things. Sometimes we end up losing some edge that way, so it's fortunate they're letting us do it the quick-and-dirty route.

'''Matt Chapman''': Sometimes lightning in a bottle comes out. Sometimes something else in a bottle.

'''Mike Chapman''': You live and die by the sword. Sometimes we die, certainly.

'''Todd VanDerWerff''': What's been the biggest shift in your writing process? What ideas are really interesting to you now that even five years ago, you weren't as excited by?

'''Matt Chapman''': With Homestar stuff we had these set characters, and with this we're making some recurring characters, but these can be all over the place. With Homestar, we'd do a bunch of Strong Bad Emails or stuff with set characters, and then every once in a while we'd do some other weird kind of tangential thing, only loosely related to the Homestar universe. This is sort of the inverse, where almost all of these are these weird tangential things. Some of them loosely related to one another, but for the most part we're not really restricted. Not that Homestar was such a narrative juggernaut in terms of storytelling or anything! But even the small restrictions that that gives you, it's like we have more freedom. So much has changed on the internet since we started. We have a series that hasn't aired yet, that's a down-on-his-luck dad trying to do YouTube videos. That will be our first foray into live action. None of those have aired yet, but that's a thing that's happened since we were back in the Homestar heyday — YouTube and people's weird "how to" and "let's play" YouTube videos. Getting to poke fun at some of the more modern stuff we see has been a fun thing.

'''Todd VanDerWerff''': What do you see as the advantages of working and creating so quickly?

'''Mike Chapman''':The volume helps — doing stuff quickly develops characters and develops worlds more quickly than outlines and revisions to outlines and then scripts and then revisions to script, and then an animatic and revisions to animatic. To me, doing eight two-minute shorts, at the end of that time period, you're going to be a lot further along with the characters and the world than if you had spent that same amount of time trying to perfect one nugget.

'''Matt Chapman''': Mike and I, we've tried to develop things earlier with Disney and with other networks, and the part we were worst at was the character bible and bios for these characters that you just kind of made up. I still don't think I could write a decent character bible or bio for Homestar, and we did that for a decade. It's like an open beta. Our cartoons are an open beta, and we're slowly evolving it, and we're making you watch it. [Laughs.]

'''Todd VanDerWerff''': A lot of your shorts — like the ones for Disney featuring Dooble — focus on weird nonsense words that are just sort of amusing in the way they sound. How do you come up with that sort of non-dialogue dialogue?

'''Mike Chapman''': It's usually us sitting there, Matt talking. We never listen to music or anything while we're working, so usually our mouths are going. We're not really having conversations. We're just saying things.

'''Matt Chapman:''' Mike, you can be a little meaner than that. I talk constantly, and Mike sits there and lets it wash over him.

'''Mike Chapman''': Sometimes I engage in nonsense conversations, but sometimes I do have to just let them waft over my head.

'''Matt Chapman''': Eventually, those weird things just come out. It's been that way since we were kids. Mike is a saint for putting up with it.

'''Mike Chapman''': I don't know about that. As little thought as you possibly think can go into stuff like that, that's what it is. It just happens.

'''Matt Chapman''': The "Dooblie Doo" thing actually wasn't the first cartoon we made with that character. His name wasn't Dooble. It was going to be something else, and then he was just driving a car and sang that little song to himself.
After we recorded that line, we both were getting that little song stuck in our head and were saying it over and over and over again. Finally, we were like, "All right, let's just go record that song." One line from a cartoon turned into the song, and then became its own other cartoon.

'''Mike Chapman''': And then became that character's name.

'''Matt Chapman''': You could never put that into a character bible. It had to evolve on its own.

'''Todd VanDerWerff''': You have worked in more traditional episodic television. Are there things about that you wish you could do in shorts?

'''Matt Chapman''': You can tell much bigger stories. I went to film school and tried to write features here and there. There's a part of me that wants to tell bigger, grander stories, whereas these are tiny little nuggets of humor, of emotion or whatever. And we can make them go from our brains to them existing in a week. I wrote on that show Gravity Falls, and there are episodes that I wrote on that won't air for months, and I worked on them two years ago. Animation's done overseas, and there's editing and revisions and all that stuff. It takes so long, but it is satisfying when I get to see those finally. It's like, "Oh wow, look, that thing finally came to life." We'd like to tell bigger stories with grander animation someday, but this seems to be what we're good at. After we recorded that line, we both were getting that little song stuck in our head and were saying it over and over and over again. Finally, we were like, "All right, let's just go record that song." One line from a cartoon turned into the song, and then became its own other cartoon.

'''Mike Chapman''': And then became that character's name.

'''Matt Chapman''': You could never put that into a character bible. It had to evolve on its own.

'''Todd VanDerWerff''': You have worked in more traditional episodic television. Are there things about that you wish you could do in shorts?

'''Matt Chapman''': You can tell much bigger stories. I went to film school and tried to write features here and there. There's a part of me that wants to tell bigger, grander stories, whereas these are tiny little nuggets of humor, of emotion or whatever. And we can make them go from our brains to them existing in a week. I wrote on that show Gravity Falls, and there are episodes that I wrote on that won't air for months, and I worked on them two years ago. Animation's done overseas, and there's editing and revisions and all that stuff. It takes so long, but it is satisfying when I get to see those finally. It's like, "Oh wow, look, that thing finally came to life." We'd like to tell bigger stories with grander animation someday, but this seems to be what we're good at.

'''Todd VanDerWerff''': You brought back the Homestar Runner characters recently, after considerable clamor for a comeback. Were you surprised at how much people had missed them?

'''Mike Chapman''': We were amazed and thankful. When we stopped doing stuff, we didn't know if we were stopping for two months, or six months, or one year, or four years. We just knew that we couldn't make a cartoon in the next couple weeks. So all of a sudden, "We're really trying to!" turned into this multiyear hiatus. Matt was moving back to Atlanta from LA, and we had over the years been talking about the characters more, and situations would come up, and we'd say, "Oh, Strong Bad should say this!" Once we decided that we had some ideas, the fact that people still cared was fantastic.

'''Matt Chapman''': Yeah, we were very psyched. We just wanted to make a new cartoon. We had time to make one, and it sort of became this big comeback thing, when we were like, "But wait, well, we're also doing this thing with Disney that's going to take up almost all of our time!" We didn't mean to tease anybody, but we're actually working on one of those as well now, a new Homestar cartoon. We're trying to squeeze them in as long as you still care, and we hope you have a lot of patience. We still want to make them, but it might be sort of sporadic and without warning.

'''Todd VanDerWerff''': Was it easy for you to slip back into those voices?

'''Matt Chapman''': The voices have changed a little bit. I take terrible care of my throat, I think. Or do the voices sound a little different just because it's been a long time? Listen to Homer Simpson in the first episode versus right now. But as far as doing them, no. It was super fun. I'm ashamed to admit it, but I would talk to my children in their younger years as Homestar kind of a lot. An easy way to baby-talk to someone is in the Homestar voice. I hadn't gone completely out of practice.

'''Todd VanDerWerff''': Everybody has their favorite Homestar cartoons, but there must be some you feel are a little unheralded compared with everything else. What are they?

'''Mike Chapman''': We did a little song for all the loading screens. We'd made 300-something cartoons, and most of them had different loading screens. We just made this song called "Loading Screens" and showed all the loading screens from all the different cartoons. I think that might be my favorite thing we ever did. The other thing I like a lot, we had two fake bands: Limozeen was a fake hair-metal, '80s band, and then this band Sloshy, which was this apathetic '90s indie-rock band. We made a split 7-inch where Sloshy covered a Limozeen song and Limozeen covered a Sloshy song. I think most of my favorite things are where the process itself was a big part of it.

'''Matt Chapman''': I feel like the best thing we've ever done and probably will ever do is Peasant's Quest, which was this old AGI-like, text-adventure-style game. I was recently at a comic convention in Charlotte, North Carolina, and I met some guys that had played through it. They'd gotten the full amount of points you can get, and I was geeking out over my own game with these guys, like, "Yeah, did you get to the part where this happened?" I felt sort of stupid about it afterward, but I will go back and play that game. I tried to get my kids to play it the other day, and they're like, "Dad, we don't want to play Peasant's Quest again." Which is not to say I don't love all of our Homestar characters, but I feel like for us sometimes, those ones that are completely different from the rest of the body of our work is what stands out for us.

==
----
Fun Facts ==
'''

Vox Interview - 6 Oct 2015

2015-10-09T15:37:18Z

24.192.11.206: A bit of editing cleanup. I still have no idea what I

Matt and Mike discuss ''Too Many Eggs'', ''Gravity Falls'', and getting back to work after the hiatus.

'''
== Transcript ==
'''
----

Mike and Matt Chapman, also known as the Brothers Chaps, also known as the Chapman brothers, hadn't really disappeared. It just sometimes felt like they had.

The two had been web video pioneers, their animated shorts proving so popular that they landed in the pages of mainstream publications like Entertainment Weekly and got hat tips on Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Starring a wide variety of colorful, brightly designed characters, the cartoons stripped storytelling down to its most basic elements. From baseball-cap-wearing naif Homestar Runner to Mexican-wrestling-mask-clad Strong Bad (well-known for answering his email), the brothers came up with a strange, comic-strip-like world that proved enormously popular.

And then they seemingly went away.

In the long, fallow period between 2010 and 2014, their website sat dormant while the two of them wrote for kids' television. They always planned to make more Homestar cartoons. It just didn't happen.

But the past 12 months have proved incredibly productive. The two have returned to the world of Homestar, but they've also launched a series of animated shorts for DisneyXD called Two More Eggs, which allow them to experiment with new characters and ideas. (The latest of these shorts premieres today on Vox.) Between the two, there's more Chapman content than ever before, and it's a great reminder of why their whimsical riff on the weirdness of humankind caught on in the first place.

I recently talked to the Chapmans about their creative process, what's changed from the early Homestar days to the Two More Eggs days, and what working in episodic TV taught them about writing shorts for the web. This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

'''Todd VanDerWerff''': Your style of humor is very whimsical and has been, I think, pretty influential on other shows and videos. What would you define your sense of humor as?

'''Mike Chapman''': I always think about family vacations. There were five of us kids, Matt and I were the two youngest, and we had a big van. There were no TVs or iPads or anything. We just had to entertain ourselves when we would go on 12-hour drives. Making people crack up and having these little jokes that you associate with a time and a place — for some weird reason that element of our childhood formed our humor a lot.

'''Matt Chapman''': Inside joke humor, where if there's an element of it you get, it feels special to you even if a bunch of other people feel the same way. It's like, "Oh, that joke is for me!" Mystery Science Theater 3000 was a thing like that. There would be these jokes in that that I was just like, "No one else in the world gets that joke but me." I feel like that's something that we really love. Either intentionally or unintentionally, that's what we're doing: family vacation, inside joke humor.

'''Todd VanDerWerff''': What's at the core of a great animated short?

'''Matt Chapman''': These being so short. That's what's nice. If there's one thing you come away with, it's like the hook in a song. If it's a weird way this guy says something, maybe it's an awesome gag that you end on, maybe it's a song that's in it. It's like having some little thing that afterward you might accidentally say in conversation because you heard it one of these shorts earlier. If we can get some sort of brain earworm out of it, even if it wasn't like, "That was the funniest thing I ever saw!" but it's like, "I can't stop thinking about the way that weird guy said 'continue,'" that's all we're really looking for.

'''Mike Chapman''': Getting in and out as quickly as possible. We'd like to think it'd be hard to bore someone in 90 seconds.

'''Matt Chapman''': You know what? Give us time.

'''Mike Chapman''': Yeah, we can try.

'''Todd VanDerWerff''': If you think about the great characters from animated shorts, they had certain consistent things, but their occupations or other biographical details could change wildly. Do you think pinning down that stuff is inherently hard to do with this format?

'''Mike Chapman''': For us, it's one of those things where you could argue that we've been doing the same thing over and over and over again. We don't want to repeat ourselves too often. Even though we've made maybe the same kinds of jokes, we don't want to do the exact the same thing over and over again. It's a way to keep it fresh, where it's like the Three Stooges. This week they're sign painters, and the next week they're delivering ice. What's consistent is those characters and how they interact.

'''Matt Chapman''': It's hard to nail that stuff down arbitrarily early on and just decide these things. You put the character in situations, and then that stuff happens naturally. You discover the nuances of the character. Whereas when you're writing a [show] bible, when you've invented these characters, you're like, "All right, I guess this will be the guy who likes food, and maybe this will be the guy that's real nervous."

'''Mike Chapman''': Eventually, those things get worked out by putting them in a bunch of situations to get there.

'''Matt Chapman''': When we were working on [other television pilots], Mike and I would finally come to the thing of, "All right let's put [the main characters] all in the back of a cop car." This isn't the plot of an episode. It's just asking, who are these characters? Put them all in the back of a cop car and write a scene, and that became the way we would try to find out what these characters were like. Usually that cop car scene was funnier than the pilot we were trying to write.

'''Todd VanDerWerff''': You've been making animated shorts for the internet for 15 years now. What's been the biggest change in your process in that time?

'''Matt Chapman''': There's not a whole lot of difference, which is actually really cool. That's what's unique about the relationship we've got with Disney — what they're letting us do, or get away with, depending on how you look at it. Mike and I come up with an idea, and then we just start barfing it out. Originally we were submitting little springboards or little synopses, and we'd say, "Hey, here's five, which one do you like?" Now they just let us have freedom: "Oh, just surprise us, let's see what you do next." We've sort of been able to let these organically grow, which is exactly how we used to do Homestar.

'''Mike Chapman''': We write something in a day, record it the next day, and then make it in the next three or four days, and give it to Disney. That is pretty much the way we used to do things with Homestar, which is really good for us. It's our strength. Get the lightning in the bottle. We live and die by the sword, as opposed to sitting on things and rewriting and overthinking things. Sometimes we end up losing some edge that way, so it's fortunate they're letting us do it the quick-and-dirty route.

'''Matt Chapman''': Sometimes lightning in a bottle comes out. Sometimes something else in a bottle.

'''Mike Chapman''': You live and die by the sword. Sometimes we die, certainly.

'''Todd VanDerWerff''': What's been the biggest shift in your writing process? What ideas are really interesting to you now that even five years ago, you weren't as excited by?

'''Matt Chapman''': With Homestar stuff we had these set characters, and with this we're making some recurring characters, but these can be all over the place. With Homestar, we'd do a bunch of Strong Bad Emails or stuff with set characters, and then every once in a while we'd do some other weird kind of tangential thing, only loosely related to the Homestar universe. This is sort of the inverse, where almost all of these are these weird tangential things. Some of them loosely related to one another, but for the most part we're not really restricted. Not that Homestar was such a narrative juggernaut in terms of storytelling or anything! But even the small restrictions that that gives you, it's like we have more freedom. So much has changed on the internet since we started. We have a series that hasn't aired yet, that's a down-on-his-luck dad trying to do YouTube videos. That will be our first foray into live action. None of those have aired yet, but that's a thing that's happened since we were back in the Homestar heyday — YouTube and people's weird "how to" and "let's play" YouTube videos. Getting to poke fun at some of the more modern stuff we see has been a fun thing.

'''Todd VanDerWerff''': What do you see as the advantages of working and creating so quickly?

'''Mike Chapman''':The volume helps — doing stuff quickly develops characters and develops worlds more quickly than outlines and revisions to outlines and then scripts and then revisions to script, and then an animatic and revisions to animatic. To me, doing eight two-minute shorts, at the end of that time period, you're going to be a lot further along with the characters and the world than if you had spent that same amount of time trying to perfect one nugget.

'''Matt Chapman''': Mike and I, we've tried to develop things earlier with Disney and with other networks, and the part we were worst at was the character bible and bios for these characters that you just kind of made up. I still don't think I could write a decent character bible or bio for Homestar, and we did that for a decade. It's like an open beta. Our cartoons are an open beta, and we're slowly evolving it, and we're making you watch it. [Laughs.]

'''Todd VanDerWerff''': A lot of your shorts — like the ones for Disney featuring Dooble — focus on weird nonsense words that are just sort of amusing in the way they sound. How do you come up with that sort of non-dialogue dialogue?

'''Mike Chapman''': It's usually us sitting there, Matt talking. We never listen to music or anything while we're working, so usually our mouths are going. We're not really having conversations. We're just saying things.

'''Matt Chapman:''' Mike, you can be a little meaner than that. I talk constantly, and Mike sits there and lets it wash over him.

'''Mike Chapman''': Sometimes I engage in nonsense conversations, but sometimes I do have to just let them waft over my head.

'''Matt Chapman''': Eventually, those weird things just come out. It's been that way since we were kids. Mike is a saint for putting up with it.

'''Mike Chapman''': I don't know about that. As little thought as you possibly think can go into stuff like that, that's what it is. It just happens.

'''Matt Chapman''': The "Dooblie Doo" thing actually wasn't the first cartoon we made with that character. His name wasn't Dooble. It was going to be something else, and then he was just driving a car and sang that little song to himself.
After we recorded that line, we both were getting that little song stuck in our head and were saying it over and over and over again. Finally, we were like, "All right, let's just go record that song." One line from a cartoon turned into the song, and then became its own other cartoon.

'''Mike Chapman''': And then became that character's name.

'''Matt Chapman''': You could never put that into a character bible. It had to evolve on its own.

'''Todd VanDerWerff''': You have worked in more traditional episodic television. Are there things about that you wish you could do in shorts?

'''Matt Chapman''': You can tell much bigger stories. I went to film school and tried to write features here and there. There's a part of me that wants to tell bigger, grander stories, whereas these are tiny little nuggets of humor, of emotion or whatever. And we can make them go from our brains to them existing in a week. I wrote on that show Gravity Falls, and there are episodes that I wrote on that won't air for months, and I worked on them two years ago. Animation's done overseas, and there's editing and revisions and all that stuff. It takes so long, but it is satisfying when I get to see those finally. It's like, "Oh wow, look, that thing finally came to life." We'd like to tell bigger stories with grander animation someday, but this seems to be what we're good at. After we recorded that line, we both were getting that little song stuck in our head and were saying it over and over and over again. Finally, we were like, "All right, let's just go record that song." One line from a cartoon turned into the song, and then became its own other cartoon.

'''Mike Chapman''': And then became that character's name.

'''Matt Chapman''': You could never put that into a character bible. It had to evolve on its own.

Todd VanDerWerff
You have worked in more traditional episodic television. Are there things about that you wish you could do in shorts?

Matt Chapman
You can tell much bigger stories. I went to film school and tried to write features here and there. There's a part of me that wants to tell bigger, grander stories, whereas these are tiny little nuggets of humor, of emotion or whatever. And we can make them go from our brains to them existing in a week.

I wrote on that show Gravity Falls, and there are episodes that I wrote on that won't air for months, and I worked on them two years ago. Animation's done overseas, and there's editing and revisions and all that stuff. It takes so long, but it is satisfying when I get to see those finally. It's like, "Oh wow, look, that thing finally came to life." We'd like to tell bigger stories with grander animation someday, but this seems to be what we're good at.

''Todd VanDerWerff'': You brought back the Homestar Runner characters recently, after considerable clamor for a comeback. Were you surprised at how much people had missed them?

'''Mike Chapman''': We were amazed and thankful. When we stopped doing stuff, we didn't know if we were stopping for two months, or six months, or one year, or four years. We just knew that we couldn't make a cartoon in the next couple weeks. So all of a sudden, "We're really trying to!" turned into this multiyear hiatus. Matt was moving back to Atlanta from LA, and we had over the years been talking about the characters more, and situations would come up, and we'd say, "Oh, Strong Bad should say this!" Once we decided that we had some ideas, the fact that people still cared was fantastic.

'''Matt Chapman''': Yeah, we were very psyched. We just wanted to make a new cartoon. We had time to make one, and it sort of became this big comeback thing, when we were like, "But wait, well, we're also doing this thing with Disney that's going to take up almost all of our time!" We didn't mean to tease anybody, but we're actually working on one of those as well now, a new Homestar cartoon. We're trying to squeeze them in as long as you still care, and we hope you have a lot of patience. We still want to make them, but it might be sort of sporadic and without warning.

'''Todd VanDerWerff''': Was it easy for you to slip back into those voices?

'''Matt Chapman''': The voices have changed a little bit. I take terrible care of my throat, I think. Or do the voices sound a little different just because it's been a long time? Listen to Homer Simpson in the first episode versus right now. But as far as doing them, no. It was super fun. I'm ashamed to admit it, but I would talk to my children in their younger years as Homestar kind of a lot. An easy way to baby-talk to someone is in the Homestar voice. I hadn't gone completely out of practice.

'''Todd VanDerWerff''': Everybody has their favorite Homestar cartoons, but there must be some you feel are a little unheralded compared with everything else. What are they?

'''Mike Chapman''': We did a little song for all the loading screens. We'd made 300-something cartoons, and most of them had different loading screens. We just made this song called "Loading Screens" and showed all the loading screens from all the different cartoons. I think that might be my favorite thing we ever did. The other thing I like a lot, we had two fake bands: Limozeen was a fake hair-metal, '80s band, and then this band Sloshy, which was this apathetic '90s indie-rock band. We made a split 7-inch where Sloshy covered a Limozeen song and Limozeen covered a Sloshy song. I think most of my favorite things are where the process itself was a big part of it.

'''Matt Chapman''': I feel like the best thing we've ever done and probably will ever do is Peasant's Quest, which was this old AGI-like, text-adventure-style game. I was recently at a comic convention in Charlotte, North Carolina, and I met some guys that had played through it. They'd gotten the full amount of points you can get, and I was geeking out over my own game with these guys, like, "Yeah, did you get to the part where this happened?" I felt sort of stupid about it afterward, but I will go back and play that game. I tried to get my kids to play it the other day, and they're like, "Dad, we don't want to play Peasant's Quest again." Which is not to say I don't love all of our Homestar characters, but I feel like for us sometimes, those ones that are completely different from the rest of the body of our work is what stands out for us.

'''
==
----
Fun Facts ==
'''

Vox Interview - 6 Oct 2015

2015-10-09T15:21:31Z

24.192.11.206: Copied and pasted interview into edit box (sans block quotes and embedded videos). Don't know what else to do. Please help!

Mike and Matt Chapman, also known as the Brothers Chaps, also known as the Chapman brothers, hadn't really disappeared. It just sometimes felt like they had.

The two had been web video pioneers, their animated shorts proving so popular that they landed in the pages of mainstream publications like Entertainment Weekly and got hat tips on Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Starring a wide variety of colorful, brightly designed characters, the cartoons stripped storytelling down to its most basic elements. From baseball-cap-wearing naif Homestar Runner to Mexican-wrestling-mask-clad Strong Bad (well-known for answering his email), the brothers came up with a strange, comic-strip-like world that proved enormously popular.

And then they seemingly went away.

In the long, fallow period between 2010 and 2014, their website sat dormant while the two of them wrote for kids' television. They always planned to make more Homestar cartoons. It just didn't happen.

But the past 12 months have proved incredibly productive. The two have returned to the world of Homestar, but they've also launched a series of animated shorts for DisneyXD called Two More Eggs, which allow them to experiment with new characters and ideas. (The latest of these shorts premieres today on Vox.) Between the two, there's more Chapman content than ever before, and it's a great reminder of why their whimsical riff on the weirdness of humankind caught on in the first place.

I recently talked to the Chapmans about their creative process, what's changed from the early Homestar days to the Two More Eggs days, and what working in episodic TV taught them about writing shorts for the web. This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Todd VanDerWerff
Your style of humor is very whimsical and has been, I think, pretty influential on other shows and videos. What would you define your sense of humor as?

Mike Chapman
I always think about family vacations. There were five of us kids, Matt and I were the two youngest, and we had a big van. There were no TVs or iPads or anything. We just had to entertain ourselves when we would go on 12-hour drives. Making people crack up and having these little jokes that you associate with a time and a place — for some weird reason that element of our childhood formed our humor a lot.

Matt Chapman
Inside joke humor, where if there's an element of it you get, it feels special to you even if a bunch of other people feel the same way. It's like, "Oh, that joke is for me!"

Mystery Science Theater 3000 was a thing like that. There would be these jokes in that that I was just like, "No one else in the world gets that joke but me." I feel like that's something that we really love. Either intentionally or unintentionally, that's what we're doing: family vacation, inside joke humor.

Todd VanDerWerff
What's at the core of a great animated short?

Matt Chapman
These being so short. That's what's nice. If there's one thing you come away with, it's like the hook in a song. If it's a weird way this guy says something, maybe it's an awesome gag that you end on, maybe it's a song that's in it. It's like having some little thing that afterward you might accidentally say in conversation because you heard it one of these shorts earlier. If we can get some sort of brain earworm out of it, even if it wasn't like, "That was the funniest thing I ever saw!" but it's like, "I can't stop thinking about the way that weird guy said 'continue,'" that's all we're really looking for.

Mike Chapman
Getting in and out as quickly as possible. We'd like to think it'd be hard to bore someone in 90 seconds.

Matt Chapman
You know what? Give us time.

Mike Chapman
Yeah, we can try.

Todd VanDerWerff
If you think about the great characters from animated shorts, they had certain consistent things, but their occupations or other biographical details could change wildly. Do you think pinning down that stuff is inherently hard to do with this format?

Mike Chapman
For us, it's one of those things where you could argue that we've been doing the same thing over and over and over again. We don't want to repeat ourselves too often.
Even though we've made maybe the same kinds of jokes, we don't want to do the exact the same thing over and over again. It's a way to keep it fresh, where it's like the Three Stooges. This week they're sign painters, and the next week they're delivering ice. What's consistent is those characters and how they interact.

Matt Chapman
It's hard to nail that stuff down arbitrarily early on and just decide these things. You put the character in situations, and then that stuff happens naturally. You discover the nuances of the character. Whereas when you're writing a [show] bible, when you've invented these characters, you're like, "All right, I guess this will be the guy who likes food, and maybe this will be the guy that's real nervous."

Mike Chapman
Eventually, those things get worked out by putting them in a bunch of situations to get there.

Matt Chapman
When we were working on [other television pilots], Mike and I would finally come to the thing of, "All right let's put [the main characters] all in the back of a cop car." This isn't the plot of an episode. It's just asking, who are these characters? Put them all in the back of a cop car and write a scene, and that became the way we would try to find out what these characters were like. Usually that cop car scene was funnier than the pilot we were trying to write.

Todd VanDerWerff
You've been making animated shorts for the internet for 15 years now. What's been the biggest change in your process in that time?

Matt Chapman
There's not a whole lot of difference, which is actually really cool. That's what's unique about the relationship we've got with Disney — what they're letting us do, or get away with, depending on how you look at it.

Mike and I come up with an idea, and then we just start barfing it out. Originally we were submitting little springboards or little synopses, and we'd say, "Hey, here's five, which one do you like?" Now they just let us have freedom: "Oh, just surprise us, let's see what you do next." We've sort of been able to let these organically grow, which is exactly how we used to do Homestar.

Mike Chapman
We write something in a day, record it the next day, and then make it in the next three or four days, and give it to Disney. That is pretty much the way we used to do things with Homestar, which is really good for us.

It's our strength. Get the lightning in the bottle. We live and die by the sword, as opposed to sitting on things and rewriting and overthinking things. Sometimes we end up losing some edge that way, so it's fortunate they're letting us do it the quick-and-dirty route.

Matt Chapman
Sometimes lightning in a bottle comes out. Sometimes something else in a bottle.

Mike Chapman
You live and die by the sword. Sometimes we die, certainly.

Todd VanDerWerff
What's been the biggest shift in your writing process? What ideas are really interesting to you now that even five years ago, you weren't as excited by?

Matt ChapmanWith Homestar stuff we had these set characters, and with this we're making some recurring characters, but these can be all over the place. With Homestar, we'd do a bunch of Strong Bad Emails or stuff with set characters, and then every once in a while we'd do some other weird kind of tangential thing, only loosely related to the Homestar universe.

This is sort of the inverse, where almost all of these are these weird tangential things. Some of them loosely related to one another, but for the most part we're not really restricted. Not that Homestar was such a narrative juggernaut in terms of storytelling or anything! But even the small restrictions that that gives you, it's like we have more freedom.

So much has changed on the internet since we started. We have a series that hasn't aired yet, that's a down-on-his-luck dad trying to do YouTube videos. That will be our first foray into live action. None of those have aired yet, but that's a thing that's happened since we were back in the Homestar heyday — YouTube and people's weird "how to" and "let's play" YouTube videos. Getting to poke fun at some of the more modern stuff we see has been a fun thing.

Todd VanDerWerff
What do you see as the advantages of working and creating so quickly?

Mike Chapman
The volume helps — doing stuff quickly develops characters and develops worlds more quickly than outlines and revisions to outlines and then scripts and then revisions to script, and then an animatic and revisions to animatic. To me, doing eight two-minute shorts, at the end of that time period, you're going to be a lot further along with the characters and the world than if you had spent that same amount of time trying to perfect one nugget.

Matt Chapman
Mike and I, we've tried to develop things earlier with Disney and with other networks, and the part we were worst at was the character bible and bios for these characters that you just kind of made up. I still don't think I could write a decent character bible or bio for Homestar, and we did that for a decade. It's like an open beta. Our cartoons are an open beta, and we're slowly evolving it, and we're making you watch it. [Laughs.]

Todd VanDerWerff
A lot of your shorts — like the ones for Disney featuring Dooble — focus on weird nonsense words that are just sort of amusing in the way they sound. How do you come up with that sort of non-dialogue dialogue?

Mike Chapman
It's usually us sitting there, Matt talking. We never listen to music or anything while we're working, so usually our mouths are going. We're not really having conversations. We're just saying things.

Matt Chapman
Mike, you can be a little meaner than that. I talk constantly, and Mike sits there and lets it wash over him.

Mike Chapman
Sometimes I engage in nonsense conversations, but sometimes I do have to just let them waft over my head.

Matt Chapman
Eventually, those weird things just come out. It's been that way since we were kids. Mike is a saint for putting up with it.

Mike Chapman
I don't know about that. As little thought as you possibly think can go into stuff like that, that's what it is. It just happens.

Matt Chapman
The "Dooblie Doo" thing actually wasn't the first cartoon we made with that character. His name wasn't Dooble. It was going to be something else, and then he was just driving a car and sang that little song to himself.
After we recorded that line, we both were getting that little song stuck in our head and were saying it over and over and over again. Finally, we were like, "All right, let's just go record that song." One line from a cartoon turned into the song, and then became its own other cartoon.

Mike Chapman
And then became that character's name.

Matt Chapman
You could never put that into a character bible. It had to evolve on its own.

Todd VanDerWerff
You have worked in more traditional episodic television. Are there things about that you wish you could do in shorts?

Matt Chapman
You can tell much bigger stories. I went to film school and tried to write features here and there. There's a part of me that wants to tell bigger, grander stories, whereas these are tiny little nuggets of humor, of emotion or whatever. And we can make them go from our brains to them existing in a week.

I wrote on that show Gravity Falls, and there are episodes that I wrote on that won't air for months, and I worked on them two years ago. Animation's done overseas, and there's editing and revisions and all that stuff. It takes so long, but it is satisfying when I get to see those finally. It's like, "Oh wow, look, that thing finally came to life." We'd like to tell bigger stories with grander animation someday, but this seems to be what we're good at.

After we recorded that line, we both were getting that little song stuck in our head and were saying it over and over and over again. Finally, we were like, "All right, let's just go record that song." One line from a cartoon turned into the song, and then became its own other cartoon.

Mike Chapman
And then became that character's name.

Matt Chapman
You could never put that into a character bible. It had to evolve on its own.

Todd VanDerWerff
You have worked in more traditional episodic television. Are there things about that you wish you could do in shorts?

Matt Chapman
You can tell much bigger stories. I went to film school and tried to write features here and there. There's a part of me that wants to tell bigger, grander stories, whereas these are tiny little nuggets of humor, of emotion or whatever. And we can make them go from our brains to them existing in a week.

I wrote on that show Gravity Falls, and there are episodes that I wrote on that won't air for months, and I worked on them two years ago. Animation's done overseas, and there's editing and revisions and all that stuff. It takes so long, but it is satisfying when I get to see those finally. It's like, "Oh wow, look, that thing finally came to life." We'd like to tell bigger stories with grander animation someday, but this seems to be what we're good at.
After we recorded that line, we both were getting that little song stuck in our head and were saying it over and over and over again. Finally, we were like, "All right, let's just go record that song." One line from a cartoon turned into the song, and then became its own other cartoon.

Mike Chapman
And then became that character's name.

Matt Chapman
You could never put that into a character bible. It had to evolve on its own.

Todd VanDerWerff
You have worked in more traditional episodic television. Are there things about that you wish you could do in shorts?

Matt Chapman
You can tell much bigger stories. I went to film school and tried to write features here and there. There's a part of me that wants to tell bigger, grander stories, whereas these are tiny little nuggets of humor, of emotion or whatever. And we can make them go from our brains to them existing in a week.

I wrote on that show Gravity Falls, and there are episodes that I wrote on that won't air for months, and I worked on them two years ago. Animation's done overseas, and there's editing and revisions and all that stuff. It takes so long, but it is satisfying when I get to see those finally. It's like, "Oh wow, look, that thing finally came to life." We'd like to tell bigger stories with grander animation someday, but this seems to be what we're good at.
After we recorded that line, we both were getting that little song stuck in our head and were saying it over and over and over again. Finally, we were like, "All right, let's just go record that song." One line from a cartoon turned into the song, and then became its own other cartoon.

Mike Chapman
And then became that character's name.

Matt Chapman
You could never put that into a character bible. It had to evolve on its own.

Todd VanDerWerff
You have worked in more traditional episodic television. Are there things about that you wish you could do in shorts?

Matt Chapman
You can tell much bigger stories. I went to film school and tried to write features here and there. There's a part of me that wants to tell bigger, grander stories, whereas these are tiny little nuggets of humor, of emotion or whatever. And we can make them go from our brains to them existing in a week.

I wrote on that show Gravity Falls, and there are episodes that I wrote on that won't air for months, and I worked on them two years ago. Animation's done overseas, and there's editing and revisions and all that stuff. It takes so long, but it is satisfying when I get to see those finally. It's like, "Oh wow, look, that thing finally came to life." We'd like to tell bigger stories with grander animation someday, but this seems to be what we're good at.