I haven’t given URBMN much content for quite a few weeks.  I’ve honestly been busy with my other projects – you know, writing for the places I write for, trying to earn that cred so I have an excuse to do work that doesn’t involve wood or thankless manual labour, throwing out April Fool’s jokes about me leaving sites and being called a self-important, overly serious twat for attempting them etc.  Nothing new to report there, then.  When two articles about “hipster cred” popped into miserable existence within twenty-four hours of each other, of course, I knew I had to return to my soapbox as there’s nothing I love more than deflating self-important, extraneous bullshit.  It’s why the people that read UR still come here and why I still practice this “writing career” – I honestly wonder sometimes why the people that get paid for writing newspaper/magazine columns can’t do it better than some anonymous berk with a LiveJournal and a fandom for Simple Plan.  I can pretend to like horrible indie rock.  NOW WHERE’S MY MONEY?

The first article about hipsters comes from The Globe and Mail Style writer Leah McLaren, who I didn’t know anything about before this column.  Considering her condescending style and generalizations, I see I’m not missing much.  McLaren seems like one of a multitude of writers given a column not because they have any discernible talent or interesting opinions. They’re just young, go to the right schools and follow in the goose-step of the media’s version of what’s “hip” in popular culture.  It’s good to see that other people hate McLaren’s writing, but it’s apparently become passé these days to talk about her.  Screw it – I’m dissecting Leah McLaren.  She’s a small part of my big picture here, that’s my excuse.

Here come the Fair Use quotes!  Get ready for BANALITY!

It’s not easy being an 18-to-35-year-old these days.

Everywhere we go, somebody wants a piece of us. If it isn’t the clothing retailers, it’s the church, hoping to tempt us back into the fold with post-Pope nostalgia.

But most people my age don’t go to church. (According to Ipsos-Reid, only one in five Canadians does on a regular basis.) Nor do we care much about politics (we barely vote), poor people (we rarely volunteer) or health care (we’re pretty healthy, after all).

Wooo-ee!  Demographics and stats!  How about that?  McLaren takes a bunch of general stats and generalizations, throws them into a bag and tells us who we are as 18-to-35-year-olds!  Never mind the fact that the church statistic is for all Canadians regardless of age and that sly, winking dig at the Roman Catholics as if the death of the Pope was planned in any way.  Three paragraphs in, and we’re already in Stupid Country.  Even Michael Moore doesn’t throw away his allusions to “journalistic integrity” like a flowerpot this early on.  This should be fun.

What we dislike and ignore is well documented. It’s what we want that everyone is so desperate to find out. There are lots of us and, apparently, we’ve got disposable income to burn (though none of my friends feels that way). The word on us is largely negative: We don’t like stodgy, we don’t like old, we don’t like tradition and we don’t like anything too serious. What we want, it seems, is hip, young, new and light.

Isn’t not liking “old,” “stodgy,” “traditional” and “serious” things a function of the “young” in the first place?  Brilliant inference, McLaren.  That’s exactly the sort of statement I’d expect to come from a newspaper formed before the turn of the 20th century.  That “hip, young” bullshit is the exact statement advertising agencies and entertainment venues primarily aimed at older demographics use to justify their leaving said demographics.  One can’t exactly build brand identity when the average age of the consumer a company aims at is fifty to dead.  Also, older people tend to have more experience with regards to ignoring vacuous advertising campaigns.

It’s nice to read McLaren’s column considering some of the biggest news stories of recent vintage deal with young punks like that rebel Paul Martin, that fun-lovin’ Terri Schiavo and John Paul II, the Party Pope.  Nothing says “FUCK TRADITION” like those three party animals.

For example, broadcast executives have noticed that many members of my demographic would rather watch music videos than the news. So what do they do? They get former MuchMusic VJs to present the news to us.

I’m not sneering here. I think George Stroumboulopoulos, host of CBC’s The Hour, is a talented guy. He has intelligence and charisma. But then, so did Avi Lewis before him. Like Stroumboulopoulos, Lewis had piercings, wore casual clothes, jumped around a lot and abused the term “awesome.” (And, like Stroumboulopoulos, he also exuded an air of charming compassion that didn’t entirely fit with the ironic-hipster-in-residence tag that the Corp. slapped on his forehead from the word go.)

Here’s the main problem with this article: it’s partially about a guy CBC stole from MuchMusic.  George Stroumboulopoulos is an intelligent guy, granted (and that’s a hard thing for me to say considering I wasn’t thrilled with his tenure at MuchLoud), but CBC didn’t hire the man because he’s supposed to appeal to the “MTV generation.”  CBC hired the man because he’s supposed to give the Corp. more credibility among “the kids.”  It’s part of CBC’s continuing strategy to reinvent the broadcaster as a tastemaker for the young and “urban.”  Hell, CBC’s audience was skewing old, rural and stodgy!  MomCo can’t have that, can it?

I honestly despise when CBC programs try to appeal to a younger audience, because the radio and television networks of the MotherCorp are so blatantly left-wing and trend-oriented it’s almost sickening.  If you don’t live in a major city, have a liberal mindset, follow the flavour of the week or lack a distinctive personality you mean nothing to the MotherCorp.  Why is it interesting that Avi Lewis or George S. have piercings and wear casual clothes?  How the hell does that equate to anything?  They came from MuchMusic, which was nothing more than a shill for the major record companies to begin with.  How “real” do you expect these people to be, anyway?  Let the Greekgyptkranian live and die by his own merits.

Clearly, this pandering treatment of the so-called youth market has been going on for some time now to no great success. The problem is, those in charge of the media don’t know what we want, the reason being that what people my age want is (wait for it) a bunch of different things. Some of us are interested in politics. Some are curling fans. Others flip straight to the horoscopes. Put simply, we want all the things a good news product delivers. We respond to quality — the one thing Canadian news media outlets can’t consistently deliver with any of its youth-oriented products.

Those in charge of the media, huh?  Like your mother?  Sorry, sorry, too easy.

Seriously, the “media” don’t know what my generation wants because my generation is interested in different things?  No, the “mainstream media” haven’t succeeded in coming up with a decent “youth” news outlet because most “youth” news outlets are terrible.  They’re either blatant shill mags trying to enforce some sort of overly commercial, market-oriented mindset (hence the manufactured cool that I tend to despise) or they’re byproducts of people trying to push an agenda onto other people, whether it be “hipsterism” or whatever.

This is sort of why blogs and websites have stolen some of the thunder from the newspapers and mainstream/”alternative” print media – because the online media are largely controlled by actual people as opposed to a consortium of editors with the right academic “credentials” and “youth-oriented” mindset.  Blogs and news sites have their own problems, granted – the desperate bids for popularity and relevance some blogs strive for is sometimes disturbing – but they far outstrip papers like Ottawa Express and eye weekly for sheer entertainment, readability and relevance as they know the audiences they’re aiming for and don’t have the pressure of being at odds with an overly corporate mindset.  Not that they’re not corporate, mind, but blogging is a young medium yet.

Dose, the national daily news magazine launched by CanWest last week, is another case in point. Edited and published by people in their late 20s, the tabloid reads like a university paper drained of all political or satirical venom.

When in doubt, make fun of your competitor – in this case, Canwest Global and its attempt to emulate the alternative print media.

Honestly, university papers have political and/or satirical venom?  Are you telling me the university paper I tried to infiltrate for three years had intelligent satire?  I was under the impression The Charlatan was a shoddily-run bog paper with opinions ranging from “REZ IS TOO NOISY” and “NICE TYPO ON THE FRONT PAGE, DIPSHITS” to “ANYONE LIVING ON CAMPUS AFTER THE FIRST YEAR IS A FAILURE OH AND GO FIND A FUCKING JOB, APARTMENT AND GIRL YOU FAGGOTS.”  When the hell did university papers become readable/stop becoming self-important, then?  Aren’t you too busy generalizing me to care, McLaren?

The cover of the launch issue featured a photo of a young woman in a frayed denim vest beside a quote in white font. “We don’t need leaders who are wealthy . . .” it read, “we need people like the Pope.”

What is this supposed to say? That the leader of the Catholic Church lived a modest existence? That in spite of cracking down on condom distribution in AIDS-ridden African nations, declaring gay marriage “evil” and refusing to ordain women, the Pope was a nice guy? Or is it that 24-year-olds in frayed denim vests don’t know what the heck they’re talking about?

The Pope was in the news.  Dose interviewed a 24-year-old who likely got swept up in the tide of Popemania.  It’s not a hard thing to figure out.  McLaren’s also thirty years old, so what’s with the overly sanctimonious tone?  Are the “common people” just that much more stupid than she is?  Man.

What’s with the trendy Pope-bashing, anyway?  The last two reasons McLaren doesn’t like the Pope seem more like she’s translating official stands of the Catholic Church to the Pope himself (although John Paul II did harbor those beliefs, which is understandable considering he’s the figurehead of the Catholic Church.)  The condom issue makes little sense considering a condom means shit when some Africans live on $5 a month and have to face dilapidated living standards each day of their lives.  John Paul II didn’t make popular decisions all the time, and he’s not supposed to – he’s supposed to represent the Catholic Church’s position on an issue, not to follow popular opinion.

Honestly, McLaren, you’re criticizing Base yet you go for targets like the Pope.  There were many roads to take with regards to criticizing the newspaper (like the fact that the editor is a 20-something Harvard grad and doesn’t represent “youth culture” at all – honestly, he sounds like a business major trying to tap into the pocketbooks of “his people”), yet you went for Catholic-bashing.  How come a 23-year-old nothing schlub like me can see that and you can’t?

Inside, the tabloid is filled with irrelevant factoids and diagrams, few of which are sourced or relate to a larger story. Some of the news stories, in turn, fail to answer basic questions. A short item on a study that found the majority of ninth graders practise oral sex in the belief that it is safer than intercourse failed to address the glaring question of whether it actually is.

The following day, there was a story about an academic at the University of Calgary who is examining why women flashed their breasts on the Red Mile last year in support of the Calgary Flames. The reporter quoted the professor as saying the women’s reasons for flashing are “really interesting and fascinating,” but never told us what they are.

So what you’re saying is…Dose is a tabloid.  Wow.  Two paragraphs to state the obvious?  Amazing.  What great muckraking.  You should write for the Globe and Mail.

Dose is not all bad. It’s big on environmental stories, which matter to people my age. In the first issue, there was an interesting piece on bald-eagle slaughtering in B.C. There’s also a fair bit of national and international news.

But something about these “hipified” news sources worries me. The Canadian media has a history of getting excited about young people for their kinetic delivery and leather trousers and then tossing aside for the same reasons. In other words, they eat their young.

I remember a guy who ran a record store in Madoc, and he wore leather trousers.  He was a jerk.  His store later became a slum.

Also, the Canadian media eat their young?  That was obvious, but obviously McLaren doesn’t understand that she’s part of the group she criticizes.  If she ends up appealing to a bunch of dirty sixty-year-old men, she’ll be out on her ass tomorrow.  If I piss off Adrian Bromley by being me, I’ll be out on my ass tomorrow.  I don’t pretend to be hot shit, but McLaren obviously thinks she is.  No one is unsackable, which the woman should have realized when she was run out of the UK after a year.  The Brits had already suffered through Barbara Amiel and The Girlie Show, so why put up with the distillation of those two artefacts?

Like Stroumboulopoulos, Noah Godfrey, the publisher of Dose, is in a difficult position. CanWest has spent buckets promoting his paper. If the numbers are high, the critics will sneer about the dumbing down of the news. If they’re low, he’ll be turned out on his low-rise denim behind until the next sacrificial hipster saunters in to take his place.

Will such youth-oriented shows and publications draw younger audiences in or make us yawn with indifference? It depends solely on the quality of content they deliver. We may have nose rings, but we still know a crock of BS when we smell one. Just ask George and Noah.

Tch.  Stroumboulopoulos is the Evan Solomon of the 2000′s.  He’ll be given a semi-major push (after all, CBC created The Greatest Canadian to debut Stroumboulopoulos – like people actually thought Tommy Douglas was The Greatest Canadian outside of the Prairies) and then settle into the CBC detritus.  I imagine George S. will replace Solomon on CBC News: Sunday – or he’ll end up like Daniel Richler or Brent Bambury.  We’ll see.

Godfrey, though?  He wins either way.  If he succeeds, he’ll go on to work at the National Post.  If Godfrey fails, it wasn’t his money and his reputation will still remain intact.  He really isn’t in a position to lose very much aside from personal pride.  If Dose succeeds, it strengthens CanWest Global’s news reputation (which isn’t that bad despite what National Post haters say.  It’s better than Bell Globemedia’s, at least.)  If Dose fails, CanWest Global looks stupid.  It’s the company taking the risk, not Noah Godfrey.  McLaren would be wise to remember that.

What does this have to do with hipsterism, exactly?  The news is not a hip thing to be into, no matter what demographics have to say about it.  These days, though, it’s acceptable to be blatantly left-wing in some corners of the news media, especially if you’re young.  Leah McLaren writes for one of the more liberal papers in Canada.  It’s in her self-interest to grease the palms of a broadcaster that might want her and to criticize the company that has become rather right-wing in recent years (although she gives it some praise, just to keep that door open if she defects to the CanWest Leper Colony – y’know, like Barbara Amiel.)

What I see from McLaren is a bunch of subtle hints about her being somehow above her subjects.  The non-religious stand, the obvious ignorance she exhibits, the condescending “we” tone she takes in the article – basically, she’s what she’s criticizing.  There was a good article here, but Leah McLaren ruined it by being the same writer she always was.  Instead of tackling the issue of “youth news” head-on, she took the tone of disinterested 30-something who knows what “people like me” want.  She’s right about people wanting “good news,” mind you – but it isn’t going to come from her.  I’d rather read a magazine that skewers old but has good journalistic credentials over some poorly-written, vacuous “youth news” outlet any day of the week.  No one should give a flying fuck over demographics, but a lot of people (including hipsters) swear by them. It’s a sad sight to behold.

Call me when you write for Spin, hon. You are destined for there.

Recently, a gay sports site (the jokes just flow, don’t they) by the name of Outsports posted a list of “naughty words” that NFL Shop wouldn’t allow people to use on its customized jerseys.  The Javascript that the NFL uses for personalizing jerseys through its online shop is, of course, so bad that 1155 certain phrases are banned but everything else is up for grabs.  A lot of blogs have caught wind of this and I’m one of them, but the majority of people talking about this story are giving attention to its “you’ll allow PISS POT but not PISS?  WHAT?” aspect.  This story, though, has another aspect to it that people seem to have forgotten amidst all the talk and bluster – the obnoxiousness of some sports fans that they’ll order joke jerseys like this.

Personally, I don’t understand why people pay $79.99 to wear a billboard for their favourite sports stars in the first place.  It’s even worse when some unfunny berk thinks that it’ll be a riot to wear an NHL jersey with Tie Domi’s number and “ME IDIOT” on the back.  There is more than one type of obnoxious sports jersey, and I plan to cover at least ten of them in this blog.  Trust me, after reading this article you might want to buy a “ME IDIOT” jersey of your own.  I wouldn’t, but you don’t care what I think all that much, do you?  It’s not my money, boy.

THE WRESTLING JERSEY | This is a favourite of some cretins.  Nothing’s less funny than a jersey that only three people tops will understand, and just because John Cena’s your favourite wrestler doesn’t mean you have the right to inflict your fandom on other people.  I don’t care what you do when pretending to wrestle JBL in a barbed-wire-cage-and-sodomy match, but coming out in a $300 jersey and whipping out “YO CHILL THUGANOMICS” and bad Michael Cole jokes to your three equally cretinous fans just smacks of idiocy.  Sadly, it’s legal and easy to buy a Brock Lesnar replica jersey through NFL Shop, not that people should…or would.

THE NIP SLIP JERSEY | You can legally buy this jersey through NFL Shop.  We have Janet Jackson and MTV to thank for the worst catchphrase of this decade, so please remember to thank them by throwing refuse their way.  I’m sure at least one person bought this jersey.

As an aside, why the hell is the Super Bowl considered to be the most important sports day in existence, anyway?  Just because someone says it’s the most important day according to advertisers and other marketing types (AMERICAN DAD IS FUNNYE) doesn’t mean I need to watch the friggin’ Super Bowl when it comes on.  Cripes, if it ain’t got the Bills I couldn’t care less about it, seriously.  I feel like buying an ironic Rob Johnson jersey right now just thinking about the Bills.  Really.

THE OBSCURE SWEARIES JERSEY | The jersey to your left is not allowed to be purchased through MLB Shop or NHL Shop considering the two sites share the same online store template and possibly the same profanity filter.  NFL Shop’s “naughty words” filter, on the other hand, doesn’t catch this less-used but still pretty obvious swear-word deviation.  The filter will catch Cumming, a legitimate surname of many, but go ahead and order all the Colonel Angus jerseys you want.  Brilliant – the biggest sport in America has one of the worst profanity filters.  That makes me feel one-eighth safer.

THE OBSCURE-VARIATIONS-OF-SWEAR-WORDS JERSEY | Again, “cum” is questionable but “come” isn’t.  Personally, I think one can get away with a “COME BUNS” Toronto Maple Leafs jersey through NHL Shop considering neither “come” nor “buns” are profane enough for the profanity filter there.  On the face of it, there’s nothing wrong with using the phrase “come buns” as both words are common enough to be used in daily conversation.  Still, there’s only one mental image for “come buns” and you’ll see it in porn every eight seconds.  Tell a jury any different and they’ll come down hard on you – and you know exactly what I mean by that, cretins.  Don’t look at me that way, ya bloody pervs.

THE XFL JERSEY | NFL Shop won’t allow “HE HATE ME,” but “DAR DAR BINKS” is fair game.  I can’t understand the logic behind NFL Shop’s profanity filter – I can understand all variations of “RAE CARRUTH” being blocked, but any dumb name that an XFL player used during all five minutes of that league’s existence can be used aside from the one that everyone stopped giving two tosses about four years ago.  Hell, order a Rod Smart jersey – same flatus, different smell.  Trust me, people will never tire of using the XFL as a bad punchline to what was initially a good joke.  I know three of you want that Dar Dar Binks jersey so bad you’d kill.  Don’t tell me otherwise.

THE RANDOM LETTERS JERSEY | No filter can, or will ever, stop this jersey from becoming a reality.  At least one filter should, considering immature eight-year-olds never tire of using daddy’s credit card to buy themselves a Minnesota Vikings “RTIGVNSOENJQ” jersey.  It’s like pretending to throw a ball, but not applying any force to the ball so that the pigskin will just drop vertically to the floor (essentially rolling the ball off the hand – we’ve all done it to make fun of others at one time or another.)  The classics never die, even though they have the best reason ever to.

THE BAND NAME JERSEY | All right, maybe “WACO JESUS” and “ANAL BLAST” are off-limits as jerseys (aside from the jerseys at NFL Shop, so make sure to get the warehouse discount on those puppies now) but I dare anyone to think that putting an obscure medical term for bodily waste on the back of an overpriced jersey is clever or underground in any way.  Jerseys are only acceptable wear if you’re in a hardcore band, and even then it’s obnoxious as hell.  Seriously, sports and underground metal (or music of any culture, basically, aside from that ROCK JOCK shit and The Hanson Brothers) don’t and shouldn’t mix.  For $79 a jersey is the same price as five underground metal shirts.  Guess which man-boob cover earns you “scene points.”

THE BAD SPORTS IN-JOKE JERSEY | See “RAE CARRUTH,” “DAR DAR BINKS,” “KEYSHAWN” et cetera.  No one thinks you’re funny when a Montreal Canadiens jersey is emblazoned with the names of “T LINDEN,” “GOODENOW,” “BETTMAN SUX” or “I M GREEDIE.”  That’s exactly why I let Hockey Lockout Compendium die after a while – too many bad jokes.

By the way, I will throttle anyone who says “THE NHL LOCKOUT IS A JOKE IN ITSELF HAR HAR HAR.”  It is, but that doesn’t mean you’re as funny as the ten million people who’ve already said this before you.  Get a writer and/or an agent, because you’re not Bobcat Goldthwait and never will be.  Asses.

THE BAD INNUENDO JERSEY | Ah, bad innuendo.  What sort of joke jersey list would be complete without this entry?  Profanity filters can’t filter out bad come-ons, as I’ve demonstrated rather handily.  This jersey is ready for you to order through NHL Shop, so what are you waiting for?  Not only will dumb, drunk girls think you’re a hockey player, they’ll think you’re a young go-getter.  After all, what is sports fandom without the usual pandering to dumb “macho” types who like their semen depositories young, stupid and wearing standard wet T-shirt?  After all, it’s a badge of honour to wear jerseys that say “NOT THAT WAY,” “GAY BASHER” and/or “I LIKE HONEY.”  Gotta show that vivacious wit, now.

Oh wait, you don’t have wit.  Still, you’ve got two testicles and a penis.  That’s good enough by your standards, surely.

THE IRRITATING INTERNET LINGO JERSEY | This is the worst thing you can wear.  Believe it or not, NHL Shop thought this jersey was a “great choice” when I entered my personalization details into its form fields.  NHL Shop doesn’t know squat by the looks of its filter.  Then again, I’m not surprised.  I mean, Blogger thinks it’s okay to delete entire posts I wrote that had questionable titles, so what’s NHL Shop’s excuse?  Come on, “OMGWTFLOL” is reason enough to censor me at one place, so NHL Shop’s e-business partners aren’t exactly on the ball here.  I think acronyms are just as and/or even more annoying than anything else I’ve ever seen.  Seriously, tell me you wouldn’t get flogged if you wore this in public.

Sorry for the trendiness of this article, by the way.  I’ll try to do better next time.  I hope you’re looking forward to “AVRIL LAVIGNE SUCKS,” kids!  It’ll be neato!  See You Next Tuesday!

One of the things that bothers me about doing URBMN (and UR itself, once I actually redesign the site and/or make it look like I give half a toss about it) is the fact that I feel like a moron sometimes for not excessively following popular culture these days.  I know I’ve repositioned Unbelievably Retarded away from the “metal fanzine” it barely was in the first place this past year, but I’m still not exactly trying to appeal to a mass audience with what I do.  I don’t think I’m able to appeal to a mass audience considering how off-the-wall some of the things I’ve written are.  When I came across the story about Warner Brothers “redesigning” Bugs Bunny for the ‘NEW,’ ‘HIP’ ‘INTERNET GENERATION,’ though, people seem to have reacted to this enough that my need to make smart-arse comments about this subject and how people have reacted to it has been awakened.

Honestly, this is the biggest overreaction to a bog-standard “SAME SHIT, MORE ATTITUDE!” story I’ve noticed in quite some time.  Cartoon Brew dedicated six stories to this topic in a matter of a few days (which puts the lie to a “first and last” topic the site posted earlier) and people are already going New Coke on this story, running around like headless chickens and yelling “HOW CAN YOU SCREW AROUND WITH WHAT WORKS?  CHANGING THE FORMULA IS LIKE PUTTING TOES ON OUR EARS OR GOD TURNING THE GRASS PURPLE!”  I’m not playing devil’s advocate, but people seem to have forgotten and/or ignored three important things about this revival which I think need to be addressed.  To wit:

1.  No one’s actually redesigning Bugs Bunny and throwing him into a 28th century situation.  These are spinoff characters meant to extend a brand, nothing else.  No one’s making pretensions to the contrary here.  I’m not surprised that a Time Warner company is ripping off another TW company’s strategy here – DC’s been bogarting this joint for decades and the last time anyone cared was when Superman was “killed” thirteen years ago (well, that and the “new tights” crap that lasted a whole year before Superman went back to the usual blue/red/yellow arrangement he’s famous for.)  Sometimes this strategy works, sometimes it doesn’t.

Loonatics seems to be more a ripoff of DC One Million than anything else – descendents of established characters fight crime while ostensibly carrying on the “Looney Tunes tradition.”  This was inevitable coming from Warner Brothers.  After all, that Teen Titans revamp worked, didn’t it?  I prefer to think of Loonatics as an Elseworlds brainfart as opposed to the desecration of a sacred trust.  Frank Miller, Grant Morrison et al. have been screwing around with Superman and DC Comics superheroes for years with varying degrees of success.  So the idea spilled over into the Looney Tunes “universe” – wow, never expected that.  Some people are really short-sighted sometimes.

2.  To the people complaining about this being “OMG ANIME WTF?!” – give it a rest, will ya?  I’ll agree with Warner Bros. Animation being one of the studios that have been influenced by anime within the past few years, but they’re not nearly as bad at aping it as other studios are.  Trust me, if you’ve seen Martin Mystery you’d know how much some studios steal from Japanimation – and they always steal the most annoying, superficial parts of anime, too.  What the designers at Warner Bros. Animation do, to me anyway, is steal equally from anime and Jamie Hewlett for their animation designs.  The Teen Titans and Loonatics character designs are too angular for Loonatics to be considered purely anime.  If anything, somebody’s trying to ape The Batman more than rip off standard anime conventions.  Those crazy Koreans animators.

Most people who complain about some cartoons being too anime have probably never watched anything but Pokemon and Dragon Ball Z anyway, and judging anime by its most obvious overseas successes is one of the worst things anyone can do.  Anime is too big and has too many distinctive styles for Shaman King or Robotech to be fully indicative of the entire genre.  Ushio To Tora, Super Milk Chan and Sailor Moon can all be considered anime despite each entry having different styles and quirks from each other because they all originated from Japan.  Loonatics is just another example of Warner Bros. taking a bunch of disparate styles and amalgamating them into something that’ll appeal to the “kids.”  Gotta prop up that Kids WB, now.

3.  This is the most obvious example of trying to rectify the treatment of a poorly-handled set of icons I’ve seen in a while, but any character more than ten years old has to go through a “freshening” of said character in order to stay current.  Do I consider any pop culture icon sacred?  NO, and that’s the way it should be.  I’m not saying Loonatics isn’t going to be crap, but it’s something that’s totally of its time and it could be the impetus for reminding people of why the characters were so appealing in the first place.  It probably won’t, but who’s to say what shows eight-year-olds like.

I’m looking forward to the Doctor Who revival, for example, but its success will depend on how good the revival ends up being (and Doctor Who needs to be better than what it is right now – basically Paul McGann having amnesia, moping about Gallifrey being blown up etc.  Man, the hardcore fans raped that show.)  Sometimes a radical revision is what is needed for certain characters, and the success of evergreen franchises like Doctor Who and Looney Tunes depends on whether someone’s seriously trying to give a franchise a well-deserved boot up the ass (e.g., Space Ghost Coast to Coast) or cynically trying to milk it for the dead cash cow it’s become (e.g., any other Space Ghost revival.)  People have forgotten Quack Pack, Taz-Mania, Tiny Toon Adventures and Ren & Stimpy Adult Party Cartoon not because the characters didn’t need reviving, but because the revivals were crap.  Only time will tell if this revival is as bad as Baby Looney Tunes – and that show’s a tough depth to out-plumb.

Yes, I also think The Simpsons‘ new season is better than the previous four and I enjoy the newly political tone of the show.  Wanna fight about it?