June 16, 2006
FROM THE ADAM & JOE VAULTS
A&J’S AMERICAN ANIMATION ADVENTURE: RUGRATS (& BEING LET DOWN)
Here is the final episode of this series split into Rugrats part 1 and Rugrats part 2 together with some outrageous, self important over-analysis of its status as weakest of the series: I subscribe to the theory that you should leave the shittest ’til last in the hope that if people have built up an affection for something they will be more forgiving when it goes weak. Of course the other way of looking at it is that if people like a thing they’ll feel let down if it goes a bit bollox but personally I was always in the forgiving camp. For me this applies particularly with music.
Some people say they’re into a band and then go fucking mental when that band puts out an album that they reckon isn’t as good as an earlier one. “Have you heard the new album? It’s fucking dreadful! A disgrace! They’ve lost it!†In my experience that’s seldom the case. These people are usually spitting bullets because a band has tried something a little different and it hasn’t completely happened. It just seems joyless and disloyal to go around ranting abut how awful they are suddenly. Fair enough, if a band starts putting out one shit album after another, you bail out until you’re given notice of a return to form (though in Bowie’s case that it’s usually hopelessly optimistic hoobah, though the last one was pretty good).
In the case of the Pixies for example, people complaining that Bossa Nova or Trompe Le Monde weren’t up to Doolittle or Surfer Rosa seem to have just totally missed the point. Those early albums should make Pixies like your best childhood friends. They’ve proved themselves worthy of your affection for life! Watching them change is exciting and any faults they pick up along the way you forgive because they’re still fantastic company. You certainly don’t bail on them if they turn up wearing slightly gay clothes one day, or if they announce they’re into jazz. If anything you dress gay too and dig out some Be Bop, as long as it’s just a phase… Hang Wire, Blown Away, Alison, Subbacultcha, Motorway To Roswell, Palace Of The Brine, Alec Eiffel, they’re as good as anything Pixies ever did! I’m overstating my case a little but it’s Friday night and I’ve got beer. Back to this Rugrats based episode of Adam & Joe’s American Animation Adventure…
I seem to recall Joe and I were keen to revisit People Place, a regular item we had in the 4th series of The Adam & Joe Show which featured 2 daytime TV presenters who steamrollered members of the public with their ignorant bullcrap. As we didn’t know or care much about Rugrats we thought that might be a good way to go and it seemed to fit with the style of post Andy Peters children’s television presentation we were going for. That’s why Joe and I are called Andy and Peter you see? Brilliant. It doesn’t quite work though and the silly facts and figures bit at the beginning is lamer than most our People Place sketches. The line “Welcome to a place where dreams and drawings of those dreams come to life…and we’re here to find out what†makes me cringe and the stuff where Joe asks one of the animators if he’s always had a ‘long pencil’ just indicates that the pickings were a bit slim for this episode, no disrespect to Joe who was at least doing more to drive the thing than I! Of course the joke was supposed to be how nice and talented all the animators were and how horrid and shallow we were but it’s not that funny and comes off as a bit patronising somehow, especially as you can see that the animators really were an unusually odd and interesting bunch (checkout the bizarre variety of personal fashion styles on display in the offices of Klasky Csupo!) and we end up not so much pretending to steamroll them as simply steamrolling them.
Things pick up a bit when we get into the VO booth and the semi autobiographical rivalry kicks in. The whole thing of getting to do a cameo voice was based on those shows where a TV presenter gets to do a line in a big American animation as part of a show they’re doing to promote it. Offhand I can think of Jonathan Ross’s cameo as a bartender in Shrek 2, Vernon Kay as a robot extra in Robots and of course the daddy of the genre, Andy Peters as a camp British baggage handler, hilariously out of place in Toy Story 2. I’m pretty sure that’s what Joe had in mind when he was delivering his line “You guys next. Go under!†and it certainly makes me laugh.
Fun fact: when I’m in the VO booth with rollerskates on my hands and I bash them down on the floor then yell out in pain, I had just sprained my hand and was genuinely in pure agony which once again enhanced my performance as a miserable little git. Well I think that’s a personal record for unwarranted trivia and analysis! I’m getting another beer! Cheers baboon!