Though I hate to write things that seem too intensely personal, sometimes it feels unavoidable and I have to vent a little lest my heart and mind explode inward and morph me into some kind of Incredible Hulk-like creature… Which as cool as it sounds, would wreak havoc on my dress pants, and I just can’t be bothered with malls right now what with all the holiday shopping crowds and such.
As such, I present another list:
Selected Events of the Last 24 Hours: Things that Make Me Feel Heartsick, Too Damn Sentimental, Small and Confused (In that Order)
1. Every year my Mom’s office puts up an “Angel Tree” where less fortunate children hang requests for Christmas gifts that can then be donated by a willing “adopter.” This year, I’ve decided to participate. The family of three kids I’ve picked all asked for coats.
2. I passed a beautiful girl and realized she was blind. It struck me as tragic that she’ll never get to see how pretty she is.
3. Though I’m not completely sure, I think I was sitting next to Richard Ford on the metro this morning reading one of his books. The combined awkwardness of the setting and situation forced me to pretend like I didn’t know who he might be.
4. On my way to work I spotted a large, balding man with bushy eyebrows and a Nixon-like nose driving a with a license plate frame that read “I’d Rather Be Roller Skating!”
I remember reading the very first The Boondocks comic strip even before it went syndicated and got published in The Washington Post, in a couple of copies of The Diamondback my mom snagged for me from her work at College Park. Before then, the most provocative comic strip going for me was Zits, and so anyone who knows anything about either strip can imagine how blown my mind was. Becoming a huge fan of Aaron McGruder was a fairly quick and simple process and it wasn’t long before I was reading the funnies with scissors in hand so that I could keep clippings of Huey, Riley and Granddad’s bafflingly poignant ghetto-meets-the-suburbs juxtapositions.
Needless to say, when the Adult Swim on Cartoon Network started broadcasting the animated version of McGruder’s vision, I could barely wait to tune in.
The first couple of episodes started off with the same type of satirical vibe I loved from the strip and any seemingly non-canon additions only seemed to develop the characters in exactly the direction I would expect them to be. Specifically, I loved the effort to tone down Huey’s constant cynicism by occasionally treating his radical militant thinking as nothing more than a child’s vibrant imagination (a handful of stylized kung-fu fight scenes matched the mood of the characters perfectly)! It was great. Save a few seemingly needless arcs (e.g. that weird episode with the random ghost-like fed agent shadowing Huey), everything about the show seemed perfect. It was sharp and scathing to a point, even earning a little bit of oh-no-they-didn’t attention for a surprisingly vicious episode featuring a revived Martin Luther King Jr. Even the theme song, written by the amazing MC Asheru, was beyond reproach. Too soon the season ended, though strongly, and fans were promised a new season after a short few-month break.
And then the second season premiered…
In short, it was a ridiculous episode and hinted at the show turning into a vapid pandering to the MTV crowds. The quick little kung-fu interludes turned into drawn out productions with no purpose. The interplay of Riley and Granddad’s surreal insipidness and Huey’s level-headed maturity was dashed as seemingly all of them got turned into… Well… Cartoons. Everything just got seemingly dumbed down.
What’s worse, is that with planned guest appearances by Snoop Dogg and other celebs not generally recognized for their depth, I don’t think the show is going to bounce back to it’s former intellectually stimulating glory.
What a shame, what a shame. I’ve got my fingers crossed for the new episode scheduled for tomorrow. I’m hopping McGruder was just having an off week or something.