There's an important lesson that anyone interested in art and entertainment needs to keep close to their hearts: beware of anything that has an abnormally long production time. If something's been in the work for, say, a decade or more, there's a natural tendency to build it up to build it up to such an unrealistic level that disappointment is inevitable. It also doesn't help that these things, for some reason, tend to be objectively disappointing across the board. The examples are endless, and span virtually all modern media. In movies, The Phantom Menace was anticipated for years and years, and look at how great that turned out. In music, Guns N' Roses promised us Chinese Democracy in the '90s, and when it finally came out in 2008, nobody wanted it, not even Best Buy bargain shoppers.
STOP GIVING AXL ROSE MONEY, FOR THE FUCK'S SAKE
In video games, the most obvious example is Duke Nukem Forever, a game that honestly deserves its own series of blog entries. But The Last Guardian certainly should be included among that crowd. Originally created by Team Ico in 2007, the game suffered delay after delay after delay, with many, including myself, thinking it was never going to be released at all. Well, imagine my surprise when, in 2015, we were finally given a release date, and in late 2016, the game came out for the PS4. After playing through a good portion of the game, the question must be: was this game worth the nearly ten year wait we as gamers were subjected to?
Like all of Team Ico's games, I can sum up the point in a few sentences. You're a young boy, and you wake up in a field next to a giant beast named Trico, which, I have to say, is probably the best part of the game. Trico's design is so fucking adorable.
I mean, come on - look at that little face. Don't you want a plush of this guy?
Anyway, I'm distracting myself. You and him are essentially set on exploring this ruined world, a world that's filled with colossal broken towers, demonic suits of armor, and titanic cliffs. Like Team Ico's other two games, the plot and characterization is minimal, with story progression often given through suggestion and, on occasion, brief flashbacks. What's important, instead, is atmosphere, and the intense focus, through the gameplay, of the relationship between you and Trico.
I opened this blog by asking whether this game was worth waiting almost a decade for. I now think that question is irrelevant - instead, we should be asking, was it worth paying $60 for? The answer to that question is much easier: no.
The Last Guardian is simply too short to justify that price - if played correctly, the game can be beaten in a matter of hours. This is a criticism I had of both Ico an Shadow of the Colossus, and such criticism is harder to accept, in 2017, than it was in the mid 2000s. When I play The Last Guardian, it feels, now, like a game that would be offered exclusively on the Playstation Network and sold for $15 or $20. Something like Journey, for instance. Such a price would, I think, be fair - you can be taken in by the astonishing setting, the powerful relationship between your character and Trico, and be done with it quickly.
As it stands, we're asked to pay the same price for this game as we are for, say, Final Fantasy XV, a game I'll bring up again since it seems to be a reoccuring theme of this blog. I've probably put in close to 50 hours in that game, and I still am not anywhere near close to finishing all that it can offer. I paid full price for that game, and I feel that price was justified for such a massive game. The Last Guardian has no justification.
This all sounds pretty negative, and I suppose it is, but honestly I really like the game as a whole. Trico is actually surprisingly responsive to commands, which I wasn't expecting for a computer AI character. The settings, as I've said, are gorgeous, and Team Ico stands second to none when it comes to creating mood in their games. There is an overwhelming sense of loneliness in their worlds - though there are, technically, other people, the games make you believe that you and your companion are the only living things left. What each game does with that feeling is different - Ico makes you feel like a protector, while Shadow gives you an intense feeling of sadness when you're done killing all those colossi. The Last Guardian, in purely tonal terms, is my personal favorite - the cooperation of the main character and Trico is the only the only guarantor of survival (and meaning, if I'm being honest) in this ruined world.
That feeling alone is worth playing the game, and so it's with sadness that I feel the need to recommend for gamers to wait until it reaches an appropriate price. Team Ico took nearly ten years to make this game, but in the process, they stopped paying attention to the evolution of the video game market. Thankfully, in the future, the game will drop in price, and you'll be able to buy it on the PSN for $20 like I've said. At that point, we'll no longer have to concern ourselves with these pedestrian economic issues, and the game's true merits will be what we remember.
Though 1990 may have been the start of new decade, some of the most obnoxious trends in 1980s entertainment continued to be annoyingly omnipresent. For instance, hair metal not only stuck around, but was almost at a commercial high point, with even fourth or fifth tier bands like Warrant able to achieve Top 10 success. Somehow.
This is a real thing that exists. And we have no one to blame but ourselves.
Shifting away from music, a television trend that continued to exert its influence well into the early 90s was something called The Very Special Episode. This is something many of you no doubt have at least heard of - The Very Special Episode was, in brief, when a comedy show attempted to wrestle with some sort of serious or controversial topic, usually somehow involving teen sex or drug use. What show holds the honor of presenting the first Very Special Episode is up for debate, though my money goes to Diff'rent Strokes, with its infamous episode where Gary Coleman is molested by the owner of the bicycle shop. Yeah, that's a thing that happened.
From this point onward, The Very Special Episode became virtually unavoidable, with shows like The Facts of Life and Family Ties airing multiple VSEs throughout their history. For some shows, almost every episode was a VSE - I know there are a lot of you out there who love Full House to death, but you have to admit, that show was VSE overkill.
Now, I understand sitcoms have been dealing with heavy shit since long before Diff'rent Strokes aired - hell, All In The Family's entire reason for existing was trying to make sense out of the brave new world that was (and still is) post-1960s US Culture. But here's the thing: shows like All In The Family are primarily for adults, while any show with a Very Special Episode is "family friendly." There are a lot of young kids watching these shows - because of this, I think writers feel they have to talk down to the audience, to make the issue easy to digest. Here's a clip from Full House to demonstrate my point:
This provides no insight into the world of child abuse whatsoever - for the fuck sake, they actually used the "I walked into a doorknob" line unironically! Full House doesn't think the children in the audience can comprehend the serious reality of child abuse, and so reduces it to a collection of cliches and stock phrases we've heard a hundred times before. Ironically, this does exactly the opposite of what they're intending to do: by taking the complexity out of the issue, by treating it like a condescending stereotype, we actually understand it less than when we began watching!
This whole divergence on the Very Special Episode is, I think, essential with regards to what I'm going to be talking about today: Cartoon All-Stars To The Rescue.
Basically, this is a Very Special Episode raised to the tenth power. McDonald's (yes, the Big Mac guys) and Disney decided to address the issue of childhood drug abuse by producing a 30 minute short film in which cartoon characters from ten different popular franchises (remember, this was 1990, so popular meant The Smurfs and Looney Tunes and Garfield) come together to help out two human teenagers with their drug problem. Yes, it sounds so stupid, and so patronizing, but oh my god, was this show a big deal back in the day.
Just how big? Consider: when this movie first aired on April 21, 1990, not only did it air, simultaneously, on all four major networks, but also on most independent and cable channels as well! George and Barbara Bush, of all people, took time away from running the country to introduce the damn thing! You know, I was only 11 days old when this thing aired, so I don't remember it at all, but I do remember when I was a bit more grown up, there was another time when President Bush introduced something that was aired simultaneously on every major TV station in the country. Oh, what was it, oh yeah, it was the 9/11 attacks.
Basically the same thing as Papa Smurf.
I'm not saying this to be insensitive - it's more that when the only thing I can compare your broadcast schedule to is the coverage of the most deadly terrorist attack in US history, then you sure as hell better have some justification for airing on that many networks at the same time. Does Cartoon All-Stars have that justification? Oh, I don't know, take a fucking wild guess.
So, the whole set-up of this show is that Corey, an innocent young girl, is sleeping in her bed one Saturday morning, when somebody reaches into her bedroom and snatches her piggy bank. Corey, being an innocent young girl, has posters, books, etc of basically every major cartoon character from the 1980s scattered around her room, and, witnessing the theft, they all come to life. This scene was a red flag for me for two reasons: first, though the movie's run time is just under 30 minutes, this scene lasted about five. Yes, this one scene lasts around 20% of the run time. Toy Story was able to pull off something similar in about a minute, and that movie was over three times as long. Secondly, one of the cartoons is Alf. You know, the sitcom alien that likes to eat cats. Yeah, that's how I knew this was going to be a thing of beauty.
After our Cartoon All-Stars (and Alf) come to life, they soon discover the criminal responsible for the piggy bank theft. Of course, it was her older brother Michael, a boy who looks to be about 15 going on 45.
What's wrong with his face!? Well, it turns out the answer to that question may have something to do with why he stole the money from his sister. Thanks to some Solid Snake-caliber stealth, our Cartoon All-Stars find (gasp) a hidden stash of marijuana hidden under his bed! But that's not all - Michael uses the money to buy more weed for him and his friends. They end up smoking the whole lot, which, of course, causes an anthropomorphic cloud of smoke to appear and start talking to Michael.
Almost as smokin' as Jim Carrey. Almost.
This guy, of course, is the proverbial devil on Michael's shoulder, who'll do everything in his power to keep him convinced that continuing to do drugs is the best idea ever. From here on out, the entire movie consists of a series of encounters between Michael and the Cartoon All-Stars, who tell him the dangers of drugs but are never quite able to convince him 100%, before he finally kicks the habit when his sister Corey knocks some sense into his punk ass.
Alright, let's start with the easiest target, and shockingly, it doesn't have anything to do with Alf. If anything in this video betrays its 1980s feel (despite it being made in 1990), its the fact that it takes 90% of its time to demonize marijuana, a drug that, as of 2017, is legal, whether recreationally or medicinally, in a good portion of the US. A drug that study after study confirms is a hell of a lot less dangerous than these Reefer Madness types lead us to believe it was. They even use, via Smoke, the old argument that marijuana is a gateway drug to harder shit, which, again, isn't as true as people once thought it was. I'll put it bluntly - this film is dated. Not as dated as Reefer Madness, but hell, it's not too far off.
So fine, marijuana isn't as big of a deal as we once thought. People can still, while not being addicted, take their hobby way too far to the point where it consumes their life - I get that, and I think this movie did too, because Michael is an asshole. He's mean to his sister, he commits petty theft, etc etc. How does these cartoon characters try to get him to see the error of his ways? Oh god, the best example has to come right after Michael and his friends are smoking - they hear a police siren and scatter, and Michael finds himself trapped in an alleyway, with a policeman walking slowly in his direction. After about 30 seconds, we're shown that it isn't actually a policeman, it's Bugs Bunny, who just happens to be wearing a policeman's hat and in possession of an authentic police siren.
The irony of this scene is astounding - they want to convince us of the danger and moral bankruptcy of taking drugs, and the one they conscript into convincing us is a cartoon rabbit who, for literally no reason whatsoever, was impersonating a police officer, something that I'm 98% sure is a felony in every state in the nation. Setting up the scene in this way makes it virtually impossible to claim any sort of moral high ground.
To add a swift kick in the balls to what's already been something that I'm pretty sure the 8th Amendment considers unconstitutional, when Bugs starts giving Michael his anti-drug spiel, it's honestly the most banal advice on the planet. Shit like, "what's important is inside you!" is said without a tinge of irony. The way I see it, there are two potential scenarios at play here. One: Michael is a recreational pot smoker, in which case everyone is blowing the entire situation way the fuck out of proportion. Two: Michael has some deep-seeded psychological issues that cause him to be consumed (note how I didn't say "addicted") by marijuana, in which case it's going to take a fuck of a lot more than Dr. Bugs Bunny MD, whose Mr. Rogers caliber pop-psychology convinces me he has nowhere near the necessary APA certification to be treating someone like that professionally.
That scene embodies every single problem with this show, and makes it perfectly clear that, despite its "star power" and cultural prestige, Cartoon All-Stars is really no different than any other terribly written, offensively condescending Very Special Episode. Aside from Michael being an asshole, we aren't shown or told why drugs are bad - they're just this thing that we're all supposed to know is bad and that's all we have to say on the matter, young man. Aside from a vague suggestion about wanting to fit in with the crowd, we aren't shown or told why people turn to drugs - even if that was given as a legitimate suggestion, it's too simple to be taken seriously. Nobody watching this is going to learn anything about drugs - they're just going to be given a message that exactly reinforces what society has been telling them for decades. This is propaganda, pure and simple, and I guess propaganda is socially acceptable when it comes in the form of an old blue man and a stuffed bear talking to kids.
And that's the final irony concerning this piece of shit film. The Cartoon All-Stars are, clearly, the centerpiece of this movie. But really, they have very little impact - Michael's final encounter with his sister does more to change his way of thinking than all of the preceding 30 minutes of encounters with fictional characters put together. Honestly, I think there's something important to be taken away from that: reconnecting with the ones you love, in times of crisis, is a more effective method of intervention than any sort of conversation with Bugs Bunny will ever be. But I don't think the movie understands this - I think that scene was included because they needed some quick way to wrap things up, and any sort of epiphany it provides must, as I've just done, be taken out of context, in contrast to how it was probably written and directed.
I can't tell you how successful this movie was, but I can tell you that very shortly after this aired, sitcoms like Seinfeld started taking over US airwaves, and soon enough the whole idea of the Very Special Episode became seen as an antiquated embarrassment. This can only be a good thing. I know kids are still using drugs, and, depending on the circumstances, that can be a serious problem. But you know what? If we want that to change, we can't rely on a feline-eating alien and a group of talking chipmunks to do all the heavy lifting for us.
One of the reasons why I love anime so much is because there is, seemingly, anime about everything. American animation is so dominated by a fewselect styles that we can often forget, or fail to assume, that animation can be used to tell literally any kind of story, whether it's an insane violence epic or a touching exploration of transgenderism. For the most part, this is positive - until we realize that the unbound freedom anime offers us can even be used to make ridiculous propaganda videos for Japanese cults. Which is, of course, what I'm going to be talking about this time.
The Laws of the Sun is, literally, a propaganda film made by a religious organization called, I shit you not, Happy Science. Founded in 1986, the movement believes its founder, Ryuho Okawa, is the reincarnation of a celestial being called El Cantare, who's apparently the true form of the Old Testament God. In the past, El Cantare incarnated himself as The Buddha - in his present form as Okawa, he is able to channel the spirits of such religious leaders as Jesus, Muhammad, and Confucius. As if that weren't enough, Okawa can apparently use his powers to speak to the spirit of Margaret Thatcher for political advice, because of course that's a thing he can do.
Bomb China - Reagan agrees with me.
Obviously, their beliefs are nuts, and it would take an entire entry in itself to completely unpack their theology. Thankfully, this movie makes it so that I don't have to - the plot is essentially a retelling of the Happy Science creation myths.
El Cantare, as it turns out, isn't the highest god in the Happy Science pantheon - the Primordial God, as he's called, first appeared 80 billion years ago, and he's described in this movie as a "13th dimensional cosmic spirit." Yes, 13th - this is the guy that's responsible for the creation of the universe, and as such, the first part of the movie consists largely of wonderfully animated sequences of cosmic activity.
Honestly, this movie deserves credit for its consistently high animation quality - though made by a fringe religious group, they somehow convinced Group TAC, the studio responsible for awesome shows like Touch and the Street Fighter Movie, to animate it. How in the hell they worked that out is beyond me - the upside is that when shit really starts going bananas (which doesn't take long at all), we're able to watch the insanity in beautifully animated form.
Like I said, the insanity begins very quickly - El Cantare, we're told, is a 9th Dimensional Cosmic Spirit that was originally born as El Miore, guardian spirit of the planet Venus.
I'm sure you guys remember this from high school history class, but Venus, we're told, was originally the home to a hyper-advanced civilization that makes the Galactic Republic from Star Wars look like a motherfucking collection of tribal huts. I mean, look at how goddamn beautiful this is!
But TJ, you say, the planet Venus is completely uninhabitable. Don't worry, the movie itself is quick to point this out - at a certain point, El Miore and the other Cosmic Spirits realize that perhaps building a civilization on a planet comprised of dangerous volcanoes maybe isn't the best idea. It's alright! They'll just transport the population of Venus to this new planet called Earth - El Miore will continue to be their guardian spirit, this time under the name El Cantare, while a few other spirits will come in to guide the new Earth civilization in the right direction, one of those spirits, of course, being Jesus Christ.
What, you thought I was joking?
All of this literally takes place in the first 15 minutes of the film. And even though I've barely scratched the surface, I think you can clearly see what makes this movie so baffling. Every religious system, whether it be Christianity or Ancient Greek polytheism, is founded on a group of stories - for many of these systems, these stories are so well told, so fundamentally archetypal, that even those who don't believe can get something out of them. The stories in The Laws of the Sun don't feel mythic, archetypal, or well told in the slightest. They want to be told as sincere history, yet the things we see are so fucking ridiculous that nobody in their right mind will take them as history. A super civilization on Venus is the least of our problems here - are we supposed to believe that a 13th and 9th Dimensional Cosmic Spirit didn't have the foresight to understand that building a human civilization on a toxic/volcanic planet may not be the best idea? These are supposed to be their supreme beings, and they're doing stupid shit like this! They wanted it both ways - to have a crazy Venusian civilization and to have the atmosphere of the planet be recognizable - but it just doesn't fucking work. It's dumb, no way around it.
You know what else is dumb? What happens afterwards. So all the Venusians are living on Earth now, but the civilization is selfish and corrupt, even though El Cantare and Space Jesus are supposed to be tag-teaming to get this shit done. Their corruption peaks when they brutally kill all the dinosaurs, which happens, I swear to El Cantare, by having all the humans ride around on hoverboards and shoot them with lazer beams.
Thankfully, the spirits have thousands and thousands of years to get this human civilization thing right. The rest of the movie is basically the progression of human life on Earth from our dinosaur-lazering low point to where we are now. Of course, because Happy Science has such a firm grasp of history, that progression may look a bit different to what we've been told in the past. We start with Satan, who is, of course, an corrupt spirit originally from the Large Magellanic Cloud.
We move forward through some of the great empires of the world - the most important, of course, being those based on the lost continents of Mu and Atlantis. These empires were lead by El Cantare himself, who took the human forms of wise men called La Mu and Thoth. Also, quick note - the sign of any great empire is pyramid power.
From there, we spend a bit of time in the Incas, in Greece, and finally in India, where El Cantare took on the form of Buddha. This was, we're told, his final and most important human form until his present incarnation in Ryuho Okawa - as such, a good portion of the movie focuses on Buddha's story. Unfortunately, this was probably the most boring portion of the movie as well - honestly, if I want to see the story of Buddha done right, Osamu Tezuka beat you to it decades ago, Happy Science.
Note: Osamu Tezuka is the only person on the planet who can wear a beret and not instantly become an insufferable douche, because Osamu Tezuka is the motherfucking God of Manga and he can do what he wants. Alright? Good.
As you can see, I've basically given up on talking about this movie in any sort of sane way. It's impossible to review this like an actual movie, because the things we're meant to take seriously are so far beyond what is acceptable for most people that there's no point in even trying. When faced with something this absurd, all we can do is point out that it exists, and there are thousands, if not millions, of people who take it seriously. That, and try your best to be entertained.
I'll be honest - if animation, as an art form, succeeds or fails based on how entertaining it is, then this is one of the most successful pieces of animation I've ever seen. You literally have no fucking clue what's coming next, and when it hits you that they're going to be spending five minutes blasting dinosaurs with lazers, you laugh like a madman. This would be such a great thing to watch in a group of your intoxicated friends - seriously, anyone watching this needs to buy like three bottles of whiskey and just watch this thing straight though. If you aren't entertained, I'll give you a dollar. Seriously.
One last thing before I stop - though this movie never got an official release in the US, Happy Science did produce an English dub of it. This is noteworthy for two reasons: it actually isn't terrible, and, though I have no way to confirm this, I'm like 95% sure that El Cantare is voiced by Crispin Freeman. I'm dead fucking serious - the same guy who voiced Alucard from Hellsing seems to be the voice of El Cantare. Somebody watch this clip from Hellsing Ultimate and then watch The Laws of the Sun, and tell me if I'm right or if I'm just delusional.
Is this not the same guy? I want to believe it is, if for no other reason than for its poetic beauty. If Morgan Freeman has become the unofficial voice of God among American actors, then it's perfectly fitting that Crispin Freeman is the unofficial voice of God among American voice actors. And hell, if the voice of El Cantare really is Crispin Freeman's voice, then maybe the theology of Happy Science isn't as awful as I was lead to believe.
One of the unexpected surprises I discovered during the holidays was the Bob Ross YouTube Channel. This channel, apparently operated by Bob Ross Inc., has uploaded an almost complete archive of The Joy of Painting that anyone can watch for free. Needless to say, I subscribed immediately, and The Joy of Painting has become one of my go-to things to watch when I'm trying to fall asleep. Now, because about 95% of the readers of my blog are my close friends, I don't need to go into detail about why Bob Ross is awesome - I will say, though, that the combination of his soothing demeanor, his genuine passion for teaching ordinary folks how to paint, and of course that hair, will ensure his immortality.
Sadly, Bob Ross passed away in 1995, and since then, there hasn't really been anyone who's filled the void he left. Perhaps, and I think many readers will agree with me, Bob Ross is one of those guys who comes around once in a generation - he was just so damn unique that finding someone to replace him is basically impossible. This hasn't stopped people from trying, though - today I want to bring to your attention someone I describe as The Anti-Bob Ross, or alternatively, Bizarro Bob Ross or Psychotic Bob Ross.
This guy, who looks like Rowan Atkinson on a bad day, is John Kilduff, and he's the host of Let's Paint TV. This show began it's life in 2002, among the drudges of Los Angeles Public Access - after shutting down in 2008, Kilduff began airing episodes online. Now, what makes this show so goddamn psychotic is that, unlike Bob Ross, Kilduff isn't satisfied with just teaching you how to paint - no, that's too basic. You have to be doing something while you paint - many of the episodes feature Kilduff exercising on a treadmill, playing ping pong, or, and this is the most bizarre for me, making blended drinks. There are dozens and dozens of episodes of this show available online right now, but for simplicity's sake, I'm going to share and discuss this seven minute clip, which I feel gives a decent introduction to the show as a whole.
Jesus Christ, I don't even know where to begin. Kilduff is running on a treadmill, while incredibly unsettling music, which I can only describe as if a third rate psychedelic rock composer were to write songs for an NES game while high on mescaline, plays in the background. He's wearing a suit and tie, which is quite possibly the worst thing you can wear while painting, to say nothing of running on a treadmill. The subject of his painting isn't a forest of happy little trees, but instead, is this man.
This is Michael Q Schmidt, an actor and fine arts model. Throughout the entire episode, he just sits there, shirtless and unmoving - at times, he even wields a scepter and crown like some sort of monarch. Kilduff will paint several portraits of Schmidt throughout the episode, which I'll get to in a minute - for each portrait, he seems to put himself under some artificial time constraint, which the clip doesn't really get into in that much detail. Suffice it to say, it felt rather unnecessary, considering everything else that's going on.
So, let's quickly compare this ridiculousness to The Joy of Painting. That show was outright minimalistic in its approach - there was no music, no backgrounds, just Bob Ross and his canvas, and honestly that was all the audience needed. Let's Paint TV, in the proud tradition of the Star Wars Special Editions, seems to be all about throwing as much random shit on camera at once - there's Kilduff himself, there's his canvas, his treadmill, fake plastic trees, Schmidt, some asshole on his MacBook - there's so much going on just in the scenery one isn't sure where to focus your attention, and that's saying absolutely fucking nothing about the three simultaneous things Kilduff is doing. When one watches Bob Ross, you feel an intense calm - when one watches this show, you feel your heart rate exponentially increase.
But TJ, you say, this is a painting show - what you should focus on isn't the tone but paintings themselves. Fair enough - let's, again, compare it to The Joy of Painting. Bob Ross is methodical in his detail and teaches you step by step how to do exactly what he's doing. I'm a complete moron when it comes to visual art, but I can walk away from an episode of The Joy of Painting and at least feel like I can do something like what I saw on TV. This show? Nope. Kilduff doesn't really teach you anything - in fact, he doesn't do much in the way of interacting with his audience at all. He does say stuff in the midst of his running and painting, but he's basically talking to himself - what's even worse, for much of the show, we don't even see the goddamn canvas. He's doing his thing, but the camera is more focused on him running, or Schmidt looking like the epitome of regality - it's focused on everything but the painting. What's worse, when Kilduff is finished painting, this is the result.
Yes, that blob of shit-colored paint is supposed to be Schmidt sitting down. Now I understand that Kilduff is approaching his painting from a different artistic school than Bob Ross - this, of course, being much more abstract than Ross' landscapes. But holy shit. I admit that I have a bias against a lot of modern visual art, which is so often nothing more than self-indulgent pretentious horseshit, but honestly, how is this good? Even if it was good, how am I supposed to duplicate it, John Kilduff? You didn't teach me a goddamn thing!
I can imagine what some of you may be thinking right now, so I'll just bring it up straight away. There are people who think this entire show is a joke, and as tempting as that is to believe, I don't know if I can. After all, it's been running for 14 straight years, and even in 2004, before anyone outside of the 50 people who watched LA public access even knew what this show was, Kilduff stated in interviews that his aim is sincere, that he really wanted to, like Bob Ross before him, inspire creativity in others. But I'll entertain the hypothesis that this is all a joke - if so, I don't think the punch line is funny enough to sustain a 14 year life span. Whatever humor is derived from this show is similar to that derived from other bad public access shows - it's not funny, per se, but it's fascinating and disturbing in its ridiculousness.
My favorite part of the video comes near the end, where Kilduff takes a call - after fumbling for about 10 seconds trying to get the call through, you hear a voice say, "Uh, hi, my name's John, and I just wanna know, like, what the fuck are you doing?" John, my friend, you speak for the world.
