...have we got a Saturday Morning Cartoon Show for you!

Welcome to another day of singin', dancin', and tom foolery based on the exploits of animated do-gooders. Today, my friends, is VeggieTales day and we've got vikings!

Born in 1993, the brainchild of Big Idea Productions founders Mike Nawrocki and Phil Vischer, VeggieTales has become a driving force in both Christian and mainstream cartoon production. Why? Because it's filled from stem to stern with well-rounded characters, hysterical writing, and musical numbers that would amuse The Marx Brothers. :) Whatever your religious convictions (or non-religious, for that matter), this show is smart, this show is funny, and this show understands my needs for parody of culturally significant arts and literature...and cowboys. If you've never been willing to give VeggieTales a chance, doing so today may just change your mind. If nothing else, you'll be able to say you've heard vegetables doing Shakespeare and that'll impress all the right people. It's hard to imagine that a direct to video cartoon could produce almost forty episodes, two feature length films, over two dozen CDs, and a live stage show if it sucked, you know?

Podcast for 03/21/09 - VeggieTales

For those of you show are unfamiliar with the treasure trove that is the VeggieTales silly song library, here's a sampling of their brilliance. One of our listeners requested it, but since we try not to play additional material from whatever we're highlighting, I promised to post it here instead. Bear in mind that pretty much everything from VeggieTales and the rest of the Big Idea universe are available on CD, video, and through digital sources, so piracy is not encouraged.

The Hairbrush Song

If you're looking for even more VeggieTales action, check out the Big Idea Fun site. It's kid friendly and, let me be totally honest here, there's plenty of stuff for the grown-up casual gamer. I've spent many a happy hour on The Eggsperts, Jerry's Cheeseburger Madness, and especially Lyle's Breakout. I once had a record on that bad boy. :) The coloring pages are pretty sweet too, though I babysit a lot and that may bias me.

I'd also like to take a moment to welcome our new UK podcast listeners. There are a whole mess of you. :) Hopefully you enjoyed last week's Bananaman outing. If there are any British, Irish, Scottish, or Welsh cartoons that you'd like the SMCS to know about, please don't be shy. Link us, baby!  

Next week we'll be stepping into our red long johns, moussing our hair with lightning bolts, and running around, arms in the air, going "Whssssshhhhhh!" If you guessed that our next cartoon was Freakazoid, give yourself a cookie! You're smart and you've earned it. ;) Now, every episode of Freakazoid is a good one, but if there's a specific episode you'd like to hear, please let us know - either in the comment here or via e-mail - by Thursday night so we can play the ones that will tickle you the most.

Have a great weekend and enjoy!

 - DJ Muppet

P.S. To our beloved listener who adopted us, I e-mailed you, but now I think it may have gone awry. Alas! Drop me a line here or through the SMCS e-mail addy and we'll get things sussed. :)

When Eric eats a banana, he becomes The Saturday Morning Cartoon Show!

Happy Sunday, SMCS listeners! I don't know how things are on your end, but here in Kalamazoo it's blue skies, bright sun, and the promise of temperatures approaching 60, so I'm a very happy camper. Hopefully none of you are being subjected to anything too intense that would spoil the fun of a very lively show chock full of evil machinations and daring-do.

Today's show was supposed to be VeggieTales, but the files were corrupt when I went to burn the show CD and we were unable to bring them to you this week. While the vegetables have been relegated a show to one week hence, Beta and I are always prepared - I was a Girl Scout for thirteen years after all - and we had another wonderful cartoon ready to go. Today, we are proud to present the UK darling Bananaman. Those of you who are fans of other classic Brit toons like Danger Mouse and Count Duckula will no doubt enjoy this simple, but very funny when-they-aired-in-America contemporary. The episodes are extremely short, but the pacing and cleverness of the characters make the length an asset. Cartoon nuggets that don't suck? How can it be? It just can. ;)

Podcast for 03/14/09 - Bananaman

There isn't much to say about today's episode, as the cartoon speaks for itself, but I do want to thank everyone who called in requests. There were a ton of you and we love playing stuff we know you want to hear, so keep 'em coming. :) Also a huge thank you to one of our biggest fans (I haven't asked if I can use his name, so I won't) who upgraded his initial WIDR Week pledge to Adopt-A-DJ status! Woohoo! This means that sometime in the near future, you'll all be hearing him on the air with us while playing the the cartoons and music he likes best. There's just so much to look forward too!

Since some of you requested that the songs is offered last week be made available individually rather than in a single zip file, I set up a folder with the soundtrack for The Phantom Tollbooth that allows single song downloads. Bear in mind, this isn't something that's commercially available. If you were able to buy this soundtrack I wouldn't have uploaded it (or had to put it together for that matter), but it's not, so have at it! I'm not sure if MediaFire has any policies about files that go a certain length of time without being downloaded, but just in case, if you want these, you should get them quickly.

The Phantom Tollbooth soundtrack

So, next week will be filled with animated scallions and silly songs, but for now, have fun with fruit based super heroing and the loving parody of a pantheon of both heroes and villains. Keep those requests coming via e-mails and comments in the blog too. Enjoy!

- DJ Muppet