In the 6th season of South Park, back in 2002, an episode aired in which the boys watch a show appropriately-named Fightin’ Around the World with Russell Crowe, in which a feisty cartoon Russell Crowe picks unnecessary fights with people around the world. Crowe later joked about the episode in a 60 Minutes interview, but did you know Trey Parker and Matt Stone made the episode “just to rip on Russell Crowe” after an uncomfortable party at Russell Crowe’s house?

According to Parker, he and Stone were invited to Crowe’s house to listen to and give their thoughts on the demo tape for his album. However when they arrived, Parker claims there were a handful of Crowe’s friends there, and the “Demo tape” was, in fact, a complete album, and Crowe simply wanted all his friends to listen to the album in its entirety. During one of the songs Parker offered a suggestion to improve one of the songs which apparently didn’t set well with Crowe, which led to this episode. […] Parker also stated that Crowe was “a really cool guy” and “a very talented actor“, the latter referencing how bad he and Stone secretly thought the album was, which Parker described as Bon Jovi meets Hepatitis B. [Wiki]

So why did we tell you all this? Well, it’s awesome, but also the day has arrived in which Russell Crowe became the character portrayed on South Park. All it took was access to Twitter and a (we assume) napping publicist.

All in accordance with the prophecy…

(H/T: Final Ellipsis)

Ubisoft bought the rights to South Park: The Stick of Truth when THQ declared bankruptcy in January. We were worried the Obsidian-developed RPG might not get finished after it was delayed a year and THQ crumbled. Now the E3 trailer pokes fun at their own setbacks by promising the game will come “this holiday season, or some holiday season, hopefully kind of soon. You know how video games are.”

As with the NSFW trailer from last year, we can’t tell which parts are cutscenes and which parts are gameplay. This may be because Obsidian was rumored to have 15 years of assets from South Park given to them by Trey Parker and Matt Stone. This is the first South Park game for which Parker and Stone wrote the script.

South Park: The Stick of Truth lead designer Matt MacLean said the game’s combat system will be similar to Paper Mario, meaning that properly-timed button-pressing yields better results. He also said the weapons are stuff kids could realistically find or make. The player is a “new kid in town” who can choose from one of five player classes: wizard, paladin, adventurer, rogue, or Jew. Guess which character named that last player class.

The Xbox One version will be a different game called the “All Roshambo Edition” in which players only kick each other in the crotch while the Kinect sends footage of their fight to the NSA. Microsoft assumed Xbox One buyers are masochists anyway, so this is just the immersive, synergistic experience the end user was clamoring for. Television.

And now, some classy screencaps:

Classic.

[Sources: Kotaku (1, 2) and PC Gamer]

Today’s installment of 73 Sports Movies in 73 Days is the 1998 sports spoof BASEketball, which starred Trey Parker and Matt Stone, who are obviously much better known as the guys who gave us South Park. I’m not going to beat around the bush on this one – BASEketball is one of the best movies ever made. Is it stupid? Yes. Is it offensive? Oh yes. Is it absurd on all levels and an affront to human decency? Yeah, absolutely.

But it is also a film that I can watch several dozen times over the span of 15 years and still laugh until my stomach hurts every time, because I am an immature child at my core. Unfortunately, some people don’t share my love of BASEketball, so as I was watching it this afternoon, I checked Rotten Tomatoes for the movie’s worst reviews and paired them with the appropriate responses.

Also, this has to be included…

Sixteen years ago today, four precocious kids named Stan, Kyle, Eric and Kenny entered our living (and dorm) rooms with foul-mouthed authority, as South Park debuted on Comedy Central. It’s so hard to believe that a couple that may have given birth to a baby boy as Cartman screamed, “BEEFCAKE!” is now watching that kid learn how to drive, but then that’s how life works. Time passes, we grow up and several years later, we put together listicles to remind us of the past because today’s reality blows.

As for South Park, it’s simply remarkable to think that what started as a funny little animated short between Trey Parker and Matt Stone has grown into a Comedy Central cornerstone and a cartoon empire. Of course, like any TV series, South Park has had its highs and lows, as not every episode was a home run, nor was every joke the kind that made us double over in pain with laughter. But for a lot of us, South Park has been every bit as important to pop culture and, more importantly, our own comedy influences and senses of humor as The Simpsons and other animated shows, so to see it doing so well after all these years is a great feeling. No matter how old it makes us feel.

That’s why I wanted to take a moment or 17 to celebrate one of South Park’s original recurring jokes, Kenny’s ridiculous deaths, that evolved over the years from a hilarious expectation to an eye-rolling “all right already” and eventually to a whole new level of absurdity and creativity as the show not only created Imaginationland, but also invited us to take up residence while Cartman and Co. kept the adventures fresh and borderline insane.

(Screen caps taken from South Park Studios, kudos to the South Park Wiki’s fine records of poor Kenny’s demises.)

Blasted by an alien space ship, trampled by a herd of cattle, then run over by Officer Barbrady’s police cruiser. (Kenny was still alive after being shot and trampled, it was Barbrady who delivered the fatal blow.)

It was the first of approximately 83 deaths for Kenny (maybe add a few for the episodes where he had multiple deaths and the original shorts and other various sketches that didn’t air in episodes). Each one was more ridiculous or bizarre than the last, but it all began on August 13, 1997 with Officer Barbrady’s backwoods stupidity.

Arms ripped off by two Middle Park Cowboy players before a third tackles him, decapitating him in the process. The “Oh my God! They killed Kenny!” line is said by Kyle in this episode.

Decapitation, limbs being torn from a child’s lifeless body – this was par for the course for the first season. We watched this and laughed along, all while wondering how Kenny would meet his demise next. Soon, “They killed Kenny!” joined “I didn’t do it” in the primetime animated series Hall of Fame.

Cut in half with a chainsaw by Kyle to end the zombie curse. The “Oh my God, they killed Kenny!” line is said by Kyle, though “they” is changed to “I”, reflecting the fact that it is he who kills Kenny this time. Kyle says to himself “You bastard!” when he should’ve said “I’m a bastard!”. This is the same episode where Stan says the line as usual (when the Mir space station crashes upon him earlier in the episode) making this the only time both Stan and Kyle have said the line in the same episode. Sometimes the line is cut.

It was the first time that Kenny was killed two times in one episode, and it certainly wouldn’t be the last. But for it still being only the first season, it was hard to believe that they could have topped cutting Kenny in half with a chainsaw.

While Mecha-Streisand is wrecking the town, Kenny dodges several things that would be the perfect cause for his death. Instead, it comes when he finds himself in a playground and begins to play tetherball with himself. He is tied to the pole and asphyxiated.

It was one of the first times that an awareness was shown for the joke, at least by Kenny, as instead of his death being a centerpiece of the episode, it was simply a side joke. Sure enough, it was still hilarious, even if it didn’t matter to the plot.

Killed by an overpowered dodgeball throw from a Chinese opponent. Kyle, in pain, weakly says the “You bastards” line.

This wasn’t a remarkable death by any means, but the episode’s callback to the careless, racist football announcer from “Big Gay Al’s Big Gay Boat Ride” was revived as a careless, racist Chinese dodgeball announcer, who hilariously mocked Americans. In both episodes, barely anyone even noticed Kenny’s deaths.

Ozzy Osbourne bites his head off. The regular post-death line is changed to “Oh my God, Ozzy Osbourne bit Kenny’s head off!”. However, he is spontaneously revived moments later and can be seen standing next to Stan and Kyle in the crowd. Whether this is his immortality coming into effect sooner than usual or just a continuity error is open to debate. This is a reference to two incidents where Ozzy bit the heads off of live animals. One was a dove at a contract signing, and the other was he bit the head off a bat in concert.

This might have been my favorite of Kenny’s deaths, at least for the first five seasons. Of course, any throwback to when Ozzy Osbourne was rock n’ roll’s badass and not Sharon’s goofy husband makes me happy.

Sacrifices himself to open the conch shell that Moses is trapped in, saving the Jews. The usual post-death lines are not said, partially due to Stan being absent in this episode.

This episode really set the standard for just how ridiculous South Park was going to get with not only Judaism, but all religions in general. And this was tame compared to the later episodes about Mormons and Scientology, among others. It was also one of the first times that Kenny actually gave his own life to save others. I don’t know that this was a point that made Parker and Stone say, “Hey let’s make him immortal,” but it was brewing by then.

Crushed by an ambulance after Stewart is loaded therein.

Earlier in the episode, he is also killed in a dream by his newborn alien-like brother. His father says “Oh my God, it killed Kenny!” and his mother shouts “Bad baby.”

His parents have another child, which is born dressed in an orange hoody, just before the credits and name him Kenny (in honor of his ‘dead’ brother); his father comments that this must be the 50th time this has happened and his mother specifies that it’s the 52nd because this is the 52nd time Kenny has died.

Another episode that involved multiple deaths, it was also the first time that we witnessed Kenny’s “re-birth.” Again, I’m not sure if that was something that Parker and Stone were toying with by that point, but it’s interesting to see how it connects to the Mysterion plot in the last several seasons.

Laughs himself to death after seeing Cartman’s “I’m a little piggy” video. His spirit is then seen coming out of his body, still laughing (similar to Who Framed Roger Rabbit). (When the episode is first aired, his spirit was not shown.)

Another meaningless death, sure, but it was sparked by Cartman’s first transformation into one of the most evil and diabolical characters in television history. To recap, the older kid, Scott Tenorman, scammed him with pubes for cash, so he tricked Mr. Denkins into shooting Scott’s parents and then chopped them up into pieces and cooked them into chili that he eventually fed to Scott. All over $10. Kenny may have laughed himself to death, but Cartman was truly born in this episode.

Explosion kills Kenny and his Afghan counterpart. Stan and Kyle’s Afghan counterparts say “Ya Allah! Koshtaen Keyvano! Tol dayoos!”, which translates to “Oh God, they killed Keyvan! You bastards!” in Persian . Kenny is also seen talking with Kyle, Stan, and the Afghanies in the background, although his alter ego is not.

Kenny’s death was funny paired with Keyvan, but Cartman’s Bugs Bunny routine with Bin Laden in this episode is definitely one of the show’s most absurd and hilarious topical bits. And that says a lot, because this show routinely showed how tapped into the news and pop culture it was with quick turnarounds on huge subjects.

Rob Schneider eats a roast beef joint containing Kenny’s recently-exorcised soul (Kenny possesses Cartman’s body for a few episodes this season) and dies when Rob Schneider gets impaled by a flagpole in a movie trailer (in reference to one of Kenny’s deaths in “Weight Gain 4000”).

This isn’t necessarily Kenny’s death – as he’d been given a little vacation in the afterlife once this recurring death bit had sort of run its course – but watching Rob Schneider be impaled on a flag pole while mocking his terrible movies? Magnificent.

He is hit by an ice cream van and brought to Heaven but is resuscitated and kept alive on a feeding tube (à la Terri Schiavo), which is removed and he finally dies. It’s worthy to note that this is one of the very few times (including the movie) that Kenny continues to appear on-screen and play a significant part even after he is killed.

One of the perfect examples of just how in touch South Park was with the hot button issues, from politics to personal rights, and for once Kenny’s death was taken to a new level and given actual significance, as it both made us laugh (a lot) and especially made us think. Well, at least some of us. It was also the last time that Kenny would die for almost two seasons.

Shot in the head in his house by a stray bullet fired by Bebe Stevens. No lines are said for his death, though two pop tarts pop out of the toaster seconds after. This is the second time Bebe has killed Kenny (the first being in “Proper Condom Use”).

Kenny spent the entire 10th and 11th seasons free of pain and brutal slaughter, which allowed for new adventures, stories and especially jokes. So when Bebe’s stray bullet blasted through Kenny’s kitchen window and struck him in the head, it made the final episode of the 11th season all the more pants-wettingly hilarious.

Dies from syphilis after receiving a blowjob from his girlfriend Tammy Warner. The line, “Oh my God, they killed Kenny!” “You bastards!” were not used.

This takedown of the Disney empire with the Jonas Brothers at the center was phenomenal, with Kenny’s death from syphilis serving as the punchline to one of the show’s most absurd plots, and that’s not just misguided hyperbole. This was the first episode of the 13th season and the death was once again a pleasant surprise, as Kenny didn’t die at all in the 12th season, despite making it seem like he would several times.

Dies as a result of autoerotic asphyxiation, after choking himself with a belt while dressed as Batman upon the suggestion of a Center for Disease Control agent testing for sex addiction.

Butters was the star of this episode that was a takedown of the celebrity scapegoat of sex addiction, as he was both fascinated and terrified after seeing some good, old 70s porn bush. But Kenny’s death was a tasteless mocking of David Carradine’s apparent accidental death from autoerotic asphyxiation in a Bangkok hotel, but it wasn’t any worse than the stories of “self-bondage,” sexual deviance and conspiracies of ninja murder.

Just as the school children praise Kenny for his accomplishments (and Cartman sings with glee about how he is no longer the poorest kid in the school), a gigantic “reptilian” bird breaks through the ceiling and tosses Kenny around with its’ mouth, right before he eats him whole, and flies away. The normal lines are not used; Stan simply replies, “What the fuck?”

Maybe my favorite of all of Kenny’s deaths to date, the giant bird eating him after he played such a sweet and inspirational role was so amazingly stupid and ridiculous that it basically summed the entire series up in one quick snack.

Sixteen years later, I still love this show so much. Even after the video you’re about to watch…

I honestly forgot this existed until today. Consider this a bonus.

Set to, what else? “Let the Bodies Hit the Floor.” Naturally.

(via Getty Image)

I was listening to Bill Hader on The Nerdist podcast this week, and it was amusing in all the ways that Bill Hader is typically amusing. He spoke about leaving Saturday Night Live, why he chose to do so (mostly to move to Los Angeles with his family), and he actually spent a lot of time talking about his marriage to writer/director Maggie Carey (The To Do List), which is fascinating if you like hearing about the minutia of married life (I do). He also dropped some interesting Saturday Night Live tales, and spoke about the tireless work ethic of people like Lorne Michaels and Southpark’s Matt Stone and Trey Parker, with whom Hader works with as a writer on South Park.

The conversation basically moved from Saturday Night Live to Ghostbusters and then to Bill Murray, which was probably the most fascinating part of the podcast. Hader talked about his embarassing first encounter with Murray, and then ended up telling a story about the first time that Matt Stone and Trey Parker met him. I won’t spoil it, but let’s just say that the South Park duo, who are typically nonplussed by celebrity encounters, basically LOST THEIR SH*T.

It’s an outstanding anectdote, and someone on YouTube was kind enough to isolate the minute and thirty-six second story, so you can listen to it in its entirety below, or listen to the entire podcast.

Ubisoft picked up the rights to South Park: The Stick of Truth when THQ declared bankruptcy, which cheered us greatly. The E3 trailer and the NSFW trailer were entertaining, and it would be a shame for a game of this magnitude to be abandoned. The good news is that over seven minutes of gameplay were screened at Fan Expo in Toronto last weekend, and a fan managed to snag some video. It looks awesomely similar to the show.

The scenes screened at Fan Expo involve a player stealing The Stick of Truth and using mysterious green goo to reanimate dead Nazi cats. Uh, okay. The clip also shows off the player’s special power, “Cup-a-Spell”, which involves farting, of course. And yes, you can light your Cup-a-Spell with an open flame. Your character is also nicknamed “The Dragonborn”. And your dragon shout? You guessed it. Also farting. And at some point you can have dueling fart magic with “Grand Wizard” Eric Cartman:

Classy times.

The video comes courtesy of Kotaku. Check out the 7+ magnificently silly minutes below while they last. NSFW due to swearing and cartoon butts.

VIDEO UPDATED (while this one lasts). Thanks to The Surly Badger for the assist.

It looks like this was filmed with a spycam hidden in eyeglass frames. We suspect it will get pulled soon, so view it while you can. If it’s already gone when you read this, console yourself with these screencaps and the ones below.

A couple more screencaps are available at Kotaku.

In the three years or so since Trey Parker and Matt Stone’s Book Of Mormon hit Broadway you’d be hard-pressed to find anyone who’s seen it who didn’t enjoy it. Despite it running for a while and having a national tour currently going, the show still sells out months in advance and people are still paying scalpers top dollar for tickets. Jon Stewart said the show is “so good it makes me f*cking angry,” and in a past post about it, I wrote, “Theater experiences like this one only come around once in a generation.”

So what I’m trying to say is that you’d probably have to be a pretty joyless f*ck to hate Book of Mormon. Yet somehow the New Orleans Times Picayune managed to find someone who hates it some much that he feels it’s an indicator that American culture is “slouching toward the abyss.”

Here’s a sampling of the gems dropped by Theodore P. Mahne, who I assume is at least 120 years old, in his Book of Mormon review.

Despite the anticipation and the hype, and despite the multiple Tony Awards and its blockbuster status, “The Book of Mormon” is little more than degrading, offensive trash.

“The Book of Mormon” could be the stuff of a satisfying and funny buddy story and fish-out-of-water comedy, even while poking fun at the inevitable clashes of cultures that erupt. But Parker, Stone and co-writer Robert Lopez fail to reach even for that degree of substance. Instead, they rely upon the most puerile laughs that are rarely aimed higher than vulgar, scatological humor. Such grotesque jokes usually lose their appeal once one hits puberty.

Far too many followers, however, have given the show a pass, claiming that because there are no limits to their attacks, at least Parker, Stone and Lopez are “equal opportunity offenders.” But the utter lack of originality in “The Book of Mormon,” combined with an often downright mean-spiritedness, drags the show to unforeseen depths.

If the humor was merely in poor taste, the show would be simply innocuous. But its offensive aim runs more deeply. The Mormon Church, and ultimately faith itself, bears the biggest bull’s-eye.

The lyrics to one key song, which also cannot be quoted here, were so horribly offensive, that I was tempted to walk out with the large handful of others at intermission.

Other material seen fitting for jokes includes sexual violence against women and children, as well as genital mutilation. Black Africans are depicted in a crude and demeaning manner not seen on stages since the time of minstrel shows. And don’t forget to throw in lots of barbs about AIDS and cancer. That’s sure to draw laughs.

Because it is all draped in mocking religious faith, however, its base insults have been deemed acceptable, even worthy of multiple Tony Awards. The politically correct crowd, which would usually be shouting from the rooftops, appears to be willing to accept the show’s virulent racism and sexism as pure lagniappe.

“The Book of Mormon” runs through Oct. 27. American culture, meanwhile, continues slouching toward the abyss.

Not surprisingly, Mahne — who sounds more like a Fox News commentator than he does a theater critic in a city famed for embracing debauchery, lewdness, perversion, excess, and vice — also hated Avenue Q, the music to which was also written by Robert Lopez. He has written glowingly about the Catholic Church and loved a recent re-creation of Bob Hope’s WWII variety show. Go figure.

(Lead image via Gambit)

Even if Matt Stone and Trey Parker had never pitted Jesus against Santa, eventually leading to the creation of South Park as we know it, they’d still be comedy legends for giving the world Cannibal! The Musical. “Shpadoinkle” will never not be funny; it’s far and way the greatest made-up word from a movie about a guy who’s accused of eating his friends. Actually, Stone and Parker’s entire filmography is filled with classics (at least if you were a teenage boy in the 1990s), from Orgazmo to Team America: World Police, with BASEketball and of course South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut in-between.

Today is Parker’s 44th birthday, so in honor of him not dying, let’s take a look at some of his and Stone’s greatest movie GIFs. (Unfortunately, there aren’t many GIFs out there for Cannibal or Orgazmo, so I had to make due.) I maxed each film out at four selections, otherwise this post would be nothing but lines from The Mole.

1. Cannibal! The Musical

2. Cannibal! The Musical

3. Orgazmo

4. Orgazmo

5. BASEketball

6. BASEketball

7. BASEketball

We’ve been consistently impressed with all of the footage from South Park: The Stick of Truth, including the Giggling Donkey mission and the E3 trailer and the NSFW trailer. This new trailer aired at the VGX Awards this weekend, and it shows “Grand Wizard” Eric Cartman teaching the new kid his special power, the “Cup-a-Spell”. Yes, it involves farting in your hand and throwing it at other kids, because South Park.

Although this video doesn’t show it, you’ll also be able to light your Cup-a-Spell on fire, leading to interesting battles like this one:

Yes, I am 12 years old and this is hilarious.

The PS3, Xbox 360, and PC versions of South Park: The Stick of Truth will march forth on March 4th.

(H/T: CVG)

“I hope we don’t get a f*cking 4 on Gamespot,” says Trey Parker about South Park: The Stick of Truth in this new behind the scenes video about the game. Is he still mad Gamespot gave the N64 South Park game a 5.8 out of 10?

In the behind the scenes video, Matt Stone mentions that farting is the skill players try to master. Trey Parker adds, reminding us that the game mechanics have Paper Mario style bonuses based on timing button presses, “It was really important that you didn’t just press a button to fart but that it was analog. You need to, like, feel it go out of your a**hole.”

Classy times.

South Park: The Stick of Truth is coming to PS3, Xbox 360, and PC on March 4th (hopefully). If you still want more footage when you’re done with the video below, check out the “Cup A Spell” trailer, the “Giggling Donkey” mission, the E3 trailer, and the NSFW trailer. What a time to be alive.

COMEDY CENTRAL

Unlike The Simpsons, at least up until their FXX deal, South Park has embraced the Internet with a passion that rivals Eric Cartman’s love of KFC. Every episode (minus two) of the long-running animated series is on South Park Studios. You have to deal with the occasional ad, but whatever, it’s free. That’s all about to change, though: following the season 18 premiere on September 24th, Hulu Plus will become, to quote Variety, the “exclusive online-streaming home” for South Park.

Hulu cut the deal with South Park Digital Studios, a joint venture between Viacom and South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone. In 2008, the South Park partners launched all seasons of the adult-themed animated show in free, ad-supported format on SouthParkStudios.com — but with the new deal, as of this fall those will be streaming only on the $7.99-per month Hulu Plus.

Starting Saturday, July 12, the entire South Park library will be available for free on Hulu, and will continue to be free on SouthParkStudios.com until Sept. 24. At that point, both Hulu and SouthParkStudios.com will have day-after-air access to new episodes from season 18. In addition, each of the sites will offer a revolving selection of 30 free episodes at any given time. (Via)

In other words, we’re going from 244 episodes for free to 30 episodes for free and 214 that you have to pay for. I’m sure this deal is going to add a few more millions to Matt and Trey’s bank account, and they deserve every penny they get for “Something Wall-Mart This Way Comes” alone. That being said:

Via Variety

COMEDY CENTRAL

There’s no exact figure available, but if I had to guess how many characters Matt Stone and Trey Parker have voiced over 17 seasons (and one movie!) of South Park, I’d say: a lot. But even they need SOME help. Mona Marshall and April Stewart provide the voices for most of the females on the long-running series, while Vernon Chatman, Adrien Beard, and Jennifer Howell are the talent behind Towelie, Token, and Bebe. There’s been a heap of guest stars, too. Matt and Trey will gladly keep the skewering of Tom Cruise in-house, but sometimes, you just need some assistance from Radiohead.

George Clooney as Sparky (“Big Gay Al’s Big Gay Boat Ride”) and Dr. Gouache (South Park: Bigger, Longer, & Uncut)

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Michael Buffer as himself (“Damien (South Park)”)

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Natasha Henstridge as Ms. Ellen (“Tom’s Rhinoplasty”)

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Robert Smith as himself (“Mecha-Streisand”)

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Jay Leno as Kitty (“Cartman’s Mom Is a Dirty Slut”) and himself (“City on the Edge of Forever”)

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Henry Winkler as Big Black Scary Monster (“City on the Edge of Forever”)

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Brent Musburger as Scuzzlebutt’s Leg (“City on the Edge of Forever”)

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Jonathan Katz as Dr. Katz (“Summer Sucks”)

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Devo, DMZ, Rick James Elton John, Meat Loaf, Ozzy Osbourne, Primus, Rancid, Joe Strummer, and Ween all appear as themselves (“Chef Aid”)

Mike Judge as Kenny (South Park: Bigger, Longer, & Uncut)

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Brent Spiner as Conan O’Brien (South Park: Bigger, Longer, & Uncut)

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Minnie Driver as Brooke Shields (South Park: Bigger, Longer, & Uncut)

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Dave Foley as the Baldwin Brothers (South Park: Bigger, Longer, & Uncut)

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Eric Idle as Dr. Vosknocker (South Park: Bigger, Longer, & Uncut)

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Stewart Copeland as American Soldier #1 (South Park: Bigger, Longer, & Uncut)

Getty Image

Michael McDonald’s “Eyes of a Child” and James Hetfield’s “Hell Isn’t Good” (South Park: Bigger, Longer, & Uncut)

Nick Rhodes as Canadian Fighter Pilot (South Park: Bigger, Longer, & Uncut)

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Just as South Park has been doubling down on the “Randy Marsh is Lorde” jokes (in Wednesday’s episode, Randy insists, “Just because I make a good living with my music doesn’t mean you can just blow it all on Canadough!”), so too have fans of the show continued ya ya ya’ing all over the place. The 18-going-on-57 pop star curated the soundtrack for the new Hunger Games movie, which provided an excuse for Matt Stone and Trey Parker’s followers to make references on two separate Facebook pages, three if you count NAMBLA’s.

FACEBOOK

It keeps going, not unlike how Barbra Streisand still can’t walk out of the house without someone telling her, “You ain’t Fiona Apple, and if you ain’t Fiona Apple, I don’t give a rat’s ass.” Ya ya ya.

South Park

This season’s premiere of South Park, “Go Fund Yourself,” saw the boys quit school so they could create a startup called “Washington Redskins” and make money via Kickstarter. Their plan nearly worked, until too many people complained about the offensive name, leaving them with no choice but to go back to school. At the time, it seemed like that would be the last we would hear about this. This is South Park, after all, a show that normally resets after every episode. I mean, how many times has Kenny died only to be brought back to life? Seriously, I lost count.

So, imagine our shock at the beginning of the next episode, “Gluten Free Ebola,” when the boys were pariahs throughout the halls of South Park Elementary, their friends enraged at their arrogant behavior after they abandoned school for the world of tech startups. Wait, the plot from last week was going to stick? That never happens. In an excellent bit of meta-humor, Stan seems just as stunned by this development as we are:

Comedy Central

By the time the episode was over, Stan, Kyle, Kenny, and Cartman had smoothed things over by throwing a party. Since they couldn’t get Lorde in time, Randy Marsh took the stage impersonating her. No one seemed to notice.

Comedy Central

Everything was back to normal at South Park Elementary, and the internet had a brand new meme. This might have been the point where South Park‘s serial storyline experiment had stopped if not for a 200-word article posted at Spin the next day. The writer missed the point of Randy-as-Lorde, and seemed way too offended by South Park, a show that thrives on having fun at the expense of others.

Rather than letting this silly little article stand, in the following episode we were introduced to a Spin reporter who was doing a report on Lorde, and was nervous that “someone might be having fun at her expense.”

Comedy Central

Shortly after this, the biggest bombshell of the season would drop: Randy Marsh wasn’t impersonating Lorde; he WAS Lorde. All this time, he had been writing songs — heavily altered by auto-tune — and releasing them under the name Lorde. You have to wonder if this was Matt and Trey’s plan all along, or if it was a reaction to the Spin piece. They might have originally intended to have Randy-as-Lorde be a one-off joke, but the article emboldened them to go a few steps further and reveal Lorde as the secret identity of Randy Marsh. Either way, South Park‘s experiment with episode-to-episode continuity had now lasted for the first three episodes of the season.

Comedy Central

In the episodes that have aired since, the serial storylines have died down considerably, but not completely. The “Handicar” episode saw Randy/Lorde drive by on a Handicar singing “Ya Ya Ya/I Am Lorde,” perhaps as a hint that even though that particular episode would be focusing on minor characters, the storylines we had seen explored earlier might not be over just yet.

Last week’s episode, “Freemium Isn’t Free,” made more references to this season’s ongoing continuity, including this exchange after Stan racked up a $26,000 bill playing the Terrance and Philip freemium game:

Randy: Do you know many songs I have to write to pay for this?
Stan: One?
Randy: That’s not the point!”

That would be a strong hint that Randy-as-Lorde will continue to be a factor in the future, or at least that the writers haven’t forgotten about it. The episode also made references to Randy’s alcoholism — a recurring theme in the past — and revisited the heavy emphasis on gluten-free everything that arose earlier in the season:

Comedy Central

After three consecutive episodes that more less ran into each other, the show’s episodes have started to feel more separated over the past few weeks, but there are still multiple hints that episode-to-episode continuity will continue to be a part of South Park‘s format in the future. This has the potential to change the show pretty radically. We’ve seen two- and-three part sagas before (“Black Friday,” “Imaginationland”), but the idea of individual episodes that loosely connect to each other is a new concept for South Park, one that could keep the show fresh as it moves ever closer to two decades on the air.

How will these developments work out? Will Randy continue to be Lorde, or will there be a drastic new revelation that changes that story yet again? Will Randy/Lorde’s alcoholism be a major storyline? Will gluten ever stop making your d*** fly off? The fact that we even get to ask these questions proves that South Park has thoroughly re-invigorated itself, and should be intriguing to follow going forward.

Everyone knows South Park is an animated show…or is it a live-action show where what’s real is fake and what’s fake is real and, oh God, it’s so confusing. In last night’s episode, “Grounded Vindaloop,” Cartman, as he is wont to do, f*cks with an increasingly perplexed Butters by using the Oculus Rift. The plot gets super hard to follow, which is the entire point, before the final reveal: that Cartman, Stan, Kyle, and Kenny, are flesh-and-blood humans, and for the past 18 seasons, we’ve been watching them in sucky graphics form. Or something. Just watch the clip.

Legendary TV showrunner/creator Norman Lear — arguably the first “name” TV showrunner, famous for hits like All in the Family, The Jeffersons, Good Times, Maude, One Day at a Time and Sanford and Son — has been everywhere of late, promoting his new autobiography, Even This I Get to Experience. That said, he was recently on Marc Maron’s WTF podcast, where he dropped a nugget that I found interesting: Trey Parker and Matt Stone created Eric Cartman to be their version of Archie Bunker from All in the Family.

“They wanted to do an Archie…so they did a kid,” Lear told Maron. “So that’s how Cartman came about. I couldn’t be prouder of anything. Because I LOVE South Park.”

Also highly recommended: Norman Lear’s Fresh Air interview. In that interview Lear detailed some of the negotiating he had to do with CBS executives in the ’70s to get the language that Archie Bunker used — language often rife with racial and sexual slurs — on the air.

Gross: So in your memoir, in your autobiography, you write that the network executives gave you notes asking you not to use the language that we just heard, and I’m going to read a memo that you quote in your autobiography. “We ask that homosexual terminology be kept to an absolute minimum and, in particular, the word ‘fag’ not be used at all. ‘Queer’ should be used most sparingly and less offensive terms, like ‘pansy,’ ‘sissy,’ or even ‘fairy,’ should be used instead. A term like ‘regular fellow’ would be preferred to ‘straight’.” So, but the way you’re using it, those words are being used by a character who’s obviously representing the wrong way of thinking. I mean, you’re obviously not endorsing those kinds of, you know, stereotypes. So how did you get around the network executives who didn’t want you to use the language and say the things that you are obviously doing, even in that clip we just heard?

NORMAN LEAR: Well, basically I said, you know, if you force the change I won’t be back. That sounds so much like a big deal. It wasn’t as it played out, at the time, a big deal. In the very first show, Archie had a line – they came in from church ’cause he hated the sermon and the young people were – thought they had the house alone and they were going to go upstairs to make love. They heard the door open, they came down quick – Archie got the moment, he understood what had happened then he said, 11:10 of a Sunday morning. They wanted that line out. It had to be out. And why? Because it was specific, the audience would know exactly what he was talking about. And I said, of course they would, they were going to bed. I said, well, they’re also married, what is the problem with a married couple…

GROSS: …Having sex. Yes, we can say that (laughter).

LEAR: And so, 20 minutes or so before it was to air in New York, I was on the phone with the president of the company saying they were going to put it on but they were going to cut that line. Well, the show would’ve been just fine with that line cut, it wouldn’t have hurt the show. But it was such a silly, little argument that if I lost that, I would’ve continued – or the scripts, the shows would’ve continued to lose, on a constant basis, those little arguments. And I knew I just couldn’t live with that.

Paramount Pictures

Trey Parker and Matt Stone have some nerve. They just HAD to wrap up this season of South Park last Wednesday, exactly a week before America let the terrorists win. But even though we won’t get to see their spin on The Interview vs. North Korea vs. Guardians of Peace vs. Three Dogs In a Trench Coat, we certainly know their feelings for the land of Jong, which is why the best little whorehouse, er, Alamo Drafthouse in Texas is screening Team America: World Police in place of Seth Rogen and James Franco’s now-unseen comedy apocalypse.

“We’re just trying to make the best of an unfortunate situation,” James Wallace, creative manager and programmer at the Alamo Drafthouse Cinema’s Dallas/Fort Worth location, tells The Hollywood Reporter.

The Alamo Drafthouse in Dallas, Texas, will be showing Team America: World Police in place of The Interview on Dec. 27 at 7 p.m. Wallace says that the Dallas/Fort Worth location is the only location as of now that is planning to screen the replacement film…American flags and other patriotic items will be given out by theater employees. (Via)

When reached for comment, Team America star Matt Damon replied:

PARAMOUNT

You said it.

Via the Hollywood Reporter

Getty/MoviePix

There have been versions of this story going around for years, most notably as an odd footnote in Big Red Son, one of the David Foster Wallace essays published in his collection, Consider the Lobster. So the story goes, once upon a time, Trey Parker and Matt Stone had just released The Spirit of Christmas, the animated Christmas video that went viral before that was a thing, which led to them getting a deal with Comedy Central to make South Park. They were doing research for their next project, Orgazmo, a movie about a Mormon porn star, when they met a porn producer and former porn performer named Farrell Timlake (porn name: “Tim Lake”), who became Parker and Stone’s “porno concierge” (according to one Orgazmo producer). Timlake would invite them down to his porn sets, which naturally presented a number of irresistible opportunities for pranks. At one point, a mutual acquaintance of both asked to invite some “friends” down to a Timlake set Trey and Matt would be attending to watch a shoot and meet Hollywood’s new wonder boys. The friends turned out to be Carrie Fisher, Richard Dreyfuss, Timothy Hutton, and Buck Henry.

Of course, none of the Hollywood luminaries had seen Trey Parker and Matt Stone in the flesh at that point, so before they arrived, Trey and Farrell decided to switch personas. With Trey playing Farrell Timlake, porn producer, and Farrell playing Trey Parker, hotshot comedy animator. The story of what happened next has stuck with me through the many years since I read Consider the Lobster, for one because it’s a great story, and two because I used to work for Farrell Timlake’s brother and business partner. Imagine reading David Foster Wallace on your lunch break at the porn warehouse and finding a story about your boss, and you have a small, strange window into my pre-FilmDrunk life.

I was offered an interview with Farrell Timlake, President/Owner of Homegrown Video, at this year’s AVNs, and obviously the first order of business was to get the story straight from the horse’s mouth.

FILMDRUNK: I was wondering if you could retell the Trey Parker story.

FARRELL TIMLAKE: Well, you mean how I came to meet him, or one of the adventures we had on the way?

No, I mean the time where you guys switched places to try and freak out a bunch of Hollywood people.

Haha, okay. Well, that was after we met and had been hanging for a while. They’d done the Spirit of Christmas video which was what became South Park. So a lot of people had seen that, like George Clooney and stuff had sent that around to all his Hollywood friends. So a couple of people knew who they were just through having the same agent and whatnot, and one of them was a guy named Charlie Wessler. Charlie Wessler produced the movies Dumb and Dumber, Something About Mary. Even worked on some of the Star Wars films going back to the original one.

So Wessler, he knew that Trey was working on this Mormon porn guy superhero script and knew that we were shooting porn together, and said, “Come over to my apartment and you guys can shoot some video. I’m going to invite some friends to watch you as you shoot it.” So we showed up and Trey pretended to be Farrell Timlake the ultimate porn producer. And I pretended to be Trey Parker the up-and-coming Hollywood sensation. So then the friends showed up and they turned out to be Carrie Fisher, Richard Dreyfuss, Timothy Hutton, and Buck Henry. And all of them had little entourages with them, so basically it was probably like 25 people in the room, and they set up almost like stadium seating to watch us as we were shooting. And I’m just looking like a little hippie kid, and they’re all coming up to me going, “You’re so talented, you’re going to be the huge sensation,” and I was all Mr Humble, “Oh, thank you very much, I appreciate it.”

Meanwhile Trey’s storming around going, “People. People. I need more ass licking. God damn it! Can I have more ass licking?”

We just kept on throwing them curve balls. A couple of the so-called production assistants were actually porn stars, they were just not made up or anything, just dressed in sweats and walking around serving coffee or cupcakes or whatnot. Couple of them pretend like they get so turned on by what we’re shooting that they run out on the balcony to get it on, and Buck Henry, he’s shown up with his own camera. He goes from filming the action that we were shooting to filming the couple out on the balcony. We had one porn star that was a– she was in the ’70s porn scene, like a golden age star and she had become a makeup artist, and so we had her outside. It turned out that Buck Henry actually knew her from their swinging days at Plato’s Retreat. So, they see each other and are like, “Oh God, I haven’t seen you since that orgy!” Like, what? They’re just hugging and kissing and it was just a grand reunion.

And we just kept on shooting behind-the-scenes photos and stuff like Matt Stone farting on Richard Dreyfuss and Tim Hutton and Carrie on a couch with a couple giving each other head right next to them, and they’re just sitting there like, “Oh this happens to us every day. Oh yeah, this is what we do for fun.”

We had somebody there that had a product, Mud Cuffs, and it was essentially this surfer guy who made a bondage product that was– essentially it was a surf board strap with velcro and whatnot that you could use for bondage, and Carrie Fisher had this big six-foot-four super good looking blonde guy with her. They bought his whole box of stuff [laughter] and at the end of the evening took that home.

At a certain point, I [still in persona as “Trey Parker” as far as the Hollywood people are concerned] just make like I’m so turned on shooting the action– wait, hold on, I’ll get to that. At one point, I look at Carrie and I say, “God, I got to take a pee. Can you get the shot for me?” She’s like, “Yeah, what should I get?” I’m pushing the camera in her hand like, “Close ups. Just get close ups.” And so she says, “Yeah, okay,” and she jumps into filming.

And at a certain point I [again, still in persona as “Trey Parker” as far as the Hollywood people are concerned] just make like I’m so turned on, like I’m so overcome with how hot the action is that I unzip and drop trou and jump into it [as in having sex with the actress – “humping away” according to some accounts]. And you hear the whole room go, “Ooooh, no,” Like, “his career is over before it even started!”

So we f*cked with them all night long and one of the– the only person that learned what was happening was Timothy Hutton at the end, who stayed later so he kind of was in on the joke at the end. But, by the next day, literally Trey’s agent was already here and like, “Oh, did you know that Trey was in porn?” And it was already going around at whatever cocktail party that next afternoon. It was talked about, and then I guess some of the pictures surfaced of crazy stuff going on. Some pictures ended up on IEG, that was the company that broke the Pam and Tommy video, and all chaos broke loose. I guess Carrie Fisher was really pissed off and whatnot. But it was funny because  they were obviously just so into it, and literally, like Richard Dreyfuss was so enthralled with the action that he was sitting so close his nose was almost touching somebody’s ass or someone bouncing up and down. It was beautiful in that regard.

What a great story. Allegedly.

Farrell Timlake

Farrell Timlake

I’ve always thought of porn as sort of a perfect subject for me, both for the inherent comedy and the legitimate cultural insight, combined with the fact that so relatively few writers will deign to write about it – it’s like a dick joke wrapped in a middle finger. My schtick in this world has mostly been the amused outsider, going in with an open mind to dig for those gems of prized absurdity. A tourist.

But “outsider” isn’t the whole story, in fact, it’s kind of a lie. Fresh out of college, when I still thought video editing might be a good career path, I found myself working at XPLOR, an adult DVD warehouse with attached offices and editing suites in San Diego, where I would digitize ancient videotapes on half inch and make them DVD ready. I worked under Moffit Timlake, the insanely all-American looking, sweater-wearing Stanford grad who ran the joint, alongside a handful of misfits, including a pretty female receptionist and a metal-head video editor, easily the grungiest dude I’ve ever had to impress during a job interview. While buttoned up and preppy by porn standards (or by any standards, really), Moffit was a cool boss, the kind of guy who’d buy you beer on your lunch break. To this day, it’s still probably the least toxic office environment I’ve ever been a part of. Friendly, laidback, and no one took anything too seriously. Because how seriously can you take yourself when you’re pressing copies of “Handjobs Across America?”

I’ll never forget Moffit asking me if I knew what a “creampie” was during the job interview. I did, and had theretofore never thought that kind of knowledge would come in handy. I was hired, and soon dubbed “tie guy” on account of my attire during the interview. I still don’t know what the wardrobe rules are for a job interview at a porn company.

The job itself, unfortunately, kind of sucked. I would hit play on the half-inch tape deck and then wait up to two hours while the most God-awful old eighties amateur porn played on the monitor as it digitized. It ran the gamut from bad to baffling, including one starring a woman in dime store Halloween mask reciting limericks and eating a hot dog. Seriously. I quit after only a few months, but the most valuable thing it gave me was all that down time. I mostly spent it writing, and slowly came to realize how much I liked it (not to mention the fact that it’s much less expensive to put together a writing portfolio than it is an editing reel, and I was in probably five grand worth of debt by that point, not counting student loans).

Being an aspiring writer, naturally I was reading David Foster Wallace on my lunch break one day, when I came across a passage about my employer (from “Big Red Son,” an essay written in 1998 and republished in Consider The Lobster), a strange experience. Okay, so it was more of a footnote, attributed to one “Dick Filth”:

XPlor is a kind of an anomaly type of thing in the porn business. By and large the industry is still run by these grim cigar-smoking numbnutses who’ll just stare blankly at you if you should ever even attempt a bonmot or whatnot. You get me? In contrast to how XPlor are more of your hippieish dope-smoking bunch of Gen Xers who are always up for a good gag.

This led into a story about Moffit’s brother and business partner, Farrell, posing as Trey Parker from South Park and having sex with a porn star in front of Carrie Fisher and some other Hollywood types – Farrell was having the sex, Fisher and Dreyfuss and others still thinking Farrell was Trey Parker (you can read that story here).

More importantly, it painted the place where I worked the way I wanted to see myself. Merry pranksters living for a good joke, reveling in their outsider status. Who wanted to have a regular job anyway?

Trouble was, I was never quite able to enjoy it in that way. Even if you don’t exactly care what people squarer than you think, they can still be a pain in your ass. It wasn’t like I came from a conservative family. That year at Thanksgiving, my dad’s idea of a dinner ice breaker was “Hey, you guys hear Vince edits porno now?” I still give him credit for comedic timing, and that situation is basically my father in a nutshell, but I also found I didn’t like the follow-up questions and weird looks from family friends and distant cousins.

Another time, I had called a cab after a late night at the bars, and the cab driver who showed up was an over caffeinated woman with fluffy bangs and Sally Jesse Raphael glasses with a tiny animal print sweater who looked like a kindergarten teacher. She peppered me with a thousand questions. I told her I was a video editor, and when she got to “what kind of videos do you edit,” I was too tired to lie and just said “porno.” She went completely silent for the remainder of the ride and refused to take my money at the end. “I’ve never been so embarrassed in my entire life,” was the last thing she said.

One way to look at it, hey, free cab, and a funny story to boot. But I had a hard time seeing myself as a cheerful rebel while working a job I didn’t really like in a freezing beige office with foam-core ceiling tiles. You know that Patton Oswalt bit about Piss Drinkers Magazine? (“You know that thing that you think is so f*cked up and dangerous? That’s somebody’s boring job somewhere.”). It was like that.

So when I got the chance to interview President Owner of XPlor Media and Homegrown Video Farrel Timlake (who I’d never actually met back in the day) at this year’s AVNs, sure, I wanted to know how he went from Connecticut prep school kid to porn star to porn company owner. I figured I could get a more detailed version of the Trey Parker story (again, you can read that here), and dig up a little more background about Orgazmo from the man who has been called Matt and Trey’s “porn concierge.” But more than that, I wanted to find out something he probably couldn’t answer: What it’s like to live outside the straight world and what it takes to enjoy it.