TMIT: THE SHIVERING TRUTH

we simply must talk about what went down last night. it blew each of our minds and our minds collectively, and our relationship will never be the same again...

1. who was your favorite cartoon character as a child? i've often described myself as a fully-grown adult man who never stopped watching cartoons, that's pretty much my milieu. so let's basically get down to it:

first there was the one i recognized because this cartoon you knew from the start the basics. it's all the ingredients near and dear to my heart: animation, medieval times, and weird sex. as i trudge along the plot, there is no plot, it's meant to be a display of how disjointed various elements and character designs exploding out of the heads of other character designs are showcased with wow factor. like the one boss with the one body with the two heads of the king and queen (i hope they're not related but you could never tell in those times) wanting to have another kid in the tower bed. and the procession of two purple ogre giants with minons of some race coming out of their...you get it. lava lakes and minotaur brothels and our hero quester with the ragdoll body made of construction paper yet the photorealistic head whose mouth moved as if a live real human head, which was jarring and filmic and uncomfortable all at once. you finish it, so to speak well it ends, and you can only surmise that this is what actually happens when you take drugs right before writing. like i know that's the vogue rumor and lifestyle amongst all writers for television, but this is the test case.

then the one about Santa Cruz. as a Cali native, i got this immediately but it may not be for all tastes. you basically need to have had the main character in your real childhood for this to have any value. i instantly recognized him: the surfer bro with the golden locks of mop and that distinctive green hat surfers wear with the front flap flapped the fuck out leaning back so you can write messages on that open wing, all tanned except for the circles around the eyeholes from his deep-sea goggling, speaking Spanish as if fluent but just stuff like "amigo" and "gracias" and "no bueno" and "mondo" and "burrito", and the bleeding-heart liberal politics of one-man one-ocean one-love which i especially bleed for, bleeding right into that blue ocean. (i like turtles.) offended that the city council does not share his sensibilities of dudes and dudettes and the only way of the waves. speaking of burrito, the story revolves around the famed ghost burrito food truck which doesn't exist except parked in the character's heart. the one which serves the burrito which will unite us all. and his sidekick has a knuckle sandwich for a head which fits in nicely with the food theme, and his gnarly girlfriend either IS a mermaid with glasses or wears a mermaid tail and can still somehow walk the street, which is rad and righteous.

next up is, well you know how in art you're not supposed to let the audience see your seams, acting flawlessly so the crowd can't see where your character ends and you begin? this piece of art makes sure you're pounded on the head with subliminal messages. yes, like literally there are written messages which appear in balloonless balloons right on the screen in the corners, for one second, quick or you'll miss it. also messages within balloons. i normally have a rule that i watch something new through once without pausing and that's it, but this might be the one exception where i actually have to use my DVR for some function. about a saccharine sweet children's cartoon show and the hidden sick underbelly of its performers. most are jaded and nihilistic save for one who just wants to do right by his family. he has an RIP on his forehead so i guess he's already dead so that's why he's freer than the rest. his wife is a milk carton---missing kid? i don't know---who the cartoon i guess is trying to make out to be an attractive milk carton that us kidults would want to fuck? (at least to draw deviantly, the mind starts to wander around the corner edge lip of her triangle opening carton mouth). the head of the company is an apple who's already been eaten, he's an apple core with his bitter bitten white showing which i thought was a clever design, hadn't seen something quite like that before. i won't give away the ending, cos i don't think i remember it i was so distracted with all the pop-up ads.

finally we reach the conclusion and the masterpiece: The Shivering Truth. watch this now, it has Cera and the kid who's fat sometimes and skinny the next. Jonah Hill. i thought those two weren't friends anymore. penned by someone i greatly admire, someone who really stretches the limits of what's kosher on tv, really gets to the dark places of our minds, where we know what the truth it but we don't want to expose it in front of our kids. until now, kids should know the ephemeral vicissitudes of existence, too, never too early, before they experience it for themselves as well. the guy who created Wonder Showzen and the show which made me reassess hollers as metaphors for country-club hell. Shivering is inhabited by demonic puppets moving as if on strings but stringless, with demented painted-on faces, exploring a rich backwater world of a dirty city that grew too much urban and urbane and not enough natural and nature. a suicide-hotline operator who is blasé and callous, this is the one job in life which calls on sincerity, which must still be there inside you somewhere. a tale as old as time, and of woe. narrated solemnly by a grandfather with a baritone, watching events unfold omnisciently overhead from the invisible sky. we follow an old man who's trying to get to the truth after all. he travels to a Bali beach out of scenes from the Silence of the Lambs ending, in an attempt to get in accordance with nature again, to blend with the butterflies who can cause hurricanes with a flap of their tiny wings. falls in love of course with the taco girl who serves him this lonely solitary traveler foreigner. i won't give away the ending, but it has to do with sex, with the way we communicate about sex, it always does doesn't it? is there true love out there, or is the universe beautiful in its chaos? you will watch this and you will live this and it will stick to the hairy freckles of your forearms like the haunting shedded skin of recent chickenpox. please let this be the pilot that's picked up, adult swim. written by one of my heroes, Vernon Chatman, have a chat with Vernon sometime by watching his shows and be quite disturbed and illuminated. and the credits roll down, not up, like rivers of mucus shot out of the nostrils of the shriveled nose pictured above.

2. what makes you cry? the last most-recent episode of SNL. all the Mother's Day stuff. first time i've ever cried over an SNL. tears of sadness anyway.

3. what similarity between you and your SO do you love? we both love two things and two things only: pizza and sex.

4. what characteristic do you admire in others that you feel you are lacking? i wish i had more confidence. and energy. and positivity. but after watching The Shivering Truth i'm drained. also the program ended at 1AM so i'm generally just tired from being up late...

5. if you could eliminate one thing from your daily schedule what would it be? all the Instagram updates. man there are a lot of bugs on insta. except that anti-bullying update that was cool. i'm not sure it's working i don't see any comments on my posts...

bonus: you could trade places with one person for a day, who would it be? Picasso. the young Picasso who doesn't dodge fighting the Spanish Civil War and saves his friend from suicide and doesn't paint Guernica and forgoes the entire Blue Period...

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