ARTS The Michigan Daily - Tuesday, January 13, 2004 - 7 Homestar stumbles into hilarity * Inclusion in different forms of media is old hat for the Crystal Method, a band that is no stranger to corporations bent on "hippifying" their products. Overall, the new CD, The Legion of Boom, seems to be more like a three-step business blueprint about how to write marketable music. Step 1 - Stick with what you know. Several of the songs on Legion of Boom sound exactly like Crystal Method's The Crystal Method Legion of Boom V2 land. Step 3 - Make covert references to products before the tracks are sold. A sample from the song "The American Way" was initially per- plexing, for the subject of the title was never specified. Repeated listens reveal that the Crystal Method likely included this song as bait for an American car company to swallow. Making a marketable CD is not entirely a bad thing. Indeed, for most electronic acts, this is the only viable option for financial success. However, this album fits so well with videogames like "Splinter Cell" because it is so melodramatic, seemingly made for people who say that they live their lives "one second at a time," or who tell people that they wear suits to conceal their silenced pistols or some ridicu- lous tripe like that. While the Crystal Method still produce danceable, rhythmic music, this CD still sounds like they are remixing their By Raquel Laneri Daily Arts Writer When asked any question concerning the creative or intellectual processes that produce the brilliant hilarity of the flash-animation website Homestarrunner.com, Mike Chapman answers pretty much the same way: "I don't know ... not tons of thought was given to it; we just thought it would be funny at the time." This spon- taneous, carefree attitude explains the random and whimsical nature of this site. Brothers Mike and Matt Chapman (ages 30 and 27, respectively) have created the "Seinfeld" of flash-animation - a cartoon in which the characters (led by Homestar Runner, a no- armed, beanie-wearing, endearingly-dumb "whitey" with a severe speech impediment) write e-mails, make prank phone calls and loiter by concession stands - a cartoon about, essentially, nothing. The most outrageous "Seinfeld" episode takes a backseat to the animated wackiness, whose humor fits in somewhere between sophisticated sarcasm and childish idiocy. Characters morphing into their anime alter-egos, dragons burning villages, poopsmiths, bro- ken cow lamps and cinnamon facial hair are only a few of the more off-the-wall scenarios. Sure, there are plenty of quotable TV shows and cartoons, but Home- starrunner.com is unique not only because it is so contagiously quotable, but because all the quotes sound so stupid when you look at them from an out- side perspective. And you'll relish in the confused looks others who are not "in the know" will give you. The funny and unpredictable cartoon can only take place in a world where the characters "aren't really peo- ple and aren't really animals and some make little squeaky sounds instead of talking," as Mike describes. "We liked the Batman TV show from the '60s ... we got a lot of inspiration from that. And videogames ... the 'Peanuts' ... 'The Muppets"'- which explains why the site's so appealing to both the pop and the geek culture savvy. Homestarrunner has grown from a children's book copied at Kinko's and distrib- uted among friends to an underground phenomenon. "Homestarrunner's our full-time job now," Mike explains cheerily. "Fortunately, we make enough money from T-shirt sales that we don't have to do anything else." Another indicator of the site's popularity is the weekly Strong Bad e-mail. Strong Bad, the "bully" of the bunch who wears a Mexican wrestling mask and box- ing gloves, gets around 5,000 e- mails a day. "Obviously we can't read all those e-mails. We ran- domly go through, locate 500 or so and set aside the ones we think have potential. And as the week gets closer to the weekend, we nar- row it down to one or two. We make (the car- toon) on Sunday, usually," Mike remarks, the night before the e-mail goes up for the thou- sands of expectant fans. I 0 . ? U, [D 0 0 their first CD, Vegas. A good move, if the aim is to sell music for commercials, as nearly all of the songs from Vegas were included in car ads. "Broken Glass" has a stolen melody from their old classic "Trip Like I Do," and "Weapons of Mass Distortion" is completely lifted from the Splinter Cell soundtrack. Step 2 - Recruit guitar "genius" Wes Bor- the michigan daily y own catalog to cash in. H [ FALL '04. CENTRAL campus. 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