Coal in the Rough

There are two things in this world that transcend depressing - things that, when fully realized, challenge the resilience of the human mind. When fully immersed in these two things, one occasionally finds oneself having to command oneself to keep breathing, and self-consciously hide sharp objects.

The first of these things is the depths of the human capacity for evil - indeed, for the utter banality of absolute evil among many common human activities. Things like reading shopping lists written by NKVD interrogators, or office Chrismas party photos from the Warsaw Gestapo bureau, that sort of thing.

The second is Hanna-Barbera cartoons of the late sixties and early seventies.

Am I being hyperbolic? If you don't know already, then you have what it takes to be a MoveOn.org member, or perhaps an Air America regular.

And yet.

When I was a kid, in the days before Nickelodeon and the Disney network, Saturday mornings were when kids programming happened. Cartoons, end to end, from 6AM til noon. They ranged from the sublime - the old Warner Bros. cartoons that I still find entertaining today - to...

...well, the animated effluvia from the Hanna/Barbera; endless, wretched, cookie-cutter cartoons that recycled each other's plots, maybe playing off pop genres ("Secret Squirrel", "Devlin", "Hong Kong Phooey"), sometimes surreally dumb ("Birdman", "Space Ghost"), usually merely krep ("Wacky Races", "Scooby Doo").

And for these shows, I'm thankful; their inanity and stupidity so turned me off to television when was a kid, I never really went back.

I only bring this up because I've found myself watching Cartoon Network's Adult Swim on occasion lately. For whatever reason, they've discovered there's a market in hijacking the bad old H/B cartoons, adding storylines that had to have come from the fourth row of a Phish concert, and sitting back and watching the results.

"Space Ghost Coast to Coast" was the first - a Letterman-style talk show featuring Space Ghost - although it eventually ran out of steam.

But I can watch "Sealab 2021" and "Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law" (featuring Birdman defending other H/B characters), and for the first time in my life realize the perverse genius behind Hanna and Barbera - creating fodder for a whole generation of MST3K-spawned wags.