Cheech And Chong

The original stoner duo (no, not ambiguously gay - or gay at all). This is just a mere hint of the humor and situations they face in each of their Oscar-shunned movies. Enjoy.

Cheech & Chong vs. Harold & Kumar

I had C&C down as a topic, but once I saw “Harold & Kumar Escape From Guatanomo Bay”, I knew I had to compare the two.


Cheech & Chong. Richard “Cheech” Marin & Tommy Chong. The lovable stoners from the 70s and 80s, though now long mutually alienated. Last I saw Cheech he was on “Nash Bridges” as a cop with Don Johnson (who drives a ’71 Plymouth Hemi Cuda convertible – one of 7! – as his daily driver, give me a break. What’s his gun, a .45 Luger?). Chong has been basically doing his Chong bit as Leo on “That 70’s Show”.

I haven’t seen all their movies, just “Up in Smoke”, “Nice Dreams”, “Cheech’n’Chong’s Next Movie”, “Things are Tough All Over”, and “Still Smokin’” – nonetheless, their classics. Cheech plays up the East L.A. Mexican dude who almost never actually speaks in Spanish (except “pendejo”!). Chong is white, but otherwise unclear what his ethnicity is (beyond Canadian, which he is – is “Canadian” an ethnic group?). They never seem to have real jobs. They’re either ON drugs or trying to score them, most often marijuana but also shrooms (esp. in Amsterdam), LSD, and various other substances (e.g. horse turd – “this is not peyote!”) – whatever they can do to get high. They often unwittingly “dose” other people with the drugs, e.g. CHP motorcycle patrolman following their smoking van who ends up completely stoned. A subplot is Cheech trying to get laid, which for some reason always screws up at the very last minute. The movies are somewhat raunchy at times with some nudity, but never as much sex as the typical R rated drama, i.e. more of a tease than anything else. Timothy Leary shows up in “Nice Dreams” as an asylum doctor who prescribes LSD (what else?) to Cheech; Pee Wee Herman shows up a few times. And Stacy Keach is amusing as the corrupt narc chief who “busts their knees and steals their weed”. The movies rarely have anything close to a coherent plot, they’re more like a loosely strung series of independently wacked out misadventures of varying amusement. I do find their on-stage comedy, though, to be tedious and dull, the crazy adventures to be much more entertaining.


They put up an invisible wall: either you’re with them, the stoners, dopers, etc., and laughing WITH them and AT the various authority figures; or on the outside looking in, the straight non-drug-using crowd, laughing AT them and WITH the authority figures. Oddly, the police detective, Stacy Keach, is himself quite baked on the marijuana he so often seizes from various dopers. It’s a crazy, fucked-up world, and these two simply stumble through it, sometimes winning, sometimes losing, in one misadventure after another, giving mainstream society a subtle middle finger along the way. In an sense, it’s a live action version of The Freak Brothers, the famous underground cartoon.


Harold & Kumar. Considerably more intelligent and less socially dysfunctional. Harold (John Cho) and Kumar (Kal Penn) are a Korean and an Indian guy who (A) attempt to secure White Castle burgers somewhere in New Jersey (“Harold & Kumar Go To White Castle”) and (B) escape from Guantanamo Bay and try to crash an ex-GF’s wedding (“Harold & Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay”). Neil Patrick Harris has a charmingly disturbing cameo in both films, going out of his way to completely annihilate the squeaky clean image he inherited from “Doogie Howser, MD”. On a deeper level, they’re trying to escape the racial stereotypes, which is why they’re Indian and Korean and not simply WASPs. For that matter, whites tend to get a bad rap: Rob Corddry’s FBI agent in “Guatanamo Bay” (violent yet clueless about EVERYTHING), the redneck brother-sister couple in the second movie, the Klan members and skinheads; and authority figures tend to be portrayed here as ignorant bullies, though I doubt that, in real life, someone like Corddry’s character would have been accepted into the FBI in the first place, much less earned a position of responsibility like his – but hey, it’s a movie. Even the two Jewish hippies are a bit off the wall. Put in perspective, Harold and Kumar seem to be the most normal and well-adjusted guys in the films. Even George W Bush turns out to be a stoner, as we might have suspected anyway (shades of Stacy Keach!).


As with Cheech & Chong, the H&K films are a latter day smack at so-called normal, mainstream society, each fulfilling a similar role in a new context, separated by 20-30 years. Plus ça change, plus c’est le meme chose! Yet again.

Dennis Wilson and the Beach Boys

Beach Boys. This was the first band I ever got into, thanks to my cousin persuading my parents to buy us Endless Summer from the PX. It served as my baseline for music, and also the soundtrack to my first romance, with Courtney (now long lost – let’s get Matt Dillon to track her down). No matter what raunchy, obnoxious, noisy thrash trash I listen to (Metallica, Judas Priest, etc.) these days, I will always love this band. As James Hetfield said, “you can’t be an angry, pissed off SOB all the time.”


Endless Summer. This is their compilation, which takes us right up to, but not including, Pet Sounds. You can hear how the songs progress from “moon-June” simple stuff about love and surfing, and gradually develop a harder edge (“Girl Don’t Tell Me” being the best example). The Beatles did the same: they had to do “I Want To Hold Your Hand” before they could master “For No One”. Although “409” isn’t included, it does have “Little Deuce Coupe”, “Shut Down” (fuel-injected Stingray vs. Dodge 413), and “Fun, Fun, Fun”, the car songs, and “Catch A Wave”, “Surfin’ Safari”, “Surfer Girl”, and “Surfin’ USA”. The softer, melancholy melodies are here, “In My Room” and “Warmth of the Sun”. The peppy ones like “Help Me Rhonda” and “Wendy”, and of course “I Get Around” are here too. As a bonus, the CD has “Good Vibrations”, sparing you the need to get Smiley Smile, or the recently released Smile. In addition to having this album on long abused, warped, scratched and melted vinyl, I have it on 8-track, cassette, and CD. Overall what this album gives you is the best of the Beach Boys’ material before Pet Sounds.


Pet Sounds. This is the magnus opus, the Beach Boys’ Sgt Pepper and Dark Side. Brian Wilson finally casts aside the car and surfing songs and looks inward for an entire album of masterpieces. In fact, it was this album, itself a response to Revolver, which inspired the Beatles to write Sgt Pepper. When America had turned its back on the Beach Boys as squares, the UK still loved them as hip, thanks to this album. “Wouldn’t It Be Nice” starts it off, “Sloop John B” picks up the tempo mid-album, and “Caroline, No” finishes the album off on a suitably melancholy note (train whistle). When I got this album, I listened to it nonstop for days. The most recent version has the entire album in mono, then stereo, and adds “Hang On To Your Ego”, which is “I Know There’s An Answer” with a different chorus. Do yourself a favor: drop whatever you’re doing and listen to this album. NOW.


Post-Pet Sounds. Brian Wilson was supposed to follow up Pet Sounds with Smile, but due to various problems – issues with Capital Records and immense pressure to follow up the perfect album with something even MORE perfect (???) – Wilson couldn’t handle it, and we got Smiley-Smile instead. Although it contains “Good Vibrations”, the rest of the album is pretty much complete crap – including the insanely idiotic “Vegetables”, an accidental novelty song. It took Brian Wilson until 2004 to complete Smile, which includes “Heroes and Villains” and various other tracks which had ended up scattered piecemeal on later Beach Boys albums. To my ears it still sucks, only marginally less toilet-worthy than Smiley-Smile.
The subsequent albums, Wild Honey, Friends, 20/20, Sunflower, Surf’s Up, are not bad. None of the come close to the excellence of Pet Sounds, and none are remotely as bad as Smiley-Smile. Since Brian had locked himself in his room with an ongoing nervous breakdown, the rest of the band had to step forward and take a more active creative role in making the band’s music. Inevitably the results would fall short of Pet Sounds, but they still sound decent and respectable.


It’s easy to write off the Beach Boys as lightweights. None other than the genius of the guitar himself, Jimi Hendrix, dismissed them as “a psychedelic barbershop quartet.” But consider the following:
1. The Beatles were in serious competition with them. The Beatles, and George Martin, considered Pet Sounds to be a masterpiece, that the bar they raised with Rubber Soul and Revolver had been raised, and thus a response from them was thereby necessary – which we know was Sgt. Pepper. If there was no Pet Sounds, there may well have never been a Sgt. Pepper.
2. The Grateful Dead did a show with the Beach Boys at the Fillmore East in April 1971. It’s hard to imagine a cooler band than the Dead – so why would they deign to allow the Beach Boys not only to share the stage with them, but also play “Good Vibrations” and “I Get Around”?
3. Keith Moon of the Who was a huge Beach Boys fan. “Don’t Worry Baby” was his favorite song. The Who covered “Barbara Ann” – although the Beach Boys didn’t write it, they certainly made it famous.
4. Cozy Powell of Rainbow was also a Beach Boys fan, and David Gilmour played Beach Boys covers in France with his pre-Pink Floyd band, Joker’s Wild.
5. Pet Sounds guaranteed the band’s reputation in England. It showed they could move beyond “moon-june” songs about puppy love, surfing, and cars, and write some serious music. Unfortunately they weren’t able to top it, but consider this: Pink Floyd have never been able to top Dark Side of the Moon, but no one considers them failures for that reason.


At this point it’s time to change the focus....


Dennis Wilson. Brian Wilson gets most, if not all, of the credit and attention as the creative genius behind the Beach Boys’ music. As a result, Dennis was all but forgotten, except by the female fans, for whom he was the favorite. But without Dennis, Brian would have had nothing to write about – at least to start out.
Cars & Surfing. Dennis was the one who actually worked on cars and did the surfing – the others just sang about it. He was the one who really “walked the walk”, not just talked the talk.


Charles Manson. Dennis was his roommate briefly, until Manson and his followers basically took over and Dennis was forced to move out. The classic anecdote is that Manson pulled a knife on Dennis, threatening to kill him, and Dennis simply replied, “Do it.” Dennis had the Beach Boys cover one of Manson’s songs, “Cease to Exist”, as “Never Learn Not To Love”. The original Manson version (on the Lie album) is stripped down and bare. The Beach Boys version is far superior. It appeared on 20/20 and as a single, and flopped as the latter. Manson refused to accept this for what it was: proof that his material had (as Frank Zappa might put it) “no commercial potential.”


Two Lane Blacktop. Mentioned earlier, this is Dennis’ sole movie role, opposite James Taylor. Dennis was the “mechanic”, always talking about replacing the jets in the ’55 Chevy’s dual Holleys. He really didn’t have to do much more than that. Although I obviously like Dennis Wilson, plus his hands-on deal with the car, the movie isn’t all that great. It doesn’t have much of a plot (if any), nothing much happens, and it ends abruptly. It’s the perfect movie to watch once for the sake of seeing it, and to ignore after that.


Pacific Ocean Blue. This is his 1978 solo album, tacked on with Bambu, his subsequent – and never-released – follow-up. It’s not bad, but it is very much mellow and easy listening. I’d say it makes great listening when you want to relax and enjoy yourself, to unwind, or sit on the beach and drink Coronas and throw your office pager into the water. Somewhat reminiscent of Jimmy Buffett, but somewhat more serious and introspective.

Death.  On December 28, 1983, Wilson went for a swim off the pier at the Marina Del Rey, heavily intoxicated.  He drowned.  Sorry, no exotic drugs, no strippers, no vomit, no CIA or Mafia angle, no deranged fan, just a mundane end to a far-less-than mundane life.  Add him to Steve Clark and Bon Scott on the list of untimely deaths due to alcohol.  

Coney Island of the 1940's

A vintage documentary on Coney Island the way it was in the 1940s - about the time my dad was a teenager. The Cyclone is saved for the very end. Some of these rides don't look very safe, but everyone seems to be having a good time, oblivious of the danger or liability issues. Enjoy!

Amusement Parks

 Recently myself, my brother and his family went down to King’s Dominion, an amusement park (aka “theme park”) for the first time in ages.  We all had a great time – the crowds were almost nonexistent and the weather cooperated beautifully.  The kids were more into the more sedate rides, whereas I was more into the roller coasters.  

I’m not really a theme park kind of guy.  I manage to get to them on average about every 10 years, but I do enjoy them while I’m there.  I went from being terrified of roller coasters as a kid to aggressively seeking out the nastiest ones as an “adult”.  However, the topsy-turvy rides that spin you up and down and around, which we find in the midway portions of most themes parks and which serve as the main rides at temporary carnivals and county fairs (e.g. Montgomery County Fair) really don’t do much for me except offend my stomach without exciting my brain or challenging my heart.  As with so many other topics I’ve covered, I’ll try to make this less an exhaustive analysis and more a reflection based on personal experiences.  

Coney Island and the Cyclone.  9/11 and the Empire State Building, among so many other attractions of New York City in general and Manhattan in particular, get most of the attention and spotlight, so it’s easy to forget or overlook that the city has a beach with a boardwalk – which dates back to the turn of the century, a time at which Copacabana and Ipanema in Rio de Janeiro were wild, desolate, undeveloped beaches.  Granted, it’s cold in winter and isn’t really “open” year round as a practical matter, but during the summer it’s a legitimate beach.  The amusement parks have changed over the years, and Astroland itself is due to close soon.   

But my favorite part, the Cyclone, will remain indefinitely.  This is one of the earliest roller coasters in the country.  It’s so old (built in 1927) that my father (born in 1928) had experiences riding on it as a kid himself.  We managed to enjoy it during summer of 1988.  Its modest size is very misleading.  It is very fast (90 mph) and very intense, one of the best roller coasters ever, which is even more impressive when you consider how old it is and how much competition it has by now.  I strongly recommend anyone visiting NYC to stop by Coney Island and experience the Cyclone.  

King’s Dominion.  This is the park I’ve been to most often and with which I’m most familiar.  It’s about 15 minutes north of Richmond, Virginia, and has been there since the mid-70s; in fact, we went there shortly after it opened up and went a few times as kids growing up in the late 70s before moving to Paris, France in 1979.  It features a miniature Eiffel Tower which provides a spectacular panorama of the park itself and the still-largely-undeveloped surrounding areas.  The Lion Country Safari, which started out with us driving through in cars, then upgraded to a safer (!) monorail, is long gone; however, certain parts of the park (near the Volcano coaster) still have the safari/tiki motif to them.  The Hanna-Barbera theme is also still present, somewhat: while Yogi’s Cave is now simply Treasure Cave, the Scooby Doo Roller Coaster is still alive and well.  Remarkably, it’s rated a 4 on the park’s scale of excitement (5 being the nastiest and 1 being the most sedate and boring).  In the 90s the park turned into Paramount’s King’s Dominion and added Klingons and Romulans to the mix, but this too is gone.  Likewise, the Wayne’s World theme is gone, except for a wooden roller coaster known as the Hurler, a close competitor to the Grizzly (though I still think the Cyclone is better than either of those).   The Dominator is the nastiest Class 5 ride, but it was nastier because it banged my ears against the cushion more than the loops and speed.   KD also has the bumper cars, the concession stands, the midway (three tosses for an oversized stuffed animal), the caricaturist, the “olde tyme” antique novelty portrait studio (still no ‘60s-70s version) and so on.  I recall as a kid throwing a tantrum so my parents would buy me the Davy Crockett raccoon hat from a concession in the Old Virginia part of the park, near the log plume ride.  This is a park where our enjoyment as adults is severely twisted by our recollections of the park as kids.    

Busch Gardens.  This is close to Williamsburg, Virginia, southeast of Richmond.  We went there exactly once, some time in the early 80s.  The “deal” is that the park is separated into sections each of which reflects a different part of Old Europe: England, Scotland, Ireland, France, Italy and Germany (what? No Switzerland?  No Austria?  No Belgium?).  At the time we went, the Big Bad Wolf was the new roller coaster, but it was closed for repair; the Loch Ness Monster was the baddest ride available and I remember it well – another one that goes upside down, however briefly.  The German section doesn’t have anything related to that business from 1939-45, but it does have an Oktoberfest hall.  

Hershey Park.  Somewhere in Pennsylvania. We went there once as kids.  I remember a corkscrew coaster which was pretty wild.  Some coasters will loop upside down, but they do so going straight ahead.   You end up being upside down for about a nanosecond and don’t really sense anything.  The nastier ones will loop at an angle, which really messes you up.  The highlight of this park was the museum where they show Kisses being made, and we got inflatable pillows (plastic) of Hershey Bar and Reese Peanut Butter Cups – one of which ended up a victim of our lawn mower.  

Six Flags Great Escapes.  Up in upstate New York near Glens Falls.  I went there with my cousins in July 1998 (about the time France whupped Brazil’s ass in the World Cup).              The top ride there was the Comet.  Oddly, this was originally called the Cyclone, but is not the Coney Island coaster.  It’s a huge, wooden coaster which is extremely fierce and aggressive.  When I agreed to go on it, my cousins were incredulous.  To me, it looked nothing worse than the Rebel Yell from King’s Dominion, which for all its impressive height is fairly dull: it just goes up and down, turns 180, and then goes up and down back to the beginning.  This one does far more than that one.  Years later was I watching a documentary on roller coasters, which featured this one, describing it as the world’s tallest, fastest, baddest wooden roller coaster.  Here I am thinking, “man, I have GOT to ride this thing.” After following the documentary’s trail of the ride’s origin and transplant to Canada, etc. they finally revealed that it ended up at Six Flags Great Escapes…I HAD BEEN ON IT!  D’oh!             

I also went on the Screamin’ Demon and the Boomerang – the latter is very short, but goes backwards for its second half.  That is a very unpleasant sensation for a roller coaster, the closest thing to making you hurl you can imagine, far worse than even going upside down, even at an angle.  I remember my dad telling me how, as nasty and fast as many of these coasters are, including the Cyclone, none of them will take you backwards.  It’s bad enough that occasionally – VERY rarely – someone dies on a roller coaster, usually because the “You! Out of the gene pool!!” dumbass does something idiotic like standing up; but having the damn thing go backwards is a recipe for a carload of broken necks and dead riders.  The Boomerang didn’t really do a whole lot EXCEPT go up for a short distance and then come back, backwards, which as a spectator standing off to the side doesn’t look like much – especially compared to such obviously nasty rides like the Screamin’ Demon or the Comet.  But when you’re on this thing going backwards, you want the ride to end as soon as possible.

Asterix Park.  I’ve never been to Euro Disney, which opened up long after I left Paris for the last time in 1990.  For that matter, I have never been to Disneyland or Disney World, as I’ve never visited Florida or California.  The Asterix Park is located just north of Paris, and is extremely well done.  It has the usual array of different types of rides, including a Roman rapids white water thing and a crazy, aggressive steel roller coaster, the Boudurix, named after the shy but spoiled kid in Asterix and the Normans who – along with Cacofonix the Bard – taught the Vikings the meaning of fear.  With Euro Disney now open, I don’t know how strongly I can recommend this park (if it even survived the competition) but I certainly enjoyed it, and it is definitely FRENCH.  

Jardin D’Acclimatation.  Though not quite as impressive as the Asterix Park or King’s Dominion, this was an excellent source of entertainment for my brother and I growing up as kids from 1979-84.  It’s located in Neuilly, just west of Paris.  It had a huge playground, even a wading pool, a house of mirrors, bumper cars, a small roller coaster, a go kart track (which we loved), a midway, and our favorite, an arcade full of (almost) state of the art video games – including Phoenix and Lock’n’Chase.  For some reason we could never figure out, the video arcades in Paris proper were all off-limits to minors (“interdit au moins 18 ans”).  I can see the porno/peep show places having that prohibition, but an ARCADE??  So our parents had to accompany us to them.  The arcade at the Jardin, however, had no such restriction, so we were free to go there whenever we wanted.   

Montgomery County Fair.  Although not a theme park, per se, this merits an honorable mention.  Every August, the fair came to Gaithersburg.  When we were kids, our dad took us.  The fair had its usual “throw you around and make you puke” rides, the cotton candy and other concessions, midway, the booths for the local fire dept., various barns full of animals (cows, pigs, sheep, goats, etc.) smelling like animal poop.  They would often have some other “main attraction”.  A few years ago my dad and I went and saw a demolition derby – complete with Maryland State Trooper giving breathalyzer tests to the drivers (???) – which was lots of fun.  More recently the attraction was a monster truck rally which we HEARD but did not watch. 

the kumete

My favorite Boondocks moment - when Granpa and the boys realize this woman is a psychotic killer...and she's in their house. I love the "Enter the Dragon" and "Mortal Kombat" references.

The Boondocks

I rented this from Netflix and was surprised at its quality.  I  had never been too impressed with the comic strip - except that Sunday edition when it was predicted that UPN's black version of "Who Wants to Be A Millionaire" was going to be called "Gimme Dat Money." There are now (2013) three seasons of it, each better then the last..

It turns out that Aaron McGruder, the creator of the Boondocks, went to University of Maryland, College Park, and originally published the cartoon in the school newspaper, the Diamondback.

It features the trio of grandfather Robert Freeman, older grandson Huey (above right), and younger grandson Riley (above left).  Huey is the more introspective and intellectual of the three, while Riley has the cocky rap attitude (and loves the gangsta rappers, e.g. Ganstalicious and Thugnificent, not that he's riding their dicks or anything).  Huey seems to like nunchakus and practices some form of martial arts, though it's never explained which one it is, how he learned it, or what level he's reached.  They've been moved from the 'hood to the 'burbs and are now in a somewhat different environment.  They have several intriguing neighbors.

Tom DuBois. The local DA, a light-skinned black of soft-spoken manners who married a white woman.  Their daughter is Jazmine, somewhat of a lightweight compared to Huey.  His wife has a major crush on Usher.

Ed & Rummy.  Ed is the grandson of "The Man", Mr. Wunzler, who - for all intents and purposes - runs the town.  He just got back from Iraq, where he claims he - along with his buddy Rummy - were in "special ops" (if so, that explains why the war hasn't been going too well. But it sounds like bullshit to me).  The two of them talk like blacks - lots like Eminem - yet bust on them for doing exactly what they themselves are doing (super wacked out racial hypocrisy).  They tend to rob banks and stuff and get away with it because Ed's grandfather basically owns the police, usually some really STUPID plan that Riley is all for but Huey considers ill-advised.  In one episode they tried to kidnap Oprah, but got Maya Angelou instead (who kicks their asses).  Ultimately they wound up with Bill Cosby - who no one wants.
   Granpa and Wunzler get along pretty well - apparently Granpa's theory that "the way to win over white people is to give them nice cheese" actually DID work with Wunzler.

Gangstalicious and Thugnificent.  Two of the fictional rappers who enter the story (Usher and Ghostface Killa, we know, are real).  Gangstalicious turns out to be..not what he claimed (he appears to favor "homeys" over "hos").  Thugnificent came from Terra Bella, Georgia - so poor that people even ran around naked - to Woodcrest, and brought his ghetto with him, much to Granpa's disgust.  Riley is a major fan of both.  Huey doesn't seem to care much for rap music - nor does old school Granpa, of course.

Uncle Ruckus.  Easily the most twisted and least politically correct.  He's basically an old, crazy black guy who constantly rips on blacks and claims that whites are superior.  He claims to have "vitiligo", some bizarre disease which makes his otherwise white skin turn black, "the opposite of what Michael Jackson has." Count on him to articulate all the worst prejudices and negative racial stereotypes everyone believes about blacks, even blacks themselves - in the craziest, most colorful language.

A Pimp Called Slickback.  No, not "Slickback", he insists on being referred to as "A Pimp Called Slickback." McGruder isn't ashamed to make him black, nor to dress him just as outlandishly as we would expect a pimp to dress.  He does, however, offer a surprisingly informative array of advice and information.  He reminds me of Eddie Murphy's classic SNL character Velvet Jones, author of "Kicked in Da Butt By Love" and "How to Be A Ho".

"Nigga" tends to be thrown around fairly often, but in the colloquial self-referent context of blacks, not used by whites (except by Ed & Rummy).  I noticed that although Huey has his share of "fight the power" angles, the de rigeur Che Guevara and Malcolm X posters, etc., he also has limited tolerance for blacks behaving badly.  In fact, in the episode which - somehow, I can't remember how - Martin Luther King, Jr. returns to contemporary US society, MLK is shocked and disgusted with the state of the black community, and condemns the blacks as "ignorant niggas." Likewise, in an earlier episode, Huey declines to come to R. Kelly's defense - "the man peed on a girl!  He's not Nelson Mandela!"

According to McGruder's worldview, YES, "The Man" does exist and is trying to keep down the black man.  As Ronald Reagan explained to Uncle Ruckus in a dream, "God hates niggas!" But just about as much of the blacks' problems arise from their own idiotic behavior.  In fact, there's even a name for the occasion when otherwise normal, intelligent black people suddenly lose their common sense and succumb to their most base emotions: "nigga moment".  It's bad enough the system is already biased against them, but God save them from their own stupidity.  Sometimes Riley and Granpa are part of the problem (can't blame Ed & Rummy for everything!)

BET (Black Entertainment Television) features in some episodes, and is supposedly expressly designed to spew out the worst possible crap imaginable, in a deliberate attempt to ruin blacks with complete shit to rot and corrupt their minds.  UPN comes in a close second.

My favorite episode is the one with the crazy woman, Luna, who Granpa met through Internet dating.  It turns out she's a master of White Lotus Kung Fu and won a "kumite" - the mythical/legendary death match, as seen in Bruce Lee's "Enter the Dragon" and the "Mortal Kombat" video games.  Once they determine that Granpa's date is a crazy - though stunningly attractive - killer woman, the issue becomes, "how on earth are we supposed to get rid of her?"

Overall, extremely well done and very funny.  I only wish McGruder would continue it further.