Dumb Baby is Three Years Old!
Billy Green here. I completely forgot about this when it happened and didn't notice until a few days after that Dumb Baby has recently turned three years old. Yes, Johnny and I have been churning our terribly bland and poorly written content for three years now. Throughout that time we've had a lot of laughs, a lot of tears, a lot of death, and a lot of group sex. Here are three important moments in Dumb Baby history:
The Time We Defeated Rangerboard
"Rangerboard" is a synonym for "abstinence pledge."
It all started when Johnny wrote Mysterious Connections Between The White Power Ranger and Casey Jones. It was a barely noticed article and received little attention in the mainstream press. A month later I wrote about Power Rangers characters you never thought were gay until now. In my quest for images for that article and remember character's name, Google led me to Power Ranger Central, a disturbingly well detailed database of Power Ranger lore. The site linked to Rangerboard, and I looked around a little, intrigued that there were people who considered themselves Power Ranger fans and were over 8 years old. I browsed around at the various topics that interested Rangerboard members, such as what the new season will be like, what does everyone think of the current season, what does everyone imagine having sex with a woman feels like, and how to decorate a basement bedroom so your mom doesn't catch you masturbating to anime when she comes down to do the laundry.
I forgot about Rangerboard until some time later when I checked the referral logs and found that the gay Power Ranger article had been linked on a Rangerboard thread. The members put aside constructing their Green Ranger costume shields to complain about how it wasn't funny and I was majorly retarded.
Well that was uncalled for. I know I am funny because I did make people laugh that time I peed my pants at my high school graduation ceremony. And I was only ever diagnosed mildly retarded in elementary school but medication and going back to kindergarten for three years helped out. Johnny responded by making fun of several photos of themselves that Rangerboard members posted. Those guys were pretty pissed after that, much to the amusement of us. There is nothing more fun on the internet than getting people you have never met really mad at you. They also responded sorely to an article I wrote Where Are The Power Ranger Actors Now? and then an article highlighting the loserosity of the forum. Something Awful did a similar thing a year later. They did it better than us, I have to say, because we had to stop writing Power Ranger articles when it got to the point where for a few months all we had were articles about Power Rangers, and that is sad.
As a side note, at some point during this brouhaha, the Rangerboard geeks attacked and brought down another Power Ranger fanforum we had never heard of. This had something to do with getting revenge toward us somehow. Rangerboard members are all high on Minute Maid.
The Time We Crashed
Let's just burn down the internet and start over.
At some point in December of 2004, College Humor linked to Johnny's article Ten Reasons to Hate Joey Gladstone in their Hotlinks section. The flood of traffic from that one small link overwhelmed our puny little girl bandwidth and we were knocked offline for the rest of the year. You can read about it in I Broke the Internet.
We learned two things from that incident. One, websites like College Humor are so much more popular than us. Turns out getting five visits a day isn't that impressive. Second, we would have to beef up our website big time in order to compensate for the flood of readership that would come as soon as we were made a Something Awful Awful Link of the Day for our fifteen hundred Power Ranger articles. I had to upgrade Dumb Baby's webhosting plan to one with a higher bandwidth and it kind of sucked because I had to pay an extra twenty bucks a year.
The Launch of Boycott the Caf
I spend 28 hours a day on this.
Anyway, as soon as we saw the show we realized how not only was it the greatest show ever made, it was also batshit ridiculous. We fell in love with watching episodes whenever we could and making fun of them, just like on Mystery Science Theater 3000 only not as clever and only 22 minutes long and with more robots. It got to the point where it would annoy other people we were friends with when we would be "Hey, Degrassi is on! Let's all watch Degrassi!" And they would be like, "What the hell is Degrassi?" and "Why the hell are we watching this middle school show that doesn't make any sense?" and "Fuck you guys, let's do something not gay."
We eventually decided to turn our unhealthy fixation with these Canadian teenagers into a website and one year after we gave the world the gift of Dumb Baby, we bestowed on the world a second gift, Boycott the Caf. The world has yet to pay us back.
Not that Boycott the Caf has not been without its rewards. We've gotten a small number of emails from people involved, however loosely, with the show. We've grown considerably in readership as it turns out there are many fans of Degrassi who also find the show kind of stupid. Also, the people who published the Degrassi book sent us some of copies and we got to give them away in a contest. I also got a free copy for myself to keep. That was sweet. So the lesson from this all is that if you make a website about a TV show, at some point you will get a free book.
And that's our fondest memories of this site. They all happened in 2004, so I guess nothing excited happened to us in 2005 or 2006. It's all been downhill for us since then.
Now Johnny, Christopher, Jason and I are going to reflect on some of our favorite articles. I am going to talk about my three favorite article by Johnny and he is going to talk about three of mine that he likes the most. Walken and Mewes are then going to talk about three articles they really enjoy.
Johnny's Dangerous' Greatest Hits
[Note: I did not have internet access when I wrote this section, so I am describing these articles from memory. I could have waited until I had internet access, or better yet, look at the backup of the site I have on my computer, but that was on another computer on the other side of the house, so to hell with it.]
1.) The Epic Slash Poem - February 4, 2004
This is an old one from 2004 but I still really enjoy it. We all know the only cool form of poetry is haiku and the only cool cast member from Kid Notorious was Slash, so it was totally awesome when they were combined. Johnny is to haiku poetry what Michael Jordan is to basketball, Michael Jackson is to dancing, and Michael Richards is to racial slurs. This is also when I knew that Johnny was going to be seriously involved in this site instead of merely writing quick two paragraph articles on topics like clementines, which I continued to do for another year.
2.) Mike O'Malley's Dirty Life and Times - September 12, 2005
Johnny and I have a pretty good dynamic. I know how to run and design a website and he does not, so he is forced to write for my website. He sends me his articles over email as a Word document, including the images. I then convert the .doc file to a web page and optimize the images. In the case of articles with a ton of images like A Week With the Red Hot Chili Peppers, preparing the article for the web can be a pain in the ass. But it's well worth it because Johnny is very funny and I get to read his stuff at least week before the huddled masses do.
We also have a good dynamic because several of the articles come from things we have seen on TV together. Hell, the entire site Boycott the Caf is a testament to how we watch TV together. And it just so happens we often watch a lot of Nickelodeon GAS, a Nick spinoff channel that airs all of Nickelodeon's low budget games shows of yesteryear, with Mike O'Malley's several games shows in heavy rotation. Staying in to watch Get the Picture, GUTS, and Figure It Out may not be as "cool" as going out and meeting girls, but it does result in articles like this.
When I first read it, I thought it was the funniest thing we had on the site. I loved how Johnny was able to take aspects from Mike O'Malley's real life and incorporate it with things we had observed by watching him on TV, particularly how much we hate Figure It Out. The result is an article that actually very accurately follows Mike O'Malley's real biography, but it also funny as hell by being built into such a great parody of every Behind the Music/E True Hollywood Story episode ever. I think that even if you don't watch Nick GAS fourteen hours a day and aren't at as familiar with Mike O'Malley as we are, you can still laugh at the article. Knowing our readers, I'd have to say you at least have seen GUTS sometime when you were younger and would have said, "Hey, I remember that show, it had the mountain thing that was located inside a sports complex for some reason."
But even if you have no idea what this article was talking about and just stumbled upon Dumb Baby because you were looking for cupcake recipes, you would still like this article. The magazine quotes are worth four stars and a snap just on their own.
3.) Lando and His Techno Union - July 10, 2006
This was our 200th article, and I wanted it to be the big 200th because it is so awesome. First off, who doesn't love a good Star Wars themed thing on the internet? Secondly, this is a great parody of all those softball interviews in music rags like Rolling Stone and Spin. The streaming songs at the end are also the most high tech thing this site has done so far. You can hear Johnny on them, and notice that while he cannot rap, he is aware of rap as a musical genre and can at least do it humorously, which is what counts when you are part of a humor site. I also understand he wrote the lyrics for all those songs, which shows off his talent for music. I'm sure he could make millions writing songs for famous musicians, but not many of them are willing to sing songs about Casey Jones fighting pirates.
I had nothing to do with recording the songs, but I did create the Lando Player. At first I wanted to set up a Flash music player like they use on Myspace, but I was horribly confused about how to to use the software I downloaded, so I went the old fashion route and embedded the files. What we have is one of the finest webpages featuring Star Wars characters as members of a modern funk rock band on the internet.
- Billy Green
Billy Green's Greatest Hits
I remember the day Billy asked me to join Dumb Baby. It was a crisp autumn day, the leaves were shimmering and light dew covered the ground. Billy came into my room to tell me he needed help with the fire wood. "Good god!" he screamed when he saw the dress I was wearing. He then threw the hatchet he was holding; miraculously it hit me square in the forehead and stuck there. I started screaming and running around. Billy tried to calm me down to no avail. He then subdued me using a baseball bat. I woke up in a hospital three states away.
Wait a sec. That was the last time I ever saw my father. Let me think. Okay now I remember what happened. Billy was like "Hey man you want to write for my site" and I said "Sure!" Then the magic began. Over the next three years we made people laugh, cry, and threaten to sue us for making fun of Power Rangers. It's been a fun experience. When I started my first website where I ranted against banks and snow I never thought I would eventually be writing comedy pieces people would actually read.
To celebrate the anniversary Billy suggested that he write about his three favorite articles that I wrote, and I do the same with three of his pieces. That sounded like a fine dandy idea to me, so here we go…
1.) A Tale of Teacher and Woe - July 10, 2006
This is the only poem I have read and enjoyed, and that's including poems I have written myself. Look at it; it's actually a pretty well written poem. The rhyme scheme is consistent, and avoids any obvious rhymes like cat and hat. You can argue that shark and heart don't actually rhyme, and I would tell you to lay off asshole. Actually looking over the poem there are a few awkward rhymes that might mess you up if you were reading this out loud. I'm going to defend this by saying that the comedy trumps any literary weaknesses, and anybody reading this out loud is a loser.
The content of the poem itself also embodies a lot of the inherent silliness of Dumb Baby. The story is about a student battling his evil teacher with a light saber, and later ninjas on dragons. That is like a checklist of things that makes me laugh. Then to top it all off is the final line…
"And we celebrated with Kool-Aid"
I think that the fact that Billy can pull a funny irrelevant joke at the end of a poem about dragons, ninjas, and lightsabers says a lot about his ability as a comedy writer.
To tie it all together, he has the poem illustrated. I like that. I've never been able to draw good enough in real life or on computers to illustrate my pieces. I think with something like this it is good enough alone, but the drawings make it even better. They are like icing on the cake, fireworks on the 4th of July, ketchup on a hotdog, a cherry on the sundae, an episode of Two and a Half Men after the first episode of Two and a Half Men, so on, and so on. What I'm really trying to say is that the poem and pictures team come together to form an unmatchable winning combination. Much like the tag team The Rockers, they can work alone to success, but it only when they team up is the magic really there. The pictures are Marty Jannetty, good alone, but only truly successful when combined with Shawn Michaels aka the words. Together these two can take out the competition with a combination of high flying moves, clever word play, and electric fan reaction. Kudos to you Billy, you found the winning combination.
2.) I'm Just Looking for a New Fight Club - September 11, 2006
I've never seen the movie Fight Club. I assume it is a lot like the fight clubs depicted here. You make soap, are not allowed to kick people in the balls, and they won't let Billy in because he always kicks people in the balls. That is a fact that I know from personal experience. Let me tell you, that waiter at Applebee's won't be giving us any sass again, and not just because we were banned from the restaurant either.
Sometimes when writing an article I worry if it won't work because the person doesn't have an extensive knowledge about Full House or Meatloaf. Then I decide I don't care and write the article anyways. With this piece Billy demonstrated the rare talent of writing about a specific subject but in a way that people who are not familiar with it can enjoy it. I may not know much about Project Mayhem, but I certainly know lots about peeing the bed, and the comedic theory behind it. I also suspect that there isn't an actual Mayhem house, but that's just a guess.
This article also shows off the timely art of self deprecating humor. It's easy to talk about how awesome you are and make fun of other people, but being willing to make fun of yourself no matter how untrue it may be shows something. I'm not sure what yet, but I think a news editor from the 20s would call it moxie. When self deprecating humor is done correctly it can be extremely funny. Even when it is done poorly it's still pretty entertaining.
What is my favorite part of this article you ask? Why it would be the word jeewillikers. If you look at it quickly it sort of looks like jewkillers. That sort of threw me off the first time I read the article because it seemed like an odd place to bring up those who kill the Jewish. Despite that the word works because it is something nobody after 1957 ever says, much less writes down.
3.) Stories of Badassity - June 8, 2004
Remember that one movie? The one with the one guy of the one race and the guy of the other race and they are partners but don't get along because different races are completely segregated and have no shared culture at all? So do I, it was sweet. Billy remembered it too and totally nailed it with this article. One thing you should also know, originally this article had the "Beverly Hills Cop Theme" song playing in the background. That fucking ruled.
I have a fun story about the "Beverly Hills Cop Theme." I use to have a mix cd with that song on it. One day me and some buddies rode around with all the windows down in my car blasting it. The people at the ice cream place fucking blew a load when we came rolling by. Then we kept driving past them because the town is pretty small and there wasn't much of anywhere else to go where people could hear the sweet song we were blasting. Then we started playing "Yankee Rose" by David Lee Roth. That was just too much. This story isn't really going anywhere. I guess I'll go back to talking about the article.
One thing I like about this one is that it is about a news story. Billy use to do this a lot, and I like it. I almost did it once but I usually take five months to write an article, so the news story was no longer relevant. Billy use to do it a lot, and it usually worked out pretty well. Then he stopped doing it, but things still worked out pretty well for him I guess, and he still does it sometimes, so really about half of this paragraph is irrelevant. Let's just move on to the next one.
You know what the best part of the article is? The part about the ninja attack in the hotel. It accurately portrays how movie ninja attacks work. I've even been known to steal the joke about how ninjas just stand around like its baseball. I should probably credit it to Billy, but I don't because I want people to think I'm funny. The part about the little girl biting the guys hand is pretty dead on too. It's amazing how funny an article can be while still sticking to reality, with reality in this case meaning movies, which aren't reality at all but rather works of fiction, with the exception of documentaries and movies based on real events like Harry and the Hendersons.
So those are my three favorite Dumb Baby articles written by Billy. Don't think it was easy choosing these three either. I had to narrow down the list from about twenty five, and there are a lot of fine pieces of comedic essay writing that were left on the killing floor. These last three years have been great, and I hope the next three are even better. Let's all grab a class of fine imported French champagne and give a toast to Dumb Baby, one of the web's Top 365,000 websites. Hurray!
- Johnny Dangerous
Christopher Walken's Favorite Articles
1). Privacy Policy
The Privacy Policy is one of my favorite articles because it reassures us all that Billy and Johnny are not spying on us through our computer's internet. We can rest assured that whatever information gets sent to Dumb Baby's central mainframe will not be sent to the Heffalump and Woozle Organization of North America to find our home addresses and steal our precious honey. If it was not for this warning, I would not write for this particular website as my honey supply is too valuable to be risked.
2.) Links
I don't know what cartoon series is depicted in those images on the page, but it's not from the classic 1984 to 1989 Hanna Barbara cartoons The Snorks, so fuck it.
3.) Copyright Information
I am pro-copyright, so I salute this page. Copyright is how I bring home the bacon, and that is not merely an expression, I only eat bacon from Wednesday to Friday. The doctor informed me that I need to stop because I have the cholesterol of a 370 pound man and am going to die within five years, but I told that quack "Up your nose with a rubber hose" and blew that popsicle stand called the Mayo Clinic with my posse of 1950's greasers who accompany on all medical visits.
The point is, I need to uphold copyright law by any means necessary. I spend my weekends at a special command station set up by the Motion Picture Association of America where I monitor the internet for signs of Poolhall Junkies being downloaded illegally. When I see it show up on file trading sites, I assemble my team onto an Apache helicopter and swoop down to attack.
- Christopher Walken
Jason Mewes' Favorite Articles
Yo like one day I was in my house when this fucker came down and I was like get out of my house fucker and he said this isn’t your house this is the basement for dumb baby remember we let you sleep here. And I said I don’t know nothing about babies but you better get out of here cause I m bout to bust a nut into that pile of rags over there and he said that wasn’t a pile of rags but actually a box of steel wool but what the fuck ever wool is rags. Then he said I could keep living in the basement but I had to write an article about my favorite things on dumb baby. I don’t know shit about the internet except that there’s lots of porn. I like to sneak up at night onto the computers and look at that hardcore shit. I use to do that at Kevin’s house but one day I was on this site and I started talking to some girl and she sent me pictures and it turned out she was 14. My parole officer says I can’t have sex with girls under 18 anymore even if its on the internet so I hightailed it out of there before anybody found out. I guess Kevin got in trouble cause they thought it was him. Luckily he never got mad at me because he didn’t know I was living with him when it happened. So then I went on the baby site and then I left to look at porn and then the guy was like HEY STOP LOOKING AT PORN so I stopped. Here is my list
1.) Looking Back at the Making of Clerks - June 5, 2006
This was fun we all got together to talk about Clerks. I was going to blow it off but then there was a buffet with this fucking sweet little sandwhiches it had ham and white stuff and this other white stuff. I ate a bunch and stole the rest. I also stole some forks and Randal’s wallet. Kevin was there but he wasn’t mad at me then because I told him I was in rehab again. Really I wasn’t but he let me live in his house for a month so I didn’t care. Coach Dante was there and kept telling me to stop calling him Coach Dante and saying its not funny when I tell gays that he wants to go out with them because he isn’t gay. Fuck I know he isn’t a fag I tell people he sucks cock because its funny. What a little pussy he probably does suck cock. Next time I see him I going to punch him in his faggot ball sack. I’ll probably get man cock all over my hand from all the men he buttfucks but I don’t care.
2.) Going Down the Road - July 17, 2006
Man this was the shit. I remember when we went to Degrassi and made that movie. Degrassi is in Canada I think or Michigan and there were maple leafs and shit all over the place. Some hot bitches were all over the place and I was like all right then Kevin said that they were all in high school but that’s bullshit one of them had to be 18. That fat fuck just wanted all the bitches for himself. So I decided to show him whose boss by fucking one of those fine ass bitches just to show him whose boss. So I went after this huge ass slut but she said no because I smelled like urine and don’t shower. Then she had this sister there and I totally fucked her She was tight I tell you. Then later I found out she was like ten so I got worried but she never told the police which is good because I already had a warrant out in Canada for stealing maple syrup. There was fucking syrup everywhere mother fuckers. Like one time this lady had some bags from a store and I took them and she had syrup. They were just giving it away man. Like I went in this store and took some and they all yelled because it was free probably. I don’t know I was really drunk at the time. They like got this guy in Degrassi that brings you beer. It fucking rules Kevin kept calling him and getting more beer then the next day I woke up covered in syrup for some reason. It was weird man, I bet some fine ass Degrassi chicks came buy and gave me a syrup bath ahh yeah fucker snootch to the mother fucking notch
3.) Jason Mewes Wrote a Column for Dumb Baby - March 20, 2005
Fuck I remember this this guy gave me cigarettes and I wrote some shit on a box. That box was sweet because there was a picture on it and it had some cheese in it. That happened when Kevin kicked me out of his house because he is a big fucking crybaby pussy lip. Kevin is cool because he lets me live in his house and he gives me money for making movies and he gives me money to buy drugs and he has a video camera hidden in his shower and he lets me watch his wife but he’s gay because he doesn’t want me to do drugs and he gets pissed when I sell his stuff to buy drugs and when I do drugs and hit his wife he makes me go to my room. So fuck him. I don’t need him. I’m doing fine I got drugs and some clothes and some money and some drugs so I can do fine by myself. Fuck him and his wife. I’d like to fuck his wife, if you know what I mean.
4.) Cartoon: The Deer - September 23, 3004
Fucker showed him whose boss sniggidy-niggidy-nooch
5.) An Open Letter to Kevin Smith: My Memorandum on Jersey Girl - March 23, 2004
Kevin should have listened to this fucker. I needed money to buy smack but fucking Kevin wouldn’t let me into Jersey girl because I was to high. Fuck it I was fucking fucked out my mind for every fucking movie I ever made and they all fucking fucked off. Kevin can take his fucking fuck and go fuck himself. Jersey girl fucking sucked anyways. It sucked and fucked like coach Dante at a gay fuck bar.
- Jason Mewes