Pee Bonner

I went to see John Kricfalusi (Kris•fa•loosee) on Sunday night at the Aero Theatre. It was a presentation of his banned and unbought work. He also did a signing at Every Picture Tells a Story, and was supposed to do a presentation and a bit of playing with his band, but that seemed to have been canceled or overridden by the necessity to continue signing the prints that were for sale. The price for the prints at $25 was a bit steep for me at the moment. I probably could have gotten him to sign something, or draw a picture, but since I don't really have an autograph book, I just didn't try. I got to EPTAS around 4:00 PM, to make sure I got a ticket, and when the festivities beyond the signing didn't occur, I basically had to trundle about on Montana Ave for two hours waiting to get into the theatre. That bit was quite boring.

The show itself was full of both finished cartoons and animatics of concept pitches and cartoons that never got finished. The lead off was "Naked Beach Frenzy" which was one of the later Ren and Stimpy cartoons worked up for Spike TV recently. It was a bit long and the animation was at times uneven, but for the most part it was enjoyable and bawdy, with large amounts of nipples and hair, both of which seem to be the colliding positives and negatives these days. The symbol of male lust and the ugliness of the male. There were also animatics of a pitch called "He Hog", which was pitched to MTV and rejected. The highlights for me were the Yogi Bear cartoon he had done, which I'd not yet seen, called "Boo Boo Runs Wild" and "What Pee Bonners are For". Beyond all of it though, the animatics for the unmade Ren and Stimpy episode, originally developed for the Spike TV episodes, called "Life Sucks". It's basically a clash between Stimpy's Optimism and Ren's Pessimism. Ren recounts for Stimpy the story of the Children's Crusade in all it's bloody useless glory in an effort to prove to Stimpy that Life Sucks. The only real disappointment of the evening was John K's seeming disinterest in actually answering the questions asked him. I don't know if it was because he was uncomfortable to do so, or because he simply wanted to show the cartoons and let them speak for themselves. An example of a good question and a less than interesting response was:
Q: What do you think the future of internet cartoons is?
A: I invented internet cartoons.
Not exactly what anyone was looking for. He seems more comfortable answering questions on his blog, and maybe that's best. All-in-all it was an enjoyable evening and easily worth the $9.00. For everyone that missed it, the lost episodes of Ren and Stimpy will be released in June on DVD. Think of them as Ren and Stimpy with more nipples and sexual innuendo.