"You're a tree! You sap."

Fri, 05 Aug 2011 02:18:42 GMT

First of all: Go here. Scroll down to #4. Watch the video.

NOW FREAK THE HELL OUT.

(The woman looks like she's reading off a script on her laptop, so I assume the conversation was staged. EVEN SO.)

*

In completely unrelated news, somehow, over the past couple days I ran into the fact that some industrious YouTubers have posted every single episode of the early 1990s cartoon version of Beetlejuice. YOU GUYS. THIS WAS MY CHILDHOOD. I LOVED THIS CARTOON. No, really, I think I can directly trace my love of puns and other wordplay to this show, as well as my fondness for visual gags.* I went trick-or-treating as Lydia when I was eleven, wearing a red tablecloth I had cut a hole for my head in and drawn spiderwebs on with a Sharpie.

Representative example, which is going to be all the more appropriate as of the next paragraph: To Beetle or Not to Beetle, the Shakespeare episode. PUNS FOREVER. Also a gazillion references I know I never got as a kid, but which are hilarious to me now. (BTW, if you've seen the movie Beetlejuice, throw out basically everything you know about it. The only thing it has in common with the series are a few character names and Tim Burton. It is verrrry Burtony.)

Slings & Arrows fans, you may be interested to know that Stephen Ouimette, aka Oliver, voices Beetlejuice. I recognized his name when I first saw S&A, and I think I spent about a week wandering around in a daze over this fact. If you know in advance that it's him, you can recognize his voice, but wow, does he sound different.

Word to the wise: don't go searching for fanfic, because much of it is of the Beetlejuice/Lydia variety. Think about that for a second. She's twelve. He's...well, he's dead, so it doesn't really matter, but he sure appears to share many characteristics with the over-21 set. GAAAAAH. I hear tell the people in charge intended the admittedly rather obvious romantic subtext, but I heard it from such bastions of accuracy as TV Tropes, so in response I am just going to put my fingers in my ears and sing LA LA LA LA LA.**

* Some examples: the "gross-ery" store; a punch bowl that grows arms and boxing gloves and punches you in the face when you get near it; Beetlejuice telling a tree to "pack your trunk"; "Julius, seize her!"; "that kid's sharp" (child bares fangs); characters named Mayor Maynot and Judge Mental; a "punk-in-pie" that grows a be-mohawked head festooned with piercings and stomps off muttering, "Oy, outta me way" (oh, 1989); etc. etc. One of Beetlejuice's powers is that every time he says a figure of speech, he turns into a visual representation of it. If he has a brainstorm, he gets rainclouds over his head. If he says his foot's asleep, it starts snoring.

** Speaking of lalalala, THAT THEMESONG. It is in my head. It will not leave. Aaaaaaah.

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"You're a tree! You sap."