the best strong bad e-mail ever seen, done, or eaten

Once upon a time, the greatest website on the internet was a strange slice of the web called Homestar Runner. It was a cartoon series - an innovative idea at the time, independent of the influence and control of a television network or producer, just a couple of brothers and their friends bringing to life an odd cast of characters. The series has been on indefinite hiatus since the end of 2010, but its influence lingers on.

Unquestionably the most popular feature on the website was "Strong Bad E-mails," in which the titular character responds to fan mail with amusing results. There are over two hundred of these shorts, and they would often introduce characters and in-jokes that would snowball and continually pop up in various places around the website.

With a library this extensive, it might be difficult to pick a single favorite, but I can pick a greatest e-mail without hesitation: e-mail #126, "best thing."



The "best thing" e-mail is far and away my favorite because it lampoons such and oddly specific experience of childhood that, before I saw this short, I never realized I might share with others. Now, I knew the ubiquity of Saturday morning cartoons, and like many other kids, I would set my alarm for some early hour so I could soak in as much of the cartoony goodness as I could on the way day dedicated to such shows. I would eagerly wake up at 6:30, 6:00, maybe even 5:30 when feeling especially adventurous.

But the rarest treat of all was those days when I turned on the television in the wee morning hours and some new show was on - some exciting, unknown show that might never be shown again. I can immediately recall episodes of kids' shows I witnessed on fables morning and never found agin, despite any amount of channel surfing or frantic flipping through the newspaper looking for the TV guide.

I am also awre that this kind of experience is more or less lost to history. Now when I watch television shows, it is often on my computer days, if not weeks, after it aired. If I miss one of my favorite programs, I just shrug it off and figure that I'll look it up on Hulu later. It isn't going to vanish or disappear into history. If I flip through the channels and catch part of an unfamiliar show, I can look up actor names, character names, and/or plot point into Google and usually uncover the name of the program.

What Strong Bad points out is that the joy is in the rarity of the discovery. Maybe those obscure kids' shows were something like the media version of a shooting star: if you blink you miss it, but if you see it, you never forget.