Fred and Loathing on The Internet

Today we will be talking about the sitcom Father Ted. Before we get into discussing this show, we’ll start with the reason why it was chosen to be in the fredlambuth.com blog spotlight. I have enjoyed a few Father Ted episodes. They were entertaining, but there was no special hold placed on me after being amused. The reason I want to talk about this show is not about discovering the novelty of its oddball style of comedy. No, the reason Father Ted has resurfaced to my attention is because of drum and bass music.

Now, for those readers out there, you might not know this, but the namesake of this website’s blog really enjoys drum and bass music. Just what is drum and bass music, you ask? Well, it does include the sounds of a drum kit being struck. The sound of a string bass is not always present with this drum sound. In fact, quite rarely is there an actual bass in drum’n’bass. Usually, it’s drums and whatever sample the DJ can find and throw into the mix. The drum beat is usually an interplay between the snare and a cymbal on the drum kit. Maybe some hi-hat. These two things are played pretty fast.

This flavor of music nestled its way into my brain since the PlayStation 1 and 2 era video games, mostly from playing a lot of driving games from that period. I think the creators of the games of that era were on to the right idea for selecting music that elicits concerted effort from the audience. Or, I tell myself that and that music is imprinted on the...

The blog post we have for today is in fact about a show that was produced and broadcast through Adult Swim. I had mentioned that I would be theming several blog posts around Adult Swim. This has come true in this case, but not for intentional reasons. I had finally got around to finishing the second season of Primal. How I think of Primal is worlds apart from the likes of Sealab 2021 or Aqua Teen Hunger Force, despite all the shows mentioned being cartoons produced by Adult Swim. What separates them is genre for one. Primal is far from a comedy. To my recollection I had not watched any dramatic series on Adult Swim.

Another separation between them is time. I watched Adult Swim throughout the 2000s, with a special fervor in the mid 2000s. By the 2010s there were not any new shows for me to glob onto, nor were there compelling new seasons of the shows I did like. In 2011 I did not think there was too much need for even more Squidbillies episodes. The Venture Brothers was the one standout that kept me watching whenever a new season was released. For that series, that was very few and far between releases.

The Venture Brothers do border on the edge of dramatic. My appreciation for that show has already been reported on here at the blog. Please refer to those for my more specific biographical appreciations of that series that took twenty years to complete.

Primal is not a bizarre or zany comedy in the slightest. There is also no dialogue. I suppose...

After a little bit of retrospection, certain themes about this blog appear in the muck. From my current estimate, these published ramblings of mine are an oral biography of my brushes with the media. Media, as in the aggregate term for creative volumes of media. Anything that travels before a medium before it gets to my senses. It could be several volumes like a TV series. One single volume like a novel or a 90-180 minute cinematic feature. The media is not just TV news, as most MAGA voters would have you believe. I mean every single piece of information given to me that was mediated by the means it was delivered. AM radio, podcasts, paintings, opera. It’s all media.

I suppose I had written a few posts about some live music concerts I attended. Even though the ‘media’ of music I had mostly heard from recorded work is what brought me there, the actual experience of the concert is the closest thing to something I reviewed on here that is not a response to media. Boy, I bet Baudrillard would be proud to see that last sentence.

Sure, I refer to the blog posts as reviews or critiques, but that is a bit of a misnomer. What I get the most kick from when I write these blog posts is from talking about how I, the namesake of this web domain’s blog, learned to like whatever the blog post is about. The first half of any of my reviews are just talking about why I would bother to review it. The origin story for my likes and dislikes. I have not done a blog post yet...