Yet Another Feature To Keep The Features Weekly-er Than Ever

Welcome to Transformer Generation Dad. In case you haven’t been here before, allow me to inform you that we have a group of weekly features on the left hand column. In order to maintain the weekly-est of weekly features that our readers demand, we pour our blood, sweat and tears into changing them each Sunday.

To be honest, we don’t get to it every Sunday, but usually Sunday. Also, we don’t pour much blood into them. We use mostly just sweat and tears. Mostly tears in fact. We cry a lot. Also, by we, we mean I.

So, first on the agenda is our top five list. This week, we use our list to reflect on the fact that cartoons are not just for kids any more. In fact, there are plenty of cartoons (Aqua Teen Hunger Force, Squid-billies, Metalocalypse, and I’m not sure were to throw Robot Chicken in since it’s not actually a cartoon) that your kids are only watching if they are in their teens or you are a neglectful parent. But we aren’t here to pass judgment, just to make a meaningless list, so let’s be on with it then:

5 – The Life & Times of Tim: Created by Steve Dildarian, it’s a Seinfeld-esque animated show on HBO that features the hilarious happenings (that was accidental alliteration…and that consonance was coincidental…whoa, I’m good) of a timid average Joe drawn like stop motion Beavis and Butt-head.

4 – Family Guy: If you expected to see this show ranked higher, you might have two years ago. I’m all for random humor, and no show does random like Family Guy, but I’ve come to expect more plot and cleverness to my cartoon shows. Don’t get me wrong, it’s still funny as hell, but three shows surpass it.

3 – Futurama: I’m so glad they have started making new shows (which you can watch on Comedy Central) because I always thought Matt Groening’s second best cartoon was widely underappreciated.

2 – The Simpsons: Smart, yet raunchy humor. While it pains me to rank them only number two because of how much the yellow bastards have been a part of my life, there is a show which currently sits above it at number one. Still, this show was the beginning of the adult-themed cartoon. In fact, I think all the rest of the cartoons on this list have to pay royalties to the Simpsons.

1 – South Park: The fact that they can still skewer society on a regular basis using a group of fourth graders that look like they’re cut out of construction paper is awesome. The fact that no group is safe from mockery or criticism and that said mockery and criticism actually goes directly to the heart of each show’s issue at hand is also remarkable. Watch South Park and you’re sure to be offended eventually, but you’ll laugh your ass off over it.

This week’s cool-ass thing you’ll never own is a clone army. The planet where they are created is in a galaxy far, far away, so you’re looking at extremely high transportation costs right off the bat. Should you successfully make the journey, you will surely have to pay more than Palpatine originally did. While I haven’t been able to get a reliable quote, I hear the Kaminoans are really taking advantage of the popularity of the Clone Wars animated series. Even if that weren’t the case, inflation alone would be killer. Remember, the Republic bought that clone army a long, long time ago.

This week’s sign you are a nerd is that you read this blog. Oh, c’mon, laugh at yourself. I didn’t mean anything by it! Come back! COME BACK!

This week’s nemesis is Lunchables from Oscar Meyer. I try to give my kids a variety of healthy options for lunch at school each day, but when shopping each weekend, the yellow boxes and their convenience call out to me.

This week’s lesson learned is to switch the tooth under your child’s pillow for the money as soon as possible one he or she is asleep. Should it slip your mind, you will have a lot of explaining to do about why the tooth fairy slipped up. It’s hard enough to justify my own behavior, I don’t need the stress of accounting for where a fictional, oral-obsessed pixie might have spent the night that kept her from completing her rounds.

This week’s equation serves as my commentary on the new trends in the way school systems are organized and what they are doing to the institution of childhood:

This week’s Star Wars quote is: “Give yourself to the Dark Side. It is the only way you can save your friends. Yes, your thoughts betray you. Your feelings for them are strong. Especially for…sister.”

Finally, in a desperate attempt to make this blog more useful, we have added a new weekly feature where we tell you what new interesting things are to be released each week, entitled Stuff Coming Soon. We hope to keep a relatively comprehensive list of stuff we are interested in and excluding stuff that we think will suck or including it just to make fun of it.

Have a good week, everybody. Thanks, as always, for reading.