On a scale of one to awesome, Homestar is super great

www.homestarrunner.com reaches cult-like status with the help of Strong Bad, Homestar Runner

By TAI ARCENEAUX

A man with no arms and a red T-shirt just ran across your computer screen with lights flashing and energetic children singing “Everybody, everybody.”

Welcome to the world of Homestarrunner.com.

Thriving on off-beat humor, Mike and Matt Chapman’s (The Brothers Chaps) Web site is gaining a cult-like status with almost 300, 000 daily visitors.

According to an interview with Wired News, an authority on what’s new and hot in the techno world, the Atlanta-based brothers started the site in 2000 using material from a children’s book they created in 1996.

Mike told Wired that he started the book because he and a friend thought they could create a children’s book better than the ones they saw at a bookstore.

A few sketches and a trip to Kinko’s later, Homestar and the cast were born.
Homestar is, in a sense, the ringleader of the group.

He is supposedly the best athlete at a game that incorporates soccer and basketball. He is a clueless character that can sometimes be a harmless jerk.

And he sounds like a nasally four-year-old.

Homestar’s sidekick is a bloated yellow and orange character named Pom-Pom, whose voice sounds like someone blowing bubbles in milk.

Every story needs an evil guy and his sidekick, so enter Strong Bad, a half-naked, pot-bellied man with a Mexican wrestling mask and an indistinguishable accent.

The Cheat is a…well, no one quite knows what he is, but he’s good at cheating and lives in a BBQ grill.

There are seven more characters that make up the illustrious cast, all voices done by the brothers and Mike’s girlfriend, Melissa Palmer.

But what is it about this website that allows the two brothers to live comfortably off of T-shirt sales featuring their designs without the need for pop-up advertisements or Web site banners?

The comedy is refreshingly original; it doesn’t rely on expletives to shock a laugh out of the viewers. In a sense, it’s nerdy.

In Strong Bad e-mails, one of the site’s features, viewers can watch Strong Bad as he sits at his computer to sarcastically answer his e-mails in the form of an animated short.

Sometimes the Brothers Chaps take an e-mail topic and turn it into an animated series.

An example is “Teen Girl Squad,” an answer to a viewer’s request to have her and her friends drawn into a cartoon. Stick figure characters—Cheerleader, So and So, What’s Her Face and The Ugly One—are animated on college-rule paper background.

The result is the hilarity of a grown man making fun of superficial teenage-girl life while doing the voices of crudely animated drawings.

The Brothers Chaps challenge their viewers by hiding special features in almost every episode of Strong Bad e-mails.

This requires the viewer to scroll over Strong Bad’s computer screen to see if any of the words cause the cursor arrow to turn into a hand.

Click on that word and let the surprises entertain you.

Viewers can also play games based on Strong Bad e-mails that are reminiscent of old Super Nintendo games, graphics and sounds.

The Web site was such a hit with viewers that the Brothers Chaps decided to sell T-shirts, which quickly spawned into hats, beanies, stickers, messenger bags, plush dolls and figurines.

Last year, Strong Bad Sings was released on CD.

The album features an eight-page booklet and 20 songs sung by the site’s characters.

Viewers can buy this and the other items on the Web site by clicking the “store” button on the homepage.

A DVD with Homestar and the gang is coming out this year.