Now I Can Finally Watch "Porcupine Racetrack" Again!

I'll admit it ... I've been pretty down recently. The summer heat has been brutal locally. I haven't been sleeping well at all, so I'm constantly tired. Work has been a real grind of late, and the air conditioning at the office has been almost completely ineffective. My wife's been under the weather, so that sucks.

But today, my friends ... today I have a little more spring in my step. Today, the sun doesn't seem quite so ruthless. The birds seem to be less interested in crapping all over my front door and more interested in gently singing. Even my muggy office seems less trying.

That's right, it's all getting better ... for today, ladies and gentlemen, is the day I discovered that MTV'S THE STATE IS FINALLY AVAILABLE ON DVD!

I'll go ahead and let that sink in for a minute ...

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... are we ready? OK, then.

For all you philistines who are clueless as to the greatness of this news, The State was a comedy sketch show on MTV that ran from 1993 to 1995. It was groundbreaking, and I still consider it among the top comedy/sketch shows ever. It had a bunch of guys you've seen before, but no one that ever became a giant star or anything.

Some of my personal favorite memories of that show:

Louie: Typical Saturday-Night-Live-humor is to develop a character, give him some stupid catch phrase, and then run it into the ground. The State countered with Louie - a guy who ONLY uttered his catchphrase. Everyone thought he was hilarious for carrying around 2 golf balls, identifying something, and then saying, "I wanna dip my balls in it!" It's the "Isn't that special?" -"Whatcha Talkin' 'Bout Willis?" - "Schwing!" - "I'm crushing your head." sketch taken to its ultimate.


Fan Names: This one was pretty stupid, but for some reason it stuck with me. Apparently, the crew and writers were inundated with requests for them to slip fans' names into sketches. So, they decided to take care of every request at once by creating a two-minute sketch that crammed every name they could in there. I don't know why I still remember this - I guess it just seemed like the kind of stupid thing I would have done if I had a TV show.


$240 Worth of Pudding: This is the ultimate The State sketch. Anyone who ever saw the show - and even some who didn't - saw it and loved it. Take two guys dressed as bad lounge singers, smooth R&B music, a red velvet backdrop, and an insane amount of tapioca pudding. Then let the magic happen! It’s something so funny that I still could watch it 5 times a day and never be sick of it.


Seriously, they used the line "whisper some sweet nuthings to this puddin'" on TV! How awesome is that?

There's been a demand for this for quite a while, but MTV is notoriously slow with putting things out on DVD. Now, however, we finally get to watch it all, and I fully suggest each and every one of you go purchase a copy.

Now, if only MTV would go ahead and release the full run of Sifl and Olly ... but that's probably too much to ask.

Until next time,
The Jim