Recap / Strong Bad Email E 146 Pop Up

Why, look! It's the Homestar Runner!

Airdate: Monday, February 20, 2006

Sender: Kat, Spokane, Wash.

Strong Bad: (rapping) I was born to check email and eat lots of cake!

Kat from "Spoke Ann, Wash" tells Strong Bad that they "had a dream that my friend had a Strong Bad pop-up book. It was the book of my dreams," a line that Strong Bad just can't resist rapping a few times, once with accompaniment by The Cheat and a dramatic jump.

Strong Bad: You know, I feel like that sentence could really apply to anything. Like, uh, "I had a dream that my friend had a Strong Bad salad. It was the salad of my dreams." Or maybe like "I had a dream that my friend had a Strong Bad taco salad. It was the taco salad of my dreams." Anyways, a Strong Bad pop-up book. This sounds like a job for: makin' stuff up!

A Strong Bad pop-up book would have all the bells and whistles, including:

• Strong Bad hanging out with "wing-a-ling babies" at The Stick, with a tab to move Strong Bad's "fleshtangle" of a mouth and make him gush about how cute those cherubs are, and an "ab-tab" to enhance his physique.
• Strong Bad's "crappy old computer", the Tandy 400, "asking the same crappy old questions" (like "HOW TYPE BOX GLOVES?"), which promptly get "DELETED!", though the quality of the book's sound chip leaves something to be desired.
  Book: (garbled and nearly incomprehensible) Deleted!
  Strong Bad: "The lake head"? What does that mean?
  Book: Deleted!
  Strong Bad: Police Quest?! This thing is obviously broken!
  (Another tab gets pulled, revealing a cloud of smoke coming from the Tandy)
  Strong Bad: No wonder I got rid of that old buncha beige.
• A page in which Strong Sad wanders onto Strong Bad's construction site and gets various substances dumped on him, including "cement, ram's blood, Boston creme, [and] Magic Eye". Then to add insult to injury, Strong Bad gives his brother a "flab tab" that makes his paunch look even paunchier.
• A mini-fridge that's inexplicably able to conjure actual hamburger patties.
• Homestar Runner getting skewered by a pair of saws.
  Strong Bad: Why look, it's the Homestar Runner! (beat) Bye, the Homestar Runner!
  Homestar: (faintly) See ya later, Strong Baaaaad...
• A page where "Senor Muybueno" gets some payback on "The Cheato Bandito" for stealing his gold by giving him a good kicking.
  Strong Bad: Boot 'em up, boot 'em up, boot 'em up, y'all. This is like kicking The Cheat lite! All of the flavor, with only half the chance of rabies!
• The final spread, a "cornucop-pourri of pop-up mastery" with flashing lights, an assortment of tabs and flaps (including, of course, the "crap flap"), a "string thing that doesn't work", and some slightly more intelligible sound chips. ("HOLY CRAP!")

Strong Bad: So now the pop-up book is primed and ready for the four year-old, or The Cheat, in your life... to use as a tissue! That thing'll provide seconds of non-ripped apart fun! Speaking of seconds, I'm gonna go eat my burgers.
(Strong Bad leaves, The Paper comes down.)

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Tropes:

• Amusing Injuries: Strong Bad features a page of a battered and bruised Homestar getting skewered by two saws. At least Strong Bad finds it amusing, anyway.
• Bloody Hilarious: One of the substances proposed to pour onto Strong Sad is ram's blood.
• Brick Joke:
  • Strong Bad sends The Cheat off to win a car, which does happen in an Easter Egg at the end.
  • The first page of Strong Bad's book has him surrounded by cherubs, which Strong Bad says he'd like to fry in beer batter. The last page features one of the cherubs being non-chalantly dipped in a deep fat fryer.
• Continuity Nod: This episode confirms Strong Bad's claim in "different town" that the computer room has recessed lighting.
• It Kind of Looks Like a Face: An Easter egg shows a picture of Manicouagan Reservoir in Quebec that makes it look kind of like Strong Sad's head ("the lake head").
• Mad Libs Catchphrase: Strong Bad believes this of Kat's email:
  Strong Bad: You know, I feel like that sentence could really apply to anything. Like, uh, "I had a dream that my friend had a Strong Bad salad. It was the salad of my dreams."
• Mind Screw: When Strong Bad says "goodbye" to the pop-up of Homestar, you can hear Homestar's voice faintly saying "See ya later, Strong Baaaaaad..."
• Mundane Made Awesome: Strong Bad declares the pop-up book "a source of unspeakable power" when he realizes he can generate a never-ending supply of burgers from it.
• Rate-Limited Perpetual Resource: Strong Bad's ideal pop-up book would include a mini-fridge that inexplicably summons an actual, edible hamburger patty every time that page is opened. Strong Bad calls the book "a source of unspeakable power" when he realizes he can create a theoretically endless supply of burgers with it.
• Rhymes on a Dime: Strong Bad creates the "ab tab", "flab tab", and "crap flap" in the course of making his book.
• Shout-Out: Strong Bad mishears the voice box saying "deleted" as "Police Quest".
• The Unintelligible: The voice function of Strong Bad's pop-up book is so garbled he has trouble deciphering it.
• Voice Clip Song: Strong Bad makes a brief rap out of the phrase "I had a dream that my friend had a Strong Bad pop-up book; it was the book of my dreams!"

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(Cut to The Cheat playing dominoes with Bubs and Strong Sad. Bubs is smoking a cigar.)
Strong Sad: Oh, The Cheat wins again. Pay up.
Bubs: Well, she's all yours! (tosses a set of car keys on the table)
The Cheat: (triumphant The Cheat noise, does a victory dance)