Homestar Runner: The Interview

By Nicole_J on Mon, Apr 21, 2008 2:49 pm

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Matt and Mike Chapman make the Brothers Chaps, the co-creators of Homestar Runner. Matt was nice enough to take the time to answer some questions for the Dig via email. Both brothers will be attending ROFLCon at MIT this weekend. (Humble? Check. Funny? Check. Internet crush? Um, check.)

1. How/when did you hear about ROFLCon?

We heard about it when Tim Hwang emailed us several months ago to ask if we wanted to participate.

2. Were you interested in participating right away?

Totally. It sounded like a hilarious gathering. And the fact that Harvard and MIT are involved only made it cooler and weirder.

3. You're scheduled to be on a panel called,"Making It Big," which is appropriate because you're possibly the biggest internet celebrities attending. What are some points you guys are going to discuss?

That's super nice of you to say but I think Tron Guy blows us out of the water. I suppose we'll talk about our experience versus some of the other folks on the panels'. And maybe try and share some of the lessons we've learned along the way. I hope we've got some unique perspectives to share.

4. Are there other internet celebs that you're excited/interested to see? Have you met any of them before?

We've met the Rooster Teeth folks before at SXSW and they're all super nice. I'm a big Dinosaur Comics fan so I'd definitely like to buy Ryan North a beer.

5. Have you participated in similar conferences? Why is ROFLCon different-or not?

We talked at the interactive portion of SXSW a few years ago but we had our own panel and just kinda showed stuff and answer questions. ROFLCon is cool because it's such an all-star cast of internet people all under one roof. For one low installment of $19.99 (may not reflect actual ticket prices).

6. Could you just give a brief history of Homestarrunner.com? Why did you guys want to set it up online?

June 1996 - Mike Chapman and Craig Zobel make crappy photocopied kids' book called 'The Homestar Runner Enters the Strongest Man in the World Contest.'

Jan 2000 - Mike and Matt launch Homestarrunner.com with a handful of cartoons and games.

2001 - The site starts selling merch

Jan 2002 - The site begins to be updated every week,mostly with Strong Bad Emails.

Sept 2002 - Mike and Matt quit day jobs, work on site fulltime

2008 - Mike and Matt won't stop making cartoons

We put the site online because that's what you did in those days. And maybe somebody'd see it and we'd get decent jobs. We had no grand plans beyond that. Our dad was the one who first suggested we quit our day jobs and just sell t-shirts.

7. Do you think your sense of humor is particularly suited to internet culture? Since you've been up and running for about eight years, do you think internet culture has influenced the site or your characters over time?

I think the site's humor and internet culture have kinda evolved together in a cool way, influencing each other. Not that the site's effect on the internet is so great. Having something on the web, especially with a fan-interactive feature like Strong Bad Email, it's hard NOT to reference internet culture all the time. And by 'reference,' I mean totally make fun of.

8. Homestarrunner.com is known for not selling ad space and using merchandise sales to fund the site. How did you guys come to that decision?

It was easy. Ads continue to be the my least favorite thing about the internet and TV and movies and video games. So we decided not to use them. Merch was the only choice.

9. Was there a specific moment/event where you guys knew you'd "made it big" on the internet?

When some adult site reserved the misspelled domain Homestarruner.com (with only one 'N') and had it forward to some site of theirs. That meant someone thought we were getting enough traffic to merit one of those misspelled site forwards.

10. Where do you see Homestarrunner.com/internet culture going in the future?

You can definitely expect more of the same from us in addition to this game for Nintendo's WiiWare service we're working on with Telltale Games. As for internet culture, I hope the web (at least where entertainment is concerned) stops being thought of as this incubator for other outlets (tv, movies, print) and starts being it's own destination.

Michael Chertoff: Secret Socialist or Evil Genius?

By Nicole_J on Mon, Feb 11, 2008 6:42 pm

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Secretary of Homeland Security and Vincent Price look-alike Michael Chertoff spoke at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government last week for its Albert Gordon Lecture on Finance and Public Policy. Described by Kennedy School Dean Ellwood as "the man who's protecting us all," Chertoff's speech was titled Why Washington Doesn't Work. Yes, really.

After a painfully awkward analogy linking the Super Bowl and President Bush's final year in office ("There's an awful lot you can do in the fourth quarter of a game"), the guest of honor got down to business, explaining to the rapt audience of earnestly rumpled grad students and Windsor-knotted Republicans why the government, in fact, doesn't work. According to Chertoff, there are countless "structural obstacles" that get in the way of meaningful change in Washington.

What are these structural obstacles? Mostly, according to Chertoff, they come in the form of business interests. The Republican consistently railed against the selfish, money-grubbing interests of big business.

The co-author of the Patriot Act and former Special Counsel for the Whitewater Committee stressed the importance of individual sacrifice for the greater good. In relation to the "war on terror," Chertoff treated the audience to an abbreviated history of terrorism in the U.S. prior to September 11th, pointing out that many of the anti-terrorism procedures in place now (identity checks and fingerprinting at border crossings, tracking foreign students within the U.S.) were on their way to becoming law when business groups and border communities loudly began opposing them, calling such measures an "inconvenience" that might disrupt the flow of commerce. Similarly, in the wake of 9.11, privately owned chemical plants and refineries were told to tighten security; they sued rather than bear the expense of installing locks and cameras.

"If you look at the number of times I've been sued, it's a very, very long printout," Chertoff panned to muffled laughter, going on to describe a helicopter ride with California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger where they viewed the overflowing levies of the Sacramento River Valley in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. When the Secretary of Homeland Security and the Terminator approached Sacramento's mayor about evacuating the potentially dangerous flood plains, the mayor, in league with evil developers, called the plan "dumb."

During the question and answer segment, a shakily indignant graduate student asked about the mismanagement of aid to Hurricane Katrina survivors and FEMA's negligence in the Gulf Coast in 2005. Pausing for a moment to reflect, Chertoff replied, "I actually have thought about this a lot.... Trailers are not a good idea for housing."