Thursday, March 24, 2005

South Park makes a funny

South Park is one of my guilty pleasures. The rest will keep me in posts for years, I suspect.
When I first heard about South Park, I was appalled. These four foul-mouthed little children made Bart Simpson look like a choir boy. They shot out racial epithets and curse words like an obscene oral machine gun. The only thing going for it was that it was an equal-opportunity insulter. The show doesn't care who or what you are, they'll make fun of you. I wanted nothing to do with it or them.
That was then.
I tuned into South Park about two months ago. Luckily, I caught an episode that was entertaining. I'm batting about .500 here. Half the time I don't want the episode to end, and the other half leaves me looking at my clock, knowing that I've spent thirty minutes of my life I'll never get back.
Last night there were two episodes. One was okay. It was from 1999. It involved two men in a hot tub. Enough said.
The NEW episode involved agents. A boy at school won the chance to sing at a pagent for $200 bucks. This made all the other children jealous. Our four anti-heroes decided to get a piece of that. Thus, they became agents. Let the good times began.
They were entitled to ten percent. Insert dollar signs in their eyes. All the boy had to do was "Work the job, find new work, make money" and the rest was up to the agents.
I laughed. Long and hard.
They lost the boy to a "real" agent, who in the end, left the boy waiting tables working his way back home.
Our four anti-heroes were down on their luck when another client came to them. She was a Chinese woman named Wing. (She didn't speak English, but she could sing ABBA. ABBA is a band from the seventies. Think "Dancing Queen." Man, that stuff is classic.) Anyway...the boys weren't going to take her until her husband assured them she already had a gig and it paid ten thousand dollars. More dollar signs for the boys.
The only problem was that the Chinese Mafia was after her also. They kidnapped her, and the following five minutes of the show were hilarious.
The boys thought NEVER AGAIN would they lose a client to another agent (Chinese Mafia). Gunfire ensued. Then came the moral and music part. You know, when action stops and a character realizes the error of their ways with the piano playing in the background.
They shouldn't treat this woman like a commodity. She has feelings. She's not just a piece of property. Being an agent made them feel dirty. They utterly lost sight of their humanity and hers.
I was grinning.

Now. Before undies are in knots, know this. I realize there are good agents out there. I'm envious of the writers who have them. But I also have seen P & E listings. Writer Beware. Websites of the like. These bottom feeder agents see dollar signs, NOT the person. This South Park was clever and cutting. Who else could draw a parallel between agents and the Chinese Mafia? I suppose I could find a few writers.
Grins*

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