INVADER ZIM Fact #23

A google search for obstacle course gets you this. Where are the rats? The rusty nails?

Look, I know you’re tired.  I’m tired, too, but we have to keep gong on, alright?  These things are killing me as much as they’re killing you, but you don’t see me getting all cranky, do you, you miserable garbage-faced lizard?

When I was a little kid and I’d get a cut from running scraping against something, or from not being good enough when running the obstacle course my dad would make me run on occasion to prove that I was worth carrying on the Vasquez name, making him unhappy as the razorwire would slice bloody tracks down the flesh of my back, I would do a thing to make the pain less immediate.  What I’d do is to project my thinking weeks, days or even just hours away from the moment in my present where the pain was so pressing.  Knowing that time healed all wounds, I would simply rewire my mind to exist in that time to come where the wounds were healed and the pain just a memory.

It was my little exercise in manipulating eventuality, and it really did work for me on many of those terrible occasions where my dad, disgusted with my failure to jump the broken glass pit, would remind me that the Vasquez name was good enough for a mountain range but utterly wasted on his pitiful excuse for a son.

“What’re ya gonna do when your wife and kids are getting eaten by tigers on the other side of a pit of glass, huh?!” he’d yell at me , not seeming to understand my silly childhood logic, not at all giving a shit that I was only six.

“Do it again!” was all he’d say after glaring at my stupidity.

“Can I wait until I grow more blood?” I’d plead, desperately hoping he’d look around and see that he was standing in almost everything I had in me to bleed.  It was useless, of course, and I’d do my best to run the course again, soldiering through somehow.

I tell you that story because it’s what you need to do now.  You need to understand that this March we’re in isn’t forever, and that there will come a day when this is all behind you and maybe you can tell people, maybe even with a laugh, that you made it through.  You survived the worst month of your life.

I know you can do it.

I kind of hope you don’t but it’s possible you will.  I’ve really learned to dislike you quite a bit over this past month and I’m not really looking forward to seeing you around after this is done.  I’d prefer to avoid any awkward run-ins with you while on walks or at the local stores and such. Just…look, just don’t try too hard to survive, alright?

So yeah, what say we just try to get along for a bit longer and get on with the good stuff?

FACT:

I’ve never listened to the audio commentary that we did for the DVDs.

I know that’s not a big deal to most of you, but sometimes people come up and ask me what I meant by this or that or they tell me that they just leave the audio commentary on and not watch the show’s audio anymore.

I can actually understand that last bit in my own way, as there are plenty of movies that I can just replay over and over in my head, but I love listening to the audio commentary while I’m working or going through the tedious hours of trying to cover up evidence of something.  Re-Animator, Miller’s Crossing, Evil Dead 2, CHUD, those are just a few of the commentary tracks that I listen to on occasion, more like audio podcasts more than anything.  So I get it, I get how it can be sorta cozy to just listen to a conversation with familiar voices happen over and over again as you pretend that these are your friends, your only friends, the only people who will let you around them because of the shrill, pterodactyl cry that is your voice.

I remember going in to do those commentary tracks, but that was the last time I heard any of it.  I just recall a lot of people talking over one another and trying not to look over at Richard sitting there totally naked, and Andy Berman, who had brought some hot young baboon with him, making the rest of us just a bit uncomfortable.  The show had been off the air for some years by that point, so it was great to see everyone after so long, but it was also reminding me of why I was enjoying the last few years so much.  All I had to do was take off my breather mask and smell the air around me that Horvitz was terraforming with the vents on his body pumping out an atmosphere more suited to him, and I knew getting done and away from this would was tops on my list.

So we did our commentary, and all in all it was fun, but I can’t recall a damn thing about it, so when people come up to ask about this or that in regards to the DVDs, I’m usually at a loss as to how to help out.  What I do recall is bullshitting a whole lot, and hearing that a ton of that stuff had been cut from the final content, resulting in very obvious gaps in the audio.  I haven’t listened to the stuff, but Rikki Simons and a few others have and told me about the dropouts way back when the DVDs were first released.

This came up when searching for "ZIM audio commentary". I'm not sure what the hell is happening.

Something that I’d get a lot of after those DVDs came out was people asking how I could be so mean to fans who supported the show.  What they were often referring to was a bit in the commentary where I was deriding kids who pretended to be INVADERS that were not actually in the show, angry that they’d think they could just MAKE UP stuff that clearly did not exist.  I’d laugh at being asked the question, until I realized the person asking was not at all joking.

“Why is that funny?  These people are just trying to have fun and you don’t want them to?”

“Wait.  What?  Oh, you’re being serious.”

“BLARGHABLARGHABLOOOGH!”

“It was a joke.  Get it?  NONE of it existed, because it was a cartoon, ya know?  Making fun of little kids who get excited about a show and pretend to be characters when they play…it’s funny BECAUSE it’s so obviously mean.  I don’t actually hate little kids who are having fun.”

“I’m not talking about kids.  I’m talking about ME.  I am INVADER PIP!”

“Uh…”

“I’m twenty seven years old!”

“Oh, my god…”

“AND I DO EXIST!”

“I hate my life.”

So yeah, that’s gone down, in various forms, on a few isolated occasions.  Where someone who is a fan of a monstrously surreal, sarcastic show filled with ridiculously demented characters has absolutely no ability to detect sarcasm.  It’s scary to think that those people are out there…waiting…hiding…for you…to justify my love.

Sorry…a bit of a Madonna song sorta got in there at the end, but I’m not gonna delete it.  It feels right.

It’s not all bad, though!  I once met a beautiful woman waiting in the same line for a concert when she recognized my voice from the DVD commentary.  I remember being more than a bit shocked at meeting someone so attractive and actually decent seeming through my work!  I couldn’t take my eyes off this girl’s eyes, stunning blue and engaging!  They were perfect.

Back at my place later that night I ripped those fuckers out of her skull and added them to my frankenstein’s monster.  I call her Gorgulon.  My perfect mate still waits, dormant and beautiful, her perfect eyes closed for now.  She just needs a butt.

So that was pretty nice, meeting someone that wasn’t crazy for once, and I’m sure she would’ve been happy to know that she was a highpoint in commentary-induced encounters on my side.

Ooh, look, guys.  I know this one was sorta short, and a bit anemic on the vital information side, but something just came up and I have to head out.  I’m working on something really quite special for the final installment later this month, and you’ll be happy I abandoned you this day if I can actually manage to pull this off.  I’m digging around to find a rare video interview with Rikki Simons, the voice of GIR himself, and I just got a lead on that!

BE EXCITED!

–ZIM FACTS. Here’s why—