Monday 11 October 2010

Round 2: E-mail back to Nickelodeon


So i decided to email Nickelodeon back,


Dear one half of the worlds finest geordie double act,

I see where you are coming from with the whole sing along thing and it is a point well taken however maybe singing along to intro's and such should be kept in the 90's. Take a risk! do something crazy! You could delve into areas unknown and express words through the medium of dance. Instead of a man signing in the bottom corner of the screen like they do with shows adapted for the hard of hearing why not have a man dancing in the bottom of the screen telling out the story as he goes along. I understand that some complete, utter, uneducated idiots with an allergy to culture out there may not understand what is going on in the story due to their lack of knowledge of story telling through expressive dance but these people could use subtitles therefore enhancing their reading ability and everyone knows reading is a million times cooler than TV anyway. So its a complete win win situation. Unless your blind as well as deaf. Maybe i'll invent a braille tv....

However 'Spongebob Quadrilateralpants' is so simple yet genius i am ashamed of myself for not suggesting this but great work from your team there. They deserve a raise. Also due to my half Italian, half English, two thirds Spanish and nine quarters Bolivian heritage i can confirm that quadrilateralpants in Italian means 'to munch someone's cucumber' and in Bolivian it means 'that dog brought a cow' not very rude that one but it would be quite confusing for those little Bolivians kids. 'Spongebob Parralelagrampants' is something i have recently thought of and is great due to added alliteration. If Nickelodeon ever decides to go the way of other channels out there and just broadcast pure filth you could have a look at after dark alternatives such as, Spongebob Nopants or Sponge-nob loudpants (pants in that name is referencing to the verb to pant and not the noun pants.) 

I also suspect that for the patchy the pirate reference you watched the intro to spongebob squarepants at least twice like i did where i attempted to look for a word 4 or more syllables but could only find a high of 3 syllables words, Nautical, pineapple and absorbent. Good work Ant. However if you skip the intro to 44 seconds and listen very very very very very very very very very very very very very carefully you will hear patchy the pirate whisper 'antidisestablishmentarianism' disproving your theory of Patchy's inability to pronounce words containing more than 3 syllables. However i won't publish this so we'll just keep it as our little secret and no one will ever know about patchy's super pirate powers. except me and you Ant. Just Me. And you. I hope you can live with this resting on your conscience...

Also if you are going to pass my email around all those executive types do me a favour and try find me a really beautiful young blonde woman who's earning at least 200k+ a year and is really desperate for somebody to be there for her because i'm that man and if she even dares to accuse me of just wanting her for her money you just tell her that i think she's got a really nice personality and i love women that like football or horseriding or films or walks or takeaways or dogs or cats or snow or sun or rock music or pop music or opera or the theatre. (delete where approriate)

Thanks 
Jonny

P.S if you are still in contact with the creators of Ed, Edd n Eddy and if they are still creating new shows maybe you could suggest to them that in one episodes they get girlfriends called Ann, Anne n Annie who had pets called Ben, Benn and Bennie which resulted in Ed, Edd and Eddy having to get matching pets called Ken, Kenn and Kenny. I'm Sure this would create comical and absolutely mind boggling viewing.


it took a couple of days for a reply but eventually there it was, top of my inbox,


Dear Jonny,

Thank you for your email. I am answer-bot, the automatic computer responder at Nickelodeon which handles emails when Ant cannot think of anything funny to say. Unfortunately this happens much too often and we’re thinking of letting him go.

Our robotic sensors have scanned your email and will reply with fine pre-written paragraphs in response to random words which you have mentioned.

1. Fred, Fredd and Freddy is a good idea but perhaps needs some development. How about “The Soul Adventures Of Fred, Fredd and Freddy and the Furious Five” ? It sounds like one of those old cartoons they show on Cartoon Network. Nickelodeon is like Cartoon Network, but better. Sometimes.

2. Ant says that he’s not that Ant, but someone completely else.

3. Unfortunately, we do not know any blonde women meeting your salary parameters, and if we did, we would be keeping them for ourselves.

Thankyou as always for your email. It made our lights flash and everything.

Yours robotically,

Answer-Bot
Nickelodeon!



Ant was definitely a bit of a let down this time around and I feel he may be growing tired of me so it looks like I'm going to have to find another company to start emailing.

I also feel silly for assuming that Ed, Edd and Eddy was on Nickelodeon, completely forgot about cartoon network. Deary me....


Wednesday 29 September 2010

Spongebob Squarepants does not have square pants....

Whilst at work I suddenly became obsessed with whether Spongebob Squarepants actually had did have squarepants. This was playing on my mind for the whole day so as soon as I got home i had to check using the good old interwebs and low and behold, he did not have square pants. I decided to take this issue up with nickelodeon and wrote them a letter...

'Dear Nickelodeon,
I have recently become rather seduced by your marvellous cartoons however I feel i must point something out. In 'Spongebob Squarepants', the name of the show suggests that Spongebob will indeed have square pants but after a quick measurement, taking into account the width and length of Spongebob's pants it is quite obvious that his pants are infact rectangular.
Now i know this may not seem like a big deal to you but i have a 3 year old daughter who is still attempting to grasp the simple concept of shapes and it seems down right stupid that somebody advertised as having squarepants clearly has rectangular pants.
Please would you take my following suggestions into consideration;

1. Make Spongebob's pants sqaure
2. Change the title of the show to Spongebob Rectangularpants
3. Make a sister show to Spongebob entitled 'Clothfred rectangular pants but they're actually square as Spongebob squarepants has rectangular pants so this evens everything out and prevents confusion in the younger generation'
Thankyou for time.

Yours sincerely,
Jonathon Smith'

After waiting a couple of days it soon became clear that they were not going to answer me therefore my brain came up with another bright idea, a second letter...

To whom it may concern,
I recently got in contact with you regarding the shape of 'Spongebob Squarepants' pants. Below is the first email for reference;

'Dear Nickelodeon,
I have recently become rather seduced by your marvellous cartoons however I feel i must point something out. In 'Spongebob Squarepants', the name of the show suggests that Spongebob will indeed have square pants but after a quick measurement, taking into account the width and length of Spongebob's pants it is quite obvious that his pants are infact rectangular.
Now i know this may not seem like a big deal to you but i have a 3 year old daughter who is still attempting to grasp the simple concept of shapes and it seems down right stupid that somebody advertised as having squarepants clearly has rectangular pants.
Please would you take my following suggestions into consideration;

1. Make Spongebob's pants sqaure
2. Change the title of the show to Spongebob Rectangularpants
3. Make a sister show to Spongebob entitled 'Clothfred rectangular pants but they're actually square as Spongebob squarepants has rectangular pants so this evens everything out and prevents confusion in the younger generation'
Thankyou for time.

Yours sincerely,
Jonathon Smith'

You are yet to get in contact with me and I am literally sat on the edge of my seat waiting for an answer however this is not through anticipation or excitement just due to the fact this is the part of the seat I prefer to sit on. I feel that as a valued member of the nickelodeon community a reply to my inquiry is the least i deserve. I have read through the help section to check if my answer has been answered there like you insist and after thorough checks i can conclude that it does not fall in any section you have listed.
I have taken into account reasons for you not replying to my email which i shall list now;

1. Upon reading my previous email, the person who replies to emails head exploded due to the complexity and seriousness of the issues I brought up. The person who took over from this poor fellow saw that this email had already been opened and reached the conclusion that the poor head explody bloke must have replied.

2. After reading about my idea for a sister show entitled 'Clothfred rectangular pants but they're actually square as Spongebob squarepants has rectangular pants so this evens everything out and prevents confusion in the younger generation' you have decided not to reply to my email so you can steal my idea before i have chance to copyright it and by not replying and by simply deleting my first email there will be no way of me fighting a case in court. (I have now begun saving my emails to a harddrive, so if you do steal the Clothfred idea i'll be taking you straight to court)

3. You are simply too busy replying to less important and complex emails such as 'Y did ed, edd n eddy not have anuva fwend called eddie? lots of love timmy age 4' and 'What is a penguin? write bak plz sam aged 6' .

4. You don't understand some of the long words i have used. However i have checked with my friend who is a teacher who has confirmed that the vocabulary i use can be read by somebody of a reading age of 12 so if that is the case and you cannot understand by wording i feel you should quit your vastly important job.

5. You are too busy thinking of a suitable prize and drafting out the perfect thankyou letter for pointing out something that could have such huge consequences that you have still not had time to reply with something that would match the big favour i have done for you.

6. You don't care. (It would be disastrous if it was this one)

I look forward to hearing from you in the near future.
Yours sincerely Jonathon Smith.

P.S if you want to produce 'Clothfred rectangular pants but they're actually square as Spongebob squarepants has rectangular pants so this evens everything out and prevents confusion in the younger generation' I already have drawings, plotlines and a series of episodes already prepared.

However this time they decided to take me seriously and a few hours later my hotmail inbox greeted me with this delight...

Hi Jonathon! Thanks for your message.

You're right - we're sorry for not replying to you sooner! We thought your first email was really pretty awesome (seriously) and it had stunned us into total silence. Sorry about that.

SpongeBob Rectangularpants 3 is a great name for any TV show, but it might be a bit hard to sing along with. Patchy the pirate would need quite some time to learn how to say a word with more than three syllables in it, and until then there'd be no theme music to sing along with. You can see what a problem that would be.

We do have a department at Nickelodeon that sits around thinking about stuff like this. So far the best they came up with was "SpongeBob QuadrilateralPants", but we think that might mean something rude in Italian, so we didn't go any further with the idea.

Rest assured that making things better is our top priority, and we'll keep your email in mind as we think of more ways to fill your TV with sponges. I'll make sure that the right people here at Nick get to see it (seriously.)

Thanks again for your message - and of course, thank you for watching!

All the best,

Ant

Quite pleased with the overall result and Ant from nickelodeon was a great sport. I shall be sending some more emails sometime in the near future...