TVSquad

This is the age of personalized entertainment on demand. It's also the age of talking wads of meat and animated fart jokes. Finally, all of that can now come together on your home DVD player.

Adult Swim fans can now go online and create a disc full of their favorite episodes from the channel's top shows with the Build Your Custom DVD tool.

For $20, you get 110 minutes worth of space to build a DVD. You can choose any of the available episodes from such series as Venture Brothers (right), Aqua Teen Hunger Force and Sealab 2021. After arranging them in your preferred order, you give your DVD a name, description and cover art before paying for it and burning your unique creation.

The new Adult Swim In A Box is an embarrassment of riches - six boxed sets for six different shows and a bonus disc featuring five unreleased pilots -- more than 20 hours on 12 DVDs. I was especially happy to get season two of Sealab 2021, which I have never been able to catch regularly, and season one of Metalocalypse, which I have always enjoyed.

Getting season two of Robot Chicken, volume one of Moral Orel, volume two of Aqua Teen Hunger Force, and volume three of Space Ghost Coast to Coast just seemed like a bonus. Well worth the suggested retail price of $69.98 for Adult Swim fans who haven't already purchased any of the included sets.

The pilots are a mixed bag, but mostly good. The Best of Totally for Teens is a live action parody of a moralistic teen variety show hosted by thirtysomethings trying to be hip. It's a promising premise, one that should maybe be revisited, but the pilot is a bit of a mess. It hits topics ripe for satire in the format like teen insecurity, drugs, and sex, and has the right look for Adult Swim.

A series of free music and comedy performances especially for fans of Cartoon Network's Adult Swim is coming to New York City.

The Adult Swim Presents Summer at Santos Series includes six live shows featuring a different musical and/or comedy performance each night.

It's a great opportunity for fans of various Adult Swim series to see their creators and stars live and on stage. The casts and minds behind Metalocalypse, Aqua Teen Hunger Force and Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job! were each asked to prepare their own unique show for their respective night.

Blame the influence of friends; I do. Because we couldn't get the Aqua Teen Hunger Force movie to play right, we ended up jumping into Volume 2 of Squidbillies. Now I'd seen part of one episode of this (where Rusty makes his deal with the devil), but I changed the channel. I'm not sure why I resisted the Cuylers. I love ATHF, so you'd think it would be right up my alley, considering it's by one of ATHF's creators. Hell, it even features the voice of Master Shake as Granny.

Even when we first started watching it last night, with Season 3, Episode 1 I was reluctant to say I was enjoying it. Eleven episodes later and I was laughing out loud when Granny was transformed with road kill skin grafts and an udderly disgusting boob job. It's a tradition in our house to look at one another at the end of each episode of ATHF and say "what the f**k did we just watch?!" Squidbillies gives me that same feeling of ridiculous. Not to mention the characters remind me of some of the people who live in the small Midwest town I find myself now.

The season finale of Aqua Teen Hunger Force will involve a live-action episode in which real people will play the roles of Frylock, Master Shake and Carl. The role of Meatwad will be played by an exercise ball.

As with every other episode of Aqua Teen Hunger Force, you'll probably have to be high to truly understand their sense of humor (which makes sense, since they're probably high whenever they write an episode).

Frylock will be played by rapper T-Pain. Master Shake will be played by Jon Benjamin. Carl will be played by first time actor Dave Long, Jr., the winner of Adult Swim's Carl look-alike contest. I'm so used to hearing Dana Snyder, Carey Means and Dave Willis as the voices of our intrepid heroes that if these actors try to do the same voices, it may feel "wrong" to me somehow. Here's hoping they can nail each character perfectly, or that the animated voices are dubbed over.

Photos are after the jump. Enjoy.

This time we've got five copies of Aqua Teen Hunger Force volume five on DVD for five lucky, random commenters. The set is available in stores tomorrow.

To enter, simply leave a comment below before 5:00PM Eastern, Friday, February 1, simply telling us what your favorite moment of ATHF is. As always, we'll randomly choose five winners amongst the eligible entries. Some other details:
Click here for complete Official Rules.

Hey, Brigitte here with TV Squad Daily. I'll be covering the TV stories I find interesting each day, Monday through Friday, in this video blog.

Today on TV Squad Daily:

• American Idol contestants are accusing Simon Cowell of fixing the competition.
  
• Did the head of Cartoon Network really need to resign following the Boston bomb scare over Aqua Teen Hunger Force advertisements?
  
• Clay Aiken's plan for fighting back against tabloid rumors is bound to backfire.
  

The video's embedded below, or you can download the file directly (Quicktime required). You can also subscribe to this vodcast via our feed.

The folks at National Lampoon have created a bizarre parody video combining 24's Jack Bauer and the Cartoon Network's bird-flipping Mooninites, interwoven with real cable news footage of the discovery of the Aqua Teen Lite Bright battery-operated boards that terrorized Boston last week.

The video starts with the 24 ticking clock and shows Jack Bauer interrogating various cartoon characters, including the Aqua Teen milk shake known as "Master Shake" who is duct-taped down to a chair while Jack threatens him.

In another scene, Jack tells Meatwad that he'll put a bullet through his brain (Meatwad has a brain?) unless he coughs up the intel. This was just before the Mooninites taunt Jack via cell phone.

The video's embedded after the jump.

[Via 24weblog.]

They say there's no such thing as bad publicity. Turner Broadcasting got way more attention for Aqua Teen Hunger Force by causing a bomb scare in Boston than they would have received if their Mooninites had only been seen and recognized by regular viewers of the program who already knew what they were.

But now it looks like Turner and marketing firm Interence Inc. will pay Massachusetts and federal agencies $2 million in compensation for the resources spent during last week's scare. That's about a million dollars to cover costs, and another million that will go to fund other homeland security functions.

While Mooninites signs were put up in 10 cities, only Boston took extreme actions to deal with them, resulting in the rather large bill for law enforcement activities.

In other Mooninite news, G4's Attack of the Show weighed in on the controversy last week. We have video of host Kevin Pereira's analysis of the incident after the jump.

Hey, Brigitte here with TV Squad Daily. I'll be covering the TV stories I find interesting each day, Monday through Friday, in this video blog.

Today on TV Squad Daily:

• Boston's bomb scare turned out to just be advertising for Aqua Teen Hunger Force.
  
• Is all the praise finally going to Jennifer Hudson's head? She describes her time on American Idol as "abusive."
  
• Dustin Diamond was forced to be quarantined while filming Celebrity Fit Club because of something he said to past American Idol contestant Kimberly Locke.
  

The video's embedded below, or you can download the file directly (Quicktime required). You can also subscribe to this vodcast via our feed.

So I watched the TV coverage all day long of the Boston "bombs" that turned out to be electronic devices promoting Cartoon Network's Aqua Teen Hunger Force. And I think it was screwed up on every angle (media, Turner Broadcasting), but the people who deserve the least amount of second guessing from us are the Boston police and city officials.

I mean, they were doing their job. We can't expect every police officer, every city official, every politician, to be hip to what ATHF is. And even if they were, so what? A bomb can't be placed in something with a wacky cartoon character on it? Yeah, they were up for a couple of weeks, but in this day and age you can't be too careful, especially since these things were put in some really odd public places.

After months of teasing and speculation, we finally learned that, yes, there would indeed be an Aqua Teen Hunger Force movie. Now Variety is reporting that the movie is slated for a March release, opening in over 800 theaters. The movie will center on the origin of the anthropomorphic trio of Meatwad, Frylock and Master Shake, a team of talking food who fight crime and solve mysteries, except they really do neither of those things. Trust me, if the concept alone confuses you, you're probably not even reading this anyway. Oh yeah, and the antagonist in the movie is an evil piece of exercise equipment. Fans of Bruce "Don't Call Me Ash" Campbell can look forward to hearing their hero's voice in the upcoming film, along with Rush drummer Neil Peart.

[via Toon Zone]

After watching the first minute of the Aqua Teen Hunger Force movie and jumping around my apartment clapping, squealing and giggling like a little girl in anticipation of the movie's theatrical release sometime next year, I figured I should let those of you who haven't discovered it yet know that AdultSwim.com has the clip, which you can watch and laugh at here. Judging from this minuscule slice of the whole picture pie, it looks as if they're making the show with the fans in mind, and screw anyone who comes into the theater who has never seen the series before. I can't imagine they'd do the movie any other way, since a show about anthropomorphic fast food that interacts with mystical and often evil forces from time and space is really the kind of oddity that people find on their own. I don't predict huge returns for this film, but if it doesn't become an instant cult hit, I'll eat my hat. The hat I made of licorice.

(S02E08) Yet another fantastic episode. I'm really astounded by how well this season is going. This week contained a better look at the inner workings of the hero/super-scientist vs. arch-enemies business, and, for the two of you interested, there's Monarch nudity.

Have you ever had a friend tell you, "you just HAVE to watch this show. You'll love it!" Or is there a show on that looks like something you'd love, because you like the genre or you like the people behind the scenes or the cast, but for some reason you just can't get into the show (maybe it's just not as good as you thought it would be)?  Here's my list of the five shows I wish I was into, but I'm not.

1. Aqua Teen Hunger Force: A lot people have told me that I would love this show. I love f***ed up animated shows, I like pop culture-centered comedy, and I like the idea that the three main heroes are fast foods. But I just can't get into this show. Maybe it's the pace of the show, or the writing, or the fact I always have to really, really listen to Meat to understand what the hell he's saying, I don'ty know. But I'm just not into this show.