Wolf Gnards

Boys have a infinite amount of possibilities. They can be Batman, Superman, Spider-Man, hell, even Aquaman is better than Rainbow Brite, but for girls it's either Wonder Woman or bust (insert Wonder Woman bust jokes here). In imaginationland, girls are relegated to being Spider-Man's aunt or Superman's girlfriend. Because what is a knight without a damsel in distress? Then a very forward thinking cartoon executive one day said, “Why don't we have girl characters that do something?” Girls that do things, what a revolutionary idea. Girls that are not just on train tracks. Girls that are not just in towers. From that day, a rule was created: there will be a female charter on the cartoon team, not be saved, but helping to save, BUT there can be only one. And she must be cute.

And this is weird lesson that's relevant in just about any cartoon: girl's can be equals as long as they're aesthetically pleasant. When creating charters you don't accidentally draw a hot girl standing next two mutant reptiles... creation is planned, at least, on kids programing. Even as cartoon girls come up in the world, it's still have to look good and please men.

Smurfette

She was the original only girl, and the most prolific. Why there were thousands, possibly millions of male Smurfs to her one little ol' blue self, but they're Belgium so anything goes. She has her choice between Brainy Smurf, Hefty Smurf, and her favorite Poppa Smurf (he loves it when she calls him Big Poppa). Smurfette was actually created by Gargamel to do what women do best: cause trouble. No lie, that's her actual back story. Lesson: If you're sufficiently cute, you can get an entire village of men to do things for you.

Cheetara

Ain't nothing like a girl who knows how to work a staff. All those Thundercats and only one female amongst them (let's not put WilyKit into the equation). Now Lion-O might have still had the mind of a 10-year-old, but don't tell me Tygra and Panthero, didn't do the math. Four males, two females, and a Snarf, and only one of the females is legal. Cheetara, by the way, was the first women I ever saw naked, now she was cartoon and didn't have nipples, but still significant. Up there with Phoebe Cates and Jamie Lee Curtis. Lesson: Enjoy your beauty marks.

Firestar

Firestar was on the show Spider-Man and his Amazing Threesome. Spider-man, Iceman, and Firestar were set up for a nice little love triangular. Obviously, fire and ice go together perfectly, but Firestar looks suspiciously like Mary Jane, and we all know Petie's a sucker for red heads. Producers originally wanted the Human Torch, but his Fantastic Four rights were all tied up, which actually prevented Spider-Man his Amazing Friends from being a huge superhero sausage fest. Lesson: Don't be a tease, or your boyfriend will melt.

Gadget

Gadget and the Rescue Rangers are actually interesting because there was an actual love triangle written into this Disney afternoon show. Here's the interesting bit though, Chip & Dale, Gadget's two primary suitors, are not genetically similar enough to mate (at least, I don't think they are, I haven't seen any mousemonks roaming around). The only one that could pair up with Gadget was Monterrey Jack and he was more interested in fighting, cheese, and his man/boy relationship with a fly. Lesson: Let young men fight over you until an older man comes around.

April O'Neil

I didn't know anything about sexuality when Ninja Turtles hit the seen. I just knew that April O'Neil made me feel very, very funny. Why would they make character on a kid's show so insanely hot? She was hotter than her comic book counterpart. Even as a kid I knew that the only thing that separated me from full frontal was a little zipper on April's jump suit. Lesson: Cleavage can make up for any hasty decision.

Cleo from the Catillac Cats

Heathcliff actually featured two lady cats, but they never had scenes together. Sonja was Heathcliff's main squeeze and was basically a white, chubby female version of Heathcliff. But the cat of our dreams, of course, was Cleo, better known as the cat in leg warmers. There is no reason why a cat should be drawn that good looking in a kids cartoon. 1) It's a kid's show, no reason to be hot. 2) She's a cat, no reason to be hot. On a side note, Dee Dee Supreme knitted some leg warmers for our cat, she kicked them off without seconds. I also found something unjust that Heathcliff's girlfriend was not as good looking as Cleo. I mean, he was the star of the show. Lesson: Only date the coolest cat in town.

Let's not forget the princess from Voltron, Cover Girl and Scarlett from GI Joe, Penny from Inspector Gadget, and He-man's Teela (Not to mention the She-ra universe).

What does this say about feminism in cartoons, and how boys view women through television? Probably absolutely nothing. Maybe, good people are cute, bad people are ugly. Though, boys should enjoy the time being a hero because in a few years that's all going to stop, and the ladies will be slyly running things with their leg warmers and yellow jump suits.

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Enough attention has been given to Frost/Nixon... the real interview of the century is Heeb/Gnards. Check out my interview with Heeb Magazine to learn everything you never wanted to learn about Wolf Gnards. Enjoy.

Wolf Gnards Interview with Heeb Magazine

As of March 2009, Bill Gates is the richest man in the world at around $40 billion. If that's what a pants wearing man can make, how much could a fine feathered duck possibly be worth? There's no dispute Scrooge McDuck is the richest duck in the world, richer than Flintheart Glomgold and wealthier than John D. Rockerduck. But exactly how wealthy is Scrooge McDuck? Scrooge has unlimited fictional resources that include Gizmoducks and time travel, deep sea diving and outer space exploration, but these resources vary from writer to writer, so determining the precise wealth is a gray area.

The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck by Don Rosa claims “Five multiplujillion, nine impossibidillion, seven fantasticatrillion dollars and sixteen cents.” For some reason, that number seems slightly on the fictional side. But a fictional duck has fictional wealth, why not, right? Forbes Magazine in the famous Forbes Fictional 15 states that Scrooge is the wealthiest of fictional characters but at a measly 28.8 billion. Nearly half as much as Gates, I don't think so. I don't even know where they're getting this number from, I mean, they have Ming the Merciless on the list and I'm fairly certain his wealth cannot be measure by Earth standards, he's got space bucks or moon dollars. The fans of Wolf Gnards insist, nay, demand that I show the work, and Forbes should be held to the same standards. It's as if people think that Forbes is a more trusted and dependable institution than Wolf Gnards.

The real answer to Scrooge McDuck's worth: $ 27 Trillion (That's Trillion with a “T”)

I'll break it down for you. Carl Barks ,the creator of Scrooge McDuck, Duckburg, and the Money Bin, states that the Money Bin is three “cubic acres,” now an acre is a measurement of area and not length, but let's assume Barks meant a length of 43,560 ft. The Money Bin would therefor have a volume of 247,961,850,048,000 cubic feet, or roughly the size of three football stadiums stacked one on top of the other. The McDuck Money Bin is the largest structure in Duckburg, so this sounds about right. We know most of the money in the bin is in coin form, we've seen Scrooge swim it, but to find the value we have to assume that each coin is the equivalent to a dollar and is roughly the size of a silver dollar. By finding the dimensions of a silver dollar, we can calculate a silver dollar volume of 2736.22 mm. If we convert the bin to millimeters and divide by the volume of silver dollars, a maximum of 27,621,599,101,910 coins can fit in the vault. Allowing for empty space and different value coins we can round down to $27 trillion, actually $27 trillion and 10 cents (let's not forget his number one dime).

However, this isn't Scrooge's net value, just what's in his actual Money Bin. This doesn't count all of McDuck Industries: his mills, gold mines, oil rigs, and islands of diamonds. Whatever his value is, I think it's safe to say, it's a little more than Bill Gates.

Forbes, you've been gnarded, yo! Leave the useless facts to the professionals.

Top Chef is back, and then means one thing and one thing only: Padma. Forget the food. Forget the Quick Fire Challenges. Forget the chefs. It's all about Padma: introducing, eating, and wearing evening dresses in the middle of the afternoon. With Top Chef in Las Vegas this year, expect plenty of showgirls looking sexy but I think the best girls were already there.

1.Padma Lakshmi

What I like most about Padma is that she was married to Salman Rushdie. This immediately says two things about her: she digs smart guys and looks don't matter. These bode very well for me. Her arm scar works well for us normies as well. Padma received her scar after a grizzly car wreck, and it gave all us nerds an in. Like Tina Fey's scar, it takes a perfect looking model and brings her down to a Salman Rushdie level of self esteem. Plus, her name's Padma and the sounds a lot like Padme, and that ain't not too bad.

2.Kelly Choi

The fact that Bravo hired Kelly Choi to host Top Chef Masters leads me to believe that there's a study out there that states “Foodies love Asians.” When she first walked out, all I could say was, “That's not Padma.” It's tough not being Padma.

3. Gail Simmons

Some of you my argue, but to me Gail is by far the most attractive woman on Top Chef. She's not super model tall and skinny, but she's almost painfully cute. Stuffed animal cute. Unicorn sexy, if you well. Plus, she's the only one of the three with real food street cred. Brought up in the mean streets of Le Cirque, she's the only one who's actually qualified to be on a food show.

Top Chef Bonus

A little something for the ladies - Tom Colicchio.

Personally, I don't see it, but women found Yul Brynner sexy, too. I have a number of female friends that want to pour oil on Tom's head and rub it all over their bodies. Bon Appetit.

NBC has already started their big Heroes marketing campaign, and in preparation I've been developing the Hiro Meter. The Hiro Meter doesn't gauge Hiro's power levels, but how much he has let down the Asian community. I love Hiro, I love Masi Oka, but he really has become the William Hung of superheroes. I've always been very vocal about NBC's continued emasculation of Masi Oka, and I'm interested to see if it continues in Heroes 4th season. The problem is everyone loves Masi because he's as cuddly as a Mogwai, he's as close a human being can possibly get to plush toy, but to keep him at this cuddly marketable state, he needs to be kept nice and degradated. Every season is the same for Hiro: he goofs his way through a mission, something terrible happens to him (someone he loves dies, loses his powers, etc.), he manages to shine for three seconds and save the world, something worse happens to him (he's trapped in time, brain explodes). Heaven forbid Hiro kisses a girl or uses his powers to the fullest. No one else on the show gets pantsed half us much as Hiro.

So, as the fourth season of Heroes begins Monday, September 21, 2009, it will be interesting to see if Hiro continues his cycle of humiliation, or the writers finally let his character grow some much needed gnards. For this purpose, I've created a finely tuned meter that can detect just how much Hiro has disgraced Asians everywhere with his Uncle Chen stereotypical antics, or if he's actually been a positive Asian influence. And, of course, why must Masi Oka be positive Asian role model? He's just an actor after all, but he's just about the only Asian actor on TV. He's all we got, and I want someone kids can look up to. Otherwise this happens.

How will Masi do? Will he be a positive influence, or should we just let Mickey Rooney take over the part?

From my grab bag of goodies, here's an email from a new Gnard follower:

I just came across your website, and it's like coming home...

I was wondering if you've ever pondered this about Gremlins, which to this day (and I'm a physician) still gnaws at me:

The three rules for keeping a Mogwai are well known: never get them wet, keep them out of direct sunlight, and NEVER feed them after midnight. The problem is, every given moment in time is after the preceding midnight, so when can you actually start feeding them again?

I've discussed this with scores of people, and every person eventually comes up with sunrise, but this is utterly arbitrary: why does the sun being in the sky make a difference? And furthermore, IF that was indeed was the case, should the time at which one STOPS feeding be sun DOWN, not midnight (well before which it is dark everywhere).

Most importantly, whenever the safe time to feed again actually is, it's never explicitly stated, so the ensuing hijinx were inevitable.

I would love your insight - perhaps I'll finally get some sleep.

JPC

Well, JPC, as a physician you probably know that Mogwai physiology is entirely dependent on both the Mogwaian metabolic rate and relative blood sugar levels. During transformation, Mogwai form more of Chrysalis than a cocoon. This means the furry little critters use all that chickeny goodness (or whatever midnight snack) to form a gooey sludge in their blood called Hemolymph the crucial ingredient for gremlin metamorphosis.

The never feed after midnight is probably more of a good rule of thumb than a strict doctrine. There's most likely a window of opportunity when a Mogwai's body is primed for transformation. Perhaps, 11:50 PM to 3:00 AM, or 12:15 AM to 12:45 AM, whatever it is, it's easier and safer to just say after midnight. The reset cycle is determined not through time of day, but through the Mogawai's own internal clock. Meaning when it wakes up. It's the same with diabetics, hormones are released during sleep that can regulate blood sugar levels. Magwai hormones simply regulate demonic energies.

The one flaw, of course, being that since Mogwai and gremlins turn into steaming piles of goo in sunlight, they would most likely be nocturnal creatures, and wouldn't sleep at night at all.

Some more helpful tips...

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