Angry ticks firing out of stick figure nipples is the sort of humor that inspired Adult Swim and "Too Many Cooks" (Bitter Films)

This week's column was supposed to be about the ending to 'Lord of The Rings: The Return of The King.' That column has been punted to next week.

There are more important matters to discuss…matters concerning an excessive amount of culinary personnel.

If you've been on the internet any time in the past week, you've probably heard of "Too Many Cooks," a parody of 80s sitcoms from Adult Swim that is receiving critical acclaim as the late night block's magnum opus. This little monstrosity was conceived during a weeklong airing on Adult Swim's 4 A.M. "Infomercial" block, a dark, unspeakable corner of television where no light can reach and only the sleepless and drug-addled dare to venture. If you were to look for this on your TV's info guide, you would simply find a time slot that reads "Infomercials," "Paid Programming," or oddest of all, "Off The Air." When the nation is asleep, and no one is watching, Adult Swim is more than happy to open the asylum cells and let their most twisted concoctions wreak havoc on the airwaves.

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I write this with the assumption that any wandering internet nomad that happens upon my little assortment of words will have already seen this video. If you have not, I can only urge you to go see it. To even begin to explain what it is would be to spoil the experience. Heck, even urging one to see it sort of spoils the experience. "Too Many Cooks" is best enjoyed the way Adult Swim presented it: without warning, without explanation, and without expectation. I first saw the video from a random link, and even though I saw it with no idea of what it would be and was completely blown away by it, I know that I will never experience the sheer terror and hilarity that was enjoyed by those select few stoners that saw it during its original airing like a wide-awake fever dream.

So go ahead and watch it here, but I think it be much better if you saw it at four in the morning. And make sure you roll a strong one before you watch it at that early hour. Yes, I know I am advocating poor sleep habits and drug usage on a university website. Art justifies my harmful advice, dammit!

So, yeah. "Too Many Cooks" is pretty much a 12-minute showcase of all the comedic elements that have become synonymous with Adult Swim. Surrealist/absurdist humor? Check. Catchy music? Check. Pop culture references? Quintuple check. Ridiculous levels of risqué and violent humor? In SPADES. Adult Swim prides itself on being bizarre and incomprehensible, throwing lightning-fast easter egg jokes that only their most hardcore fans can pick out.

But Adult Swim's style, like everything else in the good world of A&E, had its influences; and as I watched "Too Many Cooks" too many times, a certain Oscar-nominated short film was called unto mind: Don Hertzfeldt's 'Rejected.'

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Don Hertzfeldt is an animator that has quickly risen to stardom as one of the most shocking, hilarious, and thought-provoking artists of the 21st century. His most recent work was a macabre couch gag for "The Simpsons," which depicted the TV show as it may look in a distant future ruled by sentient cephalopods. His style is extremely minimalist, largely centering around stick figures and simple shapes. You may have seen his style shamelessly ripped off by recent Pop-Tarts commercials, something that Kellogg's and a creatively bankrupt advertising firm conspired to create following Hertzfeldt's staunch refusal to lend his craft to any commercials.

His bitterness towards such commercialism lies at the heart of 'Rejected.' It's nine minutes of stick figures in rejected network bumpers and food ads, with each commercial being more violent and unhinged than the last. Finally, the chaos reaches a critical mass, resulting in a harrowing finale where Hertzfeldt's world of doodles collapses in on itself.

Though he has never mentioned it, I wouldn't be surprised if Casper Kelly, director of "Too Many Cooks," was inspired by 'Rejected' when he storyboarded his work. Both shorts have a very similar pacing. Both start out with a strange but fairly normal start before taking a very violent turn. But through the chaos, both stories are establishing a strange little reality that their characters inhabit, and at the end, we watch that reality go haywire. And, of course, both shorts take a great joy at taking something relatively innocent like an 80s sitcom or a family-oriented TV network and turning it into the basis for something disturbing, a trait that is frequently found in Adult Swim stalwarts like 'Harvey Birdman,' 'Robot Chicken,' and 'Aqua Teen Hunger Force.'

It's funny to see how Hertzfeldt's brand of subversive humor has been built upon and popularized by Adult Swim. There is a whole generation of college students who spent the darkest hours of the night tuned in to Cartoon Network to see this freak show of non sequiturs and gross-out humor. It has helped shows like 'Futurama' and 'Family Guy' return from the grave of cancellation and find mainstream success. In the process, the network's own original creations have slowly accumulated widespread appeal, culminating in the ridiculous viral sensation that is "Too Many Cooks." For older audiences (i.e.: your mom), this strange mash of nonsense, parody, and bloody cat puppets probably will go over their heads. But millenials have embraced this weirdness, allowing it to shape their sense of humor the way "The Simpsons" influenced the youth of the 90s. There's nothing funnier to this generation than a show designed to go off-the-rails and cross every line imaginable, and no better-timed joke than one that makes absolutely no sense. And now that idea of humor has melded with our own, becoming a part of the college student vernacular.

My desk lamp talks to me at night. He tells me to kick things.

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