big white face

Strong Bad Email #70

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Not the first time this has happened, today.

Jen C. asks Strong Bad why he is so mean to the guy with the big white face and gray body.

Cast (in order of appearance): Strong Bad, Strong Sad, The Poopsmith

Places: Computer Room, The Field, King of Town's Castle

Computer: Compy 386

Date: Monday, April 21, 2003

Running Time: 2:51

Page Title: Compy 086!!

DVD: strongbad_email.exe Disc Two

Transcript

STRONG BAD: Hoo! Cha! Cheritiza! Hooritajuzu-duh-email!

{reading}

Dear Strong Bad,

Why are you so mean to the guy with
the big white face and gray body?

Jen C from Millbrae , CA

{Strong Bad sings "Dear Strong Bad" in a slightly high-pitched voice}

STRONG BAD: {typing} Big, white face and gray body?!? Who is she talking about? Hang on a second.

{types run "M4RZ1P4N"}

STRONG BAD: Is she talking about Marzipan?

{Marzipan's picture shows up on his computer}

STRONG BAD: No, her head is... more like a baseball bat.

{types run "bu-hubs"}

STRONG BAD: Maybe Bubs? No. Bubs is definitely of the blue-headed persuasion.

{types run "undabite"}

STRONG BAD: Homestar's got the white head, but... his body's just kinda that red skirt. {laughs a little as he speaks}

{types run "no-neck"}

STRONG BAD: Strong Mad doesn't really have a head or a body.

{types run "dacheese"}

STRONG BAD: The Cheat's physiology just plain baffles me.

{types run "mr.smith"}

STRONG BAD: Um, the Poopsmith? Or the Poopsmith! But why would she think he has a gray body? Maybe her monitor isn't calibrated right. Or maybe she's like... on one of those old black and white monitors.

{types run "b/w"; it converts his monitor to an old Macintosh layout}

STRONG BAD: That's it! {tabs out of the Macintosh layout, starts typing} Yeah, maybe I am a little hard on that guy. I should do something nice for him.

{Strong Bad gets up, Strong Sad walks past}

STRONG SAD: Just on my way to do some stuff... Oh! What's this say? {reads the email, mumbling} Finally! My comeuppance has arrived! I should go wait somewhere inconspicuous and act none the wiser.

{Cut to a screen of the Macintosh setup with the caption "A little while later..." with the wristwatch cursor on the screen. Then cut to The Field, where Strong Sad is standing.}

STRONG SAD: Oh, nothing, nothing...

{Strong Bad starts walking past Strong Sad with a cake behind his back}

STRONG SAD: Oh, hey, Strong Bad!

STRONG BAD: Hey, wiggidy-wiener.

STRONG SAD: Did you have something you wanted to tell me?

STRONG BAD: Ummm... you're the wiggidy-wiener?

STRONG SAD: No, not that. What are you holding behind your back?

STRONG BAD: Ummm... a single deuce? Dooj? {flips him the single deuce}

STRONG SAD: No, your other back!

STRONG BAD: Uhhh... cake for the Poopsmith? Dooj? {throws the cake in Strong Sad's face} Aww, look what you made me do! Now I gotta make The Cheat make me another cake. {walks off}

STRONG SAD: I wish I could say this was the first time that this has happened to me. Today.

{Back to the Mac screen, now reading "Another while later..." Cut to the Poopsmith and his pile of whatsit. Strong Bad walks up to him with another cake.}

STRONG BAD: Hey, doodoo man! I just wanted to apologize for throwing that first cake at Strong Sad. I put some beans on it. You know. In case maybe you wanted beans on it. {The Poopsmith shrugs} I hope there's no hard feelings.

{The Poopsmith takes the cake}

STRONG BAD: Anyways, it really {covers his "nose"} stinks over here, so, uhh... {gestures backwards with his thumb} I'm—I'm gonna go. Enjoy the cake.

{Strong Bad walks off. The Poopsmith flinches when The Paper comes down. The Poopsmith pokes it with his shovel. The end is on a loop, so he does this about every 10 seconds}

Easter Eggs

"Enjoy the cake."

• Click on the image of The Cheat to check out his physiology.
• At the end click on the bit of whatsit on The Poopsmith's shovel to download the Mac desktops as wallpaper.
• Also at the end, click on the cake to see what it looks like. Keep clicking on it to add toppings to it. The toppings are added in this order: fortune cookies, Chinese food (which looks like it might be General Tso's Chicken), grapes, Golden Grahams cereal, ice cubes, lemon slices, and finally, a Swiss Cake Roll and the "50" candle from 50 emails.
  • The cake Easter egg will not work on some computers, probably because the cake is stored in a separate Flash file.
  • The cake reads: Sorry I threw that 1st cake at Strong Sad. There is a you that points at a caricature of the Poopsmith. There is a me that points to a caricature of Strong Bad.

Fun Facts

Trivia

• The first cake read, "Hey!! Poopsmith! Here's a cake!" However, the second cake (when zoomed in, not seen in the closeup) reads, "Sorry for screwing up the jumble caper." (also see Inside References)
• The label on the disk in the floppy disk container reads "world games".
• The YouTube description for this email is "After some soul-searching and looking at low-res portraits of everyone, Strong Bad realizes he needs to apologize to the Poopsmith."
• This email marks the first time "dooj" is spoken.

Remarks

• It's strange that Strong Bad says he's been hard on The Poopsmith, since in your friends, he says he didn't harm The Poopsmith because, on account of The Poopsmith's profession, "his tolerance for pain's gotta be through the roof."
• In the part where Strong Bad says, "Big, white face and gray body?!? Who is she talking about? Hang on a second...," he's actually typing it, meaning he's sending a reply. Unless he was thinking out loud, he should have said "you", not "she".
• Even though Strong Bad has no visible nose, he covers the area where his nose would be if he had one when he says "It really stinks over here..."
• Strong Bad's theory that Jen C.'s monitor displays images in black and white can be applied to make Homestar Runner a viable person to apologize to as well as the Poopsmith and Strong Sad, and, if he were to have continued, Homsar, Coach Z, the King of Town, The Hornblower, and many others.

Goofs

• Strong Bad's reflection is covered by the pictures.
• Strong Sad's reflection isn't affected by contrast change.
• The bottom of Strong Sad's reflection is cut off early at the Compy.
• If the contrast is changed before the Mac desktop comes up, then the Mac desktop appears blue instead of grey.
• When Strong Bad looks away from the castle before telling the Poopsmith to enjoy the cake, his right eye remains bigger than his left.

Inside References

• "Sorry for screwing up the jumble caper" (see Trivia) is The Cheat's continued apology for ruining the caper.
• When Strong Sad asks what Strong Bad is holding behind his back, he says the Single Deuce, which is Pom Pom's gesture from "the bird".
• The Cheat's photo shows him smoking a pipe, as per his nicotine habit seen in The Cheat's Smoking Challenge and Where's The Cheat?. His addiction is later revisited in montage.
• When Strong Bad types out Marzipan's name ("M4RZ1P4N"), it is written in a form of leet.
• The Poopsmith's second cake is another example of a concoction.
• In the Easter egg, the final addition to the cake includes the candle shaped as a 50, which was previously used on the cake in 50 emails.
  • The whole cake at the end, and all its toppings, is a live action food.

Real-World References

• The email's page title says "Compy 086" instead of "Compy 386", and there's an icon on the black and white Mac desktop that says "Compy 086". This is a reference to the Intel 8086, the first 16-bit processor introduced by Intel. Macs of that vintage ran on Motorola 68000 processors, not Intel processors. It may be inferred that Strong Bad was using either a screen simulator or fast-loading OS emulator because the OS is at the desktop immediately after Strong Bad's keystroke and is not shown booting.
  • One explanation of the "Compy 086" designation is that with the introduction of the 68020 processor, Motorola's processors were sometimes referred to by dropping the "68" and abbreviating their names to their last three digits - Macs were said to run on "020", "030" and "040" processors. It is reasoned that that is where the "0" in "086" may have come from in this email.
  • However, it should be noted that Apple officially pronounced the processor lines by their full generation names and by spelling out all the numbers in the names individually, (i.e. "six-eight-oh-two-oh, six-eight-oh-three-oh, six-eight-oh-four-oh"). Many Mac users followed that or a similar full pronunciation of the processor generation names (the other popular variant being "six-eighty-twenty, six-eighty-thirty, six-eighty-forty"), although for convenience the triple digit abbreviation was sometimes used in third-party product literature. In other words, the aforementioned triple digit abbreviation was not officially used by Apple to refer to the processors, nor was it necessarily used by many users.
• The Mac desktop shown is most likely of a version of System 6 with Multi-Finder enabled, hence the application menu on the top right. It may be a release of System 5 instead, but that is unlikely since System 5 was replaced relatively quickly by System 6. However, it is clearly not a version of System 7 since, although it looked similar to its predecessors in B&W mode, the menubar lacks the Balloon Help icon found in System 7.
• The Mac desktop has a floppy disk icon that reads "The Manhole", one of the first computer games by Cyan, the company that would go on to make Myst.
• Visible on the Mac's menu bar are a closed pair of eyes from the old Mac shareware program MyEyes. These eyes would open to follow the cursor around and blink periodically.
• The Apple desktop has Karateka on it, a karate combat game developed by Jordan Mechner in 1984. Karateka was popular in the 1980s, so it can be inferred that this Macintosh environment is very old.

Fast Forward

• Strong Bad will later have a similar chant in the email funny.
• World Games, the game that appears in the floppy disk container, will later be featured in Disk 4 of 12 - World Games.
• The Manhole would serve as the source for Pom Pom's costume in Halloween Hide & Seek.

DVD Version

• All of the Easter eggs are still viewable using either the angle button on the DVD remote or pressing down to find the bad graphics Strong Bad at the end of the email.

External Links

• watch "big white face"
• watch "big white face" on YouTube
• watch "big white face" on the old Flash site
• view the Flash file for "big white face"
• view the cake
• download the Mac desktop (800×600)
• download the Mac desktop (1024×768)