SOB
Okay, I need to do some explanation of the title of this post. SOB in this case stands for "Sons of Butcher," a cartoon show about two brothers and their "friend" who run a butcher shop by day, and have a heavy metal band on the side. The two brothers are Ricky and Sol Butcher - Ricky is SUPPOSED to be 17 (yeah, right) and has a thing for really huge boobs (which he calls "zubes") on women much older than himself. He's a complete perv. This fellow is not discerning at all, except he prefers married women over single ones (usually). Ricky plays guitar and is the frontman for the band. Sol is SUPPOSED to be 19 (an even bigger "yeah, right") and is a recovering alcoholic bent on making his butcher shop a huge success and do his dead daddy proud, who he inherited the butcher's craft from. Sol has a nasty habit of malapropisms. He also plays guitar and sings a number of songs, and well, you'll hear more about that later. Then there's Doug. Doug is just a strange fellow with an even stranger background. Raised in Africa by a non-descript African tribe, he couldn't pass his test of manhood so was shipped off to Hamilton, Ontario, Canada to eek out a living there. Doug is white, doesn't speak with any sort of discernable accent and much of the first season of the show has Doug trying to reconcile his lack of manhood and in the process has some pretty weird adventures. Oh, he was hired orginally by Sol and Ricky's father to be the janitor of the butcher's shop, a job he loves and is very good at...most of the time. Doug is supposed to be 18 - something easier to believe than the other two since the actor who plays him looks fairly young (the guy is actually 29 though). And I almost forgot...Doug has a unibrow and plays bass in the band.
Now the setting is Hamilton, Ontario Canada, also known as "Steeltown."
The show is done in flash with an insteresting stylistic twist...the heads of Doug, Sol and Ricky are rotoscoped from the actors heads. They are the only three characters in the show that have a "realistic" look. (Think of the rotoscoping that Ralph Bakshi did in his butchered version of the "Lord of the Rings" and you got it about right - except Sons of Butcher do it better.)
So, that's the background. The show's first season is actually pretty bad. Bad in a "My God, I can't stop looking at the train wreck" sort of way (although one of my absoulte favourite eppies is a first season eppie) and is defintely not for the faint of heart. The second season is better with smoother animation and better writing, but it's still very much a "guy" kind of show. Scat humour and innuendos are the name of the game, and of course, with Ricky working hard to get laid or get the band gigs, Sol desperately is trying to compete with other local butchers to get his shop on the top of the butcher's block and Doug just having the most surreal adventures going there's plenty to stare at in awe...or not. Doug's adventures especially make you go "huh?" It's like being on an acid trip, but without the acid. Doug's often said "Bitch, are you fo' real?" is pretty apt for most of his experiences. The show always end with the boys' three storylines coming together and ending with a song or two.
So, to promote the show and in the hopes that it will be renewed for a third season, Sons of Butcher, the band, are touring Canada. Teletoon is promoting it and even have a little commercial to do so. It's a disturbing commerical (funny as hell, but disturbing because Sol isn't wearing any pants O.O). Teletoon also has a contest to go with the tour. A set of free tickets go to one lucky winner at each venue the boys play at.
So, on a lark, I entered the contest, then promptly forgot about it, because really, I rarely win anything and given how the show has gone, I wasn't about to part with $15 of my hard earned cash to go see a silly cartoon based band. It would be like going to see Josey and the Pussycats, but without the pseudo-wholesomness and pretty babes in leotard.
Instead I'd get one fat guy, one heavyset fellow and one slender fellow in spandex. Yow!
To make a long story short. I won for the Vancovuer venue. O.O I thougt it was a joke at first until the promoter hounded me for proof of age and consent form so she could send me my tickets. I finally gave in and got it and two days later, I had VIP passes to see Sons of Butcher and their opening act, The Great Orbax.
Since I had two of these passes, I invited cheebz to come with me, since he's the only other person than my friend Ira who likes heavy metal amd lives anywhere close to Vancouver. Yeah, I'm a metalhead from waaaaaaaaaaaaaay back. :P
cheebz was even more apprehensive about going to see SOB than I was. He thought they kinda sucked and in looking up stuff on YouTube, with its crummy feeds and tinny sound, they did sound pretty bad. Still I was going to give them the benefit of a doubt - I figured they'd likely be a good bar band and leave it at that (that was my story and I was sticking to it). I'd go, make an appearance and, since the concert took place on a work weekday, I'd leave at 11:00 to get home to get into bed before it got too late. I had work in the morning.
So, we go to the concert. Funtimes in the line up. Folks were pleasant and while I had been making jokes about how maybe 10 people would show up, it turned out there was more...a lot more, and people were coming from Abbotsford and some fellow made a 12 hour trip JUST TO SEE SOB!
Wow. Just wow. I took all of 10 minutes to get get to the Red Room, where they were showing. And there were goths, metalheads, rockers and me...likely the oldest person there AND dressed in my work clothes because I didn't have much time to go and change into something more appropriate for a concert setting. The big difference is instead of up, I wore my hair down. I figured if I was gonna do the headbanging thing, the hair HAD to be down (Note: my hair is waist length).
We get in and pass by the table of goodies for the two acts. I bought the CDs for Sons of Butcher and their manager, who was manning the table, spotted me with the VIP pass and told an assistant (who I suspect was his girlfriend) to give me a poster (which was selling for $10). As I talked to him he told me Teletoon just told him that at each show, someone would be able to get in for free with a guest. Nothing else. No names, no thought to anything. Even the guys didn't know who won or even that there was a contest initially (as I found out later). He figured winners should get some goodies too so he gave away posters and stickers to those he spotted as winners and he then told me to make sure I stuck around for the end of the show to get the guys to sign just about everything I had on me. I figured, okay. Whatever.
So, the opening act, The Great Orbax comes out. Now given that the main band was a heavy metal band, we figured Orbax was a band too...nope, it was a magician. Well, more of a freak magician. He did things with a condom and staple gun that will make me never look at the two the same way again. I got called up on the staple gun thing...I got to staple a card to the man's face. Let's just say after being told to choose a word between face, ass and tits, I'm glad I chose face. >.<
Here's me standing around on stage waiting for The Great Orbax to do something Great (pictures courtesy of cheebz's cell phone - so please don't mind the sucky photos and I look way fatter in them than I actually am - at least I think so, YMMV):
(Note: Click on the photos for a bigger picture with a short description of what it's about.)
He did one of those walk on shattered glass things and decided to make things interesting by laying face down on the stuff and having some sweet young thing stand on the back of his head. Here's a shot of that:
(Note: Click on the photos for a bigger picture with a short description of what it's about.)
Yeah, I know, cheebz takes crappy pictures on his cell phone. :P He couldn't help it with all the jumping around he did. :D
Then after much oohing and aweing and throwing up in my mouth a little, Sons of Butcher finally came on and the fun really began.
I tried to set up a little video that cheebz took of the boys playing. For some reason it won't appear so you'll have to trust me that it was a cool little thing, if a bit choppy since the boy was bouncing around to the music.
Needless to say the boys played their charactes on stage, wearing the all too revealing spandex costumes modelled after their cartoon characters' costumes - and you know what spandex does so it's not a place we wanna go right now...or do we.
Anyway, the guys are much cuter in person than in their cartoon. And taller too. Especially Sol (I will not ruin the effect of using actors names so I'll stick with their cartoon names). And well, they're much better musicians than we expected. Let's say that cheebz was sold and so was I. Sol especially did a cover of "Doncha" which had us howling. Talk about "butchering" a song. Still, he did it intentionally and didn't change the words to suit gender. It was hilarious. They were hilarous although I still maintain that Doug has the best singing voice of the three of them. And my god that guy has a rubber face. He was priceless AND sang my favourite song, from my favourite episode...can you tell Doug is my favourite character (maybe it is MY drugs talking).
And they kept on dissing Fernie. Man, these guys HATED Fernie. Despised it. Ricky especially took every opportunity to say nasty things about it. Eventually I found out why.
Here's some very blurry pictures of the guys performing. Trying to make out human forms might be difficult but what the hey, cheebz sent 'em too me so I may as well show 'em off:
(Note: Click on the photos for a bigger picture with a short description of what it's about.)
I was having such a good time, I forgot the time and stayed to the end of the show and yes, got to meet the guys.
What a trio of really nice guys. They were funny and friendly and extremely patient. Doug and Sol were especially mobbed by fans and both were just really cool. Sol especially seemed to enjoy chatting up anyone who wanted to talk. cheebz and he had some fun banter.
So, here's me with the guys. Sol wasn't with Doug and Ricky so I had to get pictures separately. I'm sitting down with Doug and Ricky because...er...I'm taller than they are. Sol was the only one taller than me. :P Doug is still my favourite (and when I told him so, he did this cute little thing and asked me not to tell the other guys). Hey, I wasn't the only one. Two girls threw their bras at the man on stage...and someone threw a lemon at him too. Dunno what that was about. Doug had some fun with the bras. He draped them over things, sniffed them, played with them...I think he tried to drape it on a guitar at one point, but they kept falling off. He had way too much fun with those things. In the end he gave them backed...signed.
(Note: Click on the photos for a bigger picture with a short description of what it's about.)
Doug and Ricky kept spelling my name wrong too...I told Sol who wrote on the poster how dumb the other two were and how smart he was. cheebz and I cracked up at him. Sol and I also had a talk about the show, how they were hoping to get a third season and even chatted a bit about animation. I told him "the love of my life" lived in Hamilton AND is an animator and we had a chat about how most animators hated their show and why and how it was very likely Al would have hated it. In the end he signed my VIP pass with "I hate your buddy." cheebz made the comment that this was his first concert and Sol said, "What? Are you twelve?" to which I said, "Nah, but I bet I'm the oldest person here. " When he asked me how old I was and I told him, he looked around for a moment and then said, "Maybe one or two are older but you're up there." When I told him I had won the contest for the Vancouver venue as he was signing my pass, he said "I was wondering what those were."
I also had a good chance to have a chat with Doug after getting a hug from him (he's very huggable) and got the story on Fernie. Apparently it was their worst concert and somewhat of a disaster. Apparently a bunch of folks from Ontario showed up and tried to be "cool" by just being nasty to the band. They had some air fresheners made which someone tried to steal (and gathing by the fact they didn't have any for the show in Vancouver, they made off with most or all of 'em). Doug said there was a bit of a tussel trying to get them back. In his own words "We almost had to fight our way out of there." Some people's kids, eh?
So cheebz and I left and were pumped, having had a great time and enjoying ourselves tremendously and really glad the band was much better than we anticipated (and being pleasantly suprised). Mind you, even if they had sucked, the fact that they're such awesome guys personally would have made it worth the evening out alone.
So, for your viewing pleasure, here are the goodies I did get, signed by the band (and on the VIP pass The Great Orbax), minus the poster because it was way too big to try and even scan in (in the spirit of the show, the poster is going up on the bathroom door). Yay! (I've included cheebz's stuff too because he also had things signed and whatnot but I think given the fact that I have huge "zubes" I got a bit more out of 'em than cheebz did. Yay zubes!)
(Note: Click on the photos for a bigger picture with a short description of what it's about.)
And for who are morbidly curious, here are some links with more info on the band and the boys:
Some YouTube stuff since my photos and video suck: http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Sons+of+Butcher
Their official website: http://www.sonsofbutcher.com/
Their Cartoon website on Teletoon: http://thedetour.ca/shows/shows.php?showName=sonsOfButcher
For those who are even more interested, Doug is played by the cartoon artist Zebarf!
Now the setting is Hamilton, Ontario Canada, also known as "Steeltown."
The show is done in flash with an insteresting stylistic twist...the heads of Doug, Sol and Ricky are rotoscoped from the actors heads. They are the only three characters in the show that have a "realistic" look. (Think of the rotoscoping that Ralph Bakshi did in his butchered version of the "Lord of the Rings" and you got it about right - except Sons of Butcher do it better.)
So, that's the background. The show's first season is actually pretty bad. Bad in a "My God, I can't stop looking at the train wreck" sort of way (although one of my absoulte favourite eppies is a first season eppie) and is defintely not for the faint of heart. The second season is better with smoother animation and better writing, but it's still very much a "guy" kind of show. Scat humour and innuendos are the name of the game, and of course, with Ricky working hard to get laid or get the band gigs, Sol desperately is trying to compete with other local butchers to get his shop on the top of the butcher's block and Doug just having the most surreal adventures going there's plenty to stare at in awe...or not. Doug's adventures especially make you go "huh?" It's like being on an acid trip, but without the acid. Doug's often said "Bitch, are you fo' real?" is pretty apt for most of his experiences. The show always end with the boys' three storylines coming together and ending with a song or two.
So, to promote the show and in the hopes that it will be renewed for a third season, Sons of Butcher, the band, are touring Canada. Teletoon is promoting it and even have a little commercial to do so. It's a disturbing commerical (funny as hell, but disturbing because Sol isn't wearing any pants O.O). Teletoon also has a contest to go with the tour. A set of free tickets go to one lucky winner at each venue the boys play at.
So, on a lark, I entered the contest, then promptly forgot about it, because really, I rarely win anything and given how the show has gone, I wasn't about to part with $15 of my hard earned cash to go see a silly cartoon based band. It would be like going to see Josey and the Pussycats, but without the pseudo-wholesomness and pretty babes in leotard.
Instead I'd get one fat guy, one heavyset fellow and one slender fellow in spandex. Yow!
To make a long story short. I won for the Vancovuer venue. O.O I thougt it was a joke at first until the promoter hounded me for proof of age and consent form so she could send me my tickets. I finally gave in and got it and two days later, I had VIP passes to see Sons of Butcher and their opening act, The Great Orbax.
Since I had two of these passes, I invited cheebz to come with me, since he's the only other person than my friend Ira who likes heavy metal amd lives anywhere close to Vancouver. Yeah, I'm a metalhead from waaaaaaaaaaaaaay back. :P
cheebz was even more apprehensive about going to see SOB than I was. He thought they kinda sucked and in looking up stuff on YouTube, with its crummy feeds and tinny sound, they did sound pretty bad. Still I was going to give them the benefit of a doubt - I figured they'd likely be a good bar band and leave it at that (that was my story and I was sticking to it). I'd go, make an appearance and, since the concert took place on a work weekday, I'd leave at 11:00 to get home to get into bed before it got too late. I had work in the morning.
So, we go to the concert. Funtimes in the line up. Folks were pleasant and while I had been making jokes about how maybe 10 people would show up, it turned out there was more...a lot more, and people were coming from Abbotsford and some fellow made a 12 hour trip JUST TO SEE SOB!
Wow. Just wow. I took all of 10 minutes to get get to the Red Room, where they were showing. And there were goths, metalheads, rockers and me...likely the oldest person there AND dressed in my work clothes because I didn't have much time to go and change into something more appropriate for a concert setting. The big difference is instead of up, I wore my hair down. I figured if I was gonna do the headbanging thing, the hair HAD to be down (Note: my hair is waist length).
We get in and pass by the table of goodies for the two acts. I bought the CDs for Sons of Butcher and their manager, who was manning the table, spotted me with the VIP pass and told an assistant (who I suspect was his girlfriend) to give me a poster (which was selling for $10). As I talked to him he told me Teletoon just told him that at each show, someone would be able to get in for free with a guest. Nothing else. No names, no thought to anything. Even the guys didn't know who won or even that there was a contest initially (as I found out later). He figured winners should get some goodies too so he gave away posters and stickers to those he spotted as winners and he then told me to make sure I stuck around for the end of the show to get the guys to sign just about everything I had on me. I figured, okay. Whatever.
So, the opening act, The Great Orbax comes out. Now given that the main band was a heavy metal band, we figured Orbax was a band too...nope, it was a magician. Well, more of a freak magician. He did things with a condom and staple gun that will make me never look at the two the same way again. I got called up on the staple gun thing...I got to staple a card to the man's face. Let's just say after being told to choose a word between face, ass and tits, I'm glad I chose face. >.<
Here's me standing around on stage waiting for The Great Orbax to do something Great (pictures courtesy of cheebz's cell phone - so please don't mind the sucky photos and I look way fatter in them than I actually am - at least I think so, YMMV):
(Note: Click on the photos for a bigger picture with a short description of what it's about.)
He did one of those walk on shattered glass things and decided to make things interesting by laying face down on the stuff and having some sweet young thing stand on the back of his head. Here's a shot of that:
(Note: Click on the photos for a bigger picture with a short description of what it's about.)
Yeah, I know, cheebz takes crappy pictures on his cell phone. :P He couldn't help it with all the jumping around he did. :D
Then after much oohing and aweing and throwing up in my mouth a little, Sons of Butcher finally came on and the fun really began.
I tried to set up a little video that cheebz took of the boys playing. For some reason it won't appear so you'll have to trust me that it was a cool little thing, if a bit choppy since the boy was bouncing around to the music.
Needless to say the boys played their charactes on stage, wearing the all too revealing spandex costumes modelled after their cartoon characters' costumes - and you know what spandex does so it's not a place we wanna go right now...or do we.
Anyway, the guys are much cuter in person than in their cartoon. And taller too. Especially Sol (I will not ruin the effect of using actors names so I'll stick with their cartoon names). And well, they're much better musicians than we expected. Let's say that cheebz was sold and so was I. Sol especially did a cover of "Doncha" which had us howling. Talk about "butchering" a song. Still, he did it intentionally and didn't change the words to suit gender. It was hilarious. They were hilarous although I still maintain that Doug has the best singing voice of the three of them. And my god that guy has a rubber face. He was priceless AND sang my favourite song, from my favourite episode...can you tell Doug is my favourite character (maybe it is MY drugs talking).
And they kept on dissing Fernie. Man, these guys HATED Fernie. Despised it. Ricky especially took every opportunity to say nasty things about it. Eventually I found out why.
Here's some very blurry pictures of the guys performing. Trying to make out human forms might be difficult but what the hey, cheebz sent 'em too me so I may as well show 'em off:
(Note: Click on the photos for a bigger picture with a short description of what it's about.)
I was having such a good time, I forgot the time and stayed to the end of the show and yes, got to meet the guys.
What a trio of really nice guys. They were funny and friendly and extremely patient. Doug and Sol were especially mobbed by fans and both were just really cool. Sol especially seemed to enjoy chatting up anyone who wanted to talk. cheebz and he had some fun banter.
So, here's me with the guys. Sol wasn't with Doug and Ricky so I had to get pictures separately. I'm sitting down with Doug and Ricky because...er...I'm taller than they are. Sol was the only one taller than me. :P Doug is still my favourite (and when I told him so, he did this cute little thing and asked me not to tell the other guys). Hey, I wasn't the only one. Two girls threw their bras at the man on stage...and someone threw a lemon at him too. Dunno what that was about. Doug had some fun with the bras. He draped them over things, sniffed them, played with them...I think he tried to drape it on a guitar at one point, but they kept falling off. He had way too much fun with those things. In the end he gave them backed...signed.
(Note: Click on the photos for a bigger picture with a short description of what it's about.)
Doug and Ricky kept spelling my name wrong too...I told Sol who wrote on the poster how dumb the other two were and how smart he was. cheebz and I cracked up at him. Sol and I also had a talk about the show, how they were hoping to get a third season and even chatted a bit about animation. I told him "the love of my life" lived in Hamilton AND is an animator and we had a chat about how most animators hated their show and why and how it was very likely Al would have hated it. In the end he signed my VIP pass with "I hate your buddy." cheebz made the comment that this was his first concert and Sol said, "What? Are you twelve?" to which I said, "Nah, but I bet I'm the oldest person here. " When he asked me how old I was and I told him, he looked around for a moment and then said, "Maybe one or two are older but you're up there." When I told him I had won the contest for the Vancouver venue as he was signing my pass, he said "I was wondering what those were."
I also had a good chance to have a chat with Doug after getting a hug from him (he's very huggable) and got the story on Fernie. Apparently it was their worst concert and somewhat of a disaster. Apparently a bunch of folks from Ontario showed up and tried to be "cool" by just being nasty to the band. They had some air fresheners made which someone tried to steal (and gathing by the fact they didn't have any for the show in Vancouver, they made off with most or all of 'em). Doug said there was a bit of a tussel trying to get them back. In his own words "We almost had to fight our way out of there." Some people's kids, eh?
So cheebz and I left and were pumped, having had a great time and enjoying ourselves tremendously and really glad the band was much better than we anticipated (and being pleasantly suprised). Mind you, even if they had sucked, the fact that they're such awesome guys personally would have made it worth the evening out alone.
So, for your viewing pleasure, here are the goodies I did get, signed by the band (and on the VIP pass The Great Orbax), minus the poster because it was way too big to try and even scan in (in the spirit of the show, the poster is going up on the bathroom door). Yay! (I've included cheebz's stuff too because he also had things signed and whatnot but I think given the fact that I have huge "zubes" I got a bit more out of 'em than cheebz did. Yay zubes!)
(Note: Click on the photos for a bigger picture with a short description of what it's about.)
And for who are morbidly curious, here are some links with more info on the band and the boys:
Some YouTube stuff since my photos and video suck: http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Sons+of+Butcher
Their official website: http://www.sonsofbutcher.com/
Their Cartoon website on Teletoon: http://thedetour.ca/shows/shows.php?showName=sonsOfButcher
For those who are even more interested, Doug is played by the cartoon artist Zebarf!