JCM

Beetlejuice Beetlejuice

Now that I've finished the movie, here are some notes I've taken: I did not expect to enjoy this even more than SOOW going into it, but it's easily my favorite SB movie since the first one. I still have no intention of watching the Sandy movie, but I'm glad we got one more banger out of the Nickelodeon-Netflix partnership.

Before we had Discord, we had Xat, an online chatroom that mostly died with Flash. What if it didn’t die, though? What if SBC members remained loyal to Xat even as the rest of the internet transitioned to Discord for their chatting needs? Episode 21: What If... Xat Was Still Alive? JJS: I'm gonna kick your ass. JCM: How long has Xat had Hank Hill? I want Hank Hill. Fred: Why have Hank Hill when you can have Peter Griffin? JCM: Is that a real question? (ding dong) WookiePlums has been made a member. WookiePlums: Hello. JCM: Ah, a fellow Looney Tunes enjoyer. Fred: They can't all be winners! JJS: Poor Speedy can't catch a break. PatrickStarFan: How do I change my pfp? JCM: You have to go to some page and pick a number. It's super annoying. PatrickStarFan: Why not just use something like Discord, then? Fred: If it ain't broke, don't fix it. Clappy: Late, but "Looney Tunes enjoyer"? Weren't you just talking about how much you wanted to be Hank Hill, JCM? JCM: Sometimes I'll look at other girls, but I'll never betray my one true love Daffy. Clappy: Like you never betrayed your "one true love", the Panthers? JCM: I've never rooted for an NFL team other than the Panthers, and anybody who claims otherwise is lying. Wumbo: I want whatever he's smoking. JCM: We have animated avatars now, too? Is there some secret page I don't know about? JJS: I guess we'll never know. PatrickStarFan: I'll help you escape from Looney Tunes purgatory if you help me, JCM. JCM: Bet. Prez: Hope JCM and new guy don't find this Remy. I'm so proud of it. JJS: Doodle in ten minutes. PatrickStarFan has been banned. JCM: He messaged me telling me to trade him xats for info on where to find the avatars. What a disappointment. Wumbo: I guess you'll be stuck with Daffy forever. JCM: Or at least until we make the switch to Discord. Clappy: So forever, then. Prez: This is not a drill! 91X is playing Boys Who Cry! This is not a drill! JJS: welp, back to the old grind clocks out

I'll be Macrinus from Gladiator II.

I'll be Hermey

Blood Moon “Are they ready, Tim?” I had just finished pulling the chains out of the closet as Caleb pulled the blinds down over our window. The blinds wouldn’t stop the transformation from happening, but they would make the thing he transformed into much weaker. “They’re ready,” I said. “Good.” Caleb and I lived in an apartment in Loris, South Carolina, a small town not far from Myrtle Beach. While we had no trouble finding work on the beach during the summer, it would inevitably lead to us getting laid off and living off unemployment checks until spring came ‘round again. I peeked through the blinds, finding a sky that was orange as a pumpkin and only a sliver of the sun that that lit up the sky hours before. An hour from now, the sky would be black, dotted by stars, with a prominent place taken by that glowing white orb more dangerous than most of the billions of people who would soon be under it could imagine. I locked one end of the chains to the foot of our bed, and then I wrapped the chains around Caleb. “Tighter,” he said. “If I go any tighter, you won’t be able to breathe,” I replied. “I won’t be able to breathe if you put a bullet in my head, either.” I shuddered. I knew what I had to do if Caleb got out of the chains, but I didn’t like how nonchalant he was about it. I began to worry more and more that he wanted to get out of the chains so that I would finally put him out of his misery...out of our misery. Caleb and I had been best friends for as long as I can remember. I didn’t know when our friendship started, but I knew why it started. We were the only kids in our elementary, middle, and high school classes who had single mothers. My dad left my mom for a younger woman he met on the beach shortly before I was born, and Caleb’s dad left his mom shortly after he was born, but I didn’t know why for the longest time, though there plenty of rumors, whispered by gossiping old ladies on every corner. I would eventually learn that Caleb’s father left due to his condition, a condition I didn’t know about until we were both accepted to Coastal Carolina in Conway. Caleb’s mother got us together that night, with a beautiful crescent moon in the sky, overlooking a pair of excited 17-year-olds who didn’t realize just how challenging the next ten years would be for them. Caleb started to twitch. “You should probably get out now. I feel it starting.” I walked out of our bedroom, passing a calendar with today’s date circled. I closed the door behind me but didn’t bother locking it because, if Caleb got out of the chains, a lock wouldn’t do much good against him. I sat on a couch and reached between the cushions. There was a handgun full of silver bullets. I didn’t want to use it but kept it near me just in case. The howling began just minutes later. I heard the chains being rattled and felt my hands shaking. The condition Caleb had was lycanthropy, a condition that causes people to turn into werewolves. It was something he had inherited from his grandmother and one she had inherited from her grandparents, and so on and so forth, this horrible, secret disease being passed down through generations starting from the Native Americans who first inhabited these lands. Those with lycanthropy used to live together in their own tribes, as a werewolf never kills one of their own, but when the Europeans settled here and discovered them, they killed as many as they could find, believing lycanthropy to be a curse from the devil. What used to be a thriving population was quickly whittled down, and many of those who managed to escape the original massacre were discovered and executed along with any “suspected werewolves” found during the years of the Salem witch trials. Today, there may be a hundred werewolves out there, there may be ten, there might not be any outside of Caleb. The instinct to form packs has been so severely punished throughout history that Caleb was told by his mother, and his mother’s mother, the only other person he knew with his condition, that he could not seek others like him out no matter how much he wanted to. I think he listened to them, too, until his grandmother died last year. Since then, I’ve seen him on all types of internet forums, Reddit threads, and Discord servers specializing in the paranormal. I’m almost certain I’ve seen him on the dark web once, too. I asked him just a week ago why he was so obsessed with finding other werewolves. “I don’t want to be alone in this world,” he said. “You aren’t alone,” I responded. “You have me.” “It’s not the same. It’s just...it’s not.” I didn’t want to tell him I was feeling hurt by this, because I knew he was feeling things I could never relate to, things possibly nobody else living could relate to, including his own mother. She had called me just a few days ago to tell me that Caleb was ignoring her calls, that she was worried about him, and that even though she didn’t have Caleb’s werewolf instincts, her motherly instincts told her plenty. I told her I would look after him, and I was looking after him, but I was worried, too. Not much happened in Loris, but we did have one big event that got everyone in town excited: the annual Loris Bog-Off, a festival with rides, snacks, a zoo, and of course, all the chicken bog we could eat. I went with my mom every year before starting college, but Caleb was never there, as he tried to avoid big crowds whenever possible. Last week, however, Caleb told me he wanted to go to this year’s Bog-Off, and that’s what we did that weekend. Caleb seemed like a child again, laughing and screaming on every ride, petting every pig and goat he could, and scarfing down lots and lots of chicken bog. Even outside of his first Bog-Off experience, Caleb had been eating more and more, putting on at least ten pounds since the last full moon, and he was husky before then. I worried that this extra weight would make it easier for him to break the chains, but I didn’t voice that worry. I didn’t want Caleb to feel like I was trying to control his life, especially with him still mourning his grandmother. He was the happiest I had seen him in a long time at the Bog-Off, and the last thing I wanted to do was interfere with that. The howling grew louder. Caleb thrashed more and more, but the chains held. After an hour of listening to Caleb in his wolf form, I assumed he was tired now and I could finally rela- SNAP I heard a chain break, and my eyes widened. THUD I heard the chains clatter as they fell to the ground, and my heart started to race. I felt the gun between the couch cushions as Caleb slammed into the door from the other side. He crashed into it once...twice... I quickly pulled the gun out as the door flew off its hinges and the large creature that used to be my best friend sprinted towards me. I pulled the trigger without thinking, and the creature paused for a moment before turning and leaping out the window, ripping the blinds and giving me a perfect view of the full moon that turned Caleb into that monster. I ran to the window and saw the creature lying on the ground in front of our apartment building before slowly getting up and trotting off. I slid the gun into my pocket and noticed a bullet hole in the wall of our bedroom. I didn’t come close to hitting the creature. I rushed out of our apartment building, but the creature was nowhere to be found. I then heard a familiar howl from downtown, and I covered my mouth, realizing the creature was now in the densest part of the city on a Friday night. There would be dozens of people gathered in every bar and restaurant downtown, unaware of the wild predator locked onto their scents. I didn’t know why it had to be tonight, out of all the nights I restrained Caleb, I didn’t know why tonight had to be the night he broke free of them. Had it been a sleepy winter night, a Monday or Tuesday night, the carnage would have been limited. Caleb forgetting how to open doors in his wolf form meant most people, likely in their homes, would have enough warning to pull out their own guns, and while a non-silver bullet won’t kill this creature, it would have certainly slowed it down. Caleb usually spent his summers with his grandmother in a more remote part of South Carolina, a part cars rarely, if ever, drove through. The privacy meant his grandmother could transform in peace, and when Caleb visited, it was the only time he could feel safe under full moons without needing to be chained down. Since his grandmother was like him, his wolf form wouldn’t attack her. He always looked forward to his time with his grandmother, and once he had to start working summers with me, he would leave for his grandmother’s place before Thanksgiving, and I wouldn’t see Caleb again until March, right before we had to start working again. Where his grandmother lived, there was no cell service, and she never came here to visit, so I never actually spoke to her. I only knew what she looked like from Caleb’s photos, and the first time I saw her in person was last year, dolled up in her casket at the funeral. I doubt she would have wanted to speak to me, though, as I heard multiple times from her daughter that she felt I was holding Caleb back from Caleb’s “singular duty”, getting married, having kids, ensuring that this special power they had would continue to exist. Caleb never indicated any interest in marriage to me, though, and while he had been on plenty of dates, I don’t think he wanted to tell another person about his condition, something he didn’t feel nearly as much pride about as his grandmother did. “This isn’t some superpower, it’s a curse,” I heard Caleb say one morning after cleaning up the hair he shed and putting on new clothes to replace the ones his stronger, more muscular form ripped. “It’s a curse,” he continued. “I didn’t ask to be born with this, and I wish I hadn’t been. I wish...” Caleb paused, knowing that what he was about to say would have gotten him smacked by his grandmother. “I wish nobody would have to be born with this again.” I ran into the first bar I saw, and it was red everywhere. On the walls, on the ceiling, on the floor. People lying everywhere with fresh bite marks and claw marks. They were still as lamp posts, fear frozen onto many of their faces. I was too late. I ran into another bar and found a grisly scene just as bad as the last one. The creature wasn’t there. I ran into a restaurant beside it. Everyone there was dead, too, but this time, it included children. I knew I had to be quick, stop this creature before it murdered anybody else, but I couldn’t help myself. I fell to my knees and cried, wailing like that creature in the night. These people weren’t just murdered by what Caleb transformed into. They were murdered by me, because I couldn’t bring myself to do the one thing Caleb and his family trusted me to do if he shed his chains before shedding his fur. I wanted to believe I had simply missed, I wanted to convince myself that I was just scared and my shot was off, but those were just excuses. I had to kill him, and because I didn’t, he was going to kill as many people as he could find. I had to get up. I had to stop feeling sorry for myself. I went to more buildings, found more shattered windows, more still, terrified bodies. The creature seemed to know anatomy as well as a doctor, knowing exactly where to scratch or bite to kill these people instantly, or have them bleed out so fast they had no chance of being saved. The first time I heard screams, they were in the distance. I immediately ran out of the bar I was in, and I saw the creature zip out of one a few blocks away from me. I followed it into a restaurant with my gun drawn, saw it about to lunge at a kid, and fired my gun again. This time, I didn’t miss. The people in the restaurant looked at the creature, looked at me, and then began clapping. I ignored them as I walked to the creature, nodded at the kid, a justifiably scared little girl, as well as her parents, who were in front of her and in shock. I picked the creature up and noticed it was already beginning to shed fur. I had to get back to the apartment fast. By the time I dropped the creature on our couch, it was already looking like Caleb again. I pulled the silver bullet out of his back and then felt his pulse. As I expected and as I feared, there was no movement. I grabbed a knife from the kitchen and slashed his throat, being careful to make it look like it was done by a wolf. I then went to bed, making sure not to think about Caleb’s mother or the families of all of the people I couldn’t save, thoughts that would have simply kept me up all night. I eventually did go to sleep, the full moon shining as brightly as ever above me.

I'll be Weird Al.

Since The Lion King is about to turn 30 I'll be Simba.

Three final updates to the Interviews page: Casey Alexander interview Second Paul Tibbitt interview Second Dani Michaeli interview

I've added an interview with Dani Michaeli and (one part of) an interview with Richard Pursel to the interviews page. The second part of the Pursel interview will be added tomorrow morning. Expect even more after that.

I've made the first update to the Interviews page in over a year, adding interviews with well-known crew members Dave Cunningham and Jay Lender as well as the lesser known Chris Rios. Expect more updates to the page coming sooner rather than later.

All of the flash games have now been tested, so there are now 120 games under the Working Games section of our games page. As a final treat, I've added a new game, SpongeBlocks, based on my favorite game from the arcade SBC had when it was powered by vBulletin. Like our other exclusive games, it should work on mobile, though I will warn you that the mobile version of the game doesn't have as much functionality and is therefore much harder than the desktop version. If you have any issues with that game or any of the games that are now listed as working, please let me know. I likely won't be making any more major changes to the page, as I want to focus on other parts of SBC I've neglected, including and especially the other SBC, SpongeBob Captures. As always, happy gaming.

JCM Says Goodbye (CNF walks into JCM's office.) JCM: (gasps) CNF? Is it really you? CNF: Yeah! I see you're the guidance counselor now. That's...an unexpected development. JCM: I just couldn't leave SBC, and while I really loved teaching, being a shrink has been great, too! CNF: I'm glad you're doing something you love. I just started a law firm, and well, it pays the bills, at least. JCM: So, why did you come back today? CNF: I heard that jjs is leaving, and I couldn't miss his going-away party! JCM: Going-away party? When's that? CNF: It's in two hours. You didn't see the post about it on Ex's IG? JCM: IG? CNF: Instagram. JCM: Oh, yeah! That thing our old science teacher's popular on! CNF: All the old-heads are going to be at the party. You should stop by! JCM: I wish I could, but if I don't finish this paperwork by the time classes end, jjs will take turns beating me up with OWM and sbl. CNF: How much of the paperwork have you finished? JCM: One paper! CNF: And how much do you have left? (JCM flips through the remaining papers on his desk.) JCM: About 300 or so. CNF: You just started? JCM: 20 hours ago, yeah! But thanks to my all-nighter, I was able to get this one paper done ahead of schedule, and I don't feel tired at a- (JCM's head drops onto his desk, and he starts snoring.) CNF: JCM? (CNF looks through the stack of papers and sighs. Later that day, JCM is woken up by the sound of the school bell ringing.) JCM: Oh, no! I slept through the rest of the school day, and my paperwork is... (JCM looks down at the paperwork to find that it's all done.) JCM: Did I...do this in my sleep? (jjs walks into the office.) jjs: Man, that party was awesome! I've never done that much coke in my life! (jjs notices JCM looking down at the paperwork with a confused expression.) jjs: Let me guess...you need more time to finish? JCM: No...it's finished. jjs: Wow! I'm impressed! Seb never finished the paperwork on time. That's the main reason it took a week longer for me to become the principal here than it was supposed to. (The ground starts to shake.) JCM: What the heck? We don't get earthquakes here! jjs: That's not an earthquake. (jjs grabs the paperwork, leaves the office, and then leaves the school. JCM follows him to find a large replica of the Millennium Falcon landing in the school's parking lot, crushing most of the cars under it. The students and teacher who are already outside marvel at the sight.) jjs: That's my ride! (The students and teachers wave at jjs as he walks towards the spaceship.) JCM: Wait! (jjs turns around, and JCM does the Vulcan salute.) JCM: Live long and prosper! jjs: That's Star Trek, you fucking idiot. (jjs gets into the spaceship, and it flies off.) JCM: Cha, why didn't you tell me that was from Star Trek and not Star Wars? Cha: I did tell you...twice. (JCM sighs and walks towards his scooter. CNF runs to him.) CNF: Hey, do you mind if I hop on? My car just got destroyed by jjs's farewell flight. JCM: Oh! O...of course! CNF: Besides, it's the least you could do after I did all of that paperwork for you. JCM: That was you? What about the party? CNF: (shrugs) There will be other parties. (JCM and CNF get onto JCM's scooter.) JCM: You didn't have to do that, you know. CNF: I'm a lawyer! Paperwork's nothing for me! (JCM and CNF look back at the school.) CNF: I miss it, too, you know. JCM: Miss what? CNF: The school. If only they didn't pay like shit, maybe I'd be teaching. Or guidance counseling. Or whatever. (The Grim Reaper approaches JCM and CNF.) JCM: Grim! Long time no see! Grim Reaper: Can I...hop on, too? I've been bored as fuck lately. JCM: Of course! (The Grim Reaper gets onto the scooter behind JCM and CNF, and they roll the scooter together.) JCM: JCM and CNF! Grim Reaper: And my unfitting bony ass! JCM: Together again! The possibilities for adventure are endless! CNF: I did hear Ex is planning an afterparty downtown. jjs is going to be sending a Force projection there, so he'll be able to join in on the fun! JCM: Thank goodness! Maybe I can get my goodbye right this time! CNF: Hey, even if you don't get it right, I'm sure he'll visit sometime...just like I'm doing right now! JCM: Yeah...hopefully. CNF: Let's be honest, SBC isn't that great of a school. I don't remember most of the things I learned from there, but one thing I learned that I'll keep with me forever is that even as we go our separate ways, and as people graduate, and retire, and find better opportunities, that doesn't mean they're completely gone from our lives. The school will always connect us, so when we tell each other goodbye, it's never really a goodbye. JCM: Nah, this time it's really goodbye. CNF: Well, fuck it. I tried. (The End)