Man, sleeping on my belly is messing with me; well, that is, waking up with my face hanging off the edge of the bed was somewhat disorienting. Alas, such are the sacrifices we must make for some ink. Anyway, so as I was waking up, I flipped on the Saturday morning cartoons, and pleasantly found Ben 10 to be on. Not only does it have a catchy theme song, but it also moves out of the general cartoon cliches to use that great subgenre, the roadtrip, as its backbone. What I think is interesting about using the roadtrip genre in a cartoon is the episodic nature of it; rather than picking one overarching road-setting (Europe in Eurotrip, Route 66, the Oregon Trail being horribly obvious examples) and having that set part of the tone, the cartoon is free to shift settings at will. I know that doesn't sound like much, but it would be hard to fit satires of every summer trip archetype from 'by the lake' to visiting D.C. to camping in national parks to seeing the world's largest rubber band ball. Sure, it's a cartoon about a kid superhero, but I think the real value is in the subtler roadtrip-satire jokes.

Bubblesoap - haven't seen a clever project like this in a while

They're making a Tristram Shandy movie! I am left bereft of words.