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A valid question, to be sure. The short answer is, he's just a pod.
Oh, what. You're not satisfied with that? You gonna get all huffy with me? Fine. |
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Mike the Pod, as we have come to know him, first emerged in New Jersey in 1987. He is not Matty Boy Anderson, though this is a common mistake. Mr. Anderson acts as Mike's guardian, and in return, Mike performs as a sort of mascot. Many people ponder what exactly is inside Mike, but he is just a pod. I frigging told you that before. You're being a dick.
Anyway. Mike appeared in several obscure comic strips in the late eighties. Small plastic replicas of Mike were often stomped in public places, as a sort of ritual. Mike traveled to New York City a couple times, and eventually migrated to Georgia with Mr. Anderson in 1990, on a dare. Mike was not with Mr. Anderson when he and his friends were shot at that fall by a large gang, in a shitty part of town. Had Mike been there, the situation would likely have been diffused. Or maybe aggravated. Who cares. Around this time, the Official Cult of Mike the Pod came into being briefly, spreading the word of Poddism (the Science of Practical Hedonism) around south Georgia. Some people understood; some people kept throwing Mr. Anderson out of their stupid little chalk-scribble festivals. Repeatedly. In some locations, particularly those over-run by ignorant, self-important pseudo-artists, the word of Pod is not welcome. Over the 90s, several "Mike the Pod Comix" were distributed around the southeast. These "funny-books" (which were seldom funny) intended to revive the spirit of underground comics from the 1960s. Of course, humans totally suck now, and these comics were largely ignored, excepting some cases where they were used to line birdcages. In 1999, the close of the decade and century brought Mike onto the world wide web, with the ugliest, most useless website ever created. Great pains and long man-hours are taken to ensure the site becomes only more ugly and useless, and offensive to almost everyone. Reportedly 77% of people who visit the site come away with a nasty case of the clap. After the turn of the century, MTP moved more towards animation and music, due to the fact that most folks are too dumb to appreciate comic books. Several short animated cartoons were produced, many of which have been viewed around the world. Some people watch them upside-down while they finger their rectum. No one knows why. It wasn't our god-damned idea. Now, MTP LTD., with Mike and Matty at the helm as always, is striving to become a full-service underground animation studio, as well as continue its terrible reputation as a widely-loathed "comedy" website. From the frying-pan cement-and-glass paradise that is Atlanta, Georgia, we have just completed our first feature-length animated DVD: John's Arm: Armageddon, which was finally released upon an unsuspecting public in early 2008. Even though the DVD weighs in at almost two hours, Matty did all the animating by himself, inspiring the informal MTP Studio motto: "Animation While U Wait". If you'd like to know more about the Mike the Pod studio, located just off of scenic Ponce De Leon, please email us. We'll send someone to your house to kill you. Nothing personal. We just roll like that. MATTY BOY ANDERSON is the nom de guerre of MATTHEW M. ANDERSON, an American cartoonist, animator, sculptor, writer and musician (if you want to make it sound all pseudo-academic like a Wikipedia entry). He was born in Manhattan, raised in New Jersey (in a tiny town famous for its giant, unmovable rock), and now resides in Atlanta, within walking distance of Eats and Papi's, two restaurants he cannot continue living without. He has been published in newspapers and periodicals, without interruption or vacation, since 1991. For nearly a decade, he has been employed as a daily editorial cartoonist. What that essentially means is, if you think of a day in the past decade of your life, odds are Matty drew a cartoon that day. Oftentimes, he drew two or three. For five years in the 1990s, he drew a weekly comic strip on top of that, and in the early 90s, he self-published collections of his work in comic book form. He occasionally wrote movie reviews and opinion pieces in Creative Loafing. In the late '90s, just before establishing MIKETHEPOD.COM, he self-published a monthly "fake news" humor sheet called The Last Laugh. Around this time, he also performed on stage in local theatres, and was twice bestowed the award of Best Actor by the Savannah Morning News. Once or twice, he appeared on public access TV with homemade puppets, for a show he created called Uncle Fist. He also wrote a one-act play called Shnoz!, which was intended to be performed almost entirely in darkness. In 1999, Matty co-founded the band Tailothepup with George "Wampus" Wallace. In 2000, Tailothepup composed the score for Empire Theatre Company's production of "Misery", which also won an award from SMN. In addition to playing bass guitar (when he can be bothered to) and programming beats as "Five Sixseven", Matty designs the CD artwork and produces the discs on the Pod's micro-label Neon Ponderosa. Each 'Pup album is actually the product of months of intensive compositional process, with Matty and George (and sometimes Joey Pickles) working back and forth, utilizing field and found recordings as well as traditional instruments and appliances. Also not hurting matters is the fact that George is a guitar virtuoso to the level of actually searing the paint off of every house for miles around merely with by soloing. Fuck, listen to any of their recent shit if you don't believe me. Start with "Voodoo Pork". Apologies in advance if it stomps a foot-size mudhole in your fat ass. Matty is also an animator whose cartoons have been viewed worldwide. He has won numerous awards on the popular Flash site Newgrounds, as well as many other sites (you know how to Google). When you see one of his animations (for better or worse), particularly the feature-length John's Arm: Armageddon, keep in mind that Matty wrote the script, mixed the audio, did the animation, which almost always includes lip-synching, etc., etc. And that's just an averaged assessment of the work involved, not including rounding up voice actors, fabricating sound effects, putting the music together, directing voice actors, figuring out how to simulate camera effects like zoom in 2D, and a shit-ton more. If all this sounds like boasting to you, you're too dumb to understand how hard it is. Go lie down. As far as BANDS I USETA LIKE goes, here's the text blurb from the back of the "ashcan edition" of the old collection:
When he isn't working on one goddamn thing or another, Matty listens to a lot of Freddie Hubbard, Steely Dan and Frank Zappa. He has collected Transformers fervently since 1984 and possesses a collection that terrifies most onlookers. He also collects comic books if they have Transformers in them, or if they're by Peter Bagge, Jay Lynch, Jim Woodring, Chester Gould, Evan Dorkin, Kim Deitch, Roy Tompkins and a bunch of other great artists there's no way you know about. Matty is an authority on Transformer minutae (his art has appeared in the Collectors' Club Magazine), Zappology, Dragonball Z (unfortunately), Star Wars (particularly the prequels), Dick Tracy comics, underground comics, Looney Tunes history, and female breasts. He will espouse upon any of these in person if you let him, but only recently has he begun to do so on his website, largely because he isn't especially proud of his vast knowledge on these subjects (excepting robots and tits, which he never shuts up about). His passion for candy, mainly of the Gummi persuasion, makes him not only knowledgeable about sweets, but a hyperactive home to a hilarious mouthful of shardy molars. Some of the more notable things he's eaten recently are a hot sauce with a Scoville rating of 1,000,000, and a Pez he found on the sidewalk. For every breath you've taken in your life, Matty has eaten a chicken, to such an extent that he hopes to rule an army of chicken spirits after he dies. He has been known to eat nearly anything, and as Col. Samuel Trautman famously said: "Matty eats things that would make a billygoat puke." Occasionally (read: rarely), Matty guests at conventions like DragonCon or MoCCA, or at gallery shows displaying figurines he has made for Art-O-Mat machines. Sometimes he draws caricatures for people, which he clearly hates. Should you approach him in public, be aware that he is usually hostile, unwashed, and sleep-deprived. He enjoys publicly humiliating white men who wear dreadlocks. He has a fierce intolerance for most children, and the smell of infants makes him nauseous. The sight of a pregnant woman, even on a magazine cover, causes him to gag and retch for some reason. He is too antisocial even for internet forums. Despite these flaws, Matty has maintained a healthy monogamous relationship with an attractive, highly-paid woman for many years. Sometimes, he puts on a Mexican luchador mask and calls himself "Mr. Mayhem". He is also referring to himself in the third person for the purposes of this page, so as not to appear as a flaming egomaniac, but let's not pretend like anyone with half a brain didn't realize that already.
PUBLISHED WORK (Matty Boy Anderson) 2003 - 2005, comic art for backs of Garbage Pail Kids ANS cards (various) SELF-PUBLISHED WORK (Matty Boy Anderson) Mike The Pod Semi-Annual, 2004 |
Seriously.
