"Aqua Teen" Co-Creator Talks Neko, Homme, T-Pain
Case to play animated teen pop star in "Cheyenne Cinnamon and the Fantabulous Unicorn of Sugar Town Candy Fudge"

Folks who tune in to the new season of Adult Swim's "Aqua Teen Hunger Force" on Cartoon Network (which premieres this Sunday, January 20) can of course look forward to seeing cartoon and comedy convention further subverted beyond any semblance of reason. They can also look forward to a pretty sick assemblage of guest stars. Those guests, as previously reported, include Neko Case, Queens of the Stone Age's Josh Homme, T-Pain, Kelly Hogan, and former professional baseball star John Kruk.

Still puzzling over the utter randomness of it all, Pitchfork caught up with Dave Willis, "Aqua Teen" co-creator (and the voice of Meatwad, Carl, and Ignignokt), to chat about the upcoming season's unlikely guests, past adventures with Danzig and Ted Nugent, T-Pain's Mooninite-inspired "bling," and Case's upcoming turn as computer-animated "pop princess" Cheyenne Cinnamon.

Case, Hogan, and Kruk play a trio of sirens [see above] on an "Aqua Teen" episode set to air January 27. Why sirens? As Willis, a longtime fan of both Case and Hogan, tells it, "We were trying to think of the perfect vehicle for both [Case] and Kelly Hogan and former Philadelphia Phillies great John Kruk, and this just seemed like such a natural fit."

And why these three? "Well, when you see Neko and Kelly, you think of Philadelphia Phillies baseball. In the same way you see Kruk on 'Baseball Tonight' and alt-country keeps popping up in your head."

Naturally.

While Case-- who, along with Hogan, sings all of her lines on the episode-- took a minute to warm up to things, she and Willis eventually formed a rapport that's already extended to a second project.

"I think Neko was genuinely kind of nervous, at least initially," says Willis. "But I've since used her voice for this other thing I'm doing, this CGI pilot that we're still working on, and by then we were pretty comfortable with each other. She's actually a really great actor. Not that I was surprised, but she's really good."

[Case and Hogan also spoke to Time Out Chicago's TOC Blog today about their "Aqua Teen" adventures and Case's follow-up to Fox Confessor Brings the Flood, which is due in January 2009 for now. Apparently, Neko's got it bad for Master Shake.]

And that CGI pilot? Brace yourselves: it's called "Cheyenne Cinnamon and the Fantabulous Unicorn of Sugar Town Candy Fudge", and it features what Willis describes as "a Strawberry Shortcake pop princess that lives in a candy wonderland just outside of Detroit. She comes into Detroit and helps solve problems of racism and teen pregnancy with the power of love and teen pop songs."

Unlike her "Aqua Teen" appearance, Neko is lined up to provide the speaking voice of Cheyenne Cinnamon, but won't be doing any singing-- "which is consistent with every other pop princess," Willis notes. "But her character will lip-synch it, and then a decidedly different-sounding voice sings all the songs." He isn't certain who will provide the singing voice just yet.

The songs in question were penned by pop-rocker and producer Butch Walker, and Willis is pretty psyched about them. "Butch turned all the music around in less than a week, and it sounds exactly like something that you would hear all over the radio, like something that would sell 20 million records."

"Cheyenne Cinnamon" is only in the pilot stages right now, but with any luck it will be confounding late-night television viewers soon enough.

So Case and Willis hit it off pretty good, but what of Mr. Kruk and "Aqua Teen"? "I don't think he quite realizes what he did. He was amazing [enough] to just say, 'Sure, yeah I'll do it.' I mean, I think that's pretty consistent with his entire career.

"Ultimately we made him look pretty good. And I told him, I said, 'Can I give you the mullet from the late-80s Padres Kruk?' And he was like, 'Sure, go for it.' He didn't care."

While Kruk and the musical guest stars mostly stuck to the script, they join a show noted for its sharp use of ad-libbing. As Willis explains, "When you're watching most comedy on TV-- and cartoons, too-- it's almost like setup-setup-punchline. It loses spontaneity and unpredictability, and sort of gets in this metronome rhythm. I mean, how can you possibly find that sort of pattern amusing, that four-jokes-a-page [setup]? All the people that do voices on the show [are] really great at improvising lines. We get really funny people in there and cut 'em loose."

Speaking of funny people, Willis and fellow "Aqua Teen" co-creator Matt Maiellaro roped in two of 'em for the March 2 episode. Queens of the Stone Age frontbro Josh Homme and chart-topping hook-man T-Pain turn up portraying-- naturally, once again-- homicidal ventriloquist dummies.

"I saw [Queens of the Stone Age] play on 'Saturday Night Live'," Willis explains, "and [Homme] let Will Ferrell just stand up there and beat on a cowbell for three straight minutes, through the whole song. And you knew a guy like that would be somebody you'd want in your show. He's really funny and real...no attitude, just a funny guy, just wants to do cool stuff.

"So we just said, 'Here's what we need,' and he just recorded it for us. He's really great to work with."

T-Pain was an even easier catch, being a pretty hardcore "Aqua Teen" fan already. "Apparently he's got, like, bling-- is that word still in vogue, bling?-- he's got these two Mooninite medallions made out of diamonds and rubies and stuff. [It] was like, 'That costs more than an episode.'

"But he came in and he was awesome-- really funny. He's kind of a natural. And I guess when you think about it, a lot of the hip-hop guys that we've used in the past, they're kinda natural at voiceover. I mean, why wouldn't they be? We've worked with [MF] Doom, and [so forth]. They're comfortable in front of a mic. [T-Pain] was great, really funny."

Homme, T-Pain, Case, and Hogan knew the "Aqua Teen" franchise-- "as opposed to someone like Danzig," says Willis, "who maybe didn't quite realize what he was getting into."

Danzig played himself in a 2002 episode titled "Cybernetic Ghost of Christmas Past from the Future". "He sent us back on design elements quite a bit," Willis recalls. "We'd fax him pictures of himself, and he'd be like, 'I'm way more cut than that!'

"So we'd keep redoing it, and at a certain point, one of our animators said, 'I really can't make him more cut, then it will just be-- I know it's a cartoon, but it will be beyond cartoonish.'

"Fortunately Danzig was okay with the way we had done his abs on that particular drawing. I think he was also concerned about size, too, and in the episode I think we made him like 6'6", you know, he's a giant...and we all know that's not true.

"All that said, he was funny. He was sitting there adding lines, and he'd be like, 'You want me to say it in German?' and we'd be like, "Yeah!" So he'd crank out all this German...it was good."

Not to be outdone, Ted Nugent also graced "Aqua Teen" as himself in the 2004 episode "Gee Whiz".

"Ted Nugent, like, recorded it from some wild gang ranch in Texas, where they sort of create dinosaurs out of DNA so you can hunt them. I think he was recording all his lines from a jeep out in the savanna. But he was cool, he was funny. He didn't have any pretensions, he just came in and did it.

Has Mr. Nugent seen his "Aqua Teen" turn yet? "I don't know, actually," Willis admits. "You know...he probably hasn't even listened to some of his albums."

Video: Aqua Teen Hunger Force: Various Clips