Land Before Swine Secret Commentary Transcript
aka the in-character Stan one
aka the only one that’s on youtube at the time of me writing this.
…I’ll get to the other ones later. When I feel like it. Also dang Stan says “y’know” a lot.
Disclaimer: my hearing is shot so take this as you will
Stan: Ah, hello? Is this thing on? Testing, hello? Uh, hi there, listeners. I’m Grunkle Stan! What’s this down here?
I was promised a plate of bacon– is there bacon for me? No, I’m not gonna do this for free. …Alright they just gave me a dollar. Gimme two.
Okay, okay– alright, hi, hey! It’s me, Grunkle Stan. So here’s the deal; apparently my sweaty grandnephew, Dipdop, was recording the entire summer with Soos’ video camera, like a little weirdo? Like every single thing we did, the entire summer he was recording. That’s-that’s what we’re watching right now. It’s kinda creepy that he did that. He gets that from Ford, I think. That and his inability to make eye contact with women.
Anyway, he wanted me to, I dunno, give commentary on this day of… our lives? That he recorded? Like a school project or something? So here I am. Here’s my voice– crank up the volume! You really wanna hear that gravel. You want your neighbors to hear it too. It takes, it takes a lot of really bad livin’ to sound this way, so (laughs) I earned it. Enjoy.
Um, I dunno what this [referring to the opening] is. Guess Dipper cut together a musical montage of various moments. Fairly professional! Frankly it’s embarrassing he spent that much time on it.
So, uh, so yeah, this was a day in my life. This was uh, a regular old day. Little bit of scamming people. Little bit of punching dinosaurs in the face. Y’know I get why Dipper wanted my commentary. I mean, I’m a pretty great man so I understand why he wanted to hear my perspective on things, uh, I have a lot to say.
(coughs) So many pearls of wisdom, um… Let’s see ah, what’s new in my life… I went to the doctor today. Well it wasn’t a doctor so much that he was Soos dressed in a lab coat, reading WebMD off of his phone. “Y’know I think I’m gonna give my life savings to some quack with a medical degree?” No! Not gonna happen. Y’know I heard on the AM radio that vaccines lets the government read your thoughts– nice try, Uncle Sam!! Go back to Russia!
Anyway, who wants to hear about my various body problems? You name it, I’ve got it. Hernia? Got it. Abnormal rashes? Ho, ho, you gotta believe I’ve got abnormal rashes. Who’s got two thumbs and a liver that’s hanging by a thread? This guy, baby! Let’s see, what other body problems do I have? According to Soos, I got boxer’s ear, money lung, brass knuckles, sailor’s mouth, ingrown eyebrows, Achilles everything… something called “super gout”! Dog pox, seasonal squash nose, chronic uncle jokes, tooth flu, strep leg, something called “face worm”… Y’know when an earthquake is coming, my knee swells up and when a musical festival is coming, my fist swells up in rage. I’m also partially deaf because my ears are next to my mouth and I’ve been diagnosed with having no indoor voice.
And now to read you my current blood pressure statistics– warning! They’re terrible. Oh, wait, sorry, there’s a sticky note here from Dipper. It says “Don’t talk about your body problems.” I guess I’m supposed to talk about the video? I dunno, I mean… what is there to say? I’m trying to give the people what they want. Let’s talk about the day.
Um, I remember it was really hot, that’s the first thing. Uh, y’’know Dipper and Soos, they went off on some kinda journey. Y’know Dipper and Mabel's mom, they said “keep a close eye on these kids over the course of the summer. Don’t let them get into trouble. Don’t let them wander into any cemeteries or off of any cliffs. Keep them away from sharp objects.” –But they didn’t say anything about monsters so I think I’m covered, honestly.
Let’s see, what happened? I mean, it was just like any other day in Gravity Falls! I um, I got outta bed. I did three hundred pushups. I ate some steamed carrots… (laughs) Nah, c’mon, what do I look like, a sucker? You only live once, friends.
Here’s a real routine from Grunkle Stan; I got outta bed, ate a basket of cold cinnamon rolls I found in a drawer, laid on the carpet for like an hour until Soos came and poked me with a stick. Y’know that’s basically how most of my days start up. Then I went into the basement to work on that darn portal. I mean, I can talk about that right? Cat’s outta the bag now? Yeah, y’know, I was working on that portal everyday. You see me here being a bear of a man, a leader, a titan of industry. But, uh, off camera, prior to this adjusting my tie in the mirror, I was downstairs trying to figure out how to get my brother back from that dimension that he… through various means wound up in. Partially my fault. Partially his. Who could really say? Y’know the point is, I wasn’t just the curmudgeon I look like here. Every morning I would go downstairs, I would work on trying to figure out on how to get him outta there, y’know? Um, part of my daily routine, I was tightening screws, trying to teach myself highschool maths so I could get the thing up and running. I also did a lotta punching the portal, like the jukebox. And let's not forget that toxic waste I stole! Yeah those are some good memories.
So y’know, everyday it’d be something like this; I’ll work on the portal, break some things so Soss has some stuff to fix, get on my suit and give a tour like the one ya looking at. Y’know I like to mix it up on my tour, um, I mean sometimes I like to take people through the Shack. Sometimes I show them taxidermies, sometimes optical illusions.
This corn, this unicorn made of corn, I brought that at a rummage sale. Um, I shoulda known someone would eat it. I kinda had a running pool with Wendy that it’d get eaten by Soos or Dipper or Mabel. Forgot about the pig. Probably should’ve bet on the pig.
So y’know here’s the kid up in the attic, just in the dark like a creep, like a weirdo. I mean, I don’t understand, I feel like all photographers, there’s something wrong with their heads. They’re passively observing life– like not like me! Grabbing life by the horns and making money off of it, uh, because I could make money off of anything! The key of being a showman is turning anything into an attraction. Like I have this pool of stagnant water that collected by the front door after the radiator broke. So I called it the “Befuddle Puddle” and charge an extra dollar to see your reflection. “Feeling befuddled yet?!” is what I say to the people. And I also glue a lotta things to other things to make a thing that’s new! So you give a turban to an armadillo; now it’s a “carmadillo”! Glue a cat to another cat; now ya got a double cat.
Sometimes people point out that they just drove ten miles to see a wet floor and a bunch of angry cats glued to each other and that’s when you gotta defuse the situation with comedy. Um, y’know, I’m always doing different material, I’m sorta an amateur comedian– can, can I swear on this thing? There’s a guy who’s shaking his head at me, he’s giving a thumbs down, he’s doing a cross your throat thing with his finger. I’m-I'm not sure, is that a “yes”? I can swear? Now, he’s freaking out– he just ran out of the room. Alright, maybe I’ve got to watch my mouth on this thing, um but, ya not getting the full experience, kids! I’m pretty hilarious without the censors breathing down my neck. People always ask me, “Stan, where do you get your material?” A little word to the wise, for aspiring comedians out there; bumper stickers.
When ya step onto the road right there, I’ve never seen a bumper sticker that didn’t make me laugh like, heh, on the way here this morning, I saw one that said “driver carries no cash– hE’S MARRIED!” (laughs so hard he begins to choke) Oh lord… urgh, that’s my money lung actin’ up, one sec (giggles) “He’s married…” Guh, I mean, I don’t have a crowd around me right now but if I did they’d be laughing as hard as I just was. Y’know it’s a little, it’s a play on social mores etcetera.
Um, ah, whatta we lookin’ at here? I guess Dipper somehow got his camera into my mind? Not really sure how he did this but um, yeah I’m pretty good at weaving a yarn and this was a tale I told to Mabel to um, y’know make her see the real me because sometimes the truth is hiding within a lie. Y’know like, you might tell a lie like uh “I fought a monster for your pig” and the truth is you’re directly responsible for the pig getting stolen b-but the deeper truth is you would’ve fought a monster, right? It’s like a, it’s sorta like a truth turducken; lie, truth, lie, truth– y’know who’s really to say what is real and what is not? Certainly not Soos! He has no idea what’s real.
So, uh, y’know, let’s see… jokes…. I told you about my medical problems, um… heh alright, okay I know what Dipper wants to hear, I know why he asked me to do this. He wants to know a little bit about the real Grunkle Stan. Y’know, you guys see this paragon of attractiveness and virtue- you don’t learn the warts and all.
You probably want to hear about my ex-wife, right? Okay? There’s not much to tell, I bring her up every now and again. I tell jokes. Uh, sometimes comedy comes from a place of pain and I, y’know, was actually married for less than a day. Vegas situation. Reach for the same slot machine handle and it was love at first sight. Marilyn. Had hair like an airline stewardess and a neon pink shirt that said “over thirty and very flirty.” Man, I was putty in her hands. You shoulda seen the way she threw dice. One time right at my head! Turns out she only married me to distract me while she stole my car and all my winnings. And I guess her name was fake and her hair was fake, but y’know the love was real. She really was the one that got away. Like literally. It was a proper getaway. She was chased by cop cars for about a mile outta Vegas before ducking out of a door into a canyon and making off with all my loot. Sometimes I still think of her. That pale bingo hall skin. That one weirdly sharp tooth. S-sorry I’m getting nostalgic– point is, yeah! I had love in my life once and uh y’know, it bit me. And I learnt a bit of a lesson from that which is ya open your heart and blood comes out and ya die. So, y’know, try not to be a sap like I was.
Let’s see, let’s talk about what’s going on here, uh… This is the only time you’ll see me step foot in a building with any kinda spiritual significance, I’ll say that much. Urgh gosh, this guy. So, yeah, Old Man McGucket, he’s kinda a liability and uh, I guess he helped us save the world with that robot and whatever but, uh, prior to realising he was a genius, he was mainly just a nuisance. Like I think I ran him over with my car a couple of times? Like he’s like a possum, he just runs out onto the middle of the road. (laugh) I mean, everyone in Gravity Falls has run over Old Man McGucket at least once. It’s, it’s kinda a rite of passage when you’re in that town.
Obviously I didn’t want him on this mission, y’know, McGucket-ing up the whole thing, he was a liability, let’s face it! Various tales we didn’t need to hear. That gold tooth glinting in my eye, distracting me all the time… Uh, yeah I’m pretty sure he was responsible for getting us to… fall off of this thing… wait, let’s wait and see… yeah, there it is- called it! His fault. Sometimes I remember things being someone else’s fault but this case I was right! All McGucket.
So yeah, this day, the other thing I remember about it was, uh, it represented a real missed opportunity for me because this coulda been a great tourist trap. Right? Like, Land… Time Forgot. Park of Jurassic Creatures, uh. I can’t think of a great name for it but y’know, Dino Fun Wacky Sap Town Park, something like that. I mean just picture what this woulda been like. Okay this is a once in a lifetime dream, to charge saps to literally look at sap. Like I’m always scamming people but pun-based scams, that’s the sweetest. I coulda made that happen! Sadly I lost the chance when the place caved in at the end of the day, you’ll see.
The dinosaur mishap kinda gets outta hand. The whole thing goes bottoms up. Y’know, I suppose Sixer might be able to make some sorta drill that could get me back down to the dinosaur cave with some real attractions. Like his inventions always backfire, like (laughs) like this one time in high school, he’ll hate that i’m talking about this so, should I talk about this?
Yeah, I’ll do it, okay. So this one time in high school, my brother, Stanford– well, it started out like this; so Fordsy had a fear of girls ever since Cathy Crenshaw got freaked out by his hand in third grade, uh, those of you listening, I’ve got a brother, he’s got six fingers. It’s kinda cool, he’s great at piano, y’know? He could do really cool like, shadow puppets but uh, in elementary school, kids could be cruel and uh, I guess it sorta traumatised him? He tried to hold a girl’s hand. She spilled punch on his head and ever since then he had a hard time talking to girls, unlike- unlike myself. That’s life.
Anyway, cut to high school, the guy’s never kissed a girl, prom is coming up and he asked me for advice. “Stanley, I know things have been a little weird between you and me with college but can you talk to me about girls?” Um, and y’know, I said, uh “whatever you do, don’t be yourself. You’re gonna freak ‘em out. Act like me!” And so we tried for a couple of days, we actually traded places. He dressed up as me, I dressed up as him and I was hoping that would make the ladies flock to him. But instead he was ruining my reputation, right? Like he was destroying my game all over the place so we switched back. I said “you’re a hopeless case” and he, (laughs) his solution as he is wont to do was to build like a kissing practice robot, okay.
It was basically a mannequin head with a rubik's cube for a mouth and a siren attached to its head that would go off if you were kissing it wrong. Like he read a bunch of Mom’s magazines for women about men and programmed that into the machine so the only way to get the siren to stop is for you to learn to kiss properly. Anyway, cut to all of us in gym class, the head falls out of his gym bag. The siren starts going off. The only way to stop the thing is for him to kiss it in front of the whole class! (laughs) Ah, man! Ha… he was still more popular than me. Not my fault.
I dunno, I just have an excess of personality. Some people get jealous… Dad always taught me that the way to get people to respect you is to punch the biggest person in any room, the first time you enter that room. But if you do that in school then apparently you have “rage problems” quote unquote according to the counselor. Darn hippy.
Childhood, y’know, is hard! It’s hard, guys! No matter how you slice it, right? Like it’s clearly not easy on these kids. I think I was a pretty good caretaker though. I mean, all things considered. Okay, let’s get real, guys. The pig’s cute, okay? Like I knew the pig was cute from day one. You see it in that nest. You’re feeling it. I’m feeling it. Looking at it and you feel your desire to eat bacon slightly subsiding… I mean a lil’ bit. Like five percent. I, I didn’t actually want the pig to get eaten by wolves, y’know. I was just hoping I could just get it outta my crosshairs so that it wouldn’t get in the way of my various amazing jokes and… y’know I was a lil’ worried that it might get lost in the portal so I wanted it out of the house. But I didn’t want this to happen, alright?
So what you’re watching right here, me tussling with a pig, getting attacked by a dinosaur, plummeting into a ravine, this was not how I expected this day to wind up. But, uh, push comes to shove, y’know, I’m not a bad guy, right? Like… how many of you, looking at this video right now, how many of you think that I’m gonna let this pig get eaten by a monster? Is that what you think of me? Not gonna do it. Not gonna happen.
The fez. Y’know sometimes people ask about my fez and there might be some people listening to in Dipper’s class that might be curious, yeah that’s actually my old man’s, actually. That belonged to my dad. Um, he’d come home late, first Thursday or second Thursday of every month. He had this Masonic lodge? That he was a part of? The Loyal Order of the Holy Mackerel, something like that. It’s just a bunch of old guys who worshiped a fish in a tank and they did a bunch of weird rituals. Something about brotherhood– here’s the secret behind the Masons, alright? I never really joined so I can tell ya; they’re just trying to get away from their wives and girlfriends for one night, eat pasta and tell dumb jokes. Like they act like they, oh control the world- they don’t control the world. They can’t even control their own interpersonal relationships. They just wanna play poker and have a night to themselves, right? I think that’s what my dad was doing. Anyway I guess he “bestowed” his hat upon my brother, thinking that one day maybe he’d join the fraternal order and when I took over my brother’s house, I took the hat as a showman and, y’know it fit my head pretty good!
Alright if you got popcorn, now’s the time to eat it because prepare for some heroism. This is, alright, it looks pretty dramatic what I’m about to do on camera but like, real talk, I basically couldn’t get outta bed for three days, this was (laughs) incredibly painful. Impressive but painful. Y’know the important thing is uh, is that the kids came out alright. They didn’t get eaten by a monster like McGucket there. Uh, I was a pretty good caretaker.
A lot of people ask me, they say “Stan. You have impeccable genetic material, why haven’t you sired an heir?” People are always saying that. Y’know that’s an easy one because kids, kids are a giant hassle. I was once a kid and it was the worst. And the only thing worse than kids-? Parents. My dad was a cold-hearted ex-bricklayer who’d rather list my faults at Passover rather than throw the ol’ football around. Seriously, I never played catch with my old man.
For a science fair, I asked Ford to help me invent a football throwing robot just to get someone to throw a football around with me. But, uh, Ford wouldn’t do it, he was mad about the whole Kissbot incident so I had to invent my own football throwing robot. Just duct tape a football to a toaster, call it Footbot. I mean, what’s a guy gotta do to get one game of catch with his old man? Right? Whatever, Whatever! Doesn’t matter!
I have, I have, I have my own family. I do have a son, Benjamin Abe Hamilton Washington. This pile of money I’ve collected over the years! That’s my true family. Y’know I can sorta glue it together into the shape of a child maybe… Eh, I dunno. I, I do my best, right? And I do have, I do actually, not to brag, but I have an obscene amount of money. Uh, y’know all the years of collecting and etcetera– and also grifting!
You wanna learn some classic grifts? Anyone out there wanna learn some grifts? Here’s a good one; I call this one the “Grunkle Surprise!” You pay a bunch of hobos, okay it’s complicated, get a pen and paper. You pay a bunch of hobos a fish head a piece to dress up as an ol’ timey barbershop quartet– then you need to get six, not five, six live bats and a little guy dressed as a baby. Now here’s the really important part, don’t use an actual baby in this grift. I learnt that the hard way– wait, wait, just interrupt this thought for a moment.
I can’t remember how we got outta this one. Did we, did we die? Am, am I in the afterlife right now? I seriously can’t recall. A dinosaur came for us, I must’ve done something really amazing, personally, myself. Maybe I, uh, oh whaddya know, actually it was Soos! Y’know I think he’s gonna make a good Mr Mystery. Uh don’t tell anybody this but uh, I’m kinda proud of him, push comes to shove. Eh, one second.
Soos: ‘Sup, dude!
Stan: Oh Soos, whatta you doin’ here?
Soos: Oh yeah, dude. I just uh, I knew you were doin’ some commentary and I thought I would bring you some, uh, cracker-flavoured chipackers?
Stan: T-That’s a thing? Soos: Yeah, dude! I just brought some, have some!
Stan: Alright, heh, let’s see. Oh, oh my goodness. They’re crackers that taste just like chips that taste just like crackers! Thanks, Soos. Holy cow! Soos: Science truly is an amazing thing. I also brought a bag of stuff from the Mystery Shack. I was hoping you could, uh , sign these for me? Stan: Alright, yeah, sure, let’s see. We’ve got snowglobes, the ol’ John Hancock. Let’s see we got a bumper stick, Stan Pines and a… what’s this? Football? We don’t sell footballs at the Mystery Shack, Soos.
Soos: (nervous laugh) Ha, yeah, ya know. I was just thinking, maybe before you leave on your big adventure with Ford, we could… I dunno. Toss the ol’ football around? L-Like catch or whatever…
Stan: Soos, were you listening through the wall while I was recording this-? Soos: No, dude, I swear I wasn’t!! Stan: Alright. Okay. What the heck. You and me, huh? This is Grunkle Stan and as I always say, wait no, this time you can say it with me, Soos.
Stan and Soos: No refunds!
Soos: Dude!
Stan: Alright, alright. So let’s see, uh, throwing the football around, y’know I’m an expert. (laughs) You gotta go long and the secret is throwing it as hard as you can to the other person’s head.
Soos: Like a Terminator!
Stan: (laughs) Exactly! Exactly, like a– y’know, you’re alright!