SOAKING UP SPONGEBOB
By Nancy Imperiale Wellons and Sentinel Staff Writer
He may be a sponge, but he is also da man.
SpongeBob SquarePants is the hottest sponge to rise to pop culture prominence since Kato Kaelin.
Soaking up monster ratings for Nickelodeon -- it's the second-highest rated children's TV program, averaging about 3 million viewers a week -- the show is a hit, but not only with its intended kid audience.
College campuses have gone crazy for SpongeBob. An A-list of celebrities, including Sigourney Weaver, Rob Lowe, Bruce Willis, Tony Bennett and 'N Sync's Lance Bass, have either expressed public homage for SpongeBob or contacted Nick for SpongeBob goodies for their kids.
Those who mention an association with the program often find themselves besieged on airplanes and in shopping malls. The actor who voices SpongeBob has been hounded like Santa Claus by starstruck youngsters.
The show's namesake, a grinning yellow sponge, is the star of an ever-growing line of merchandise, including plush toys with removable pants. He has his own milk ad. He's even a Cheese Nip. This month, he's set for that ultimate honor -- being dropped into every Burger King Kids' Meal.
The future looks even brighter for the gap-toothed character, with more SpongeBob prominence on the Nick schedule planned and a feature film being discussed.
The fact that some of you may be scratching your heads at this moment muttering "Sponge-what?" merely adds to his cachet. In this age of instant information and game-show experts, nothing's cooler than the incomprehensible.
Here's a primer for landlubbers: Created by a former marine science teacher, SpongeBob SquarePants is a sea sponge (yes, he looks more like a kitchen sponge, but let's not quibble). He lives in a two-bedroom pineapple in the underwater land of Bikini Bottom and works as a fry cook at The Krusty Krab restaurant. His best friend is Patrick, a doltish starfish who sometimes stays in the sun too long and ends up rigid as a gift shop curio. There's also a bitter octopus neighbor named Squidward who plays the clarinet, and Sandy Cheeks, a squirrel from Texas who survives marine life thanks to a diving suit.
There, hopefully that cleared it all up.
If not, don't worry. Even in this, the show's third season, there are many who feel wrung out by SpongeBob's quirky underwater logic.
"It took me a long time to get that show," said Robert Thompson, a Syracuse University professor of pop culture. "To an adult, this is a really wild, almost surrealistic program to watch."
Merchandisers kept the whole family in mind when designing SpongeBob's extensive line of products rolling out this season: coloring books and kites for the little ones, hooded sweatshirts and baby-doll T's for the teens, and SpongeBob soap-on-a-rope and air freshener for mom and dad.
More adults are expected to glom on to the program when SpongeBob expands from its current schedule (Saturday and Sunday mornings and Sunday afternoons) to an every-weeknight airing, possibly as early as this summer, Nick executives said.
CREATOR DIVES IN
Similar scheduling helped make Rugrats and Powerpuff Girls household names with adults.
Extra hours of SpongeBob would make fan Rebekah Mallett of DeLeon Springs a happy woman.
"I am obsessed!" said the 20-year-old woman. "I tape it every week."
But SpongeBob is, at its squishy center, really for the kiddos. "It taps into the kid id," as Thompson puts it.
The show is the singular vision of Stephen Hillenburg, 39. Before becoming a top animator with a masters degree from California Institute of the Arts, Hillenberg was an undergrad with a natural-science degree who worked preparing exhibits on marine science for kids.
Working as creative director on Nick's Rocko's Modern Life , he began pondering his own show.
"I was thinking about what would it be, what would the characters be like, and it just suddenly dawned on me that, hey, nobody is doing an underseas show," he said. "So I started drawing these weird invertebrate animals, various characters like crawfish and starfish and squids and sponge. And then I drew a square sponge and it seemed so funny."
HIP TO BE SQUARE
Hillenberg says SpongeBob's squarepantedness is the key to his appeal.
"A natural sponge is not as funny," he said without apparent irony. "A square sponge also fit that squeaky-clean idea I was going for." SpongeBob is a wide-eyed innocent in a cynical world, oblivious to the stupidity of his best friend, the cynicism of his neighbor and the greed of his boss.
That's what Hillenburg told Nick executives in 1996 when he pitched the show.
"I said it was kind of like a key ingredient that he's an innocent character, like Charlie Chaplin or Jerry Lewis or Pee Wee Herman. And that the world is really about him and his earnest behavior and optimism getting him into trouble, because he's so na UNKNOWN_HIGHBIT_ef ve."
He also plied the execs with candy, wrote a theme song played on a tiny tape recorder hidden inside a seashell, and floated clay mock-ups of his characters in an aquarium.
Despite such inducements, Nick executives were wary. A sponge with square pants who has a pet snail named Gary and whose chief mission in life is flipping Krabby Patties?
"I think we probably took a moment to scratch our heads," admitted Cyma Zarghami, Nick executive vice president and general manager. "And then we said 'This is a winner.' SpongeBob is just one of those charming and magical characters that seems to strike a chord with everyone who comes across him."
A KARATE-CHOP VOICE
Hillenburg says he resisted efforts by executives early on to give SpongeBob a set of parents and plunk him in school, like every other cartoon character. Thus SpongeBob remains an ageless, unfathomable drifter.
"We don't like to answer questions like 'Where does he come from? Why does he look square?' We don't want to get too detailed because we want the latitude to do what we want," Hillenburg said. "Obviously, we're never going to say what the Krabby Patty secret formula is."
But the voice of SpongeBob does reveal the secret behind his wacky laugh.
"It's almost a cross between a sheep's baaaa and a porpoise noise," said Tom Kenny. "Do that and then karate chop your hand into your neck. That's it."
A veteran voice talent, Kenny also is the narrator and mayor of Townsville on The Powerpuff Girls, the voices of Dog on CatDog and Heffer on Rocko's Modern Life, as well as an on-camera regular on HBO's Mr. Show with Bob and David.
But it's SpongeBob that kids go nuts for.
"It's amazing, the effect that it can create at a birthday party when somebody leaks that I'm associated with SpongeBob," Kenny said. "I go from being another dopey, dull dad to the most interesting guy there. It's like being Santa Claus at the mall, with kids chasing me around with pieces of paper."
AN UNDERWATER WONDERLAND
Older children, naturally, find it harder to believe.
"Yeah, with your fourth-graders I find myself going 'But I am SpongeBob! Why would I lie?' It's like I'm on the witness stand!"
Kenny was thrilled to have Ernest Borgnine and Tim Conway on the show as the voices of Mermaid Man and Baranacle Boy -- the irony that the pair once starred on McHale's Navy wasn't lost on the whole nautical-obsessed SpongeBob crew.
Kenny's favorite episode?
"I tend to like the simple stories where he's trying to perform a very simple task, and everything spins utterly out of control. In one episode I like, which hasn't aired yet, SpongeBob and Patrick pick up a swear word from Mr. Krabbs [proprietor of The Krusty Krab]. They walk around saying it and getting in trouble the whole episode, even though they don't even know what it means," Kenny laughed. You never hear the word, by the way. "Every time they say it, there's the sound of a loud foghorn."
Kenny says SpongeBob has "its own bizarre logic. It's a weird, pretzel logic, not beholden to our laws of science and all that. It's down the rabbit hole, like Lewis Carroll's Wonderland."
CLOTHES MAKE THE SPONGE
Or it could be something much simpler.
"Anytime you get a sponge who wears pants, you got me," said comedian and SpongeBob fan Will Ferrell. "Plus, he wears a tie. You take one of those elements out, and the whole ensemble falls apart."
So, will the nation's pre-eminent impersonator of President George W. Bush on Saturday Night Live be next tackling a SpongeBob send-up?
"No, I don't think so," Ferrell said. "The thing about SpongeBob is, he's a nice guy, but he's real cagey, you know."
And absorbing.