Yeah, and it's weird that they've kept the HEAVY METAL TECHNO thing going even though now the opening titles are this weird pastoral stop-motion-style thing and no longer the "XTREME FOURTH GRADE" thing.

Definitely my thoughts. Tom Waits.

Is this episode available anywhere? I'm assuming it's on some DVD but I don't really care that much (early SP is almost unwatchable for me now with a few exceptions,) I'm just curious: if I remember, Mr. Hanky didn't show up until the second season and definitely wasn't in the opening credits.. who's that piece of shit with the sailor hat (?) and was he in the episode? Yeah, I'm asking about a talking piece of poo with a hat on.

There were two original short films, Jesus vs Frosty and this one, Jesus vs Santa.

Mr. Hankey is actually an in-joke between Matt and Trey. One of them was told as a kid that, I think it's that if he didn't flush the toilet, Mr. Hankey would kill him. That's the story they told, anyway. I guess transforming Mr. Hankey into a kinder mythical figure was a kind of therapy.

The guy in the sailor hat is Les Claypool of Primus. He's in the original TV show intro too, and appeared in the Chef Aid episode.

Cool. I've seen both of those, but those weren't really "pilots," were they? They just sort of passed them around until somebody picked up on it. I was thinking it was something in-between those two shorts and "Cartman Gets an Anal Probe."

I just looked it up and this is indeed an in-between pilot, the original version of Anal Probe.