ALA: Ask Larry Anything

[Larry The Cucumber 21]

Hey everyone!

Here at Veggietales, we've always prided ourselves on accepting our viewers' letters with open arms. Sometimes, they even ask us questions, and we try to respond as best we're able.

I thought it'd be a cool idea to give you all the same opportunity kids across the country did to ask us (or me, at least) anything you wanted to ask, and I promise I'll do my very best to answer it.

[MetalSonic 86]

Are you familiar with the tragedy of Darth Plagueis the Wise?

[Uncle Death 8]

So are you an actual cucumber?

I still can't wrap my head around the idea...

...although it is quite humerus.

[Kurumi Ebisuzawa 4]

What happens to a person's soul if they die but their body keeps moving around, eating and killing indiscriminately?

[Larry The Cucumber 21]

34 minutes ago, MetalSonic said:

Are you familiar with the tragedy of Darth Plagueis the Wise?

I'm not! We always tried to tell happier stories -- you know, 'cause of the kids -- so while I know a couple sadder stories, I don't actually know of that one. Do you want to tell it to me?

30 minutes ago, Uncle Death said:

So are you an actual cucumber?

I still can't wrap my head around the idea...

...although it is quite humerus.

Yes, I'm an actual, honest-to-goodness cucumber, though I can see how that might confuse you. The trick is, I think, in the beauty of Veggietales' makeup and animation teams. It's difficult to imagine a vegetable talking, yes, but if you dress it up a bit and a little post-production elbow grease, well, voilá! You get me!

Just now, Kurumi Ebisuzawa said:

What happens to a person's soul if they die but their body keeps moving around, eating and killing indiscriminately?

That's quite the pickle you're in! I asked Qwerty about this and got this as a response:

Then the Lord God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being. (Genesis 2:7 (NIV))

If you'll allow me to interpret for ol' Qwerty here, I think that that means that when a person dies, their soul -- that breath of life -- leaves their body. So whatever's going on in your life involving zombies or whatever undead you might face, they cannot be the same person as they were when they were alive. And whatever actions that body might take, that doesn't affect that soul.

[MetalSonic 86]

But of course. You see, Darth Plagueis was a Sith Lord who was so powerful and wise in the ways of the Force, he could prevent the ones he cared for from dying. He could even create life. Unfortunately, as is the way of the Sith, he taught his apprentice his power, and then his apprentice betrayed and killed him by getting him drunk and calling upon Force Lightning to electrocute him. Ironic, isn’t it? He could save others from death, but not himself.

[Kurumi Ebisuzawa 4]

1 minute ago, Larry The Cucumber said:

That's quite the pickle you're in! I asked Qwerty about this and got this as a response:

Then the Lord God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being. (Genesis 2:7 (NIV))

If you'll allow me to interpret for ol' Qwerty here, I think that that means that when a person dies, their soul -- that breath of life -- leaves their body. So whatever's going on in your life involving zombies or whatever undead you might face, they cannot be the same person as they were when they were alive. And whatever actions that body might take, that doesn't affect that soul.

I see. That's a relief! I thought it might be something like that, but hearing it from someone else is nice.

[Larry The Cucumber 21]

29 minutes ago, MetalSonic said:

But of course. You see, Darth Plagueis was a Sith Lord who was so powerful and wise in the ways of the Force, he could prevent the ones he cared for from dying. He could even create life. Unfortunately, as is the way of the Sith, he taught his apprentice his power, and then his apprentice betrayed and killed him by getting him drunk and calling upon Force Lightning to electrocute him. Ironic, isn’t it? He could save others from death, but not himself.

Wow! That is a tragedy. And actually, now that you've brought it up, it sounds a little familiar...

Okay, so we've started branching out and doing books, right? Normal children's entertainment stuff, right? But at one point they had me model for illustrations of this character they were calling "Cuke Sandwalker" for this book called Frog Wars.

I read the book. It's not bad, actually! But the point is, there's this character called Dark Visor in it and that kind of sounds like Darth? Dark Visor was the bad guy, though, so I don't know about the "wise" part.

I don't know, that's just me rambling.

[Segata Sanshiro 6]

You call that a Genesis? Does it even have Blast Processing?

[Larry The Cucumber 21]

3 hours ago, Segata Sanshiro said:

You call that a Genesis? Does it even have Blast Processing?

Well I guess that depends! There are a lot of people who interpret God creating the universe as God triggering what scientists call "The Big Bang", and once I processed what that was I thought it was an interesting interpretation at least.

There're also a couple parties in Genesis, like the one Joseph throws his brothers and I'm sure that was a blast too.

[Chaos Sonic 442]

So real talk...did you enjoy the time you and your friends were animated like this nightmare fuel?

[MetalSonic 86]

Where did Lucifer get his first inclination to sin?

[Larry The Cucumber 21]

On 10/22/2019 at 3:02 PM, Chaos Sonic said:

So real talk...did you enjoy the time you and your friends were animated like this nightmare fuel?

Oh, sure! I get the complaints, definitely, but we were actually pretty successful then. I mean, four seasons? It took some getting used to, but, I don't know, maybe it's because I was there?

If you want to talk about embarassments, though, we can talk the show we did with NBC back in 2006. They really tried to get us to cut back on the "God loves you" stuff, and that wasn't going to happen without a lot of internal strife. They tried to change our catchphrase to "Thanks for coming to my house today. See you next week! Good-bye!" and I think I said our old one like five or six times before it finally stuck. So in a way, our Neflix look was much better in terms of "making changes to the formula."

We do look better in our new show. I promise!

On 10/22/2019 at 3:18 PM, MetalSonic said:

Where did Lucifer get his first inclination to sin?

Wow, what a question for just a simple cucumber like me. I'll try to answer this as best as I can but it's going to be a bit difficult. You see, while there is an occasional reference in the Bible to some sort of adversary (the story of Jesus wandering in the desert, the one who tests Job, angels that align with the dragon during John's Revelation), calling them a "Lucifer" character -- for various reasons -- would be a little misleading. So while I can tell you what other people think, I can't tell you what the Bible says, because without interpreting Isaiah 14 in a very specific way, Lucifer is literally non-canon.

I guess that's idea number one: Lucifer was made by humans, so of course he would be imperfect. That's probably why people sympathize with Milton's Paradise Lost interpretation, because not only is he closer to the reader as arguably the protagonist of the entire epic as oppose to God's distance, he also expresses more human qualities. It's easy to be prideful sometimes. Even for me!

That leads us into Milton's interpretation, though this is also shared by other texts, where Lucifer refused to, uh, "bend the knee" as it were, to either mankind represented in Adam or God's son Jesus. That's where "'Tis better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven" comes from; Lucifer's hubris and belief that he and God could be equals. That was his sin, says people who follow that particular reading.

I don't know. Again, I'm just a cucumber, so I probably got some things wrong. But I think Bob's looking for his soap and, uh, I'm standing on the box for it so I should probably give it back to him soon. I do hope that helped.

(...C=T,N,L D=H,ø,Y...)

[The Frost King 6]

Since you're a talking vegetable and all, I gotta ask. Have you ever met the Annoying Orange or any of his friends?

[Larry The Cucumber 21]

2 hours ago, The Frost King said:

Since you're a talking vegetable and all, I gotta ask. Have you ever met the Annoying Orange or any of his friends?

We've never met met, but there's a pretty strong overlap in, uh, how do I put this, available actors? So we've been in the same room once or twice at conventions and the sort. I have a friend, Norman Peach, and he says he got a callback from Orange and co. once, but he got cut in the second round of auditions and that's when we managed to add him to the cast.

I wouldn't say I'm the biggest fan, but I definitely have respect for any fruit or vegetable making it in this industry.

[yui 573]

How do you feel about those old claims that metal is the devil's music?

Also, what's the difference between a cucumber and a pickle? This is bothering me now that I'm thinking about it because I don't know.

[Larry The Cucumber 21]

1 hour ago, Yui said:

How do you feel about those old claims that metal is the devil's music?

Also, what's the difference between a cucumber and a pickle? This is bothering me now that I'm thinking about it because I don't know.

I do have to admit, I don't think metal is my thing. The hardest band I've listened to, I think was Relient K? And that's just because they covered a song I did with some friends back in, like, 2002? I know that's not very "metal" so I don't know. I normally listen to adult contemporary.

But anyway, when I do get a glimpse of what metal sounds like, I dunno, on the radio or something, I mean, like I said I don't like it -- it's the aggressive drumming that gets me, I think -- but I don't hear anything actually satanic. I did just spend a bunch of paragraphs a few posts up talking about how I didn't think Satan was in the Bible, though, so maybe I'm not the right cucumber to ask there. It's definitely for somebody, though. Just not me.

Why did the claims exist in the first place? I mean, you've seen the stereotypical metal imagery, right? All the stuff that people would attribute to Hell, it's all there in the lyrics, in the dress, in just about everything.

I do have to note that I'm a nineties cuke. As far as I've been told, the "devil music" thing was more of a seventies discourse. So maybe all these bands are just embracing the hate and adding it to their brand. "Of course we're all devil worshippers," they want to say. "Haven't you heard what people are saying?"

I imagine what happened in the seventies was a combination of metal being relatively new (or at least undiscovered) at the time and its then-countercultural tendencies leading to fear and distrust from those "in the culture". You probably noticed a similar thing happening with video games in the nineties and maybe into the early 2000s. And I'm sure there are video games embracing the devil aesthetic in the same way as metalheads do and still probably do. That doesn't mean video game developers are devil worshippers.

Except Activision.

I think it's important to remember that Jesus was pretty countercultural in his time, too. Not in the way that pastors like to act hip with the youths and try and rap about Jesus, but challenging the cultural norms of the time, turning over moneylending tables at the Temple and having meals with tax collectors and other societal outcasts. And they killed him for it! He came back, fortunately, but still.

The point is, the new is probably always going to be scary, and norms are always changing. Overreacting to things like metal just isn't going to do anything but cause people to talk about that thing for years to come.

It looks like Bob is looking for his soapbox again...

Before I go, a pickle is just a cucumber that's been fermented in vinegar or a salt brine for a bit. That's why there are so many types, and that's why when something's been resting in brine for long enough, we call it "pickled". Pickled cucumbers are just the most popular so that's why they get to be called just "pickles."

Hope that helps!

[MetalSonic 86]

I don’t get something. Why use fruits and vegetables to teach Christianity? I don’t get it. 

[Larry The Cucumber 21]

3 hours ago, MetalSonic said:

I don’t get something. Why use fruits and vegetables to teach Christianity? I don’t get it. 

I mentioned our 3D animation team, right?

Let me take you back to 1993 when we were just starting out. Toy Story hadn't come out yet. Reboot wasn't on TV. And our budget was suuuper duper low.

So if you're an animator using off-the-shelf tools to make a character, would you rather make a person and have to have them walk around and do all the stuff humans do, or would you rather take a cucumber like me and just have us hop around?

As for why Christianity, I mean, that's the message we wanted to get out there. Our biggest hurdle was how to do it.

[LordCowCow 839]

Hey kid....want some....vinegar?

[Larry The Cucumber 21]

1 hour ago, LordCowCow said:

Hey kid....want some....vinegar?

That depends! On Fridays, when all the fish fries come out, of course I'll want some vinegar to put on that beer-battered fish to help with the taste. And sometimes I forget to bring some with me and of course those are the days they run out of vineger and it becomes a whooole thing, but tartar sauce is okay and I can make do and that's what I tell the frantic staff just looking for a bottle of vinegar but of course they can't find any and nobody really hears me in all the commotion and I end up having to just take my fish to-go because, you know, now I'm just causing a fuss but then the fish cools down and it gets all soggy and then the vinegar I have at home doesn't help anymore and I just wonder, "Why? Why did I forget to bring vinegar with me?"

Most days, though, when someone asks me that, I just give a firm "No thank you" and move on.

[yui 573]

aight hopefully this either has an obvious answer I don't know about or really gets your noggin thinking.

for what reason are we as mortal men put on earth by god, only to go to heaven when we die (unless you did some really fucked-up shit and didn't repent/fess up to it), instead of just being put in heaven in the first place and only getting the boot to hell if we've been naughty boys & girls?

[LordCowCow 839]

do you do any cucumber things?

[Larry The Cucumber 21]

11 hours ago, Yui said:

aight hopefully this either has an obvious answer I don't know about or really gets your noggin thinking.

for what reason are we as mortal men put on earth by god, only to go to heaven when we die (unless you did some really fucked-up shit and didn't repent/fess up to it), instead of just being put in heaven in the first place and only getting the boot to hell if we've been naughty boys & girls?

Wow! What a great question! And here I am just a humble cucumber. Here's what Qwerty has to say about all that:

So the Lord God banished him from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken. (Genesis 3:23 (NIV))

(I brought my own soapbox from home this time!)

Qwerty's got a point! That's part of Christianity's creation myth. If you don't know it, basically after God had created the heavens and the earth, he created this paradise called the Garden of Eden. And there he gave Adam and Eve -- and all humans after them, by proxy -- dominion over the place, over every other living thing. But soon both Adam and Eve fell to temptation and ate from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, and introduced them to Sin. Thus humanity was cast out from Paradise.

A lot of people, even a lot of people who believe in God, don't believe this story literally happened, and that's okay! The point is it tells us of humanity's potential to fall into sin. When people talk about humanity's Original Sin, that's what they're talking about.

So to kind of answer your question, it's not that Christians believe that humanity is necessarily wicked by nature (though some do!), just that because God gave humans the gift of free will, they have the potential to fall from God's grace.

Now, how does one rid their soul of Original Sin?

A lot of people have a lot of different ideas on that, actually! There are three big ones I want to mention here, though:

First, through the Sacrament of Baptism. Any human who is baptized in the name of God has their Original Sin washed away from them. These people are generally the ones who baptize their kids just after the moment of their birth, as that would mean in the (hopefully unlikely!) event that they do die, they will be accepted into Heaven.

The second idea is similar to the first: through the cleansing power of baptism, though this idea has the added bonus of believing that baptism washes away all sins, past, present, and future, so that just by accepting Jesus as your Lord and Savior, you are welcomed into Heaven with open arms.

And last, but certainly not least, there are people who believe that Jesus' sacrifice on our behalf, because Jesus died on the cross for all of humanity's sins, all people are promised the Kingdom of Heaven after death.

All this still comes with the same caveat: I'm not a theological expert, I'm just a cucumber, so you shouldn't take my word for anything. That doesn't mean I can't hope I answered your question though!

11 hours ago, LordCowCow said:

do you do any cucumber things?

I don't know! If you don't mind me answering your question with another question, what do you think a cucumber normally does? What is "a cucumber thing"?

[LordCowCow 839]

You can't run from facing your own existence for long! Look within and you will find the answer.