Farewell to the funny future.

(From Sunday Mail (Malay))

Byline: Ahmad Azrai

LOTS of events were expected to happen on the night of Dec 31, 1999.

No one, though, could have predicted that a pizza delivery boy's journey to the future would be one of them.

Yes, we're talking about Futurama, the ridiculously hilarious cartoon series that was a parallel to The Simpsons.

The creator for both shows, Matt Groening, wanted to find a middle ground between the `normal' visions of the future - hopelessly utopian outlooks like The Jetsons, or the broody, apocalyptic future of Blade Runner.

Groening said in an interview that he was trying to offer an alternative that's more like the way things are right now, and that Futurama was a reaction in part to the liberal optimism of Star Trek and Star Wars.

The show follows the adventures of Philip J.

Fry, a loser who was dumped by his girlfriend while he was sent out to deliver pizza.

Realising the delivery was a crank call, he falls into a cryogenic chamber and wakes up on the eve of the year 3000.

The characters he subsequently meets all add a surreal flavour to his `visit'.

There's Turanga Leela (the sexiest cyclops you'll ever meet) from whom he tries to escape, but ends up falling in love with - well, lust at any rate...

Whilst on the run, he bumps into a robot at a suicide booth (don't ask). Fry questions whether he's a real robot or just a New Year's Eve costume, and he proceeds to utter the immortal words that form his catch-phrase: "Bite my shiny metal …