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![Video thumbnail — [Adult Swim] 2001 Pool Bumps](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/hoWcIE8VRMI/hqdefault.jpg)
Cartoon Network's late-night block launched in 2001 as a joke about pool rules — and became a proving ground for surreal, irreverent animation that refused to fit anywhere else. Deadpan bumpers over footage of elderly swimmers announced shows like Aqua Teen Hunger Force and Harvey Birdman to an audience that had grown up with the network and wasn't ready to turn in.
The Jamaican-accented tarot reader who ruled late-night cable — 'Call me now!' — as the face of the Psychic Readers Network. For a few years around the turn of the millennium, Miss Cleo's pay-per-minute readings were an inescapable TV-ad fixture, until the whole operation collapsed under federal scrutiny.
A fake newscast that became a real ritual: eleven p.m. on Comedy Central, Jon Stewart at the desk, the day's news taken apart piece by piece. For a generation in dorm rooms and first apartments, this was how the 2000s got processed — and quoted at work the next morning.