Author: Robert Brockway

Categories
FUCKING DAY

Fucking Day: Dick Fight Island 2, Part 2 🌭

Hail and greetings, genital warriors. If you need to warm up before the day’s Great Hog Tournament commences, please check your Comprehensive Manual of Dick-to-Dick Combat. See Chapter 1 for basic grips and strokes. See Chapter 2 for twists, licks, and ball-tickling. Finally revisit Chapter 3 for proper suction and head motion. There, you’re back up to Dick Fighting form. Now, get your dicks out (I am subtracting points, your dicks should have already been out) and let’s begin. 

Let’s get right to the meat: The answer to the question we’ve all been breathlessly awaiting since the most pivotal moment of Dick Fight Island, Part 1…

How can love blossom after you’ve executed a savage dicksplitter on your partner?

It’s not easy. Trust, like ornamental dick armor, is easy to break and difficult to mend. 

Pisao of the fishing clan was up against his own training partner and future lover, Yudha. He opened the fight by kicking Yudha in the face, then dropping to one knee so his bladed cock could split the man’s dick armor right down the middle, leaving his dong to flop out like a sick bird, vulnerable and exposed. It’s the most you can physically and psychologically dominate another human being, and that’s shaky bedrock to build a relationship on.

Pisao and Yudha live together after the tournament. They plan to marry. They’re still very much in love, but as Yudha works designing their future home, he can’t help but reflect on being dicksplit. It haunts him. Dicksplitting is his own personal Vietnam. He models something on his computer, flashes back to being dicksplit, pushes it aside. Overcomes it. 

Then Pisao wanders up like “YO! Hey remember your dick armor? That you worked so hard on? That you thought would protect you? Your most vulnerable bits? Haha, remember when I split that in half like it was nothing and then I dragged you into my ass and made you shamegasm in front of the whole island? All right man, love you!’

Once you dicksplit your partner, that is your relationship dynamic. You are the dicksplitter and they are the dicksplitted. Every argument ends with “this is a pretty big fight but it’s nothing compared to that time I dicksplit you right in twain.”

They’re still going ahead with the marriage, but it’s not smooth sailing. It’s been Yudha’s job to build them a house, and he’s been slacking. I’m going to say it’s shellshock from watching his metaphorical manhood burst like a microwaved hot dog, but he mostly blames it on Harto for sending them an enormous case of butthole lube as a wedding gift. 

Haha, we’ve all been there, right? Like, why put “one full case of butthole lube” on the registry if you’re gonna yell at me for picking it? Right, folks? Am I right? And why am I getting YOU a gift? If anything the married couple should buy their guests gifts, like “sorry for making you dryhump my aunt to Earth, Wind & Fire, here’s a toaster oven ALL RIGHT you’ve been great that’s my time!”

Anyway, aside from Split Dick Psychosis, this is just a cute little vignette about a newlywed couple getting a bit too lost into each other’s buttholes for their own good. They get their happily ever after moment, and I probably don’t have to say this, but of course they attend the ceremony in their formal dick armor.

I love it! 

I love it, Pisao. 

What utter domination, to begin a life together wearing a bladed codpiece. You could not make that relationship dynamic any clearer if you walked down the aisle to Nazareth’s “Hair of the Dog.” You don’t need a prenup if you get married in a dickblade, you’re telling everyone exactly how that marriage gets severed.

I’m breezing through this one because it’s just a little teaser. A short to break up the flow like Roro’s section last week. It’s not the real story. The real story is about our two remaining Dick Fighters: Naga and Vampir.

Vampir was the gentle mystical waif of the Healer Clan, while Naga was the eyepatched hardass warrior of the Dragon Clan. But you’ll remember that Vampir’s special move was to blast himself in the face with powerful hallucinogens from his armored codpiece in order to summon a dickfighting demon ancestor named Delar. You will remember that. If you forget that, I don’t know what possible information you’re going to slot into those brain cells. Those neural connections are shaped like a psychogenic dickfighting demon ghost and there’s just no way a recipe for fish or directions to a carwash are mapping over that shit. That’s eternal information. As we die and our brains shift into overdrive to process an entire life before we pass, hallucinogenic dickfighting demons will invade each and every one of our Forever Dreams like those red dudes from Elden Ring. 

And I, for one, cannot wait for it.

Anyway, apparently Vampir sparkles in a way that is both more and somehow less gay than Twilight. That’s neither here nor there, just a bit of dickbuilding lore. 

Vampir is asking the chief about their romantic problems: Though they did hook up after their match, Naga is avoiding Vampir for some reason. He spends all his time sulking with his adorable dragon which, remember, were once beasts so fearsome that men battled to death while riding them – that’s actually how they settled disputes before the more civil age of Gentleman’s Dickfighting. Over centuries of breeding they turned their battle dragons into adorable little lizards kind of like how we genetically suplexed wolves into pugs. I think it’s included here because it speaks to how far the Dragon Clan has fallen in general, but maybe also mirrors how Naga is feeling about himself after their bout.

See, like Yudha, Naga is also psychically scarred after his lover – let me reiterate – dick dominated him with hallucinogenic codpiece dust that gave his body over to a demonic fuckmaster. 

That takes a toll. That is going to take a toll on any relationship. Maybe it’s not as damaging as cheating, but it’s way worse than leaving the groceries in the car so the ice cream melts. Orgasm bullying your lover with the spirit of a long dead genital torturer is firmly worse than forgetting the Breyer’s. Every couples counselor knows that. But Naga still wants to be with Vampir, and goes instantly into denial about the sex demon that lives within him. He actually does it in a weirdly upbeat way…

Right, you’re setting us up for something, Dick Fight Island. You’re clearly putting us in position for – wait, oh holy shit. Are you setting us up for wacky hijinks where Naga is desperately in love with Vampir, but not at all with the furious dong monster that shares his body? Are there going to be flirty misunderstandings and hilarious switcheroos with the hallucinogenic ghost of an evil, long-dead cock wrangler? This is some nightmare world Three’s Company shit and I have never been more for anything in my life.

And that’s – fuck yes! That’s exactly what we get!

Once again we see the warriors fooling around for joy outside of battle, talking about how strange and how right it feels. They even start practicing Harto’s secret assblasting technique – the most fearsome special move in their island’s history. And they’re doing it for fun! Harto really fucked up an entire culture here. He introduced an invasive species to a fragile ecosystem and that invasive species was anal play. 

Okay, so the book hinted at this a few times, and I genuinely think this is where the story is eventually going: I think by introducing assblasting to the dick fighters, Harto has begun the slow fall of their society. These men had no idea that gayness even existed before Harto was their First Man In An Ass. Well, some did, but it was apparently something reserved for the ruling elite. That’s why an average gay roommate in our world is better than their greatest dickfighter – a homosexual practices dickfighting all the time, and not even for the rulership of a nation! You can’t beat that pure passion.

But now the seal is broken, and every single fighter that took part in Harto’s competition is falling in love with one other. They’re all practicing dick fighting outside of the ring, almost like it’s not fighting at all. I think this is how Pulau’s society as they know it falls. I mentioned before it’s like an invasive species, but that’s not right. It’s more like the printing press or the cotton gin. Harto is sparking a revolution for the people based off access to a new technology…

Gayness. 

I’m going back to college to make this my thesis so I can dress up in a bladed codpiece and defend it, but that’s for another day. Let’s get back to Naga and Vampir. They’re fooling around, doing very tender, cautious experimentation with this frightening new position…

When Vampir gets too into it. 

You didn’t know he could channel the demon without his dick armor drugs! But he absolutely can, and the dong-dominating spirit he holds at bay starts to come out now – while he’s fingering Naga’s butthole with one hand and jacking him off with the other! 

This is the second worst time for an ancestral dickfighting demon to possess your boyfriend, next to the three-legged race at a church picnic with his close-minded family. There’s nothing Naga can do: The demon makes him cum like a toothpaste tube in the Mariana trench, and now Naga is scared to see Vampir again. 

That’s when the king tells it to Vampir straight: 

That’s right. 

He’s a sex berserker. 

I’m not being funny! 

Straight up, the king pulls him aside, puts a tender hand on his shoulder, and in a voice heavy with paternal concern he says “you’re a dick berserker. You go hog wild for hog. You are the scourge of dongs everywhere, and the limitless fury you slip into while jacking off a man is something we weaponized and turned on our enemies.”

And now, if he ever wants a relationship outside the ring, he’s going to have to learn to fuck like he’s not trying to kill an elephant with his dick. It’s the old “they made me a weapon, now I don’t know how to be anything else” scene from every Rambo movie, only it’s about dickfighting!

Wonderful. I never would have asked for a Rambo/Dick Fight Island crossover, but that’s not because I don’t want it. It’s because to want it would have been to open myself up to disappointment with a world that wouldn’t allow something so beautiful. Thank you, Dick Fight Island. You dream the impossible.

With the revelation that not all lovers give control of their limbs to a genital-punishing ghost, Vampir goes to beg his ancestors for help. The uh, the same ancestors that put the sex berserker inside him in the first place.

It’s the old carpenter and the nail problem. When the only tool you have is a furious dick demon cohabitating your body, every problem starts to look like an enemy cock.

Naga is an elementary school math teacher, which – imagine that, imagine you found that out. Imagine the mental schism you’d have when those worlds collided. When you first realized your teacher has a life outside of school, and this is it. Like instead of going to the movies and finding Mr. Bellevue taking tickets, you went to a dickfighting contest and saw him in the ring with his big glasses and tight sweater vest and a huge math-themed codpiece. That’s what these kids are dealing with-

…as their teacher just has a mental breakdown over being cockwalloped. They start negging him about his 0-1 dickfighting career, and somehow that helps Naga come to the realization that his warrior spirit will never let him date a man he hasn’t dicked into the dirt.

For the sake of their love, they must duel one more time! With penises! 

You know that ‘two rogue samurai rip off their cloaks to reveal their swords’ scene? Here it is with dongs.

This isn’t a sparring session. Pride demands that they go all out. Vampir understands this, and he once again gives his body over entirely to Delar the Undead Dick Demon. Naga comes at him with a halfmast roundhouse and immediately eats beach.

I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again. A fancy kick can tell if you’re not into it. If there’s any hesitation at all to something as impractical as a spinning facekick, don’t even try it. This is a move to be used when you are fully erect or not at all. 

But Naga isn’t beaten. Battle is hardening his nerves and blood is hardening his cock. He shoulderflips Vampir into the surf and transitions seamlessly into full anal penetration. Now it’s a battle to see who cums first – the fucker or the fuckee!

But Delar’s whole life is dickfighting. What time he does not spend blasting cocks in this dimension is spent in hell, thinking about blasting cocks. Of course he has knowledge of another forbidden technique! Lost to time! Impossible and blasphemous but beyond all else… powerful.

It’s the Power Bottom!

Naga’s mind and soon to be load are blown. 

It was absolute genius to make Dick Fight Island so sheltered and centered on actual dick-to-dick combat that even the basic tenets of gayness are like Goku going Super Saiyan for the first time. 

“I-I don’t understand! I’m fucking him, but… but he’s fucking me! His buttfucking level! It’s over 9000!” 

The match ends as it must for this relationship to survive: in a draw between mighty warriors. Which in this case means simultaneous orgasm. 

I’m going to take this lesson into my own love life. A simultaneous orgasm is no longer good timing. It’s a fuckwar without a winner. 

Now that Naga has proved to himself – and more importantly to the berserker cock demon that lives inside his boyfriend – that he’s a true warrior, they can look each other in the eye as equals once again. A perfect ending to a perfect story. 

There’s a final wrap-up, framed by the domestic lives of Matthew and Harto as they catch up on everything happening with the other warriors. Pisao and Yudha had to swim back home after the wedding, a ritual which apparently killed Yudha, going by this panel-

Everyone admires Naga’s bravery, to go steady with the Pazuzu of butt stuff.

Everyone also admires Bulan’s bravery, to go steady with Roro – the man with an eternally-growing lobster dick. 

And we even catch up with Taring the resident twink who, in the first match, got buttfingered so hard it whipped up a sandstorm. He had a sweet cock whip that shook vibrations into his enemy’s codpiece – a technique taught to him by the island’s masters of vibration (lesbians) – and I thought it was a pretty neat gimmick. But he never received an ounce of respect and was promptly dropped from the story. Until now! What’s he up to? What’s his whole deal?

He’s getting molested by his uncle. 

Not all of these are fun. 

Matthew and Harto are done catching up and start to fool around… when something terrible occurs to Matthew: is this not over? They’re a couple now, but the next time the tournament comes around, is Harto just going to run off to battlehump eight other men into the ground? It’s a valid fear…

To which Harto, ever the purebred fuck dope answers-

“HELL! YES!”

…

This article was brought to you by our fine sponsor and Hot Dog Supreme: Ted H, who for tax purposes only is a legal citizen of Dick Fight Island. TAX PURPOSES ONLY.

Categories
FUCKING DAY

Fucking Day: Dick Fight Island 2, Part 1 🌭

Last year I covered Dick Fight Island, a gay manga about an all-male sex kumite whose prize is the rulership of a secret island nation. The rules are simple: Whoever cums first, loses. I don’t think I’m overstating anything when I say Dick Fight Island changed the way the whole world looks at all dicks, most fights, and some islands. I went in to mock it, and it completely won me over. I’m not joking when I say I am a proud member of the Dick Fight Island mailing list. I get the Dick Fight news first, because I am a journalist, and I am on the frontlines of what matters.

So I’m very happy to tell you it’s here, the day is finally here:

This cover illustration is titled “Wave of Buttocks” and yes, of course it’s a wraparound. 

Welcome to Dick Fight Island, readers. It is located in the middle of a sea of disassociated man-parts floating in a homeopathic semen solution. It is only accessible by Dickboat, a traditional canoe used by the natives that one steers with their- well, you can probably guess.

Please leave your preconceptions at the door: Dick Fight Island, Part 2 is not the book you expect, need, or even want. There is no dick fighting in Dick Fight Island, Part 2. I know, I threw it at the wall and wailed until the neighbors had to check on me, too. I was so upset I didn’t even want to give the book a chance, but I’m glad I did. Because we need to know all of this to prepare for Dick Fight Island, Part 3: Fight, Dick Island! 

While Dick Fight Island, Part 2 may tease us with the dick fighting, it does give it to us balls-deep with the Dick Fight Island Lore. The book catches up with all of last year’s combatants through slice-of-life stories that don’t advance any central plot, but do advance the art of ass-blasting. Harto was our main character in Dick Fight Island, a beautiful naive boy who left the island to explore the outside world and came back with a secret technique: Anal sex! Dick Fight Island, despite being a culture based entirely around man-on-man sexwar, had simply never invented butt stuff. Harto got far with it, but did not win the contest. He did wildly disrupt the entire culture of his country though, where anal fingering was something akin to the industrial revolution. 

For his storyline in Part 2, we flashback to the time he met his outworld boyfriend, Matthew, who taught him the forbidden dim mak of prostate massage. 

Harto is a fighter to the core, and so he processes all sex as a battle. His post-coital care is assuring Matthew that he fucks like a terrifying warrior who would dominate his native land, and to be fair, that’s all a man wants to hear after sex. 

Don’t look for big changes in Part 2: There is not a Dick Fight Revolution, for instance, where steadfast ball-ticklers refute the legitimacy of an assblasting contest and seek to nullify the results and overthrow the government. That’s my fanfiction, and you can’t have it. Dick Fight Island, Part 2 is all about character and a lot of dickbuilding, which if you’re new here, is worldbuilding, but for dicks. Maybe you could have guessed that.

Anyway, not only did Harto model in the outside world, but Dick Fight Island has an official clothing brand:

As near as I can tell, that is not a real brand. I mean, it can’t be – it would be insane if The Gap sponsored Dick Fight Island and was like “make sure our logo is prominent in at least eight panels and one two-page splash – and try to work in something about how our sweaters are specially woven to absorb the most semen. Thrust into The Gap!” That means Grenat serves one purpose: To flesh out the rich world of Dick Fight Island. I told you: Prime dickbuilding.

Harto is your classic fish out of water at first, and there are so many delightful misunderstandings. Like when he quickdraws his asshole open during a nice dinner:

It would have won him two points in Documental, but here it just nets him an admonishment from Matthew, who does want to pound that ass, he does want that, but perhaps not over a taco platter. Matthew is so thrown by Harto’s alienness that he can’t act on his attraction. It’s like a beautiful mute redhead, so simple she doesn’t know what forks are, wandering out of the sea and into your arms. You can’t fuck that. That’s a crime.

But when Harto accidentally sees Matthew flexing shaft in his Grenats – “Grenat, the only boxer with shaft highlighting technology!” – something ignites inside him. 

Remember: These Dick Fighters do not necessarily think of themselves as gay. Sucking off another man is a noble and sacred ritual battle. They’re so not gay they didn’t even invent butt stuff, and now their whole society reels from its introduction! But Harto can’t shake this lust. He feels something for Matthew. It’s like… it’s like he wants to dick fight him even though the rulership of a country is not on the line. What could it possibly mean?!

Harto touches himself, instantly ejaculates, and immediately hates himself for being so weak. This is crazy, but it turns out that when you teach kids that cumming is losing and then replace democracy with jack-off battles, that does create some mental health issues. 

This sexual tension builds until one day Harto slips and winds up bare-assed in Matthew’s lap – you know, classic everyday roommate blunders.

That’s when he realizes Matthew wants to dick fight, too! Finally, Harto has it figured out. There’s only one thing this can mean: Matthew wants to be his Dick Fight Trainer! Matthew just doesn’t know what dick fighting is, the idiot, so he can’t explain his needs properly. Harto will help him!

Of course, Matthew doesn’t like to admit he wants to nail an unfrozen caveman goggling at traffic and terrified of electric light, so Harto wages an absolute war of sexual attrition on Matthew’s willpower. 

Finally, Matthew is ready for the truth: The man he’s attracted to is actually part of an elite warrior squad that has trained his whole life for a competitive masturbation competition. 

This is an impossible ethical sex dilemma on dozens of levels. It is the exact spell woven into the cooling Earth that will one day unravel Dr. Ruth. Nobody tell her, it is not yet her time!

Matthew is ready to relent, and help train Harto. He’s a little dismayed that Harto is a professional dickmaster and has never been defeated by an orgasm – he can feel the lockjaw building up already – but Matthew’s so hard up he’s willing to put in those throat hours.

And then…

After one touch…

Harto cums.

There is no more embarrassing sex problem than this. You just sat your lover down and carefully explained that you were from a special island that never prematurely ejaculates, and on that island, you are the king of not prematurely ejaculating. They have to be thinking “this is an insane thing to say before fucking; they must have a problem with premature ejaculation.” And then you prematurely ejaculate. 

But no, Matthew believes the excuse perfectly – the longest and most elaborate “this never happens to me!” in recorded history, and he buys it outright, no prompting. He carefully explains to Harto why he lost, and we actually get to see it! The moment! THE moment!

That fateful moment the very first Dick Fighter realized the power of Butt Stuff! Of course Harto processes it as a vulnerability within the ass, because he’s a warrior. He just found the flashing weak point of every boss he’ll ever fight, and it’s conveniently located up the butthole.

Now it’s time for Matthew to show him a whole new world… of anal sex.

I love it so much. This is the panel that won me over: Harto has Goku syndrome so bad. Hit Goku with a car and he’ll thank you for the training. Harto is the same way about sex. He’s a purebred fuck dope. He can’t help but experience all of life as a series of things related to dickfighting. You show him a dildo and he sees a training dummy, you show him lube and he sees a weapon, you show him hardcore gay pornography and he sees two noble warriors unwilling to admit defeat. 

Again, Matthew, if you show somebody pornography for the first time and they ask if those two people are wrestling – you are not allowed to fuck that. I don’t care what they look like, they mentally categorize sex as a fight and the odds they’re from a secret island nation that chooses its ruler based on dong battles and not just processing a bad upbringing the best way they know how are criminally low. 

Matthew and Harto frolic, they fuck, they fall in love – well, they do, but Harto doesn’t know that yet. He can only understand love as the inability to defeat a man in dong combat. 

Don’t worry – Matthew gets his comeuppance. He falls fully in love with Harto, so he makes a tender confession and a gentle request…

…and then the postscript tells us Harto thinks that’s great, but it’s no Dickfighting. Haha, he makes them wait two years just to call it a relationship! All so it won’t interfere with the competition where he fucks several other men into the dirt!

This is what you get for taking advantage of purebred fuck dopes, Matthew.

Next is a vignette catching up with Roro, king of the Earth Clan, cursed with a freakish dick that never stops growing. It’s like Rapunzel, but instead of hair, it’s a huge throbbing hog, and instead of you using it to rescue him, you are in a lot of trouble when he tosses it out. Roro nearly won the last Dick Fight, but was defeated in the last round because he was secretly in love with his opponent’s spouse and getting reverse-cucked in public was the hidden fetish he never knew he had, and discovered at the worst possible moment. Like finding out you’re a foot guy while fitting Stalin’s daughter for funeral shoes. 

Roro is visiting the Moon Clan, but he doesn’t seem very into the idea of meeting Bulan, their chosen warrior he faced in the competition. Bulan lost to Roro, but he was immediately infatuated with The Dick That Should Not Be. Obsessed, even. It was not reciprocated. The Moon Clan chieftain notices Roro’s reluctance… and decides he and Bulan should stay the night together. No reasoning. The king is bored and there clearly ain’t no TV on Dick Fight Island, or they would’ve learned all about assblasting from reruns of Caroline in the City.

Here’s some more vital Dick Lore, you will need this for setup: The Moon Clan kept it so tight they had to move to the ass end of the earth to protect their ass ends. 

Please note this in your Dick Fight Atlases, it’s important.

Roro heads up to Bulan’s place just as a blizzard rolls in, stranding him with his stalker. If you recognize this as the setup to a horror movie, prepare to be very uncomfortable with the way the rest of this tale unfolds. 

Bulan’s parents actually died in a blizzard on a night just like this – and here’s the point where you run, Roro! You should not still be around to hear that Bulan was saved by a mystical stag only he could see. That’s the other part where you run, Roro! Shit! If you get any sketchy vibes whatsoever and somebody says “it was a night just like this” – you get the fuck out of the house. You should be a Roro-shaped hole in the wall by the time they say there are certain beasts only they can see. That ghost animal bit? That’s not even a hint to flee anymore. That’s a courtesy call, that’s how a dickmurderer lets you know you should void your bowels on your own terms before death does it for you. 

And then Bulan drops the clincher:

Mads Mikkelsen got an Emmy for delivering that line. That is a man who wants to eat your testicles and I am not exaggerating anymore: Bulan wants to kill and eat his savior stag, just like he wants to “devour” Roro’s testicles to steal his vitality.

Roro is so deeply not into this. He protests that he doesn’t even dick fight anymore – there’s no need for this training! Poor, simple Roro. A king in his way, a child in others. He doesn’t know he’s in a horror film. This is a beat-by-beat reboot of Misery, except for instead of breaking his ankles, Kathy Bates deepthroats James Caan to completion. 

Roro flees into the blizzard, deciding he’d rather face death than this… this unwelcome… training! It feels like there should be another word for that, but Dick Fight Island never invented it! And Roro’s such a gentle soul he mostly worries that if this goes on, his monster hog would split this Twink into at least thirds. At least! 

While I disagree with the implicit morality of this entire story, I do have to admit the ending is airtight. Roro falls in the blizzard and needs rescuing, which Bulan does. Bulan’s own tribe has a policy against saving those who fall in blizzards, because it’s too risky to the rescuers. That’s why nobody came for his parents that night. That’s why that stag saved him, but now… he gets to save the stag. It’s solid structure, it’s a good emotional arc for Bulan, and I would be much more comfortable with the whole thing if we weren’t just a few pages removed from him screaming-

EAT THE TESTICLES!

TAKE IN THEIR VIGOR!

AND LET ME SEE YOU COME!

…
This article was brought to you by our fine sponsor and Hot Dog Supreme: Jacob Thornburg, who for legal purposes does not endorse Dick Fight Island, but may endorse other, much worse Organ Fight Islands.

Categories
PODCASTING DAY

Podcasting Day: Lone Tiger, with Josh Barnett! 🌭

Here’s the podcast! 

This week we’re joined by former UFC champ and master of war, The Warmaster Josh Barnett! He’s a big-rig full of high torque beef, of course. He’s a punch artist, obviously. He is those things and you know that. Did you know he’s also an accomplished bourbonist and avid bloodsportsman? And yet, above all else, he would surely describe himself as a Lone Tiger fan.

Lone Tiger is a 1996 action movie possibly based on Japanese professional wrestler Tiger Mask, but it’s very shy about it. This is the story of Lone Tiger, an occasionally tiger-masked lunatic who moves to Vegas to avenge his father, forgets about that, starts a teenage hobo cult, is a willing accomplice to several bumfight massacres, accidentally solves his father’s murder three times but none of them stick, and then leaves, having accomplished nothing and confused everybody. It stars nobody, but it does feature Richard Lynch and Robert Z’Dar! And with the talents of…

Remember to subscribe wherever you get podcasts, and please leave us a review. We need it to live. If this gig falls through it’s back to strangling veterans in an above-ground pool for us.

Categories
NERDING DAY

Nerding Day: M.A.S.K.

Children’s television in the 1980s was utter garbage, because there was never any need for it to be better. Executives figured out early that kids were stupid, writers were always named shit like Terrence and said obnoxious stuff about act breaks, and satisfying story-arcs don’t sell toys anyway – fucking Real Grappling Hook Action sells toys, Terrence. Writing for a kid’s show used to be a punishment job for somebody’s shitty nephew. But see, it turns out adding total apathy to greed with no second drafts doesn’t just give you trash, it gives you an inside look at the raw madness of a money-poisoned brain worrying at the edges of creativity. 

God, it was my favorite era of television.

Today we’re looking at M.A.S.K., a show which had one very simple mission: Give kids another transforming vehicle thing. Please remember, as we go through the episodes – that was their only goal in writing this show: selling a child of the 1980s a plastic motorcycle with guns on it. It’s the easiest thing in the world to do. With no further context, if you just set out a display of new gun motorcycles in a 1985 KB Toys, the morning rush would be so brutal you’d have to build a median out of Lite Brites to keep the toy aisle from becoming a Killing Sluice. 

And yet the writers of M.A.S.K. tried so fucking hard that they went completely insane from it. 

We start off with some standard 1980s cartoon nonsense:

Something about meteors – a villainous plot to steal maybe a meteor, I guess, those suckers gotta be worth something. A third of children’s TV from 1982-1997 was this episode. TVTropes calls this Steal the Meteor and the page gets shockingly racist toward the end. But that’s how M.A.S.K. began, by nakedly aping the nonsense their kid babbled about the plot of a GoBots episode. 

We probably should’ve listened to 1980s Children’s Programming when they kept writing episodes about greedy villains using television to hijack our brains and steal our money.

M.A.S.K. quickly ran out of money to rent G.I. Joe tapes for inspiration, so they started freestyling. This is the beginning of the prime era – we wound up with some wild episodes that, to this day, would get you a high five in a Nic Cage pitch meeting. Maybe even a Thank You T-Rex Skull after.

“What if stage magic was real?” That was a very important question to the 1980s, and one they answered in every single show for 10 years. We didn’t take it lightly. There was a two-part Very Special Episode of Punky Brewster where Punky botched the Disappearing Cabinet trick and wound up locked in a fridge. Each week on The A-Team they’d rescue a roguish magician whose tricks were all totally lame until the last ten seconds of the episode, when he disappeared in a cloud of sparkles so we could freeze frame on B.A. Baracus wondering… is there magic in this world after all? 

But remixing it so that stage magic is unquestionably real and used for villainy? That’s M.A.S.K. territory, baby!

Hell yeah Kubla Khan’s treasure is hidden inside the Great Wall and only I know the wall’s weakness: Giant scorpions. I’m telling you right now: You get me in a room with Nic Cage, six Chinese investors, and one faulty translator app, and this movie will flop in America but take home $600 million internationally for reasons nobody can ever explain.

…

Nic’s people passed on this one.

V.E.N.O.M. started off as M.A.S.K.s version of S.P.E.C.T.R.E. and man my right index finger is sick of typing this article. V.E.N.O.M. began as an elite agency of evil, but as the show spiraled they were more like if you gave a toddler the keys to a van that transformed into a van with a flamethrower.

No real plans, not even necessarily evil in intent, but the tantrums did result in some war crimes. 

Yeah, of course. Get revenge for your childhood with an earthquake machine, I mean, who hasn’t?

Yeah, of course. Run for haha, run for Vice President of the Netherlands with an earthquake machine. I mean, who hasn’t? Not president though, don’t shoot for the big dog’s seat, that motherfucker’s an incumbent with a volcano ray – he’s got this term on lock.

You got this cynical throw-it-at-the-wall writing from every toy-line TV show in the ‘80s. But only with M.A.S.K. did you also get a glimpse at the psyche of the creators. A real insight into the brains of the shitty nephews of Hasbro executives who got banished to writer’s rooms. M.A.S.K. writers had experienced so little of the real world that even the normal parts of their ludicrous synopses were ridiculously disconnected.  

Let’s find that mummy, Professor Hillary! Professor Tiffany, you’re on Wolfman Patrol!

It truly became art, watching six brains that had never thought of any part of a story before get forced under deadline to communicate to a demographic they had nothing in common with and no respect for. It was a wonderful mix of condescension, desperation, and the confidence of the very stupid.

“Oh man, what if money got sick with a virus that made it not money?” Some 26 year-old Hamptons Disappointment told a roomful of interns who dutifully wrote that down without a single comment.

M.A.S.K. broke every once in a while to do a comic relief episode, but it was totally indistinguishable from every single other episode they ever did.

Like “Oh no, panda bears are on the wrong island!” can’t be your bar for wacky outlandish premise, when here’s a real one…

“All right, we’ve had enough serious drama with Dutch Earthquake President and The Curse Of Professor Hillary’s Mummy Lover – time for a fun one! Terrence, give me something wacky.”

“S-shit, something about… like vikings. Ships? Sails. V.E.N.O.M. steals every sail from one of those viking countries and they play parachute with a whole city. I don’t know! I need this job, papa said if I don’t leave the house for three hours each and every week he’ll freeze the trust!” 

Wait, no, sorry. That’s a serious one. I’m sorry, I’m having trouble finding the line between wacky and sincere episodes in this show where somebody named T-Bob finds Irish treasure at the end of a rainbow.

One weirdly M.A.S.K. specific obsession: Esoteric high-society theft. This is pure Terrence-brain, right here. He really thought kids would understand the stakes of somebody’s prized Lippizaner Stallions going missing:

But of course there’s no consistency. V.E.N.O.M. would spend one episode stealing some kind of billion dollar turbo horse, and the next stealing blankets and mesh. 

Terrence did not know what poor people valued! It’s like he got yelled at for being out of touch after the horsey episode so now he’s swinging at the wind, “poor people like… quilts! Mesh! Wait! They love doors!”

Stay tuned next week, kids, when V.E.N.O.M. strips the copper wiring out of a disused community center! They find a ping-pong table with only major water damage – in your face, M.A.S.K.!

Who could forget the thrilling episode where an entire villainous agency got together to steal the ashtray change from a babysitter’s used Saturn?

The stakes vary so wildly: It’s either replacing all of the planet’s water with Lipizanner Stallions or it’s stealing Billy Meyers’ new retainer. V.E.N.O.M. seems less like an evil organization, and more like aliens who got brain damage from a crash landing and now they’re trying to relearn basic morality in a world they don’t know they don’t belong to.

But don’t worry. M.A.S.K. found its footing eventually! It didn’t take them long to hit their Eureka moment. Of course! It was there the whole time! This show about cars that kind of transform is really about… protecting indigineous people across the globe! From themselves and their own ignorance!

Damn, that’s a good shenanigan in that thumbnail! That’s worth a zoom and enhance.

God, I can taste that freeze frame. Some dude named B.U.C.K. or Laser Hound says like “Oh, Professor Demolition – he’s made a monkey of you!” And then they laugh and we’re out, having earned it. Having earned our ending.

The problem with M.A.S.K. proclaiming themselves protector of indigineous cultures both living and dead was that the writers weren’t willing to research anything about anything. Normally, that’s actually fine…

Better, even: Kids are stupid, they don’t know you’re making up a race. And you don’t have to take wild guesses at the delicate history of an aborginal people who really don’t need to show up in a cartoon for latchkey suburban kids that have every good GoBot already. It’s a win-win.

But M.A.S.K. does not stick to fictional anthropology. 

And that means every ethnicity other than White Protestant is actually magic, but so fucking bad at it they also need a truck with wings to save them.

“Every culture is hiding a secret treasure!” Is one of those cute lessons to teach kids, but it loses some charm when you stop, look them dead in the eye, and say “no really, it’s there. Let’s go get it. Let’s go take it from them and god help them, Margaret, god help them if they try to stop me and the flamethrower I mounted in the back of my station wagon.”

Hey you know what Native Americans need to see more of, in pop culture? White people rolling up on the reservation in battle wagons! 

Ah, shit. I’m sorry, this is so easy to do: Slip into applying modern morality to past media. This was the 1980s – if you got out of any action show without the team going undercover as natives, that was a win. There was a Very Special Punky Brewster episode where she got trapped in a fridge and hallucinated a rapping devil played by Andy Gibb in blackface. It was a nightmare decade. This show is mostly harmless.

I didn’t want to bring M.A.S.K. to condemn it, I wanted to bring it because of its childlike naivete about the world: Sure the natives of fictional Mongo Pongo have never seen a plane before and they tried to feed their children to its engines to calm its fury. You, the writers, invented them. You can say whatever you want. Also the Inca don’t care that you’re using their sacred temples as a set piece for a Cadillac with a harpoon-gun to fight a Fiat that’s half-boat. They’re too busy being dead and their priests are chasing Scooby Doo through a hot dog stand. 

But like… 

Those superstitious Singaporeans? I was a dipshit kid watching this. I had no reference for Singapore. I probably did think it was an island where they threw spears at helicopters. But here’s Singapore in 1980:

I know Terrence was a thin-skulled child and was never allowed to leave the poolhouse for his own safety, but he has a job writing children’s shows now. You need to let him use the encyclopedias even if he gets so excited by the topless aborigines that he has a trademark Vanderburg fainting spell. Look, I know I just made that up but holy shit, wouldn’t that perfectly explain everything about M.A.S.K.?

Freed from the tyranny of basic research, M.A.S.K. starts getting wild with ethnics that need saving. We got unfrozen caveman ethnics…

Zoom and enhance. The artist calls this work “The British History Museum Dilemma.”

We’re unfreezing ancient Incan priests one episode, and the next we’re zipping across the world to raid MacGuffins from the very real aborigines of New Guinea. 

Somewhere around the 30th episode I get the feeling M.A.S.K. is just fucking around with us, seeing what the limits are. How far they can get out into the garden before the shock collar goes off. You think that’s a dog metaphor, but no – that’s still Poolhouse Terrence.

Haha, incredible. It’s been 37 episodes and they’re so out of ideas that it’s every idea. Frightening aborigines! Flying rocks! No! Holographic projections of flying rocks! Those idiots! They think it’s god! Their god, Mimi! Who has a secret treasure! But don’t worry, at the end Brad saves the day with his hocus pocus mask. Brad with his guitar!

No, come on.

…

Is that scene exactly what I think it is?

Yes, it is exactly that.

Every M.A.S.K. plot starts with two things too many and then adds eight more, trying to overload the Buy Center of a child’s brain with confusing and contradictory information. It’s a classic CIA Fake and Break technique.

Then the writers rush out half a draft, set it in a “primitive” village like Portugal, and count on the failure of the American Education System to get them to Season 2. And it worked! I had like eight M.A.S.K. toys and I do not know where Singapore is. 

Haha! 

That’s the best episode yet. 

It brings up such a clear mental picture, doesn’t it?

You can see it in your head: 

Some ‘80s jerk with a villainous mustache- 

Those big chunky Ray-Bans- 

The natives flee in terror-

As he pulls off some wildly offensive Ooga Booga mask –

To be like “the fools!”

Categories
PODCASTING DAY

Podcasting Day: American Inventor with Drew Toothpaste and Natalie Dee! 🌭

This week we’re joined by co-founders of internet comedy, Drew Toothpaste and Natalie Dee. Natalie and Drew have been making Weird Internet Shit far longer than any of us feel comfortable discussing. Find them at the Garbage Brain University podcast, or here, right now! To commemorate all of us being veterans of the comedy wars, we made them watch the first episode of American Inventor, which of course they had already seen. 

American Inventor was a failed reality show from 2006, when it was impossible to fail as a reality show. It was a predecessor of Shark Tank but with a more evil premise, crazier inventors, and scummier hosts. Let’s meet the judges:

Ed Evangelista, the untrustworthy one!

Peter Jones, the posh one! Brilliantly untrustworthy.

Mary Lou Quinan, the woman one! Confidently untrustworthy.

And Doug Hall, the eccentric inventor! There’s something about a white guy in a Hawaiian shirt and denim jacket that screams “trust me with your dreams.”

Doug brags hard and often about his elite luxury invention compound where the world’s best minds think professionally, untethered by material concerns. Let’s take a look at those sprawling resort grounds, Google Street View!

Remember to subscribe to the podcast, which we hear is like being trapped in a child’s prison of joy. And then leave us a glowing review, which offers all the satisfaction of publicly relieving yourself in a trash bag.

Listen to the podcast to get these jokes, or just read them now and remember them fondly when the time comes!

Categories
LEARNING DAY

Learning Day: Isn’t That Something? 🌭

Public Access Television is for documenting maniacs who are certain they need documenting. It’s always a gamble tuning in to Public Access – anyone with $50, a dream, and a head injury that prevents shame can get on TV. On channel 1170. At 3AM. Turn on Public Access and you might get something about gardening, you’ll probably get something about Christ, you’ll definitely get at least one flaccid penis. There was one show when I was a kid where a man in a goat mask just swung his dick around to Halloween Sound Effects. It was foundational art that shaped me as a person. But you have to sift to find the gold, is what I’m saying. 

That’s what I’m here for. I’m your Goatmask Dick Sifter, and I have found Isn’t That Something? 

We open as most Public Access shows open: on a drunk middle-aged man in an interesting hat. He listens to jazz in the way an uncle does, shameless and free. He does hand dances in a crowded corner where a grandma exploded. He scats. Oh, he scats. 

“What charming opening credits,” you think. “Just a relaxed man doing his thing, about to welcome us to the show.”

No, this is the show. 

This is Mike Loveless. I assume he was Mike Love before the divorce.

We are going to do this. We are going to spend half an hour watching a drunk furniture salesman rediscover music. He will pretend to conduct a guitar. He will sing along with a trumpet.

He makes faces like an animated bullfrog, which is great because he is wearing the exact right outfit for that. 

He invents dance moves that have already been invented, but not like this. Not like this. Behold the robot, but a specific kind of robot. 

It’s kind of a robot trying to remove dog hair from the jumper of a hyperactive child. It’s kind of C3PO dying. 

We do not have to surmise that he is drunk. 

Loveless didn’t just come into this show fucked up (he did), he is using this show to get fucked up (he will). And it’s going great! Then, everything stops.

He has found himself. 

In the monitor.

Jazz plays, abandoned, as a man who looks like a Hank, not a Henry, contemplates his external existence: The physical space he occupies in this world instead of just the life he leads inside his own head.

Then it’s time for more dancing.

This would be plenty – no words, just watching a Heart Attack Before Photo experience pure solo joy in a way that doesn’t get him arrested at a bus stop. But no, he speaks! 

It does take a while.

I have done my best to transcribe it, but please forgive any mistakes or shortcomings. Mike Loveless talks like Boss Hogg dying in a black hole and the cadence of one word is always at war with the next. This is how he opens the show:

He trails off, shrugs miserably. 

Welcome to the show!

We have just now started. Expect at all times for our host to get lost staring at a tchotchke, a memorial of somebody’s mother’s obsession with ceramic pigs, or a human skull with panties on it. Notice the pure chaos, the crazily tilted photos on the wall, the action figures, half the set of Doctor Who. This man will scat to himself while staring at all of them. “Rank bank gank a gank” he’ll say, blearing misty-eyed at a plastic frog, “Gank ganky gank gank bank.” 

And you will watch, transfixed. 

He will frequently sexually harass this mannequin. 

So this is a show about music. He told us that much. It might not be true, it’s not always up to the artist to decide what the art is about. Ray Bradbury famously thought Fahrenheit 451 was about the dangers of television. This man will fondle a plastic bank teller while hollering tuba noises, and he thinks that’s about music. 

We will be the judges of that.

Let’s hear our first album, Chime Music, by Lou Charles.

“Let’s see what this sounds like,” Loveless says, because he didn’t vet the records ahead of time.

It is clocks. 

I will repeat that. It is the various sounds a grandfather clock might make, in no special kind of order. I am not being dismissive about a style of music, this is what a clock salesman might play while trying to sell you a clock or murdering you in a shed, clock salesman depending. 

Loveless grabbed an album at random, and he wound up with an archival recording to remind aliens what clocks were like long after human society collapses. My god. Where the fuck are we? My god. It goes so fast.

He turns to the camera, and remember you are hearing atonal clock sounds bonging loudly throughout this, he turns to the camera and says…

He pauses to mess with the RPMs, doing a clock chime chop and screw. It endlessly repeats. He meows along to it, he becomes concerned, he asks who the cat is – he solves this problem; he is the cat. He addresses himself as a cat. He asks his cat self how he feels about remixed clock sounds.

This is the end. Possibly of all things, probably of the coherency of language, definitely of this record. He applauds the patience of men who play clocks, he hurls the record across the room, he scats clock sounds to himself for the next minute. 

It is time to sexually harass the mannequin. Some shows will segue between scenes by throwing it to the band, others will toss in a short clip to hide the transition. Here, we grope a plastic woman and then get offended at her lack of interest.

Now it’s time for Corey Hart’s First Offense. “Let’s hear some offensive guy,” Loveless garbles. “Sunglasses at Night” will play for the next five minutes, but it will feel like forty, as it always does. Just as with the clock solos, it is imperative you remember Corey Hart’s “Sunglasses at Night” is playing to its completion while all of this is happening. It’s part of the art.

He is wearing a special suit just for this episode. He got it from a flea market. It belongs to someone possibly named Jason Frambini from Sports. I do not know and I will not look it up, I recognize a knowledge trap when I see one. I know which concepts will plant info-bombs in my head, to be triggered by seeing certain stock photo models in ads for new salad dressings. I know the CIA puts them there. This is not my first day on Public Access, I have seen every episode of They Know But Do You Know? Now You Know with Electric Jimmy Pork. 

Either Loveless got hustled for a Big ‘N Tall suit that an Indiana Gypsy could not move without elaborate lies, or he stole a dead man’s clothes. Those are assumptions I’m making. I will not listen if you tell me anything more about Jason Frambini. I will attack you if you try.

Corey Hart’s “Sunglasses at Night” really kicks into overdrive.

Loveless suddenly pulls out a pistol and everything makes sense. For the first time in the show, you get it. The liquor, the chaos, the cold-hearted bitch of a mannequin, the clock sounds. It’s a bleak island we’ve found ourselves on, but sometimes you’re just glad to be standing on land again. 

We know exactly where this is going…

He conducts Corey Hart with the cigar. It doesn’t work. He’s never heard the song before; he doesn’t know you can’t tame Corey’s restless Hart. 

Loveless pauses for a long time, then says “you know the show right now is running kinda slow,” and I don’t believe him. I’ve spent ten minutes in this episode and I’m already at peace with watching a man in a dead giant’s suit blow his brains out to “Sunglasses at Night.” This is riveting television, but everybody gets imposter syndrome. Loveless puts his hand to his mouth, like he’s telling us a secret, then hollers like a rural mechanic upset at an engine possum.

“I’m kinda feeling embarrassed how it’s running,” he screams. “I think I’m gonna hide.”

And he does that.

And now it’s time to hide. This is the hiding portion of the show.

It will last for the rest of the show.

Oh sure, he pops up every once in a while to drunkenly knock over records like a groundhog that is not handling the groundhog divorce well. But 20 minutes of this show’s 30 minute run-time is watching for the wormsign of a 53 year old man crawling around on the floor, smoking, hollering, and never forgetting his drink.

That is a wrap on Corey Hart.

“HEYHN! WANNA HEAR SOME DISCO?”

A voice booms from a place we can’t identify. A straw fedora bobs unsteadily. The gulp of a rum and flat Diet Coke (no ice) going down smooth. 

There’s a logistical issue. It’s time to change the record and we need to wipe it with a damp cloth because it’s all that’s left, the records are all that’s left – but if you’ll recall, we are hiding from debt collectors and memories of Brenda in the one place they left us: The floor.

He does it! He breaks out of hiding, he wrestles himself off the floor, he emerges to get the cloth, to clean the record, to clean off everything – he weaves, blinking amniotically at a bigger world, full of potential.

We put on some disco, time to get down!

No, lower.

This is the magic of Public Access. You have nothing. No context, no foundation, no reference points. You volunteered to take a human journey and now here you are watching a former Fort Wayne Chili Contest Champion half-boogie on a basement floor. 

“HEYHN! You wanna hear a dead guy?” Loveless asks. 

Okay, so the pistol lighter was a false start but we were right, this is a video suicide note. That was always where this was going-

“OLIVIA NEWTON JOHN IS SINGING,” He explains. 

Olivia Newton John, famous dead guy. 

Look at those bold dance moves! Flowing seamlessly from Hungry Gorilla to How Do I Walk These Feet to Crashing the Surfboard. Mike Loveless dances, wild and free (while still hiding from a camera he himself set up). He gets up to skip every single song, listening for 10 seconds only. He does not like disco. It escapes him why he suggested it. 

He takes the record off, he cleans the record. He gives us a lesson about cleaning records. He puts the record back on. He forgot he took it off. He listens to 10 seconds of each song and remembers he does not like disco. 

You forgot too, didn’t you? That you’re watching a Public Access show somebody pitched, petitioned, and paid to be made. The streaming age has left you immune to one-camera glimpses into banal insanity. And then comes the program break.

“HEYHN!” He yells from behind a stack of records, still hiding from his own show. “If you like the content of this program, please write to Isn’t That Something? Post Office *coughing, gagging* 10387, Fort Wayne, Indiana, 46852.” 

Something about that – about pausing this “program” to invite longtime fans to write in – just breaks me. I hope they did. I hope they wrote in by the hundreds, absolutely flooding this man’s life with love and validation. 

“I loved the hiding episode!” One reads. “I never did find you!”

“I found so much great music thanks to you throwing it in my yard!” Another gushes.

“I forgive you for throwing up on my father’s corpse at the open casket funeral!” A Brenda raves.

Mike Loveless puts on a serious face. 

“All the views expressed do not necessarily represent those of the channel you’re watchin… but they’re real important to this guy – he’ll back it up.” 

He points to himself. Probably. We can’t see it.

A quick reminder that he has expressed no views. 

This has been a lot of fun, just watching a traveling salesman make a home for himself in music, a home for himself in joy, a home for himself probably in his ex-wife’s garage without her knowledge. But there’s a darkness to the show that I don’t wish on this man. We need something pure and good and positive to chase it away and end the episode strong. 

Oh hell yes. The gods of Chaos shine on Mike Loveless. The last record of the night, the one that random chance has chosen for him? Purple Rain, by Prince and the Revolution.

This is it, Mike. This is how the universe tells you it wants you to live. This is the cosmos putting Brenda on blast.

You know me. You know this next section could be a thousand words. A thousand beautiful breathless words about a man who upsells warranties on aluminum siding turning his whole life around after hitting rock bottom and finding a Prince album there. It’s what my next screenplay is gonna be about and I already won every award for it. I could try to paint you a picture of the bursting, room-filling joy of Purple Rain flooding through Mike Loveless’ brain and bonding with the Sadness Neurons and the Wild Turkey Molecules and just washing them out, leaving him sober and happy and weeping and vomiting up the karmic sludge of thirty years, thirty god damn years that never once went the way he wanted – I could do that. I could write those thousand words. I’m not going to write those thousand words.

Instead, here’s four.

…
This article was brought to you by our fine sponsor and Hot Dog Supreme: Michael Wells, famous dead guy.