Author: Robert Brockway

Categories
FUCKING DAY

Gor

Once, long ago, there was a comedy website that only wanted three simple things: to make people laugh, to teach them a few things, and to be able to issue our own traffic citations to people who put eyelashes on headlights. It succeeded in two of those goals, before getting piledriven into the dirt by corporate scavengers. Some of its archives have been deleted, some of them have been corrupted, and some just suck. You decide which one this is. It’s…

Gor is a fantasy film from the late ’80s based on a series of erotic Men’s Rights manifestos, and it is about three simple things: Nerd revenge fantasies, women knowing their place, and underbutt.

Gor’s protagonist is just a grown-up version of that one kid on the playground who insisted he fought off a gang on the way to school, stole a car at lunch, and had a date with his Canadian supermodel girlfriend penciled in for that afternoon. You will see his soft, underbaked buttcheeks several million times.

The movie opens on a stuffy college Physics professor lecturing his students on the subject of Gor, a parallel earth with fantasy overtones, and the fact that it totally exists, because his ring can take him there if the circumstances are just right. After dutifully scratching down terms like ‘counter-earth’ and ‘dimension stone’ in preparation for the easiest Physics test in history, the class stands up to file out. The professor intercepts his teaching assistant, a perky young blonde who doesn’t seem to return his affections. This conversation really only serves to establish two things: The professor’s main character trait, and his name. He is an uncertain man, lacking in confidence and not well respected by his peers. And his name is Tarl Cabot.

One of those things is probably responsible for the other.

Tarl is a non-stop barrage of High School Movie Nerd stereotypes. The cafeteria workers take his lunch money but only after they’ve beaten him up for it. He’s the only college professor with a locker just so he can get stuffed in it. He’s one cancelled Star Trek spinoff and an unattended rifle away from a campus-wide emergency alert. He awkwardly dorks all over the blonde’s face for a few minutes before she finally ditches him and rides off with the cool jock instead.

Wait…weren’t they just teachers? There’s a cool jock college professor? What does he teach, Nerdflushing 212? 

Heartbroken and dejected, Tarl departs campus alone in his shitty Volvo. Then a mysterious storm hits and, blinded by the rain, he rams his car into a tree. The camera pans slowly over the wreckage, until it reaches the driver’s seat and we realize – he’s not there! Tarl has been transported to the magical world of Gor! That’s the mechanic we’re working with here: Mystical caves, enchanted books, magical phrases – fuck ’em. The only way to trigger pan-dimensional teleportation to Gor is by tasting the steering wheel of a beat up 1960 Volvo PF544. And that’s probably a fitting welcome to this lush fantasy world…

Tarl barely has time to take in his surroundings before he spots a band of raiders attacking a village in order to steal their Homestone, the soul of their community. Overseeing the massacre is the sinister Priest-King Sarm, pictured here with his elite warlords…

Looking like they’re all sharing one Skeletor costume.

One of the horsemen spots and pursues Tarl, and there’s a good solid minute of him frantically running in front of horses, tripping over nets, and screeching in panic, which is more than enough to unhorse and defeat several of the most skilled soldiers of Gor. 

These barbarians have spent their whole lives riding the unforgiving badlands and killing its bravest warriors, but nothing could prepare them for a single flailing dork and his sloppy khakis. At the end of this carnage, Tarl is left wounded and unconscious, but has also killed the bandit’s leader: The son of Priest-king Sarm, who will vow revenge!

When he awakens, Tarl is being tended to by a slave girl, Talena. Skanks, loincloths, giant hair, sassiness – Talena is everything the ’80s considered sexy strapped onto some breast implants and set loose to do what she does best: find new and interesting excuses to bend over.

Gor could have been a solid comedy: A modern day nerd sent back in time to engage in hilarious shenanigans with a barbarian horde! Jerry Lewis would have killed that premise, and then done yellowface over its corpse. But Gor is not a comedy, so instead of an hour of Tarl teaching hulking berserkers the importance of Calculus, we get the shortest, least believable training montage in cinema history.

The montage takes roughly thirty seconds, and consists of only two scenes: Tarl cowering away from a sparring session, then dodging thrown spears without looking, and Tarl fumbling with a quiver of arrows, then splitting them Robin Hood-style. Even by the movie’s chronology, he goes from power-nerd to elite warlord in just under an afternoon. To commemorate his entry into manhood, Tarl is given his very own set of armor. It’s just too bad all they had left were child sizes.

Girl child sizes.

Sexy girl child sizes.

Thrilling adventures ensue! In order to pass as slavers, the proud female lead turns to Tarl and whispers “just remember to hold me, and treat me like a slave.” The crew stumbles across a bar hosting a Filthy Lesbian Wrestling night, which Talena obviously must participate in. Our heroes fight raiders; they get caught in quicksand; they acquire a dwarf.

Now take a good long look at that screencap up there. Do you see what’s coming next? You do? Well, fucking good for you. What do you want, a medal? Too bad, because all I have to offer you is dwarf grundle.

Our heroes eventually sneak into the nefarious Sarm’s citadel and then stand around for all of forty-five seconds before being easily, easily captured. Now remember at the beginning of the film, when Tarl accidentally killed Sarm’s son through dorkarate, and the evil ruler vowed revenge? Good for you!

The movie doesn’t.

Instead of torture or beheading or something else suitably sinister, Sarm throws the gang a medieval swinger’s party. This is supposed to woo Tarl over to the side of darkness, because even darkness needs somebody to run the IT desk. Sarm suggestively whispers “let me show you something” and then gestures over to a parade of naked mimes…

He demands that Tarl watch him engage in bisexual make-out sessions…

Then Sarm drags a slave girl over to Tarl while screaming “please him! Please him! Please him well!” 

Look, there are “tempting the hero” scenes, and there are “let me watch while you make my son’s murderer cum” scenes. I see what gets you off, Sarm, and I know the sign over your hot tub says this is a judgment-free zone, and I’m sorry if this harshes the sexmimes’ buzz, but you’re kinda fucked in the head.

Somehow Tarl resists the temptation to bang a slave while the father of a man he killed and the understudies of Cats watch him penetrate. Instead, he escapes with a different slave girl. As they flee down a hidden escape tunnel, Tarl and the new girl join up with Talena, and the next ten minutes are of a level three geek expertly navigating a cave with his two nubile, bikini-clad sex servants. 

That is the exact plot to a depressingly erotic game of Dungeons and Dragons I played in 1992, when I did not fully understand my own sexuality, but I knew it was better than this. 

Unfortunately, the rest of Tarl’s party gets turned around in the caves and wind up stumbling right back into enemy hands. After freeing the other slaves, stealing back the Homestone, and valiantly fighting off a dozen guards, Tarl returns to save his friends. 

We’re here. 

The big showdown: Tarl vs. Sarm! A man who doesn’t know how to start fucking against a man who does not know how to stop! The climactic battle is upon us! 

Here it is:

That’s it. That is the entirety of the final fight scene. An arrow through the neck from off-screen. It takes all of three seconds. Also Jack Palance happens:

Having never appeared for even a second of screentime prior to this, Jack Palance tragically shows up in the final minutes of Gor. You were so close! You were very nearly not in Gor! At least he doesn’t do anything. He just mutters something ominous, and then kind of wanders away, hopefully into a better movie.

Now that the threat is over, Tarl and Talena are free to admit their true feelings. And with all the subtle eroticism one would expect from people whose sexual experience is measured in upvotes on r/theredpill, our screenwriters oblige: Talena sultrily whispers “now that you have helped us break the bonds of slavery, we owe a…service to you.” To which Tarl replies: “We can discuss that.” 

SMASH CUT right to them fucking.

But what’s this? The Homestone has begun to glow! Tarl stops mid-thrust to get up and fondle it, because even in fantasy, he understands more about geology than girls. 

He inserts his ring into a hole on the stone, and is transported back to Earth, presumably with the world’s first case of pan-dimensional blue balls.

Back at the college, Tarl uses his newfound confidence to knock out the bully teacher, and the blonde that previously rejected him rushes into his arms for doing so. That’s just good characterization right there: It’s a well known fact that the two things women find most sexually irresistible are ‘punching your coworkers’ and ‘punching their boyfriends.’

Gor should end here. It has done everything it set out to do: Everybody sure is sorry they picked on the nerdy math guy, all the women lust after him, an entire world worships him as a king – he’s the undisputed best at both punching and humping, where else is there to go?

Ask Jack Palance, who suddenly reappears to give a strange monologue in a Greek Orthodox Mickey Mouse hat.

That’s right: He’s setting up a sequel. Because Gor was not just one hilarious misstep in the history of fiction. It is a rich and storied universe, inspiring a total run of twenty-nine novels, two movies, and even roleplaying games. The books alone sold over 10 million copies. That’s how our world works. I know brilliant authors who will die in squalor and I’m not even including myself, but Gary Gorgax bought himself a private island by writing titty-words for fantasy incels. 

Categories
UPSETTING DAY

Cracked Remaster: The Focus Drug Review

Once, long ago, there was a comedy website that only wanted three simple things: to make people laugh, to teach them a few things, and to make enough money to build a robot that would be our friend, instead of yet another enemy. It succeeded in two of those goals, before getting piledriven into the dirt by corporate scavengers. Some of its archives have been deleted, some of them have been corrupted, and some just suck. You decide which one this is. It’s…

My earlier forays into the field of professional drug abuse were full of mistakes, I understand that now. My chief error was buying all of my prescriptions in baggie form from a man named “The Hungary Hungary Hippo” whose office was “the stank spot beneath the pier.” I’ve tested drugs for boosts to intelligence, creativity, and the enjoyment of colors. But I already understand crosswalks and once caught a squirrel with my bare hands; I’m as smart and alert as any human being needs to be, practically speaking. Plus colors rip ass. They don’t need a boost. No, what I really need is more focus. And, as with all things, I assume that stealing prescriptions is the best way to get it.

Test

To measure for a potential increase in concentration, I will be repeatedly watching a 10-minute loop of a sheep chewing grass to techno music. I will measure the efficacy of each drug by seeing how long I can go before clicking away and Googling He-Man mashups. Our baseline is 0 seconds, because I didn’t even manage to hit play the first time. Instead, I watched this three times and then chased my dogs for a while.

Natural Solutions

Mother Earth was the first and maddest scientist. So if we’re trying to trick our brains into productivity, why not abuse nature first? This article insists that concentration is really a simple matter of adjusting the amount of lubricated fish in your life, and that makes a strange kind of sense to me. Do I have problems focusing? Yes. Am I eating lots of greasy sea life? No.

The problem is clear.

Don’t Take If:

Really, the only risks from natural medication are allergies. And as everybody knows, it’s impossible to be allergic to something you’ve never had before. So I’ve gone ahead and stocked up on the most exotic, oily sea life I can find (for less than 10 dollars): Whatever is in these abandoned Russian fish tins.

There’s some kind of half-fish, half-man skull on the back with a giant cross through it, so it’s either NOT made from mermaids, or it’s made from ONLY mermaids, and either way seems like a good start.

Side Effects:

The complete absence of human companionship. They make your breath and skin smell like an old fisherman’s wet longjohns. 

Also some minor blindness.

Video Test Results:

I made it 35 seconds into the sheep clip this time before I wandered away to watch a He-Man/DMX mashup. I am but a man, with all of that creature’s weaknesses.

Ritalin

Sometimes it’s best to start with the obvious. If you’re looking to buy a car, you go to a car dealership; if you want a Big Mac, you go to McDonald’s; if you want a mattress, you go to Mad Matt’s Mattress Mattorium. So if you find your priorities constantly shifting from work to shiny objects, you go with the big name first: Ritalin.

Don’t Take If:

According to their website, one should not ingest Ritalin if you have “a fructose intolerance, glucose-galactose malabsorption or sucrase-isomaltase deficiency.” I don’t understand what any of those words mean, so I have to assume that they don’t apply to me.

Side Effects:

This is weird: Ritalin lists its side effects as “fast, pounding or uneven heartbeats, feeling like you might pass out and aggression.” But what if you’re always on the verge of passing out (it’s called having a good time, officer), you’re aggressive because people are stupid and constantly in your way, and your heart only beats that way because you’re so fucking fast?

Video Test Results:

I managed to get a full two minutes into sheep trance before wondering if the Internet might have Skeletor doing some Queen covers and it fucking totally did.

Concerta

I actually started taking this one because I thought it was called Concentra, named for the Greek god of paying attention. But upon closer inspection, it seems to be called Concerta. So it’s like a music drug? That seems a bit redundant. We already have a music drug; it’s called “all of them.”

Don’t Take If:

You have a family history of Tourette’s syndrome. Oh man. Will this increase my ability to tell people to fuck off?! That’s not a side effect, it’s a stat boost! This is how you get yourself a customer, Big Pharma. 

Side Effects:

Nothing too bad. I’ve stopped sleeping and started swearing (more), and I now have to snap my fingers every time I use a comma, like there, or here, or hey, did anybody else notice that this paragraph is punctuated to the tune of John Cougar Mellencamp’s “Jack & Diane”? No, just me? (,,)

Video Test Results:

Holy shit! I watched the whole sheep thing twice. This is amazing! I’m not sure if it’s due to increased concentration, or if it’s just that I have more uninterrupted time to focus on my tasks since I started calling everybody Captain Cocksipper and stinking of the fruits of the Baltic Sea, but I am really getting some shit done now. I mean, so far that “shit” has just been staring at this sheep, but I am doing it. I’m really doing the ASS out of it!

Focalin

It’s called Focalin because it helps you focus. Get it? God, drug names are so cool. I wish I had a drug name. I wish I was named Robertine or Brocolux. My side effects would be “belligerence and sleep racing,” and my label art would be a field of flowers with one furious naked man standing in the middle yelling at the sun. Fuck you, the sun, I did not give you permission to touch my skin! 

Don’t Take If:

It says I shouldn’t take this stuff if I’ve also taken MAOI-inhibitors in the past two weeks. Google tells me that’s some kind of antidepressant. But it’s impossible to say for certain what drugs I have and haven’t taken because nobody leaves me unattended in their bathrooms long enough to read the labels of their prescriptions.

Side Effects:

Eyesight changes.

Wait … ha ha, what? What kind of “eyesight changes”? Will I go blind? Will I get Predator vision? Will I be able to see lies? That’s some worryingly vague shit to drop on a fella, Captain Cocksipper. Captain Cocksipper and his first mate, Mr. Dongdrinker. Captain Cocksipper and his first mate, Mr. Dongdrinker, and their loyal companion Bosun Ballchug. 

What were we doing?

Video Test Results:

Okay. Do you still see the sheep in this video? Is it… is it just me who sees this fresh lunacy? Is this what they meant by “eyesight changes”? Fuck you, Focalin, this isn’t an “eyesight change,” this is a madness infusion. And the real tragedy is I’m so goddamn focused that I watched every second of it. I couldn’t help myself. And now, as a direct consequence, I can understand the language that shadows speak.

They have nothing interesting to say.

Vyvanse

Vyvanse.

Vyvanse. VYVANSE. Look at all of those crazy dips and valleys. Vyvyvyv. That word just looks fun, doesn’t it? So I took a handful of them.

Turns out it was a focus drug, too!

Small world.

Don’t Take If:

I can’t take this if I have “agitated states” and a “history of drug use”? Ha ha, shit. You might as well have just put “no comedians” on the bottle. Whatever, Vyvanse. Thanks to Focalin and the screaming war babies, I can already see death’s reflection in the pupils of every man I pass on the street. Really, what are you going to do to me that I haven’t already done to every man foolish enough to look upon me with their cursed death-eyes?

Side Effects:

Vyvanse lists possible side effects as “new or worse behavior and thought problems, aggressive behavior or hostility, hearing voices, believing things that are not true and extreme suspicion.”

Worse behavior than what? My previous behavior? My neighbor’s behavior? Society’s stifling rules of normality? There’s no measure! And “believing things that are not true”? What do you mean, exactly? Are we talking outright fiction here, like the existence of elves, or just erroneous misconceptions, like thinking that concept albums are a good idea? You’re fucking with me, Vyvanse.

Shadowfriends, this medication is fucking with me, and I do not appreciate it.

Attack.

No, attack.

I don’t know, the bottle.

What do you mean, that won’t do anything?

Class action lawsuit? Fuck! You’re so fucking basic, shadowpeople.

Video Test Results:

I was mistaken earlier. This isn’t the wrong video at all. It was the wrong clip before, but it’s right now. It’s all right now. I’ve watched all 10 minutes of it, 15 times, back to back. I do that, instead of dreaming. And I understand now, I do. I understand everything: I know what has to be done, and why, and who has to do it, and that this paragraph is punctuated to Hall and Oates’ “Private Eyes.” (,,)

Yay, that’s fun. That’s a fun thing.

Pardon me. I have a mission.

Arresting Officer’s Notes:

Mr. Brockway tried to burn down a CVS and had to be submerged in an ice bath due to his body temperature of 119 degrees Fahrenheit.

Perhaps he shouldn’t have been “stacking” his tests. He did not stop taking one drug before starting another. Also all of his “test material” used the same active ingredient — some form of methylphenidate — except for the expired can of fish. But apparently the latter, when combined with certain psychostimulants, causes a blood toxicity condition called Spratsblud.

The medical examiner says Mr. Brockway’s plasma is still too explosive to legally allow for an interrogation, but I have drawn some conclusions from my investigation so far:

This was stupid, and somebody is going to be extremely in jail the very second that “upsetting their blood” stops being considered an act of public endangerment.

Categories
NERDING DAY

Rapsittie Street Kids Believe in Santa 🌭

It’s getting to look a lot like Christmas, probably. Somewhere. There’s a plague on, I haven’t checked. But I’m sure somebody’s still trying to put on a Christmas to cap off this horrible, insane year full of garbage and terror, so it’s only appropriate that our Christmas movie be The Rapsittie Street Kids Believe in Santa — a horrible, insane movie full of garbage and terror. If you had to guess when this was made based solely off of the cover, what would you say?

Maybe 1987, with the stipulation that it was programmed by amateur PC enthusiasts trying and failing to prove that computers could do art better than a 2nd grader? Like a Kasparov vs. Deep Blue situation, but for slow children? Nope! This was made in 2002 by Wolf Tracer Studios. That may seem like ancient history for some of our younger readers, whose blood I want to steal to revive this decaying body, but keep in mind Toy Story 2 was 1999. Monsters, Inc. and Shrek were released in 2001. For reference, here’s a screengrab from Shrek somehow looking at the abominations from Rapsittie.

Maybe CGI wasn’t super great in 2002, but it was way better than this. 

Even putting aside that the kid looks like E.T. in blackface and moves like a robot programmed to mock somebody discovering the wonder of dance, this was still an exceptionally bad effort. And remember: This wasn’t an art project by an emotionally scarred head trauma patient trying to communicate the dumb lens of horror through which he now sees the world — this was an actual movie with an actual budget. It had a solid cast: the voices of Belle from Beauty and the Beast and Ariel from The Little Mermaid, Nancy Cartwright from The Simpsons, and Mark Hamill! That’s right: motherfucking Wing Commander himself was in this! 

Rapsittie Street Kids Believe in Santa aired nationally! 

On multiple major networks!

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: if you’re out there studying your craft and diligently working your way up the Hollywood ladder hoping you’ll one day earn that lottery ticket to maybe get into filmmaking… you can eat shit until you get shit poisoning. These are the movies that get made. 

That’s Ricky “Rhymemaster” Rodgers, and he raps like he graduated from the Will Smith College of Harmless Slang and Funky Noises, where his thesis statement was rhyming “ya boo” with “haha woo!” Ricky isn’t always rapping, but every time Ricky is onscreen these gentle, hesitant beats play in the background, like the music director was a well-meaning racist who thinks he should always be ready in case black people start freestyling.

Here’s Ricky’s great-grandmother:

She speaks every line like she’s voiced by three different old women having an argument, and it comes across like she’s doing a Lil Wayne impression through a stroke. It is never explained why she talks like you’re playing a particularly violent episode of The View backwards to summon a Geriatric Bitch Demon. It is but one of many insane decisions that make up Rapsittie Street Kids Believe in Santa. Here’s another:

Look at those poor children in the last stages of drowning, their little legs twitching uselessly as their brains shut down; as the cold currents whisk them away to an unacknowledged grave.

Those kids are supposed to be ice skating. Not only did Wolf Tracer not animate an ice skating motion, they didn’t bother rendering ice skates, which would be as simple as “line under normal shoe.” It’s not like they spent that saved time on the story. The plot of Rapsittie Street Kids is almost as terrible as everything else in Rapsittie Street Kids. Young Ricky’s main goal in life is to get with “beautiful Nicole” who looks like this:

They say beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and that’s good, since she’s got the eyes of a Beholder. Why do all of the children look like 53-year old Steve Buscemi in the ReBoot universe?

That’s Ricky’s best friend, Smithy, who’s supposed to be fat, but that’s hard to render so he’s just a slightly wider tube. Also mouths are hard to render, so he doesn’t have one. He is always carrying a sandwich and all of his lines are about food, but he does not physically try to eat another child, so this is actually quite a sensitive portrayal of an overweight kid by early 2000s standards.

Ricky is plagued by what I think are supposed to be bullies, and here they’re doing what I think is supposed to be laughing. But while real middle school bullies try to carve slurs into the bellies of children foolish enough to display feelings, these bullies mostly mildly heckle Ricky’s hasty raps. It’s a very privileged dickhead’s idea of what bullying might have been like for the people he bullied.

In order to Bang the Beholder (capitalized because that’s obviously going to be the name of my next DnD campaign) Ricky wants to get Nicole the perfect gift. But he doesn’t have any money. This is a problem because Nicole only likes money. Not the things it can buy, or the status it brings. She just likes the idea of stuff costing other stuff. She repeats, several times, that she only likes objects because they may have been purchased at the mall. She also repeats, several times, that she does not like Ricky.

So Ricky, who is poor, and in love with this girl whose only two personality traits are “likes money” and “does not like Ricky,” decides that the perfect gift for her is the old teddy bear that his dead mother gave him. A gift that Nicole is guaranteed to hate, from a person she already hates, that also disrespects his mother’s legacy. Even if none of that was true, a teddy bear is still a terrible gift for any middle school girl who doesn’t have to wear a purity ring with their father’s name engraved inside the band. 

I shouldn’t even have to type this, but of course Nicole throws the bear in the garbage. 

Heartbroken, Ricky runs home to write to Santa and ask for “a videobox,” an old person’s understanding of what a game console might be. Oh, and he also tacks on that he would like the other kids to get good presents, too, and further writes in the bear incident with Nicole, possibly just to lowkey snitch her out. He goes to mail the letter but loses it, and because a Christmas miracle looks a lot like hack writing, it blows over to Nicole who reads it and has a change of heart. She heads back to retrieve the bear from the garbage, only to find Smithy and Lenee already digging through part of a Quake map I made in 1996 that #gameboyzzz on IRC called “pretty bad, even for a f*****t.”

But it’s not there, so they do the next logical thing: head to the school’s basement. Since that’s… where the trash goes? After you put it in the dumpster outside? I don’t know what kind of person doesn’t know how garbage works, and I cannot fathom why their first wild guess as to where it goes to die is the basement of a children’s school, but here’s that cluttered trash-heap with all four of its loose objects.

I hope you appreciated the lushness of that scene. That’s what Rapsittie blew all of its budget on. You will not see its like again.

The bear isn’t down there (it wasn’t in the box, or even on the desk!) so the kids head to the junkyard — again, not where trash goes. This was 2002, we had the internet. Our pornography was unacceptably slow and unbearably puritan with nary a stepsister to be found, but you could still Altavista up what a dump was. Or you could at least ask any other human being what happens to garbage when you’re not looking at it. But no: Nobody involved in the making of this movie knew what to do with trash, which probably explains why they left all of Rapsittie Street Kids in Rapsittie Street Kids.

Only after writing down “EXT. THE JUNKYARD” did Wolf Tracer realize they would have to render maybe six boxes this time. Oh god, two stacks of chairs! A task so beyond their meager abilities they didn’t even try:

What happened here? You couldn’t put together three cars, the objects made out of straight lines and boxes? You couldn’t even find a picture of a car? You couldn’t even find a 6 year old willing to draw you a picture of a car who didn’t have lobster hands and child glaucoma? You really exploited Lippo the Lobster Boy’s poor vision and trusting nature to pay him 40 dollars in monopoly money for this establishing shot of a junkyard starring one legible carblob and two more carblobs that might actually be horseblob and mommyblob, now that I look closer?

You might have spied one of the gentle bullies hiding in that scene, waiting in ambush. Now, if my childhood bully found me in a junkyard I would have to eat a catalytic converter and walk home with my dick out, but their plan is to wait for Nicole, Smithy and Lenee to get there and “find the best junk” so they can “take the good stuff.” There is junk all around you. This is it. This is the whole of the junkyard; there is no backroom. Why is garbage such a mystery to this film that I would have sworn was magicked into life by a Garbagemancer? 

Anyway, Smithy saves the day by hurling his precious sandwich at the bullies, which causes the guard dogs to chase them off. My god, Wolf Tracer. Why do you set goals you have no intention of meeting? 

Those look like leaked screenshots of Spore from around the time when we all started to get worried about Spore. This isn’t just poorly done, it is actually madness. Why do they have eyestalks when they don’t have eyes? How is a paw a suction cup? If you truly can’t draw shit, a paw can just be a round blob – ask Lippo to draw Floofers, his only friend. He’ll show you. Just don’t tell him Floofers is taxidermied. You’ll set off another of what Dr. Bobbi fearfully calls “the pinchstorms.”

The kids find the bear in a weirdly prominent spot, and Nicole returns triumphant. She tries to give back the only memento Ricky has of his dead mother, but he wants to make them eyestalks roll so bad he insists she keep it.

That seems ridiculous even by the standards of Christmas specials, where a murderer’s heart can be changed by a really fancy bow, but wait — we’re going somewhere. Nicole’s grandmother gets her a Videobox. That’s the very expensive gift that Ricky wanted! Nicole, having recently learned the spirit of the season by visiting up to two locations where garbage is not, immediately regifts the console to Ricky. 

And he accepts it! None of this “I couldn’t possibly, your friendship is enough” crap. He yoinks that console with a sinister grin that tells you his plan came together just like he and Nicole will tonight, but her eyeballs never will.

Because this was all his plan. Whose letter miraculously made its way to the rich girl? Who took the bear out of the dumpster, but nothing else? Who put it in a junkyard? In a safe, easily findable spot? That’s the real lesson Rapsittie Street Kids Believe in Santa wants to teach us: how to emotionally exploit the wealthy into buying us videogame consoles. PS5s are still going for like 20 grand on eBay. 

You know what you have to do.

…
This post was brought to you by a Hot Tip from Hot Dog It’s Matthew Byas, and by our fine sponsor and Hot Dog Supreme, Lyman: A level 17 Bangbard whose cantrips are Vicious Muffery and Prestidongitation.

Categories
FUCKING DAY

Transformers Kiss Players

Transformers were awesome. They took two bitchin’ things, cars and robots, and mashed them together into the ultimate toy. Then some poor intern had to come up with a reason for that toy to exist, and everything started falling apart. Oh, not immediately: At first it was just “robot cars fight other robot cars because some robot cars are jerks,” and it was good. But when you take any idea and stretch it out over decades, it begins to unravel. And at some point lunatics will take up those loose threads and use them to tie tiny nooses for their genitals, and that’s how we wind up with stuff like Transformers: Kiss Players.

“Oh no,” you say to the lonely apartment that will one day be your tomb. “What is this? More Transformers fanfiction? I actually got way into the asshole-building lore of the last one, but I’m not ready for more yet.”

No, Kiss Players was not fanfiction, despite looking so fanfiction you can scratch and sniff this image for a whiff of Taki-dust and balls:

That picture looks like it wants to be evidence. It looks like the nail in the coffin for The People of Thailand vs. Rodimus Prime, Wheeljack, and Thrust (2006). It just sort of feels like that photo changed a life — like whoever had to paint that on commission finished the last brush stroke and then just walked the Earth for a while, trying to figure out where happiness comes from.

But no, despite giving off serious now-deleted-forum vibes, Transformers Kiss Players actually happened within the timeline of the official Transformers universe. And not only that, but for over a year it was their main IP.

If you referred to “the Transformers” anytime in 2006, you were talking about the giant robot trucks that made out with little girls. And you would have been rightfully under arrest for it. There is, of course, an elaborate anime nonsense explanation for why these worryingly young girls absolutely must get to second base with a half-robot half-police car to save the world.

Oh, okay. That totally checks out. By all means, Grimlock, please continue penetrating the 12-year-old. It is I who am the fool for ever trying to stop you.

Now, my Japanese begins and ends with “Biru wa doko desu ka? Jinsei wa muzukashii desu.” And I’m guessing that translating Kiss Players into English would make it prosecutable under our laws, so while I have outside sources to verify the details of the main storybeats, I may have to guess about the fineries of which Transformer is fucking which 9th grader in which degree of impoliteness.

Let’s meet the colorful cast of characters, who look abused and terrified at all times: First up is Atari Hitotonari, whose name apparently means something like “bruised pear next door” and my god do I not want to know what that’s a euphemism for. I’m serious. I will delete this website if you tell me.

Atari is just wandering an empty city, suicidally despondent, until a Decepticon with a dick tongue corners her.

She suddenly decides she doesn’t want to die, or more probably, does not want to die like that – impaled on the forever-cumming penile tongue of a mid-priced sports car. The comic acts like this moment fixed her suicidal ideation, but just because you don’t want to be molested to death by a Miata does not mean you’re over your mental health issues. But sadly, it is no longer up to Atari: The Decepticon looms over her, dripping viscous white fluid onto her hair and face which I’m sure is explained as “oil discharge” or something for plausible deniability, but the art leaves absolutely no doubt that this transformer has a urethra in his mouth:

But oh shit! She’s saved at the last minute by an autobot, huzzah! The good guys are here! 

Then that good guy leans over and barfs up our next main character, a miserable naked teen in chains.

I hope this isn’t racist, but I’m starting to think Transformers turn into cars because they’re all sex traffickers. Anyway, that lil’ robo-snack up there is Syao, and if it feels like I’m cherry-picking weird frames to make this look bad, I promise you two things: 

1. These are the very first moments you see the main characters of this series — while one is being threatened by a prehensile dongue, and another is getting yakked out of the sex dungeon that a robot keeps in its stomach.

2. Kiss Players does not need anybody’s help to look bad. In fact, if you ever need help looking bad — I don’t know, maybe you just bought an exceptionally loud motorcycle and now lust-addled ladies keep hopping on at stoplights and they’re starting to stain your seat — Kiss Players will help you. Just mention how you thought it was an underrated exploration of female sexuality, and long after you die women will travel just to spit on your grave.

Back to the story: The Autobot is wounded, but his little girl timer has run out, and now he needs a new little girl. As everybody knows, robots can only be healed by the passionate kiss of a girl who looks too young to give consent but definitely is, if you read the fine print. So Atari must – absolutely must – make out with a Mitsubishi to save the world.

Then all of her clothes fall off and the Autobot absorbs her body so it can make her do things. You know, your classic Robot Child Predator Reverse Conscience Scenario.

Yes, this is how Transformers power up: Violating consent. I miss the days when it was just “Energon,” which was dumb, but generic energy Jell-O cubes was better than a young girl’s mouth virginity. 

Oh right, I forgot to mention that was Atari’s first kiss, so I guess it grants whatever robot coerced her out of it more power? Listen, say what you will about Kiss Players, but I haven’t seen this much worldbuilding put into child molestation since Neverland Ranch. 

And that’s it. That’s the story. Like 40% of this comic is nude young girls being chained to giant robots and 60% of it is trying to explain why you shouldn’t prosecute. 

And I must reiterate: Not only was this not illegal, this was officially the main Transformers storyline for an entire year. It wasn’t just a comic! It was also a serial radio play (we loved those back in 2007!) and every single episode synopsis looks like an overwhelmed moderator explaining why they deleted a piece of fanfiction from an all-ages Transformers forum:

What! Transformed her surfboard into a sword! That’s nuts!

Oh also I guess a teenager sucked off Rodimus Prime’s Exhaust Rod, but that surfboard thing is downright wacky!

Of course, Transformers have always really been about the toys — you didn’t think you’d get out of this without seeing the official toyline did you?

I cannot stress this enough, because how could you possibly believe me? We have not established that level of trust yet. We probably won’t, now, after I did this to you. But I’m telling you, this was an official Transformers toyline. The only official Transformers toyline at the time. That is not a fucked up fan creation, an award-winning photoshop in a now-banned subreddit, or the tragic label misprint that brought down the Takara corporation. That is the actual box found in toy stores featuring the main character of this show getting forcible head from an energy goblin for reasons that cannot be explained by the feeble words of man.

Is there more than meets the eye left here? Girl’s presenting like a baboon that is very comfortable being second-in-command. This is Melissa, whose “boyfriend” is a version of Optimus Prime that turns into — remember, at this point I have clinically lost the ability to be kidding — a Dodge Ram. Look at the box. No, not the inside of the young girl’s ass — there’s something far, far stranger here. What’s that up there, middle-left? Why yes, it is the official Dodge badge. Dodge signed off on this. It was a licensed tie-in! 

And anyway that’s why you should buy Ford, next time you’re out truck shopping. Because Dodge molested a teenage girl in Japan and skipped out on the charges. 

Aw, what the hell, we all know who the real star of this article is. Let’s give the people what they want to see! More! Dick! Tongue!

More!

Dick!

Tongue!

MORE! 

Categories
PUNCHING DAY

Street Fighter the Animated Series

You know what the easiest thing in the world is to write? A film adaptation of a fighting game. We explore a bit of each character’s background, and then they fight. Because there’s a fighting contest. They have enlisted in this fighting contest, and that is why they want to fight: Because they have already agreed to do that by, remember, signing up for a fighting contest. That’s it! Stop fucking overcomplicating it! You just Madlibs Bloodsport and you got yourself a movie. None whiff this extremely simple setup more consistently than the Street Fighter franchise, who are desperate to introduce the world to their Street Fighter concept but are certain the world does not want to see any Street Fighting. Street Fighter has failed in every direction, but today, we’re going to talk about the first episode of the 1995 US animated series: 

Because this is the US version, Guile is obviously the main character, being the most flat-topped white American male of the group. And he travels the world using the international fighting circuit to conceal his mission as head of an elite squad of crime fighters, with the code name Street Fighter. 

Why do you do this? Do you think people don’t like fighting? A Dragonball Z season is two minutes of exposition and then 600 hours of screaming and powering up and we watch it every time because we know there’s a punch at the end. The only thing we like watching more than two people fighting is two people fucking, and yet Hollywood still calls me a monster every time I pitch Fucksport. Cowards. Cowards!

Street Fighter does a few other things boldly wrong, immediately: Blanka and Chun Li are the only other ones named in the intro, meaning that’s our main trio. Ken and Ryu, the protagonists of the game and driving focus of its plot, are not mentioned.

They really just wanted to make the Guile show, huh? Guile is the shitty middle child of Street Fighter. Guile is nobody’s favorite. Guile was a crutch used by emotionally damaged children so they could learn why hiding in a corner and lashing out at anybody that gets too close is a bad strategy. Guile is boring. If you mained Guile, your favorite show is the news and you masturbate to Playboy. You’re the margin for error in the census. You are a human NPC.

The show almost seems to know this. Guile is somehow both plain and fantastically stupid. Like for his first mission, the commander tasks Guile with investigating a dangerous new virus discovered in the Amazon. This is that actual exchange:

For backup, they research other Street Fighter operatives. Chun Li is available, and mercenaries Ken and Ryu are also in the area. At the mention of the actual protagonists of the source material, Guile groans and says “not them!” The commander wishes him luck and Guile says “with Ken and Ryu? I’m gonna need it!” 

That’s right: Ken and Ryu are our wacky comedy relief.

They’re both voiced by idiot bros, they bicker incessantly, and they’re only in the rainforest because they heard rumors of native treasure. So the show doesn’t just sideline Ken and Ryu, it recasts them as dipshit criminals targeting indiginous people. It doesn’t seem like they just want to do their own thing with this show; it seems like they actively hate the source material. It’s like adapting Uncanny X-Men and making Jubilee the main character, then reworking Cyclops and Wolverine to be scumbag amateur porn stars who spraypaint native petroglyphs. 

When we finally see those natives, they’re referred to as “Incan mystics,” and they’re wearing ponchos and headdresses. I don’t know much about the aboriginal people of the rainforest, but I’m like 70% sure that’s racist in a very strange and archaic way. It’s like talking about rural Egyptians today and then smash cutting to a bunch of slaves building a pyramid. It’s time travel bigotry. The Incan Mystics are having themselves a good ol’ fashioned inscrutable ritual when soldiers step out of the brush and attack them with sonic weapons that fire bitchin’ guitar riffs. It is the most ‘90s thing I’ve seen since X-Files pogs. 

It is unquestionably rad. 

Then Blanka explodes out of the temple! It turns out the Incans were keeping him imprisoned, but he’s… mad that they’re being taken away?

So Blanka was consensually staying in that dungeon, could break out at any time, and loved his captors who dressed like archaic ethnic stereotypes? Cool, super cool. I just wanted to verify that we meant to feature racially charged psychosexual monster bondage in our children’s cartoon.

He’s too late, anyway: The soldiers escape with the mystics in tow, and soon Blanka meets up with Guile and the rest of the Street Fighter crew to get them back. Well, most of the crew: Here’s where Ken and Ryu peel off to raid the abducted natives’ home for “treasure.” In case you thought Street Fighter was going to keep the colonial crimes politely implied. But oh no! Ryu runs into a pig and catches the virus!

I’m not even kidding, that’s what happens.

Haha, what? Why didn’t you just have Ryu fucking that pig? You guys clearly despise him. How did Ken and Ryu wrong you, writers of Street Fighter? Did somebody’s big brother pin them in the corner with endless fireballs? It goes jump, block, jump, block, then pause to bait him into a shoryuken and there’s your opening. There’s simply no need for this elaborate, undignified revenge!

Anyway, the rest of the team figure out it was Bison who kidnapped the mystics, so they raid Bison’s compound and this is about how it goes:

Nobody has lost this immediately and this humiliatingly since that pig revoked Ryu’s consent. Actually, knowing what gets him off, Blanka probably shame-came while gently spinning in that magnet grasp. Bison makes his escape as Blanka cleans up, and the Street Fighters come to realize that not only had Bison abducted the Incan Bondage Shamans, he was also the one who kidnapped the missing scientists! You see, he wants to use the virus as a targeted weapon, but for that, he first needs control of the cure. To speed up research, he means to infect more people. As Bison zooms away on a very stupid hovercraft, he explains that he’s put the virus into a balloon which will pop when the timer runs out:

Putting a plague into a pinata is so stupid that I can’t help but love it — really adds that festive element that biological warfare is missing — but you know how the rest of this goes: the Street Fighters are going to catch the deadly virus and have to fight through the illness, and since this is the ‘90s, the Incans will whip up a cure made from pure uncut rainforest. For the rainforest, you see, she is the woman who has everything.

That’s what you think, huh, idiot? Well, you counted the number of fucks Street Fighter gives wrong. You thought it was greater than one. It is not.

Holy shit!

The plot of the VERY FIRST EPISODE of the Street Fighter cartoon hinges on unethical scientists infecting aboriginal people with deadly viruses to research a cure for use in the civilized world. That uh… that kind of thing actually happened, Street Fighter. A lot. A lot of native peoples were subjected to dangerous medical experiments so the “real world” might have a cure. It is actually a form of genocide. Are you sure — are you absolutely sure — that you want to tackle it in the pilot episode of your children’s cartoon about punches and, if there’s time, kicks?

Now, to be fair, Street Fighter pulls back just shy of the line, and doesn’t actually show colonial genocide. Instead Blanka jumps in and takes the viral moneyshot like a good sub. But to everyone’s surprise, he wakes up just fine and his blood turns out to be the cure. Let’s check in once more with the character we had to restructure the entire game’s plot to focus on, our daring and charismatic frontman, Guile: 

Good stuff, Guile. You deserve this spotlight. 

Chun Li and Blanka join Guile, forming the Street Fighter squad. While our actual main characters, Ken and Ryu, leave the show sans native gold, and head to Tierra del Fuego for “killer waves.” But that’s not important. What’s important is that you know the pilot episode of the 1995 cartoon adaptation of Street Fighter was about ethnic cleansing. That way you can tell this anecdote to people who talk to you, so they can stop talking to you.

Categories
UPSETTING DAY

Japan’s Soul Tunnels

The Japanese version of anything is a beartrap baited with pocky and used panties: It might hurt you, sure, but pocky is sweet and those panties look salty. It’s worth a shot! I would like you to carefully nurture that mindset as I take you through… Japanese Soul Train.

It’s called Soul Tunnels, I guess because that’s what Soul Trains use to get through mountains? That’s actually a perfect title, since this is quite a bit like Soul Train, but not as expansive, way darker, and there will absolutely be phallic things going into dank orifices. 

We are in trouble so quickly: The very first thing you see after that shameless ripoff of the Soul Train title sequence is our announcer, DJ Problematik.

I know you’re squinting at all four of those terrible pixels and trying to figure out what you’re looking at. The fake afro could be pretty harmless, but is he…? No, this took place in the ‘90s, surely he’s not in blackface. And you know what? I just can’t tell. The DJ pixels never resolved enough for me to tell whether or not this whole show is an extremely racist reboot of a black institution. 

So please allow the host of Soul Tunnels to remove any doubt.

This isn’t just blackface, it’s the worst blackface I’ve ever seen. Klan members tell that guy he doesn’t need the shoe polish AND nose prosthetics. He looks like somebody exaggerating blackface to try and make a point about how bad blackface really is, only he just realized the second he stepped on stage that it still means he’s doing blackface. Is it the laziness that’s most disturbing? The uncolored ears poking out of the sides, the ill-fitting bald cap, the makeup that crudely ends in jagged smears on the neck? This is a man who has done blackface so many times that it doesn’t even give him a thrill anymore. He hastily slaps on racism like I slap on pants so the mailman can’t sue again.

I know the old excuse: That Japan’s relationship to blackface isn’t meant to be offensive, so it’s not offensive. Kind of like how Australians say “cunt” and they really just mean “any human being, anywhere, of any gender or disposition, dead or alive.” But that’s like saying that flashing the mailman isn’t offensive because you didn’t mean to have your dick out — he just happened to be at the bottom of the stairs on Kilt Day. It won’t hold up in court, is what I’m getting at here.

But while the blackface is – oh god, definitely the biggest thing here — there are a lot of other bizarre issues with Soul Tunnels. For example: everyone is wearing costumes that feel like stereotypes I don’t know about Americans, but that the rest of the world thinks are hilarious.

What is with all the cutesy overalls that look more like Adult Osh Kosh B’Gosh than actual farm gear?

Is Disco a hillbilly thing in Japan? Because I would watch a program about Okinawan Disco Hicks and the minor tragedies of their day to day lives as long as the blackface was tastefully done. 

It’s either huge toddlers playing farmtime dress-up, or it’s men in suits and dark sunglasses wearing fake afros, like somebody installed a funk mod in a John Woo game.

Here’s the Japanese King of Soul:

Looking like an unsuccessful speedboat salesman. He always shows up with three henchmen dressed just like him, which is to say they’re all dressed like background Robocop villains. It’s the least Soul Train thing I can imagine, outside of an Intro to Business class at a Vermont Community College taught by a divorced, former unsuccessful speedboat salesman.

Every episode of Soul Tunnels opens with the Human Hatecrime in a new crazy costume, and so obviously in blackface that it feels weird even mentioning it. I might as well specify he’s not on fire. He then performs a wacky little skit that always feels like he’s mocking a cultural pun that gets lost in translation. Here he is angrily storming out, freezing in place:

Then dropping to the ground to mime the careful insertion of a microphone into his rectum. It’s so specifically, slowly, grossly done that they actually had to pixelate it:

I don’t know what this is. Is the Japanese phrase for “dance competition” phonetically close to their phrase for “surprise anal”? Even if that’s true, I can think of three skits to better capitalize on that observation, and only one of them needs to be digitally altered for decency. After a solid minute of silent, uncomfortable butt stuff, this Japanese man wearing blackface and Berry Gordy’s pajamas just gets up and goes about explaining the rules of this, again, dancing show.

It’s too bad I was wildly distracted by the second worst mime routine in this article, because I really needed to know those rules. Sometimes it seems like Soul Train, where people just dance for the love of it. Sometimes it’s like Britain’s Got Talent, where bullshit and skill are put on equal footing. And other times it’s like MadTV, if they were allowed to air their first drafts. 

It is definitely a competition, but I have no idea who or what to root for. There are very good dancers going so hard they injure themselves…

Have to be carried off-stage…

And then later return to finish their routine, clearly in pain and using a crutch to Hustle.

This is the end of a tragic sports drama. This is the Disco version of collapsing and shitting yourself at the end of a marathon and then not giving up — crawling, screaming, shit-smearing yourself over that finish line as a testament to the human spirit. People are really trying in this competition, when bad dancers do exactly as well by doing nothing except sucking gently to music. Hold on, that’s not fair: Sucking gently and committing race crimes.

These ladies get the same two-minutes of screentime, and they use it to lip sync badly, dance like an unwelcome aunt at a wedding, and run out of shoepolish at the neck. 

And yet they made it through, same as the dude that exploded his kneecap so hard he had to scotch tape the pieces back together and crutch-boogie the rest of his routine just so he could have the honor of finishing.

This high drama was wisely saved for the end of the season, but early episodes were more heavily into bad comedy sketches, like the Disco Mime:

Who combined two of everybody’s least favorite things into something worse, much like racism and dry anal.

While the boneless dental assistants absolutely blew up the house:

They clearly cannot dance and aren’t trying, but the audience goes ballistic for them. This has to be a hilarious reference to something I don’t understand, because when the head labtech does the electrocuted octopus:

The crowd loses their shit! There is no explanation! Wearing your work uniform while having a seizure is the least Soul Train thing I can think of, except for maybe receiving a cancer diagnosis by text while standing in line at the bank.

But things really take a turn a few episodes in, when the biggest god damn twist in the world happens. You will never see this coming. You won’t even believe me when I type it.

Soul Tunnels…

Got…

An actual black guy!

He’s not the worst dancer on Soul Tunnels. He does two minutes of moving invisible boxes while trying to dislodge a wedgie. It looks like he’s about to start a dance forty-two times. It’s kind of a freestyle Beavis and Butthead. 

And he makes it through!

Listen: He got up there and danced, possibly for the first time ever, while a Japanese man dressed like an old racist ad for cough medicine laughed at him ten feet away. That’s what courage looks like. He deserved this win. Though maybe not the next seven — even though he was so shocked by his victory that he never prepared another dance, they kept putting him through, all the way to the final. Where his brother and his brother’s wife, dressed like they’re making fun of white people, were watching from the crowd.

That’s the only thing he says, and he delivers it like an actor trying to read a line with a typo in it. Like he knows there’s something wrong with what he’s saying but it’s not his job to think about it. It’s such a strange and uneven moment that I am now questioning all of Soul Tunnels. Was I wrong about this whole thing? Was it ever a reality show, or was it a scripted Kaufman-esque spoof of a spoof? 

You know what? That’s what we’re going with. This was all a cutting meta-parody that ended with the only black contestant standing next to a hateful caricature of himself, smiling triumphantly because of his ability to do the Funky Forklift for up to two minutes, seven times. Because the other option is that this actually happened.

This post was brought to you by a hot tip from Br_At! Th…thanks?