Author: Robert Brockway

Categories
PUNCHING DAY

Road to Sturgis

Ever since our first Teamworking Day, I have been a haunted man. I have not been whole. Some portion of my thoughts have always been with this hunk of aged beef:

At first I thought it was pure lust overriding my faculties, and that makes sense: He looks like Guy Fieri had a walk-on part in Waterworld. He’s a portly hombre with a visible facial grimeline wearing half of a Native American. He’s got a possum-head bracelet and Steven Seagal’s second-most racist coat. This man is an adonis, it’s no wonder he rented a hotel room in my mind and immediately gave it bedbugs. But then something occurred to me — I didn’t want to be loved by Davy Crockett’s great-great-grandson, Peevis Crockett… I wanted to be him. So I went and dug up his game. 

Harley Davidson: The Road to Sturgis promises to be a completely authentic snapshot of America as seen through the eyes of a dentist’s midlife crisis. But they couldn’t even handle a snapshot of a map on the title screen, so we must forgive their dream being greater than their reach. I will not waste time mocking these graphics again. Even though every screenshot looks like you ran it through a dot-matrix printer and a mud puddle then took a picture of it with a Playskool camera.

I’m sorry I lied to you about making fun of the graphics just now. 

I’m sorry I lied to you about being sorry just now.

Here’s the entire story of Harley Davidson: The Road to Sturgis:

God damn I miss when games had one screen and fourteen words to communicate the entire plot. Today you have to sit through forty-seven minutes of cutscenes explaining why you’re a Norman Reedus delivering fetuses in the post-apocalypse, but back in the ‘80s you would’ve gotten one holdscreen of a pixelated baby with the words “Greetings Norman Reedus, wasteland needs abortions!” and off you’d go.

Hell yes that’s our opening cinematic! A man who dresses like a stand-in for a local production of West Side Story and who walks like a stand-in for a local production of West Side Story goes to start his motorcycle, which immediately bursts into flame. As both a fop and an owner of several old motorcycles, I am absolutely here for this level of authenticity.

Oh shit, character creation! Are you kidding me, Road to Sturgis? You are decades ahead of your time here. I expected you to tell me I’m named Hank Harley and I love to Harley — but you’re giving me options? I better think of something good. I’m going to scroll back up and stare at that cover again for inspiration.

…

I’ve got it. It has taken three hours and two moleskine notebooks full of scratched-out, tear-blurred rejections, but I have the perfect biker name.

I am an artist.

This is the only other option in the character creator. It is the most robust character creator that video games ever should have had. Everything else added afterward was complete horseshit. All you ever need to know about anybody is their name and how hairy they are. Sweet Hot Dogger, let me assure you, it took absolutely everything in my power not to choose ‘bushy.’

Fucking stat allocation screen! 

Road to Sturgis!

Are you secretly an RPG??? Is there going to be an ability tree where I have to choose between Power Skid and Dry Hump? Am I going to collect a ragtag crew and try to kill god with Celestial Hepatitis? Sweet Christ, I am so here for this.

Thank you, NPC that looks like a xerox of a xerox of a WARNING: SEX OFFENDER IN NEIGHBORHOOD poster. 

Clearly, Scuzz Dogballs is not some prissy trick rider. He doesn’t spend his weekends looking for a 10mm socket. He thinks a bank account is for people without extra baggy underwear and he thinks a pick up line is what you call the rope you use to drag women behind your motorcycle. Scuzz Dogballs knows only one thing: Brawling. 

I am going to brawl the holy shit out of literally everything I see.

FIRE WHEN DONE, MOTHERFUCKER.

Is that… is that supposed to be me? You promised me grizzled, Road to Sturgis! Where is the grizzle?! This is not Scuzz Dogballs, Moto Brawler; this is Perry Winklebottom, Tennis Lothario. Don’t get me wrong, that still sounds like a great game, but it’s not the one you promised me.

Ugh, I guess I’ll ENTER STORE if only to get this disappointment off the screen.

Ah, I see my mistake. A true biker does not ENTER STORE. Now I’m not allowed to leave. 

I couldn’t figure out the controls to EXIT STORE, so I looked up the manual, found the EXIT STORE button, and confirmed that it did not work. I would die here. That’s the tale of Scuzz Dogballs: He briefly considered a motorcycle adventure but then settled down to run a discount riding gear outlet instead. RIP Mr. Dogballs, you died how you lived: As a crushing disappointment.

Starting over. There weren’t enough characters to write “Jr.” in there, so just know this is not the original Scuzz Dogballs, and he is nothing like his dad. He has one extra point in riding. Scuzz Dogballs, Sr. disowned him for it.

I won’t make the same mistake twice. I’ll never enter another business again. The open road is enough for me. 

You can see me here, not riding. I’m just sitting there, uselessly revving my Harley to the redline. This is partially because the controls are once again broken and will not allow me to shift, and partially because it’s a simulation game about the Harley experience.

I did not drive a single foot, but I did rev so hard that I burned out my clutch. Scuzz Dogballs, Sr. would never admit it, but Junior made his dad proud that day. 

All right, back on the road.

I did nothing and fell over. I probably should have read the manual before setting off, but that is not the Harley way. The Harley way is to gun it out of the dealership, immediately hit the side of a bus, spend the next sixteen months learning to walk again, then tell all the female servers at the wine bar that you “had to lay ‘er down.”

I finally figured out how to get into first gear, so I floored it up to a stunning 18MPH until I ran out of gas and had to be rescued once again by a kindly old man who I swear is making a face.

Fuck you, old man. Scuzz Dogballs, Jr. does not invest points in riding.

Let’s refill at the station:

Aw hell yeah, here we go. This is the Harley lifestyle simulator I’m looking for. You’re god damn right I see something else “I might be wantin’,” you nasty lil’ pump attendant.

Oh. She’s just… she’s going to ignore my advances. 

Man, the realism in this game is truly on point.

Let’s try something different. I won’t even ride, I’ll just click ‘events’ this time. See what else this game has to offer.

Another sex offender, this one in the middle of going Super Saiyan Blue, here to tell me there’s nothing happening in his dipshit town. I sure hope Scuzz Dogballs’s $18,000 Harley can take another twenty minutes redlining in first to make the next offramp where there will hopefully be at least one thing to look at. 

Actually, wait — you know what? I know how to do two things. I can get into first gear and I can pin it. That’s enough to do a fucking wheelie! 

Should’ve seen that one coming. 

To recap: In Road to Sturgis, I spent most of my time inventing a biker persona in preparation for thrilling fights and adventures I never had, I spent a fortune fixing my bike but barely got out of town, I was ignored by every woman who quietly seethed at my unwelcome advances, and none of the controls worked. 

Truly, this was the perfect Harley Davidson lifestyle simulator. 

I’m never playing it again. Unless…

Categories
UPSETTING DAY

The Saved by the Bell Reboot 🌭

2:38AM

I woke up in the middle of the night feeling hollow and hungry. My stomach rumbled, so I went to the kitchen to pour some disciplinary bourbon. Fuckin’ stomach will think twice before pulling this crap again. I flicked on the kitchen light and was brought up short by my shadow. There was something off about it. I moved and it moved with me, it still looked like me — I couldn’t place what wasn’t right. Then it hit me: The lights were overhead, but my shadow was sprawled across the floor like I was backlit. Seeing the game was up, the distorted silhouette shivered. Its limbs struggled and began to unstick themselves from the floor with audible pops. My guts dropped out. Cold sweat beaded on me like condensation. It was all I could do to step over the shadowbeast to get to the bourbon. 

I poured three fingers Florida-style (measured vertically) and scooted backwards into a corner.  Something was happening to the monster: Its darkness was — not lessening, but diminishing somehow. Soon it gave way to smooth skin, cut abs, and adorable dimples. The shadow had fully receded from the body before me, pulling back and taking up residence in the eyes. But there, the concentrated darkness stayed. 

“Mario Lopez,” I said, because I have long since learned that it likes to hear those words spoken in fear.

“Broadway!” Mario Lopez cackled. “Long time no verte, mi amigo!”

I almost corrected him, because I was a sleepy idiot pouring bourbon on a burrito-less stomach. But it’s so much better if he forgets your name.

“Why?” I asked instead. “I wrote the books! I acted as your herald, just like you demanded! It’s been years! Why now?”

“Because,” Mario Lopez said, idly chewing his lip until it gushed blood. “We’re doing a Saved by the Bell reboot.”

3:07AM

“In the new show, Zack is the governor of California! Ay ay ay, can you believe it?” Mario Lopez knelt on my neighbor’s chest, stealing the man’s inhalations as he slept.

“I got fired from Cracked!” I pleaded. “Nobody buys my books! I barely have a platform! I cannot serve you! All I have now is half of a little Patreon where I write jokes about things that should not exist in this universe.”

Mario Lopez just stared at me emptily.

“Oh, right,” I nodded. “Carry on.”

“But oh no,” Mario Lopez continued, drumming on my neighbor’s shuddering eyelids. “Zack is in the middle of a huge PR scandal — he’s closed too many low-income schools! So he sends all the disenfranchised minorities to upper-class Bayside! Talk about fish out of water! Like your neighbor here!”

Mario Lopez’s voice fell flat as a wind-dead lake. 

“Gasping like a fish out of water,” he clarified.

“Can you let him live?” I asked, my voice tremulous, my hands tremulous, my whole body tremulous from both fear and lack of adequate liquors. “He owes me $15.”

Mario Lopez rose from my slumbering neighbor’s chest and trod directly on his wife’s face as he crossed their bed toward me. The man sucked in desperate air, and the woman’s nose gushed blood, but neither woke.

“My character, A.C. Slater,” Mario Lopez said, stripping off his too-tight polo shirt and undoing his belt. “Was used to being one of the popular kids, but now he’s a gym teacher.”

“The least respected teacher,” he added. “The kind of teacher who knows that, when others refer to them as a teacher, they hold air-quotes in their hearts. This shows modesty on my part. Modesty is culturally desirable at this time.”

“I-it is,” I said, remembering how hard it was to distinguish questions when he flipped to his empty state. “People like humility.”

“Especially from the old and obsolete,” he had stripped entirely naked, and somehow glistened even in the gloom of my neighbor’s unlit bedroom.

“But you don’t look old,” I ventured, unsure if it was the correct thing to do — praise its vanity, or point out a mistake it was making.

“I paint faint lines around my eyes before I go out in public,” Mario Lopez said, now idly pawing at his limp, yet still truly monstrous genitalia. “I allow the skin on my body to slightly loosen, when others see me shirtless. As they do. Often.”

Seriously, his dick was the size of a Fiat. It looked like that staff thing you see on the sides of hospitals — just two snakes twisting around a massive rod.

“Can you put that away?” I gestured at his naked cock, which was easy to do. I didn’t even have to pick a direction. “I’m not sure if I’m embarrassed or jealous but I literally can’t look at anything else. There’s not enough room.”

Mario Lopez picked up something from the floor and mechanically slid on a pair of the woman’s worn panties. They were metallic purple. It was almost worse.

“Can you put on something else?”

He wrapped himself in the man’s robe and, as an afterthought, plucked a football helmet from its place on the wall. It was clearly some kind of treasured trophy, and my neighbor moaned in his sleep. I could tell he was losing that precious memory by the way Mario Lopez’s mammoth dong twitched.

“The gym teacher role was my idea!” Mario Lopez said, mimicking human cadence once again. “Gym teachers have been in the news a lot lately. That makes it timely content — the best kind of content!”

“Yeah, but it’s always for like molestation charges or something. I don’t think gym teachers are in a real hot spot now, culturally spea-”

He spat in my open mouth and I immediately fell into a violent seizure. 

4:15AM

When I awoke we were on the roof of an elementary school. He was crouched atop an antenna array which should not have held his weight.

“On the show, we make many jokes about how the kids these days are both sheltered and clueless,” his voice once again like an echoless cave. 

“That’s not great,” I said, in between the huge gouts of bloody vomit my system used to try to reject his poison. “It’s a harmful and tired misconception and it alienates what’s got to be your best demographic.”

“The old cast is coming back!” Mario Lopez dropped from his perch and grabbed me by my beard. He dragged me to the edge of the roof and tossed me off like you’d toss paper at a wastebasket. I landed in a dumpster and he leapt after me. I took the full weight of him on my old, shitty knees. How could he be so light just a moment ago, and so heavy now?

“We got Jessie Spano!” He howled.

“We got Zach Morris!” 

“We got Kelly Kapowski!” 

“We got Max — the original Max, remember him? Hahaha!”

He rocketed up and away and he didn’t even disturb the trash. It was almost noiseless. Like the quiet ruffle of crows preening.

“What about Screech?” I poured myself out of the dumpster and tried to hobble after him, across the deserted parking lot. 

“We do not talk of Screech.”

“I saw something about this,” I gasped, noticing that however quickly I hobbled, Mario Lopez moved marginally faster. Just enough to keep my pain perpetually escalating. “You said fans could expect an ‘updated, edgier version of the show.’ Then later you compared it to Game of Thrones.”

He nodded along as I spoke, then confirmed: “Yes, there will be severed penises.”

“It’ll probably be a while before you can resume filming though, right?” It was my only hope: to die before his masterwork could air. “With the pandemic delays and all?”

Mario Lopez pulled to an abrupt stop. He spun and put a finger in the dent between my collarbones. He bored into me like a drill. 

“You are such a weak species. Just because hundreds of thousands of you die, you think you’re allowed to slow. To nurse each other. At least the ants realize they are ants.”

“I-I’m sorry we care that we die!” I howled, and he removed the piercing digit.

“Not all of you do. This is good. The reboot is on pause, but I am not. I am working on another project right now. I posted a video on Instagram. Did you see. I was very proud that we were one of the first productions to resume filming. My crew is expendable. My work is not.”

“W-what’s it called?” I moaned, getting to my feet. 

“Feliz NaviDAD!” He chuckled. “Many will die for Feliz NaviDAD!”

Mario Lopez began to hop in place, eager for something that hadn’t begun yet.

“This interview’s over, gordito,” he said, and I could see the shadow leak from his eyes once again. “I’ll give you a headstart.”

“W-what?” I asked, but my body knew. I was already running. Or trying to.

“10-9-8,” there was mirth in his voice, but with each number it fell away until there was only the void. “7-6-5-4-3-2…”

“Oh shit.” My knees. My god damned traitorous knees. “Oh shit oh shit oh shi-”

Categories
NERDING DAY

Nerding Day: Pat and Julian – Power Nerds

Database was a 1984 series about the fascinating world of computers years before computers were anything like fascinating, and decades before you could pay anybody to give a shit. It ran on Thames Television, which as near as I can tell was like British Public Access, but with marginally less full frontal male nudity and honestly about the same level of racism.

Much of Database was simply boring — just pasty middle-aged dudes who forgot to rinse out their conditioner talking to each other about wattage until the film ran out because the director died in his sleep and there was nobody to call ‘cut.’

There is no way in hell this niche disaster was a real TV show, much less one that ran back in the mid-1980s — when every other series was about a ragtag team of misfits waging guerilla-warfare against real estate tycoons with the help of their sassy talking motorcycles. But no, Database did exist, and to be fair, it was actually pretty revolutionary. For example, they ended their episodes by ‘sending’ the audience free software via sound — so instead of a credits song, they said their polite British goodbyes and then cut straight to cacophonous demon screeching for fifty solid seconds. 

It was an unpleasant show.

One that lacked any meaningful audience, any effective means of conveying information about their topic, or any clue why anybody should care. But that’s not why we’re here. This is Nerding Day, and for once, we’re going to use it to honor the nerds.

The Power Nerds. The Proto Nerds. The Nerds Who Came Before. The nerds who were here when we invented Nerds, and thus shaped our image of nerdom for the coming generations. Nerds who were so far ahead of their time that society hadn’t even learned how to hate them yet — so these dorks had to teach us.

This, then, is Julian and Pat — the least comfortable guest stars put to film before Joe Rogan started his YouTube channel.

Julian and Pat are here to demonstrate how to send an email, which is laughably simple now, but back then involved two dozen steps, eight plugs, three special machines and a backup letter in the post in case the email didn’t go through.

I feel for Julian and Pat — I recognize a lot of my own anxiety in their dry lips and juddering chests. They should not be on television and they both simultaneously came to that realization the very second the onsite director shouted whatever “action” is in British. “Gippy-gos,” most likely. But I relate to their discomfort, and I respect how they’re facing it anyway. So it is only with the truest of love that I mock them for it. Mocking is how I display affection. It is my problem, not theirs. I hope you all feel the love in this:

Julian looks like a chemistry teacher who’s still two steps ahead of the detectives hunting the Toe-Suck Killer… for now.

Both he and Pat resist moving their necks like they’re suffering internal decapitation and this is all some twisted Saw-style challenge.

Julian boldly exclaims that “this process is quite simple, really,” then proceeds to:

Remove the phone line from the outlet

Plug the phone line into the modem

Plug the modem’s phone line into the outlet

Switch on and set up the modem

Log onto the computer

Log onto the computer’s modem application

Retrieve his fucking enormous rotary phone

Make an actual phone call to the computer he wants to connect to-

At this point Julian risks certain death and burns a neck movement to shoot the camera a panicked glance — he only just now fully appreciated that he’s showing the world he takes eight extra steps and makes an actual phone call just to avoid making a phone call.

The host chooses this time to parrot his earlier words back to him — “so it’s a very simple connection to make?” She either does this in the hopes that her audience consists solely of drunk gullible children who enjoy lies, or because Julian said something snotty to her before filming and now she wants to watch him twist. 

Julian does not back down. “Extremely simple!” He proclaims, continuing to crank his archaic rotary phone wheel to and fro like a grizzled sea captain caught in a typhoon.

He then: 

Waits for the computer to answer

Flips some switches on his modem

Adjusts his modem application

Hangs up the phone

And voila!

Easy! 

You’re ready to think about sending an email now!

That was session zero of this campaign! 

You’ve only just now set up the characters — the adventure begins next time!

Julian has one more moment to shine, and that’s inputting his personal password.

It’s 1-2-3-4.

…

Listen, I know Julian is the kind of uber-nerd who thought ahead, who rehearsed this whole sequence eighty times before filming, who probably changed his password temporarily once he figured out he’d have to give it away on air. But this was 1984 — the only other person who would own a computer, watch this show, and log into the same highly local internet, is Pat. And look at the little smile she fights back when he pulls that move. That smile tells me Pat cracked your weak-shit real password months ago, Julian. “Oh, nobody will figure out NCC1701!” That’s the designation of the original Enterprise, Julian, you BASIC bitch.

Anyway, here’s the internet that arcane ritual got you access to:

You can: 

What’s New!

Or

Computermart!

The primitive internet was 9 things and 5 of them were horseshit. 

Now it’s Pat’s turn to shine! 

Pat moves like it’s her first day piloting a Pat-suit. 

Remember this is with love! 

She blinks like she’s been told exactly how many blinks she has left before she dies, but not how many days. She’s wearing some kind of short-sleeved Battlestar Galactica onesie just for the special occasion, and it is apparently constricting her breathing like a Victorian corset. 

I can’t believe how little you want to be doing this, but you’re still doing it, Pat! You are absolutely dominating social anxiety right now and if I point out that it looks like you’re trying to Morse code the entire Hacker Manifesto with your weird eye movements, I need you to remember that I am the broken one here. You’re doing fine.

Pat is very excited about the computer. What does she use it for? Mostly documenting the food in her fridge. That’s seriously her answer. I literally only use my computer to make fun of Pat and even I think that’s a waste of a computer, Pat. 

Pat says she loves to send email, and she really did not expect any follow-up questions. When the host asks her what sort of cool letters she’s sent, Pat hesitantly displays the time she emailed her doctor about a prescription.

Pat, my god, you are a beautiful human being and an inspiration to everything that feels fear but you are television mayonnaise. You’re the taste of cardboard. Your one job is to technically exist on screen and you are getting a C- at it. I love you, Pat. Get the fuck away from that camera before you kill somebody. You are the best. You’ve done enough. Please flee. Please flee.

But no, Pat has another task to complete before she can collapse in her closet for fourteen hours: She must demonstrate sending an email, which plays out exactly like you’d do it today, only with fourteen extra steps and seventy-three more potential failure states. They let her improv the content because it’s not like there are any viewers left to lose. Besides, what’s Pat going to do, write a vulgar screed abou-

Oh shit oh SHIT cut to credits!

Categories
LEARNING DAY

The Star SAFEty Coloring Book 🌭

Categories
FUCKING DAY

Fucking Day: SuperVan 🌭

In the 1970s people realized, for the very first time, that you could fuck in a van. It changed the world. I know it’s hard to believe now, but there were a few years in human history where people saw somebody getting railed in the back of an Econoline and assumed it was consensual. There was even a film movement called vanspoiltation, because if you spell ‘exploitation’ wrong it becomes charming. The king of this short-lived, hilariously ill-advised strain of amateur pornography was called SuperVan. Hold on, I’m sorry, I’m saying that wrong. It’s actually pronounced:

You can really hear that font.

This movie is about everything Van Guy, and if you need a comprehensive and exhaustive description of the Van Guy subculture, here it is:

But don’t be fooled, it’s not all fun and games. Or at least, not unmurderous ones — even back in that foolish era when we idolized Van Guys, we still couldn’t gloss over their many abductions. Try to count the number of kidnappings in the following fifteen second clip from SuperVan.

Did you count three? Then you missed the child struggling in the middle of that huddle, just like the Douglas County Police Department did. It’s an easy mistake to make. Try not to let it haunt you like it haunted Officer Calloway, may he rest in peace. 

Anyway, wacky sightgags of real-time crimes notwithstanding, the rest of the movie is standard exploitation fare — they have to get the supervan, Vandora, across the country to the annual van freakout to win the 5,000 dollar prize or, as you’d say in Vanglish:

Basically it’s a find/replace on the script for Smokey and the Bandit, with the part of Smokey replaced by Vandora, and the part of the Bandit replaced by attempted sexual assault. But this is Fucking Day; we’re not here to talk about plot. We’re here to talk about the greatest vans of the 1970s, and the terrible ways you will get fucked in them.

And rest assured, they will be terrible. This is what SuperVan thinks ‘woman having a good time’ looks like:

MORGAN THE PIRATE VAN

How you’ll get fucked:

By a guy in an eyepatch with a hook for a hand. The eyepatch is fake, but the hook is real. The constant pirate puns will really take you out of the experience, but the hook will drag you back in.

The lasting consequences:

Hook-based chlamydia. 

THE COOL CAR VAN

How you’ll get fucked:

The kind of guy who paints a better car on his car is a confused dreamer. He’ll vary fucks between frenzied doggystyle pounding and ‘90s-martial-arts-movie girl-on-top, then ask you to marry him. He will be gone before you can answer “god, no.”

The lasting consequences:

Cool Car Van Guy will overly romanticize the night you had together, even though he’ll never even attempt to call the fake phone number you gave him. He will show up at your wedding years later with a boombox playing Genesis to object to your union, and propose his own. He will be gone before you can answer “god, no.”

VANDORA, THE SOLAR-POWERED SUPERVAN

How you’ll get fucked:

By a man in a ponytail wearing a crystal necklace. He’s going to subtly imply he’s from the future; he’s going to not so subtly imply that everyone does anal in the future.

The lasting consequences:

Futuristic anal warts.

SENSITIVE GUITAR-PLAYING GUY VAN

How you’ll get fucked:

You will not get fucked by the Sensitive Guitar-Playing Guy. The Sensitive Guitar-Playing Guy Van is the Pied Paper of Van Fucking — all the girls chase the gentle man’s magical tunes, only to be led to a muddy lot containing another van: this one matte black and dented, with the words ‘Hot Stuff’ painted on the side. Sensitive Guitar-Playing Guy Van will peel away, Hot Stuff will beckon, and you’ll think “hey, what’s the worst that could happen?”

The lasting consequences:

If you’ve seen this woman, please call the Van Abduction Hotline at 1-800-VANISHD.

CRUDELY-DRAWN HEART VAN

How you’ll get fucked:

Crudely-Drawn Heart Van Guy fucks like he draws hearts — hastily and with very little eye for detail. Expect to take a poke or two in the bellybutton while he wildly stabs at holes.

The lasting consequences:

Belly-button based chlamydia.

FREEDOM MACHINE

How you’ll get fucked:

Freedom Machine is the ultimate American Fuck Van. Expect to get fucked missionary style with no eye contact, and also later by the disastrous US healthcare system when you go to treat your-

The lasting consequences:

All-American Chlamydia. 

SESAME STREET VAN

How you’ll get fucked:

By a puppet. 

No, I’m just joking. 

By two puppets.

The lasting consequences:

The exceptionally virulent strain of chlamydia that thrives on all puppet-felt. Even brand new from the factory. Every puppet in history. Rife with chlamydia. My god.

EPIC BEAR-SLED VAN

How you’ll get fucked:

On a bear-skin rug by a man in a Viking helmet. He will call you Brynhild and you will call him Crom, and it will actually be pretty awesome.

The lasting consequences:

Cromydia.

PLAIN VAN

How you’ll get fucked:

You won’t! 

Your corpse, on the other hand…

The lasting consequences:

Your ghost, your poor goddamn ghost — it’s going to have to haunt the You-skin condom that your murderer will make out of the soles of your feet. You’re going to have to see everything it does. You’re going to have to penetrate everything it penetrates, until a wandering Vigilante Highway Cleric defeats your Van Murderer and purifies the You-skin condom with salt before burning it at first light.

Anyway that’s my time folks, go van yourselves.

…

This article was brought to you by our fine patron and Hot Dog Supreme, Zach Harrison: winner of the Kumite with fastest face punch with also kick and spin (174 mph).

Categories
PUNCHING DAY

He-Man’s Fisto’s Forest 🌭

He-Man and the Masters of the Universe was a cartoon about a useless dipshit with a terrible haircut…

who transformed into a shirtless version of himself by hollering. 

It was basically Tallahassee Drunk and Disorderly Arrest: The Cartoon. You don’t need me to explain what He-Man is, because you’re here, and it’s part of the 🌭1-900-HOT-DOG KIDS CLUB!🌭 Foundational Reading Program. 

And also because they try to reboot it every five years. Studio executives across the decades live in utter disbelief that they can’t pull off a successful relaunch of this hasty cartoon based on toy remainders. And in every one of those reboots, they insist on including Fisto, and every time somebody new finds out about Fisto, everyone makes a bunch of tired jokes about fisting. That’s fine, I’m not above it, watch:

The original He-Man toy came with a Power Sword, the original Man-At-Arms toy came with a mace, and the original Fisto toy came with a moist towelette for leakage. 

But here’s the thing: We make these naughty little jokes like He-Man wasn’t in on it. Like the cartoon was some naive young pixie blinking up at the ribald double-entendres with a placid smile that said “I don’t get it, but I’m just glad everybody’s having fun.” That is not the case. I can prove it. Here’s Fisto’s actual origin story:

Fisto’s Forest is a loaded term that begs a terrible question. Never ask it. The smile that comes over Fisto’s face whenever a busload of soon-to-be-missing Mormons asks “w-what’s Fisto’s Forest?” is terrible in its purity. Fisto’s Forest is a Ukrainian slang term for the abandoned lot behind a truck stop where they don’t even pick up bodies anymore. It’s the name of the hidden porno your wife discovered that made her leave you. That very name promises untold perversion and the cartoon absolutely delivers: Within thirty seconds Fisto is grabbing a strange child and carrying him away.

You’re right, I am taking that out of context. But in my defense, it’s impossible not to – Fisto destroys context just by existing. It is impossible to take any screen grab where Fisto doesn’t look like a sex offender doing his legally required introduction.

Fuck. I’m going to scan ahead randomly and try again:

He’s a bearded man in fur panties with one giant hand; even if you didn’t know his name you would instinctively utter the word “Fisto” as he pushes you into the dumpster where you die. 

Here’s Fisto just a few minutes into his own origin story, hiding behind a bush…

…and promising that, actual quotes here, “I’ll give [He-Man and friends] a sticky welcome.”

THIS IS NOT A METAPHOR.

Again, this is taken out of context for a cheap joke… but is it still out of context if every single moment of the show is like this? It’s a twenty minute episode that requires constant explanation and if you stop breathlessly justifying what’s on screen for even for a second you’ll wind up with no alibi for watching this:

Now for legal purposes he’s supposed to have an evil spider and those are supposed to be webs, but you might recognize that this stream of goo is in no way web-shaped, and is instead a puddle of sticky white liquid that Fisto shoots at feet:

Nobody has ever made unfortunate eye contact with a man named Fisto, had starchy pale sauce splattered all over their sassy red high-heeled boots, and thought “oh no, a spider web! I’m stuck!”

In fact, the running gag in the show is that people keep stepping on, running into, or grabbing various things and then grimly staring off into the distance as they realize Fisto has already coated it with his “webbing.”

There’s not even really any justification for these hijinks — we get some brief fantasy bullshit about Skeletor casting a magic spell on the forest and imprisoning the elf lord, but this takes up maybe two minutes of Fisto’s episode:

And the other twenty three are dedicated to lovingly-rendered spider bukakke. 

Here’s the thing: The term “fisting” not only existed long before He-Man, it was especially present in the mid-80s lexicon. He-Man ran at the height of the AIDS epidemic, when fisting was being held up as the flagship deviant practice by those darned homosexuals, recklessly spreading the virus due to the small tears the act caused in the anus. And I promise you that Baron Douglas Booth, writer of this episode and actual fucking Baron — that is a real title that you seriously had to call the guy who wrote Fisto and you still think I’m kidding — knew what fisting was when he wrote this shit. Douglas Booth inherited his British shipping family’s baronetcy and, presumably bored with the idle perversions of the aristocracy, used it to pursue a passion for American cartoon-writing. The dude was like the Davy Crockett of western hentai: he didn’t discover the frontier, but he sure plunged into it headfirst when everybody else was like “no, gross.”

Here’s another of those “out of context” grabs from Fisto’s Forest:

Fisto’s whole arc is that he started out as a bad guy, but reformed when somebody finally treated him like “a real person.” Seeing a path back to normal society, he changed his ways and earned a pardon from the king. You can read into that story what you will. I don’t live in Baron Douglas Booth’s head and you can tell because I’m not currently being raped by trees and ejaculated on by spiders. So I’m not here to tell you what he really meant with Fisto’s tale. I’m not even here to tell you to stop making Fisto jokes — I’m just here to tell you that Fisto was a sex criminal named after a then-culturally villified gay practice by the actual fucking aristocrat who created Scooby Doo. I’m here to tell you that because some facts pollute your brain and the only way to alleviate the damage is to spread that poison out nice and thin. Thanks for taking some of my brain-poison, guys. Sorry I got it all over your sassy red high-heeled boots.

Oh, also here’s Evil-Lyn standing with Jitsu, Fisto’s villainous counterpart:

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This article was brought to you by our fine patron and Hot Dog Supreme, Cale Block: who only now, this sentence, realizes he is being hunted by a Showtime Pizza robot band.