Author: Robert Brockway

Fucking Day: Finding Peak Hunk with the Fabulous Ones 🌭

Post author By Robert Brockway
Post date 04/18/2024
7 Comments on Fucking Day: Finding Peak Hunk with the Fabulous Ones 🌭

From the Greeks to the Romans to probably others but mostly those two, a culture is measured by their hunks. Here in the US, we live in a declining empire and I can prove it. We reached maximum hunk saturation in 1983, and every day since then we’ve only watched the slow unraveling of society. It’s too late for us, but in the interest of saving future civilizations, we need to pinpoint the apex of American hunkiness. I propose it is a 1983 promo video featuring Stan Lane and Steve Keirn, The Fabulous Ones. Apparently they were a wrestling tag team, that couldn’t be less important. We’ll never talk about it. This is about history, hunks, and the hubris of mankind. The Triple H.

I’m told that’s also a wrestler. Please focus.

I’m not here to prove the 1983 Fabulous Ones promo was the high-water mark of the western world, when hunkiness broke and the cheeks rolled back. That’s self-evident. But the video is 135 seconds long, and only one of those seconds can save the world. We’re going to find it. Music should be swelling in your heart. Somebody should be saluting you. If you’re alone, look outside – you’ll find a squirrel with one paw over its heart in quiet tribute. This is the work of heroes, somber and dignified.

Send in the subjects, please.

Toot toot, all aboard the hunk train. It’s all caboose.

With the obligations done, let’s talk science. The promo is so effective because of two things: the rapid fire montage of alternate hunk looks, and the buns. Let’s discuss the looks first, and the buns second, third, fourth, and actually first. This video features more man mounds than Arlington National Cemetery. It is a black diamond run of sexy moguls. In France it’s punishable by six years in prison to smuggle buns like this. If these cheeks were ever to clap in unison, it would shatter all the windows in town.

Now, on to the analysis of hunk archetypes. Let’s begin with the Dandy Cowpoke, as first presented by Stan Lane.

The denim tells you he’s blue collar, the blue collar tells you it’s not all work. Shirtless, leather, cowboy boots, these are the pornhub tags of every repressed pastor. Blink and you’ll miss the saucy straw-bite, don’t blink and you’ll be lost in his hazel eyes forever. It’s a strong introduction, but not peak hunk.

Not to be outdone, Steve Keirn both combines and subverts two diametrically opposed hunk archetypes to create the Fancy Bathtime Hunk.

Countless hunks have died of shampoo poisoning trying to drink wine and bathe at the same time. Notice how he stops just shy of sipping, frozen in time. Steve’s not going out like that. That’s called experience. This isn’t Keirn’s first rodeo, Stan would laugh and show you his SK brand if you said that.

But this isn’t a competition. Stan and Steve are a team, and woe to any panties that fall under their combined gaze.

Tell your panties I’m sorry I wished them woe. I didn’t know they were about to explode.

The Barn Hunk demands a subtle but important distinction from the Dandy Cowpoke Hunk. The Barn Hunk works for a living, he earned his buns squatting haybales. The Dandy Cowpoke Hunk has buns built for gripping onto prancing horses. They’re not just different classes, they use entirely different muscle fibers and that results in wildly disparate cheek ripples.

This is not to say one hunk archetype is inferior to another. Remember, that’s not the purpose of this study. It’s about the cumulative effect. Watch this – I’m going to warn you not to get lost in Steve’s smile, but it’s not going to help.

The Barn Hunk could never pull off that pose. The jaunty lean, the casual splay, the devil’s own smirk. A Barn Hunk is a direct hunk. He’s a tool hunk, a trade hunk. A Monday Hunk. A Dandy Cowpoke Hunk is for Saturday night regrets at the mechanical bull bar. And yet even now you can see Stan and Steve playing these expectations against one another. Lured into this sort of hunk class war, we’re thrown right back out and into the tawdry opulence of the Fancy Bathtime Hunk.

The effect doesn’t fully land. Stan simply does not have Steve’s experience, he is unwilling or perhaps unable to mime a sip from his elegant bathtime wine. It might be for insurance reasons, hunk drowning coverage is wildly expensive since the Hunk Boat disaster. But still, we sense something missing from the scene. It feels like a step backward after Steve’s daredevil pose. Stan tries to make up for it with a bathtime derby and a double foamy thumbs up, but this gives less an impression of a rapacious hunk demanding your eyeline and a more of a gentleman trying to save face after falling naked through a ceiling.

That’s all down to Steve’s vast experience and classical hunk education. But youth does have advantages over years. Watch this – I’m going to warn you not to get overstimulated by the buns, but it’s not going to help.

Devastating. I should have tried to save your panties but I already failed them once earlier. I know it’s too late to walk back my mistakes.

Tear your eyes away – down here. DOWN HERE. It’s actually the transition that’s important in this scene. There they are, shirtlessly lounging in the hay to ease you into a false sense of security. This feels, if anything, postcoital. The action has already happened, just relax into the damp straw and bask in the afterglow.

Only then do they smash, for the very first time, into a full booty presentation. I know I promised we weren’t talking about wrestling, but this is like dropping to one knee to propose and then, when she’s off guard, executing a perfect suplex.

Steve is no slouch here, but look at Stan. The outline of his buns are sharper, his jeans tighter, his elbow flared more dramatically, his smirk a little more defiant. The more experienced Steve set up a textbook-perfect descending bun flash, but in breaking with classic form it’s Stan’s buns that draw us in, precisely for the rules they break.

Speaking of breaks, let’s take an Existential Hunk Break and ponder, for just one second, the bottomless hunger of time.

That’s enough, hunks cannot gaze into the void for too long. It falls in love.

Back to the study.

Stan and Steve are marvels of mankind individually, but it was always the way they set up and played off each other that escalated mere pretty boys into beautiful men. Watch this – I’m going to warn you not to get distracted by Stan’s crotch, but it’s not going to help.

You see how they did that? Stan’s face is barely in frame, yet he’s executing an Open Dangled Hay Splay. That’s so risky it’s banned in eight countries. It’s a centerpiece move. As we begin the zoom we think we know, of course, where the point of focus is going to be. We’re here to catch ourselves a greased hog. But no, a flirty last minute camera shift to Steve waylays our lust. “Oh?” He seems to say, “did you mean to look at something else?” He then gives us just a hint of Straw Suckle, not even a full-mouthed pull. He’s telling us in no uncertain terms that the Fabulous Ones know what you want, and it will be given to you only on their time.

I think it’s in here. The one perfect second to save a future’s hunks. I think this Open Dangled Hay Splay Hog Zoom Fakeout to Partial Straw Suckle is the peak of the form. This is two hunks at the top of their game, at the height of the art, working in perfect sync to both define and shatter the conventional rules of hunking. If there is but a single moment to point to as the ultimate-

Oh. Oh my god.

Once again, when it comes to hunks, I’ve been premature.

Somewhere in this clip is our one perfect second of apex hunk. But where?

Is it Steve reading a hotel pamphlet in a slutty kimono? Maybe. That’s such a perfect example of the dignity and grace a hunk can bring to a scene that, were it given to a woman, might come across trashy and obscene. Picture a small Asian babe up there in her micro-robe. It’s sexy, but it’s vulgar. It’s exploitative. When Steve strolls across the room in a child’s kimono, there’s an intentionality to it. It’s controlled, it’s subversive, there’s only the hint of a package that is never delivered.

Or is it Stan, just giving us the pure and simple American buns we deserve? That moment could be seen as pandering, but watch Stan set it up. The split-second look he gives us before the reveal. Looking straight at the camera through his own reflection, telling us we’re not leering at him. He’s leering at us. Then the sudden snap zoom to full bun presentation as he casually does his hair – the opposite of buns both in location and symbolism. “Oh these?” He seems to say. “These old buns? I just threw these on. The hair, on the other hand, now that takes effort.”

It’s neither of these moments, and it is both. Black-pantied buns and slutty kimonos do not make the hunk. A hunk plays in the spaces between ham presentations. Great music happens between notes, powerful books live in the subtext, master chefs will tell you – it’s all about the food you don’t eat.

I believe I’ve found the Peak Hunk Instant. Now, at first it seems tame, stuffy, maybe even prude – but I think the summit of western hunking happens exactly here. I’ve slowed it down for you to study:

Nothing is an accident. Steve begins his maneuver in partial profile, dropping his knees apart as he settles into a low chair in his slutty kimono. Whether we’re aware of it or not, we understand this is the moment before the moment. The expectation before climax. The silent triangle twisting gently in a musician’s grip, just before the ding. The finger hovering over a doorbell, just before the dong.

If he sinks one more inch into that chair, that’s the end of the circus. We’ll meet the elephant. And in that exact fraction of a second we throw to a closeup of Stan doing his hair. Before our frustration can even register, a bakery van flips. It’s an unexpected bun delivery.

That’s it. That’s where the western hunk stood astride the summit and realized there were no more mountains to climb. Future civilizations, I don’t know if you’re reading this. I don’t know if our dialect survived long enough to speak to you. I don’t know if these words are capable of conveying my sorrow for what we lost, my hope for what you’ve gained, and my gratitude at being part of it all. Luckily I do speak one universal language.

This article was brought to you by our fine sponsor and Hot Dog Supreme: OrneryWeevil, who died of a urethral straw infection attempting the Open Dangled Hay Splay. We hope you’re heaving meat in heaven now.

Tags 1980s, best of 2024, Free, hunks, wrestling

NERDING DAY

Nerding Day: Kidz Water Hydrators 🌭

Post author By Robert Brockway
Post date 04/11/2024
5 Comments on Nerding Day: Kidz Water Hydrators 🌭

Children love comic books and also need water to live. Maybe that’s a controversial stance, but it’s one I’m willing to stand behind. Hi, I’m Robert Brockway and I’m here to talk to you about proper hydration and unleashed capitalism. It’s a ringing endorsement from me on both! Here’s my favorite comic book.

Kidz Water is exactly what it sounds like, water for kids. Now with extra fluoride! A bold twist in 1999, when the main market for bottled water was conspiracy-brained survivalists prepping bunkers for Y2K. It’s like booking flights to Orlando with the promise of extra colorful chem trails. Your demographic ain’t gonna love it.

But at first glance, the Kidz Water Hydrators comic book isn’t too crazy. Branded content and comic books go together like The Incredible Hulk and delicious Hostess Fruit Pies. Some maniac has already documented those extensively, it took most of his life and all of his sanity. I’m just saying that if this was an established practice – and Captain Citrus promises me it was – why then did Kidz Water Hydrators have to be launched under its own line: Marvel Custom Comics?

No other sponsored content title had to be distinguished from the Marvel brand, much less quarantined in its own publishing line. Marvel Custom Comics never published a single title before Kidz Water Hydrators, and never published one after. A whole separate imprint that existed just to clarify “this Kidz Water piece of shit does not represent us.” In an alternate timeline where Marvel never took that step, Kevin Feige is kicking off Phase Six of the Brandedverse by announcing Jojo Siwa as Crystal and Michael B Jordan as Tooth Decay.

“Haha,” you’re saying. “Classic Crystal burn from Brockway. I love this guy. He’s my best friend, I’m going to trust him with my house for the weekend.” Most of you are saying that, but I’m sure there are a few younger readers who don’t get our off the cuff Kidz Water Hydrators references. Let’s fix that.

MEET THE HYDRATORS!

Hydro! He can shoot water and is strong, like water is!

Crystal! She can turn invisible and has a crystal shield! She protects teeth! Any teeth!

Misty! She creates mist! Let’s check the next sentence for the rest of her powers! Thanks, Misty!

Ice! Ice!

Vapor! He can shoot water and is strong, like water is! Whoops that’s Hydro, thank god I caught that error in time, unlike Michael Stewart, the writer of Kidz Water Hydrators!

X-Stream! He can shoot various forms of water and is strong, like water is! Haha, you’re fired Michael Stewart!

Together they are the Hydrators, here to promote proper childhood hydration on their gleaming hovercycles, the sales of which could provide clean drinking water to all of Africa for the rest of time!

I have worked in branded content. It’s part of the only reason I’m so filled with crippling hate. I can tell you this: You do not put your A Team on Kidz Water Hydrators. Trust me, I’m a B Team Motherfucker. Yet those Hydrators bylines are not all struggling interns about to wash out of the comic industry. All of them are seasoned pros with big titles under their belts, and Al Milgrom was an actual editor at Marvel during this time. Not a well liked one, we can deduce from this job. But still, it’s wild how much money and effort was put into this. I’m only lying about one of those things.

Ha, “wash out.” I just got it. That’s why they pay me that B Team money.

The first issue – I’ll repeat that, the first issue – of Hydrators is about a villain named Chill who’s here to ruin a child’s snowboard race. In terms our younger reader can understand, in the ‘90s this was akin to inciting a violent political coup to overthrow a democratic election. It was a big deal, very frowned upon, but ultimately not punished.

I’m not going to sit here and spend my day spotting errors in the plot of Hydrators, because I have self respect but it is not unshakeable. I just want to point out that in the beginning, our heroes don’t know Chill’s sinister plan. They only know Nicole crashed one time in an active snowboard race, which made them bummed, so they gave her a flying hoverbike ride all the way back to the lead position. In terms our younger readers can understand, it’s like that election thing again.

That’s it. That’s all Crystal needs to hear. Nicole, a teenage snowboarder in the 1990s, is feeling a bit dizzy and flushed. To super-detective Crystal that’s evidence of a sinister plot, and not a Jetta full of half-crushed Sprite cans with little holes poked in them.

Ice, with his Bachelor’s degree in ice, knows that children’s water bottles do not naturally freeze in a perfect rectangle. Vapor, with his Associate’s degree in HVAC, knows the best solution is to fire scalding water at it. The kids replenish their bodies with warm water in heat compromised plastic. AHHH!

Real quick note: Can we find a way for the teens to drink water without saying the words “the kids replenish their bodies?” No? Kidz Water isn’t paying enough for a second pass? There’s barely enough money in the world to pay for this first pass? Human dignity does have a price, but you can’t buy it twice? That’s fair. B Team solidarity, Kidz Water Hydrators writer Micheal Stewart.

If we were accepting notes, I’d say it’s a little weird that the villain also loves water, but it worked for Hostess Fruit Pies and Nestle so let’s roll with it.

Hey, Michael Higgins, you’re the letterer of this issue. We need you to figure out a good sound effect for a snowboarder wiping out. It’s basically your one job.

You’re right, Michael Higgins: little rebellions keep the soul alive.

But look at that! Nicole is back in the race! With only substantial hoverbike assistance from a billion dollar superteam. We’d root against her for that back in the ‘90s. She was decades ahead of her time.

Chill isn’t out of the running yet, he’s come to this child’s snowboard competition armed with a high tech freeze-ray because he really, really wants that Personal Pan Pizza.

Whoops, you blinked and you missed it. The only thing X-Stream did in this, the team’s debut issue. He missed a flying dive tackle. Not a superpowered one at hyper speed. A normal dive tackle aimed at a teenage snowboarder off his board. At a kid wearing clunky snowboard boots in deep snow, who has just been knocked totally off guard by an invisible karate kick. I know I said I wasn’t here to poke holes in the plot of a sponsored content comic book for dehydrated children, but I also said I have self respect. We tell all sorts of lies to get through life. Right, Michael Higgins?

Holy shit, Ice. You should not be on this novelty corporate water team. You just flew in on an ice slide you made by flash freezing the ambient water in the air, then shaped a ski resort’s powder into a perfect loop to paralyze a snowboarding cheater. Even Chill could only freeze small blocks of water, and he needed a special gun to do it. This is a wild escalation, Ice. The person who did second most on your team high kicked a wrist.

Shit like this is why we needed Affirmative Action. Those are Iceman level powers. He’s an Omega threat now. Ice, you turned in a resume explaining how you’re the master of one of the fundamental elements of life and they put you on a team with the dipshit failcousin of every voting board member. That’s pure injustice. The only minority done dirtier in these pages is Misty (not pictured).

This is the whole comic so far, every page. Misty is not in it. The one panel where she helps a snowboarder stand up doesn’t count. She could’ve been replaced by a sturdy branch. Maybe “makes fog banks” isn’t exactly a universal screwdriver, but low visibility is famously the enemy of mountain sports. Ask Sonny Bono’s ghost, and while you’re at it, have him explain who he is to the younger readers. I don’t have a cynical analogy for that.

Wait, he’s like if Paul Walker was K-Fed.

Wait, that’s somehow even older.

Hold on, is that supposed to be a twist? That Chill brought a freeze ray AND a trick snowboard? And THE SNOWBOARD is why he was disqualified? Is this an Air Bud situation, there’s nothing in the rules about freeze-blasting teens and weaponizing dehydration?

Actually, let me check the handbook for the Mountain Creek Winter Fundays Downhill Play Race (Junior Division), yep it definitely says here you can’t be ferried down the mountain on the hovercycles of corporate shills. Actually, let me check the penal code of the United States of America, yep says here you can’t paralyze a teenager for cheating at snowboarding.

I can’t believe Chill brought the GDP of Indonesia in high tech weaponry and he’s not even going to get those two free passes to Snow Problem: Vernon, New Jersey’s hottest and only snowboard halfpipe for ages 18 and under. Those were the only stakes of this issue!

This is such a failure on every level that I can only assume it bankrupted the company. But there’s so little evidence Kidz Water even existed I can’t be sure of that. Hold on, there’s a website address here in the back. Let’s check Kidzwater.com on the Wayback Machine.

Huh, that was the same month the comics released. Even back in 1999, companies knew not to print their website address if they didn’t have a website. Let’s check back a year later.

Oh, man. Construction.jpg was the digital tombstone of the 1990s. So it never existed and skipped straight to limbo. Just an unbaptized baby of a business. RIP Kidz Water, the only unflavored fluoridated drinking water for children, aside from tap.

Special thanks to Mo for the Hot Hot Dog Tip!

This article was brought to you by our fine sponsor and Hot Dog Supreme: Brian Seiler, also known as Fluorider! He can shoot water and is strong, like water is!

Tags 1990s, comic books, Free, marvel, products

NERDING DAY

Nerding Day: The (Devil’s) Workshop 🌭

Post author By Robert Brockway
Post date 03/28/2024
7 Comments on Nerding Day: The (Devil’s) Workshop 🌭

Blue Comet Press was an independent comic book publisher founded, staffed, and terrorized by Craig Stormon. Craig has a tough vibe to pin down, he’s kind of like a child granted a Zoltar wish to be big, and then sent six hundred years into the future to fight in a time war he had no chance of understanding. Now he’s back, and he has PTSD from robot attacks that haven’t happened yet. He is a madman standing at the edge of infinity, and instead of therapy he slowly burned down a comic book imprint over the course of a decade. He started BCP in 1986 and ran it until the mid ‘90s, and he never published a title that went beyond three issues. Craig Stormon himself was BCP’s most prolific and most canceled creator, and he was in charge of cancellations. They say if you hate yourself you’re probably not alone, but only Craig Stormon has a choir of alternate universe Stormons heckling his every move.

The (Devil’s) Workshop was one of many Blue Comet Press titles that didn’t make it past the first issue. That makes it lucky – some titles didn’t make it beyond issue zero. He canceled them before they started, because his child-brain has been tragically shattered and spread across the chronoverse. The (Devil’s) Workshop was Stormon’s response to the ‘90s edgy comics craze which, like all of human existence, Craig Stormon both despised and desperately wanted to be a part of, but couldn’t figure out how.

You might remember the main character, Windraven, from Blue Comet’s flagship title, L.I.F.E. Brigade – a team of bewildered superheroes fighting every comic book plot at once. Windraven was the Indian psychic magician who got her powers twice, once from the fact that all Indians are magic, and twice from a living comet who’d never met her and didn’t realize it was granting her the exact same set of powers again. Her primary personality trait was bikini, and she lost half of it for The (Devil’s) Workshop. Windraven is an embodiment of the saddest thing that can happen in comic books: When a nerd falls in love with a sexy lady he made up. She shows up in multiple titles, surviving several cancellations. She’s the one thing Craig Stormon can’t let go of – well, her and the pinless handgrenade he carries everywhere for arguments.

Like all Blue Comet Press titles, The (Devil’s) Workshop opens with a completely insane frothing manifesto from the editor, Craig Stormon, ranting against the very artists he’s working with in this issue, often including himself.

Craig Stormon writes like the moment after a child falls into an ape enclosure. Just pure shrieking chaos. Every Stormon editorial feels like a man in a dynamite vest is screaming over your shoulder while using you as a human shield against a wary SWAT team. The opening sentences of this comic book blame you, the reader, for assuming Craig Stormon was selling out to the edgy comics craze. He invented the concept of bad girls in 1991, maybe 1992, you idiot! They didn’t exist before that! Also the penciler for this issue was a son of a bitch whose ghost almost certainly haunts the trunk of Craig Stormon’s 1981 Buick Electra. It’s a good thing we’re not even naming that son of a bitch or this would be libel.

Craig Stormon’s mortal enemy this week is a cowardly penciller named Dick Bonk. There’s no way that man exists outside of Craig’s own quivering brain. This is definitely a Split situation. When co-writer Paul Birch walked into the office one day to find the walls smeared in shit and Craig Stormon introducing himself as Dick Bonk Pencilman, he knew better than to question it. That’s how you get a Stormon Bite, and those always get infected.

It gets overshadowed by the mad fury reserved for his own pencilsona, but Craig also throws digs at the painter of this issue’s cover, promising that all future issues will be MUCH better than this shitty one. That’s the kind of burn that doesn’t fully land until Craig Stormon cancels the whole title, ensuring there will be no future issues.

Hold on, Craig Stormon is not done clawing at the walls and cursing at the unrelenting sun.

Craig knows what you’re worried about: You think he’s too afraid to say “FUCK.” Well, you little dick bonk, he’s not! He’ll say it, plus any other word. Butt! That’s just an example. BUTT AGAIN.

I’m not sure what he means by listing other books he’s worked on before they got “too scared of competition.” Wait, I am sure: He got fired for hunting the other artists like Lance Henriksen in Hard Target.

The (Devil’s) Workshop is a comic book for ADULTS… who are also children brain-zapped into huge bodies and doing their best in a society full of loud noises. It’s about hardcore stuff like sex, drugs, and satan worship! It’s all so pure and naive. By sex Craig means looking at a butt, by drugs he means the stuff he learned about in elementary school puppet shows, and by satan worship he means the stuff he learned about in home school after he attacked the puppets.

Let’s meet our first character, a drug addict, handled with all the skill and sensitivity of a man who shoots nutria for sport.

Finally, Craig Stormon has found his voice, and its a hollow-eyed Maine fisherman’s suicide note. Hey Craig, real quick, why are all the dogs slaughtered at sunrise? Does that happen every sunrise, is it one of those brutal English aristocrat things, like fox-hunting or Royal Knockout? Since you felt the need to specify, I have to ask: Craig Stormon, do you think dogs howl in salute to you? Is that why you always howl back, you slavering fucking madman?

We’re looking for a live child in an apehouse if we’re looking for empathy and understanding in a Craig Stormon title. Maybe he does better with the female characters-

Most of the women in Craig’s comics are horny extroverts who get what they deserve. But that’s only to show us how the special one, Windraven, isn’t like the other girls. She’s not overtly sexual. She doesn’t want to be the center of attention. Yes, she has her whole butt out the first time we meet her, yes it’s in the same panel where she explains she’s not making an exhibition of herself, but contradiction and exposed asses are how you create deep characters.

Now that we’ve established our primary themes – junkies, dog slaughter, Indian butt – it’s time to break the whole comic for a three page flashback to the events of L.I.F.E. Brigade, which are not relevant to this story and will not come up again.

Here’s the only important new development in those pages:

In a two panel yadda, all of Craig Stormon’s “sexy women” get chrono-blasted across time, just like his own fragile child brain. This accomplishes three things: It lets him set the story in a more relatable modern-day world, it gets rid of all the gross unsexy men, and more butt.

What a butt! Like all the best butts, it’s two water balloons hanging from a back. Like only the greatest butts, it looks like Gleep and Glorp doing the Bump. Like only the most sensual of ladybutts, it’s a top down view of two pachycephalosaurs fighting.

This being the mid-90s, Craig has to strike a delicate balance. Every edgy female character has to be super horny for sex, but she also has to attack any man trying to have it with her.

The physical storytelling here is so bad I’m not sure what’s happening. I guess Shandazar magnetized that man’s cock so his best friend’s wedding ring was inexorably drawn to it? Otherwise I have no idea why that man took a plasma blast to the junk and his buddy started juggling his balls while quipping “what a quaint old British custom.” It might be a Monty Python reference. Wait, this is the art’s fault – that means this is Dick Bonk’s doing. The son of a bitch! Dick Bonk slipped a dick bonk in here!

So far we are missing the trademark Craig Stormon dyslexia blitz, but don’t worry- it’s coming.

He crowded that last word bubble so hard it overran its borders, only to spell the word he screwed it all up for wrong. He spelled “damn” with a B, then basically called his main characters a couple of cubts.

It’s worth pointing out Craig’s one attempt at a running joke – he named this team of all sexy lady warriors the Iron Cupcakes, then decided they hated it. That’s actually pretty funny until you realize it’s a tragic metaphor for Craig Stormon’s entire comic book career.

There are two plotlines running parallel in The (Devil’s) Workshop. One is this: sexy ‘90s women with prehensile butts lusting for and then attacking dong, and the other is a junkie for satan learning the cons of buying smack from the devil.

Yes, the drug dealers here are literal zombies and demons, obviously led by-

A woman’s crotch.

This is our main villain, and if I told you anything about her before posting the proof, you’d never know if I was joking. For example, if I said she deals drugs brought up from hell to save enough money to post the devil’s bail and her name is some fedora-tipping shit like M’Lady Doom, you would laugh, but part of you would secretly think Craig Stormon could actually write that.

Sometimes a pearl-clutching Satanic Panic scare goes so hard it comes back around to awesome again. M’Lady Doom rules. She’s just, she’s the baddest.

It turns out Murphy, the junkie every dog salutes as they die, has been skimming the devil’s hell heroin. M’Lady is a ride or die gal for Satan, so it’s good that Murphy is incredibly ready to die. He was practically bursting with mortality.

M’Lady injects him with battery acid and he curses her, vows zombie revenge, demands euthanasia, and then untucks his shirt to fire his guts at her like a lizard – all within the span of three panels. There’s no way her entourage was prepared for this dude speedrunning death like that. If they didn’t inject him with battery acid he would’ve died two seconds later spitting vile curses at a nearby rusty nail. He was a shaken-up bottle of Diet Flesh Coke just waiting for his Acid Mentos.

Meanwhile, across town at the sexy ‘90s butt rave for chaste women, Windraven’s barely named friend made the mistake of going out for a cigarette. Because Craig Stormon’s brain is a whirlwind of howling ghosts he can never escape, this means she deserves to get kidnapped by a satanic cyborg drug dealer.

There’s a lot to deal with here: The reiteration of “damb,” which means that wasn’t a typo earlier – Craig Stormon really thinks that’s how you spell it. Do you think he pronounces the B? There’s the slutty cutouts on her already short skirt that make it look like she has a spare butt. The fact that she reacts to killer cyborgs like Helen Keller walking into a sprinkler. But I like the little details: Hell’s Robocop is so bad he bought a Bic with a little skeleton on it. I think I had a hackeysack with that exact logo on it, and ironically enough I traded it for cigarettes.

Whoever this lady is, she’s so irrelevant that her friends, the main characters, never actually realize she’s been abducted. Even after her kidnappers nearly run them over. Man, I’m starting to get Stormon’s enmity. Penciller and Enemy of the People Dick Bonk’s only reference for “big tittied woman diving” is a vampire lunge-

He really bonked this dick up.

Finally we see the titular workshop (devil’s). It’s the vicious dungeon where the blood of 13 innocent victims must be spilled to free Saragar!

From jail! Hell jail! The demon judge set Saragar’s blood bail at 13 victims! And he’s almost free. He’s so close! Saragar is trying to spend the last of his commissary fund on erasers and tic tacs, because he’ll be damned if the hell prison is keeping a penny of his baby momma’s paycheck!

The barely named friend is sacrificed nude and upside down, forced to stare up the very cooch of her captor as she dies. In fact, she’s beheaded at that exact moment – so the last sight her brain imprints as she spins up eternity is a pap smear of the devil’s girlfriend.

Across town, her best friends sleep as all women do – full makeup, same bed, tits out – totally unaware of the satanic drug orgy being held in honor of her death. The devil’s cyborg uses her skull for a gag to a non-existent camera while a caped man spit takes through a handjob. Everyone’s college roommate, a guy named something like AJ, gets head from one of the devil’s concubines, just happy to be gettin’ some.

Fucking AJ, man. He’s not even a satanist. He’s a registered pastafarian, he has the bumper sticker and everything. You could call him out on his hypocrisy but you know he’d just say “head’s head, man!” and spill bong water on the carpet while going for a high five.

And that’s it, somehow that’s everything that happens in this comic. It’s way too much and not nearly enough. A woman gets beheaded by a Chick tract while her friends sass up a ‘90s rave, and every single one of them shows their whole ass, especially Craig Stormon.

I’m pretty sure Craig even writes the ads in the back, because if not, he has found his people:

RAW Comics is so anti-establishment they’ll shun Valiant, which I think was an MLM knife scam that got out of hand and accidentally turned into a comic book press. RAW’s tagline is “COMICS THAT BITE BACK!” which sounds edgy until you think about it, and then it just implies they’re so stupid they eat comic books.

And then there’s this full page splash for GEOFFREY’S COMICS, where Craig Stormon drew a custom character named Captain Greed shaking and then punching the head off a child for shopping at a rival comic book store.

So are we rooting FOR Captain Greed here, Craig? It’s good and right that he’s rocketing the faces off children for capitalism? Oh hey everybody it’s Bone Daddy, the contextless janitor hermit! Tell your local comic book clerk Bone Daddy sent you, and get a free kidnapping! It’s how you tell a total stranger “I have no family to care if I’m found in a bathtub full of ice later.”

There’s no way Geoffrey Comic knew what he was getting into when he took out this ad space. Craig Stormon promised him something tasteful and then sent him this page covered in barbecue sauce and ants. I don’t know if Geoffrey complained, but we’ll find out in the next unhinged editorial starring Craig Stormon’s brain mites.

Craig’s final note is one of baseless optimism undulled by ten straight years of self-inflicted failures and invented enemies. It’s a teaser page for issue 2 of The (Devil’s) Workshop.

“12 women, no blood, no heads. Who’s 13th? The future at stake,” Craig Stormon writes.

“That’s great!” His neurologist says, “we’re getting some fine motor coordination back. The words will start making sense eventually when we teach your speech center to reconnect with your hands. Trust the process, you were lucky to survive that tractor accident.”

This article was brought to you by our fine sponsor and Hot Dog Supreme: Craig Lemoine, the original Bone Daddy, now a proud Bone Granddaddy to two little Bone Daddies and one Bone Mommy.

Tags 1990s, best of 2024, blue comet, comic books, drugs, Free, satanic panic, sex

UPSETTING DAY

Upsetting Day: Carnival Towel Creations with Freddy 🌭

Post author By Robert Brockway
Post date 03/07/2024
14 Comments on Upsetting Day: Carnival Towel Creations with Freddy 🌭

You are 12 years old. Your grandmother just returned from a three month cruise. She’s been to Lisbon, Malta, Istanbul. She’s traveled the world, visited exotic places rich in culture and history. She has gifts for you. I want you to close your eyes and picture the worst thing she could possibly give you.

“Let’s have some fun with towels,” is a troublesome statement. In a locker room it means you didn’t tuck tight enough and now you’re about to show your dick to the coach. In a barracks it means you let down the platoon too many times and now you have to pay for it. But let’s put aside the inherent despair of this premise. Let’s focus, just for a moment, on Freddy. Freddy the Carnival Cruise Towel Monster. Freddy, whose body is formless chaos, whose eyes screech madness from the prison inside his skull. One look at Freddy and you know, reflexively, that it’s your duty to die fighting this thing so the rest of humanity might live.

If Freddy is an actual mascot present on a Carnival Cruise Ship, I promise you he gets the shit beaten out of him several times a day. That costume must be armored. Wearing it is a punishment for cabana boys who don’t wear condoms. Donning the Freddy costume is the cruise variant of putting someone in the stocks. The Freddy head doesn’t even come out of storage until the ship hits international waters. Nothing about Freddy is fun, and he is on every page of this book. Doing nothing. Bending, pointing, jumping – if you flip the pages fast enough he’ll do the dance that ends time. Freddy is such a fucking walking atrocity that he overshadows the numbing sadness of this book, which is so tragic they have to put the words “fun ships” in quotation marks.

“Create your own towel family!” is a real sentence on the first page of this book. That’s some shit Freddy says to a cruise orphan. It’s deranged. Carnival says they “received literally hundreds of requests for a new, expanded book.” A dangerous lie, just like the smile carved on Freddy’s face. But let’s pretend it’s true: That means there was a first book, they learned nothing from its failure, and they convinced a roomful of executives that kids love towels, twice. If I walked into a pitch meeting like “we all know kids love towels,” I’d watch the table carefully to see who nods, then hit them with a flamethrower and say “now that we’ve destroyed the Thing infiltrating your company, let’s do the real pitch.”

The whole premise is succinctly and perfectly engineered to make sure no human could possibly think it’s a good idea, it’s a reverse Voight-Kampff test, and yet real money has gone into bringing this to life. It’s a hardcover book with thick high gloss paper, full color photos on every page, and it is way longer than you think. Somebody saw this-

And said “yes, you’re right, kids would love to do hours of whimsical laundry – you just earned a promotion, Wilford Brimley Head With Tentacles.” And this is even assuming the towel sculptures fucking kick ass. That there is a Michaelangelo for every medium, and towels have waited for millenia to find theirs.

That is not the case.

This is their opener. The hook. They hope some rich, demented grandma flips Carnival Towel Creations with Freddy open to the first page, sees a rumpled formless towel soaring through the night, and thinks of home. Family. That’s the only way they sell a book!

The next spot should be a clincher. You set the hook, now reel it in.

That’s actually pretty good, it looks sort of like a snake. Because it is a rolled up towel with sunglasses on it. If I got this back at the end of a summer camp craft session I’d tell the kid I know she played phone the whole hour and she’s getting half rations the rest of the week. Cool Cobra sucks. Cool Cobra looks like he’d be voiced by David Alan Grier in a Christian puppet show about Leviticus. You can’t just put sunglasses on a rumpled towel and call it art, I’d just assume Matthew McConaughey got vaporized.

“Maybe the kids want to fuck the towels?” Wilford Brimley Head With Tentacles says in the brainstorm meeting.

There are confused mutterings, the others avoid eye contact.

“No bad ideas, am I right?” Wilford Brimely Head With Tentacles tries to laugh it off.

No one else does.

Wilford Brimley Head With Tentacles frowns into his coffee.

“This is fucking soy milk,” Wilford Brimley Head With Tentacles sighs.

We all have off days.

They say every bad idea is worth trying sixteen times, and by they, I mean the Carnival Cruise executives hosting Freddy’s eggs.

“Why are the towels naughty?” is a question I’ve only asked once before, when I had the stroke. This shouldn’t have to be said, but if you’re four pages into a towel animal cheesecake pinup book for kids maybe you need a life coach. “Let’s get back on heroin,” your life coach would say. “I feel like we made better decisions with a little horse in us. NO! I didn’t mean it like that.”

Let’s move on-

I really thought we’d be moving on.

This cannot stand.

There was a step in these instructions to give a towel goat individual identifiable buttcheeks. Carnival Cruises asked a child to do that. I don’t think that’s a crime, but I think it will be if I mail this book to my congressman.

Maybe we’re approaching this whole thing from the wrong direction. Maybe it’s not that the book shouldn’t exist because no child would want it. Maybe the book is for children who shouldn’t exist. Like if you give this book to little Suzy and she flips through the pages, gasps, asks with light in her eyes: “Can we make this one?”

You know you’ve been cuckooed. You need to check around outside your house to see if the real Suzy has been pushed out a window and left to starve.

The book calls this one the Honeymoon and it’s normally filled with chocolates and lubricant. Picture anything else in that heart-shaped depression. Your mind automatically sketches in a VHS about the joys of anal. If your kid used one of the good towels to make this you would go wordlessly fight his PE teacher.

You guys did a bunny earlier! It was 114% too sexy but you did it. Why make another, worse one with its face smashed in? We don’t breed pug bunnies. This is a bunny rescue farm for glass door tragedies. And it’s still horny!

If I find either of those last two shapes in my kid’s room I’m putting filters on the internet and we’re done watching Space Jam.

I’m going to say something insane, but it’s absolutely true: These are the best ones.

Most of this book teaches kids how to burn an entire afternoon recreating forgotten laundry.

Guess what that’s supposed to be. Write it down, you’ll get points if you’re correct.

My first guess was Roadkill Duck, but if I squint now I’m seeing Birth Defect Lobster. Actually I’d like to change my guess to Crashed Concorde.

You get no points if you guessed-

Because that is not a fucking crocodile. I’ll give that beast Prone Bone Pyramid Head before I give it Crocodile. I’ll – hold on.

This is a multi-towel creation??

You want children to gather three fucking towels just to make this uncertain heap? If I came back from work to find the kid used every clean towel in the house to make a Submissive Sandworm I would report myself to child services, because clearly the fault lies with the parents.

There are only, generously, like five things you can make with a towel. Too bad this book has about sixty. Because the rest of these are just various mounds, occasionally seductive.

“I love it, Billy! It’s very obviously an Autopsied Otter, and this tells me you’re finally processing your feelings about the divorce.”

So coquettish. So coy. You can really see its come hither stare, and by come hither, I mean it’s saying “come hither and stomp me out of this cursed existence beyond even the peripheral vision of God.”

See, the problem comes from the premise. Origami sucks anyway. It’s complicated and fiddly and your reward, at the end, is ruined paper. Flaccid origami only adds frustration and takes away both results and towels. If you use all the bath towels for crafts I am not going to dry my ass on the turkey wad. That’s an ironic trap for crafty moms, I know it’s stuffed with nails and a hand grenade. You won’t get me this time, Macrame (that’s crafty mom Jigsaw).

“That’s not a bird,” you tell the panicked burglar you caught in your cabin, now trying to convince you he’s a cabin boy.

“You haven’t seen it fly!” the burglar says, hurling it at your face and going in for the tackle.

Here’s a tip: If you have nothing to begin with, slapping some tits on nothing and launching it anyway will only make you millions of dollars. Ask Hololive.

Flipping this upside down and putting googly eyes on was a nice try, but it’s not going to get you less suspended. You think Mrs. Davis doesn’t know a soft cock when she sees it? Ask Mr. Davis.

When in doubt, put sunglasses on a heap. Call it a day.

Actually Carnival called it a turtle, but if you can see the turtle in that image that only tells me you’re still processing some kind of turtle-related trauma. I’m sorry you went to the Coming Out of Their Shells Tour and saw Raphael puking in a gutter out back, but you only get out of therapy what you put into it. You have to want to heal, and the first step is admitting this is nothing.

Absolutely nothing! There were instructions to make this? This is how I would diagnose a busted fortune cookie press. Why’s it got a sideways gash for a mouth if not for a reason, for one specific reason??

TWO large towels and fifteen steps, just to make an abstract shape that no self respecting shark would give a test nibble. If I caught my kid fucking this I would take the filters off the internet and rent Space Jam, knowing I’d gone too far.

This article was brought to you by our fine sponsor and Hot Dog Supreme: FancyShark, who is a shark with dignity and would never nibble on that sad towel seal.

Tags books, children's books, Free, how-tos

LEARNING DAY

Learning Day: Martini Ranch’s “Reach” 🌭

Post author By Robert Brockway
Post date 02/29/2024
11 Comments on Learning Day: Martini Ranch’s “Reach” 🌭

In 1988 a band named Martini Ranch released their debut album, “Holy Cow.” It’s what kids today refer to as proto-eggpunk, and what adults refer to as “what the fuck are you talking about?” It’s DEVO-esque, poppy, nerdy, punk adjacent synth pop. You can’t talk about music without sounding like an asshole, so think of it like this: You know the part of your chest that tightens anytime somebody in real life starts talking about anime? It feels like that.

It’s more fun than I make it sound, but for 1988, the band wasn’t notable. Save for one thing: Providing half of the music and vocals was professional musician Andrew Rosenthal, providing the other half plus some tetanus was sweaty, grinning, uncaged lunatic Bill Paxton.

Note the date: 1988. This is not what Bill Paxton did before he was famous. A shameful secret he’d like you to overlook, like Vin Diesel selling Street Sharks. This was after Aliens, just before Predator 2. Bill Paxton was a household name, giggling from a trash can as he lit Hollywood on fire. And right in the middle of it all he stopped to star in a video for Martini Ranch’s single “Reach.”

The video opens on a lone motorcycle drifter blasting through a desert hellscape. Its rider, Bill Paxton, slows for a broken-down cowboy pushing a baby carriage full of bomb.

Masterful filmmaking. That one scene sets the tone perfectly: The motorcycle and bomb tell us this is a post-apocalyptic nuclear cowboy world, well after society’s collapse. Bill Paxton tells us this is going to be unhinged and possibly infectious. The baby carriage tells us it’s gonna be dumb as hell.

Bill Paxton wrangles his hog through town, passing White Zombies making caskets. In this town life, and velvet top hats, are cheap.

Bill Paxton rumbles by a blacksmith shop, blasting heat from its powerful bellows and its more powerful she-hulk, who has turned her blacksmithing apron into a leather bikini. “Molten steel can’t touch my nipples” her outfit tells us, “but everywhere else is fair game.”

Bill Paxton pulls up to a raucous brothel, the only source of joy in this hopeless waste. He dismounts his motorcycle and hitches it to a post with a chain. He does not lock the chain, this is not to deter theft. It’s to keep his steel horse from wandering away to graze the gasoline plains.

A freaky little prospector goblin gambols up to molest Bill Paxton’s motorcycle. Just shoves his little kobold fingers in every gap. This is overtly sexual, Bill Paxton loves it. He tips the goblin.

Eagle-eyed Hot Doggists will notice that man is freaky little goblin Bud Cort, best known to us for playing the freaky little cyber goblin in Theodore Rex. Bud Cort was the official freaky little goblin of the 1980s. When Bud Cort auditions for a part and the casting director says “action,” Bud Cort drops into a chimp lope and dryhumps the crafts table. “That’s why he’s the best,” the casting director whispers, as Bud Cort wraps his cock in salami and spanks the ham.

Bill Paxton saunters up to the brothel. He hauls two women to him and cackles. This is about to be a party. A Bill Paxton party, so you know he’s gonna wear those girls out in a weird way. Just making them fight with butter knives all night while he swings from the chandelier.

A violent desert storm disrupts the scene. Boots march in lockstep as the beat kicks in. The music sounds like Oingo Boingo making fun of the B-52s, we will not discuss it again. But this means a new crew has arrived. A dangerous one. Silhouetted against the blinding desert sun, we can tell only one thing: Every member of this gang is a sexy lady out for revenge on Bill Paxton. Possibly nursing fresh butter knife welts.

One of the ladies, rocking a more masculine Steve Perry look, spits chaw on a scorpion.

That does nothing physical to the scorpion. It won’t kill it, or deter it. It only shames the scorpion. She spat chaw right in its face just so it can’t go home to its scorpion wife and scorpion kids with pride, knowing that it is feared as a dangerous desert predator. This scorpion will need years of therapy to separate its sense of value as a living creature from its sting. That’s really fucked up, lady.

We pan over to meet the leader of our gang: A total smokeshow.

And also Academy Award winning director of The Hurt Locker, Kathryn Bigelow.

“What the fuck?” You might be asking. You’ll want to hold onto that.

Kathryn Bigelow just had her big break the year before this, when her solo directorial debut put her on the map. That debut was Near Dark, the greatest vampire movie ever made. It starred Bill Paxton at his bloodiest, greasiest, and most maniacal. His best, in other words.

They say you need to be careful of your next move after your big break. It’s not your breakthrough movie itself, but what you do afterward that decides everything. Kathryn Bigelow’s next move after Near Dark? Erotically hunting Bill Paxton through a ghost town. Why is she here? Because Bill Paxton prowls the Hollywood night, saving celebrities so they’ll owe him a favor and star in his vanity projects. The danger he saves them from is also Bill Paxton.

The nerdcore hyperpop beat gives way to a haunting western whistle as Kathryn Bigelow’s lady gang takes over the brothel. They pop in a bounty laserdisc playing a video wanted poster of Bill Paxton spinning in place like it’s hour 3 of butter knife duels.

Andrew Rosenthal, the other half of Martini Ranch, sings from the background as one member of a three piece mariachi band. He watches as Bill Paxton steals the show, somersaulting around a Tucson tourist attraction and monkey-kicking the biggest stars in the world. He knows his place is in the shadows, and he’s glad to stay there, because he also knows Bill Paxton’s exact bite force down to the decimal.

Reviewing the wanted footage, Bill Paxton spins and snarls at the camera with Gollum teeth. He’s still somehow sexy. Science doesn’t understand it. In every model this is the point where the viewer’s genitals should retreat, a natural biological response to the roar of a nearby predator. It helps preserve the next generation in the event of an attack. And yet when shown this video, all subjects rated their emotional response as “would.”

This is all intercut with scenes of Bill Paxton buried to his neck in sand, ants and tarantulas attacking his face as he desperately tongues for a martini. Okay, let’s check back in on the experiment- “would” ratings have gone up 17%! Impossible.

Academy Award winning director of The Hurt Locker Kathryn Bigelow and two of her amazons mount an old pickup and pursue Bill Paxton with lassos. We’ve had this dream before. Let’s get out of here before their breasts turn into our mother’s faces.

Their hunt is successful. Here, I have made a gif of the time two amazons and Academy Award winning director of The Hurt Locker Kathryn Bigelow hogtied a rogue Bill Paxton.

This is a watershed moment. The high tide mark of a personal fetish. In 1996’s From Dusk Till Dawn, director Quentin Tarantino cast a young Salma Hayek as a stripper who pours tequila down her feet into the mouth of a waiting pervert. Then he cast himself as that pervert. At this moment he became the Forever King of Foot Perverts, and it was a mistake. He spent the rest of his life chasing and never matching that moment. Somewhere around the time two female bodybuilders truss his feet, and just before Academy Award winning director of The Hurt Locker Kathryn Bigelow brands him on the ass, the thought must have occurred to Bill Paxton: “Is it all downhill from here?”

Andrew Rosenthal’s overshadowed mariachi band are being dragged to their deaths, yet they continue to play their instruments. It’s noble, like the band on the Titanic if both the boat and the iceberg were Bill Paxton.

Andrew Rosenthal is lynched and hung. His last request? To shred.

Granted, say the gods of Chaos.

It whips ass. This is Andrew’s one and only moment to shine. When Andrew found Bill Paxton bound to the hitching post by Academy Award winning director of The Hurt Locker Kathryn Bigelow, his ass still smoking from her brand, Andrew asked him “can I have something cool to do, too?” Paxton was generous that day, shaky and spent and looking down at a lifetime of sexual coasting. Through the gag made of his own underwear, Paxton answered “Yrmf.”

Andrew got his guitar solo, and then he pushed his luck.

“Can I also be saved by one of the Amazons?”

“Yrmf.”

“And she makes out with me?”

“Yrmf!”

“While Academy Award winning director of The Hurt Locker Kathryn Bigelow watches and claps?”

“Wrrf um Herm Rogga?”

“I don’t know, I don’t think it exists yet. Can I do it?”

“YRMF!”

Clad only in a dirty pink onesie, Bill Paxton leads the men of this town into a final showdown against the powerful ladies dominating them. One of these filthy, filthy men has a spider monkey, like a pirate might have a parrot.

That man is Golden Globe winning actor Lance Henriksen. This is his entire role in the video: Be filthy and present with monkey.

“What the fuck is happening?” You ask, having politely saved that question like I asked you to earlier.

You fool, you god damn idiot. You burned it too early! Now you won’t have that question when you really need it. And you will. You will need it like Bill Paxton needs rope burns on his neck from Academy Award winning director of The Hurt Locker Kathryn Bigelow.

Abandoned by his peers, the ladies begin to shoot Bill Paxton’s clothes off. “Ok,” says nearby Andrew Rosenthal. “I think we get it, Bill.”

Bill Paxton is defeated. The post-apocalyptic nuclear amazon cowboys led by Academy Award winning director of The Hurt Locker Kathryn Bigelow tie Bll Paxton to their truck and roadhaul him by the taint until he is dead, dead, dead.

I forgot to mention one of those nuclear amazons is Jenette Goldstein – Private Vasquez from Aliens. I forgot to mention her because so did the video. She’s barely in it. I had to find a clear shot of her in the outtakes.

Kathryn Bigelow, Lance Henriksen, Jenette Goldstein – likewise both present and cut from the video is Adrian Pasdar, the lead of Near Dark. Everyone involved with the movie is here, which means that in the middle of filming Near Dark – the bleak and beautiful modern vampire western where Bill Paxton plays a bloodsoaked immortal sociopath – he stopped an intense take to ask if the entire cast and crew would like to strip and hogtie him in the desert. Of course they all said yes: Bill Paxton saved their lives that time the set got attacked by Bill Paxton.

Oh right, there are outtakes. Let’s get into them. They open with Bill Paxton the way his friends know him best: Hitting himself in the face with a motorcycle chain.

The man in the yellow shirt, just passing through the scene, laughs. “Classic Bill,” he might say. He might follow this up with “would you like to come aboard my private submarine and spend 9/11 on the deck of the sunken Titanic with me, BIll Paxton?” Because this man is Academy Award winning director of Dark Angel, James Cameron. Also because that’s where he and Bill Paxton actually were when 9/11 happened.

“What the f-”

Shut up! Not yet.

Yes, James Cameron directed this video. Hot off Terminator and Aliens, about to direct The Abyss, James Cameron took this job filming his future wife, Academy Award winning director of The Hurt Locker Kathryn Bigelow, while she rope-spanked Bill Paxton in a cowboy outfit.

Curious how they did that shot with Bill Paxton buried up to his neck in sand while ants and spiders attacked his face? You’ll kick yourself: They buried Bill Paxton up to his neck in sand while ants and spiders attacked his face.

James Cameron, in particular, thought that was fucking hilarious.

“When can I say ‘what the fuck is happening?!’” You’re wondering.

I’m so glad you asked. It’s right now, when I tell you that in the video for Martini Ranch’s “Reach,” the haunting western whistle was provided by Beverly Hills Cop’s Judge Reinhold.

This article was brought to you by our fine sponsor and Hot Dog Supreme: Joshua Graves, who is known as “the Bill Paxton” of his local TGI Friday’s.

Tags 1980s, best of 2024, Celebrities, Free, music videos

UPSETTING DAY

Ape Week: Lancelot Link 🌭

Happy Ape Week! Today I’m talking about Lancelot Link: The 1970 spy-spoof television show starring exclusively chimps. It was a simpler time in America. A time when adequate men could become very rich by asking “what if anything, but chimps?” And they did. They did ask that. The writers behind Get Smart asked producers “what if we did more Get Smart, but chimps?” They were given a record-breaking seven figure budget for this astonishing idea.

I have lots of TOTALLY APESOME facts about Lancelot Link!

Here’s one: The chimps were made to “talk” by rubbing peanut butter on their gums. Most also knew a hand signal, which looked like the universal yapping gesture for “blah blah blah.” When they saw a human go “blah blah blah,” they’d all start flapping their mouths like bees got into the muppet set.

This is Tonga, the chimp who played Lancelot Link, and the only one who didn’t know the hand signal. Instead they had him chew gum in every scene. He loved it!

Today, you get to choose to know that, and only that. Or you can also know the APESOLUTELY TRAGIC facts, which will pop up in italics, like so:

APESOLUTELY TRAGIC!

Tonga despised the set veterinarian in a way normally reserved for grindhouse revenge movies. His trainer, Daryll, warned the showrunners “someday, he will get that vet.” Daryll is one of those prophetic ape trainers who can foretell ape tragedy. It’s actually really easy: Is there an ape around? There’s tragedy. While being led off set one day, Tonga leapt over the other chimp’s heads, scaled a wall, and sunk his teeth into the vet. This happened on the very first and only time studio executives visited the set. They showed up to a multimillion dollar ape disaster, witnessed a man being devoured by a chimpanzee, then walked away and pulled funding. I’m kidding. They did not pull funding.

Let’s meet the rest of the cast. There was Mata Hairi, whose voice actor once played “all the children in a Japanese train wreck” on an episode of Godzilla. I don’t actually know if that’s fun or not. That’s uh, that’s a NEUTRAL MANDRILL fact!

There was Commander Darwin, who gives his “theory” on each case – that’s almost but not quite a pun. Good job, writers of Get Smart! Darwin was voiced by Bernie Koppell, who you probably don’t know as Doc from Love Boat. NEUTRAL MANDRILL!

We’re being overrun by Neutral Mandrills. Let’s get-

TOTALLY APESOME!

Show writers were brought on after the chimp’s scenes were recorded, and made to match their dialogue to the chimp’s random peanut butter licks. As a writer, that’s the saddest job I can possibly imagine, and they were not very good at it. They filled out dialogue with insane gibberish, wild screeching, random coughs, gags, and sneezes. The only way it could have been sadder is if they had actually tried. Oh no, this was supposed to be TOTALLY APESOME! Uh…. t-this is maybe the most creative control a chimp has ever exerted over man! TOTALLY APESOME!

Our hero chimps worked for an organization called APE: the Agency to Prevent Evil.

That’s actually pretty solid. Is it weird to be proud of these writers when they get a win? It’s like watching an orphan catch a game-winning homerun at the World Series. Let them enjoy that moment while they can, you know an eBay reseller’s going to mug them in the parking lot.

It’s APE’s job to fight CHUMP.

The Criminal Headquarters for Underworld Master Plan. Oh no, there’s that eBay mugging.

CHUMP was run by the Baron, also voiced by Koppell, who previously played the villain Siegfried on Get Smart. Here he’s branching out by playing exactly Siegfried again, only for less money and shared credit with an ape, because he’s a home run orphan waiting for his turn in the parking lot.

The Baron was a foppish German evil genius, and here’s something TOTALLY APESOME! The chimp who played him loved his monocle so much that he never took it off. If it fell out, he’d put it back in himself – he was not trained to do this!

There was Dr. Strangemind, an eccentric mad scientist.

They actually taught him to play with those little beakers! He runs back and forth pouring liquids from flask to flask with this genuine look of concentration on his face, it’s magical. I love that a chimp knows how to do science now, but not why. If he ever escapes his cage at the Maybelline facility, they’ll find him in the lab inventing a new kind of foundation that gives you third degree burns. That doesn’t count as an APESOLUTELY TRAGIC fact because it’s only very probably true.

There’s the Baron’s bodyguard and chauffeur, Creto:

I know what you’re thinking. That’s a borderline offensive caricature of Kato, the Asian bodyguard/chauffeur from Green Hornet. That’s on you, that’s your bias showing. Creto is a directly offensive Mexican stereotype. That’s a little thing the 1970s called diversity.

It seems hard to fuck up a comedy show for kids starring all chimps. Basically just don’t make all the humor extremely racial and you’re good to go. Meet Dragon Woman:

Huh, no ape pun for that name. I guess I don’t have one either. Something about bananas being- no, this was the right call. This was the classy move. Here’s her henchman, Wang Fu:

That’s sort of adjacent to a pun on kung fu? Although I should clarify they did not teach this chimp kung fu for the show. I probably didn’t need to clarify that actually, we’d have a national holiday to mourn the ensuing massacre if they did.

There was Ali Assa Seen, the Arabic chimp henchman. Wouldn’t it be crazy if I told you he was actually a really sensitive and progressive portrayal of Arabs at the time? I am not telling you that.

It’s been a while since we’ve had a TOTALLY APESOME fact! Here’s one: That’s a real hawk on his shoulder. They were friends!

It’s also been a while since we’ve had an APESOLUTELY TRAGIC fact! Here’s one: The hawk is with Ali because he’s the only chimp who wouldn’t tear it apart. That seems like one of those things you can only find out through trial and error…

Finally, the Duchess:

No notes. A chimp pretending to be a posh English dame is the hand grenade of comedy. You don’t have to aim it real well; it still works pretty good if you miss.

I mentioned earlier they secured a record-breaking seven figure budget for this pilot, right? It was called:

And right away it opens with a cultural constant nightmare. A terror inexplicably shared across every human civilization, no matter how disparate.

Teaching a chimp to use scissors on another chimp is illegal everywhere except floating fight clubs in international waters. Even there it’s frowned upon as crass – a sophisticated chimp wields the katana.

APESOLUTELY TRAGIC! Speaking of chimps fighting with scissors, there was a rumor that all the male chimps were castrated before production, and that’s ultimately how PETA got the show shut down. That’s not true: They actually castrated the chimps one day before filming, and PETA has never accomplished anything. Also, castration didn’t help: the chimps were exactly as aggressive on set, so the only net good here was the bag of Purina they turned those 12 monkey cocks into.

The APE agent’s cover was a psychedelic hippy band called the Evolution Revolution playing out of the Coconut Grove club, which was really just a flimsy excuse to dress chimps like hippies and have them wail on instruments. You know what? I’ll take it.

TOTALLY APESOME! Chimpanzees usually hit things with the backs of their hands, and with both hands at the same time. But when trainers handed them their musical instruments, all the chimps just seemed to get it. At first they only flailed wildly with their paws facing down, but as soon as the director played music through on-set speakers, every chimp synced up to the beat. It mystifies Chimp Hop experts to this day!

APESOLUTELY TRAGIC! The chimp on drums stole the show. His name was Blackie. In the documentary I Created Lancelot Link, the showrunners are given his picture. They have this exchange:

“Remember him?”

“Oh yeah, Charlie.”

“Blackie.”

“Blackie, right. He was the one that had the stroke.”

WHY ARE YOU READING THESE?

The best thing Lancelot Link ever did was teach these chimps to dance. And they took to it instantly. This chimp fucking rules!

Fucking rules in particular, out of an entire party of dancing hippy chimps! That’s like making Valedicktorian in All Hunk High School (check my Patreon for more AHHS).

Let’s get to the pilot. Ali Assa Seen is recruited by the Baron to steal the Star of Karachi Diamond, which is worth a shocking three million dollars. CHUMP brags at one point that even after they split it, they’ll get 500k each. Also known as “not enough to buy a starter house anymore.” That joke wasn’t TOTALLY APESOME, and I’m sorry. I’ll make it up to you:

Look at his little hawk friend riding his shoulder, surely bragging to all the other hawks about his sick problematic chimp mech.

Ali is supposed to hand the diamond off to Dragon Woman and Wang Fu, who’s using chopsticks when we meet him!

That chimp is working those chopsticks better than a conservative uncle at Panda Express, and I’m so fucking proud of him. Although hey, real quick, what do you think is the maximum number of racist props you can legally glue to an ape?

I don’t know the answer, either. I think it’s one less than this:

APESOLUTELY TRAGIC! The writers use lip syncing fills as an excuse for extra racism here. “Ah so,” and “me no,” and at least one racist sneeze. I didn’t know that was a thing!

IT IS VERY MUCH A THING.

I’m sorry if you’ve been avoiding tragedy so far and saw that, I don’t know how to make a screenshot italic.

Because it’s really hard to get chimps to do anything but fuck and eat vets, and because that seven figure budget was for sure a way to launder coke-money, the entire heist happens offscreen. Ali just shows up the next scene with the diamond already stolen:

These episodes are ten minutes long, we are eight minutes into the very first one, and the most we’ve done is watch a chimp eat with chopsticks. Don’t get me wrong, I’m real fucking proud of my boy – I’ll watch him maw those noodles down for an entire two-hour special feature. But for three-quarters of the pilot episode? And the other quarter is all phone calls?

Look, I know it’s pretty funny to imagine what one ape has to say to another on the telephone. “Probably something about bananas!” Say the writers, inwardly praying for a gas explosion. But the pilot episode is where you go all out to sell the concept, and the concept here was “chimps doing spy shit.” There’s only one more scene left, surely they won’t-

And that’s it! That’s the pilot. Now, remember it is a two-parter, but also remember studio execs will watch the absolute bare minimum of something before making a snap decision about its fate, because everyone in the world is sick of doing their job when they could be getting head on a yacht. Just imagine authorizing a seven figure budget and getting back a ten minute reel of chimpanzees opening and closing their mouths next to phones. If this was any other decade but the 1970s, in any other place but Hollywood, somebody would have been fired for Lancelot Link. Instead people like this were allowed to fail upward and upward until they negligently killed two children with a helicopter, and even then it just meant they had to fail sideways from now on.

We’re getting APESOLUTELY TRAGIC when we should be TOTALLY APESOME!

Quick, look at Tonga in his little ascot.

I know that’s not a fact, but look at his bashful smile. He knows he’s handsome. That’s a fact!

In part two of “There’s No Business Like Snow Business,” Ali Assa Seen rides a camel from the Middle East all the way to a ski resort in the Alps to fence that stolen diamond. Ignore the inexplicable racism of that – they actually got a chimp to ride a camel!

That’s a hawk riding a chimp riding a camel, or as zoologists call it: The beginning of the end. This looks like the start of a transformation sequence in one of the weirder Sentai series. I imagine this is the kind of brag that gets you laid at animal trainer conventions. They would name this accomplishment after you, they’d call it the Daryll Trio and you’d get to sidle up to two ladies at the hotel bar who always smell like horse and ask if they’d like to make a Daryll Trio of their own. It would work. It would work. What a moment, what a victory…

To be immediately overshadowed by this chimp getting stuck in a hat.

Man, I could watch a chimp get lost in a ski mask for five straight minutes which is good, because that’s what happens. But I would not need seven figures to film this. All I’d need is your dumbest chimp, your most complicated ski mask, and a cameraman who failed the Voight-Kampff test.

This is not the showrunner’s proudest moment.

TOTALLY APESOME! When asked what their proudest moment was, the creators of Lancelot Link said it was this shot:

Understandable. That rules. It’s got everything: Chimps, silly outfits, attempted sports. This establishing shot of the ski resort took 30 chimps to film!

APESOLUTELY TRAGIC! They filmed this in California during the summer, where it was “110 degrees in the shade.” The chimps had to be out in the direct sun at midday, in heavy parkas, with bulky objects strapped to their feet and hands, while repeatedly being shoved down a hill. Also all that snow was fake, which in 1970, means it was probably asbestos.

But how did they keep the little guys from eating shit on those skis? I’m glad you asked:

Then there’s an all-chimp toboggan chase. That alone is worth a quarter million dollars to one specific guy, and he’s a rich Swiss pervert with a chimp fetish. Which means he still would have considered this episode a rip-off since it cost at least four times that to film.

We close out on a big chimp snowball fight!

TOTALLY APESOME! They clearly accomplished this by standing just offscreen and whipping snowballs at unsuspecting chimps. Or wait, maybe that’s not TOTALLY APESOME! No, come on, a snowball is pretty harmless and it’s a fantastic day at work when you get to whomp a chimp with a fistful of snow. Besides, I’m saving the-

APESOLUTELY TRAGIC fact! That’s Mata Hairi in the red hat and blue sweater combo, and she obviously gets the worst whomping. Maybe that’s because, when asked about Debbie, the chimp who plays Mata Hairi, showrunners said “she was a bitch chimp. If there’s a thing called a bitch chimp, Debbie was a bitch chimp.”

TOTALLY APESOME! “Whomp the bitch chimp” is a fun onomatopoeia you can use to beatbox Darude’s “Sandstorm!”

Link and Mata trick the evil chimps into tossing them the stolen diamond in one of the snowballs, and that’s the end of the two-part pilot! The seven figure two-part pilot! The successful seven figure two-part pilot that was ordered to series based on this footage! TOTALLY APESOLUTELY APESOMELY TRAGIC!

Wait, you haven’t heard my favorite story. It is both TOTALLY APESOME and APESOLUTELY TRAGIC. You can’t separate one from the other. It happens while filming the episode “Bonana” which, holy shit, is the title of the all-chimp Bonanza parody. I take back everything I said about these writers. They were tasked with shoveling shit and they made an all-shit Veiled Virgin.

First, and most importantly, look at the chimps ride the ponies!

How did they make sure the chimps didn’t eat shit while doing this? I’m glad you asked:

The less said about the motorcycles, the better.

This story isn’t about Pony Chimps vs. The Motorcycle Apes, that’s a more personal tale you have to sign up for my Patreon to read. It’s really about my relationship with my father. This story is about the chimp who played the Indian in “Bonana” which, don’t worry, is exactly as tasteful as you assume:

To the surprise of no one except everyone involved in making Lancelot Link, as soon as they got this chimp all dressed up like a genocide and let him free in the forests of California, he bolted.

Yes, in full costume.

They had no contingency plans for rogue chimps in redface. It wasn’t in any of the binders. Those all dealt with rogue yellowface chimps, plus one Mexican, and the tactics just don’t carry over. The showrunners couldn’t do anything but stand around, hoping whatever child it tore the face off of was near-sighted.

A few hours later, the chimp shows up again. As the showrunners describe it: “A hippy – a human hippy – comes walking out of the woods hand in hand with this little Indian chimp.”

Weird emphasis theirs. Personally I think it would’ve been wilder if the hippy was another chimp, escaped from a rival production across the forest. Kind of a Romeo and Juliet thing. Again, check my Patreon.

The hippy had a cabin out in those woods and was just chilling there, presumably stoned out of his mind, when he looked up and saw Chief Chimp staring through his window. Instead of assuming he was in the fun part of an anti-drug PSA, he decided to go out there and bond with an ape. Then, instead of hopping in a van with a chimp and having a series of grand adventures solving musical mysteries across the USA, this fucking hippy soured chimp/man relations forever by betraying his new friend and returning it to the set.

Another thing the showrunners don’t specifically say, because they don’t have to: Chief Chimp was high as shit when he came back.

This article was brought to you by our fine sponsor and Hot Dog Supreme: Vooster, who would take that chimp vanning because she’s not a fucking narc.

Tags 1970s, ape week, apes, Free, tv