Author: Seanbaby

Categories
NERDING DAY

Nerding Day: The Squire and the Scroll 🌭

It’s a glorious Nerding Day miracle, for today we celebrate the three pillars of nerding: Christianity, High Fantasy, and Virginity. You may remember author and champion of unfucked holes, Jennie Bishop, who wrote The Princess and the Kiss. It was a story about a princess saving her first kiss for marriage written like an allegory, but it actually was about saving your first kiss for marriage. In 2004 she wrote a version for boys, only this time it was definitely an allegory. Maybe. Let’s see if we can learn the rewards of a pure heart in The Squire and the Scroll.

As a frequent reader of religious texts, I don’t find Christians to be good at allegories or symbolism. Mostly because you never know when they’re going to call those things “fundamental truths.” Plus, Christian art tends to be nonsense because they usually take existing creations with their own metaphors and meaning and change one of the words to “Jesus.” For example, “Jesus” but it’s the Frasier font or “Jesus Christ in a pot, that’s some wet ass pussy.” This book suffers from that shit, absolutely, but I don’t think Jennie Bishop would be a good author even if she dedicated her life to normal books. To be clear, no one is capable of crafting a good fantasy story around selling virginity to men. But this dim, crusader-brained dingbat? She is a confused baby left to die in a hot car full of typewriters.

Jennie dedicated her book about never, ever having sex to her husband, who has his own inside-joke, fantasy-themed virginity catchphrase. Sorry, that was a wordy way to put it; sort of like an author writing a 27 word dedication when they could have simply said, “I CUT OFF YOUR NUTS, RANDY.”

Randy, this is catastrophic. The first time he sheepishly asked his wife if she came, she said, “Not only did I not do whatever that is, I am going to dedicate my life to making sure no one else experiences this. I don’t care if it takes years, I will find a way to tell even children you can’t fuck.”

So once upon a time, a king was in charge of a magic lamp that kept everyone in his kingdom pure. Jennie mostly means celibate, but I get the idea she’d be okay with any way you wanted to interpret the word “pure.” This joyful kingdom doesn’t have any good falafel carts or jazz clubs, is what I’m getting at. I don’t know why I’m being cute. Hey, Jennie. You missed responsible sex education and hit Christofascism, you smooth pelvised monster.

With all the storytelling skills of a gorilla caught skipping sign language class, Jennie explains how an evil dragon stole the kingdom’s purity. Does this mean, on leathering wings and with dreadful magic, it fucked each and every person? Or did it merely fly around announcing that fucking was possible? Maybe none of this is allegory and it really was a magic lamp. I admit I have no idea. Jennie is building this story backwards from a religious certainty that her idea of “purity” is important, so none of it is really coherent or convincing. I only know this is about virginity because of the book jacket, promotional materials, and the author’s lifetime of public advocacy against sex. Without all that, I’d interpret this as a dragon stealing, like, the kingdom’s ability to say “Merry Christmas” or their zoning restrictions against drag performances. This feels like a medieval retelling of Footloose, except I don’t think Jennie agrees with Kevin Bacon about who the bad guys were in Footloose.

A lifetime of not being fucked and also not understanding metaphors means Jennie makes a lot of very horny, unintentionally funny word choices. This isn’t the best example, but when the brave knight and his pure, pure squire acquire their first treasure, she says they “split the underbrush” and “found a bag of wool” which is exactly how C.S. Lewis would describe your first time going down on a satyr. I just realized I haven’t talked much about the story. Let’s catch you up.

So the squire lives his life by the commands of a purity scroll. It’s the same scroll everyone in the kingdom is meant to live by, but he’s the only one who takes it seriously. He and the knight are attacked by evil, lustful whispers and he remembers the scroll’s First Command: “Listen only to words that are pure.”

You’d think this would mean ignoring temptation. However, Jennie is a Christian and sometimes her metaphors are literal, so this command means to take the wool out of your inventory and use it on your ears. I’m sure it doesn’t mean anything that this desperately unfucked author had the heroes overcome their first obstacle by stuffing each other’s holes.

After hiding from the sexy noise, the two pure adventurers find a shield outside a cave. “These are helpful,” explains the man who didn’t pack any shields for his dragon fight. “This reads like a novelization of a point-and-click adventure,” explains the man who noticed these virgins are finding items and then using those items at the very next location.

In the very next location, they are tempted by evil gems. The squire remembers the scroll’s second command, which is now referred to as a rule: “Let your eyes look straight ahead, fix your gaze directly before you.”

Do you know what this means? It means Jennie got so lost in the parable that her instruction manual for purity is no longer a way for the reader to live their life, but an extremely specific set of instructions for the characters to survive this one adventure. This kingdom has built itself around these commandments and the second one is only useful for getting through its evil gem cave.

By the way, the knight doesn’t care. He’s already spending the money. He’s like, “Kid, I have done way worse things than look at cave faces.” Is this a metaphor for anything? I guess in context it probably means he’s going to put his dick in one of their mouths? I’m… hmmm. No, I don’t think I’m kidding. This is a sincere interpretation. Anyway, he of course dies horribly.

Driven mad by the beautiful toothless mouths of the cavern, the knight denounces the teachings of the scroll. The shield he picked up turned out to be a nightvision shield, which is suspiciously lucky. I highlighted the words “fought to stop his horse, but to no avail,” which is suspiciously how Tolkien would describe a Hobbit trying to keep a boner under control.

“I have noticed the scroll in my belt, and I’m grasping it tightly,” is how Robert Jordan would DM a cosplayer.

The only thing the squire has left is his well-grasped scroll, so he’s about to die of thirst. He comes across a filthy pond of dead fish and wonders if his faith has any tips. It does! The third rule of the scroll is “Keep the unclean far from your lips to guard the wellspring of your life.” I think the author is trying to say we shouldn’t even do mouth stuff, but her writing is so elegant it can also refer to not drinking from a toxic fish graveyard.

The boy, mindful of the allure of temptation, finds a flask of water labeled PURE and immediately drinks it. It’s possible this could be dumber, but I’m not sure how. The scroll, a nonsense document of no help to anyone in or out of this story, is being praised by its own author for being useful and wise. So far we’ve learned to only listen to, look at, and suck on pure things. This is how a hungover girl finds her way out of a fraternity basement, not any kind of philosophy.

The squire comes to a fork in the road. The dry way is fine, while the wet way is obviously quicksand. Using the wisdom of his virginity scroll, he chooses wet. And he gets rock hard. There’s no official rule in the scroll for this, but if there was it would be “Always bet on wet.”

The actual fourth rule is “Breathe only that which is pure,” and whether you think I’ve been fair to this stupid fucking book or not, I think we can all agree this is no longer any kind of metaphor. How would a prospective virgin even use this in their sad life? Do you avoid perfumes? Moist feet? Wafting pubic scents? Speaking of disgusting, the squire enters a yawning chasm to pluck a rose and stroke his parchment. This is all gross. This is how George R.R. Martin would smell a panty.

Luckily, the squire’s plucking and sniffing gets interrupted before he loses the fight to stop his horse. It’s the dragon offering him a deal. He’ll give the Lantern back, but the boy will have to… I guess in the context of this story, give up his virginity.

Okay, so I hope I’m wrong. I hope I’ve fundamentally misunderstood something. But this is a story about resisting sex until marriage. The scroll represents the boy’s purity and the dragon represents temptation. And the dragon is saying “give me that sweet virginity and I’ll give you the lamp.” The boy says no, but then… does? He takes the scroll out of his pants, it transforms into a sword, and then he plunges that sword into the dragon’s body. That’s unambiguous. That’s fucking. That’s how any good dungeon master would describe dragon sex.

This is the hard, wet climax of the story and our hero is whipping out his virginity to penetrate temptation with it. And it cannot possibly be what the author intended. This woman set out to explain why celibacy is important, never did, and accidentally killed her purity allegory with an underage boy’s penis. Everyone knew going in she was going to fail, but this is a true wonder. This is like an orthodontist leaving for work and mistakenly eating a box of diarrhea in a dimension without teeth.

The boy’s sword goes flaccid after he pulls it from the spent dragon, a detail Jennie included to make sure we understand: it was his dick and they fucked. And we don’t make it three sentences before someone is on their knees in front of him, begging for that sweet purity. I’m not crazy, right? This is horny as fuck. This is how George R.R. Martin describes what his characters are eating.

For saving the kingdom and becoming a man, the squire is given a virgin. This isn’t a metaphor or any kind of lesson, Jennie just doesn’t know when to end a story and truly believes a woman is an appropriate prize. This might also be nothing, but the knight is back on his knees again, yearning for those turgid words of purity.

The slow death march of this story’s denouement continues, and we learn that the squire has started a whole virginity club to protect the kingdom against future horny monsters. These men are dedicated to the rules of the scroll, which again, are four pointless clues for navigating a trip to see the dragon their boss fucked to death. This kingdom’s entire philosophy makes more sense as a warning label on toilet cleaner.

We’re still going! On the merciful final page of the epilogue we learn the squire’s virgin wife knew how to please him because she fucked by way of the scroll. Let’s go over the rules one last time. Don’t listen to anything gross, look straight ahead, don’t put anything gross in your mouth, avoid inhaling toxic fu– oh my god oh my god, I’m fighting this horse to no avail! No avaaaaaaaail!!!!

…
This article was brought to you by our fine sponsor and Hot Dog Supreme: Clementine Danger, the gem-eyed cave skank.

Categories
PODCASTING DAY

Podcasting Day: Thunder in Paradise with Dan McQuade 🌭

It’s Dogg Zzone 9000 Day, and this week Defector co-founder Dan McQuade returns to share his expertise on the Civil War. More specifically, the time Hulk Hogan won it for the South using only a superboat, a remote control grenade launcher, fifteen laser guns, and an XXXL Victorian gown. That’s right, we’re finally doing a show on episode 9 of Thunder in Paradise, “Gettysburg Change of Address”!

Listen here or wherever you get podcasts!

As you certainly remember from when it first aired in 1994, it’s the episode with the skeleton mystery and the big Sea-Doo race where Hulk Hogan used Civil War costumes to trick an Army captain into thinking he had traveled through time in order to win a laser tag battle which was also a murder scheme.

Footnotes:

Podcast illustrated by Brett Ellefson

Categories
LEARNING DAY

Learning Day: The Tomima Edmark Academic Study on Creative Bankruptcy

To view this content, you must be a member of 1900HOTDOG's Patreon
Unlock with Patreon
Already a qualifying Patreon member? Refresh to access this content.
Categories
PUNCHING DAY

Punching Day: 1001 Street Fighting Secrets 🌭

1001 is probably too many secrets to be keeping about street fighting, but in 1997, Sammy Franco wrote this:

My experience with books starting with “1,001” suggests I shouldn’t bother looking inside 1001 Street Fighting SECRETS: The Principles of Contemporary Fighting Arts. This number is too high. Sammy is going to run out of punches and kicks by 47 and have to list his favorite karate songs and mid-maiming snacks to fill the next two hundred pages. Plus, is he even crazy? I’d better look up some of his other books to make sure I’m not going to be combing through increasingly boring variations of “remember to lock your car” and “every bulge on a bus passenger could be nunchucks.”

A good sign. These are fucking nuts. Okay, let’s get started.

Speaking of secrets, the book starts with a quote from Henry Ward Beecher, a historical figure who cheated on his wife so much his adultery is included in the first sentence of his Wikipedia entry. He was sniffing another man’s wife on his fingers when he said this and was absolutely not talking about karate secrets.

This is going to sound too cute and nerdy for a book about killing day drinkers with your hands, but the last secret in his book of secrets is a secret! The first 1000 secrets are a clue to decoding it! It’s the kind of idea you would have if the only people you talked to were adults in ninja costumes, and I mean that in the best way. I also mean this: if you’re a book that doesn’t do this, fuck you.

Eight pages in and we still haven’t started the secrets. Sammy first has to thank the United States Border Patrol (USBP), the kind of idea you have when you and the adults in ninja costumes you talk to have a secret favorite race. He also gives an acknowledgement to God (T.M.F.B.A.K.M.), an abbreviation he never explains. Which means this street fighter has an inside joke with God and I’ve made the right decision to read his book.

Right now would be the perfect time to start listing secrets, but I’m sure you’re wondering how Sammy Franco’s school, Contemporary Fighting Arts, got its name. He explains all three word choices for an entire page and during that time there are no twists or surprises. It’s obvious and no one asked. It’s like someone getting out of The Muffdiver Express and telling you how his van got its name. It’s like a man named Buck building an interactive exhibit so customers understand the creative process behind the name Buck’s Fishing Supplies.

Before we get to the secrets, Sammy warns he will be including some defense and spirituality. As he explains many times, these things will get you killed on the streets, but they are what separate you from the animals. Like most people training you for the imaginary, Sammy’s advice changes depending on whether he’s thinking of an underground kumite or a restroom pervert. Still, knowing your spirituality made you better than your local tough guys had to be a big comfort to an adult ninja in 1997.

Every moment is a potential attack. That’s why Sammy’s first street fighting secret is DON’T BLINK. I love it, but this is already too figurative to be useful and very, very much not a secret. No one’s last words in a death tournament have ever been, “The rules never said I had to pay attention!”

This rules. Sammy was out of secrets at number zero and he still has 999 to go. Wait, I forgot about entry ? ? ?. He only has 998 to go.

Really wanting to kill the other guy is an important step most street fighters forget. Sammy illustrates the 10th street fighting secret, “a virtuous killer instinct,” with a picture of one of his students thumbing a man’s eyes out. He is experiencing rage, happiness, and ecstasy– all the emotions you feel when taking a man’s life eyeball first, over a caption about how he’s demonstrating a perfect lack of emotion. It’s something to keep in mind, that this author who dedicated his life to surviving an afternoon in Jackie Chan’s body is weirdly incorrect whenever it’s possible to be objectively wrong.

After learning how to breathe and get comfortable with murder, it’s time to reveal the street fighting secret of standing like you’re in a fight. Sammy calls this BLADING YOUR BODY which is how you get a 1997 adult ninja to say, “Oh fuck yeah.” And they’re right.

You know, Sammy, you’re the one who decided to frame these as “secrets.” You only have yourself to blame for looking like an idiot here. You are revealing the secret of heads to head owners (this includes top, front, sides, and back). You’ve made a fighting system so basic you’ve accidentally written an operator’s manual for a parasitic mold colony. This is an instruction manual for when Jackie Chan wakes up in your body and you don’t want your wife to get suspicious.

I think we’ve learned enough about blinking, breathing, and the benefits of heads. It’s time to practice surrendering. Sammy has now spent over twenty pages explaining how to master every last thing your body does involuntarily. If you read 1001 Street Fighting Secrets to a baby their first words would be, “oh my god, no shit.” It would be so hilarious if after all of these exhausting essays on what ears and fingers are used for, Sammy finally gets to the actual fighting and goes, “I don’t know, hit him with your foot.”

No fucking way.

Groin kicks: the 40th street fighting secret! Sammy calls them “vertical kicks” because if he called them groin kicks he’d have to write three chapters on your changing body and how a groin swells when its owner blinds a man with his fingernails.

The 70th street fighting secret: poking them in the eyes! I know enough about literature to know every 1,001 Things author discovers there’s nothing left in their brain long before they finish their book. Here is where it happened for Sammy. He has explained both kinds of kicks– dick and regular, and now he’s shown the reader his forbidden eyeball strike. That’s all his moves. He genuinely thought there would be more karate in his head than 70 karates, but the rest of the book is the desperate panic of a frequent sword browser. You’re going to love it.

How are you going to tell me not to do spinning punches in a book for imaginary fights? If I’m taking out a hypothetical knifeman, I am doing only hypothetical rad shit. Full splits. Bikini beach setting. I might make him Dylan O’Brien so I can say, “You should have never run out of that maze, Dylan O’Brien! For no minotaur in there is as fierce as my very much spinning punch out here, Dylan O’Brien!”

Eating a raw opponent runs the risk of disease, which is not me making fun of Sammy, but actual advice he gives after telling the reader to deeply, penetratively bite their enemies, anywhere, to send them a message.

Reminder: the double-thumb gouge is a nuclear grappling tactic that can produce devastating results. My count might be a little off, but when Sammy Franco street fights something without eyes, he only has 814 secrets.

Exactly! Dylan O’Brien didn’t become a household name by defending mazes. I doubt this is good advice for a fight, but only the dumbest dumbshit would read a street fighting book for good advice. Sammy is telling the reader to put all their faith in dick bites and eye gouges, and that rules.

Shit, don’t be airborne? This sucks again.

Think of how desperate you must be if you’re sitting down to write street fighting secrets and you think, “Y’all ever look around at karate class and wonder who are these people? I know you guys have seen the shy one– always hesitant to participate in training. Why are you so shy, shy one? Is it because I told you to take a bite out of a sick man in our parking lot? And y’all ever do karate with a dilettante? Talkin’ ’bout karate isn’t important and shit. And that’s a double-thumb gouge! Nobody is safe from Sammy! Let’s see, who else…”

Oh no. I need to kick but I have the flu. Suddenly I flash back to my Sammy Franco flu kick training. You thought you could strike while I was weak, but I have been preparing for this exact situation, Dylan O’Brien. The two of us mount our combat wheelchairs and gossip one last time about who is the worst in our karate classes.

Find yourself a nice mannequin head at a cosmetology school to practice your eye strikes. This is a fantastic secret. I think everyone should have a few mannequin heads lying around their home. “They’re for poke practice,” you can tell your guests.

This is probably the most important street fighting secret. Non-street fighters do not respect books, especially street fighting books. Plus, if someone else reads your street fighting books, they will know all of your moves, like how your punches don’t spin and where you shop for mannequin heads.

Half of all street combat takes place in the library. Three of Sammy’s street fighting secrets are plugs for his other books, and I happen to own Killer Instinct: Unarmed Combat for Street Survival. The jacket says “On the streets of America, there is no bushido, the honorable code of the ancient warrior,” and speaking of insufferable weeb shit, Sammy also suggests reading The Art of War “at least 10 times.” Maybe check the newspaper to learn the methods of your local criminals? Oh, and be sure to pick up the Uniform Crime Report so you know which ethnicities to watch out for. This isn’t as useless as it looks. Racial profiling and untreated paranoia are a huge part of street fighting.

Everyone who says Sammy Franco wet his pants at the Boulder No-Contact Open, Blue Belt Adults and Under Division is a karate liar!

When Sammy finally limps his way into the 300s, he is filled with a new self-confidence. He is certain he must be a genius. He starts taking the most basic concepts and making them impenetrable with the biggest words he can find. Words that say, “buddy, be serious” when you look them up. So for about a hundred entries something like “hit them with a bowling ball” will become “cranialize yon Midgard child with the sphere of leisure!” It’s like he’s writing a Family Matters spec script called “Everybody Was Kung Fu Urkel.”

Oh no, this one feels real. I think Sammy Franco is still mad about the time he got interrupted biting a homeless man to death.

Real street fighters avoid crowds and events because no one has enough thumbs to blind an entire baseball game. “People get ambushed and trampled all the time outside,” says the non-paranoid man writing a perfectly sane book for real, awesome fighters.

Less than 700 entries to go! Um, park your car… at the end? This reduces scratching risk by half, and right, I forgot to mention– this curb has a mean guy who will fight you if you park where his car scratches it. I’m not sure even Sammy Franco knows what he’s afraid of at this point. His enemies are everything from sudden axe maniacs to grouchy shoppers to the general public. He has no idea what they want, but he is desperate to give it to them at any cost.

Don’t worry about thinking sometimes. Using all the judgment you have as a paranoid master of bites who knows which races do which crimes, know when it’s the right time to turn off your brain and get crazy.

Follow the rules of the death formula, the formula everyone knows for justifying deadly force. Wait, wait, I think Sammy got confused because instead of telling us that he told us to multiply where we want to hit our enemy by how hard we hit him? Ha ha that’s not anyth– wait. I guess… yeah, (1) Dick multiplied by (2) So-Goddamn-Hard does equal Death. I guess I knew this one already.

I love this book so much.

Really? The assailant’s inside position doesn’t sound very serious. Do you maybe have a picture of it?

Shit!!

There really is just the one street fighting secret.

Alright, I’m on it.

I really wish you put these in a different order, Sammy.

I … ha ha I love this book so much.

I love that Sammy made up a friend who once got massacred by a baseball bat ambush to help explain why revenge can be dangerous. He even called him a “street fighter!” Like, he wasn’t a dentist who won a fist fight after an arena football game. He was employed as a street fighter. How is this the first we’re hearing of this guy, Sammy? You thanked the border patrol at the start of this book but didn’t have room to mention this dear street fighter friend who died(?) in a Tom & Jerry skit?

In America you can walk right up to law enforcement officers and say, “That’s the man who bit me at the mannequin head store.” This is almost all of the book’s legal advice, by the way. It’s almost an afterthought, as if the possibility of a real fight is so far from Sammy Franco’s life it didn’t occur to him until secret #493 that you can get in trouble for it.

I can’t wait to see what these are going to be.

I love it.

Excellent.

Every country has its own stick strangle, but there is no better way to end a man’s life or a below average marriage than the American Stick Strangle.

Examining the motivations of the knife criminal may help you defeat him. “Reason number 8 of question mark: my lawyer said he has an easier time with my stab murders than my gun murders and, um, I’m not gonna pay a guy $40 an hour and not listen to him! Reasons 9 and 10: everywhere, affordable. God, listen to me go on. I just love knife crime!”

Everything about this is good advice. Anyone who tells you not to jump directly at a knife is probably trying to kill you with a knife.

Every street fighter should carefully, if possible, move to a house where they can own a gun.

Earlier you might have thought I was exaggerating about this author losing his mind after he ran out of special attacks. And here we are at secret #809 where he is listing all the skills you unlock if you spec your character into Gun Flashlight. He has listed four reasons it’s good to have a flashlight on your gun. Three of them are seeing in the dark, and the other one is not seeing in the dark. This is iconic in its dumbness. This is the American Stick Strangle of dumb.

Everyone thinks they’ll be able to trade jokes during a gunfight, but the fact is, cowboys and cop buddies learn specifically to shoot and speak at the same time. Without proper training, you might try to say, “Consider this a divorce, sweetheart!” and it will come out, “BOOMno no no what happened, what have I done?“

After number 867, Sammy gives up the longform street fighting secrets and starts writing little philosophical quotes. The only problem is he’s dumb as shit and his “Philosophy” is a child raised by television going through mood swings. These are fortune cookies that disagree with him and each other. They’re t-shirts you might see at an insurrection. They are bumper stickers you read on a truck before not making it out alive.

A bold stance to take in a book about ending lives by way of hand, knife, and gun is “the state should execute more people.”

I think you should have to wait more than 91 entries from your last failed explanation of flashlights before you start mocking stupid men.

In the early 900s, Sammy’s writer’s block crashes into the part of his brain that hates karate class. You’re not fucking magic, Karate. Sammy’s going to tell everybody, Karate. Maybe 15 or 20 times; it’s that important.

I don’t think kindness or consistency is fundamental to the Contemporary Fighting Arts System, but it will always protect you, you fat coward fucks. Why don’t you die already.

Easily, the most repeated theme in the book is how you can’t trust anyone, especially the trustworthy friends you trust. And yeah, I wasn’t expecting a self defense author to write a book about how things usually work out and you don’t have to worry about it, but this is a man who can’t order hot wings without telling the waitress she’ll die first if he tastes one single bite of poison. This is a man waiting for the world to betray him, and he’s ready with a flashlight on his gun that does nearly two things, or as he would put it, over four things.

Exactly like he promised, Sammy ends his book with ? ? ?. I looked everywhere for a code, but never found one. I thought maybe the first letter of each paragraph could spell something, but it was a dead end. After all, only a crazy person would do that. Only a crazy person would do that. So in the end, we can only guess what Sammy Franco’s final street fighting secret must be. All we know is that it’s probably dumb, crazy, and very different from something he said earlier.

…
This article was brought to you by our fine sponsor and Hot Dog Supreme: John Minkoff, whose name is an anagram of AAIIIIEEE! AAIIIIEEEEEEEE!

Categories
PODCASTING DAY

Podcasting Day: It’s a Royal Knockout with John Bull 🌭

In 1987, Meat Loaf, Christopher Reeve, Mr. Bean, Walter Payton, and dozens of other celebrities and athletes you would not fucking believe teamed up with the British royal family to bumble and slop through poorly planned obstacle courses. Depending on which royal you ask it was either quite silly or exceedingly important, but everyone agrees it was a catastrophe. Just a neverending volcano of expensive confusion. To help us make sense of it, and holy shit did we need it, is historian and Englishman John Bull.

You can hear us describe Meat Loaf chasing a human onion here! Or wherever you get podcasts.

Podcast novelization cover by Brett Ellefson

Categories
NERDING DAY

Nerding Day: The Incredible Hulk Hostess Snack Ads 🌭

Sometime during my career of making jokes about weird things I accidentally became the planet’s preeminent Hostess snack ad expert. It wasn’t hard. I mean, collecting and cataloging them took several years and thousands of dollars, but they aren’t complicated. A superhero would run into a problem they’d normally solve with violence, and instead throw a cupcake at it. They were stupid and insane, but sort of took place in a universe with rules. Except when it came to the Incredible Hulk. Despite appearing in a dozen Hostess ads, Hulk never figured out what the hell was going on or what he was supposed to be doing. Today, on this Nerding Day, we’re going to go through all 12 of them in chronological order in an attempt to prove my academic thesis:

Hulk’s first try at selling snacks took place in November, 1975 during a disaster called THE INCREDIBLE HULKâ„¢ AND THE TWINS OF EVIL!

Hulk is getting bashed in the face by Abomination and Wendigo while he complains about the unfairness of having to fight two bad guys. Hulk’s strength comes from rage, not from pouting about the rules of a forest monster fist fight, so he loses. He loses so badly he’s not even mad about it, because that would have made him strong enough to win. The other monsters leave whiny Hulk for dead.

Two unsupervised children find Hulk’s body and nurse him back to health with pie, a thing he is learning about for the first time. One thing you’ll notice about Hulk in any media is his dumbness is never consistent. One minute he’s debating the merits of honorable punch duels, the next he’s like “WHY IS FOOD.” Speaking of food, Hulk’s not supposed to eat the snacks. Marvel and DC had an editorial mandate with Hostess about the superheroes never eating the products themselves. This was probably so the characters could also sell diet shakes or whatever, but Hulk never got the message. He would eat the pies all the time. It’s kind of like how directors tell Zach Braff not to mention butt stuff and every commercial is like, “I’m Zach Braff, and these four fingers have been in three buttholes. Deep and moist, I explore for Goodyear Tires.”

Hulk, a creature who speaks English, tells the boys he is happy and thankful and they respond by saying, “There’s no way to know, but I think in its own way, the monster is thanking us!” That’s because these are darkly unnatural. Speaking of, do you know how you become a Wendigo? You eat the flesh of man! Even by the child safety standards of 1975, these tender, meat-filled children should not be out here alone! And this comic ends with Hulk heading off to a suicide mission against Wendigo, his last act being to clearcut a highway leading right back to his delicious friends. This is not how you sell pie. This is how you sell vacation packages to Wendigos.

In July of 1976, they gave Hulk a chance to sell cup cakes in THE INCREDIBLE HULK® AND “FRIENDS!” It starts fast with Hulk already on The Toad World and he’s been captured and put in a cave. And I know what you’re thinking, but Toad World caves are immune to headbutt. Hulk can’t Hulk his way out of this jam.

A native toad rebel frees him, offering him a Hostess cup cake. But this is Hulk. “What is this?” he asks about the common food he’s eaten many times and sells professionally. It’s got to be a disappointing response for a freedom fighter who went to so much trouble finding the Earth creature one of its home planet’s caked cups here on Toad World. Only to hear “BAH! BEAUTIFUL WOMAN, HULK NOT GIVE SHIT ABOUT STAR MUFFIN.” This would have had the same effect if it was a fermented Blorb egg or a loose gloveful of toad snot. Hulk doesn’t care.

Wow, it worked! After one cup cake and a hole, Hulk agrees to take Friendly Unnamed Toadman’s side in a planetary war! That’s where the ad leaves us, but only a lunatic would think this is the end of the story. They’ve put Hulk in some unknown sector of the galaxy about to jump into a coup screaming “HULK HERE FOR HELP CAKE MAN, WHICH YOU HIS ENEMIES!? HIM HAVE METAL HAT, BLUE SHAPE, NO OTHER FEATURES!”

I don’t know how the great toad uprising went, but a few months later, in September of 1976, Hulk would be back on Earth to market Twinkies in THE INCREDIBLE HULK® VS. “THE GREEN FROG”.

The Mad Magician is destroying the city as a gigantic frog! This isn’t one of Hulk’s many enemies. He was invented specifically for this, and you already know all that has ever been written about The Mad Magician. What he is, though, is the perfect unstoppable threat to throw a Twinkie at and save the day. This is Hulk’s chance to show everyone he’s capable of being a snack spokesman!

No, Hulk just splams him in the neck and we watch The Mad Magician unfrog and die. It was the very first, most direct thing the dumbest superhero thought of, and it worked. It’s not much of a story, but it’s so spectacularly not a Twinkie ad that one of the children watching him choke his last breath has to go, “Oh, right! The point of all this! Y-you saved ‘Twinkies,’ Hulk!” This isn’t advertising. This is, at best, a vigilante killing near a product.

In February of 1977, Hulk tried again in THE INCREDIBLE HULK® AND THE GREEN THUMB.

Hulk wakes up the same way he always wakes up– confused, in a strange place, and with a supervillain. This time it’s Cousin Betsy, The Plant Lady, who wants him to come live among her vegetables. And to Hulk’s credit, he replies, “Fucking what!? No.”

Then Hulk grabs the nearest artichoke man and shakes him until treasure comes out. Oh, right, this was supposed to be an advertisement for treats. Some time earlier the artichoke man hid some stolen pie in his head? Okay, great job, Hulk. But it’s not quite anything. It’s more like a commercial where someone says, “The darkness calls with the voice of ten thousand horses. Turn the page with anal, anal me… Zach Braff for Goodyear Tires.”

Despite not getting the hang of this at all, Hulk tries selling pies again in May of 1977. Here’s THE INCREDIBLE HULK® IN FORGET-ME-NET:

“Absent Minded Mac” has built a “forget-me-net.” The author knew these names were so strong they didn’t need to bother with an explanation, and they were right. Mac watches a campus full of students shrug and he shouts, “This is my most evil device… I think?” So the author is having fun. Maybe too much fun, because Mac’s other weapon is salad tongs:

The author makes a good point here– a forget-me-net only makes Hulk more Hulk. They make another good point as well– mental illness is no match for Hulk. This is legitimately a batshit idea to attack Hulk with salad spoons. What’s his plan? To delicately grab one of the green tank-man’s 14 rippling abs? Let’s reveal the very next panel to see if that works out:

In a vanishing point between moments, Hulk has already torn apart Mac’s net and made him into a spring roll. “SQUIIIISH!” say his ribs and organs. So the day is saved. Mac created a dumbness net and accidentally used it on the one superhero who likes that. This story has everything. Comedy, mystery, and an ironic fate for the villain. You know what it doesn’t have? Fucking snacks.

Oh, right. Pie, everyone! Let’s remap the neurons in our brain, starting with pi– wait, what did that guy say?

In October, 1977, Hulk tried selling Twinkies again with THE INCREDIBLE HULK® IN UP A TREE!

Hulk wakes up in a tree getting rocks thrown at him by cavemen or unfinished mutates or something. “THIS AM SO TYPICAL HULK,” says Hulk.

These beings are such a non-threat to Hulk it doesn’t even occur to him to defend himself. He has to talk himself into a reason to smash the poor creatures and he lands on, I quote, “HULK’S FEELINGS HURT.” It’s a tragic look inside a tortured soul, and oh shit. You know what it’s not? A Twinkies ad.

In what I think might be his way of trying to change what he had done, Hulk goes back up into the tree and starts dropping snacks. “HULK NOT KILL YOU, NUDE MEN. LOOK, HULK WAS IN TREE THROWING TWINKIES WHOLE TIME. THEY BUY IT, HULK NOT BELIEVE THAT WORKED?”

In May of 1978, Hulk turned the Hulk up to maximum for THE HULK® IN “LEAVE ME ALONE”.

Hulk wakes up in a public park and immediately starts throwing trees and boulders at the nearest noise. Women and children. That is a 3000 pound rock he is throwing. After that hits the playground, the world’s foremost puzzle owner won’t be able to reassemble the remains into something 47 grieving parents can bury.

“Please don’t kill us for having a picnic,” say the innocents to Hulk. This is no way to reason with Hulk, because he says:

“WHAT IS FUCKING ANYTHING,” demands Hulk. This is Hulk’s seventh Hostess ad and he actually says the words, “WHAT IS HOSTESS FRUIT PIES?“

In a way, Hulk is learning. If you look at the structure, THE HULK® IN “LEAVE ME ALONE” is a perfect Hostess fruit pie ad. A terrible threat emerges and the heroes stop it with delicious pie. The only thing Hulk got wrong is that he’s not supposed to be that terrible threat. It’s also possible everyone in this universe is fucking with him because that guy is holding a cherry pie and telling Hulk, “This one’s apple.” Or maybe these ads are being told from Hulk’s perspective and he isn’t remembering any details correctly because they’re the last flutters of brain activity from a man dying of intense radiation poisoning.

These are things to keep in mind as we read THE INCREDIBLE HULK® CHANGES HIS MIND! from March, 1979.

Hulk loves smashing trees and finding unattended children, but this is the first time he has ever done both with one punch.

The little boy who fell from the tree explains the basic concept of friendship to Hulk, riding him and tossing cup cakes to the only people stupid enough to still be in the park during a Hulk rampage. “We appreciate the moist cake,” the men tell the mysterious shadows. “Whatever threw us food has the voice of a boy and the explosions of a Hulk!” the men agree.

“WOW, HULK UNDERSTAND FRIENDS NOW,” says Hulk, being very wrong. “HULK PROBABLY COMPLETELY DIFFERENT HULK TOMORROW, THOUGH,” says Hulk, finally getting it. Oh, and here’s something fun you can try at home. Pick up a 7-year-old with one hand and absent-mindedly karate chop a tree into shrapnel with the other. Congratulations, that boy is dead in ways we have no names for. People won’t even know what you’ve done. They’ll ask why you’re transporting stew in a pair of children’s jeans.

Let’s try again. October, 1979: THE INCREDIBLE HULK® AND THE ULTIMATE WEAPON!

Two scientists in an unfuckable haircut contest have unleashed some kind of super tank! Now, Hulk, focus. This is a Hostess fruit pie ad. You’re going to want to tempt the pilot out of the ultimate weapon with the luscious, juicy tas–

God damn it, Hulk.

Sure, fuck it. Everyone have an unrelated pie.

In June of 1980, veteran spokesperson, Hulk, became one of the rare superheroes to star in ten Hostess advertisements. Let’s see how Hulk does in THE INCREDIBLE HULK® IN “HULK GETS EVEN!”

Someone drives straight through Hulk, loudly explaining how they’re having such a good day that murdering a guy, even an ugly one, isn’t going to put him in a bad mood. Now, Hulk, listen. I know you’re confused, but this is the part of the ad where you throw a Twinkie to the bad guy an–

You know what? Close enough!

Hulk was starting to get the hang of this! Until August of 1980, when he returned for THE INCREDIBLE HULK® VS. THE ROLLER DISCO DEVILS!

This is precisely the kind of situation that calls for a fruit pie. A group of noisy roller skaters calls for snack diplomacy, not violen–

Oh my god, Hulk, no. Hulk, what have you done!?

There’s no way those men are alive, and it is the worst kind of dead. And they were crushed into a mass roulade grave with no idea what was happening. They were having the time of their lives, skating to their favorite song, everyone thinking they’re tough… then they were made liquid by a sudden crushing darkness. “ALL DEAD, HULK NOW EAT PIE,” says Hulk. And yes, murdering six men for rudeness is bad, but again– eating the pies is the one thing Hulk wasn’t supposed to do.

“GIVE HULK ERASER. SEE, NOW HULK NOT EAT PIE. IT THAT SIMPLE, PUNY REALITY.”

By now it’s clear Hulk can’t do this. He killed a goddamn roller skating club and ate a pie, and they had to cut one of those things out. This is like filming a commercial where Zach Braff holds a cat underwater and says, “I’m butt man and butthole man Zach Braff, and I’m killing this cat for Goodyear Tires,” and then bleeping the word “Goodyear.” They gave Hulk one last chance in October, 1981 in the breathtaking and final Hulk Hostess ad… the masterpiece, THE HULK® VS. THE PHOOMIE GOONIES.

Of all the Hostess ad openings, this has the best world building. Bruce Banner looks at a post office and in only two thought bubbles you really understand how hard it must be being Hulk. “I could work there! This will be gr– wait, no, they’ll probably ask me if I’m the Hulk during the interview. My entire life is a hopeless wreck.” And he’s right. Hulk exists only to stumble into nightmares and walking into the post office only to turn around and walk out was more than enough time for him to spawn some unthinkable insanity.

The Phoomie Goonies, a three man revolutionary government and maybe some kind of Marvel executive inside joke, take everyone hostage. “Oh, great. Just what this day nee– ME AM HULK NOW,” thinks poor, puny Banner.

If any other superhero else threatened to squeeze you through an “out-of-town” slot, it’d be cute banter, but Hulk definitely means it. This would have literally been his seventh straight Hostess ad with a crushing death if he wasn’t stopped by a little boy offering a fruit pie solution. You’d think the kid would be terrified, but a post office full of machine guns and an Incredible Hulk was a very ordinary day for an American boy in 1981.

“We surrender for fruit pies!” wheezes the third Phoomie Goonie, choosing their words deliberately to help Hulk get it. As if he can explain in five words what the snack company has been trying to get Hulk to understand for six years. It’s the light, flaky crust that stops villainy, not the crushings. Stop killing every man and tree, Hulk.

The police let the seditious conspirators keep their fruit pies and Bruce Banner turns directly to us to say, “I’m going to invoice the Phoomie Goonies for those pies and my fucking shirt.” And then he definitely thought, “No, no, that will mean including my real name and address! The bank will have forms! Questions! Damn it I can feel i– ME AM HULK AGAIN. WOW, WHAT JOURNEY. OH, IF ONLY HULK SMART ENOUGH FOR PERFECT GOODBYE WORDS.”

…

This article was brought to you by our fine sponsor and Hot Dog Supreme: Matt Reiley, our most luscious and juicy Hot Dogger.