Author: Seanbaby
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Learning Day: Magic & The Bible ðŸŒ
Some of you aren’t old enough to remember this, but there was a time when Christians thought sorcery was real and they devoted their lives to destroying it at any cost to their dignity or their children’s happiness. It seems embarrassing now, but things were different back in the year … wha!? *RECORD SCRATCH* 2020!?
Published less than two years ago, Magic & THE BIBLE is hard to describe. It’s sort of a comprehensive list of make believe things the Bible didn’t mention but WOULD HAVE if they were real, but it’s also a collection of flimsy excuses for why someone would write it and how what they’re doing is, in fact, not crazy. I’m here to prove otherwise. Keep in mind I don’t have any formal psychology training. I’m just a man from an Earth where magic isn’t real with the research skills to know this book cover cost exactly $19.00 USD.
Magic & THE BIBLE was written by 70-year-old Becky Fischer, and if you’ve seen the 2006 documentary Jesus Camp, she’s the one who crawls out of the little girl’s ear after laying her eggs. She’s a giggle coming from a desiccated corpse. The thing all those clowns are running from. “Becky Fischer” will be the dying words of the last mountain gorilla. Here she is, bursting from a Happy Flesh Day musical greeting card:
To be clear, this is not a book about the dangers of secular influences. Well, I guess it is, but it’s mostly about how magic powers are an actual part of life, and it’s important to make sure the ones you use come from God. This is all probably a grift, sure, but Becky will certainly die before admitting it, so we are going to treat her as she presents herself: as a lunatic who has dedicated her entire fucking life to defeating the tooth fairy and can’t.
This is a book meant to turn kids into dumber, more confused kids, but Becky starts by speaking directly to those poor children’s parents and grandparents:
There’s a weird self-awareness to Becky’s writing. You’d think someone who was really concerned about sorcery destroying the One True Path would be more frustrated and terrified, but she comes off more smug than anything else. She has an “I told you so,” attitude like someone who warned everyone about wizards and then sure enough, someone wrote popular books about them and killed God.
I feel bad pointing out the obvious ironic things like how this elderly woman hunting witches after Sunday School is making fun of people for thinking they know “the difference between make believe and reality.” There’s no sport in it. As a target of ridicule, Becky is a deer walking meekly into your sausage maker. She thinks “research” is quoting right wing news clickbait about the number of Millennial witches. And is that… is that sarcasm at the end there? Is that something you should risk in an actual kid’s demon hunting handbook? Becky took a liar’s word for it that they counted all the teen witches and she was like, “Oh, only six billion semen drinkers with Pokemon powers. I’m sure the white babies will be soooooo safe.”
Becky does acknowledge all the times people have tried to harness impossible forces and it didn’t work. Dark forces are quite mysterious. But the thing is, when you’re operating under the strict but unclear rules of an invisible being who can’t talk and maybe doesn’t exist, there’s no difference between sorcery and attempted sorcery. Becky puts it the only way kids will understand– think of wishing you had magic is like how fucking your friend’s wife is the same as wanting to fuck your friend’s wife.
I find analogies a useful writing tool to help a reader understand your perspective. They can be evocative and persuasive, but there is a danger in using them wrong. For instance, if someone could find a difference between extramarital penetration and pretending to be a wizard, it might unravel your entire argument. Why, you might even look like a total goddamn idiot. That’s not the case here, of course. Presto cadabra, ladies.
Becky is a master of comparisons. For example, if you’re having trouble understanding how God can be a holy ghost and also His own son, think of Him like an egg. An egg has three parts too, and she can start again if you’re confused, you dumb piece of shit. Her tone, not mine.
The book is 53 pages long, but every left one is taken up by a single piece of affordable clipart to help her illustrate a point. Like when she was trying to use eggs to explain just the very basic concept of God to her extremely Christian young readers, Becky chose a cute picture of Fӧnku Plūp Jesus with gushing crucifixion head wounds. It helps make it fun for the little ones.
And I’m not exaggerating when I say she is still going over the broadest possible Christian concepts well into the second half of the book. I don’t know who the intended audience is exactly, but I know they’re a working child necromancer who hasn’t heard of Jesus Christ.
Here she is on page 11, still explaining “souls.”
It’s complicated, kids, but souls are like the inside of an astronaut suit. And outer space is an ordinary, liveable atmosphere. Think of it like this: you’re a cosmic egg but ignore the yolk since you’re not your own Son, and reading Harry Potter is condomless anal. I can’t make it any clearer.
If you’re not familiar with Satan or “The Devil,” he’s a super hot guy who could get it. “Fill me with thine gifted dick much in the same way a Dungeon Master might draw a maze,” says Becky’s subtext.
Another trait of Becky’s writing, besides baking her head in coal gas until Jesus gives her a simile, is that she can work herself into a frenzy over the course of a single sentence. She starts by introducing you to the very concept of demons, who are out there and have powers, but their powers don’t work on her! She’d like to see their bitch asses try! Magic? Weapons!? Try Jesus blood, fuckers! Hyarrgh! HARK FORSOOTH, DEVILS! FOR BECKY SHALL REMOVE ASUNDER YOUR SEXY, SEXY PENISES!
There are a few unexpected twists in the book. Like when I learned, yes, ghosts are real, but they’re not exactly “ghosts.” They are only demons (sometimes known as serpents or scorpions) pretending to be dead people to trick you into talking about them. So in her own way, I guess she’s arrived at the reasonable conclusion “people who believe in ghosts are likely wrong.” I’d call it a deranged, unforced self-humiliation, though. It’s like saying we know eggs are real because astronauts are at war with breakfast, but we all need to take our own path to find truth. Speaking of truth, are witches real?
Like all supernatural things, Becky assures you witches are real, but you’re wrong about them. They aren’t green. But you’re right about everything else. They cast spells, pierce the veils between worlds, all that. But you’re wrong about that being a big deal. In fact, Becky wishes a witch would. STEP TO BECKY’S JESUS BLOOD, MAGIC COWARDS! YOUR WIZARDRY IS TRASH. JESUS WILL PICK A CARD ON YOUR FUCKING GRAVE.
Becky explains there are three kinds of magic. The first is “black magic,” which is the kind you use to bend reality to your wicked will and perform the impossible. The second is fun, like finding a quarter behind someone’s ear, and the third is “white magic” which is the same as the first kind of magic only used for heroism. However, there’s also only one type of magic: demonic. It doesn’t matter if you’re using sorcery for good or not at all while delighting at a birthday party, magic is from demons. I have to say, even in Christian literature, it’s rare to see an author so clearly lay out how poorly their brain works. Becky Fischer truly attacks a logic problem like a cat sneaking up on a ceiling fan for the third time.
After condemning all pagans and birthday magicians to an eternity of torment, Becky takes a breath and reminds her Christian readers they have no right to judge the demonic, weak, foul sorcerers who walk among us. And I know you’re tempted to do this since all of the powers from fairy tales are real, but do not get in a curse battle with these disgusting, pathetic secular fucks who you would never judge.
“Necromancy,” or as Mexicans call it, “DIA DE LOS MUERTOS,” is when wrong and demonic people are tricked by identity thief spirits into having conversations. Their savage Spanish beliefs are wrong and ridiculous, says author Becky Fischer.
So far Becky has hit on some broad topics, but let’s get into some specifics. What should you, as a Christian child, do about zombies?
Zombies aren’t in the Bible, but God probably wouldn’t like them, right? I’m saying if they were real, and you could ask Him, it’s reasonable He’d say “was disappointed when they arrived and were flesh eating monsters, one star.”
To her credit, Becky admits zombies don’t exist, except when they do, in a thing called “Voodoo,” which is “found in Africa and Haiti.” Still, they don’t seem to be much of a problem and it’s not really clear why she brought them up. Vampires, on the other hand…
Vampires weren’t a serious problem yet when they wrote the Bible, so Jesus didn’t have a take on them. But Becky has deduced, more from gut feeling than citation, that drinking human blood to gain nocturnal bat powers has at least some elements which go against Christian tradition. In the end, it’s your decision, kids. We can’t decide for you whether you stay in your grave or rise again as a servant of the night.
Like most of these Christian authors who are against every single thing in a world of unlimited things, Becky often has to make wild guesses about why she’s making her decisions. I’m going to go through Becky’s line of thinking here with as much good faith as possible.
So she decides she’s afraid of Pokémon Go, a thing without any clear indicators of witchcraft. Fine, but maybe it’s the lack of witchcraft which is the problem! Maybe it’s exactly this non-Satanism which “can innocently open up secret doors to the enemy.” Why would it? Well, listen: the creatures have powers, which God didn’t give them since they’re fictional and He’s not, and if they didn’t get powers from God, there’s only one other option: the Devil, who unlike God, is the kind of real that can give powers to the fictional. And that’s how, with one gut feeling and at least three questionable leaps of logic, a very dumb lady has convinced herself everything that has ever been is her enemy. Which is disappointing, because I always pictured the helplessly stupid as happy.
I think at this point of the book Becky started proofreading and hearing how crazy she sounded, so she’s now asking herself a lot of pedantic questions. Or “great questions,” as she describes them. It leads her to accidentally sum up her entire doctrine with “it’s virtuous to read about magic only if the magicians are evil because others are villainous even when they’re not.” I don’t know if I have a joke for that. It’s like something a below average pig brain would spit out if you stabbed an electrode into it.
This section, “IS IT WRONG TO WATCH MOVIES ABOUT MAGIC AND WITCHCRAFT?” featuring seven dollars worth of Legally Distinct Wizard Boy clipart starts out almost beautiful.
Becky says there’s no limit to our imagination and the change it can make on this world. But she doesn’t mean any of that in the good way. She means you might accidentally imagine being Harry Potter so hard you betray God. She also tells you to follow your gut to see what God wants you to read, which is a lot of faith to put in us only 15 pages after she had to explain to us who that guy was.
Now that you know all imagination deviating from Jesus is a crime against Him, the book ends with Becky giving you conditioned permission to celebrate Halloween. So long as you do it in a way that ruins it for everyone in your neighborhood.
Becky doesn’t suggest doing normal insufferable Christian things like handing out tiny Bibles instead of treats. She is a true maniac who has created her own anti-holiday from directions you can’t have predicted. She suggests hanging confusing anti-monster signs like “EVEN ZOMBIES CAN HAVE LIFE IN JESUS’ NAME!” or “SORRY, VAMPIRES! The REAL POWER is in the BLOOD OF JESUS! (A VAMPIRE’S POWER IS FAKE POWER!)” And as for treats, how about giving “a bowl of hot chili to your visitors to bless them!” Why? If the danger of Halloween is the actual, real vampires, how is chili the opposite of that!? Becky! How dare you, after all that madness, hand me a bowl of chili and tell me the devil is defeated! This is a bullshit ending! I’ll never forgive you for this, Becky!!!!
…
This article was brought to you by our fine sponsor and Hot Dog Supreme: Rev, who knows the real way to save against Hold Person is to always Hold Christ close to your heart.
It’s a sensational and spectacular Podcasting Day! Attack of the Show producer, Vanessa Guerrero, joins us to discuss something vital: the 1978 animated series Spider-Woman(‘s 11th episode, “Dracula’s Revenge”). And in his almost insufferable nerd way, Seanbaby (me) has set up a chaotic quiz game to see if Vanessa and Brockway can, using this Dracula episode alone, decipher the Sacred 16 Spider-Woman Tropes. They almost do! They’re Spider-Woman geniuses!
Listen here! Or wherever you get podcasts! Do likes and reviews! Buy things at our store! This discussion about Spider-Woman having laser battles with Dracula 46 years ago is a fucking business.
Be careful of the Amazing Spider-Spoilers ahead because below this paragraph are the Sacred 16 Spider-Woman Tropes. Continuing to read may enhance your listening experience, or ruin it completely! Look, I know Spider-Woman, not how you personally interface with art. Anyway, you can follow along here:
Let’s say, for instance, two non-tomb dealers saw a tomb labeled “Dracula’s Tomb” with a little bat on it and they said, “we’re rich!” A normal situation would go, “No, wait, that can’t possibly be what’s happening.” Not a Spider-Woman plot.
I’m not going to write, like, an entire funny list article here. That would be crazy.
There is nothing Spider-Woman can’t or won’t add lasers to. Like in episode two whe– no. No, we’ll be here all day. This is only podcast footnotes!
The show was going for a cute “Battle of the Sexes” with the main character and her uselessly horny co-worker, Jeff, but they didn’t quite nail it. He mostly just complained to her about how confused and pathetic she must be. And to her credit, she usually had a sweet comeback like, “You’re, of course, absolutely right, Jeff.”
Spider-Woman can see anywhere from any angle for any reason, but it only works if the writer’s can’t figure out how to get to the next scene. The most egregious example of this was in the episode “The Kingo Spider” or “The Kongo Spider” as it’s sometimes spelled, where Jessic– wait, no. No, I’m doing it again.
If you’re not Spider-Woman, go ahead and assume you’re going to get transmorphed into a minion version of the main bad guy by the end of the episode.
If I was implying above that Spider-Woman was secretly smart simply because a sexist man was calling her dumb, ha ha ha. No. No, Spider-Woman is stupid as shit. She dropped out of third grade to take a job testing football helmets, which now that I think about it, would be less insane than the character’s actual three separate origin stories.
If you’re in trouble but someone is expecting Jessica Drew at an informal gathering she’s sort of running late for, Spider-Woman will 100% leave you to fucking die.
That’s Spider-Woman’s nephew Billy, and she seems to be both his primary guardian and desperately trying to murder him. If she wasn’t Spider-Woman it would be weird to bring this child to so many workplaces and dangerous situations.
“Jesus, do we really need wolfman eye lasers in addition to everything else?” said no Spider-Woman producer ever.
I mean, sure, beams can hurt or turn you into a Dracula, but did you know they can quadruple any windmill? Paralyze you for an hour? Clog your hand’s venom sacs? Block an entire moon? Wolf any man? Restitch your skin with the flesh of the dead? These are real examples from this episode alone.
“Hey, should we call Star Wars to make sure Darth Vader wants to be in this episode?” said no Spider-Woman producer ever.
I don’t mean “science is magic” like the show believes in the limitless power of human potential. I mean whoever wrote this show screams and drops to their knees when they see magnets. If you told a Spider-Woman writer you powered a starship with a potato, they would have no questions other than “potato.”
“Hold on, gentlemen, I’m not sure all these things add up,” said no Spider-Woman writer ever.
I didn’t mean to do one about her ass, it just happened organically.
At the end of an adventure, the most important thing is for Jeff to know he was the real hero. Great job, Jeff. And we’re really sorry you missed everything again, Spider-Woman-shaped lady with the same luxurious hair and butt.
In 1987, the producers of the award-winning Superbowl Shuffle created a SPECIAL REM HOME VIDEO PRESENTATION of The Grabowski Shuffleâ„¢ starring Chicago Bears coach, Mike Ditka. Here’s the box cover:
Just in case you’re not familiar, the “Superbowl Shuffle” was a charity rap song performed by the actual ’85 Chicago Bears players. So now, with all the knowledge and backstory you could be expected to have, stop and ask yourself: What is it? What the fuck is this? It’s called The Grabowski Shuffleâ„¢ and that’s the box, so what is it?
Let’s look at the back of the box:
“It’s a fun look at some real people who have dreams and aren’t afraid to work hard toward those dreams. A fast-moving video treat that’s honest, inspirational and fun… family entertainment at its best!” It features “#1 Grabowski” Mike Ditka, rapper and zapper, who has a winning team that plays at life, not football. So now, after hearing all that, you only have to answer one question: what is this?
The video opens on a closeup of Mike Ditka explaining how he originally thought everyone wanted to be the fair-haired kid on the block, but they aren’t. They’re the guys who had to work a little bit harder, and he likes that. That’s why he called them “The Grabowskis” and the good guys “The Smiths.” I promise I’m not leaving any information out. You’ve now seen the marketing, you know the context, and you’ve had the premise explained to you by the principle star, who is a professional communicator. Really think. What the goddamn fuck is The Grabowski Shuffleâ„¢?
Ditka adds a caveat to his explanation. He says, and I carefully quote, “maybe I wanted us to be the bad guy a little bit, but in real meaning, ‘Grabowski’ doesn’t mean ‘bad guy.’ It means hard worker, good attitude. A person that which gets knocked down and get back, daah… to me, it’s the American Dream. It’s what it’s all about. It’s the guy who struggles a little bit but overcomes and makes things happen.” I already know this didn’t help you. It probably didn’t even help eliminate any of your guesses. You still think this is a rapping West Side Story set in Chicago or a comedy about an A/A group that saves a church. I could strap a bomb on a baby set to go off if you correctly explained what The Grabowski Shuffleâ„¢ was and that baby would grow old and die of natural causes while you were still guessing.
The camera finally cuts away from Mike Ditka’s pointless, meandering philosophies on the can-do attitude of whoever or whatever Grabowskis might be. But it cuts right back to him, now a little bit further away. He gives a speech on how he preaches attitude, especially to his toughknocking, rough-manning, hard-USAing Chicago Bears. They’re not like the other NFL teams, you see. Ditka accuses those other guys of having “a lot of glamor.” With their “pretty white shoes, uniforms.” With utter contempt he says of those other professional football players, “they throw the ball around.” But on the other hand, “when you look at the team that gets down in there,” like his Chicago Bears, “hey: they’re Grabowskis.” I’m worried you not only still don’t know what this is, you might know less about football.
So maybe, possibly, Mike is trying to say that Grabowskis are people who have to work hard because they’re not very talented, and while Mike is on the subject: fuck the talented. He’s basically saying nothing, but cranky about it. If you polled 1000 men and asked the one with the least education and the most domestic abuse convictions to describe a “real American,” it would match Mike Ditka’s explanation of a Grabowski verbatim. I’ve shared every detail of the video so far, and I’m pretty confident you still don’t know what The Grabowski Shuffleâ„¢ is.
We cut away again and instead of a slightly more distant Ditka, it’s an exterior shot of the Riviera Theater in Chicago holding talent auditions for The Grabowski Shuffleâ„¢. Look at this crowd and see if it helps you guess what the fuck they’re trying out for:
A long line of Grabowski hopefuls file in, definitely less prepared than anyone has been for anything. Some of them read rap lyrics or practice a dance routine while others finish their paperwork. It’s enough context to start to understand what’s happening, but every new discovery leads to five new questions. You might be fairly confident the coach of the Chicago Bears is holding an open call for a high budget rap musical starring himself and an all-amateur cast of not football players based on Grabowskis, a term he personally invented for a type of person he can’t clearly explain. But how? Why? For whom? And to what end? You fool, you have no idea what The Grabowski Shuffleâ„¢ is yet.
Each person steps up to a mark and introduces themselves, and part of the audition process for this, whatever this is, is fully committing to the Grabowski way of life. So everybody adds Grabowski to their name. The world hasn’t been told yet what this is, but to be a part of it, you must take its name. “Grabowski,” says everyone. “Grabowski,” the rest agree.
“Kurt Shaeffer Grabowski,” declares a man whose whole personality is an unlit cigar. “I am the Grabowski killer,” confesses a stranger in a hat. The director breaks the Grabowskis into smaller groups of Grabowskis and tells each Grabowski he wants to see them dance and rap. He tells the Grabowskis there will also be a surprise element “just to see how quick ya are.” So incorporate that into your understanding of what this is– it will involve dancing, rapping, “zapping,” Coach Mike Ditka of the Chicago Bears, at least some improv, no football, and all the performers will have legally changed their name Grabowski.
Without yet knowing what it means, the Grabowskis dance for their chance at Grabowski. This could be the role of a lifetime. It could be an embarrassing way to waste a sick day. But whatever it is, the director was happy. He saw this crowd of sweating limbs having a squirting group seizure. It looks like nothing other than a Trump rally mocking a gay wedding reception, and the director seemed to honestly mean it when he said it was better than he hoped for.
Oh, remember that surprise he mentioned? It turned out to be them standing alone in a spotlight while they get asked inappropriate personal questions. And of course, as is Grabowski tradition, “anyone caught BS’ing will be eliminated.”
“What’s the worst thing that ever happened to you in your life, Larry?” a faceless shadow asks Truck-Driving, Moving Man, Larry. A long uncomfortable silence, replies Larry.
For reference, this is Larry’s resting face:
Larry is 80% smile, and he just got done doing a silly dance for a chance to be in… a Mike Ditka music video project? A bar mitzvah for the Grabowski family? A corporate training video for a grabowski distribution company? Well whatever it was for, he was having the best fucking day and then a faceless interrogator asked him, a black man in 1987 America, what the worst thing that ever happened to him was. I know my answer: watching the joy fade from Larry’s eyes.
His answer has been cut from the tape, because I bet it wasn’t pleasant, but whatever it was, he’s in. Welcome to the Grabowskis, Larry Grabowski. And we’re, you know, sorry that happened to you and we made you bring it up for a chance to be in a … foot powder commercial, maybe?
Next up is cranky former cop, August Deuser-Grabowski. It’s plain to see the worst thing that ever happened to him was every moment of every day, so the Grabowski Shadow Council asks him, “You ever killed anybody?”
“No,” he says, but in a way that implies he’s ready to if there are any followup questions. Mr. Deuser-Grabowski, you’re in. Trade in your police badge for a Grabowski… medal? Lobster bib? The point is, all this is extremely Grabowski, I think.
Body-building clerk, Jason Solid Grabowski, comes out and nervously mutters words in no particular order. More than anyone he gets what is at the heart of this very titled Grabowski project: the babbling un-language of a madness once thought dead. Jason Solid Grabowski, you’re in. Welcome to your new… life? Short-term unpaid freelance gig?
Up next is waitress and Grabowski Gal, Valerie Meyer. She is questioned, “What makes you think you qualify to be a Grabowski?”
There is no way she could know how to answer this. How could anyone? It’s not a real word and its meaning skitters from understanding like a grabowski Grabowski. She has been thrown from her first rap audition into a groveling contest for a voice that calls itself Grabowski. Despite this, she starts speaking immediately. “I’ve never gotten knocked down far enough that I can’t pick myself up or have someone help me.” She realizes it wasn’t anything, thinks a bit about changing it, then decides no: a Grabowski doesn’t do takebacksies. She’s in. Maybe she’s perfect. Maybe there was no wrong answer. Either way, take off your shirt and replace it with this one, that of your new true name, Valerie Grabowski.
The Grabowskis also drafted a sewer construction laborer named George Arauco, whose job and name stopped being that the moment he was touched by Grabowski’s gaze. Next, Number One Grabowski, Mike Ditka, and Grabowskis Number Two through Six hold a press conference for local and national media. Not a single one of the Grabowskis is comfortable in this role of having to explain what The Grabowski Shuffleâ„¢ is, because again, how could they?
If this was filmed ten years later, you’d swear it was a Mike Ditka prank show where he makes unsuspecting nerds think they’re a hip hop crew. But Mike Ditka is deadly serious. He really thinks this will be the springboard to superstardom for these Grabowskis, a word which obviously everyone will one day be saying. He is certain, with all his generous heart, that he’s giving the chance of a lifetime to the five luckiest people in Chicago. “This is their way to get on MTV. This is their way to, uh, hit the jackpot,” he says.
A reporter asks the group if any of them have any professional singing and dancing experience. Jason Solid Grabowski decides to field the question.
“No, HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA unfortunately,” he offers. In a room of awkward, terrified rookie performers with no media training being thrust into a high stress situation on live TV, Jason is the nervous one. It’s very Grabowski, or potentially not Grabowski at all.
A reporter, with the kind of seriousness you would use when addressing a funeral director about your grandfather’s remains, asks the director to “describe Mike Ditka’s star quality.”
The director says, and I quote, “What we’ve seen so far is he’s one heck of a good rapper. And he’s got smokin’ feet.” On paper, this exchange should be withering sarcasm. Mike Ditka should be furious and embarrassed, but I have no reason to believe they weren’t sincere. These were two adult men having an honest discussion about Mike Ditka and how he’s a real solid rap-and-dance man.
They wrap up the press conference, and I feel it’s worth mentioning that it was held only to tell the world how coach Mike Ditka has completed his quest to find the five Grabowskis, and you wouldn’t know them. Or what they’re doing. Okay, it’s time to head to the recording studio!
The five untrained Grabowski singers crowd into a studio for the first time and an engineer hands them headphones. He jokes(?), “They’re no longer headphones. They’re Grabowski phones.” A day ago these people were living normal lives. They were, in fact, chosen for having the most normal of normal lives, and now they have one name not only for themselves but for all things they touch, and their only job is being and promoting that name. If this was a horror movie about a memetic alien virus called Grabowski, you wouldn’t have to change a thing.
Speaking of Grabowski touching, the Grabowskis are pretty close in these intimate surroundings. And the only Grabowski Gal, Valerie Grabowski, has to deal with a lot of playful touching from the other Grabowskis. She pinballs between the men to avoid their hands while expertly hiding her disgust. The Grabowskis were selected for their lack of experience, but as an ordinary woman, life had already prepared Valerie for this aspect of the creative process.
I should confess I only made that gif because I thought it was funny how Jason Solid Grabowski involuntarily pumped his dick while he sang, and I didn’t notice Valerie Grabowski’s silent screams until at least the 50th loop. We should apologize to women every day for 1987. But you can’t unhonk a titty, so back to the Grabowski music. It’s not going well. They are uncomfortable, out of sync, and nothing can be done about the lyrics.
♪ We like to polka!
We like to shuffle!
We may wrinkle,
but we don’t ruffle!
We like to work!
We love to play!
We do ’em both
’bout the same way! ♪
It’s a humiliating disaster and a waste of time, but their Grabowski spirit won’t let them give up. “It’s a dream come true right here,” says one of them over footage of the frustrated group flubbing take #281 of “♪ we may wrinkle, but we don’t ruffle! ♪”
With more footage of Ditka’s rehearsal, it’s finally becoming clear what this is. Mike Ditka said earlier how the American Dream was grinding it out in the shit while the pretty boy hotshots are running passing plays, but that’s not Mike Ditka’s American Dream. Mike Ditka’s American Dream is not leaving money on the table. This is a man who put his name on boner pills, antifreeze, and Vienna sausages, and when he saw “The Superbowl Shuffle” become a huge hit and all that money go to charity, his keen entrepreneurial brain gave him an idea: the same thing, but keep the money.
But if he did a sequel to the “Superbowl Shuffle,” that would mean splitting the profits with owners and players and agents. So what if instead of football, nothing? Like a shuffle for people who aren’t something. I mean, the public loved it when a once-in-a-generation dominant NFL team of all-pro hall-of-famers celebrated with an amateur rap song. How much do you really lose if you take away everything except literally the last three words?
So okay, let’s see if you were right.
The Grabowski Shuffleâ„¢ is Mike Ditka’s attempt to recreate “The Superbowl Shuffle” for profit by taking out the football part, replacing it with nothing, and then giving that nothing a name. Doing so did not give meaning to that nothing. This is the catastrophically stupid idea of “how come sewer line workers don’t get their own superbowl shuffle?” being indulged past the point of reason.
To be fair, though: dance rehearsals are going great!
I can’t help myself and I love them. The Grabowskis are learning, becoming a team. They believe in this, whatever it is, and the choreography is too complicated to allow them time to molest Valerie. The non-union, possibly unpaid Grabowskis even sleep together in a tiny trailer during the shoot. Larry had to move his kid in!
They do an official photoshoot (pictured below) and hold another press conference to let the world’s media know how the Grabowskis, five people no one knows, learned how to sing and dance and they’re ready to film The Grabowski Shuffleâ„¢ which won’t make sense to you yet, or ever. And it’s all been building up to this, the official music video.
Mike Ditka walks out onto an empty football field to… recruit a rap crew from the crowd? He hip hops, “I’m looking for a special team, where workin’ hard is more than a dream.” So all this video we’ve been watching a football coach throw together a ragtag musical group to tell the story of the same football coach throwing together a ragtag musical group. It’s like watching the last 7 minutes of a Hulk Hogan movie and trying to make sense of it. You get he’s a cyborg muscle nanny, but you’re not sure why the dress alone convinced the beauty pageant judges he was a contestant.
Let’s talk about what the Grabowskis are doing. Former cop, August Deuser Grabowski, walks up to a man and starts beating the shit out of him. Hey, wait. That’s the cigar guy from earlier. I guess he got cast as a Smith? In the intro Mike Ditka said the good guys were The Smiths but they were never mentioned again. And George and Larry are cheering him on? Jason has grabbed a stranger’s child and is holding him above his head? And he just lets the boy drop after Mike Ditka recruits him for this… boy band? Halftime skit? This has missed zany by at least five concussions. There is nothing else made of such concentrated insanity. Through sheer force of untalent, Mike Ditka has rapped a hole into our reality.
So Mike Ditka has selected five people from the crowd. The two white men committing assaults and three people I assume he described to the casting director as “one of each of the others.” The five of them break into a well-rehearsed but not quite ready dance routine and it cuts to the next stage of their Grabowski journey– dinner theater. I don’t want to hyperbolize, so I’ll put it like this: Mike Ditka set out to make art and accidentally committed an act of terror. Fuck you if these aren’t the forbidden summoning movements of a chaos god.
Number One Grabowski, Mike Ditka, who added his name to something that already had more than enough name, comes out to do another rap. He has the charm and showmanship of a wet cough into your open mouth.
August Deuser Grabowski takes center stage and gives off the exact vibe you’d expect from a grumpy cop in a red baseball cap that says GRABOWSKI POWER– tolerant and inclusive fun!
The Grabowski Shuffleâ„¢ isn’t quite a knockoff of “The Superbowl Shuffle” so much as it’s the exact song with words not about sports legends, but the personality traits of five below average karaoke singers without interesting hobbies or jobs. It’s the absence of an idea. It’s the musical equivalent of a pouty bus driver’s complaint every time he hears it’s Secretary’s Day.
Mike Ditka invites everyone in the restaurant to join the Grabowskis on the tiny dinner theater stage, including the cigar guy from earlier again, and they can’t believe the honor. They all line dance until it transitions to the final, ultimate form of the Grabowskis– total Grabowski domination. They are performing their one song, a half-remembered Superbowl Shuffle about themselves, to a massive stadium. There is never a mention of The Smiths or what the conflict was with them, and it ends. What’s next for the Grabowskis and their ill-conceived, roughly manufactured celebrity!?
I couldn’t find a second entertainment project from any of the Grabowskis. George, Larry, and Valerie changed their names back from Grabowski, and like The Grabowski Shuffleâ„¢ itself, quietly left no trace of themselves. August, on the other hand, rode that Grabowski fame to a successful political career.
Two years ago August Deuser Grabowski campaigned on pro-guns and anti-abortion, but failed to secure enough votes to win a state senator write-in campaign. Which surprises me, because according to Internet analytics, I was the 142nd person to watch his campaign video. He even proudly commemorates his time at the top of the world. See it up there? Right after PRO-LIFE and ABOUT? A link that only says “GRABOWSKI.” I’m going to click it.
Aww, it’s only a newspaper article he clipped and nothing else. I was really hoping for some kind of retrospec… oh my God, wait. Do you know what this means!? Some of those reporters at those Grabowski press conferences were real! Some of them wrote articles! Oh fuck yeah, Chicago Reader, 1987:
I was right! They didn’t pay these poor people! Cigar guy confirmed it! The director confirmed it! They paid them in exposure, which here, 35 years later we can measure! All that work was worth a single, confusing splash of whimsy on an old gun nut’s political campaign website, and nothing else. Truly amazing. And when the reporter asked the director of The Grabowski Shuffleâ„¢ how it was going to be different from the other failed “Superbowl Shuffle” knockoff Mike Ditka already made, he explained that one was missing a strong concept. Which means he fucking thinks The Grabowski Shuffleâ„¢ had a strong concept! It’s perfect. A truly perfect cursed artifact made by truly perfect maniacs and the perfect way to end this arti— wait, hold on, I forgot to look up Body-Building Clerk, Jason Solid Grabowski. I wonder what he’s up to today…
Okay, that’s the perfect ending. Grabowski as fuck.
Categories
Nerding Day: Superhero Stars ðŸŒ
Hi. Have you ever, while walking through the shadows of darkness, found something you hated so much you’d betray your best friend for a chance to unmake it? Hi again, I’m Seanbaby, writing as Todd McFarlane, dark creator of Spawn, to introduce an article about another grotesque John Byrne joke book, 2003’s Joke Busters’ Superhero Stars.
Thanks for the intro, me as Todd. To set this book up, yes, it’s obviously bad jokes about superheroes. But not exactly. John Byrne has created his own zany spoofs of popular superheroes and then made jokes about them. And when I say “spoofs,” I don’t mean satirical takes on tropes or wacky puns. I mean he spelled all their names wrong and nothing else. I’m not exaggerating. Or, as John would put it, “eggs-aggerating” next to a couple eggs.
Unforgivably, “Souperman” has all the same powers as Superman. He does not have silly soup versions of flight or freeze breath or laser vision. If this was a book about Souperman drowning Lettuce Luthor with vichyssoise breath, we wouldn’t be here. This is a “joke book” where some monster added an “o” to Superman’s name and sold it to innocent children.
He doesn’t even have a different secret identity. He’s exactly the fucking same!
You dumb son of a bitch, John. He’s still Clark Kent? You couldn’t make him fucking Clark Consummé or Cream of Kent? Kal-Eggdrop of Kryptom-yum? That took me twelve seconds, you stupid asshole. And why is Souperman camping out with children on a school trip? He’s a childless grown man. The entire premise of the joke, the punchline of which is spelling “Kent” wrong, requires the most virtuous man in the universe to be stalking little kids in the woods. If there were any laws in place for making bad jokes, the state would chemically castrate you for this and sentence the remaining, non-genital parts of you to twenty consecutive life terms. “Clark tent.” Fuck you.
The fact that Superman’s disguise is only glasses has been a shared joke among the human race for about 80 years. And John Byrne’s take on this, the oldest superhero joke, is using a word with a double meaning and getting one of the meanings wrong. Hey, John Byrne, if someone didn’t want to make a spectacle of themselves, they wouldn’t wear glasses, you dumbass. You idiot fuck, John. Let me show you how stupid you are. This is what a Family Circus cartoon would look like if it was as goddamn dumb as you:
Wait, hold on. Maybe we’re supposed to forgive the dislogic because in Souperman’s case, he would try to be less of a spectacle by wearing more spectacles… no. No, this is war crime apologist doublethink. Luckily, not all of his Souperman gags are as controversial as probably(?) misunderstanding a misunderstood idiom. Some of them are just things happening.
“CONGRATULATIONS, SIR… NOW THERE’S A FLY IN THE SOUPERMAN?” What the hell does that mean? It sounds like Björk wishing a spider happy birthday in a Cameo. Maybe you could try, like, a riddle, John?
Again, I need to be clear: aside from eating a fly out of it in a restaurant that one time, Souperman has no soup theme or abilities. He’s simply exactly Superman with “SOUP” on his chest instead of an “S.” So, I don’t know, his favorite game could be some shit like Souper Mario Bros. or Soupo Wrestling, but expecting the audience to make a connection between “BOWLS” and the soup in his name is wild. It’s like asking your reader to suddenly imagine a situation where a spider is having a birthday and someone bought it a Cameo from Björk. It’s like saying “someone on the plane must have had diarrhea during 9/11.” It’s so much work to give your audience, and for what? Morbid sadness scratching at the edge of whimsy? You’re the diarrhea of 9/11, John Byrne.
It’s already a terrible thing to intentionally misunderstand an idiom for a lame joke. It’s worse to write in a straight man who misunderstands something there’s no reason to misunderstand for a lame joke. If someone in prison tells you they were framed, it’s not natural to respond, “Now to be clear, when you say ‘framed,’ you mean the only thing that could mean, right?” And to do that– to destroy your verisimilitude for this punchline? It’s inhuman. Yes, art galleries have frames, but who would describe robbing one in such a way? If you were a linguist trying to teach a monkey wordplay and they put this combination of words together you would consider it a frustrating setback. The point is, it’s a pretty weak framing device, no matter what frame of mind you’re in!
Here he is doing it again. John is desperately stretching for a joke across three word bubbles and he’s still a full step away from a complete gag. If the first speaker followed this up with, “Of course I mean break out of prison, idiot,” it would almost sound like real dialog. My point is, John Byrne is a stupid, sarcastic dick without the sarcasm– all the unpleasant and none of the wit. It’s like Björk filming a Cameo for a spider’s birthday, but without the Björk. Just a pile of spiders calling a spider on its birthday.
Speaking of spiders and no coherent second concept, John Byrne’s Spider-Man knockoff is Spy-Man, a spidery man with a magnifying glass. Which means his favorite place in the playground is “THE MAGNIFYING GRASS,” a punchline way closer to a Wizards & Warriors powerup than a joke. Spy-Man also seems to have maintained most of Spider-Man’s deal, in that he’s insect-themed and swings around on a web. It’s fucking tragic. John Byrne has a wet smear of chewed gum where an imagination should be. I don’t know how much longer I can watch the neurons in his fading brain limp from one idea back to that same idea with the letters rearranged.
Wait, is Spy-Man’s spyglass a goddamn mirror? John, are you fucking serious? You’re using another misunderstood cliche as the punchline to a totally unrelated setup while also requiring us to reconsider magnifying glasses as mirrors? That’s not a long walk for a short drink of water– it’s dragging a dead body to a dry lake. John, take that pen you can’t draw for shit with and fuck yourself with it. I don’t know if this properly reflects my feelings, but this cartoon is what AIDS would say if it could talk. It’s the embarrassing final words of a research monkey being destroyed in a failed linguistics experiment. Oh, speaking of monkeys:
This one isn’t so bad. It’s the only appearance of Gorilla Man, but he seems to have a coherent theme and John managed to put together a riddle that would make any popsicle stick manufacturer say, “I consider this adequate.” But look at where we are. A Gorilla Man used a mon-KEY to break into a crook’s headquarters and my expectations have been lowered so far I consider it a good try. There aren’t standards by which to judge something like John Byrne. It’s like a flesh eating bacteria asking you to take a moment to rate your experience.
This sells itself as a superhero book, but not much of it has anything to do with superhero activities. For the most part, if you took the masks and underwear off everyone, it wouldn’t change anything. It would just be nude people expressing themselves incorrectly in a miserable impersonation of humor. It’s like John Byrne got 100 pages into something he thought was called “101 Ordinary Put Downs For Unremarkable Pieces of Shit” and his editor called to say, “Tomorrow’s the deadline! How’s the superhero book coming?”
“Come on, John. Think. What’s a joke about Chameleonman’s powers? Superheroes change clothes… chameleons change color. There’s something there. Maybe… that’s it! He can’t catch crooks because he changes color! Take that, doctor who called this ‘the worst head injury he’s ever seen’! Honk honk, I’m a motorcycle!!”
It’s almost heroic how John keeps trying. I mean, he’s seen a joke and has to have thought about how they work. He knows x-rays see through things and he’s heard the phrase “seeing right through you,” but he can’t quite link it all together. John Byrne, if your cartoon requires your audience to create an entire superhero who fakes x-ray vision, maybe the most instantly disprovable of all the superpowers, and then the payoff is only, “well yeah, everyone knew,” you’ve done something wrong. Not only here in this moment, but with your entire life. I don’t have a fun way to describe it. You’re a fake dog poop factory worker who made some dumb shape that didn’t look like poop.
Another character John created is called the Incredible Hunk. I think he tried to draw him “handsome” with the talentless paws he calls hands, but he’s otherwise no different than the original superhero he’s spelling wrong. The Incredible Hunk is a green rage monster. And since he’s green, maybe… maybe something with traffic lights? Do kids run into traffic toward anything green? If they don’t, then holy shit, this joke doesn’t work at all.
“Green is almost the same word as ‘grin,’ right? Come on, John, think! There’s got to be something there. Do wrestlers who also work as crossing guards grin after they lose? Griiiiin… greeeen? Aaand bear it? So he wrestles and loses then greens and bears it, but also punches a wrestling judge? Ha. Listen to me. A cartoonist would have to have absolute contempt for their audience to expect readers to make that kind of stretch. They’d have to hate those goddamn children so very much.”
What else happens to green? Oh! Toddlers bite it!
This is a strange one– an interview with a villain named The Green Gobbler whose zaniness is based on how he enjoys eating? And since he eats so much, he’s green? How? Why? I don’t mean the Green Gobbler’s thing. I mean what happens to the concept of green after it enters John Byrne’s brain? Has anyone studied it? The first neurologist to crack this maniac’s head open will discover an entirely new disorder. John Byrne thinks people charge toward green and babies eat green, but you also get green if you eat too mu– oh my god, it’s tits. Never mind, neurologists, this is only some kind of titty code. Unless… oh damn it, I think he might mean he’s green like he’s nauseous– a cannibal in a kid’s book adorably happy he’s about to puke. I hate that if you squint hard enough and pedantically enough you can exhume the skeleton of a joke concept from some of these.
Not all the Hunk jokes have to do with people losing their minds near the color green. Here John asks what would happen if the Incredible Hunk fucked a rabbit? Here’s your answer: that’s nuts, and he strangles Spy-Man! Oh no, wait. Is the word “cross” here referring to making him mad? That would make the rabbit and the rabbit fucking red herrings, and that’d be– hold on, was the “crossing” in the Hunk joke earlier also about the kids pissing him off, or were they still only running towards him because he was a nude monster the same color as traffic lights? Look, guys, I’m sorry. I didn’t know it was going to turn into this.
I’m not comfortable with how often the people in this book finish a joke by saying “I don’t know the punchline!” and strangling the nearest person. This cartoon is something John Byrne’s wife found right before he appeared behind her and asked, “Why are my private things in your hand, dear?”
And she said, “B-because I c-can’t pick them up with my feet?”
“Can’t pick…? Ha. Ha ha ha HAHA HAHAHA HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!“
Mrs. Byrne slipped out quietly. He was getting worse. She didn’t know how much more time she could buy.
And of course, John has hilarious things to say about how hunks roar and the way superheroes are always lifting up shops. Good luck decoding his thoughts on lasers, though:
This is the Mein Kampf of toast cartoons. Look at it. If they spelled your beloved grandmother’s name “Farts Cadaver” in her obituary, you’d say “that reminds me of the worst thing I’ve ever seen in print– the time all that rotten gas burped out of the corpse of John Byrne’s imagination in the form of a laser toa… no, never mind. Let’s just focus on honoring Farts.”
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This article was brought to you by our fine sponsor and Hot Dog Supreme: Ozzie Olin, also known as the Flish (like the Flash but part fish) who responded to the question “how are you doing, The Flish?” With “I’ve BREAM better!” This is our longest dedication ever because that’s how far you have to journey to land a John Byrne joke.
This week on the Dogg Zzone 9000, best-selling necromancer author, Stephen Blackmoore, joins us to make sense of twelve mysterious and metaphysical music videos sent to us from the stars. We’re, of course, talking about Harvey Sid Fisher’s Astrology Songs.
Where did these songs come from? Of what use are they? How so strange? Why am the? Did they live up to their creator’s hopes of “making him a billion dollars?” Don’t ask us. We each dedicated ourselves to becoming experts on the backup dancers.
You should really watch one before listening, because all three of us work as communicators and none of us were able to explain what they are. They’re theoretically educational songs, but for a thing that isn’t real by a singer/songwriter who isn’t an expert in it, with distractingly hot and weird backup dancers. Four cameras are pointed at them, and all of their footage is randomly composited together like those old portraits with two pictures merg– let me start over. You know when you’re getting your official police photo taken but you also want to honor the Karate aspect of your spirit?
It’s like that, but less magical or sexy. I’m not explaining it very well at all. You should just listen.
If we enriched your soul with cosmic understanding, subscribe and review! Buy Stephen‘s books! Buy Brockway‘s books! Scroll slightly down to see Seanbaby‘s actual DVD-R of all these songs autographed by Harvey Sid Fisher in 2004!
And check out this week’s free bonus episode to see what you’re missing every single week if you, like a fool, use your money for food and clothing instead of surplus comedy.