Category: LEARNING DAY

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LEARNING DAY

Learning Day: Liberation and Let There Be Light 🌭

Do me a favor: close your eyes. I know, I know, but please, just trust me on this. Go ahead, close ‘em. Okay, are they closed? Hey, your mother sucks cocks in Hell and does a really bad job of it. Okay, good, just checking.

Now project into that space, if you will, the future; neither a time nor place, but the very concept itself…the way it makes you feel. For example, a Virtual Boy is from the past, but it is also a chunky plastic goggle that shows you red wireframes in the dusky dark, and that makes it futuristic as all fuck.

Are you imagining the future as hard as you can? Then we are imagining the same thing, for there is only one correct answer in all timespace to the question “what’s most future?” I speak of course of a CD so large its hole begs to be explored, a record so shiny with chrome you can see your face in it and you’re wearing those glasses that are just horizontal plastic bars painted neon. The LaserDisc. See it spinning there, in the showcase of your mind, rainbows playing across its vast unwieldy expanse. Now imagine that you are no longer imagining, and instead listening to me.

My friends, I speak today of a movie-watching medium so dope it has to be flipped halfway through like a record, and whose sleeves were so thin you couldn’t tell which one was which on a shelf. To 1993 me, they were the epitome of science fiction. Consider just the word: LaserDisc. Laser, obviously a strong futuristic offer along the lines of a “cyber” or “A.I.-written.” Then there’s disk, but spelled in a different way, a way they might use when all the Ks run out in, hm, I don’t know, the future perhaps?

This brings me to my new recurring column-within-a-column, LASERDISCS IN THE RAIN, comprising a hodgepodge of memories and meanderings surrounding things in my Dad’s LaserDisc collection I watched as a child. Regular readers (hi Dad!) will know that this whole column is basically for his benefit. I crave his aloof, icy approval.

Hey, here’s one now!

When I was eight, my father would take us on a trip from San Diego to Los Angeles several times a year on what he unironically called a “pilgrimage.” We’d pile into his SUV with three other very weird guys and hit up four spots: Amoeba, Fry’s, the Music Trader where they shot the beginning of the Brütal Legend video game, and fucking Ken Crane’s LaserDisc.

There at KC’s, in a room smelling exactly like a Circuit City, awash in looping trailers on CRTVs stationed throughout, we’d spend hours flipping through Discs like neanderthal hunters of antiquity and pile our pelts high in victory. “Oh look, Wayne’s World 2,” we’d say, veritably frothing at the loins.

On one of many such occasions, once home Papa called me and my brother into the media room for whiskey sours and cigars and we rifled through our bags to find something to watch. Naturally, my brother and I, being young and as yet naive, gravitated to baubles and trifles, your “We’re Back! A Dinosaur’s Story”s as it were. Dad, on the other hand, wasn’t fucking around. Using his car key to slice open the shrinkwrap on a preem new LD, he proceeded to blow our minds with a kind of media I hadn’t even known existed: COMPUTER GRAPHICS GENERALLY.

Yes, burned onto these wheels of yore, from a time of past-yet-to-come, was the most futuristic thing possible: low–poly jams from the very earliest days of CG. Literally the only other computer graphics I’d been exposed to were, like, Virtua Fighter 1 and the Pixar short that’s just a snowglobe.

It’s important that younger people understand, computer graphics were so impressive to us in the early ’90s that we would make whole LaserDiscs full of anything with computer graphics in it, just whole compilations of NOW! That’s What I Call Computer-Generated!

Many was the Sunday we’d sit there on the black leather couch, freshly puked out from the whiskey and cigars, and watch our way through an entire playlist of shit like:

● POV: Frog Jumps into Radiator and Dies

● The Video they Show in Line for a Six Flags Ride

● POV: Cat Jumps into Blender and Dies

● Spheres – A Study in Texture-Mapping

● Spanish Cleanser Commercial with CG Mosquito

● Japanese Computer Chip Commercial

● POV: Small Meowing Man Jumps into Blender

● Circles – Origins of the Sphere

Naturally, there would also be the occasional music video, but only from artists so forward-thinking that they should be living on the freakin’ moon, if indeed they aren’t (I haven’t looked into it in every case). For the rest of our time today, let us dive deeply into a crystal-clear pool of Mike Oldfield and lap up the sweet nectar of the Pet Shop Boys, pictured here as colorful blobs, which is, let’s be honest, what a lot of early CG can be described as.

The other thing a lot of early CG can be described as? CONES-HAVING, baby. Here we see the Pet Shop Boys singing about sexual freedom as their disembodied heads fly by on golden wings in conical dunce caps, and guess what they’re poopin’? Here’s a hint: you put ice cream in them.

When you need to copy and paste a lot of stuff to prove your computer works but it can’t handle pyramids? Cones. For the computing wizards of 1993, making the colorful Pet Shop Boys face-blobs poop out cones was but a trice. Behold!

I’ll see that miracle and raise you the Pet Shop Boys as neon Party Jesuses glorifying several lightly textured spheres with the cones they poop. This is the OFFICIAL VIDEO for this song.

Fuck it, here’s CONES pooping cones. Have you been New Aged yet? Are you not coned?

But I see that you’re discerning consumers, unimpressed by cones alone. I know what you’re thinking: the true benchmark of computer generated imagery is that perfect form, the human body. Six hundred muscles, enough vascular material to stretch around the Earth, lousy with bones, the human body has long been the standard by which artistic renderings are judged. To that end, we the Pet Shop Boys proudly present you this tube made of gray potato chips filled with blobby stick-men.

If you’re not picking up on the subtle theme of videos like this, it’s “We purchased computer graphics.” At no point does a narrative any more coherent than that surface. And yet, all the CG videos from this brief period share a shocking number of elements. Case-in-point: Mike Oldfield’s head presented here as a colorful blob pooping cones.

In case you’re not familiar with Oldfield, he’s the chap who brought us “Tubular Bells,” better known as the Exorcist theme. In the late’ 80s and early ’90s he was busily dismantling any and all creep cred he may have earned by producing soft-rock dreamscapes with the exact vibe of a Lisa Frank dolphin Trapper Keeper. The premise of “Let There be Light” seems to be “What if stuff flew? Wouldn’t that just be swell?”

Heck, everyone’s flying! We got cherubs hanging out on a couple lightly textured spheres, presumably just about to diarrhea some serious cone-age.

We got those same cherubs but grown into adult angel-men, now sporting wings too structurally unsound to achieve flight but majestic enough to flabbergast a vagrant.

We even got giant flying manta rays being ogled by a guy repairing a plane, as if to say “Wait, maybe fly? Maybe that’s what planes should do? Thanks for the inspo, mantas!”

And of course, there’s the issue of the rogue Pet Shop Boy:

Quick! Lash the beast to the Earth lest he drown us all in his powerful stream of cone-shit! I kid. Actually, this was just one of many subtle references to the longstanding Oldfield-Boys beef, the most notorious battle in early ’90s West Coast New Age. Tragically, the feud wouldn’t end until the infamous Yanni and Enya hits, now believed to have been carried out by that indigenous guy in the Enigma song that goes “Ayyuh haiiii oh haiwaiyuh.”

Not to be outdone, Oldfield got his own uncredited indigenous guy, who does a dance that makes dragons fly out of the sewers, surprising a work crew. This is the OFFICIAL VIDEO for this song.

Ultimately, the angel-men decide to stand on the flying dragons to reach their beloved skies again, then tool around downtown a while before crashing into a skyscraper. Remember, this was 1994, so no offense was intended except to your taste.

Another wonderful thing these early-days CG music videos do is feed you imagery of people being absolutely fucking amazed by lightly textured spheres, in case you didn’t know that was the level of awe and delight you were supposed to be experiencing.

Honestly, if you aren’t sitting there reading this article with your eyes closed and your jaw on the fucking floor, I can’t help you, and neither can any number of cubes, even this many:

Oh, right, and you can open your eyes now. You passed! This was one of many trials that will determine if you are ready to join the Swaim Swarm, where we’re taking back our masculinity one paint-your-own-ceramic at a time. As for closing out this edition of LASERDISCS IN THE RAIN, all I can say is that my heart still aches for that simpler time, a time when all it took to impress me was to have a very serious black dude roll aside to reveal bikes in the ocean.

Next time on LASERDISCS IN THE RAIN, I get sidetracked and end up doing a capsule review of Rock-a-Doodle on Hi8 Tape, then the glue in the discs starts to rot so now all our movies have static in them. Coooooooones!

This article was brought to you by our fine sponsor and Hot Dog Supreme: Badger, the winged cone-pooping sphere who represents the human soul!

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LEARNING DAY

Learning Day: A-Rod’s Gum Disease Campaign 🌭

The other day, I became less aware of gum disease. How? I listened to Alex Rodriguez.

Gah! Him again. Many American sports fans react that way when Alex Rodriguez crosses their screen. “A-Rod” (his words not mine) is a retired athlete, a grindset hokum peddler, and a relentless font of uncanny. Somehow he is always weird. Somehow he turns the coolest things on Earth into icky headaches. For example, he’s one of the greatest baseball players ever…to ruin that with steroid stuff, twice over, plus give testimony against other guys. He achieved his dream of winning the heart of megastar Jennifer Lopez… also no he did not, commence tragic rebound. He made the near-impossible leap from sports player to sports owner, by purchasing… the worst pro basketball team, mathematically. He’s also written a children’s book that fractured my sanity, and began writing an adult’s book in the weirdest way postable:

What a cool post on Alex Rodriguez’s Instagram story! It’s great to see my least favorite ballplayer write nothing, on corny letterhead, in a framing that achieves “optical illusion of pantslessness.”

What is my fellow Alex up to now? Besides simulating flashing his own house? He’s leading a disease awareness campaign. Dot dot dot. Dot dot dot. In the most Alex Rodriguez way possible. You see, Alex Rodriguez is now an advocate for gum disease awareness. How does that work in practice? Alex Rodriguez tells people he has early-stage gum disease. He does that on TV:

And in magazines:

And in…paid advertising for a pharmaceutical company??

Alex Rodriguez began telling people about his gum disease when he started receiving money to be a spokesman for gum disease medication. Which is…fine, ish. Athletes sponsor all kinds of stuff. However, big problem: most sports fans assume “famous athlete is sick” means “famous athlete is sharing about that sickness as an act of charity.” Not to link-spam you, but there’s a robust tradition of American athletes choosing to become symbols of fighting a disease: Lou Gehrig, Walter Payton, “Truth Era” Lance Armstrong. Alex Rodriguez never quite claims to be part of this tradition. He does not steal that valor…in a technical legal sense. Instead, he tells the truth about having gum disease, while maintaining varying levels of clarity about this being part of an advertisement. It’s less charity, more charitish.

Good news: though that basic situation is a bummer, I’ve filled this column with its endless silver linings. Funny silver linings! Also: this creepy ad campaign is still a net good, because gum disease is for real, and most people don’t know that, and I didn’t know that till I read that link. So thank you, real medical stuff I googled. No thank you, Alex Rodriguez. A-Rod is so bad at explaining gum disease, he decreases a viewer’s understanding of it. It’s like a sketch comedy premise of “Unaware Awareness Guy.” Check out A-Rod’s attempt to answer one question about what gum disease is, in a national television spot dedicated to that:

Good news: I don’t think A-Rod is trying to exploit anything or anybody in those statements. He references the black and brown community because that is a true fact. Also because he is brown. And he invokes Tony Gwynn because they were friends. But also, my dude, I can read the screen. You are on television to increase gum disease awareness. Say facts about gum disease. Instead, we get borderline misinformed. By distrusting this segment, and googling, I’ve learned Tony Gwynn died of salivary gland cancer, a sickness that experts and Gwynn himself attributed to Not Gum Disease. He is not the topic here. We’re off the rails, disease awareness-wise. Next silver lining: so much else went off the rails. This interview goes Metaphorical Train Disaster in a whole ‘nother direction, and it does that before they can even wrap up the Gwynn stuff:

Ho ho ho! Alex might not have prepared any scientific information, but he sure prepped some pleasant jollity! You know my guy’s packin’ a Boy Scout one-liner. “Packin’ A Boy Scout One-Liner” is also a plausible erection nickname for A-Rod. Especially given that “A-Rod” is taken. Anyway: do you remember one hundred hyperlinks ago, when I linked about A-Rod getting caught using steroids, twice? America’s gotten over that somewhat, as a baseball thing. But this man is such a space alien, he thinks he can sling twee li’l japes about having overly perfect health beliefs, when he is fully the all-time record holder for steroid suspension length. The TV journalists hearing this bravely push back, in the sense that they pivot to asking A-Rod what he thinks of recent baseball games’ quality. Spoiler: he thinks they are good. Extra spoiler: most of the rest of the segment doesn’t touch on gums, unless you count the grinning.

Two more silver linings await you. The next one is a print interview. In the print interview, Alex Rodriguez tries to say the exact TV interview stuff you just heard, but say it again, into a People Magazine tape recorder. Should that go smoothly? Sure. Does that go smoothly? Well it starts kind of like the TV interview, with Rodriguez affirming he did not use tobacco. He also throws in a little more detail on why he did not use it.

Great! Thanks Alex. That normal story wraps up this intervi–

Um…sure, thanks Alex. Great talking to–

Again, the stated goal here is disease awareness. Also, the secondary moral goal and primary financial goal is medication sales. But the moment your brain tries to latch onto any of that, Alex Rodriguez unspools an out-of-nowhere yarn about 25 epic years of arcane gum numerology. Questions abound. How did he find the time to eat and chew all that? How did he find the mouth space? Should I google the answer to the math problem “25 years times 162 games times 36 sticks of Fruit Stripe”? What does a relentless mix of pink rubber and sunflower seeds taste like? Was A-Rod exploring whether it’s possible to contract gum disease simply by chewing way way too often? Was he coining a new and psychiatric definition for the words “Gum Disease”?

Our final, vastest silver lining is A-Rod’s three and a half minute medication commercial. This ad is his clearest spokes-for-pay gig. It’s pretty clear he’s getting money. So I respect that. It also continues the trend of A-Rod openly barely understanding this disease.

Cool! That’s honest. He let his dentist lead the learning process. A dentist should lead that. However: I counted. Within 55 seconds, A-Rod racks up three more “my dentist told me”s:

That repetition turns funny. You start wanting to just hear from the dentist. Why is this ad a game of literal Telephone? I keep thinking Alex’s dentist will walk in, turn him 90 degrees, and tap him forward like a windup toy, so that an expert can talk to the camera while Alex Rodriguez bonks into a wall.

The rest of the ad turns weirder. If there’s one thing American medication commercials do, it’s show the ill person having tons of friends. That’s always what’s shown during the tiny legal text and the voiceover about side effects. This commercial missed that memo. Other than that one shot of Alex Rodriguez with a dentist, he spends this ad alone. Totally alone, in a huge glassy house. Everything from his tragic diagnosis…

…to the entire rest of his life…

…is the opposite of every other medication commercial. Total isolation. Gum disease quarantine. It’s so backward, it feels like how a space alien would write a medication commercial, in a good way. No distracting communal joy. Just pure uncut Guy Grappling With Illness. It even ends on more than a minute of warning voiceover. Which is too much. That’s longer than most entire commercials. This commercial spends 70 seconds unspooling a harrowing list of potential side effects. It includes a request that you, the patient, help them document new side effects, because that’s how new this drug is (!). That dire warning plays over one unbroken stalker shot of Alex Rodriguez brushing.

This 3.5 minute ad deserves a full episode of a bad movie podcast. It’s profoundly antithetical to selling its own product. And our fella Alex Rodriguez is this art film’s MVP (“Most Very-Freaky Person”). I never thought I’d write a column about him again. Perhaps this is the last one. But I see how he could recur yet again. This website is named 1900HOTDOG. And someday, when I seek another literal hot dog premise, I’ll remember no athlete’s ever simulated more dangled wiener.

This article was brought to you by our fine sponsor and Hot Dog Supreme: Alpha Scientist Javo, who one time wrote Article.

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LEARNING DAY

Trapping Day: BIGFEETS Design-A-Trap Contest Winners! 🌭

UPDATE 10/31 1:30PM: By usin’ us a goat and beloved friend, we lured out more entries what had been forgotten by science.

You killed it. The prompt, not Bigfoot.

What makes a good sasquatch trap? We have no idea. BIGFEETS has unpacked six episodes of lazy madness, and each minute teaches us less. To celebrate this mystery, we launched The BIGFEETS Design-A-Trap contest. We asked for your worst traps, and you overdelivered. Monsters have never been safer.

If you’re just joining in, you get all the benefits for none of the labor. Much like Buck, the accidental mascot of Mountain Monsters: a perfect Travel Channel writeoff about cryptid hunters. Almost. If mothmen exist, the team refuses to leave town to look. BIGFEETS recaps the journeys they don’t take, the monsters they don’t find, and the traps they can’t build.

They need a lot of help. We turned to the Doggzone’s finest engineers, and they’ve crushed expectations. Since building these traps, we haven’t caught one cryptid.

Of course, we can’t test every trap at once. That would end in the gun accident Mountain Monsters teases every episode. Instead, we’ve split entries into four simple groups. Each block’s winner will face off for the bandana of Worst Trap. Starting with the most filling:

Most traps end in Bigfoot eating the creator. These designs provide an appetizer.

FancyShark knows Bigfoot’s sweet tooth is legendary. I can just say that. I can say anything. Belmont improv is almost as tempting as this trap.

Skebotron’s trap has a step after meat, making him the smartest cryptid hunter alive. Meet the Edison of lying to The Travel Channel.

Hambone knows logistics matter, and abandons them. This chicken’s dying for nothing, whether or not Bigfoot turns up or exists.

Lolerpa hasn’t forgiven the Woofman, and will poison as many forests as justice demands. Non-alcoholic drinks don’t exist in Mountain Monsters’ caricature of West Virginia, but plot holes sweeten the hunt.

BorsukKumpelRyb dials up the animal cruelty by adding labor. This goat’s outworking every human on camera.

Dirty Charles is a humanist. He knows AIMS can keep their hands off an amphetamine long enough to feed it to a pig. We also choose to believe.

Delta Foxtrot sent one of the cleaner submissions, his scanner just works. The scent of fresh fried chicken should draw cryptids, and none of the other countless forest creatures.

Hank’s filename was “foolproof,” and we’re inclined to agree. There’s probably a world where Buck didn’t end this competition as delicious bait, but this isn’t it.

Static Dust’s secret sauce is sauce. Well-chosen, since sauce is the base of whatever’s replaced the food pyramid. Much like us, a Bigfoot can live off Sauce and aspartame alone for years on end.

Evan taps the hunger driving all of us–early cyberpunk. That’s all of us, right? Reading William Gibson in a decrepit St. Anne church in August 2002? Nice to share a universal experience.

A Block Champion:

Hambone remembered the first rules of design and comedy: reject simplicity. Get as much in as possible, even when the club owner throws the first punch. That density of form and skull gets our first win.

Cryptids have feelings too. They should suffer for that. These honeypots manipulate xenosexuality, xenoennui, and xenodrinkingaloneonmondaymorning.

Javo applied print magazines in 2023, which is much harder than catching mythical beasts. Even when you’re inventing your prey at the same time.

Yeyo understands high strategy, and simply lets cryptid seduce cryptid. Jockstrap is the “whiskey caramel” of cryptid colognes.

Brettlybrett knows the power of thigh sweat, like a proper BIGFEETS listener. You listen to BIGFEETS, right? It’s the last good mattress-free podcast. Casper doesn’t like all the thigh talk.

Reina channeled the ghost of Van Week. A risky play: a ghost is almost a cryptid, flirting with disqualification. This joke’s better than functional rules, so we’ll let it slide.

Jake also taps the van force. And candy! There’s candy! Everyone pile in!

Sissyneck knows those Bigfeet hide a Bigheart. And that humanity’s story is over. Switching teams is pure wisdom after what he’s seen.

Arthur Padua isn’t counting on Cryptid friendship. He knows human friendship is stronger. West Virginia novelty cap stores are about to make bank.

Beth focuses on Bigfoot’s first love: Bigfoot. This account will attract five or five million followers, and nothing in-between.

Mike’s made a Magnum Bigfoot trap. Like all the best murders, it has plausible deniability as a crime of passion.

Bucks Bunny combines classic animation with modern CIA honeypots. A subtle, tactical baseball-bat assault.

In Velo’s improv worldbuilding, Bigfoot’s curiosity is as strong as its libido. It needs to explore and understand the world around it. This will remain true until someone contradicts it–unless Velo repeats it, louder. Quality trap.

Josiah calls in backup from Documental, a comedy knifefight with more dicks than any adult film. Brace for the clash between a mythical nude lunatic and whatever madness Jimmy’s dressed as.

B-Block Winner:

Slick. Good thing we’re not a family site.

Tuckered out from all that Bigfoot Lovin’? Dylan’s made a fully-functional cryptid-slayin’ RPG. A trap? Not at all. Amazing? Yes. Dig the Hillybilly Improv PDF.

Some brilliant youth stepped up to butcher Bigfeet. They’re shockingly on point, thanks to lifelong training against art-stealing robots. What’s left of the future looks bright.

James’s trap is just like that comic Swaim–no, hold on. Kids are looking. Let’s stick to cryptids. The last meat to attract Bigfoot was a tribal pri–scratch that. James made a funny trap!

Masked Kindergartener sticks to the basics of not-catching Bigfoot: talking a big game. Their cage is perfectly posed to not deliver.

Translated Strategy Text: “It cannot get out of it. He can not get out.” Tell me that’s not a direct show quote. Or summary of life.

Alex draws cryptid traps on his own time, this contest’s just serendipity. Unlike stodgy guidance counselors, I’m in love with this two-step trap.

Meanwhile, Masked Sixth Grader taps stimulant dependence. No, not that one.

Hmm, this one’s in crayon. Jeff Orasky’s probably a kid too, right? Otherwise this would be the Smurfing maneuver of a lifetime. You decide if that’s a gaming joke or censorship.

Hugh definitely can rent a car, but applies the daredevil spelling of the Juniors division to adult Bigfoot murder. Don’t let the style fool you: he’s the only one countering teleportation.

C Block Winner:

If these were my kids, I’d let everyone win. They aren’t. “Rizz sparkles” crushed the other, younger children.

A benighted thirst for blood taints human character and history. Let’s project that onto Bigfoot, and make him pay.

Joecovery’s trap starts with a bell, and ends holding Bigfoot’s severed head aloft. There’s some naked pandering afoot, which is a good life strategy.

Greg’s found a way to put stolen mowers to work, and probably make a trap too.

Djonin is ready to take Wild Bill for every cent he’s worth. And create the Holler’s sixteenth most toxic dumping site.

Badger robs Bigfoot of size, its greatest advantage. Except when it has a magic axe. Or an entire developed society. But he’ll shrink Bigfoot Classic right down.

Fatamacian wants Bigfoot to go out like Narcissus: choking on chemical vengeance over several hours. Bigfoot knows why it deserves this, even if we don’t.

Ruckus hedged their bets. Either this works as intended, or blasts half the mountain–including Bigfoot–to ash. This is one to watch, from incredible distance.

Steven remembered mankind’s greatest weapon, gravity, and nothing else. This premium trap is a sobering reminder of what happens when technology goes too far.

Grrbal45 goes conceptual: why kill the body of Bigfoot, when you can kill the idea?

Sam takes the fight to Bigfoot’s Bigpockets. This one needs a little sociopathy, an area where men have cryptids beat.

C.K. taps the tenth worst way to die during Operation Vietnamese Freedom. But the sharp and infectious bits have been replaced with raw country pluck.

HeyitsTom’s brilliant science will either kill Bigfoot’s mystique, or slam a helicopter into it. Win-win. Either way, a memorable image is hitting the news.

Okay, your eyes hate that. Let’s break it up.

D Block Winner:

It’s time to leave subtlety’s curse behind. Confused shouting is to cryptid-chases as discretion is to valor.

If you’re not ready to watch Wild Bill challenge no-one to a fight and lose, we don’t know what to tell you.

Alright, we’re down to four finalists. I’ve put together a simple eight-round system. Send your votes to–

Wait, there’s one more. Gmail likes to play pranks, like burying bills and usable search. Let’s see our straggler.

Ah.

Some people don’t respect the law, their peers, or the rights of bipeds. They tend to do well.

Our one rule? Don’t catch a cryptid. Then Adrienne threw this in:

CAUTION: CIA DEMONS DO NOT CLICK


CONCLUSIVE BIGFEETS VIDEO PROOF

 

Does rule of law mean nothing? Do cheaters always win? Is Menendez just the guy that got caught? Don’t answer that. This is what nerds mean when they say sequential art. Adrienne is a dark age’s ruler, and the first BIGFEETS Design-A-Trap Design Contest winner!

Thank you for entering, and bringing heat. We hope you enjoyed the results, because you made them. The party continues on BIGFEETS, where joy fills each cryptidless minute.

Categories
LEARNING DAY

Puppet Week: Curt Hiss the Drug Free Beatboxing Snake 🌭

It’s the 1980s. You want to make movies but you don’t have the budget, cast, location, or talent. There’s only one avenue left for you: Drug education. You could really feel the frustrated creative mind behind every afterschool special that needed 47 minutes and an alien costume just to tell kids not to die behind a dumpster. These directors wanted to be more than this, they didn’t deserve to be more than this. One of them would be more than this.

If there’s one thing children respect, it is the sock puppet. The brainchild of Wayne Owens and Magnolia Productions, this is Curt-Hiss the Drug Free Beat-Boxing Snake’s first video, 1987’s Curt Hiss: America’s Friend, Pusher’s Enemy. It is an immediate eyeball curse. Filthy, piss yellow, the distorted, uneven font placement, the grainy cover image – this is what shooting heroin between your toes would look like, if it was boxed media. Ironic? I don’t know, and I will not look up the definition.

The first Curt Hiss outing starts off tame, but it’s important we start here to understand the motifs of Wayne Owens’ later work. He is an auteur, or something that shares most of the letters with it. America’s Friend, Pusher’s Enemy opens with Curt bullying his little brother, who insists Curt should be above this kind of “kid’s stuff.” Set the clock: How long until he’s slamming hooch in the gutter? Stop the clock.

Five seconds. We are five seconds in. Toy commercials have proven that eight year-olds respond best when you paint your message on the front of a truck and hit them with it. When you’ve only got twenty minutes of runtime and a dirty foot covering to snatch an entire generation from the street horse’s deadly mouth, you do what you can. There’s a reason nobody sets the table at an Arby’s.

Anyway, here’s the Grim Reaper.

We are six seconds in.

Curt’s passed out when he hears the whisper of the Reaper on the wind. It snaps him awake, but he can’t find the source. His first thought should be “death’s voice sounds sweet here, on the shores of oblivion.” Instead it’s “nobody’s there, good! Now I won’t have to share… THIS.”

Hey Wayne Owens, if we’re not supposed to think drugs are cool, maybe don’t give your sock puppet the sweetest weed flourish I’ve ever seen. Curt Hiss effortlessly spins a joint into his mouth using his tail, then rips it to the base in two monster drags. If Willy Nelson saw this he would laugh, take the sock off his hand, and say “but seriously thanks for coming out tonight, Tampa, here’s Mamma’s Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up To Be Cowboys.”

Curt coughs. He coughs again. He turns it into beatboxing. This rules, actually. This is the one skit you don’t skip on an MF DOOM album. Then he starts spittin’ pure venom. That’s a hip hop snake joke. Please leave my article.

I read that shit in Danny Brown’s voice, every time. Any children on the fence about drugs have already fled the gymnasium to find Big Ron’s IROC in the parking lot. I have a theory that this is technically the start of the G-Funk era and I will only need $300,000 in grant money to prove it.

Curt isn’t done carpet-bombing his own mission: He tells kids they can buy drugs anywhere if they know what to ask for, tells them what to ask for, assures them it’s easy and cheap, and that they can get the money from mom’s purse! Curt Hiss literally cannot get any cooler-

Okay, sunglasses and a skull shirt, now he can’t get any-

You know the way Prince kind of fingerbangs his guitar when he’s really on fire? That’s Curt Hiss and smoking joints. His friend, Floaty the unspecified furball, starts to ask if he can try some drugs but Curt has already teleported behind him like Vegeta and his tail is swooping in with a joint like the Goku you shouldn’t have taken your eyes off of. Curt ambush shotguns Floaty’s lungs and laughs when he can’t handle it. I don’t know whose older brother this is based on, but I bet his band sucks and his van smells like pussy.

We burned a lot of film on Curt Hiss contact juggling spliffs, so that doesn’t leave a lot of runtime for character development.

In the same sentence Curt is informed that his little brother was selling drugs, sold drugs to an undercover cop, was arrested, is in jail, and has killed himself in jail. Curt responds to this the only way you can: he does not.

A slippery voice on the wind makes grave promises. “Curt Hiss,” the Grim Reaper croons, “I will see you soon.

No, Death. That’s not “soon.” Curt’s little brother speedran drugs in about two minutes. He clipped through marijuana and got inertia-launched straight into a jailhouse suicide. Curt’s not dead yet, he just likes drugs a little more. I know people who smoked their first joint, segued to meth, clinically died twice, had a kid, segued to Jesus, got really into American Folk music, segued out of Jesus, then opened an artisanal cupcake shop with a life partner who’s a gender they did not expect, and all in under ten years. Curt hasn’t even changed his shirt. A decade is a lifetime, especially to somebody who hasn’t lived one yet. I’ll never understand why Wayne Owens thought he needed a 10 year time jump to sell these stakes. Especially since Officer Patrick runs on-screen to once again tell Curt every consequence in one breath.

Curt’s mother facetanked a child’s prison hanging and 10 years of her sock puppet son getting crusty for crack, but she dies now and it must be because of a broken heart? No, this isn’t an English moor. Cholesterol is its own tragedy and it can be prevented if you’ll only watch this educational video starring OranguTony, the A Capella Ape.

This is the tragedy it takes for Curt to get clean. The Grim Reaper shrieks to the sky in frustration because he’s been big-deathing this snake for a decade and never got to little-death himself, and Curt becomes an anti-drug Crusader. He gives a stump speech while Floaty and Officer Patrick hum “America, the Beautiful.” He tries to rap again but like every artist who finds Jesus, he’s lost his flow.

Somebody thought the best way to reach at-risk youth was a beatboxing sock puppet who owned neither boots nor cats, they accidentally taught an entire elementary school that drugs kick ass for at least ten years, then panicked and hit the America button when they didn’t have an ending. This is enough to earn your Hot Dog Media badge. But this is Puppet Week, and we’re only getting started. The one thing Curt Hiss: America’s Friend, Pusher’s Enemy actually accomplished was teaching Wayne Owens to dream big. He no longer wanted to be the McGruff of sock puppets. He wanted to be the Martin Scorcese of sock puppets. Hence the sequel…

With triple the budget ($75) and a hundred times the ambition, 1988’s When Will We Learn Who to Trust is an action packed crime thriller that teaches children ages 5-8 the complex societal damage of narcotics as a business. It’s Michael Mann for kids who still have pictures on their underwear.

When Will We Learn Who to Trust opens on a news story about the criminal trial of The Mongoose, a notorious drug kingpin. That’s an action movie trope. If the first scene is a reporter talking about some pivotal impending conviction, you’re about to see a disillusioned Jean Claude Van Damme’s ass. He’s going to wake up in a scummy apartment and slip his briefs on, pour whiskey into his coffee, then look meaningfully at a framed photo of a smiling woman in a sweater before strapping on his holster for another pointless day in pursuit of justice he won’t find.

This trial all hinges on a single testimony, but I’ll let Officer Patrick explain.

All The Mongoose has to do is take out one witness and he’ll walk away scot-free because the law is helpless in the face of corruption. Actually, let’s all take out our activity books and write down “helpless in the face of corruption” to practice our cursive. Remember that a lowercase S is like a little Sailboat Sailing through the word!

The Mongoose’s high-powered defense attorney, Penelope, is a sexy lady snake who shares a murky romantic past with Curt Hiss. After all these years, the chemistry is still there – but now they’re on opposite sides of the law. If you guessed that it’s time for a sock puppet to sing a rock ballad about choosing between the love of a good snake and vigilante justice, no you didn’t.

Officer Patrick shatters this dreamy serenade: It’s their star witness! The Mongoose got to them, they’re too scared to testify now. He laments that they relied too heavily on witness testimony – they should’ve had more on The Mongoose before going to trial. His next line really sells the existential despair that a good cop goes through, trying to navigate this failing bureaucratic quagmire we call “the law.”

Hey, you know who’s not bound by the inadequate laws of man? Snakes! And socks. Either way Curt Hiss is in the clear and our society needs vigilante puppets like him just to balance the scales. When a criminal slips through the cracks in the bottom of the washing machine that is our legal system, it will take one lone sock to catch him.

Penelope motions for dismissal, and without a star witness, the judge grants it. The Mongoose walks free. If you guessed it’s time for a drug-dealing puppet to sing a whimsical duet about mistrials with a tap-dancing Grim Reaper, holy shit. What are the odds?

We all know what happens next. Curt Hiss opens the storage unit he thought he’d closed forever. He blows dust off his trusty shotgun. He puts on his sunglasses, he whips a faded tarp off a neglected Harley and it coughs black exhaust as he burns ass down the PCH to a fateful confrontation he does not expect to walk away from. Not this time.

No, he goes to talk to his congressman. We’re slow playing it! We have to build up Curt Hiss the Drug Free Beat-Boxing Snake’s disillusionment with the established system so the audience understands his desperation. This is vital for his character arc. I’m not kidding, it only sounds sarcastic because he’s a fucking sock.

The congresspuppet tells Curt he only listens to polls, letters, and phone calls from his constituents, and he receives very few letters demanding tougher drug laws. You might recognize this as exactly how democracy is supposed to work, but Curt Hiss thinks this is the most vile kind of bullshit. It’s this craven subservience to Big Voter that finally pushes Curt over the line into vigilantism.

The Mongoose is planning a major drug deal tonight, a fact Curt hears from Floaty, which makes Floaty the minority CI in this 1988 cop thriller, so expect him to be gunned down in the third act while Curt whispers “now it’s personal.” They head to the drug warehouse, which is a hilarious child’s understanding of how drug deals work, but Officer Patrick beat them to it! Quick: What is Officer Patrick doing here? REMEMBER this is an educational video to teach very young children to obey the law!

If you guessed “planting drugs,” then you are a witch and will be burned as such.

Officer Patrick just hasn’t been the same since he got out to look for a shiny quarter, didn’t put the handbrake on, and his patrol car rolled over his head. He loudly announces to nobody “all I have to do is put these bags in the right place, then I can put the cuffs on Mister Mongoose!” He flops wildly about the alleyway before settling on the mailbox, then stops because he remembers that’s against the law. He stops again because breaking the law reminds him that laws exist. He forgot about laws!

If you guessed it’s time for a cop puppet to sing a Hall and Oates style yacht rock number about the incompetent American justice system forcing its police into corruption, that’s fucking crazy. It is fucking crazy that you guessed that. I’ll give you points for it, but I am going to confiscate your phone until this quiz is over.

Ah, but you did not guess how funny it would be to watch the little drug bags stapled to his puppet hands waggle in time with the choreography.

He’s just about to go through with it when he sees Curt and Floaty watching and decides that, no, this isn’t right. He loves the law. Almost as much as he hates people witnessing his crimes. They all decide to petition the DA for a warrant for a sting operation, and teachers – this is the part where you pause the tape and explain sting operations, warrants, and district attorneys to your second grade class. Pay special attention to any children who look like they’re following along: those are narcs. Check the copyright notice before you play Watership Down on hangover day or you’ll spend next summer break getting a cobweb tattoo from a guy named White Fred.

Penelope catches the whole crew at the worst possible moment, with bags full of cocaine in the alleyway beside her client’s drug warehouse. She’s so offended by this betrayal she turns on Curt-

Holy shit. That’s racially coded, right? That is, at best, an Uncle Ruckus situation. It has to be. I’d worry about reading adult meaning into a kid’s video but the very next scene is The Mongoose tricking Penelope into drug muling.

It’s crazy these are the stakes in a children’s puppet show. He might as well be convincing her to swallow knotted condoms as a miracle weightloss solution. She walks in on him planting the drugs in her briefcase and freaks out, so The Mongoose calls his weird, mute, creepy, unidentifiable henchpuppet to bind and gag her in total silence. It’s a Pulp Fiction moment. This is Curt Hiss’s boxed gimp.

The Mongoose plants a bomb next to Penelope and leaves this whole elaborate murder as a diversion for the cops while the real deal goes down, which you might recognize as the plot of The Dark Knight. In a 1988 anti-drug puppet show. That’s where Christopher Nolan got the idea, and I only need $300,000 in lawyer fees to prove it in court.

I’m not a complicated man. Something about the simplicity of this bound and gagged sock staring grimly at a crude little bomb just cracks me up.

If you guessed it’s time for a snake puppet to sing a broken ballad about how she wished she found love instead of explosions, well I tricked you. She’s gagged. She can’t sing at all, sucke-

Shit, you are incredible at this.

Penelope weaves her feelings for Curt seamlessly into a slow jam about how much she also doesn’t like dynamite. It’s a moving, beautiful moment that would make Andrew Lloyd Webber proud, because he was also a fucking maniac. Come at me, theater nerds. I have the Cats PSAs.

Elsewhere, The Mongoose has captured Floaty and yep, he is going to die. He’s tied to an anchor and about to be tossed into the bay. Snitches meet fishes. I guess the puppet drowning noises didn’t focus test well with the Osh Kosh demographic, because Curt saves him. And now for my second favorite line ever uttered by a sock:

Curt makes it back to the warehouse just in time to save Penelope – he doesn’t know how to defuse bombs or untie knots so he just grabs the bomb with his puppet arms, which is his mouth, and runs to the window-

Hurling it into the river seconds before it explodes. There is an underwater bomb explosion written into this anti-drug sock puppet script! It’s not shown, because $75 doesn’t buy a lot of firecrackers, but it’s part of the story!

Now Penelope testifies against her own client, and The Mongoose is booked for assault, possession, and trafficking, all new words you’re going to have to explain to children who still believe in Santa Claus. “See, a RICO charge is what they got Santa with when he tried to say it was his elves who stole those blueprints from Nintendo. Can you say RICO? That’s right, just like our dog’s name!”

Curt and Floaty vow to never relent in the fight, while Officer Patrick looks directly to the camera and yells, “I WISH EVERYONE WAS AS ACTIVE IN CLEANING UP THE DRUG PROBLEM AS YOU ARE!” If any child had ever actually seen this video, Magnolia Productions would be liable in the gangland shooting deaths of countless heroic third graders.

It’s not over! The Mongoose sneers that he’ll just get out on a technicality, because if there’s one message we’re here to sell to the kids on, it’s that the law simply does not work. Penelope has an idea: Politicians can change the laws. You know who’d be a perfect politician? Her vigilante boyfriend! Curt nods and turns to the camera to directly threaten all sitting congressmen.

True to form, Curt’s inept congresspuppet still won’t take action…

Until he’s buried in letters Curt and Penelope solicited! Haha now that chump has to listen to the will of his voters, like he always wanted.

We live in an era where some of our representatives literally tried to lynch the Vice President because he suggested abiding by the results of an election. They didn’t even lose their jobs. And Curt Hiss is pissed off it took a letter writing campaign to affect meaningful change? Never forget what we lost, kids – actually, let’s open our activity books and count them! 1, 2, 3 Constitutional rights! What comes after three? No, not revolution. It’s four!

If you guessed it’s time for a sock puppet to aggressively rap War on Drugs scare propaganda from a pulpit in front of the American flag, you get no points. That was everything in 1988.

I’m pumped. I’m ready to crash a speedboat into a mansion and shoot everybody wearing loafers without socks. But hold on, the first Curt Hiss was an anti-drug film. It wasn’t very effective, but that’s what it was: Curt got addicted to drugs, his life went to hell, he suffered, and turned it all around when he realized clean living was the better way. That didn’t happen in this movie. In fact, nobody used drugs at all. Nobody got addicted, suffered, cleaned up, none of it. The only conflict in this story came from our heroes butting up against the inept American legal system in their pursuit of a drug kingpin. I guess what we’ve learned today is that, from frustrated police officers, to naive attorneys, to noble snake citizens who have simply had enough, the law only works when you take it into your own hands. Death to drug dealers, death to the politicians who enable them, death to the principal!

This article was brought to you by our fine sponsor and Hot Dog Supreme: TanTan, the Asbestos Free Mouth-Harping Cassowary.

Categories
LEARNING DAY

Puppet Week: The Faces of Muppet Tim Curry 🌭

As we all know, Muppets are the only acceptable puppets. They are our soft friends who are genuinely funny and would never touch us with their weird little felt hands without our permission. That’s right, I don’t want to get felt up by a Muppet, waka waka! (Note to editor: if you cut this joke I will quit the website on principle). When a human enters the world of The Muppets, they typically play the role of a straight man, confused, enraged, or overjoyed by the Muppets’ silly antics. There is one person who refused to be relegated to that boring role in a Muppet movie– Muppet made living flesh, Timothy James Curry.

In my opinion, there are two standout performances by humans in the Muppet universe. First was, of course, Michael Caine in The Muppet Christmas Carol, giving a completely straight Oscar-worthy performance alongside his co-star, a talking rat. But second, and moreso, was Tim Curry out Muppeting every other Muppet in Muppet Treasure Island. This man was deeper inside the Muppets than any puppeteer. He was out there asking Kermit what he felt his character motives were, and when his puppeteer tried to answer, he said, “Shut the fuck up. I’m talking to KERMIT.”

I firmly believe that Tim Curry method acted this role, not as Long John Silver, the pirate, but as a member of the Muppets portraying Long John Silver, only eating food prepared by the Swedish Chef, playing triangle for Dr. Teeth And The Electric Mayhem on the weekends, having a tawdry on-set affair with Camilla the chicken right in front of Gonzo. It’s the only way he could have possibly achieved the level of human-to-Muppet transformation we see in this film. Tell me, could a normal human make this face? I rate it five out of five Tim Curry’s.

Don’t worry he’s not unhinging his jaw like an anaconda to attempt to eat Jim Hawkins. This is just a throwaway moment in a song about how fun it is to be a pirate where he gives a hearty Tim Curry “HA HA!”. It looks like the director said to pretend to be a baby bird waiting for food. No one was directing him, though! They couldn’t; he would never allow that. This is just Tim Curry being Tim Curry.

I don’t know if any actor has ever been better cast in any film. Only Tim Curry could bring the manic energy necessary to this role. Long John Silver is a father figure, but he’s insane. He’s a pirate but kind of a chill guy, but he’s also got a big knife. There are so many layers. His very first line in this Muppet movie is, “What have we here? Stowaways? I’m afraid we SHISHKABOB and BARBECUE stowaways on this ship!” Then he brandishes a knife at a child and a puppet named Rizzo. It’s terrifying. The first time I saw it I was certain he was going to eat that puppet! “Oh no, is this a movie about a man cannibalizing the Muppets?” I asked my Father—a solid Four Tim Currys.

The intensity of Long John Silver, the bloodthirsty pirate, is evident even when Curry is masquerading as a friendly ship cook. When Kermit orders Long John Silver to get rid of all of the alcohol on the ship, he agrees right away, but for half a second, Tim Curry makes the exact face of a drag queen holding back something really mean she wants to say about your outfit. It’s subtle but painful. In real life, Kermit would never recover from this face. It would haunt him on his deathbed. Three and a half Currys.

Once Long John Silver is outed as a pirate, he adds a pirate hat to his outfit, and his faces become as elaborate as his gold embossed costume. When he smiles at Jim Hawkins, it looks like he’s trying to show us every single tooth in his mouth. Of course, Tim Curry is a noted graduate of the wide-eyes-open-mouth school of acting. It’s the number one acting school for people who own multiple capes. I give this joyous man four Tim Currys.

Now, I’m sure your number one question about working with the Muppets is whether or not it’s difficult to do stunts alongside a co-star with no bones. Tim Curry sword fights Kermit The Frog in this movie, and when Kermit whips out that sword, he looks like he’s never seen anything more impressive in his entire life. And he probably saw Kermit ride a bike in The Muppet Movie. His look of shock, betrayal, and awe gets a full five Tim Currys. No man has ever been more mesmerized by a Muppet.

Another thing Tim Curry brings to this movie that I don’t think any other actor could is his ability to turn a murder threat into a silly, fun time. Treasure Island is probably the most murder-filled story the Muppets have ever covered. While I would love to see a Reservoir Muppets or a Great Muppet Hellraiser, Treasure Island is probably the only Muppet movie we’re going to get where someone pulls a gun on Miss Piggy.

Luckily, it’s our good friend Tim Curry holding that gun, so it’s not that upsetting. He knows how to make the perfect face that says I’m super cranky but not cranky enough to murder America’s most beloved karate pig. That’s a five out of five Tim Curry face if I’ve ever seen one.

Does he have more muscles in his face than the average person? They say some actors can express so much with so little, but Tim Curry somehow expresses so much with so much. You might be wondering if this entire movie is just close ups of Tim Curry’s face, and yeah, that’s a lot of it, and also, it rules. If you’ve got a problem with that, you can take it up with this surprised Tim Curry face, which I give six out of five Tim Currys.

There may not even be any other Muppets in this movie. They were all so upstaged by our Muppet king, nay, Muppet god, Tim Curry, that they all quit. The movie is just Tim Curry now. The article is just Tim Curry now, and that’s all it needs to be. HA HA! Twelve out of five Tim Currys because who’s going to stop me?

The fact that this man won no awards at all for this movie is frankly as insane as the character he plays in it. When Muppet Treasure Island debuted, Roger Ebert said, “It isn’t easy, co-starring with a Muppet, as actors as talented as Orson Welles and Michael Caine have discovered over the years, but Curry’s strategy is to out-act and out-bluster them, and mostly he succeeds.” Ebert only gave the movie two and a half stars overall, but he called out Tim Curry’s performance specifically because he saw it for the work of genius it was. It’s not Tim Curry’s fault he couldn’t elevate the other Muppets to his level. Forty-four Tim Currys out of five.

How is it this man can play a character I mainly associate with a fast food restaurant that always upsets my tummy and yet I go there once a year as if I’ve been cursed by an evil fishstick, and I still love that character so much? That’s the power of the ultimate Muppet. Infinite Tim Currys.

This article was brought to you by our fine sponsor and Hot Dog Supreme: Bim Talzer, who is the mouth slightly ajar eyes wide Tim Curry face of people.

Categories
LEARNING DAY

Learning Day: Pop & Unlock the Power Within

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