Category: LEARNING DAY

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LEARNING DAY

Learning Day: Van-Pires 🌭

You may recall that the previously-discussed Snailiens at some point came under the ownership of a company called Abrams Gentile Entertainment. Founded in 1986 by John Gentile, Anthony Gentile, and Marty Abrams, AGE was a toy and media company that was the successor to the Mego Corporation. They created the Power Glove, the Visionaries, and a number of other children’s properties throughout the ’90s and 2000s. But one of these properties was uniquely deranged: Van-Pires. The brainchild of founders John and Anthony Gentile, Van-Pires is more than just a shitty pun tossed out during a late-night office coke sesh that became a live action/CGI hybrid Power Rangers cash-in. Van-Pires intertwines a tale of rock music tragedy, some challenging intergenerational/interspecies romance, and a mystery that remains unsolved to this day.

So what the fuck is Van-Pires? It’s a tale as old as time, really. Four car-obsessed teens who hang out in a junkyard run by a British hippie witness a meteor crash into a pile of trash, from which rise living cars who feast on the gasoline of innocent vehicles. Those teens are transformed into similar creatures themselves, looking kind of like a child made it halfway through converting an Optimus Prime and got bored. Our heroes devote themselves to waging war against the automotive forces of evil, which include a maniacal ice cream truck and a killer lady ambulance. Straightforward stuff.

Our main cast is composed of Axle, The Leader; Nuke, The Dork; Rev, The Girl; and Snap (yes, he’s called Snap), the Black One. Their mentor, the aforementioned British hippie, is named Van He’ll Sing. Why? Because, uh, it’s kind of a car thing, but also kind of a Dracula thing? In the first episode, Van explains that he got his name when he was a roadie for The Rolling Stones and Mick Jagger fell ill, leading Mick to point to him and say “he’ll sing,” which is an insanely tortured explanation for a joke that barely qualifies as comedy. Van hates MTV because “you don’t watch music, man” and in the first episode tells the teenage children he hangs out with, “I’ve got everything you need in the van, man!” He almost certainly moved to the US because he was on the sex offenders list in England.

If you thought they exhausted their car puns on the main cast, don’t worry, because— fuck, I started doing it now! Exhaust is a car thing! Fuck!

As I was saying, the title “Van-Pires” doesn’t refer to the protagonists. It in fact describes their foes, the mythical car mutants who live at the center of an underground network of highways. They are led by Tracula, a bargain bin Megabyte whose goons are named things like “Cardaver” and “Automaniac.” At one point he even creates a son named “Alucart,” which I am begrudgingly forced to admit is actually a pretty good bit.

Tracula’s motivation is to take over the world or something, but in the meantime he and his coven of NOSferatu roam about at night, biting and sucking the gas out of cars and kind of making them deflate in the process. It looks extremely weird, and it’s framed as a serious threat to humanity. Like their bloodsucking namesakes, the Van-Pires also can’t go out during the day.

Among Tracula’s minions are an animate toaster and toilet, who the meteor apparently also brought to life. In any other show, these would be the comic relief characters, saying things like “you nincom-poop!” and “stop loafing around!” And those remarks might approach something like funny if literally every character in the show didn’t talk like this. I’m not kidding. This is a show where no one gives a second thought to a faceless toilet crawling out of a junk pile and joining a conversation.

Listening to the dialogue in Van-Pires is like getting beaten in the head with a socket wrench. The car puns are almost literally every line. Characters say things like “Snap’s got the roadmap,” and “we can’t just idle forever!” At one point, someone says “we got to keep it real” and another replies “you mean keep it wheel!” The people who wrote this dialogue had seemingly never met or even ever been a teen.

Speaking of the teens, what’s kind of interesting about Van-Pires is that the protagonists are effectively Van-Pires themselves. However, they can transform to and from their mutant car forms by leaping into their “carfins.” And if you were hoping for any kind of tortured drama over their need to drink the blood of other vehicles in order to fuel their fight against evil, well, you’re asking for a lot from a show that was created by two business majors with the express intention of getting some of that Saban-Levy money. The “Motor-Vaters,” as they’re dubbed by Van He’ll Sing in the first episode, actually go to gas stations, fill themselves up at a pump, and then leave cash behind. They won’t even steal gas, that’s how lame these kids are.

You might think that these teens would be horrified by the prospect of becoming deformed automotive gas-guzzlers, but in fact they’re pretty jazzed about it. See, despite their obsession with motor vehicles, none of them are old enough to have a car of their own — but there’s no law that says a teen transmogrified into a car monster by a magic meteor can’t drive! Van He’ll Sing, too, is fucking stoked out of his weed-addled mind that the kids he spends every evening hanging out with are freakish superheroes now.

Anyway, in the first episode the Motor-Vaters meet and do battle with the Van-Pires, and the limits of the cut-rate CGI become apparent immediately. You know how when you go back and watch a show like ReBoot or play an old video game, it looks way worse than you remember? That’s how Van-Pires looked when it aired.

But not to be outdone by the visuals, the writing really pushes the envelope too. Tracula confronts Axle and does what any reasonable ’90s villain would do: gives him a “we’re not so different” speech and asks him and his fellow teens to join his army of mutant car freaks. I reproduce the dialogue that follows here for posterity:

AXLE: Sorry, motor-mouth! No drinking while driving!

TRACULA: Says who?

AXLE: Says me!

[they fight while flying, which is apparently a thing that godless car vampires created by a magical meteor can do]

TRACULA [about to smash Axle into the ground]: If you don’t stand for something, you’ll fall for anything.

Later in the first episode, Van He’ll Sing repeats this last line to the teens when he dubs them the Motor-Vaters. Was this intentional? Did the writers just not notice? It’s impossible to know.

There were thirteen episodes in all of Van-Pires, and I have to be honest here: I only made it through three of them before I wanted to join Tracula’s crusade against humanity. In episode two, the Motor-Vaters encounter their musical idols, the real-life hair metal band “Starr.” Remember, this was 1997. It would have made more sense for these kids to be obsessed with a grunge band or a rapper, but the creators of Van-Pires were probably too coked out to notice it wasn’t the 1980s anymore.

But Starr was not the only musical act associated with Van-Pires. None other than John Entwistle, bassist for The Who, composed much of the show’s soundtrack. Yes, The Ox himself was involved in this trainwreck. How did this happen? I’m not sure. Maybe the Gentiles had some dirt on him, or maybe he just needed the money.

Apparently, in order to fulfill his contract to write thirteen tracks and a theme song for the show, he resorted to digging into his old demos. One of those songs, “Bogey Man,” was originally penned for the 1978 The Who album Who Are You, but the band thought its kazoo solo was “too silly.” There’s a lesson here — never throw away your shitty first drafts, because you might be able to recycle them twenty years later for a TV show about teenage car vampires.

Do you want to know the really tragic thing about all of this, though? Entwistle released an album called Music from Van-Pires in 2000, featuring “Bogey Man” and the other songs he produced for the show. It was the last album he ever released, as he died in 2002 from a cocaine-induced heart attack after going to bed with a stripper at the Hard Rock Hotel in Paradise, Nevada. He was only 57 years old, but already had severe heart disease from smoking 20 cigarettes a day.

Entwistle’s involvement in Van-Pires may have gone beyond recording the show’s soundtrack. See, there’s a weird little mystery connected to this unassuming and terrible kids’ show. The opening credits tell us who plays each of the Motor-Vators — and fun fact here, the guy who played Snap is apparently friends with Uwe Boll and has been in a couple of his movies — but one character gets a different treatment. Van He’ll Sing is billed as being played by “himself.” This is a deranged choice for a character who is ostensibly a human man rather than like, a talking dinosaur or something, and it’s spawned a number of theories about the identity of the car-loving druggie Brit.

For a time, some Van-Pires fans (Fan-Pires?) seemed to believe that Van was played by the prolific Gary Oldman. And while they do kind of look similar, the theory doesn’t hold up to scrutiny. Why would Oldman be cast in such a lemon, and if he were, why wouldn’t they advertise his involvement? I suppose it’s possible that he threatened to sue when he saw how bad the final product looked, but I have another theory.

I propose that Van He’ll Sing was in fact played by John Entwistle. Perhaps in a desperate bid to buy more time to put together the soundtrack he drunkenly agreed to compose, he volunteered to don the gag wig and glasses of the Motor-Vaters’ mentor. He demanded, however, that the producers not name him in the credits, and faked a terrible English accent in order to throw viewers off the scent. The perfect crime!

Sadly, we may never know who played Van He’ll Sing, because in all likelihood, I am the only person who actually cares. I emailed Van-Pires creator John Gentile, inquiring as to the identity of the actor, but my email was never delivered. John Gentile may no longer even be alive. It’s in fact possible that anyone who knows the truth may have taken it to the grave.

And the grave is, of course, where Van-Pires belongs. Did I mention there’s an episode where Tracula hypnotizes and attempts to marry the 15 year old girl car monster? She calls him “master” and he replies “that’s a good girl” and it made me want to crawl out of my skin. At that moment, I wished to shed my fleshy mortal form and become a pure machine of steel and oil, one who roams the streets night after night in pursuit of the fuel of the innocent, caring nothing for the works of man. In conclusion, Van-Pires sucks and it gave me gas. Did I mention that the Motor-Vaters literally get gas when they turn back into humans? I have to go.

…
This article was brought to you by our fine sponsor and Hot Dog Supreme: Sarcophski, who was not provably the Van-Pire called Chryslayer.

Categories
LEARNING DAY

Learning Day: The Scam Cookbooks of Morishige Shunsen 🌭

As you know, 1900HOTDOG is a website about food (such as hot dogs). This is a food website. So like usual, like always, I’m back with another roundup of the hottest new cookbooks. This week I went to a leading online bookseller known for its ethics and well-curated stock to review three new cookbooks for all you food website cookbook review fans: Kanye West Cookbook by Morishige Shunsen, Kate Middleton Cookbook by Morishige Shunsen, and Sailor Moon CookBook by Morishige Shunsen.

Who is Morishige Shunsen? I’ll tell you who: he is the author name on Amazon listings for 29 cookbooks. He is not online otherwise. Googling “Morishige Shunsen” leads me to a “Morishige” in the Japanese manga art world and a “Shunsen” in past Japanese fine art. Wow! Morishige Shunsen is one lucky guy to have a name made of two separate famous names. Two names a Japanese art fan could know, and combine if they wanted to. Wow: Morishige Shunsen sure is a lucky, normal, real guy, who uses Amazon dot com to sell his cookbooks. Cookbooks with full titles like Kate Middleton Cookbook: 20 Fantastic Recipes For The Family Kate Middleton Perfect Homemade.

Obviously we all agree Morishige Shunsen is real. Just like we agree I am a prolific cookbook reviewer. That statement is as real as Morishige Shunsen. However, let’s goof around with a thought experiment. Perhaps Morishige Shunsen is less of a Morishige Shunsen and more of a “Morishige Shunsen”. Less of a Scam Likely and more of a Scam Definitely. Less of a Real Guy With Japanese Heritage and more of a Guy Incognippon. Okay: thought experiment complete. Ha! That sure was a kooky idea we bandied about. We all know Morishige Shunsen does not exist online, beyond 29 Amazon listings for cookbooks, because Morishige Shunsen is about the work. Morishige Shunsen is not a showboat. Morishige Shunsen is not one of these “celebrity chefs” doing image-driven fakery like making foodie content, and running a restaurant, and existing. Morishige Shunsen is a food expert, and a corporeal form-haver, focused on the hard work of publishing cookbooks. Cookbooks like Kanye West Cookbook: Delicious And Totally Compliant Recipes Kanye West Every Day. Or his other book, Kanye West Cookbook: 20 Recipes Recreated From Your Favorite Kanye West You Will Ever Want To Make. Or his other other book, Kanye West Cookbook: 20 Fantastic Recipes For The Family Kanye West Easy To Learn The Basics.

Those are three separate Amazon dot com listings…and I’m kicking myself for not buying all three! They’re each so different!!! For example, the one I purchased has a cover photo of Kanye West. But as you see above, the second cover features A Picture Of Food. And the third cover features… hmm. It features a picture of A Different Black Guy.

You only get that breadth of covers from Morishige Shunsen. Other lesser authors settle for one approach. They either pay significant prices to license images and names, or they risk legal ramifications by stealing those images and names, or they do not use celebrity images and names at all. Morishige Shunsen serves up a smorgasbord of all three strategies. Then Morishige Shunsen tops that off with a racist face-blindness garnish. It’s the racism version of the publishing version of The Salt Bae Maneuver. That kind of flair makes Morishige Shunsen stand out. Professionally, Morishige Shunsen must stand out! Why? Morishige Shunsen is up against many other authors of Kanye West cookbooks. Why? Because Kanye West is constantly sharing and transmitting his food wisdom to self-published Internet cookbook writers. We all know the musician, designer, name changer, National Socialist, and name rememberer Kan“Ye” West spends most of his time co-crafting food recipes. If you could see his Google Calendar, you’d see nothing but events like “write up my BBQ Yumburgers” and “try serving fish WITH fries??” and “send my Rustic Rye Bread flour ratios to my personal friend Morishige Shunsen.”

That’s the “Table Of Content” for Morishige Shunsen’s Kanye West book. “Table Of Content” is a regular thing to call that. “Content”, singular, is the word Morishige Shunsen uses, for good reasons, and not because his recipes are stolen from food blogs (i.e. stolen Content). After Morishige tables his content, he goes straight into plain instructions and medium-res photos for all twenty recipes. Finally: a Kanye West cookbook that doesn’t get bogged down with any mentions of Kanye West. After those recipes, you’ll find several handy and on-purpose blank pages, followed by a robust description of where and when the book was published. That’s the format of all three books – right down to that final page, informing me that these three books were published in wildly different regions of a country he sometimes calls “USA” and other times calls “United States.” Wow: it seems like it would be hard for me to visit Morishige Shunsen! If he’s always jetting off to a new publication location, you can’t find him to thank him, let alone serve him legal paperwork.

Are these books exactly the same? No! Across all the sixty recipes in these three cookbooks, I did not find one repeat. You can see for yourself! I’ll show you Morishige Shunsen’s other Tables Of Content Singular. They’re a fascinating window into three chefs Morishige Shunsen knows deeply. As you saw above, Kanye West And/Or Other Black Guy is a broadly American chef. Morishige Shunsen teaches us that Chef Kanye West has eaten Doritos, and has heard of the concept of Mexican food. Wow: I almost feel like I’m learning too much about Kanye West! Meanwhile, the chef Sailor Moon is a character or franchise who cooks (humongous surprise incoming) Japanese cuisine.

Then we come to Kate Middleton. As you know, she is a fancy lady. After all, she is a Princess! A Princess of the country of… okay I’m looking closely at this book’s main cover images. According to Kate Middleton’s chef jacket, she is a Princess of Québec?

Well that settles it: Kate Middleton is French-Canadian. I wonder if she’ll ever become Québec’s Quéen. Also, quick thinksperiment: does Kate Middleton usually cook in Québec-themed clothing? Or is that an image from one of those make-work PR events Britain invented for their royals to do? Hmm. After a lot of thought, I’ve decided I trust Morishige Shunsen. He probably took a regular, representative picture of Le Princéss Kate Middleton du Qúébééééc, because Kate is so close with Morishige Shunsen. You can tell she had a major hand in this book, because the Table Of Content spread runs one picture of her, full-page, twice.

That’s a great picture, huh? You’d better think so. It is embedded in the background of every page of her entire cookbook:

I’m sure that’s a design choice Kate Middleton and Morishige Shunsen made together. Perhaps whilst hanging out in Kate’s duchy of Montreal, gettin’ creative with Stolen Adobe Software over a couple glasses of poutine. You can really feel Princess Kate in this cookbook – and not just because it looks like she’s trapped inside of every page. This cookbook makes a stock photo of shrimp risotto feel like Kate Middleton’s Phantom Zone. But no: she’s doing great, and loved contributing to this cookbook. Morishige Shunsen gets the best out of every collaborator. He helped the chefs Kanye West and Sailor Moon pursue a totally different style. Sure, they each wrote a twenty recipe cookbook, published in a softer-than-soft-cover, at a price of more than one U.S. dollar per recipe. Just like Kate! However, Kanye and Sailor’s books are so different. They don’t repeat a background picture of Kate Middleton. Instead, they are rich with one geometric shape, repeated over and over again, whenever there is page space Morishige Shunsen did not fill.

Such different personalities in those Kanye West and Sailor Moon cookbooks. Hey Hotdoggers: which Filler Shape Personality are you? Are you more of a Nested Blue Quadrilaterals? Or more of a Semicircles Mutually Pleasuring? Sound off in the comments!

Here’s where I start to have a few feelings all at once – and not just because we’re all digging what those semicircles are putting out there. As we’ve established, I am your longtime favorite cookbook reviewer for this food website. We all agree that’s a true thing about me, and you, and us. So as a cookbook reviewer, I’m here to celebrate the art of cookbooks. I’m not here to destroy the careers of very real cookbook writers like Morishige Shunsen. And I must admit I’ve reviewed a mere fraction of Morishige Shunsen’s oeuvre. I cherrypicked just one of his repeated collaborations with Kanye West, and Sailor Moon, and Québécois cuisinier Kate Meed-léh-tóhn. It also turns out I’m not the only one treating Morishige Shunsen this way. I found one of the few Amazon reviews for Morishige Shunsen’s range of 29 cookbooks, and it judges Morishige Shunsen by a single work:

Wow: give a guy a chance! Also: that second star is the kindest thing I’ve ever seen someone do online! Anyway: back to my failure. I painted Morishige Shunsen with a broad brush. I merely acquired three of his cookbooks. In my defense, three Morishige Shunsen cookbooks set me back $65.16 USD. That is meaningful money to me! My artist-owned podcast, which depends on listener support, and refuses to take ads from any company that’s creepy, is not exactly a Morishige Shunsen-esque money factory. I can’t afford to buy the Morishige Shunsen Omnibus, packed with however many recipes 29 cookbooks times 20 is. So I gave up on experiencing the full breadth of Morishige Shunsen. I’m stuck wondering if any recipes recur in Morishige Shunsen’s He Man Cookbook: 20 Recipes You Need To Know He Man You Will Ever Want To Make. I’ll never know which Marvel heroes Morishige Shunsen met when crafting Infinity War Cookbook: 20 Recipes You Need To Know Infinity War The Home Cook. And I’ll only ever enjoy the cover of Ink Master Cookbook: Easy Recipes For Families Ink Master Cooks, Eats, And Laughs Together. Only the richest Amazon users will gain the cooking secrets of Dave “Live Más” Navarro, and his two sidekicks he hired, and that time Morishige Shunsen snapped a photo of them cooking together wearing matching toques.

I assume Morishige Shunsen got that picture because of his social skills. Nobody is better at juggling awkward relationships. For example, we know Morishige Shunsen is the author of three Kanye West-ish cookbooks. But did you know Morishige Shunsen is also the author of Kardashian Cookbook: The Home Cook 20 Recipes To Know Kardashian Every Kitchen? As well as Kardashian Cookbook: Healthy Recipes To Enjoy Favorite Foods Kardashian Easy To Learn The Basics?! And also Kardashian Cookbook: More Than 20 Delectable Recipes Kardashian Wellness And Healing?!?! I can’t imagine the stress Morishige Shunsen has been under lately. He’s an inner-circle friend to both halves of a famous divorce. The emotional labor must be staggering. Yet Morishige Shunsen did what we’ve all come to expect from Morishige Shunsen: he showed up for his people, he made six cookbooks with them, and then he made three other cookbooks about a steampunk graphic novel called Lady Mechanika. I’ll never understand how he did that on top of comforting the whole West-Kardashian family, and writing Hunger Games Cookbook: The Home Cook 20 Recipes To Know Hunger Games Home Style Cookery, and also writing League Of Legends Cookbook: 20 Delicious Recipes To Get Started League Of Legends Inspired, Flexible Recipes.

We all agree: Morishige Shunsen is good. However, I am on the bad end of some financial hurt here. Moments before publishing this piece, I realized I needed to accept the $65.16 expense of these books, or else bill my editors/friends Brockway and Seanbaby for that sum. My dear Hotdogger: I chose a third option.

That’s right: I returned the books. I basically stole a heap of money that was my money originally. Such an act is an unforgivable betrayal in the cookbook community. So I’m afraid I must resign my post as Your Favorite Reviewer Of Professional Cookbooks. What happens to me next, I do not know. For now, I wander the lonely wilderness of finding something else to write about. Perhaps I will suffer the indignity of covering topics no one cares about. Such as baseball, or the actor Pierce Brosnan. If that hellish existence is fated, it is a fate I deserve, because I might’ve torpedoed the career of the striving, real, non-scammer Morishige Shunsen. Seriously: my Amazon return might ping somebody to look into this guy. My return would cause that if Amazon does any quality control whatsoever. Which they…don’t? Or do? I honestly don’t know. So I don’t know if the store pages I linked here will still be online when this publishes. No one can predict who will win the battle between Amazon dot com’s monolithic heartlessness and Morishige Shunsen’s relentless grift. But here’s what I do know: the passionate cooks Kanye West, Kate Middleton, and Sailor Moon Franchise will carry on cooking. They’re each best known for livening up the world’s dinner plates. And nobody knows that better than me (an iconic-yet-disgraced expert on cookbooks (which is a word that might be spelled “cook books”? With a space in the middle? Sean/Robert please give that a quick google before publishing.))

…

This article was brought to you by our fine sponsor and Hot Dog Supreme: Mickey Lowman, who is kind of the Oral Oysters of Angela Lansbury’s Erotic Foods for the Sexual Diner.

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LEARNING DAY

Learning Day: Become a Man of Confi-DANCE

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Categories
LEARNING DAY

Learning Day: The Ghostphone 🌭

Communion is a movie about jazz dancing with aliens, and hats. Hats for all occasions. Christopher Walken plays a character so insane that Christopher Walken thought it was a bit much. Christopher Walken stepped outside of himself for possibly the only time in his life and thought “WHOA, Christopher Walken,THIS is rid…iculous.” You probably read “dancing aliens,” and “self aware Christopher Walken,” and assumed Communion is a work of fiction. You are technically incorrect. It’s based on a true story, which happens to be a hilarious lie. Communion is the story of Whitley Strieber, UFO activist, spiritual idiot, semi-professional star lunatic and very professional liar. I don’t even think it’s true that he likes hats. This movie was based on his biographical book: Communion, A True Story.

“I bet this book is gonna be wild!” You, the Hot Dog enthusiast, say, knowing how this goes.

No. We’re not even going to open it.

Here’s the back.

Enhance.

How does one survive the afterlife? Is this a Flatliners thing, a club of morbid perverts edging death until they climax in the ghost plane? Just say that, Whitney, it’s 2023 it’s not even weird anymore. There’s a subreddit just for that fetish and a second subreddit just for calling that first subreddit ghost appropriation. Wait, is Afterlife Survivor an overwrought way of saying he died briefly but it didn’t take? That’s barely anything. Today we call that sleep apnea, fifty years ago we called it “just dad’s time.”

“Oh, I get it – the article’s about this other, way crazier book!” You say, recognizing a Hot Dog twist when you see one.

No. We’ll never mention it again.

Any time you see the letters “Dr.” in front of some spirit bullshit that means either hip hop legend Dr. Ghost’s new album sucks, or somebody’s got a fake degree and a briefcase full of magic crystals with your aunt’s name on them.

Actual PhD? Neurology? A… is that a real school? This can’t be the same person.

It’s the same person.

At the University of Arizona right now there is a Doctorate of Psychology from Harvard who’s 100% certain that ghosts are real and you can hang with them. Now, academics believe in all sorts of weird shit, it’s the premise of Ghostbusters and every Don DeLillo protagonist. UA likely keeps Dr. Gary Schwartz around because he’s really good at psychology. The Laboratory of Advances in Consciousness and Health is probably a respectable mental health research center and not some sort of reverse Flatliners ghost laboratory where they edge ghosts until they climax on the living plane.

The University of Arizona has a ghost laboratory. I guess maybe there’s… they could be studying why people believe in ghosts. Cultural shit. Spiritual Anthropology, if you’re trying to get laid. Yeah! That’s something that fits comfortably into the way I understand the world, it’s probably just that!

Holy shit, what is SoulPhone™? Surely the paranormal laboratory at the University of Arizona is not using university funding to build an actual telephone to call ghosts.

That’s exactly what they’re doing.

The current tuition at the University of Arizona for an in-state undergraduate is 12,000 dollars. For a four year degree, that comes out to nearly 50,000 dollars for an education. If you are currently or formerly a student at the University of Arizona, I want you to know that some of that 50,000 dollars went to making a smartphone for revenants.

Hold on. University funding is a complicated thing. Some rich alumnus wandered into the therapy wing raving about spirits and one elaborate farce involving bedsheets and projectors later, boom – you got the ghost department funded. They’re probably just doing the ghost phone on paper and really using those funds to scientifically prove once and for all that schizophrenics don’t like being poked or whatever.

Because that last paragraph sounded so reasonable, there’s no way you believed it. Good instincts, here’s the SoulSwitch™.

They built a ghost lightswitch that spirits can use to communicate with the living world in simple yes/no responses. The SoulSwitch uses some kind of plasma field bullshit and can respond to ten yes/no questions over a period of thirty minutes with a reported accuracy of 80%. To recap, there is an actual ghost laboratory at the University of Arizona working on a way to bootycall the hereafter and they have so far produced a button that takes half an hour to be only sort of right.

That’s just the first step! A proof of concept. See, the SoulSwitch™ is going to lead to the SoulKeyboard™ .

Twitter is already an infected snakepit and it’s full of only living racists. These guys want to actually take Twitter into hell. “Let’s see what Hitler RTs,” Gary Schwartz proposes to a packed board meeting, hoping to be fired. He almost hates the money he’s showered with in response.

But forget about sliding into the DMs of the dead, wait til you hear about SoulVoice™

I actually respect having a trademark based on pure gumption alone. These guys have 1/16th of a ouija board and they’re already dropping those TM $50s just in case a Soul Plane sequel beats them to the punch.

GHOST ZOOM.

They’re talking about how ghost zoom will allow webinars with deceased luminaries, like Leonardo Da Vinci is going to be doing a masterclass. If heaven exists and Da Vinci is in it, do you know what he’s doing? Plowing Mona Lisa. He might let you watch but you better burn $50 right now to grab SoulnlyFans™ or you’re getting shut out of the ghost porn boom.

This is so naive. Your boss already insists you telecommute with COVID, if these motherfuckers invent ghost zoom you’re going to be sitting in on earnings reports from hell. “Haha, isn’t that already hell?” You joke. Yes, but now the devil’s going to be shoving your entire grandma up your ass while Doug points out you spelled it “reciepts” on the PowerPoint again.

That’s a cute hypothetical. “Hey imagine what Tesla would say on ghost zoom!” Obviously SoulPhone™ is not honestly implying they are currently using a phantom light switch to play 20 questions with Nikola Tesla.

The University of Arizona is outsourcing labor to ghosts.

I’ll bite, who’s on this Ghost A-Team and follow-up question: can a van burnout in heaven?

This right here is a legitimate PhD from Harvard currently working on a ghost phone at a major American University, describing the spirit labor he is outsourcing from the netherrealm and still my first thought is “How are you getting Edison and Tesla to work together?” Thomas Edison killed an elephant just to fuck with Tesla. Wait. Do Elephants get ghosts? Let’s conference her in, really hash this whole thing out, address the elephant in the r- sorry, Mrs. Peanuts, that was insensitive.

Criticizing the poltergeist staffing of a paranormal laboratory trying to turn a lightswitch into ghost Zoom is probably missing the point a bit, but… what is with this team? What the fuck is Carl Sagan gonna do? He’s probably grumpy you ripped him from space to focus test a Magic 8-Ball. This is pure stunt casting. Where is Alexander Graham Bell? He was building an actual ghost phone when he died! He should at least be here so you can rub it in! If you’re just pulling names out of a hat, why isn’t Marilyn Monroe on this team? Macho Man Randy Savage. Michael Jackson, shoot for the moon.

Son of a bitch!

There is an obvious problem with claiming that Michael Jackson is interning from beyond the grave at your ghost laboratory. Okay, several problems. Several nesting problems that get deeper and more absurd with each doll that’s revealed. But let’s just talk about the ethics of letting Michael Jackson Zoom into your ghost lab from his laptop in heaven, despite the seriousness of the allegations against him when he was alive.

Jesus, what an absurd place we’ve wound up in this comedy article. We’ve gone so deep down the rabbit hole we’re worrying about employing undead potential sex criminals. That we’re even stressing about this minutia when it’s all predicated on “ghosts are real, and they telecommute” shows we’ve lost all sense of perspective.

Just like Dr. Gary Schwartz, who has a section rebutting that exact concern.

Good lord, he’s doubling down on a bad ghost hire so hard he’s accusing the actual living victims of trying to persecute a spectral pedophile. This is-

Do we need to start a ghost #MeToo?

#MeBoo

Categories
LEARNING DAY

Learning Day: The Bathroom Oscars 🌭

Kids these days… everyone’s got to get a trophy. Even bathrooms are winning awards. That’s right; there’s an Oscars for Toilets. I was at the Nashville Zoo recently and saw a prominently displayed plaque declaring their bathroom the 2019 Best Restroom Award Winner. Of course, I immediately went to bestrestroom.com to check out the other nominees to determine if this really was the Meryl Streep of bathrooms.

Here’s a very hotdog sentence for you: the bathroom had monkeys in it. It was, in fact, a very cool bathroom. Is having a special zoo exhibit only viewable if you have to piss a little weird? Yes. However, monkeys are cute, and I will never turn down a show while I wait for the bathroom. I do feel a little bit bad for the bathroom monkeys, mainly because they look like they’re aware they are the bathroom monkeys.

I feel like all of the other zoo animals make fun of them. It’s bad enough that their hair naturally grows in the shape of David Bowie’s Labyrinth mullet, but we’re also going to make them live in a bathroom? Give them some dignity, Nashville zoo.

The Nashville Zoo wasn’t the first to relegate an animal to a lifetime job as a bathroom attendant. They got the idea from the 2017 recipient of the Best Bathroom Award, OdySea Aquarium, who pulled the same move with sharks. Apparently, filling a bathroom with sharks is something either a bad James Bond villain or a good bathroom designer will suggest.

It may be controversial to say sharks deserve it, but they seem like creepy little guys. They can smell your leavings from four leagues away and they like it. But their enclosure seems more humane to me because it’s only a portion of the aquarium’s largest exhibit. It’s an interesting little window for the sharks to peek into every once in a while and see a bunch of humans standing in a line looking uncomfortable, unlike the monkeys who spend 100% of their public facing time in a bathroom.

Stuffing your bathroom full of wild animals is not the only way to get the bathroom award academy’s attention. They also seem to be interested in bathrooms decorated like a nightclub in the Lord Of The Rings universe. At least that appears to be the vibe of 2013 winner, The Varsity Theater in Minneapolis. Here’s a photo of it, taken by someone who takes pictures inside bathrooms:

I personally vote this bathroom Most Likely to Remind Me I Haven’t Been to an Olive Garden in a While. What I mean by that is it looks like someone who has never been to Italy describing Italy to you, which is exactly what the best bathroom awards were looking for that year. Its entry in the bathroom hall of fame describes it as “one part old fashioned powder room, one part lounge.” Which they say “allows concertgoers to take a break in an area from which one can still view and hear the stage. Bartenders even serve drinks over the back counter into the restroom area, offering a VIP experience to every guest.” Fucking gross, those VIPs probably think.

Even though several outlets covered The Varsity winning Best Bathroom, they didn’t include a lot of pictures. It’s sloppy journalism.

So until I have to pee in Minnesota, I can’t quite get the orientation of the place. But it seems from the description that the bathroom is far too much of a social experience. I get that sometimes women congregate in there, and that’s fine, but it seems weird to make it a social hub of your venue. Where are introverts supposed to hide in this place? Where can they learn they’re lactose intolerant now with dignity?

The more you look at the bathrooms in the hall of fame, the more it starts to sink in that there’s no specific design aesthetic the judges are looking for. Sure, if you put a David Bowie monkey in your bathroom, you will win. That’s a great general rule for life. All other past winners are seemingly chosen at random. Last year’s winner was the Tampa International Airport, which won for a very normal airport bathroom. Look at this ordinary ass line of urinals. This is the default setting of bathroom:

 

There’s not even a whiff of New Jersey mansion decorator style to liven this place up. You can tell the bathroom judges knew it was a real dud of a year, too, because the language they use to describe it in its restroom hall of fame entry is so flowery. “Boasting large graphics and a natural, deep blue stone, the undulating veining is reminiscent of waves crashing along the shore.” I’m pretty sure you can’t do undulating veining in a public bathroom. At least not with monkeys watching. Plenty of other entries got way slimmer descriptions. Wendell’s restaurant only got two sentences, but they hired Herman Melville to take us on a word journey through the Tampa International Airport’s men’s room.

Probably the most depressing section of the bathroom hall of fame is the area where you can pursue the bathrooms that were nominated but didn’t win. I’m sure 2010 was a controversial year in the competitive bathrooming world. Somehow vintage St. Louis ice cream parlor, The Fountain on Locust, narrowly beat out The Muse Hotel in New York, the most indulgent bathroom on this list. Look at how they defecate there:

I’ve never seen a bathroom and said, “This is trying too hard,” before, but The Muse bathroom is thirsty. There’s a common lounge area and then individual stalls with cool words painted on the door like glam, envy, rebel, vain, and my personal favorite, macHo. I know there’s a guy who waits for the macHo stall when the glam one is open.

This bathroom is begging people to fuck in it. There’s a large illuminated moose antler on one wall. There’s red neon lighting and gold mosaic tile. They were campaigning for this award, and the committee could sense it. In fact, they wanted to win so badly that they resubmitted for consideration in 2020 with better pictures and got snubbed again! The judges hate this tacky, desperate bathroom.

Another big controversial loss was the year Great American Bank BallPark in Cincinnati brought some actual innovation to the awards and got fully rejected. How can you innovate in bathrooms? They added a full nursing suite for new mothers with tons of amenities like comfortable gliders and a kitchenette with a refrigerator for storing and heating milk. They put a full dishwasher in their bathroom and still lost to what the town of Minturn, Colorado, says is a bathroom, but I don’t understand how it could work from its photo. I am afraid of it and angry at it, and I’ll pee right in front of monkeys.

Bathrooms should not be confusing. People need to understand bathrooms. We’ve made them very simple for that exact reason. The design team behind this calls it “functional art.” I call it an excuse for a lot of drunk people to just pee in the woods instead. I don’t want to pee in art, but the best bathroom judges are all about it; peeing as art, however, they hate.

The judges were not impressed with the “urinal gaming system” Coca-Cola Park in Allentown, Pennsylvania entered in 2016. The hands-free game was activated by motion sensors, and after finishing, the player got a unique code to report their score to a leaderboard via their smartphone and see the scores on real time displays throughout the stadium. They made a literal pissing contest and lost to another boring airport bathroom!

I have noticed one recurring theme at the bathroom awards. Aside from the gamification of peeing in a urinal, most of the entries are women’s restrooms. Not because men are disgusting but because monkeys attack when they see a penis, and none of you are brave enough to prove I’m lying. So for every beautiful bathroom winning this award, I have to wonder if there’s a men’s restroom that’s just a rusty metal trough and a pile of damp paper towels.

By the way, if you want to nominate a bathroom, you can submit an online form on bestrestroom.com. All you have to do is fill out some contact info, send a couple of pictures, and answer the question, “What makes this restroom special.” Caution, they don’t like it if you put “my daughter Courtney was conceived in here!” I heard that’s why Muse keeps losing.

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This article was brought to you by our fine sponsor and Hot Dog Supreme: Neku104, the only bathroom monkey we need in our lives.

Categories
LEARNING DAY

Learning Day: Spirit Babies

Yes Hello i just had my mind real opened up by a new book and im pretty excited to tell you all about it and maybe you can join me in a new way of seein and understandin the world:

Yup if your like me the title alone is probly given you that kinda cascadin -whoa- feelin about the possibilities and implications of: its not just AFTER you die its ghosts?!

But hold yr horses a bit there we’ll build up our foundation of understandin stone by stone with the help of our master and teacher: Walter Makichen. He’s there in the middle i know you think he aughta be the RV buddha lookin one on the left but i guess a man can be spiritual in North Face too.

I couldnt find out that much about him other than hes departed this north american plane now and he’s probly stayin just-right warm in the hereafter what with that senseable fleece, but before that he was considered a ‘’singing bowl master’’ and was kind enough to make us a musical accooterment for this article:

So push play and then find a appropriate place for reading this one, idea lee on a earth-grounded cushion away from any electricle wires or transmissions, and if theres something purple near by you thats fine as long as you balance it out with somethin orange. Lets take a coorajus breath in and a cumpassion breath out and here is our first mantra Chant:

‘’E, AH, OH, E”

(takin from Walter’s Birth Shaman Meditation)

I conceive we are ready to continue.

So in the beginning Walt was a pretty normal catholic kid except for how he could always actually SEE the angels and spirits that everybody else just had their simple faith in. Like one time his bird was sick and saint francis came and healed it:

Which after something like that I’d maybe even dare to ask: ok if I call you Saint Frank?

Walt’s actual journey to become a medium claire voyant was not complete: he next had to pass through three gates of trial:

TRIBULATION THE FIRST: GATE OF PAIN

In which Walt’s kidney made some extra gravel but it would just not come out of his pee-hole until

His report sorta indicates he still was on the Demerol but that is pure co inky dink.

TRIBULATION THE SECOND: GATE OF KINDNESS

In which he was nice instead of mean to a ‘crazy’ street person

What the hologram tells him is: ‘dont go do your dissertation defense, be a psychic instead – here hold on a minute Jesus is right here, he wants to talk to you too and Jesus was like: Yep, psychic.’

TRIBULATION THE THIRD: GATE OF CRIME SOLVING

In which the same day as the hologram one of Walt’s students called him and said she was raped two days ago and she thinks Walt could help her heal but he does more than that

Thats a nice bonus, like if your cairopracter also could tell you PowerBall secrets except probly a lot differnt than that I am still learnin about how to balance humer and human suffering.

Walter is never wrong. I read this whole book of his many spiritual ad ventures and he was never once surprised or confused or had to revise any previous ideas or believins. And every predicktion he makes comes true every time and any new occurrents is just as he spected and he also has perfect recall of all the conversations and timelines of what happened. Lets take a moment of kindly condescention and pity for us what have to acknowledge our own limitations and foolness sometimes. We will extend this intention to the world with our soul chant:

“OH, NAH, MAY, AH, SAH, NAH, CHA, OH, NAY, AH.”

(takin from Walts Calling A Spirit Baby meditation)

Ok but maybe your sayin: yeah, lots of people have a claire voyent’s, how did Walt learn of his special callin to commune and connect specificly with the spirits of the nearly borned? Is it maybe about how couples what are strugglin to conceive is a special kind of desperation and their for sucseptable to anyone offerin a narrative that gives a sense of meanin, claritin an hope? And maybe just incidentally allows that helper to oggment his own income and ego? And maybe also gives that helper a way of coping with a great pain of their own?

Oh child of doubt! Let me place a healin thumb right there in your forehead pretty hard actually and push this truth nugget into your minds heart: Walt manifested his specialty callin when he was on one of his health and personal retreats

Where he stayed in a cabin and chanted and walked around without seein another person for days so you know what happened next is real:

Yes there was kinda a vortex of ghost babies swirlin around his cabana and then

He learnt that was because there was just always so much couplin happening there all the time!

(I gotta confess i can resonate pretty hard with the innkeeper there. I was at the Maverik the other mornin it was just me and the new guy Felipe he was refillin the reesees and we had said how ya doin there a few times but this time he got kinda serious an asked me: what would i say if someone told me they could see the future? and i made the dumb joke about how i’d want to know who wun the big game and he just looked real disappointed in me and i fear whatever wondruss door he was invitin me to step through is closed forever to me now)

On to Walter’s Ghost Baby Casefile #1 in which Gail and Ron been tryin and tryin but just cant get pregnant and Walt sees theyre spirit baby who tells him:

So this to me is a powerful story but i didnt really get how Gail and Ron just bein open to whatever happens wasnt right. So I did a meditation of disearnment on this one so i’d learn this lesson really good and it came to pass that I seen a kinda a pink purple space and its kinda quiet and peaceful but then here comes this rumblin and all a sudden its just a TORRENT of whitish shapes rushin at us and at first we’re scared but then we realize thats just Rons seamen rushin in to fill up Gail and we feel peace again. But just as the sperms are about to wrangle into Gails egg a Spiritual Cowboy appears and puts up a Matrix hand with a wise smile and all the seamen just stop dead and fall down. An then maybe he looks at us and says “A heifer will calve when shes willin”’ or somethin and tips his hat but that might be me gettin too fancyful.

You maybe saw that Walt mentioned the Cowboy had a yellow and green oval and thats called a aura and Walt is just seein them all the time. So i was a lil sad and ashamed i never seen any but then i found out you can get a camera app that lets you be perceptive like Walter. LaRene didnt seem very grateful that I was using it to see her aura and explainin to her how she felt and Trayton didnt have one but now i insight when Rabbit is at his calmest:

So all this to say that I dont know how anybody could feel right about preceedin with a birth plan that doesnt include a spirit baby whisperer on the team. Just think about how lost and bewilded this couple woulda been without Walt:

They would never a known that it was there mother in laws’ selfish refusal to die that was keepin em from gettin pregnant! And yep it was just like Walt profitized:

Many spirit babies arent getting birthed for the first time, no way, for a lot of em this is like there 8th life or something and Walt gets to talk to em about who they used to be. Its all so neat to me that the past life story is never just: they were boring and normal, its always like a cool setting

and a interesting story

It honestly really reminds me of things that people make up for books…

…and movies

Which isnt that reinsuring to know that our world isnt actually a confusing place with no gayrontee of justice or resolution? Walter shows us that we’re actually livin in a universe where it all makes sense and everything that happens has a appealin and satisfyin narrative arc.

See, you would be pretty silly to ever be sad or depressed about grief or loss because: if your brother died? Thats ok! you will get another chance to say everything you never did, an apologize for when you thought it was a light-hearted prank to pee on him from up in the treehouse but to him that was a bullying trauma.

Through sexual intercourse with your wife is how you can do that, I mean.

And also thats very nice that the mother doesn’t have to learn anythin about who the child will be or what they are interested in: we already met Uncle Dave an we know he’s a PBR Extra man! And hell you probly dont even need to wait until hes born to begin healing, you can probly start tossing the remote into his mom’s crotch when she aint ready just like you used to do to him.

So maybe you caught what i illuded to up there that reincarnationed spirit babies are only one of the varieties available. The other important one is ANGELS, which it took me little while to realize thats different from normal spirits.

I practiced a soft wise smile when i read that one because i understand it from how if i wanna have the car windows down, I have to keep between 45 and 52 mph or else it hurts my ears.

Here’s more about how the angel ones work:

Lets do a nother birth shaman visualization where we ‘magine we’re Sarah or Bruce, goin through one a the most painful things you might go through as a couple and as your just lookin everywhere and anywhere for a little bit of sollus or understanding you find yoursself in this mans office:

And he looks ready to run the grill for like a family picnic in march when the sun is out and its fifty degrees but maybe the wind dont make it feel like that and you find that uncle energy kinda comfortin hear in youre time of need and then he looks up like maybe someones gonna toss him a beer but that someone is a angel and that beer is a ghost baby from the afterlife.

So isnt that a warm comfort that for some angels it helps to do like a politician-at-a-tornado type site visit and thats what all those miscarriages were and they really preciate your understandin.

If you are wonderin about whether Walt can also wisely understand and explain everything about complicated adoption and abortion situations, yes that is easy for him but you might can tell I am already a lil tuckered out from tryin to talk about miscarriage in a comedy article in a cumpassionate and respectful fashion, and maybe see why i am leavin those other ones as a exercise for the reader.

Oh yeah i was wonderin about that too, what about talkin with your ghost baby DURING conception? Thanks for bringin that up. Well Walt’s a little skittish about the “physical mechanics” of sex thats why instead of sex he always says “physical mechanics”. But he does talk about it and i’m glad he clarified because i was askin myself: is a spirit baby, like, right there in the camper with you? maybe kinda shoutin encouragements or compliments? Or maybe helpin in a more hands on way, like that old lady in Midsommar?

No its not that way its this way:

Anyway next time your gettin intimant on the couch in between episodes of Magnum or maybe in the backseat of a honda CRV because bob seger came on and it just made you both recollect what you felt like in the acid wash days remember what your really doin is makin a big spirit bowl to put babies in.

So: Here is a final faith-promoting vingrette from Walter, I recommend track 9 “No Boundaries” from the spa CD while your readin this one. Start with the following mantra, speak it aloud in your silent heart:

“MAH MA SAY MA MAH SAH MA MA KOO SAH”

(takin from Walts A Father Can Be A Patient Labor Partner Meditation)

So if any of you what have kids or might do in the future get a moment of frustration when they left the car window rolled down and the cats got in but they keep sayin that wasnt me I was at school when you drove it last, just remember that you and your child once maybe died together defending against the war of northern agression. On state rights. To enslave people. In the name of Jesus Christ Amen.

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This article was brought to you by our fine sponsor and Hot Dog Supreme: Eric Spaulding, who gets busy so often he has an army of ghost babies ready to attack his spiritual enemies at all times.