I’m terrible at investing. I never know whether to put my money in stocks or bonds or that online monkey art that looks like shit but is somehow pretend money. However, I recently found the perfect investment opportunity. For a mere twenty dollars and four hours of my time, I became a MoonStar Academy CERTIFIED psychic.
My instructor was a psychic witch named Astrid, whose real superpower is branding. This woman spends so much time doing business there can’t be a spare moment in the day for sucking the youth from the children of Salem into a big spooky cauldron. She owns magickandwitchcraft.com, where she blogs and keeps a whole online Hogwarts of witch classes. She has a YouTube channel with shamanic drumming ASMR. She does a podcast about witchcraft. She sells tarot readings, astrology readings, and spiritual coaching (which is life coaching with more ghosts). She’s on Insta; and Facebook. The woman is the Kim Kardashian of witchcraft.
Astrid’s philosophy on psychic powers is grounded in logic. She’s a logical, scientific-minded psychic witch, you see. The thing about psychic abilities is everything is based on energy. Some energies are so heavy they are tangible. Meaning they exist in our physical world. Astrid shows us a couple of great examples of heavy energy by picking up things from her desk, like a highlighter and a tiny fuzzy monkey statue, and explaining to us how those things are real because she can touch them.
There are things with light energy we can’t see, but we still believe exist, like cell phone signals, so if you believe in cell phones, you should also believe in psychic energy. It actually makes sense evolutionarily to have psychic powers because it’s part of our survival instinct. It would be great for early humans if we could sense a tiger coming to eat us, so that must have happened. Tiger energy is heavy as hell. Or, in words more easily understood, it is three cell phone signals.
The question is, how do you access this psychic energy? Contrary to what some believe, you don’t need special powers to do it. You just need twenty dollars and a candle. It turns out being psychic is pretty much just staring at a candle and thinking about stuff. Astrid posits all of your thoughts are clairvoyance. That’s hard for me to believe because I have a lot of stupid thoughts. Once I thought I should try to write a Christian erotic novel called Three Wise Men Make a Baby. Was that a psychic premonition? Do I have to do that now? Is anyone’s loins ready?
You must also “deprive your physical sense to access your astral senses.” Which sounds creepy but just means that when you stare at the candle, it should be dark. I feel like an ophthalmologist probably wouldn’t recommend attempting to be psychic. Which seems unimportant when you consider how he will be killed by something blue on November 23rd.
What’s the difference between a guess and a vision by this method of psychic reading? About seventy-five bucks. That’s what Astrid charges for most of her services. The training I have received has taught me that everything I think is not only correct and good, but it’s also psychic. I’m not only thinking stuff because I’m smart and cool but because I’m pulling light psychic energy into my body for guidance. You should get bangs! Trust me; I’m a certified psychic. This feels amazing. I get why these classes are so popular.
There’s also a section on seeing auras clairvoyantly. Again, this means staring at someone in dim lighting and seeing if a color comes to you. She explains how the aura colors align with chakras and that if someone has a glittery aura, they’re either in a state of life transition, downloading a divine lesson or divine transformation, or they’re “close to their physical death.” This helps illustrate the hilarious sitcom potential of psychic misunderstandings. Graduating high school looks the same as a gruesome death, or maybe nothing. I paid $75 to know this.
Oh yeah, I almost forgot– I learned how to time travel! A seven-minute video on remote viewing taught me that through remote viewing, you can visit Earth before humans walked on it. This is achieved by (you’re not going to believe this) staring at a candle again and (you’re also not going to believe this) imagining what it would be like to visit Earth before humans walked on it. I don’t know what ramifications this will have on history, but when I was there I looked around and saw a bunch of skateboarding dogs. It was Bulldogs shredding as far as the eyes could see; truly a magical time. At least a $75 value.
You might be thinking this can’t be all you learned in four hours of class, Lydia. Time travel? Death (or maybe a new job) predictions? Those limitless abilities can be learned in minutes. Don’t worry; I also learned a lot about the importance of potatoes. Astrid brought up potatoes a lot. A suspicious amount. Like, I think there was a group of farmers brainstorming ways to get rid of a potato surplus and one of them said, “Okay, ha ha, who’s the wise guy who put WITCHES on the board? I’ll go ahead and erase th– wait… could it… ? You know… it’s just crazy enough to work.”
Potatoes are so important to psychics because they come from the ground, you see, which is the earth. It’s important to ground yourself to the earth and not the spirit world after doing a lot of psychic readings by eating a potato. She mentions baked potatoes specifically once. No word on if french fries or hash browns will work to bind you to the earth, but the next time I down an entire large fry from McDonald’s, I’ll report on if I feel more connected to the earth or just gassy. It’s possible that those are the same thing. Or someone near me is about to die. Oh, these terrible powers!
Astrid’s deepest concern, which she repeats over and over again, is that her classes will make you too psychic. She’s that good! Her staring at a candle technique is so powerful it’s guaranteed to work. If it doesn’t, you’re definitely trying too hardâŠor you’re definitely not trying hard enough. It’s one of those two, she assures us. Buy potato, available at store.
The other safety precaution Astrid suggests is if you summon a spirit (by staring at a candle and thinking about them), you should always send them away at the end of the session. Otherwise, shirtless ghost hunks will be hanging out watching your post seance potato fest. Oh, these terrible powers.
There’s a long section of psychic trials where you can put your powers to work. This involves Astrid holding up an object you’re supposed to stare at, pause the video, and get impressions from. The objects included a necklace, a bracelet, and a crystal. The impression I got is that these are all things I would expect a psychic witch to own. If she’d pulled out a Maxim magazine or a Precious Moments figurine, I might not have known what to think, but all of these items seemed pretty standard to me.
I wrote down what I expected to get from Astrid’s class before I started so that I could check at the end and see if the course lived up to my expectations. What I expected was psychic powers. I pictured someone squinting at me on the computer screen for about three and a half hours, and then I would be psychic. What I got was a deeper appreciation for potatoes. It turns out that I’m not a very good psychic, but I am a very CERTIFIED psychic, and I think that’s what really matters.
Weâre coming up on the spooky season, so allow me to share with you the creepiest — and arguably most hilarious — series of images on my hard drive. These get worse as they go, which means that, just as in life, the real shit awaits you at the end.
Below is an actual patent for a âsurgical applianceâ from the year 1900. Can you deduce how it works? If you can, you likely have the kind of hobbies that require using the âsecret basementâ filter on Zillow:
If you guessed, âAn apparatus designed for a man to wear on his penis so that if he gets an erection, a switch will be flipped causing loud music to play,â then congratulations on getting it exactly right and also on surviving whatever upbringing replaced your imagination with a dark labyrinth of psychosexual horror. For those who need it spelled out, the diagram is a side view; see that mushroom-shaped part at the bottom?
Thatâs a little cushion that goes behind the scrotum. The strap leading off to the right goes up the butt crack. The whole vertical mechanism to the left houses the userâs penis, so that it will remain caged when erect. âWow, Jason, the proportions imply theyâre expecting the wearer to have quite the hog!â Yes, but we shanât get distracted by that right now. As for why such a device existed, well, buckle up…
Jasonâs âhorror but in the 1900HOTDOG-style novel, If This Book Exists, Youâre in the Wrong Universe is out now at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or Bookshop! Finally! Fuck! Itâs part of the John Dies at the End series but theyâre not serialized, you can just start with this one! Do whatever you want! Some of you have been waiting for this for several years!
The above apparatus isnât some wacky internet urban legend; the actual 1900 patent is right here. Itâs designed to be worn to bed to prevent any kind of ejaculation by slamming the door on the devilish engorgement that precedes it. Hereâs the key phrasing, straight from the governmentâs own archives:
â…as soon as an erection of the penis takes place the sliding rods will be forced outward and caused to engage with the adjustable contact-posts, thus closing the electric circuit and causing the bell or other device to be operated, thus awakening the sleeper…â via, â… a belt connection with any form of motor used to operate a graphophone, phonograph, or other instrument.â
Thatâs right; not only will this appliance play music to wake you up during a night-boner, you can pick your own theme! Reply in the comments with the song you want to play every time you get aroused. Mine would probably be âDu Hastâ by Rammstein but I wonât explain why.
Anyway, hereâs what the rest of the mechanism looked like; remember this is 1900, so the machinery needed to pull off this simple task probably occupied half your bedroom and sounded like a locomotive chugging uphill:
At this point, youâre probably expecting a history of the weird pervert who invented this device, but the reaction from the patent office at the time wouldâve been something akin to, âOh, itâs another one of these.â If this gadget never went into production, itâs only because the marketplace was already too crowded with similar ones.
This was due to a widespread belief that peaked in the Victorian era that masturbation and other expulsions of semen caused madness. But donât worry, this brief fad which terrorized millions of young men only persisted for, oh, about two hundred years. Thatâs why in the 1800s, devices such as this simple-but-surely-effective spiked ring could be purchased for the semen fiend in your life:
But then came the industrial revolution and the accompanying belief that all societal problems could be solved by some kind of steampunk contraption, usually one that was simultaneously whimsical and ghastly. Note that the boner-music patent doesnât specifically say itâs to prevent the patient from cranking their hog, but itâd be awfully hard to do so without accidentally blasting Turkey in the Straw throughout the house. Many of these devices only boasted of preventing involuntary nocturnal discharge, not because manual discharge was okay, but because itâd have been insulting to suggest it was even a danger. Thatâd have been like selling a smartphone app today that reminds you once a minute not to expose yourself on the bus.
I know what youâre thinking. âWow, the proportions of the tube once again implies a patient with an especially long, girthy, succulent cock! Or… or is that normal?â Well, itâs adjustable to the patientâs genital size, see the little plunger inside Figure 1? This, of course, means that at some point it had to be fitted to the patient, which would presumably mean giving the patient an erection and maintaining it for the duration of the fitting process. Then, once fitted, it presumably required at least one test boner to make sure the alarm sounded properly. Parents were buying these for their sons!
Now that I think about it, the inventor presumably had to test all of the failed prototypes on his own engorgement, presumably having to endure several awkward trips to the emergency room in which he had to convince doctors and nurses alike that he wasnât trying to design a steampunk Fleshlight.
The premise of this device is mostly the same as the first, and in fact the patent declares it is simply an iteration of the âgeneral classâ of gizmos that perform the same task: When the patient gets a sufficient hard-on, the head of the penis will press a button that triggers an alarm (please imagine one of those AWOO-GAH!! alarms from old cartoons, or perhaps an air raid siren). This, it promises, will save the patient from, â…consequences which would otherwise occur.â
Those consequences, as I mentioned, were the terrible effects on mental health caused by ejaculation. Clearly, if you want your lustful young man to grow up with a normal, healthy psychology, the best option is to strap a giant brass dick-sheath to his abdomen. And be sure to tighten the little straps that go under his balls! You donât want him to be sexually weird when he grows up, do you, mom?
But that just brings us to the real horror, the reason I saved this column for the Halloween season. This final patent is from 1903 and you can see how the tech has advanced in the few years since the others. Itâs clearly a sleeker, more modern design.
At a glance, it appears to be more of the same, with a couple of notable additions. First, the hard-hog containment pipe sticks straight out from the body, presumably protruding from the fly of the pants in a way that likely would not escape notice on the playground (and yes, it was intended to be worn during the day). Second, youâll note a wire coil that loops below, just big enough to ensnare the wearerâs scrotum. If that looks like itâs made to conduct electricity, youâre right! But weâll get to that.
See, this patent is a little more explicit about its goals, that itâs not just about stifling nocturnal emissions, but also, â…as a preventive for self-abuse or masturbation frequently practiced by weak-minded boys or young men.â And unlike the first two, which were intended to be worn to bed, this improved device is, â…adapted to be worn at all times, permitting the patient to urinate without its removal.â But donât worry, it of course still comes with, âan alarm to indicate the involuntary erection of a sleeping patient.â It does everything! It was the iPhone of mechanized tumescence snitches.
As for that little coiled scrotal loop:
âWhen desired, the electric belt may be made considerably broader than shown in the drawings, so as to generate a current of electricity strong enough to assist the cure of sexual diseases, and the spiral suspensory 13, which is placed around the testicles, imparts a mild current of electricity to these parts.â
âWow,â you say, âto think that people were so paranoid about ejaculation that they voluntarily wore this stuff!â
Ha. Yeah. Maybe you should stop reading here. Seriously. Turn off your gadget and go buy several copies of my book.
This is your last warning.
All right, see these little protrusions here?
Iâll let the inventor explain those:
âAt the inner edge of the tube and projecting toward the body of the patient is a series of short points or brads (22). These are of sufficient length to cause considerable annoyance and pain to the patient should any attempt be made to manipulate the penis by means of the tube, thus serving to prevent weakminded and insane patients from practicing self-abuse.â
Yeah, this was designed to also be strapped onto patients at mental hospitals. The logic of doctors of the time was, âAll of the young male patients in our asylum seem to occasionally want to masturbate, which must mean their masturbation is what caused their mental illness! We need a torture device to prevent this!â The logic was infallible, if your goal as a physician was partly to maintain the fiction that this activity was highly abnormal and that you werenât polishing your own knob every day on your lunch break.
That means this fucking thing was more in the category of a straightjacket, the patent noting that it can be, â…buckled in place, or the bands may be of sufficient length to be tied in difficult knots to prevent a weakminded patient from removing the device.â
When doctors are guided by puritanical superstition, horrors are wrought.
Donât get me wrong, the whole thing is still absurd, in the same chilling and grotesque manner as the last seven years of headlines. The irony of living in a mad world is that sometimes the only sane response is to cackle at it like a maniac. For example: I bet you think all of these âsurgical appliancesâ were invented by some kind of medical expert, maybe physicians going off what they observed in their own clinics or hospitals. Nope!
The wacky inventor archetype that gave us Doc Brown and the dad in Gremlins was alive and well in the Victorian era. This last device, for example, was from an inventor named Albert Todd, who four years later would be granted a patent for a âDetonating Burglar Alarm.â
Itâs amazing to think that people back then were living in a world in which even cutting-edge technology operated via wacky cartoon logic. Only, hereâs the thing: when I say âback then,â remember that there are people who were alive when this patent was granted that are still around today.
Or, to put it another way: Youâre all familiar with Blade Runner, and some of the folks who made it are still in the industry. So it was a while ago, but not that long. Well, people in 1982 felt the same about events in 1942, and people in 1942 felt the same about this era of steampunk hog-tattlers. Youâre only three Blade Runners away from practices so barbaric and insane that some of you still think this is a wacky joke article and that I had Sean create these patents with photoshop.
Attitudes toward sex and masturbation didnât start to come around until the Alfred Kinsey era in the 1940s and 50s. My parents were alive then. And, of course, that enlightenment was only in certain parts of the world — if you grew up without suffocating institutional stigma around your sex organs, you dodged that fate by a millimeter, via pure luck. And who knows how radically the situation can change just one Blade Runner from now? It is only through vigilance that the forces of ignorance and superstition are kept at- wait, I think I want my boner alert song to be âWord Upâ by Cameo, is it too late to change it?
Jasonâs novel, If This Book Exists, Youâre in the Wrong Universe is finally out on shelves everywhere, or if you donât want to leave home, order it at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or Bookshop!
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Seanbaby and Brockway started 1900HOTDOG as a way to grift government processed meat subsidies, and along the way accidentally assembled the best comedy team in novelty phone number history. This week all articles are free in honor of the fantastic columnists that make this site a place to be treasured and feared in equal measure.
There used to be a sport called âpedestrianismâ and it kind of invented modern sports. It got replaced in the 1880s by the rise of other sports, such as bicycle racing and baseball. Both those sports out-competed pedestrianism, because they offered more game elements, such as any game elements whatsoever. What did pedestrianism offer? Walking. Competitive walking. Competitive walking for baffling stretches of time (usually six days). There were also little tents by the track where the guys could sleep, a little bit. Usually less than four hours per night. AndâŠthatâs pedestrianism for you! Walking. Walking, in the most deranged ways ever recorded.
Anyway, tears wiped, carrying onward: sports are supposed to be fun! Thatâs their point. So donât sweat one teamâs wins and losses. Sweat the bizarreendlessways the entire sport of baseball is cursed/haunted/bonkers, i.e. fun. Or follow the wisdom of the great John Hodgman, and make rediscovering defunct hockey team logos your sport. Or appreciate the brilliance of professional wrestling: a staged drama, with real physical stakes, where fans pick a favorite combatant and yell about them in (ideally) whichever way that makes them happiest. Because itâs sports! Itâs whatever. Sure, yes, the wrestling belt winners are made up. So is money. So is everything in this charade we call life! And the topic of this column (pedestrianism) is a bounteous font of that perfect sports-as-entertainment experience. Pedestrianism is both a fascinating piece of history, and a rich menu of Sports Heroes to get hyped about. So read on, Dear Hotdogger, and CHOOSE YOUR FIGHTER WHO IS A WALKER. Only one of these guys can be your mental favorite â and every one of these guys is long dead.
Pedestrianism was a sport from the 1860s to the early 1880s. I hope I did not under-emphasize how bizarre it was. Modern endurance athletes run 26.2 miles for part of a day, and then (with a few nutty exceptions) they stop. Pedestrians walked hundreds and hundreds of miles, with almost no breaks, for close to a week. They did this over and over again. And it all happened because of one guy. A guy who became a mega-famous athlete, with his own cigarette sponsorship, despite looking like a walrus granted humanity by a Disney genie.
Edward Payson Weston loved walking long distances. This is partly because he was a New Yorker, but mostly because it was his kink. I am guessing at the kink part. That is also one of the most educated guesses I have ever guessed. According to the BBC, Weston gained national fame by losing a bet on the results of the 1860 Presidential election. The bet: Weston and his friend each picked a candidate. The stakes: the loser had to walk from New York City to Washington DC to view the Presidential inauguration. In this 1860 election bet, Weston selected unpopular niche hate-monster John C. Breckenridge, who finished 3rd in the popular vote, because he ran in a vote-splitting way that everyone knew was doomed nationally. Abraham Lincoln was not the obvious future winner. But Breckenridge was an obvious future loser. Breckenridge was the guy you pick if youâre losing this bet on purpose, for what I argue was Westonâs walking-based dom/sub kink.
Weston followed through on this hot-and-heavy bet. He spent 10 entire days hiking to our nationâs capital, trailed by national newspaper coverage. Then Weston scheduled competitive walks (!) against other noted walkers (?). The rest was sports history. Westonâs endurance stunts became âpedestrianismâ, a competitive sport where guys walked for several days in a row. Initially Weston competed against himself, renting out roller rinks, and charging people 10 cents per ticket to watch him walk 100 miles within 24 hours. In todayâs world, that entertainment sales pitch would result in no ticket sales, and one dead guy. Back then, that was sports. The dawn of pro sports. Finally: people had a thing to observe! And they wanted more. Weston gave it to them by competing against other people. He and other pedestrians competed in events like âThe Great Six Day Raceâ, which was guys walking in a circle for six days, with track-side tents for brief naps in moments of weakness. Weston became one of the stars of that horrible competition, earning nicknames like âThe Wily Wobblerâ (due to his gait) and âWeston The Pedestrianâ (due to words sort of rhyming). Weston was also a showboat. According to wonderful writer Matthew Algeo, whose book you should buy, Weston competed wearing a cape and a riding crop. He also walked while playing the cornet. That rules. He stacked the cardiovascular task of walking with the cardiovascular mega-task of mini-trumpet. Why did he do that? I have two theories. Either Westonâs kink evolved to require toys, or he made a heel turn into cornet-based opponent-taunting. Algeoâs theory is the latter.
Speaking of heel turns, Weston pretty much invented the sporting use of performance-enhancing drugs. In 1876, Weston got busted for chewing coca leaves. According to a Google search I am about to regret, coca leaves are the raw ingredient of cocaine. Iâm glad I confirmed that. I am excited to say the phrase âone nine hundred hot dogâ to an NYPD strike team and their battering ram. Anyway: you should make Weston your favorite pedestrian if you want a bad boy. A guy who says hell yeah, letâs bash. Also Weston did not technically break any rules. Coca leaves were not illegal in the freewheeling 1870s. So he got to keep on competing, instead of weeping in the halls of Congress or whatever. Weston also invented the modern athlete maneuver of saying a doctor accidentally prescribed the PEDs, and he was simply too good of a patient. Whatever Westonâs reasons, he made huge money as a famous top pedestrian, and died pretty much broke because he blew all that money. He also left behind a thriving sport where athletes had trading cards and sponsorships and similar fame. A sport that benefited from Westonâs rivalry withâŠ
Daniel OâLeary was a man of his time. A grim, joyless time. Because as much as we all enjoy a wacky fun guy like Weston, with a brass instrument and an alleged-by-me fetish, weâre talking about a sport from the late 1800s. A terrible era. An era when men woke up at dawn, walked to a factory, and put in a long day of contracting cancer and losing fingers in machines. Then they went home, consumed one gallon of liquor and one loaf of bread, and passed out before waking to do it all over again. Nightmare toil, plus mustaches.
Daniel OâLearyâs vibe is that exact hell-vibe. According to Matthew Algeo, OâLeary was an Irish immigrant (which was sad, then) from Chicago (which was on fire, then). âHe would walk ramrod straight, upright with his arms moving like pistons.â Thatâs not funâŠexcept that itâs mega-fun as a foil to fun rivals. OâLeary provided the âstern juggernautâ vibe we all want from one of out of two athletes. OâLeary did not provide that in the harmless, fictional, Scripts Of Rockys III And IV way. He provided it as his actual personality. Heâs like if Kaneâs origin story was a newspaper article and police report. Daniel OâLeary was a grim force of pedestrianism. He broke Westonâs early records, then battled him head-to-head (foot to foot?), creating a (White) Ali/Frazier slugfest that supercharged the sport. OâLeary also combined perfect heel-toe strides with the novel tactic of clutching corn on the cobs in each hand. He did not consider this fun, and said it was for sweat absorption. He was all about that kind of anti-charm. OâLeary was almost the real version of that The Onion headline where calm basketball great Tim Duncan gets a shoe deal with Florsheim. Daniel OâLearyâs real life huge sponsorship deal came from a brand of salt.
Going back to that WWE metaphor: imagine if Kane was real, and stern, and inhumanâŠand also founded the WCW. That describes Daniel OâLeary. After several victories in the first major pedestrianism circuit, OâLeary did the humongous business task of creating his own competing circuit, named after himself. And hey, great news: both circuits had giant shiny championship belts. Precisely like pro wrestling. Where this story is going, [Doc Brown voice] we donât need metaphors. Here is âThe Astley Beltâ, won by OâLeary multiple times:
And hereâs âThe OâLeary Beltâ, spread on a table next to one of its winners:
Also hey whoâs that guy posing with it? And is he Black? Yes! He is a Black Pedestrian namedâ
Frank Hart is humongously cool. Might be the easiest pedestrian to make your guy. Rad as hell. For one thing, he earned the nickname âBlack Danâ. He earned this by being so good at walking, he reminded people of Daniel OâLeary â and so good at walking, they called him âBlackâ instead of any of Americaâs other 1870s words for Black people.
In the run of this column, Iâve glossed over *exactly* how much money was at stake here. How much money could competitive walkers earn? Well hereâs a great example: beyond the national product endorsements these guys racked up, and the giant golden championship belts they seized, pedestrian athletes scored huge prize money. In 1880, pedestrian Frank “Black Dan” Hart won a race at Madison Square Garden by walking 565 miles in a six day period. He won $21,567. Here are three rad things about that sum:
đ: In todayâs dollars, he won about half a million USD.
đ: Despite the humongous racism of 1880 United States society, Frank Hart got to collect those winnings.
đ: A big chunk of Hartâs $21.5k winnings included a massive sports bet. He bet thousands of dollars on himself, to win. Which was legal! And that legality is kind of better than sports now. Every modern sport bans and shames players for making positive bets on themselves. Or for betting the exact way fans are encouraged to bet. Frank Hart made sports gambling part of his bread and butter, in a way that heightened the drama and embiggened his bank account.
So yes, Frank Hart rules. Frank Hart was also a ring name. He was a Haitian immigrant, born Fred Hichborn, who decided âFrank Hartâ was more marketable. Three generations of Canadian wrestlers affirm this to be accurate. So does the English language. âHartâ is almost the word âheartâ, with a vowel trimmed out for greater speed and power. That makes the last name âHartâ brave-sounding and cool. Fred (Frank (Black Dan) Hart) Hichborn was both those things, racking up winnings and cigarette sponsorships and national fame despite being an outspoken Black American in the 1870s.
Modern American pro sports is chock-full of racism. Out-in-the-open racism. Colin Kaepernick got screwed in public, Black NFL veterans got ârace-normedâ out of settlement money, Atlanta won last yearâs World Series with their crowds doing a hate-speech arm salute. Our leagues are a space where non-white players arenât welcome to do anything but play. Frank Hart played 142 years ago. He faced at least some of this. For example, during one of his bids to win OâLearyâs Belt, somebody near the track handed Hart some soda water. Hart drank it. According to historian Kelly Collins, the soda water was poisoned. Poisoned! It contained a substance that makes you sick. Or more likely, dead. In the 1870s, *food* made you dead more often than not. Let alone poison. The thing Hart consumed. And then overcame, to win that race. Because Hartâs response to poison was, in Twitter-speak, “I would simply not die of the poison”. Anyway itâs unclear whether that poisoning was racially motivated. Itâs also clear Black athletes continue to face constant racially-motivated obstacles. So if thereâs anything Iâm excited to root for, itâs Frank Hart. Because here are public statements from before the big race where he won half a million modern dollars:
Hell yeah! Frank Hart said that, and then did that. He beat fifteen white challengers (plus two non-whites), out-walking all comers in front of a massive crowd at Madison Square Garden. A stadium so famous, most non-sports fans have still heard of it. More about that stadium later. First here areâŠ
Folks: Iâve offered you three glorious pedestrians to get into. Also, I appreciate that some of you want somebody more niche. So you can be interesting, and unusual, and so forth. Great. May I suggest:
Charles Rowell â Mr. Rowellâs famous walk was a “trot”. You can see him doing it on the far left of that illustrated group of athletes.
Also perhaps You My Dear Hotdogger are seeking a âhotâ athlete to root for. Great news: in his time, Charles Rowell was criticized for his âtoo fineâ physique, and its suggestion that he had done âtoo much training.â Too much! Cool it with the practicing and fitness, Charles! Who do you think you are, a professional athlete? What a funny time. I want to build a time machine, go back to then, and tell Rowellâs critics about Dwayne âThe Rockâ Johnson’s whole deal. Itâll induce a group cardiac event.
Charles Harriman â heâs the second guy in that lineup above. Allegedly his stride was âmechanicalâ. He was also still doing week-long walks with cash prizes for challengers at age 57. What a robot. I love it. I assume he is still alive today, and still walking, bonking face-first into a wall like a forgotten wind-up toy.
Michael Byrne â in 1880, Michael Byrne won a pedestrianism race against a horse. A horse! He out-walked a horse! Final score: 578 miles to 563. Thatâs Michael Byrne for you. I donât have any further information about him. I do have more information aboutâŠ
Betsy Baker â and sorry folks, this is not the much-belated introduction of a female human competitor. Far as I know there were no female humans in this sport. Betsy Baker was the name of the horse defeated by Michael Byrne. Also I feel she defeated him in the sport of Having Good Sense-ism. Apparently Betsy refused to keep doing pedestrianism on competition day 5 out of 6. Also these guys tried to re-motivate her by feeding her champagne. Which is strange, but less strange than youâd think, because this sport had a key role forâŠ
Champagne producers â As recently as the 1870s (the peak of this sport), champagne was considered a sports drink. Fuel for the greatest athletes. Sort of like that scene in Chariots Of Fire where a rich British guy puts champagne on his track hurdles. In pedestrianismâs case, the champagne was far sloppier. According to Matthew Algeo, pedestrianismâs athletes and trainers (yes they had trainers) considered champagne to be a stimulant (wrong). Pedestrians drank it mid-race (cheers!) to âgive themselves some kind of advantage. The problem was a lot of these guys would drink it by the bottle.â Wow! I hope nobody impressionable saw star athletes chug champagne as a health beverage. Thatâd be terrible. Anyway, go ahead fingers, type the very next chunk of this blog, oh no I see the first few letters, crap crap crapâ
Small impressionable children â crap. Algeo says kids loved this nightmare sport where drunk guys walked in a circle for a week. Kids also spent their pennies on pedestrian trading cards, which were the first sports trading cards (!) and were almost always advertisements for tobacco. On top of that, Algeo says “children would imitate the strides of their favourite pedestrians.â Which makes me grateful my favorite childhood athlete was a guy who made gravity seem fake, and not a guy competitively failing a field sobriety test. That hyperlink is way better. Itâs Michael Jordan highlights. Which reminds me: I havenât detailed the last superstar of this sport. Because New York City is a character in this tale! In particularâŠ
I made this hyperlinked bonus show of my good podcast about Madison Square Garden, because it turns out M.S.G. might be the strangest stadium in modern history. For example, today it is the home of the New York Knicks and the New York Rangers and the Foul Helicopter Menace Billy Joel. It is also called âMadison Square Gardenâ even though itâs about a one mile drive from the also-famous location âMadison Squareâ.
Whoops! Huh? Why? It turns out several stadiums have been named âMadison Square Gardenâ. The first was near the park. It was this 10,000-seat outdoor sports stadium:
Built in 1879, it hosted major pedestrianism competitions. Those competitions looked like the âWhereâs Waldoâ nonsense pictured above. A bajillion people bought tickets. So pedestrianism filled and sustained the first version of the most famous stadium in the United States. Pedestrianism built Madison Square Garden! From there, a couple things happened. Bicycle racing replaced pedestrianism as the primary MSG draw, and replaced pedestrianism as the main racing sport in general. Thatâs partly because, uh, yikes, whoops, minor detail here: pedestrianism was basically unwatchable? Hereâs Matthew Algeo bringing that up late in the game:
Oops! Pedestrianism was a spectator sport that revolted spectators. So it basically vanished by the end of 1881. Bicycle racing became an even bigger draw for MSG, to the point where they installed a velodrome track, and invented a cycling relay race that got so popular, it is called âthe madisonâ to this day. That whole change stuns me! A world-famous stadium began with a totally different purpose! Itâs like learning Yankee Stadium started out as a cockfighting pit, before somebody flattened and widened the pit for stickball.
Anyway here is the other change that happened: Madison Square Garden #1 got so popular, and made so much money, rich guys decided to build a better one. MSG #2 was such a lavish indoor stadium, it got funded by JP Morgan *and* Andrew Carnegie *and* the Astor family. It was a whole complex, featuring a theater and a bunch of apartments and a restaurant, in a deluxe 32-story tower (the 2nd tallest building in NYC at the time). Most thrillingly, itâs probably haunted to this day. MSG #2 got designed by architect and Rich Guy Name-Haver Stanford White. Mister Whiteâs hobbies included being rich, living in a suite in MSG2âs tower, and âmadisoningâ his penis into other guysâ wives. One night, in 1906, that last thing caught up to him. White was dining in Mega-MSGâs restaurant. One of Whiteâs paramoursâ husbands walked into the restaurant and shot him dead. In front of everybody! Twenty years later they demolished the whole building and built a new one many blocks away. ForâŠreasons. Thereâs a golden tower there now.
Thatâs Madison Square Garden for you: a plutocratic sports-dome with a murder past and a pedestrianist foundation. So thank you, pedestrianism, for sports. Itâs a fun thing I goof off about. And thank you for making New York City weird to this very day.
…
Seanbaby and Brockway started 1900HOTDOG as a way to grift government processed meat subsidies, and along the way accidentally assembled the best comedy team in novelty phone number history. This week all articles are free in honor of the fantastic columnists that make this site a place to be treasured and feared in equal measure.
Hello to this gathered congregation of Hot Dog there is an importants to our conversation today,I donât want to blindside you to much so if you can take a moment to calibrate your emotions towards the somber. Maybe remember how you felt when you sat down to watch a funny episode of Family Ties but it was the one where Tom Hanks has a drinking problem, that might be how we at least have to start out today, but perhaps? Not end there.
So I know we all turn to our morning HotDog e-mail for a little lightness and a giggle to leaven the heaviness that will surely arrive during the rest of the day, but right now I wanna acknowledge that there were times when this hasn’t been so much the case for a certain group of people, specifically days:
In case you donât understand yet the commonamality in those is that they all feature depictions and descriptions of: m*nkeys. And then almost every Appreciation Day ever those are a nice INTENT but sometimes the actual IMPACT is not so nice for those of us who, honestly? Would rather confront the dick rip than the great ape because of our ongoing experience of the condition diagnosticianally labeled as: Pithecophobia: aka Fear of the Deadly, Horrific Ape and his Carelessly Destructive Simian Brothers.
Now I admit it we are a small community, there is not a wikipedia page for us or even a wiki-why only a old article Iâm not even sure if its serious. And our letter-writing campaign has not yet resulted in DSM enclusion but as you can see from the comments on this non-pedia wiki page: we EXIST dammit! I appreciate how in those comments people tell how theyâre condition developed, e.g. through a Scooby-Doo episode or the story of Travis the Chimp. For me personally it was a cumulation of I saw that Clint Eastwood horror movie at a tender age:
Plus then what really sealed the deal was the arrival to my hometown of Tumwater, WA of what I have to believe was a unlicensed circus outfit where I got separated from my gramma in one of the side tents:
And I will not share more details about that at this time.
Excuse me for a minute Iâm gonna need just a minute here.
Ok, Iâm ok again. So what you must understand about Pithecrophabia is that many of us are able to lead normal and healthy lives and it is only certain situations where there is problematic avoidins. I myself have held some jobs and travelled to neighboring counties and even have a robust monopolous love life but then here comes 1900hotdog and yes, it is a source of great succor and joy to me, but what about all these m*nkeys that keep showing up in the blog posts!?
SOMEtimes thereâs a kind of warning in the title or that its Upsetting Day, but other days they just kind of jump out at you with no warning (Lydia I want you to know I am not blaming you that I had to take a Health and Personal day on mind-ray-orangutan day, you couldn’tâve known not what you did) and don’t even get me started on what happened in the discord after the Congo podcast..
So my having to turn away from certain HotDog contents this was a loss to me, and I wanted to increase my cog native flexibility to fully participate in this community and maybe even one day make it to the end of the Lawnmower Man article without needing LaRene there to read it allowed and substitute all âchimpsâ for âslothsâ which retain a bit of the monkey aura but are too slow to be frightenin and not enough man in the eyes.
So I remembered what the school counselor told us when Trayton wouldnât use the bathroom by himself any more after he got a rodent fear from watching that one part of Lady and the Tramp, about a âExposure High Archyâ and showed us a good example of one if your afraid of throwing up and what I learned most was:
A] Start Where You Are (for e.g. the full-size gummy rat we bought for Trayton was Too Much Too Soon) and:
b] A Small Step Itâs Still a Step (also e.g. Trayton walking past the PetSmart mice first with âEyes-Closed-and-Listening-to-C418-on-Headphonesâ and then progressing to: âJust Eyes-Closedâ might not seem like much, however that is a Exposure âWinâ) but most importantly:
3) Warm-Patience and Self-Compassion, which honestly LaRene and I do feel those for Trayton and was pretty proud when he started to do number ones by himself again and I know heâll get back to toilet sitting too so I decided to give the same help to this other little guy (me). And some might say that sounds pretty soft or unmanly and to them I’d say well do you wanna do what SHOULD work, or what DOES work? And you know what? I have some ways to go still but it IS working pretty good and so I thought I’d share what I did here in case any of you have the m*nkey thing or maybe want to adapt it for Sudden Snakes or baby hands or night-time gas pumping or whatever.
(NOTE: Sissyneckâs qualifications as a exposure coach is unverificationed at this time, any treatments should only be undertook with the Super Vision of a local therapist or chiraproctor or a older cousin that maybe did some time in the Peace Core).
So the way I chose to confront my distress was through the viewing of the 1986 film Link (link) for reasons that will clear up as we go. Weâll view a few images from the film at each level of subjection distress and then take a break, look at a calmin picture (also from the film) and breath deeply before we move on. And hey: nobody is expecting you to make it all the way through right away, if you happen to share my afflecktion, please go at a pace that is tolerable for your comfort and organ constitution.
For our purposes you donât need to know about the plot other than its sort of like The Birds except in the 80s and in Britain and with m*nkeys. The guy who is General Zod is a professor who actually likes them.
And ethically studies them.
And then Ali from Karate Kid shows up and says she wants to help with his research.
And now you can maybe see why I chose this movie because of if your like me 80s Elisabeth Shue is such a kinda avatar of nostalgic innocents and cute and calm such that it sorta takes away some of the terror power of the simian beasts and this will be an important helpmeet for us.
Anyway at first Zod tells her no but then he remembers he needs someone to cook and clean at his big English house so he says yes and when she gets there right away weâre at step 1:
Ok as you can see weâre starting slow that’s the tityoular Link and even though he is veiled in shadow you might be able to see that he is doing the scary thing of wearing people clothes which is our first level of exposure.
And here we turn it up a bit with him fully-lit showing Elisabeth her quarters, observe he has recquired bow-tie agility even if itâs clip-on thatâs too much:
And finally our last last step at this level is Link in sorta like morning-after-a-bachelor-party-went-wrong clothes.
It is the bunched-up sleeves I think that are almost as bad as the blood I donât like the implimpcation that monkeys understand rolling sleeves because now they might also get casual vs formal roles and the inceassant eye-contact of course is not good. Also you might be noticing that even though the actor is a orangeutan they painted him black and gave him fake ears to make him portray a chimpanzee which: there might be a way to make a ethical joke about that but I have been trying without success and have had to accept that it is above my current skill level.
Ok so a important part of doing this work is keeping our promises to ourselves so even though this is only just a Level 1 Upsetting at this point we are still going to take a break to do some diaphragmentic breathing and look at a calmin image before we move on:
Ok how we feeling folks? If you are ready let’s place a warm hand on are courageous hearts and continue our journey of growth.
Our next level of exposure has to do with the removal of one of our protections from ape assault and dismemberment: we have fire and they don’t and maybe they know that and maybe they donât like it. But Link challenges our safeness by having kinda a uncle hairline and also with him being a ex-circus monkey guess what they taught him:
O. K. Its getting a little shuddersome letâs do a deep breath in, hold it, deep breath out and:
That is just so irresponsible imagine what could happen if you let a naughty ape keep playing with matches in a old house with gas fixtures.
Exactly he has burnt it all and you can see how unbothered he is by the hellish destruction he has rot even though I bet there’s probably fine tapestries and exotic teas and such in there. It is ed xactly the unableness of the monkey to understand finer consequence that hurts to the heart of me. I imagine our emotional temperature is also getting up there, letâs bring it down, repeat after me: âI am in a ape-free environment right now and especially there arenât any with the knowledge or matches to burn me up.â And let your eyes rest up on:
Now: I want you to be prepared we are moving up another level, so far the violence has just been implimpied and the destruction has been of property only but to meet our goal we must be exposured to images of a more direct and graphic nature:
Yes I was intentianal about easing us into this one; the death is of I think a plague-dog and it is in the service of protecting our Elisabeth (and the sort of Hitchcock cinematography here helps a little bit I think) but it is still time for us to confront our next level of:
Yes as Professor Zod explains earlier in the movie when Elisabeth wants to use positive enforcements on the m*nkeys: Link has the strength of 10 men you fool if you show a softness with him he will rend your neck from your head and that is very clear later in the movie when Link punishes a english man (or âBlokeâ) for threatening one of his simian brethren and sort of seems surprised at his own strength (content warning: there are multiple non-human primates in this clip):
And then with this knowledge he pretty quick attempts apeslaughter on Elisabeth herself (comfort note: she is quick and strong and smart and survives this attempt):
Also I’m pretty sure that’s a british stunt woman (or âstuntbirdâ) at the end there, to my eye the hair is not as lustrous and lively as we know Elisabethâs is. Well again at this point I invite you to check in with yourselves and determine if today is a day for continuing up this step-ladder of discomfort or if it is time for a Dr. Pepper break or even to call it a day and come back when weâre ready, letâs both me and you exercise a trust in you and me here.
Ok we welcome our brave decision to continue, whenever that may be that it happened and here we go:
Ok wow I realize I probably shouldâof let you know that was a double murder one, we learn that Link has killed Zod and then he just ENDS that lad. I apologize and I hope I can earn back your confidence over time it is through the process of rupture and repair that we strengthen our muscles AND relationships of trust. But gratefully that is the end of our Step 3 exposures and we can now take a well-deserved calming imagery break:
Ok folks you may have noticed we are at our ultimate level of m*nkey-fear exposure practice, I am feeling pretty good about preceding but that is my experience for me and it is up to you to decide if and how and when and how you’d like to scroll down to continue.
In your own time:
Oh no. I expect you can now maybe guess what is our final boss in this campaign against our own human frailty:
Hot Dog Children I invite you to do whatever you need to do to take care of yourself if you choose to preceed at this juncture, truly we are at a point where even the non-pithecophobic might quayle and do that nuh-uh swipe on their phone like when you see the wrong parts of reddit too early in the morning. Perhaps prepare a favorite tea or light your best yankee candle or put on some Enya before you keep going.
Shhhhh oh honey oh sweetie there there I know this one hurts I am right there with you with tears in my eyes, but if my internet presence isn’t enough and you want to keep going I invite you at this point to go get a trusted friend or family member whoâs hand you can squeeze or whoâs nails you can bite for support. There is just one more I promise but I had to split it into three gifs Patreon is not really set up as a therapy tool.
If You Believe You are Ready, than I Believe You Too:
OKAY ok breath out just breathe it out we saw it together we both saw those eyes and why did they have to flick downword and that slightest of unnatural smiles and no orangeutang is that good of a actor we know what Link was for real thinking and it should never be a cross-species thought which is: âNice.â
But just breath it out push the air out, here is our oasis:
Well. We have returned from the dark cold of Outer Space of emotional fear, that is behind us now and we have both our feet and maybe even our bottoms firmly planted in the warm sand of Here and Safe and Now. Take a look around you and take in the sights and the sounds and smells and think of the connection you are having with the other brave Hot Dog readers who are here with us either now or in their own chosen future time and you know what? Iâm proud of you.
When it’s your life’s work to keep people away from sex, you’ve chosen a path of humiliation and frustration. You’re selling a thing no one wants, and your only possible customers already had virginity explained to them by God. But despite it making her look like a sad dummy, author Jennie Bishop has dedicated herself to purity. She wants you to know your poundable holes are God’s precious gifts, and in 1999, she turned that sentiment into a children’s book.
The Princess and the Kiss is a story about one thing– a princess saving her first kiss for her royal wedding. There’s no age suggestion, but I feel like saving a first kiss for her wedding overshoots even the most optimistic expectations of your Christian daughter’s chastity, so the book must be for people old enough to understand it’s an allegory for penetration. But it might not be! This might literally be a book about the spiritual trauma of unmarried kisses.
Jennie dedicated The Princess and the Kiss to her home-schooled daughters, Vashti and Christianna. She does not mention how their innocence inspired her writing or her life, but instead calls for them to spend their first kisses well! Let them die dryly against the lips of a nerd for God’s glory! This is so goddamn weird. This is how a witch would curse a chapstick thief. It’s what every priest tells you the second you’re alone. It’s the least romantic line from a video cassette called Church Camp Hunks.
The story starts with the birth of the princess. When she was born, the king and queen gave her a very special gift from God, her first kiss, and something already seems off. Does this mean they put their mouth on her, or very carefully didn’t put their mouth on her? I get we’re talking about making sure your daughter never has sex, and I think every father sees the appeal in that, but why put it like this? Tell your stupid kid a wizard filled every penis with hot mustard, and cockroaches can’t resist hot mustard. You’re already inventing a kingdom of precious magic to indoctrinate her, you coward. There’s no ethical difference in explaining how insects are waiting to devour her crotch.
A page after giving the princess the very special gift of her first kiss, the king and queen give the princess the very special gift of her first kiss. Which means I’ve either gone insane, or this is not a well-written book. They lead the princess to a secret room where her kiss is stored, and if you thought her kiss was going to be a magical energy trapped inside a bird cage, congratulations:
This is an oversized children’s book, so the above illustration spans 26 inches across with no text. Representing your first kiss as a pet ghost your parents keep in a safe is beyond childlike. If you asked me, “What if fucking was like a lamp?” I would catch your words in a jar and label it “THE DUMBEST THING ANY STUPID FUCK HAS EVER SAID.” But even as a fan of trapping abstract concepts in glass, I can’t believe Jennie Bishop thought this dogshit stupid idea was powerful enough to warrent a full splash page. Did she imagine the reader would be so blown away by this reveal they needed to bask in it? Take the whole concept in? Even if it wasn’t spoiled by the cover, a two-year-old would stop you and say, “Let me guess: it’s, like, a glass cloche holding a light? Psh.”
And since we’re here looking at it, let’s talk about how this image unravels Jennie’s entire world. This is an open room on top of a thirty foot tower. This “secret kiss storage” is visible from at least five different windows. Any pervert could climb in there and take it. Her virginity has been curiously probed by a dozen squirrels every day for the past 18 years. By the rules of her own fiction, this princess has made love to at least six hundred birds. It should be called Princess Pigeon Fucker, Yes You Read That Right.
So now, despite this being, just, so deadass simple, the princess has the gift of her first kiss spelled out for her again. It’s the only thing that has happened on any page of this book, and this one is no exception. Remember, this was written by a woman who home schools her children. At this rate, we’ll be having virginity explained for another 80 pages and it will be 2049 before her elderly daughters graduate Beginner Shapes for Latter-day Saints.
If you filled a pillowcase with cottage cheese and took out television ads to tell everyone they weren’t allowed to have sex with it, your story would have richer characters than The Princess and the Kiss. This passive dingbat lives to get fucked, some day, but only once and in very specific conditions. She is a bottle of champagne for a special occasion, but with less autonomy and a noisier pop. Wait, go back one. Sorry. This book has me really cranky.
Now the book pivots to the princess refusing her kiss to suitors. Princes come from around the kingdom to offer themselves to her. The first is Prince Peacock, who is a great jumper, but you know, knows it. That’s a deal breaker for Princess… holy shit… I guess she was never given a name. Anyway, as a nameless woman whose goals, personality, and education are all described as “not kissing,” she knew she couldn’t give herself to a prince conceited enough to bring salesmanship to a princess courting.
Her next courter is Prince Romance who seemed interesting, but maybe too interesting? The princess, her insecurity honed from a lifetime of being told her first vaginal entry was the only thing she had to offer, knew this was too much man for her. “This sex machine is going to know I can’t fuck the second he gets it in,” she thought. And she was right. They should have really explained the princess’ deal to Prince Romance before he drove all this way.
For a writer, this next suitor is pretty embarrassing. His name is Prince Treasurechest, and he’s rich. But the princess, who again, was never named despite being written by a world class character namer, knows this guy is also too much for her. With all his money, why would he care about her sort of clean mouth? No, she needs a man who’s perfect. Not desirable, successful, adventurous, or experienced… someone who aspires to meet a woman who keeps her vagina under a dome and no second thing.
Many more suitors came, but the courtship ended with the princess choosing no one. “Why won’t God bring me a husband?” she demanded after every manner of man came directly to her home to offer her everything they had. Her mother comforts her by telling her even if God forsakes her, at least she’ll die with that first kiss, glowing lustily in a nearby tower. “Oh, that’s a good point,” the ape-brained virgin idiot thought.
But what’s this? A common man approaches the castle? Surely this lowborn scoundrel would not insult the princess’ honor by… no. He wouldn’t dare.
With all the charm of an Instagram follower asking for a farty pair of your panties, the common man tells the princess he has no money or talents, but he has been watching her. This is exactly the type of creep she and her parents are keeping her virginity locked away from, but they love him. He has them in the palm of his incel hand when he finally reveals the only very special gift he can give her. You already know what it is, but here are 26 inches of silent illustration anyway:
Like someone did on every other page of this book, the common man explains virginity to the princess and her parents. It’s the perfect sales pitch for these weirdos, and they agree he is the one for whom the princess has been waiting. But is he? Should this woman with unlimited options and presumably some responsibilities make a lifetime commitment to the first virgin stalker to get past her security? Like, are you teaching a valuable lesson to young girls when you tell them a man’s greatest gift is an unmoistened penis? This shit is bonkers. If I was this author’s husband I might ask myself why a woman created an entire fantasy world in order to say, “The best ladies choose unremarkable men with no sexual experience.”
So in a victory for “nice guys” everywhere, the common man and the princess get married and exchange kisses (not pictured). A drawing of a husband and wife kissing would look like an amateur gang bang video in this context, so Jennie does her best to describe it with the majesty it deserves– sun streams through the windows while all the kingdom and the actual God sing. So everyone watched them learn how to kiss together, which, Jesus fuck, means the very special gift was really only a kiss the whole time? It wasn’t an allegory! They still have at least three secret magical orbs to reveal to one another before they’ve consummated this thing.
“Princess Unnamed-Common, on our anniversary I have one last very special gift to give you. It is my will-o’-the-wisp of never having a thumb up my butt.”
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