Category: LEARNING DAY

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LEARNING DAY

Learning Day: The Extended McDonaldland Universe🌭

McDonald’s is sort of like a parasite found in America that we’ve allowed to infect other countries due to our hubris. It’s everywhere, and that means McDonaldland is everywhere. I’ve spoken about McDonald’s perverse advertising creation before. A world built on a stolen IP that resulted in a million-dollar lawsuit has somehow lasted far longer than the original idea it was ripped off of. McDonaldland makes no sense, and yet, someone has to take it to foreign countries and explain it so that they can make their own interpretations, and those interpretations are…not always great.

That is from a series of McDonald’s commercials created in Pakistan that clearly lost some things in translation. First of all, the McDonald’s gang travels by UFO, which feels spiritually correct but is not established McDonald’s canon. Also, they have made long-armed Grimace, and now that you’ve seen him, I’m sad to report he has also seen you. You should run.

I have to say the comment sections disagree with the translation of this commercial. The song playing in the commercial is at least partially sung in English. They didn’t translate any of the names, so Grimace is still Grimace. But instead of “heartless butt on Grimace,” I’m told the actual translation is “Grimace does the twist.” The plot of the commercial is that the McDonaldland gang has dropped from the sky to have a dance competition, which results in a four-way tie, so…buy McDonald’s, I guess?”

Imagine this was your first exposure to the characters in McDonaldland. You don’t open with Grimace! Grimace is a hard intro. Grimace looks like a sex toy trying to adapt to life on land. He looks like a gummy bear’s idea of Satan. Most countries don’t throw Grimace at you right away. They start you off with Ronald and some tiny, non-threatening hamburger people. This is pretty rough all around, though. It’s not just the bad CGI that makes the characters look like newborn babies attempting to hold up a wobbly head instead of dancing. Their version of Ronald McDonald is a sad man with hands larger than his head, eating a chicken sandwich that is also larger than his head. Internationally, the worst Ronald.

They don’t always change the look of the McDonald’s cast. In fact, they reskin a lot of American McDonald’s commercials with local languages, or even sometimes just local accents. Australian Ronald McDonald is twenty percent more handsome for some reason.

This Rugged Ronnie McDonnie seems to be outdoors more than the American clown. He also appears to have the power to construct a McDonald’s anywhere, including on the moon, which is a pretty cool superpower. Still, there’s something in my body that sort of revolts when he starts talking. He says, “Crikey, I’m Ronahld McDonahld.” My brain says nu uh that’s a STRANGER! It could just be my built-in clown danger instincts finally starting to kick in.

There are plenty of countries that have introduced the whole McDonaldland gang, and the formula for it seems to be that they just show up all at the same time, much like in Pakistan. A lot of times, they explain them even less. At least the Pakistan McDonald’s marketing team decided to attach names to all of these monsters. In some countries, they just show you Grimace and expect you to take him at face value. HOW. We’re used to seeing him in America, and we still have so many questions. Like is he the ghost of a boy who choked on fruit snacks?

Imagine being the American tasked with going to other countries and explaining McDonaldland. McDonald’s has a marketing policy book called “The Golden Arches Code”. In the past, it’s included things like Ronald McDonald cannot be seen visiting a nightclub or lounge, he doesn’t smoke, and no one should ever call him Ronnie. Whoops, I’ve broken the golden arches code. Officer Big Mac will be here for me any second.

There are other constants of the McDonaldland universe that aren’t as explicitly stated, but nevertheless seem to be cross-cultural. I’m talking, of course, about the Hamburglar being kind of sexy. Check out this cleaned-up K-Pop-inspired Hamburglar from Japan.

Bonus anime Hamburglar and Grimace included in gif! When they needed someone to do a fun little dance with Grimace of the Grimace shake, McDonald’s was like, take the Hamburglar, he’s the hot one. It’s established American canon, and Japan just had to accept that, probably with no follow-up questions allowed.

McDonald’s should be damn thankful that they lasted long enough in Japan to make it to the K-Pop Hamburglar era. Their earlier attempts at advertising in the country included Officer Big Mac housing Big Macs in front of a child. I never wanted to know how Officer Big Mac’s mouth opened, and now that I’ve seen that big floppy piece of cheese masticating, it’s seared into the do not enter portion of my mind. Watching a burger man eat a burger somehow created an enduring legacy for McDonald’s? There are around 3,000 McDonald’s franchises in Japan today. People loved to watch the Big Mac man eat Big Macs.

There is one country that took the concept of McDonaldland and improved it. If McDonald’s Brazilian commercials have no fans, then I am dead. Ronald lives in this dope, magical forest and kidnaps children there. It’s fine, it’s fine. Ronald always abducts children and brings them to McDonaldland. It’s just that McDonaldland is usually a quaint little small town, and now it’s just straight up the woods. Which I know sounds bad, but it’s more of a fairytale vibe. It puts children getting kidnapped by a clown in a way more positive light. In recent years children getting kidnapped by a clown has gotten a really bad reputation. If people saw these commercials, I think they would fix that.

The reason I’m so ok with Ronnie beckoning this child to follow him into the woods is very simple. He’s in a band. What, it’s a great band? In the forest where Ronald lives with his fellow band members, he has a full upright piano that he plays. The other instruments are an interesting mix of things. Hamburglar is on the clarinet, The Professor plays trombone, Captain Crook rocks the base, poor Birdie just gets some maracas, Officer Big Mac plays drums, and Grimace has a banjo for some reason. It looks like someone Googled instruments question mark and handed out the top six from the AI summary.

These Brazilian commercials were really long, up to a minute and thirty seconds of Ronald and friends, mostly straight up jamming. There’s one where Ronald wakes up in a bed in the middle of the woods, finds that he is surrounded by the members of his band, then jumps on a big trampoline. I don’t know what it means, but it makes me want a quarter pounder with cheese. I watched a compilation of fifty-eight foreign McDonald’s ads for this commercial, and these were a real bright spot in a lot of repeats and terrifying burger cannibalism. In retrospect, that might be why I was so chill with the kidnapping earlier.

All France had to offer me was an extreme close-up of Ronald McDonald’s face surrounded by tiny cookie versions of his face, which has again triggered my sense of clown danger. Brazilian Ronald would never hurt you; he’s too busy playing piano and enjoying nature. French Ronald McDonald has plans. I don’t know what they are, but I know they’re not good.

Overall, the game of McDonald’s mascot telephone has served them pretty well cross-culturally. The Golden Arches code has been upheld. Ronald is always a little menacing, Grimace is a mysterious blob. Does he actually taste like blueberry? We’ll never know until it’s far too late. The Hamburglar is the pretty one, and everyone else was laid off in the ’90s. No matter what country you travel to, there will always be a menacing clown man there to greet you!

This article was brought to you by our fine sponsor and Hot Dog Supreme: James Boyd, the model used for figuring out how Officer Big Mac would officially eat.

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LEARNING DAY

Learning Day: 10,000 Things to Praise God For

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LEARNING DAY

Learning Day: The Rock-afire Explosion Band 🌭

It’s your birthday. You’re eight years old. You just got done crawling on your hands and knees through a labyrinth of sticky tunnels that have never, ever been cleaned. You jump in the ballpit that was briefly closed because a kid threw up in there. It’s open now, a stoned teenager pretended to wipe it down. You find the filthiest balls and throw them at your best friend, before adjourning to eat the world’s worst pizza with your unwashed hands. Suddenly one wall explodes in multicolored lights, a broken loudspeaker buzzing an announcement nobody can decipher. Terrifying, unexplained automatons jerk into broken-limbed motion, singing a Beach Boys song they don’t have the rights to. This is the happiest you’ve ever been. You’re at ShowBiz Pizza Place, and you’re watching The Rock-afire Explosion Band.

Yes, later they’d be rebranded for Chuck E. Cheese, Mitzi Mozzarella would lose her rockin’ tits, and the fancy gorilla would be replaced by a trashy mouse, ruining the dignity of the franchise. But for a time The Rock-afire Explosion Band were on top of the world. Created in 1980 by Aaron Fechter of Orlando, Florida, the Rock-afire Explosion would become the sum of his life’s work. He actually didn’t want that. He did not want to be the guy who made Pizza Robots. He wanted to save the world. He wanted to invent the electric car.

Let’s throw back further, to the 1970s: America was in the middle of a gas crisis, and electricity wasn’t yet for liberal pussies. Aaron Fechter wanted to be the solution, but changing the world takes money. So he started a Science Business, which at the time meant going door-to-door asking if people needed any science. That seems like a joke, but that’s what actually happened. The joke is you hiding recruiter-friendly phrases in white text at the bottom of the four-hundredth resume you send a malfunctioning robot who sorts it right into the trash because it thinks your street name is too ethnic.

For Aaron Fechter, life wasn’t on Easy Mode. It was the Tutorial. He simply knocked on people’s doors, asked if they wanted any inventions, and that worked. He pressed left stick to move and celebrated his well-earned QUEST COMPLETE pop-up. Behind one of those doors was a carnival grifter who asked if designing rigged shooting games was science, to which Fechter replied “YUP!” With just that chance meeting, and plenty of seed money from daddy, Aaron Fechter was able to start his first animatronic game company and grift his way into history. It’s the Platonic ideal of the Boomer success story.

Aaron Fechter also claims he invented the original Whac-A-Mole game, but there are some problems with his story. Let’s see if you can spot them! Keep track of your guesses, there’s an answer key at the end.

According to Fechter, he was at a gaming expo when a carnie named Denny Denton brought him over to a broken Whac-A-Mole game, and asked if Fechter could whip up a working version. Fechter did, but when it came time to sell the game, Denny started loading a .45 Magnum in front of him while explaining “there are two kinds of people in the world, carnies and suckers, and you ain’t a carnie.” Denton cut him out of the deal and sold his Whac-A-Mole to Bob’s Space Racers, a Florida arcade company, who would license it across the world. None of this can be verified, because Fechter says Denton disappeared into the seedy criminal underworld of Gibsonton, a special magical town just for carnies and beyond the reach of traditional law enforcement.

Okay, let’s add up your points. Here are the problems with Aaron Fechter’s story, in no particular order.

  1. Denny Denton doesn’t exist.
  2. Carnies are a blade people. Ammunition costs money, but stabs are free.
  3. The magical town just for carnies is somehow a real place, but by all accounts it is subject to human law.
  4. In the story Fechter tells, he admits he didn’t invent Whac-A-Mole. He went to a booth where somebody else had invented Whac-A-Mole, and Fechter thought there was a malfunction loophole for fast inventors.
  5. There is no malfunction loophole.

The story that Bob’s Space Racers tells is a little different. They own the patent to Whac-A-Mole, which they claim was sold to them by two guys at a gaming expo whose machine was temporarily broken, but they fixed it. Huh, that’s… pretty much how Fechter tells it too, just with the concept of ownership intact. The two names on the patent: Donny Anderson, and Gerald Denton.

It’s basically the same story from two different points of view – one rooted in our reality, and one from the carnival-themed Shutter Island where Aaron Fechter’s decaying mind is trapped forever.

Sorry, that’s a spoiler. Maybe for Shutter Island, definitely for Aaron Fechter’s descent into madness. ShowBiz Pizza eventually merged with Chuck E. Cheese, rebranded the Rock-afire Explosion to Munch’s Make Believe Band, and the show went on. Without Fechter. In the early 1990s he split with ShowBiz entirely, fired all of his employees, and tried to go it alone. For reasons nobody could explain, modern children seemed to prefer video games to the bespoke choreography of mostly-broken musical terrorbots. Children’s animatronics was a dying industry, and while Fechter’s others creations did manage to take on a life of their own, I don’t mean that in the financial sense.

Fechter fell into his backup career: Mad science via IP theft. In 1991 he invented the Anti-Gravity Freedom Machine, which sounds rad as fuck. Tell me what you picture when you read those words. I’ll wait.

You guessed jetpack. Of course you guessed jetpack. There’s no way that can be anything but a jetpack that shoots fireworks.

Nope, email. Fechter tried to invent email in 1991, only his version was years too late and named like Evel Knievel’s motorcycle. When the Anti-Gravity Freedom Machine didn’t take off, because it was not filled with enough majestic fireworks, Fechter threw everything he had into a new animatronic machine. I’ll let him explain it: “It’s smart. It’s something I think adults will enjoy. It’s a robotic brain, mechanical, not a computer. And it’s going to be relevant to the post-apocalyptic challenges I think we’re all expecting.”

Go ahead, guess.

You guessed Road Warrior-style animatronic death bus. Obviously. That’s the clearest way I know to say “Road Warrior-style animatronic death bus” without tipping off the Feds before it’s fully online and unstoppable.

Wrong again!

In this game, the player tries to bash an animatronic cockroach with a big flip-flop. I guess the roach is what makes it “relevant to all the post-apocalyptic challenges we’re expecting?” Damn dude, really putting some English on the concept of stealing Whac-A-Mole. It was called Bashy Bug and you may recognize it from nowhere. Nobody bought it, because it suffered a malfunction at the gaming fair where it debuted. Hopefully while he was trying to fix it Fechter locked eyes with a younger, faster inventor and instantly knew that time is a flat circle.

That should be the end of the Platonic Boomer success story: A man of great privilege born at the perfect time dipshits into massive success, goes insane when he realizes he doesn’t have a second idea.

But then YouTube came along. A couple of dudes got a hold of his old Rock-afire Explosion robots, made them lip-sync modern pop songs, and created a viral hit. Fechter saw his path back…

And immediately tried to sue it.

“I hated it,” Fechter says. “That was my first reaction. Absolutely hated it. Those were adult songs. That’s not the Rock-afire audience.” He went on to say those YouTube guys were his “new Whac-A-Mole” enemies, because the man has self-inflicted mole poisoning and he’ll never escape Carnival Island.

I don’t know how Fechter’s lawsuit ended. I’m assuming he successfully sued the hell out of those shitty punks trying to exploit the purity of childhood nostalgia by forcing a beloved robot band to perform adult pop songs. Good riddance, may they rot in hell.

Oh hey, it looks like Aaron Fechter has his own YouTube channel for the Rock-afire Explosion Band now. Let’s check in on that.

It was actually Aaron’s idea the whole time. He went to a YouTube fair and he saw a Rock-afire Explosion Band Does Adult Pop Songs booth, only it was malfunctioning at the time, so he built his own. Everything was going great until a drifter named Yout Ube shot Fechter in the knees and disappeared into the underbelly of Viral Town, where cops fear to tread.

Ganking the idea bought Fechter a few hits, but you can see the views dip sharply even in the thumbnails up there. When things looked their bleakest, Aaron Fechter looked back upon the beach he’d been walking to see a single set of footprints in the sand. He asked Boomer Privilege “why did you abandon me there, at my darkest times?” And Boomer Privilege looked upon him and said “my man, you’ve been riding on my shoulders this whole time. You have literally not taken one single step.”

Just as Fechter was about to give it up for good, Five Nights at Freddy’s came out.

Fechter was back on top of the world! See? You entitled kids just need to knock on enough doors, somebody always needs Pizza Robots. Pure bootstraps, baby.

Now Fechter puts on new shows just for his YouTube channel. After thirty years, the Rock-afire Explosion is back with original material! Let’s see what Billy-Bob the bear has to say:

Huh. Most times when somebody says they “get asked one question more than any other,” it’s because they’re gay and still in the closet. If they say they can only answer that question through song, it’s because they’re gay and about to come out of the closet with a lot of style. I mean, hell yeah, Billy-Bob. I’m here for this. Be true to yourself!

Here’s a sentence you have to speak fluent Hot Dog to understand: Aaron Fechter is Wogglebugging Billy-Bob the Pizza Robot.

The song goes on to explain that Billy-Bob is definitely not gay, but he’s also not ace. He’s actually really into girls, he just can’t get with one. Fechter thought it better to build an incel robot than a gay one. Aaron Fechter, driven completely mad by the endless easy success of Boomer privilege, succumbed to hate. I’m playing this up, but it’s hardly a twist. All the clues were here. There was actually only one. You should’ve seen every word of this coming when I first typed “Florida.”

Here’s the official Rock-afire Explosion Twitter account. Not his own account, the account of the beloved children’s pizza band.

Aaron Fechter surely programs all of his tweets into the Rock-afire choreography board. In some dark Florida warehouse, there’s a Hillbilly Pizza Robot doing Seinfeldian observational riffs about children’s anagrams and hate crimes. Dennis Miller rants about the bump-stock preferences of biological women, beb. Letterman lists of his favorite ethnic bombings.

Wait, that last one’s real.

You know what’s weird about this primitive carnival robot choreographer listing his favorite bombings under a Pizza Bear account? I guess a lot of things. But mostly it’s that his favorite bombing isn’t his own bombing.

Oh right, let’s get to the bombing.

On September 26th, 2013, Aaron Fechter’s Orlando warehouse exploded. First responders dug through the rubble to find twitching robot limbs and burning gorilla heads. They said it was “like the Joker’s lab exploded” because they’re fucking casuals who never heard of Professor Pyg. It was such a disaster the East Central Florida Regional Planning Council made a special pamphlet and slideshow just for the incident.

This is not a general pamphlet about the kind of thing Aaron Fechter did, it’s specifically about the time he, Aaron Fechter, blew up his animatronic warehouse while trying to invent a new kind of fuel. There were no fatalities, but there was massive property damage due to the failure of the cylinder he used to store it.

That incredible damage is from one cylinder failing. He had six on premises.

Now, Aaron explains that the cylinder failed due to hidden “rust worms,” which the Transformers Wiki tells me are voracious writhing creatures that inhabit the sea of rust. The Florida Hazmat chief says it because you can’t use that type of container for that type of fuel, that even the friction from opening the tank’s valve is enough to ignite it, and that Aaron is lucky to be alive after using this janky ass arc welder setup to make a hydrogen bomb.

Aaron Fechter called his new gas Carbo-Hydrillium, and you can really feel how hard the Orlando Fire Department wanted to roast this nerd as they patiently explained all the stupid shit he just did.

The city said they had to treat the rubble as an active bomb site because the remaining cylinders were so dangerous. Aaron Fechter was cooking with it. He was cooking with homemade hydrogen bombs. I love how the pamphlet points out it wasn’t even cheaper. That has nothing to do with the disaster, it’s just to make Aaron look stupid. This whole thing is such a masterclass in calling a guy an idiot in a professional setting. They should teach it in Passive Aggressive Memos, which I assume is an MBA class every one of my former bosses took. The Orlando Fire Department absolutely rejoices in lighting up this Pizza Robot moron for slide after slide after slide:

Is sub-pamphleting a thing, like sub-tweeting?

They don’t even allow Fechter the dignity of plausible deniability. After twenty slides of vague barbs, the Orlando Fire Department takes the gloves off and slaps Aaron Fechter right where it really hurts: In the Pizza Band.

I can just picture Aaron Fechter whining to the burning head of his keyboard gorilla like Owen Wilson in The Royal Tenenbaums: “Why would they make the point of saying someone’s not a chemist? Do you think I’m especially not a chemist? … You didn’t even have to think about it, did you!”

He was probably just happy they said he invented Whac-A-Mole. Although wait, the Whac-A-Mole Wikipedia page says it was invented in Japan in 1975. Which means, holy shit – we’re multiple layers of IP theft deep. We’re nesting arcade grifts like parentheses. But then, why would the Orlando Fire Department ever think Fechter invented Whac-A-Mole? Unless, holy shit again – standing there in the exploded rubble of his former livelihood, his Pizza Friends in twitching mounds all around him, a still-smoldering Aaron Fechter looked the approaching First Responders straight in the eye and said:

“First thing you have to know: I invented Whac-A-Mole.”

This article is thanks to a Hot Dog Tip from Thrillho.

This article was brought to you by our fine sponsor and Hot Dog Supreme: Mickey Lowman, who disappeared into Carny Town and was never seen again. 

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LEARNING DAY

Learning Day: The Japanese Pornographer who Invented ASMR and One Other Simpsons Thing 🌭

What feels like an eternity ago, you and me really got into it over a metaphorical Flight of Simpsons Weirdness, which is to say three things. I showed you three things, all Simpsons-related, and in case you don’t recall you absolutely loved it. “Simpsons me again, Simpsman!,” you begged, cobbling the clumsy portmanteau together on the fly and through a thick haze of HomEros, which is a much stronger portmanteau. Now I’ve got two more Simpsons things I want to show you, and yet although they are both arguably even more fascinating…some part of me still refuses to type. Probably the fingers. The reason things feel so different is painfully clear. Between writing that first jolly column and sitting down to etch this one I suffered the birth of my first child, referred to hereafter as A. Baby.

Mr. Baby and I became acquainted through a friend of a friend’s vagina, and have since become very close, almost like family. And having that – that “almost-family feeling” – well, it changes you. There are some significant tax benefits, for example. But it also raises new and frightening questions: what kind of world will I be leaving to my heir? What kind of cursed Simpsons media will be molding him into the ideal man when Treehouse of Horror LV premieres? To answer that question, we must peer into the minds behind two of today’s most powerful Simpsons-intensive indoctrination delivery vectors: public education and YouTube.

And so, fingerefusal aside (which is a portmanteau whose elegance ranks somewhere between that of the previous two), the column must and will begin. If you can guess what I’m typing this with instead of my fingers, please don’t.

THE SEVEN DEAD-IDDLY-EDDLY SINS

Rock Eisteddfod was an attempt by the Australian public school system to get kids interested in dance, healthy diet choices, and abstinence from things like alcohol and ciggies, which is one of the stupid things they call them there. The program culminated in a yearly dance competition pitting high schools against each other for backroom betting purposes. As you might imagine, the vast majority of schools – basically all except this one I found – would do something tame and sensible, like a hiphop routine where they out-breakdance and shame a faggybutt (the Australian government literally reached out and made me call it that; I’m very sorry).

But when Harristown State High comes to play, they don’t not go immediately unhinged insane, as evidenced by the supernova eyes of their spokesperson, seen here explaining to the hosts that what they are about to witness is inexplicable and therefore she isn’t actually there and this isn’t even happening right now.

Obviously you know it’s a Simpsons thing, so let’s not obfuscate that fact. In fact, the Harristown routine starts with a valiant attempt to dramatize the intense creative anguish Matt Groening must have gone through while fucking around and giggling at his own doodles. Again, by contrast, your average one of these routines starts with some kids making a bunch of Australian flags form into a food pyramid of healthy snack options. Instead, overwhelmed by the Szyslakian despair of his task, Harristown Matt skips right past overeating, drugs and alcohol, or wanton sex, and attacks Australia’s problems at their root – ALL SEVEN DEADLY SINS FUCK IT. Like the mythical hydra, we must decapitate all the fell beasts at once and put the nation’s children back on the True Christian Path Matt Groening Intended!!!

Yep, it’s a government-funded religious guilt trip in the form of a High School Simpsons musical from dawn unduh, myte! We begin with greed, avarice, the lust for money. Who better to embody it than Springfield’s own version of famed plutocrat Mr. Snrub, Montgomery Burns?

There’s upbeat synth music, Burns juggles a little and piles up big stacks of cash – it makes sense! In fact, if things stay this grounded it almost feels like a stretch to target this for a column.

Has the part of my body I’ve been typing with instead of my fingers been perhaps a tad hasty? My ex-wife always said that part was hasty, if you know what I mean! My penis is the part if you don’t know what I mean. Indeed, as we work our way up the SIN-O-METER from Greed to Gluttony, even my famous typing penis is forced to admit this concept might work fine, actually?

Homer, Gluttony, sure. Makes sense. You got dancing beer and donuts, lead kid in a funny Homer costume…and look, they made the cooling tower! Cute.

Oh okay, there’s the bump. See, I knew it would be in there somewhere. Bart taking pics of sexy Lisa while a bunch of Lisa clones lunge through the darkness bears discussion. The staging doesn’t make it totally clear whether the above tableau represents Lust or not, but I’m going to give Harristown kids the benefit of the doubt and assume it’s going for a Pride/Envy combo thing instead. The point is, my penis should trust my fingers more. Frankly, lately they aren’t on the same page at all; trying to masturbate is like plunging a rock tumbler.

Next to take the stage is Margaret Simpson, who by process of elimination should represent Sloth, which is a pretty heavy trip to lay on a baby.

Hopefully she won’t develop any weird complex or need to overcompensate to dispel the perceived stigma of her slothfulness.

Then she backflips off a skateboard! It’s a classic Simpsons undermine. Why Bart is now a frog is a reference that goes over my head, much like Maggie as she continues to flip up up and away as if to say “Hey! You out there! Don’t be fat like Dancin’ Homer! Be skinny like a Backflip Baby getting violently shaken all around!” But it’s just as well the minors have left the room (except for two of them), for what comes next can only be described as an ideogram or kind of living hieroglyphic, the essence of Wrath and Lust conflagrating as one.

Also is Marge about to pop an understudy Maggie out? What’s with that pose? Anyway, Bart and Lisa roll away and Marge and Homer split into a domestic abuse situation on the left and violent humping on the right.

Like, they dance those things, but the message is the same: “Get it? Sex and rage are in each of us commingled? You know, the point of David Cronenberg’s A History of Violence?”

“That’s true, we largely consider this a routine responding to A History of Violence.”

Just kidding. What they actually say after they’re done doing that to a bunch of other kids is – “This really opened our eyes to what children are watching on simple cartoon shows, for example The Simpsons. We’ve noticed that it’s not always a good message or a good moral coming through and parents need to realize this before they let their children watch it.”

So EITHER this was an anti-Simpsons routine, which is evidenced by Marge being the one to deliver the above buzzkilling monolog, or it was a pro-Simpsons, pro-Sin, pro-fun Ozzie creep-down I can really get behind. The only evidence tipping the scales in that direction is the subtle brilliance of starting your final line with “This really opened our eyes…” while dressed like this:

THE JAPANESE PORNOGRAPHER WHO INVENTED ASMR

Okay, so, unfortunately our investigation into what the schools are pounding into our kids’ brains, Simpsons-wise, was inconclusive. They say satire is dead, and I agree because I am unimaginative and was never taught close reading skills. Just kidding, I’m not! That was satire! Or at least irony, you gotta give me that. And now I gotta give you this, a video I first encountered in 2010 and have since rewatched in both good times and bad. All the time, that same question pounds in my brain: is this satire? What is this?

Nominally, it is a YouTube poop-style video of ideas for a potential Simpsons movie, the real Simpsons Movie having been announced the year prior. The intro music takes up half the video, will compel you to hit someone you thought you would never hit in your whole life, and is perfectly embodied by this freezeframe:

It’s “the kind of music you’d expect to be paired with imagery like that,” and I’m confident you know what I mean. As for the rest of the video, it’s a crudely-animated horrorshow I will now try and probably fail to adequately describe. In fact, I think this is such a writing challenge I need to get my penis and my fingers involved, like I do with my patented sex move “failed attempted anal because if it’s been a while you forget how awkward it actually is mechanically to get it on in there but I do really appreciate the token of intimacy and willingness to try things.” Works* every time.

Unsurprisingly, the star of the episode is a new character with a broad Australian accent. Clearly the animator was radicalized as a child by participation in the Rock Eisteddfod program. He introduces himself to Ned Flanders-through-a-Ren-and-Stimpy-filter as Fishbone or Fishface or something, then quickly dispatches him and takes up residence in his home. Shortly thereafter, the brutalized corpses of Rod and Todd are unceremoniously dumped from the second floor windows into the gutter.

Sorry, gut-diddly-uttler. Once Fishman has stripped the Flanders home bare of resources and presumably found and defiled Maude’s body, he swiftly moves on to the Simpsons themselves. In this reality, Bart is a little older, and a little less naive. Of course by that I mean he’s graduated from “El Barto” tags to “Fuck U Homer” and his usual pranks have been replaced by the simple but effective technique of throwing bricks at his father’s face.

Naturally, this results in some household tension.

And admittedly, some of the dialog about the modern legacy of Iran-Contra politicking is spot-on, but also here’s what Homer looks like:

If I know my anime, that tear means he’s sick, the snot bubble implies he’s flirting with Fishberg, and the butter smear across his bottom lip means he’s a pro and he’s ready to go. But Homer’s usual heady mix of Wrath and Lust isn’t enough to satisfy Fishbone, who angrily seduces Marge with lines that are so distorted and Australian I can’t transcribe them, then demands Homer move out, which he does.

He cries about it. The end.

Oh wait! I almost forgot that Homer comes back home at the very end to find Marge going full reverse cowgirl on Fishbutter’s churn-stick. Please note the pool of blood implying her defloration and Homer’s absolute all-timer cuck status. Homer then lets out the final line of the video, that rings clear and true like a sad sad bell in my head to this very day.

“Maaaaaaaaarge. You’re breaking my heaaaaaaaart.” Click, and be forever changed. WAY more than having a kid, by the way, which I can now confirm.

So, given that I will be offloading my son’s development to cool stuff like the above, I’d like to dive just a little deeper into the video’s poster, who goes by “virgin teen” on YouTube. His channel appears to have been active from 2002 to 2012, boasts 2.36 subs per video he’s released, and bills itself as “the official cannel [sic] of internet pioneer, millennial “asmr” inventor, cyberartist and patron saint of online, virgin teen.” Here he is reacting to the death of Michael Jackson.

And that’s the thing about virgin teen, who as I write this must be a virgin dad himself I imagine…he’s not far off about inventing ASMR. Because the invention and description of that phenomenon is widely credited to a 2007 post wherein a user named “okaywhatever” described the experience and it resonated with so many people that researcher Jennifer Allen conducted the first study into it in the 2010’s. Meanwhile, every single one of virgin teen’s videos is like the above – a static shot of him smoking one whole cigarette while he whispers about the nominal topic so quietly that all you can hear is lip on paper and whispers and vibes, man. Of hundreds of videos, turns out the Simpsons one stands alone amidst a sea of uncredited ASMR genius.

Some of v. t.’s videos predate the widespread use of the term ASMR, and include topics as diverse as “Re: Ask Olga K [Episode 7],” “Movie 17,” “Re: my internet’s gone down,” “Re: cat scratches parrot’s head,” “Re: Michael jackson has die – Michael Jasckson is dead,” and “Re: Yaprak Dökümü 71.Blm 1.Parça [www.EsenlerDizi.com].” Each is a susurrating soundscape he probably meant to be ironically funny, but which actually come off incredibly soothing because satire is dead.

But virgin teen lives on, as does the spirit of ASMR, as does The Simpsons, and as does A.Baby, whose own gravitational journey towards pop cultural artifacts that will mark the ages of his life has only just begun. But you know? I think we’re in good hands.

He also does a pretty funny twitter feed of Japanese porn titles!

*As decreed by the National Genital Board following my disqualification from the league, I must include an asterisk whenever implying my dick works.

—

Michael also releases content through his outlet Small Beans, wrote a Sci-Fi/Fantasy novel you can read or listen to, and launched a hyuuuuuge Simpsons project June 1st on the old Cracked YouTube channel, so look for that!

This article was brought to you by our fine sponsor and Hot Dog Supreme: Honk 𝑤ℎ𝑜 ℎ𝑎𝑠 𝑎𝑛 𝑖𝑛𝑡𝑒𝑟𝑛𝑎𝑙 𝑚𝑜𝑛𝑜𝑙𝑜𝑔𝑢𝑒 𝑛𝑎𝑟𝑟𝑎𝑡𝑒𝑑 𝑏𝑦 𝑣𝑖𝑟𝑔𝑖𝑛 𝑡𝑒𝑒𝑛, 𝑠𝑜 𝑖𝑡 𝑙𝑜𝑜𝑘𝑠 𝑙𝑖𝑘𝑒 𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑠.

Categories
LEARNING DAY

Learning Day: Biker Mice From Mars Early Reader Books🌭

The Biker Mice From Mars are a product of the post Ninja Turtles animals plus radioactivity equals radical ripped animals who do extreme sports era. If only that were true, Chernobyl would be so much cooler. They live in Chicago after being kicked out of Mars for, I assume, being too radical. Also they wear slutty little outfits, live together, and I would assume, kiss.

It’s a shame that the mice are so violently allergic to shirts. That must make their love of motorcycling even more dangerous. There were a lot of similar shows in the early ’90s, but for some reason, Biker Mice From Mars has endured in a way that others have not. It’s no Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, but it ran for three seasons in the ’90s, got a one-season 2008 reboot, and they’re still making toys and comic books for it today, with talk of another reboot in the works.

What could it be about these Tom Of Finland style mice that people are so attached to? We may never know. There’s just something about them. Some undefinable thing I will not contemplate while looking at this ad for Sports Bro’s Touchdown Modo, complete with bomb blaster football missile and mesmerizingly torn crop top.

I’m not saying the only interesting thing about Biker Mice From Mars is how gay and hot they are. The show also had a pretty incredibly talented voice cast. Ian Ziering, Leah Remini, Michael Dorn, and if there’s a cartoon of questionable taste, you know it’s also going to star The Hawaiian Sweet Roll Movie‘s Mark Hamill. We have a saying in my house, “The Ham Man’s gotta get his bacon.” That means Mark Hamill will voice any cartoon for any amount of money.

I’m not here to talk about Biker Mice From Mars, the TV show, though. I’m here to talk about when these fetish mice were used to attempt to make children think reading is cool. You see, The Biker Mice From Mars has a series of early reader books that could only be sold at the hunkiest Scholastic book fairs.

Could I have attempted to find a book cover that wasn’t covered in spaghetti stains? No, this is a children’s book. They all come like that; that’s how we know it’s authentic. Buzz Books knows children’s books. They’ve worked with all of the greats– Thomas The Tank Engine, Babar, and another anthropomorphic animal who loves a slutty little crop top, Winnie-The-Pooh.

These cartoons are not on the same level as Biker Mice From Mars. I mean, I don’t know what Joshua Jones’s deal is, maybe he’s a mutated sparrow leather daddy paragliding enthusiast. Sorry, googled it, he’s a pale little British man who enjoys doing chores. The mice would eat him alive.

So, let’s look at the content of one of these books. Biker Mice From Mars: Test Of Friendship is based on a script for the TV show, because why write two stories when children’s soft brains will not remember they’ve already seen The Biker Mice From Mars conquer friendship once before. Buzz Books did not have the budget for new sexy mouse stories. They just wanted access to the classics.

We open with one of the main villains, Lawrence Lactavius Limburger, plotting with mad Scientist Karbunkle to contract a third villain named Evil Eye Weevil to make the sexy mice men fight amongst themselves. Meanwhile, completely unknowing of the danger to their special friendship, the mice men play football on motorcycles in what the text says is a deserted baseball stadium, but there’s clearly a football goal post in the background. What makes this even weirder is that in the TV show, they are playing motorcycle soccer, which feels like it makes more sense, but in 1993, an editor probably found it too European for these hyper-masculine mouse friends.

Their game of foot/base/soccerball is interrupted by the wildest radio announcements of all time. The DJ for the rock n’ roll station announces, with all of the sympathy of a wacky waving inflatable tube man, that Lawrence Limburger is going to kill all of the animals in his wildlife preserve. Can, can he do that? If you’re rich enough, can you just buy a bunch of giraffes and then one day decide to throw them into a wood chipper if you get bored? Probably, this is America.

That DJ was having a tough week. “You’re listening to 103.6 The SPLURCH, that was ‘Mmm mmm mmm mmm’ by The Crash Test Dummies, and hey, guess what, local businessman Lawrence Limburger is about to kill a whole bunch of animals, and we’re all powerless to help. Here’s ‘Mmm mmm mmm mmm’ again. I’m so sad!”

The existential crisis DJ is a trap! Lawrence Limburger is going to let the animals live; he’s just using the threat of mass death to lure the Biker Mice From Mars to his wildlife preserve so that Evil Eye Weevil can use his evil eye to make them all mad at each other via a radical stunt jump/eye laser combo. I bet that never happens in Joshua Jones.

So now the sexy mice are all fighting with each other. Boooo! Maybe it would be ok if they fight a little and then kiss, maybe roll around in the mud a little bit, idk. The Biker Mice angrily storm off in different directions, and Lawrence Limburger sends his henchmen to defeat them now that he’s split them up. They manage to capture Modo and Vinnie and tie them up in such a way that we can still see their abs (this is crucial) but not their groins (just makes it hotter).

No one has managed to capture Throttle, though; the leader mouse… the mouse so powerful he’s named after what make motorcycle go. Big mistake! The bitchiness ray only lasts for around an hour, so as soon as it wears off Throttle is headed to save his best friends/roommates/situationships. First, he takes a moment to quietly brood on a moonlit rooftop with his abs out (again, crucial. The third graders that read this book need to understand just how many abs he has).

Throttle jumps from the rooftop straight into the window of Limburger’s evil office space, where he’s keeping The Biker Mice. A scuffle ensues where he manages to turn Evil’s eyeball ray against him, Limburger, and the many other villains introduced at the beginning of this thirty-two-page book. He also uses his creatively named ray-blaster, which looks exactly like a gun, to fire the shackles off of his friends, freeing them. They flex their abs in joy.

Then they all get on their motorcycles, which I guess Limburger kept nearby, and smash another window to exit in a beautiful, tandem motorcycle stunt that symbolizes their unity. There isn’t going to be a single unshattered window left in that skyscraper if Limburger keeps beefing with the hot mice men.

Their temporary breakup has only made this throuple stronger. They arrive home and have a good laugh at how bad Limburger is at killing animals. There’s a whole forest preserve that I guess he owns, which is so full of live giraffes right now, that chump. Why does Limburger own a forest preserve anyway? That’s not very villain-like. Is it just to have a steady supply of giraffes to threaten in the event of an emergency? Third graders will probably not ask these questions. Anyway, the boys decided to kick back and enjoy a sports game by their favorite team, the Chicago Nubs. So close.

Do we think this is a typo for the Chicago Cubs? Or did the Chicago Cubs send a cease and desist so strong they’re not even allowed to have the hot mice say Chicago Cubs? I can’t decide which is more likely.

That is the story of how The Biker Mice from Mars briefly broke up, then got back together. It has everything a third grader could ever want in an early reader book, hot shirtless mice-men, hot shirtless mice-men, and of course, hot shirtless mice-men. All of the children who picked up this book learned something about themselves that they can never unlearn, and so did all of us.

This article was brought to you by our fine sponsor and Hot Dog Supreme: Armando Nava, a cooler biker mouse from Phobos. 300% hunkier and with half as much shirt.

Categories
LEARNING DAY

Learning Day: Evil Summon

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