Category: NERDING DAY

Categories
NERDING DAY

Nerding Day: Cosmo Meets the Foreskin Justice League 🌭

It’s been a calendar year since we met Foreskin Man. It feels longer, though, doesn’t it? Like the protective, elastic skin that Dr. Mutilator yearns to tear from the vulnerable bodies of newborn boys, time has stretched out over the shaft of reality over these last twelve months. Let’s slow jerk a little while the world burns.

April 4th was Foreskin Day. Did you forget it again? Who could blame you? I mean, why do the gays get a whole month while the prized foreskin with its many nerve endings and shielding tissue only gets a day? Probably it has something to do with the J— sorry, I’m getting ahead of myself. Keep your eyes on the prize. We’ve got a whole cast of characters to meet and a lot of lore created by a desperate writer who landed the world’s weirdest gig in the most lubricated crossover since Avengers: Infinity Whore to get through. But every franchise has to start somewhere. Who’s the Captain America of penile health? Aside from Captain America, I mean.

Decidedly more twinky than Foreskin Man, Cosmo is the boyish, whiplike mascot of ONE Condoms. And while he has the physique of a Dick Grayson drawn by a glasses fetishist who rakes in ten grand a month on Patreon, I want to be extremely clear here: Cosmo was never a child. He has no tragic backstory involving the death of his parents at a circus, in an alley, or on an exploding planet. He appeared suddenly out of the innermost depths of a star, protected from the ravages of nuclear fusion by a box of condoms he was stuffed into.

Foreskin Man’s powers included rocket boots, rich, and no third power. You might think Cosmo has some kind of condom projection ability based on the art above, a sort of prophylactic Kirby Krackle, but come on. That would be ridiculous. No, he’s actually immortal and omniscient, but only regarding penis length and breadth.

Somehow, this feels like more of a violation than x-ray vision. Imagine this taut and fuckable little star warrior gazing into your eyes and knowing that he knows precisely what condom style would complement your penis. Oh, also he achieves his flirty little flip hairstyle with lube. Don’t do that, though. Lube reacts differently to your earth hu-mon follicles than it does to the hair of an astral sex monster.

ONE Condoms brought Cosmo into existence in 2024 to promote their custom condom measurement kit. Well, strictly speaking it was the sex toy company SheVibe that created him, but we’re already in danger of spinning out into an extended universe of dong superheroes, so we’ll get their world of magic Dolores-es another day.

In the ONE Condom-verse, Cosmo showed up on Earth in 1999, terrified everyone with the power of infinite dildo juggling, and then spent two decades fruitlessly begging the leaders of earth to invent better condoms. I know this is all a silly promotional bit, but I want you to really visualize that for a second. A human-appearing alien arrives one day, demonstrating the powers of unassisted levitation and vibrator manifestation. He is completely indestructible and shows no signs of aggression. But he also refuses to share any information about the cosmos, his people, or the secrets of his incredible powers. When he meets with world leaders, he shakes their hands with a knowing look, leans in, and whispers “ribbed. Size small. Almond-flavored.” This little cock imp would be on the government operating table quicker than E.T. We will learn your terrible arts of condom divination, Cosmo! We will wrench them from your very star-flesh! The bloodthirsty, paranoid citizens of America demand it!

Unfortunately, Cosmo was a complete and utter failure as a marketing tool. There’s only one KPI that matters if your job is creating condom company mascots, and if there’s still no art of your guy being turned into Wonder Bread or dominated by a man-tiger a year after his debut, then you’re— well, not fired, because this was probably an underpaid contract job to begin with, but you’re not getting commissioned to create a Cosmo motion comic where he battles a team of villains who personify poorly-fitting condoms.

Anyway, the brief was doomed from the start. Giving your penis herald from beyond the edge of space the same name as one of the Fairly Oddparents is just bad SEO. There are nearly 300 results for “Cosmo” on Rule 34, and none of them feature the ONE Condoms mascot. I checked. I also learned that porn site sidebar ads are getting really creative with generative AI, though most of the innovation appears to be focused on putting arm-sized monster hogs on women with anime child faces.

Thus, Cosmo saw, he came, he entered a year-long refractory period. But then, on “Foreskin Day” 2025, he returned. And this time, he wasn’t alone. I could have said “coming alone” there, but we’ve still got a lot of article ahead of us. Like a powerful man-tiger buried in Cosmo’s inviting hole, we’ve got to pace ourselves.

Cosmo’s meeting Intact America’s Foreskin Justice League, each of whom is an ambulatory penis except for the Foreskin Fairy, who’s just Angel from X-Men if he got on gear. Intact America is exactly what it sounds like — a well-funded, professional-looking organization advocating for an end to circumcision in the United States through unsettling imagery.

I went looking for information on them and ended up on the YouTube channel of an anti-circumcision VTuber talking suspiciously about how Georganne Chapin, the executive director of Intact America, funded a “Jewish film” and partnered with a guy named Eliyahu Ungar-Sargon, who seems to be a figure of hatred amongst the kind of person who wants to express plausibly deniable antisemitism from behind the stiffly-posed visage of an anime teen.

And I think I know why. In a blog post from 2022, Ungar-Sargon talked about his early encounters with intactivists when he was producing a film about circumcision in America. Back then, he had a conversation with Matthew Hess — the creator of Foreskin Man — and wanted to give him a chance to clear his name after the second issue of the comic was called antisemitic for featuring the character “Monster Mohel.” As a refresher, he looked like this.

Ungar-Sargon asked Hess if it was a coincidence that Foreskin Man was a blonde, blue-eyed white man who battled ethnic stereotypes, and he said that “Foreskin Man’s blond hair, blue eyes, and fair skin reflects my own German heritage. I see absolutely no reason to be ashamed of that.” Oh, just German heritage. No problem there!

It turns out that Hess was kind of a harbinger of things to come, as the intactivist movement’s figureheads like Chapin realized in the mid-2010s that their biggest groundswell of support was coming from the alt right. Rather than stand their ground against them, they welcomed people who believe that circumcision is part of a pedophilic Jewish conspiracy and have struggled to control them while retaining their image as a respectable social movement ever since. Here’s Chapin arguing that circumcision is at least partly responsible for mass shootings.

See? I told you we’d get to the conspiracies. But shit, what was I talking about? Oh, right. Penis superheroes. The foreskin is the Spider-Man of the penis, in that it has a Durability rating of three on the Power Grid.

First up is the Foreskin Fairy (not a superhero?) who teaches Cosmo about the history of foreskins. Cosmo learns that the Greeks and Romans used to stretch those thangs out.

Cosmo is “hypnotized by the decadence of the Ancient world” before moving on to meet the Hooded Hero and Tip Tamer. Already I’m wondering if we really needed this many ambulatory cock heroes. I get that they’re riffing on the Justice League, but I’m not sure the concept of foreskin needed six different characters to exemplify all of its qualities. Instead of developing a half-dozen weak gestures at Marvel riffs that look like Funko Pops from a timeline where sex stores followed the same business model as GameStop and then putting the word “Shield” in two of their names, you could have just had one well-developed guy. Have Cosmo meet The Cut Avenger. Let them explore each others’ bodies a little. I’m available, ONE Condoms.

“I’LL START MOISTURIZING BEFORE MY CONSULTATIONS THEN,” Cosmo tells the Hooded Hero. What consultations? Who? Moisturizing his dick or his hands for when he “consults” the be-foreskinned penises of six large men in Space Twink Annihilation 5?

I hate the Tip Tamer’s smug little Family Guy face. He looks like he’s about to say “Hey, Lois, remember the time I busted in the tight ass of a knockoff Superboy?”

For someone who is supposed to know a lot about dicks, Cosmo seems totally mystified by foreskins. And who the hell is this for, exactly? When intactivists wax rhapsodic about the delirious plaisir of the foreskin, that seems like it would just make circumcised guys feel even more inadequate. And while I don’t doubt that formal sexual education fails many young men, I have to assume that thousands of hours of hands-on experience by the time they’re eighteen more than makes up for any deficiencies in the curriculum about how good it feels to jack your uncut cock.

Sam Shield is the last guy we meet. Super Shielder and Elastic Enforcer don’t even get lines. This is what happens when you try to put too many characters in your crossover event or too many tops in Galaxy Gangbang Geeks Vol. 7. Someone inevitably gets the short end of the proverbial stick.

But there’s more, in a post on the ONE Condoms blog called “Closing the Foreskin Gap.” 79% of people with a foreskin have “experienced difficulties” using condoms! Wow, that seems really high! I wonder how many people without foreskins have experienced difficulties using them. Not to brag, but I’ve seen a few condoms in use in my time, and I would guess that it’s more than zero.

I used to be a social scientist, so bad survey construction still gets to me sometimes. What the fuck could this possibly mean? “Differently?” Differently than what? How would they know, unless they have the mutant power of foreskin manipulation like Phimorphis, who was kicked out of the Foreskin Justice League for his unconventional, foreskin-based approach to crime fighting?

Sure, this is definitely something that could and may have happened! But hold on just a foreskin-stretching moment. We’re entering some complex genital-based power dynamics here. Foreskin Man and the Silent Hill wiki taught me that circumcised men are the libidinous equivalent of a roadside armadillo carcass. Sure, you can have sex with it, but it quickly becomes a chafing, tiresome chore.

Now, though, I’m being told that guys with foreskins are the victims of a cultural smear campaign to make them ignorant and undesirable.

I’m trying to follow the logic here, and I think it’s that The Sundered have their birthright of limitless sexual pleasure ripped from them by bloodthirsty doctors, antisemitic stereotypes, and businessmen trying to make foreskin face cream, but as a compensation they’re held up as the standard by which all penises shall be judged? And yet, I was led to believe that women loathe the disgusting sight of a circumcised hog. So which is it?

At risk of being seen as doubting the integrity of the social movement that spawned a superhero named Foreskin Man, it feels like maybe this whole thing is just about fueling and exploiting male resentment and insecurity over a subject that most women just don’t actually care that much about. Should we perform medically unnecessary operations on infants? I don’t think so. But when one of your grievances is a nine year old Mila Kunis movie, your problems might be at least partially self-generated.

They did it! In discussing a scene from the movie Bad Moms, they actually did the classic “not so funny if you imagine a totally different thing, is it?” And look, I could be living in a liberal bubble, protected from the harsh reality of penis oppression out in Real America, but I can truthfully say that nobody I know has ever cited foreskin presence or absence as a determining factor in whether or not to pursue a sexual relationship with someone. So relax about your foreskin, guys. Women are much more likely to judge you on your height, bone structure, and hairline.

Maybe I shouldn’t make fun, though. Representation is important.

In conclusion, we need more television shows where the hero turns to the camera and says “I am uncircumcised and my foreskin did not prevent me from solving this heinous crime. If anything, it assisted — by protecting the delicate head of my penis and providing natural lubrication. Thanks, foreskin!”

This article was brought to you by our fine sponsor and Hot Dog Supreme: Eric Christian Berg. I don’t even have to say why. He knows. I know. You know. Everyone knows. You can’t see my face but I’m making a face and my eyebrows are like, “oh yeah, this is a perfect pairing.”

Categories
NERDING DAY

Nerding Day: 1990 Kenner Toy Fair Catalogue 🌭

Not to get all the panties dropping at once, but I recently attended an antiquarian book fair in New York City. That’s right, the New York City, where Spider-Man fights the Rhino and salsa that cowboys don’t like is made. I also live here, so it’s really not that big of an accomplishment, although anyone who’s ever had to take the subway from Brooklyn to the Upper East Side knows that it might as well be a plane ride to Chicago. Local humor! We love that! This guy knows what I’m talking about! Anyway, let me tell you about this fair of old ass books.

I actually go to the antiquarian book fair every year because they have some incredible items and looking at old things gives me a sense of continuity with history that also allows me to ignore my own inevitable entry to oblivion. The book fair has it all, too. There are editions of books by classic authors like H.G. Wells and Jane Austen. There are loose pages from ancient bibles. There are massive, hand-painted maps from the 1700s. There are medical texts that look like grimoires from a shitty roleplaying game. All of which costs so much money. They had a complete bible from the 1600s that cost over $100,000, an amount that I would have described as “infinity” when I was a child. The only people who can afford most of this crap are super villains who face a floor-to-ceiling window while giving a monologue about how small people look from the top of a skyscraper.

That said, there are some gems that are affordable. Well, let me throw some quotation marks around “affordable” because good lord, it’s still expensive. I ended up dropping about $300 and I left with the complete set of Zork off-brand choose your own adventure books – which you just know I’m going to squeeze like a bloodless stone for content here. I also got some corny art prints, the novelization of Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome and, most importantly, “Good Things,” the 1990 Kenner Toy Fair Catalogue. If you’re wondering how much that one cost me, imagine $99 and then add one more dollar. While other people at the book fair were buying obscure 1800s erotica – there was a lot available – I was spending a hundred bucks on a catalogue that they once gave out for free.

Waste of money? No. Perfection? Yes. Just take a look at this table of contents.

It’s hard to say what I love most about this. Maybe it’s the fact that every toy listed in this catalogue sounds like an amazing name for a minor league baseball team. Maybe it’s because our culture would no longer allow someone to associate filthy rainbows with innocent children. Maybe it’s because I forgot that a toy named Sit’n Spin existed. Maybe it’s because RoboCop, based on a violent rated R movie, is right between Ernest P. Worrell and Fashionstar Fillies, neither of which are based on violent rated R movies. Ernest Scared Stupid is legitimately frightening, though. A lot of things are!

Unlike most books, when you get past the table of contents, things here get really interesting. Nearly every section starts with a splash page that is required by the government to mention the brand as many times as possible. I feel like this was SEO before the internet? Just saying the same word again and again and again so toy retailers would buy it. Although, if we’re being honest, how much did people forget who Batman was? The way the name “Batman” is capitalized each time sounds like someone made a plan to have Batman jump out at the right moment and Bruce Wayne just isn’t showing up. “It sure would be great if BATMAN were here. We all love BATMAN and his BATMAN friends. BATMAN’s enemy, the Penguin, is stabbing me to death with an umbrella, so I sure wish BATMAN jumped through that window to save me like BATMAN does!”

The Batman section is notable for two things: The coolest Joker toy ever devised and what I’d soon learn was the beginning of a series of toy guns that would cause a kid to get shot by the police in modern times. Approximately, oh, half of the brands in this catalogue feature a plastic firearm that would look real to cops at a distance best described as “itchy trigger finger.” I don’t mean to be an old man shouting at clouds, but if you brought one of these to school in 1990, the teacher would get annoyed and probably take it away. If you brought it to school now, you’d get tasered and tackled by a 300-pound security guard and then be forced to watch Adolescence with your parents.

One interesting facet in this catalogue of 1990’s finest cheap shit is that it throws jump scares at you when you least expect it, which is kind of how jump scares work. For example, in the section on Play-Doh, you have your regular toys in which kids make inedible food. And they’re kind of cool! Check out the Make-A-Meal Sub Shop! It includes that meat slicer that we’re all afraid of, except instead of meat, it’s whatever God puts in that clay. Personally, the idea of spending hours pretending to have a job in a store making fake food never appealed to me, but maybe that’s because I like real food and don’t like actually working. Still, all this is pretty normal, even if ain’t nobody making swiss cheese look that good with Play-Doh.

But then, gahhhhhh! Play-Doh faces! Jesus Christ! Jesus fucking Christ! Apparently there’s some “game” attached that lets you roll dice to figure out what facial features you’re going to mangle? Look at them!

Look at her screaming. Look at his eyes agape with horror. Like Commander Data’s daughter, Lal, they can feel it! It’s like someone thought Mr. Potato Head wasn’t terrifying enough at an uncanny level and wanted to see if they could push the limit. If someone had shown these to me as a child, I’d still have nightmares. And, not for nothing, what a missed opportunity for a Batman/Clayface crossover.

It was around the Police Academy section that I realized this pristine copy of the 1990 Kenner Toy Fair Catalogue was actually falling apart and full of loose pages.

I paid $100 goddamn dollars for this! Man, why do I always fall for shit? I’m such an idiot! God! This is what I’m fucking talking about when I tell my therapist I can’t do anything right and I ruin everything I love. Just… fuck. Fuck! You know? I’m sorry. I’m sorry. Let’s keep going. Where were we? Police Academy? Yeah, that seems right.

We don’t need to get into the nitty gritty with Police Academy, a franchise lacking both nitty and gritty, but rest assured, it’s yet another rated R movie that got turned into a children’s series. Fortunately for all the youth watching, they kept the racism intact as well as raised the stakes of the policing to frightening levels. One of the toys is a police officer hiding in a mailbox with a human rights-violating tiny prison cell behind him. Don’t look away. You couldn’t even sit or lay down in that cell. And it’s outside in view of the public, so people can attack you and you’d have no defense. It’s barbaric. It’s terrifying. So is that cage on the back of a police pickup truck. Then again, this is how I imagine half of the country wants crime to be handled, so don’t be surprised if I’m not the only one looking at a toy catalogue for ideas. I’m just saying, during the summer, that cell will kill people.

It’ll come as no surprise to you that the Police Academy toy set also features a gun that would get a little tyke merc’d. But what may come as a surprise to you – as it was to me because, honestly, this might be the most batshit thing in the whole catalogue – is a Police Academy “role playing assortment.” We’ve all seen a fake toy badge. Arnold Schwarzenegger used one to great success in Jingle All The Way. But you could apparently also buy fake police tape, fake traffic tickets, fake identification, and – this is the one that got me – fake tear gas canisters with the face of a crying man on it. I mean, I don’t think the Police Academy series is really propaganda the way some others might but this does not help the case!

What a Christmas morning! Finally the kids on my block can leave tickets on cars and then pepper spray the driver when they come out to contest it. All in good fun! Kenner!

Meanwhile, in a section for GIRLS – yuck! – there is Baby Alive, a toy with a name that implies one day the opposite will be true. The less said about Baby Alive, the better. But, as the picture says, she really eats and really dirties her diaper. This toy isn’t actually offensive in any real way – just vaguely gross – and, unlike 50% of the rest of the catalogue, won’t get you murdered by a disgruntled sheriff. But still. This was a thing that existed. Also, again, I can’t stress enough just how divided these sections are based on gender. There is not one picture of a boy in the section for Easy Bake Oven despite me constantly asking my parents to buy me one when I was a kid. My parents would happily buy me these rated R toys, but there was no way in hell they’d let their masculine son learn about cooking at a young age.

But RoboCop? Hell, yeah, baby! Look at him firing those massive guns at suspects! Due process? More like pew-pew-pew process! And no, I ain’t deleting that. RoboCop and the Ultra Force is great because it basically takes the entire point of the first movie and intentionally misses it. I do love, however, that in order for this to be child safe, the most threatening gang name they could think up was the “Vandals.” Like, is RoboCop using a backpack machine gun on a teenager tagging a wall? That could be a bit extreme, I think? Also, I love that they remind you that the latest movie is going to be PG-13 and not rated R, as if that really makes a difference with a robotic police officer blowing the heads off people in toy form. You better have a permit for that mural or you’re dead, son.

Speaking of which, I do have to give the RoboCop toy line credit for having the most “seriously, you will get a bullet in you if you take this outside” gun of them all. Yes, it has the word “police” written on it, but your hand is going to cover that while you hold the gun and nobody is going to see it until NormalCop kicks your prepubescent body to see if you’re still alive like that baby doll toy. You’re not, but you did poop yourself.

I will say this: Somehow a talking Ernest doll is the most normal toy in the entire catalogue. It’s also the one I actually went to eBay to check the price on. Most of the ones that are still in the box run for about $150, which is only $50 over my “moron who will buy anything” level. We really didn’t know what we had with Ernest. We made fun of him for just talking to Vern and having a good time. We were cruel and now the world has no Ernest. We deserve the Hell we’ve made for ourselves. We deserve pain and darkness.

Meanwhile, Fashionstar Fillies is just the best. I love, love, love that someone probably pitched this as a mature version of My Little Pony. Like it’s the feminine-coded version of Sega doing what Nintendon’t. The fact that some of them are called “Sixteens Horses” is a bit disconcerting since that sounds like an execution method saved for the worst traitors in the kingdom, but look at these beauties. Some horses are wearing literal shoes! I mean, come on, folks! Somehow a horse that dresses like Blossom from the hit show Blossom makes sense. Or maybe I just appreciate that these are some of the few toys that don’t involve pooping or the specter of death. Then again, if these were popular now, they’d likely have a lot of questionable fan art.

After a boys’ section called MegaForce (boring military equipment) and a girls’ section called Yum Yums (creepy flavored bears), we finally get back to the good stuff with Beetlejuice. The film was rated PG despite being horrifying, so we’ll allow it. And, honestly, these are the coolest toys as a whole. I have zero notes on any of these and I want them all.

There is an old man who turns into a buzzard! A fat guy who turns into a pig! A Beetlejuice that comes apart piece by piece. It’s a budding goth kid’s greatest dream outside of getting revenge on that 5th grade jock Thomas Valverde who won’t leave you alone. I want all of these toys and I want them now. Plus, there is nothing here called something like “The Beetlejuice Blaster” that will get you sent to the actual afterlife to meet Juno, your caseworker. That’s a nice surprise.

Meanwhile, the less said about the Sit’n Spin Ride-On Toy, the better. Ugh. I feel like I’m going to get sent to prison for having this photo on my phone.

Eventually, after a long, boring section of toys based on athletes – who fucking cares – we get to the headliner: The Real Ghostbusters.

If you remember, the Real Ghostbusters was the cartoon series that actually did Ghostbusters the best of any of the Ghostbusters, including the first movie. I know folks might disagree with me, but also, come on. I’ve literally got friends who acted in the latest movie and I still would tell them that the Real Ghostbusters was where it was at. They had an episode called “The Collect Call Of Cathulhu.” Yes, they spelled it wrong. It doesn’t matter; it’s an H.P. Lovecraft kids cartoon episode. This show was great and had some great toys that could’ve been mixed and matched with the Beetlejuice set if my parents had worked a little harder when I was a child. They could’ve picked up third or fourth jobs rather than coming home.

And so ends “Good Things,” the catalogue for Kenner’s 1990 toy line. I was hoping to take a lesson away from this of some sort. Something along the lines of nostalgia not being as good when you look back but, honestly, I would love these toys to exist now outside of overpriced re-sellers. This nostalgia’s pretty good. I mean, the toys are generally creepy. And if someone gave me that Play-Doh face set, I’d consider it a threat. That said, it’s fascinating how many toys would get your face on the news under a headline with the words “mistake” and “tragedy” if the police saw you with them today. We’d all be gone.

This article was brought to you by our fine sponsor and Hot Dog Supreme: Aaron Croston. AARON CROSTON has impeccable taste. AARON CROSTON is incredibly smart and sophisticated. AARON CROSTON can punch a hole through seven inches of SOLID STEEL™ (sold separately).

Categories
NERDING DAY

Nerding Day: Upworld 🌭

Yes well heres one for our 3-ring binder labeled: ‘’Profiles in Feminine Courage” for today we will hear the tale of The Most Patient Woman in the World. Which I know its a competative field,, I can think of about 4 women I know personally who could maybe be in the running just solely based on there ability to handle my perenial failure to remember napkins are a thing, but stay with me and maybe youll see why i am proud to stand here today and give my nonimation for Most Long Sufferin to the lovely talented and pleasantly alliterated Claudia Christian (all clap):

I probly dont need to tell folks here thats a signed picture of Claudia playin a woman possessed by a horny criminal alien on the run from a alien cop played by Kyle Maclachlan in the very good sci fi horror action film The Hidden, but there you go just in case. If you didn’t see that one, maybe youll recognize Claud for her work in a certain star trek type situation:

Well yes, there was that, but she was in another one I think some people actually watched:

And if you still dont recognize her well theres maybe a good chance you have at least heard her voice sayin the same things a million times:

So a storied career already! Your perhaps saying, Oh shes the most patient woman because of maybe how she has to deal with talking with people at conventions and stuff and it is VERY true how that must take a superhuman level of sufferance toleration, but brothers and sisters, that is just scratchin the surface of the iceberg here.

Stay with me now: So Claudia does not just work the nerd genres, she has pretty good range like she can obviously do sexy real good, heres a music video she made about how women kissin other women is too naughty to be described in anything other than breathy French:

But in addition to the sensuAL she also has a sensuHUMOR (comedy pun)

That clip is from her comedy demo video and Yes its pretty funny when she asks the dr who elevator to vibrate her to exstatic completion and does a silly hooter waitress voice but most interestingly to me is a movie we DIDENT see in that sizzler reel. (you probably already know this, but whenever someone says “But did you see what was MISSING?” from this or that its usually just cause they like feelin smart for a minute. Ok I’m done) Yes there’s one of Claudia’s comedy movies she consuspciously chose NOT to include ‘tween those papyrused title screens or on her wikipedia or on any of her online presents:

Some of you maybe are seeing 1990 Anthony Michael Hall there and are nodding yes, give her the Most Patient award already, we saw all saw on screen where John Hughes unleashed him into a monster that would require the world for decades after to try and rub away a headache wherever AMH’s voice could be heard.

Look at Claudia, the opening credits are still goin and she’s already puttin up with his dumb shit. In this movie Hall is supposed to be a beverly hills cop eddie murphy type who is just so funny and irreverent and good at fast-talking and doin different offensive voices (he even does the fake sign language thing) but this movie gives us a important cautionary tale of what if you try to do a Axel Foley or a Fletch but but forget the charm parts.

You are lucky you can’t hear hes doin kinda a Lew Zealand voice its really rough. Even the punch-up writers were mad at him for ruining everything.

What a wrank amature. Can you imagine the aplomb Dennis Miller would of resonated out of “Zagnut Bar”!? But observe, here comes Claudia as Anthony’s partner and right away we can see that she is dressed and equipped for the Hercalean task afore her:

Damn for real look at that shadowed earthtone ensamble. Plentiful Pleats? Check. Turtleneck of Severity? Check. Upholstery Shoulder Pads? Check. Bangs of Great Height and French-Braid Combo? Immaculate.

And she needs this entire amour set bonus because not only is Tony Mike Hall civilianly obnoxious, he is also a very bad cop. At the start of the movie hes supposed to monitor a important witness or something but instead he plays on the playground until he gets bonked.

But like he tells his boss afterwards: he knows he screwed up, but he can fix it! That’s confusing because here’s the lil boo boo what happened to the witness while Hall was knocked out.

Claudia is a Good Cop and knows that mistakes happen, c’mon, give him another chance and the chief, who is Jerry Orbach by the way, agrees and lets Hall be in the rest of the movie and Claudia continues to extend a endless forbearance to Hall that i can only describe as like unto Christ himself’s.

See I don’t know if what happened right there was the script said for the man to inappropriately touch his female coworker’s chest in front of everyone at their place of work or if thats just what really happened and they kept in the movie. Ok, so just give Claudia the Patience Trophy already, your saying. Weve seen enough i hear you cry. For gods sake stop, you holler pitiously. O my sweet hot dog halflings, we have only summited the first gentle hill of our perilus trek across this treacherous cursed-artifact range of mounts. Behold the peaks yet ahead:

Because what i have not yet revealed to you is that while this movie was evenchally released with the Upworld title, that was but a half-hearted attempt to disguise its horrible origin. Here is the original cover, before my expert photoshop fooled your eyes:

And here is the dark midwife responsible for its birth:

Stan Winston you probably know him but in case maybe your saying whos that, well:

Pretty good! But more importantly for us here today:

Holy shit, what a wonderful linkedin Stan must of had (RIP). And because we have all learned that it is actually good and correct to let Stunt Coordinators be in charge of the entire movie, maybe its also cool and fine for the puppet practical effects people to just run the whole show? Maybe?

Lets remove this Upworld mask and Look upon the True Face of this one, behold the visage of the hero of our story, A Gnome Named Gnorm:

Now, I try to tell the truth in these testimonies and so far you have all responded to my vunnerability with kindness and warmth but even so it is hard for me to say out loud here that…throughout alot of the movie…there was a part…of my brain that found Gnorm…physically attractive. Deep breath out, sissyneck. That was hard, but there’s more, go ahead and tell the people what Gnorm awakened in you that you never before fully admitted to yourself.

It’s like I was finally allowed to feel all the things I knew never should for certain Ewoks.

I need a minute here for just two or three manful sobs. Thank you for your strong warm hands of support and succor during this challenging hear-me-out situation, bless you.

Anyway so yes Upworld was what they changed the name to after they finished this movie and it sucked so they hid it in shame until it escaped some years later and now we can watch it for free on youtube. Its actually a try at a buddy movie with Anthony Michael Hall partnering up with magical and wondrous creature called Gnorm, who looks like if somehow a movie puppet guy got a million dollars to try and make Gelflings even hotter.

Now i know some of you know that maybe some or all of my writin needs to be read aloud to be at all comperhensible and might be strugglin with how to pronounce the creature’s name:

Yeah I know, i also think it’s weird hes proud of that. Instead of a “running bit I was happy with” maybe a better way to describe this creative choice is that its another thing on the list of boring shit Hall and Gnorm argue about endlessly to the frustration of any grown man watching this one. The two characters have chemistry i guess technically, like how mixin ammonia and bleach to clean mustard stains off of cargo shorts is chemistry. Stan said he wanted this movie to be “ET meets 48 Hours” but i guess nobody told him that for the buddy cop thing to work, a important concept is that for each Riggs you must offset and harmonize it with a equal and opposite Murtaugh. A Gnome Named Gnorm is like if you had two Riggs but also they were both super unpleasant and very sexually harassy. (Oh wait) Look: here is our Claudia, she-bastion of fortitudinal sufferance, in her first encounter with Gnorm.

Again, maybe say a lil prayer of gratitude you cannot hear the monster say “Nice Roundy” while cheeky tuba music plays.

So yes this is something important about Beauty we learn from this duo, AMH might have a truly gorgeous head of hair and Gnorm might have perfectly yassified cheekbones, but underneath both lies the persistent ugliness of spirit of: the Sex Pest. Somehow Gnorm even more than Anthony, here look at a selection of his behaviors.

Pretty gross. We even learn that the ENTIRE instagatin incident of the movie is that Gnorm stole a treasure to impress his gnome girlfriend, Reena with the nice “Bobos”, which his charming lil gnome euphenism for breasts and makes us feel laughter and endearment to Gnorm, who can resist his cute lil face!?

So yeah, they really failed the ET side of the equation hard also, unless I just missed the parts of ET where he’s doin nut slaps on Elliot the whole movie and makin blow job gesticalations to everyone and suprisin the mom with his weird little ET pee-pee out.

I think we’re gonna be able to expedite the sainthood process for Claudia when the Lord takes her into his bosom.

Anthony tries to keep up though, he creatively adds some racism (shouting Chung! Ching! Chang! at an Asian shopkeeper, shoutin LAPD! at a black man minding his own business, etc.) and makin fun of the deaf to his performance.

Oh yeah, that bad guy sheez, I forgot about him. The actor’s name is Robert D’Zar (also RIP) and ‘parently he had a condition called cherubism that made his jaw real big which: someone should tell Steven Segal you have to have special genes to Achieve This Look, its not just extra Hostess and angering hornets in your trailer. Bob’s whole filmography is wonderful, but there’s no time to pause, I got to keep making important gifs of Gnorm dressed as a baby putting a meat hook up Bob’s asshole and then pushin him into the tallow trough.

The movie continues, our vexations grow.

We develop a conditioned fear response to the youtube re-watch peaks.

We underline the word “frustratin” in our notes.

Anthony and Gnorm solve the mystery by arguin and fussin again and again over the most boring parts of the plot. Normally its good when writers tie up loose ends and payoff there setups, but somehow in this movie, it makes it all worse. We pray for release. Is it almost over?

The Final summit. We approach our Mount Doom.

So, my research tells me that when they showed test audiences this movie they hated it but somehow Stan thought the only problem was maybe only his original sentimentle ending, so he changed it to a funny one that goes like this: Anthony is a charmless white protaganist, so of course it is required that the attractive female supportin actor fall in love with him at the end of the movie. He is suddenly too shy to kiss her, so Gnorm pops back up from his farewell hole with some upsetting encouragement.

And a even more upsetting demonstration.

Jesus christ give her a oscar along with the Most Patient Award, look at her! She acts like that was the silliest charming thing that ever happened to her. Imagine the cost to your soul when you have to make your outside face look like that when your heart is bein corruptioned and blackened so. And then she has to right away do it all over again.

This is True Thespian Fortatude right here. Claudia, you have shone us how we might bear all and any struggle that may come our way, we thank you. May we all take into are hearts this lesson of courage and strength, borne of both Claudia’s sufferin and mine, your welcome, In the Name of Jesus Christ…

…Amen.

Thanks to Wren for the Gnift of Gnorm and also for bein way more patience than she should have to be.

This article was brought to you by our fine sponsor and Hot Dog Supreme: Rebrandrew, a slug lipped thespian that can make anyones toes curl.

Categories
NERDING DAY

Nerding Day: Otherverse America Part 2

To view this content, you must be a member of 1900HOTDOG's Patreon
Unlock with Patreon
Already a qualifying Patreon member? Refresh to access this content.
Categories
NERDING DAY

Nerding Day: Otherverse America – Part 1🌭

Quick: name the person you’d most like to see write a near-future sci-fi roleplaying game about a second Civil War sparked by a bloody conflict over reproductive rights.

Everyone said Chris Field, the guy who wrote the hentai RPG where you shit yourself to get plus five to AC, right? Good. Awesome. Let’s talk about Otherverse America.

Where were you when the historic “Ogalada [sic] Souix [sic]” abortion clinic was wiped off the map by a post-human terrorist codenamed Life Tank? Were you in a Malibu comic from 1993? It doesn’t matter. Otherverse America doesn’t actually take place during the Second American Civil War. That would be too easy. No, it’s set decades after the Treaty of Boston ended it. Who won? Well, which side had access to gay pagan wizards and metahuman technology?

Those poor, non-rainbow magic-having pro-life idiots didn’t stand a chance. And if you were expecting a gritty, down-to-earth depiction of a nation torn asunder by religious conflict, well, yes, Otherverse America is kind of that, just like Black Tokyo was kind of about the horrors of demonic sexual violence. But maybe it’s also about cartoon superheroes and gene mods and technowarriors? It’s hard to tell. Otherverse America has no table of contents, and I would describe its formatting and organizational choices as: not applicable.

Stats bleed into fictional history, tables and sidebars pop up out of nowhere, and early 3D imagery sits alongside crude hand-drawn depictions of transhuman anti-abortion cyberdocs sitting coquettishly in front of actual prenatal ultrasounds.

It’s a lot. And keep in mind Chris Field wrote this well before the advent of generative AI. If nothing else, he’s dedicated. Not dedicated enough to arrange a book in any kind of useful way, maybe, but dedicated enough to come up with all kinds of genetic modifications that the theoretical players of a game set in this world can select, which, I think you’ll agree, are all totally normal.

Ok, fine. That’s something that people probably would do if it were possible! At times like this, you can tell that Chris is trying to take his setting seriously. He’s following his premise to its natural conclusion and arriving at the kind of social commentary which would be at home in any number of dystopian YA books from the early 2010s. And then there’s stuff that, well, isn’t.

“It’s part of the setting!” Chris screams. “Everyone puts titty milk in their cereal in the future because there’s no factory farming anymore! Luxury milk! From the human cow!” Sure, Chris. Now, which collapsed institution of industrial civilization explains this one?

See, uh, grocery stores don’t exist in the 22nd century, so people have to grow their own clits.

God, there are so many of these — gene mods, I mean, not clits — and while a few of them are useful for battle and adventure, a lot of them are about sex. The generous angle here would be that it’s realistic that people would use genetic engineering for getting freaky and that including more than just combat abilities makes for a more well-rounded roleplaying experience. Counterpoint: the guy who wrote this also invented a dragon who breathes aerosolized semen. Keep that in mind as you’re trying to decide whether “Hivelove” is a flavorful, interesting sci-fi premise or the feverish invention of a brain that is 99% loose jizz sloshing around in a human skull.

This could be the whole article. We could just talk about the gene mods and cyber-implants that give women prostates so they can enjoy anal sex more, that make everyone squirt, that let you lay eggs instead of carrying a baby to term. There’s one called “Moe Facesculpt!” That’s “moe” as in “anime child,” not The Simpsons or The Three Stooges, for anyone who is normal.

There are some neat ideas here, like hackers and criminals inventing ways to fuck with genetically modified people, but again, this is Chris A. Field we’re talking about. You know it’s not going to stop with gene-hacking politicians to give them heart attacks.

In the grim darkness of the future, there are only cum-spewing cyberdragons. How did we get here?

Long story short, gay rights groups, pro-choice organizations, and AIDS activists joined forces to form the Covenant of the Goddess Universal. They were all early adopters of gene mods that gave women more control over reproduction and allowed gay couples to have kids without needing a third person in the mix. STDs were eliminated and everyone lived in a cum-soaked paradise, but Evangelicals weren’t happy about it, so they started doing (more) domestic terrorism. In response, the Covenant created a gay pagan strike force codenamed RAINBOW Liberty. And then aliens showed up? Maybe? They’re called the Lifechain, and I think they’re explained in another book. There are Half Grey people and that’s why some people have superpowers? I don’t fucking know, man.

Anyway, if you read my article on Black Tokyo you might remember that Chris has other distinctive qualities besides crippling horniness and a complete inability to organize his thoughts. He also fucking loves peppering his work with unrelated quotes in an effort to add an air of sophistication, or perhaps a humorous juxtaposition.

So here he is using a quote from The Devil Wears Prada to introduce the liberal microstate, which I’d assumed was fully half of the US but in fact is a loose assortment of neighborhoods strung throughout the country that are constantly fucking and wield advanced cybermagic. Or maybe there are full-on Choicer cities and states? Chris says they have a constitutional monarchy, but it also seems like he’s describing a world where the Choicer and Lifer nations exist within the greater United States.

To me, this implies that in addition to the many-clitted egg-laying technowitches of the Choicer nation and the cyborg death commandos of the Lifer state, there are also just normal Americans walking around. And honestly? I kind of like that. It reminds me of Omegaverse fanfiction where the vast majority of the population is just the normal human Betas who are trying to maintain civilization while Alphas and Omegas are trying to fuck it apart all the time. So here’s a high-level look at the Choicer society.

Wow, that seems pretty gr— ah. Hm. Thirteen to fifteen, huh? You’re going to see more and more of this, but Chris definitely paints the Choicers as the “good guys” in this brave new world. So maybe he’s just trying to paint them as a culture that goes too far in its pursuit of sexual freedoms? Or maybe it’s insane to give the benefit of the doubt to a guy who, just a few pages earlier, was jacking off to the idea of drinking titty milk.

We get a lot of details about the Choicer nation and its organization, and Chris points out that they’re just as religious as the Lifers. It’s a matrilineal theocracy run by the Neo-Witch Church that rules from an artificial island in the San Francisco Bay sometimes called Aradia and sometimes called Araida and which is protected by force fields and lasers. Even when he’s not explicitly writing anime bullshit, Chris is writing anime bullshit and — lest we forget — drawing it.

One detail here might surprise you: gay people have “fallen out of fashion” in the liberal utopia of the future. Most people have bisexuality genetically programmed by their parents at birth, but there’s a faction of young people who rebel against their omnisexual society by being full-on gay or hetero. Good for them. But beware, rebel gays and straights, of the Apollo Psi-Field!

These things just look like stereo equipment and are commercially available at Sacred Feminine Radio Shack, so in this world you could go over to a neighbor’s housewarming party without knowing they’ve got the Field That Makes You Bi set up. And speaking of stupid names for things, this:

Improbably, Lady Sylvia Moondark is not the dumbest name for a character in Otherverse America. That honor goes to LORD CHARLES STARSPIRAL, whose name is so fucking idiotic that it causes a buffer overflow and wraps around to being sick as hell.

Chris opens the next section on Choicer celebrities and sports with a quote from I Love Bees, a sequence of words that means nothing to anybody under 35 years old. He says that Choicer culture is basically the dominant culture on the planet, and even in Lifer territories they bootleg Choicer “mesh dramas” and sneak into Choicer neighborhoods to watch light, fairly frivolous adventures as well as distorted, highly fictionalized accounts of Phallus Space.

That’s basically the only mention of “Phallus Space” in the book, by the way. Sloppy writing? Perhaps. Or maybe it’s keen worldbuilding, the type that raises questions in the reader rather than rushing to fill out every blank space on the map. What could Phallus Space possibly be? What could the movies be getting wrong about it? Are there people who have been to Phallus Space, if it is indeed a physical location in the cosmos, who are furious about future gay witch Hollywood’s misrepresentation of it? Chris has prompted us to wonder about so much with this throwaway sentence. And isn’t that the mark of a true shaper of the fantastic? I wonder how Chris is going to characterize the defeated Lifer pseudo-nation.

Sure, they’re a military dictatorship whose citizens are undereducated, poor felons, but you do have to hand it to them in one particular respect: they don’t fuck kids. There’s a whole section on pedophilia and age of consent laws, and Chris treats this subject with all of the care it demands: by putting it next to a picture of Catholic battle cyborg.

I got distracted by the dope robot for a second, but uh oh! I’m breaking the glass labeled “in case of Chris A. Field talking about child pornography.” What’s inside? Why, it’s something called “catminding!” This should be fun.

Oh. It’s not fun. I’m breaking the second, different glass labeled “Chris A. Field is still, improbably, talking about childlike sex slaves.” And good news! It’s not a sex thing this time.

It’s a guy I can only describe as fanart of a non-existent Deus Ex mod where everyone only ever talks about stopping abortions in the same way that everyone in Pokémon games only ever talks about Pokémon.

Pages and pages of text tell us that the Lifers are bitter, ugly morons whose love of graphic depictions of mutilated fetuses is only equaled by their adoration of SMG-wielding, heavily-pregnant paramilitaries.

This stuff overshoots satire and — I can’t believe I’m saying this — ends up actually feeling kind of mean-spirited. Like, we know that the right-wing Evangelical movement is essentially evil. But Chris has created less of a plausible-sounding world where embattled bigots fester in hatred of their genetically superior lib conquerors than a version of Captain Planet where instead of polluting for no real reason, the bad guys are barely-literate jazz-loving necrophiliacs.

Sorry, I’m just re-reading that and it looks like I wrote “jazz-loving necrophiliacs.” That can’t be right.

Hey, wasn’t this supposed to be a roleplaying game? We haven’t had any stats or powers in a while. The Choicers got all kinds of cool gene mods. What advantages might a Lifer character have? How about being someone who almost got aborted, but then wasn’t?

I want you to do something for me. Guess what kind of powers being a “survivor of abortion” might give your RPG character. Some kind of healing factor? Perhaps the ability to manipulate fate? Really mull it over, then come back and see how wrong you were.

You get better at arguing that people shouldn’t do abortions. And if you make a successful Bluff against someone who is pro-choice, you get an action point which you could spend, just theoretically, on using your cum breath attack once. Remember to do it after you recover from the emotional exhaustion of trauma dumping, but before you go to bed, otherwise you’re leaving cum on the proverbial table.

We are now barely 100 pages into Otherverse America. This is a 320 page book. God help us all.

This article was brought to you by our fine sponsor and Hot Dog Supreme: David Shull, who is a full force advocate of titty milk in your cereal. The future is now!

Categories
NERDING DAY

Nerding Day: Reglar Fellers Comics

To view this content, you must be a member of 1900HOTDOG's Patreon
Unlock with Patreon
Already a qualifying Patreon member? Refresh to access this content.