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Nerding Day: Pokemon Black & Blue
Category: NERDING DAY
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Now that weāre all aware of Chicken Girls The College Years: Sponsored By Takis, I think itās time to wade you into Brat TVās less chicken flavored offerings. Three years ago, an executive at BratTV, who was probably a fourteen-year-old former Vine star now far past his prime, saw the show Charmed, a vehicle for witches to be horny, and thought this would make a great show for kids! They barely even needed to change the name. They just called it Charmers because legal said Li’l Charmed, like Li’l Archie, was absolutely off the table. Itās not Charmed, itās just another entry into the four women holding glowing orbs genre. Itās Orbcore!
Even though Charmers debuted twenty-three years after Charmed, its special effects are about what you’d expect from a ’90s show. This show seems very affordable. It takes place at a summer camp, so the costume budget went to a box of t-shirts, each teen getting their own color like Power Rangers, only by personality instead of race.
Charmers also saved on set design because they shot the child actors at an actual abandoned murder shed.
The rusty shack budget for season one of Charmers was paid for by Starbursts and they should have been swimming in nightmare shacks with the way these children pushed Starbursts. Every heartwarming moment of the show was mumbled through an enormous wad of original flavor or limited time all-pink Starburst brand fruit chews. Itās basically the only food the children on this show consume. This summer camp is exclusively feeding these kids Starburts. It’s possible theyāre not really fighting demons; they are all going mad from malnutrition and diabetes.
The plot of Charmers is that these sugared up children are witches, sometimes. They only have the budget for occasional witchery, so a lot of the show is about explaining why they donāt have magic right now, or why their magic isnāt working for some reason. The four main characters are the inhabitants of Bunk 15 at the not-at-all-ominously named Camp Whispering Sky: Senna, the powerful one, Colver, the nerd one; Flori, the hippy one; and Zaria, the goth one. Senna arrives at camp with telepathy, and the other girls say that she is a ānatural witch,ā but after episode one, this telepathy disappears, and Sennaās power is revealed to be a magic shield in season two when the girls all get their individual powers. Telepathy would be very helpful to these kids multiple times, but sadly, the sugar amnesia wiped it away. Damn, you, Starbursts.
Instead of battling an expensive new demon every episode, they battle one demon per season, starting with an evil witch/demon who crawls out of a wardrobe set up in the nightmare shack. This demon is the reason for the show’s best line: “Wait, the demon, itās heading straight for the talent show!ā The girls dashed to rescue the demon from half hearted teenage dance routines, but they were too late.
The girls manage to vanquish the demon because, for that episode, they have demon-vanquishing powers, which are later forgotten about. The banishing only sends the demon back to the nightmare shed, though; it’s a light banishing. She can send a new demon through the wardrobe that possesses the campers, and the campers it possesses still love Starbursts! Sorry I haven’t mentioned Starburst in a while. You should know that they are still very present in the story and even demons love them!
I don’t think Starburst considered how demon-possessed children would meld with this product. In fact, the whole tone of the show is pretty all over the place. They couldn’t decide how high the stakes should be for the teen witches, so sometimes it was, “Wait, the demon, it’s heading straight for the talent show!” and sometimes it was, “The demons are trying to open a portal to Hell and destroy the earth.” They never officially say Hell, though. The demons are trying to open a portal toā¦wherever the demons come from. It could be a Pottery Barn.
You could tell in season one there was a complaint, probably from Starburst corporate, that it’s a little weird and extra scary to have children fighting full-grown adult women. So, in season 2, they made the main villain a child with a permanently bloody mouth who unhinges her jaw and vomits bats. Sooooo much more comforting than dub step Daenerys Targaryen.
They also have one of the children get physically injured for the first time in season two during a tragic capture-the-flag explosion. It’s so artistically done. The camera lingers on his bruised hand, still clutching the flag, as if it’s a commentary on man’s incessant need to conquer. If only he hadn’t captured that flag, he might still be alive!
To further lighten up season two, Charmers also added two older camp counselors to the cast, John and Jean. I thought Jean had the fakest French accent I’ve ever heard, but I looked him up, and it turns out he’s actually a famous French TikToker with 13.8 million followers who, at the time of filming, was married to the actor who played John in real life. They announced their divorce shortly after Charmers season two premiered, blaming the pressure of social media stardom for ending their relationship. You guys, I think Charmers ended that marriage.
The addition of the older camp counselors made the children’s demon-slaying seem more supervised. Maybe there wasn’t someone they could go to and say, “Help, there’s a portal to some unspecified place that’s spitting out demons everywhere!” but they could at least say, “Jean, this 29-year-old woman has wandered into camp,” and there would be some help available.
Like The Chicken Girls The College Years, Charmers is presented in ten-minute increments, but they fit a lot more plot into those ten minutes and the cast is more expansive. Each of the four main girls is given an issue to deal with over the two seasons, but once again, the tone of the issues is weird. Colver wants to be more confident, and Filori feels guilty for distracting her mother and causing a car accident that killed her brother. Some don’t have enough Starburst fruit chews. So there’s just a little bit of disparity between the issues they face.
The reason for the camp being filled to the brim with demons, Unseelie fairies, and ancient half-dragon kids making friendship bracelets along with the other campers is that Sinna’s natural witch magic is a magnet for darkness. Don’t worry, though; the girls can handle it. Remember that wardrobe in the shack in the middle of the woods that was a demon portal? They closed that right up with some loose lumber, nailed randomly in any which way. Problem solved. Demons are no match for witchcraft and Home Depot.
You would think that one of the camp’s two staff members would have some questions about the satanic wardrobe but they unequivocally do not. When the girls vanquished the talent show demon in front of everyone, they won the talent show. The general consensus was that their talent was “cool special effects,” which is also what I would say if I set a woman on fire on stage in front of an entire summer camp. The kid who got exploded during capture the flag was written off as a freak lightning strike. The sudden appearance of tons of bats from the girl’s mouth was probably sold to parents as animal husbandry and karaoke.
Charmers seems to have slowly lost its audience over the course of the series, beginning season one with 1.8 million views and ending it with 625K. It turns out that when you take away the weird horny plots and cute outfits, Charmed kind of sucks. Staring into the dark nexus brought to you by Starbursts just wasn’t the dark tone for a cool teen show the Brat TV audience was looking for. So I’ll leave you with one of the most touching quotes from the show. “You don’t need to use magic to be something you’re not. You are a pink Starburst, amazing, exactly the way you are.”
This article was brought to you by our fine sponsor and Hot Dog Supreme: Timmy Leahy, who was in turn sponsored by new Wow! Only Timmy Skittles: Unlock The Tangy Chew of Timmy Leahy!
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Mascot Week: Volto From Mars š
Mascot Week ends here, the only way it ever could: VOLTO FROM MARS.
Volto From Mars was created in 1944, a rocket age champion of man’s imagination. He fell from the sky in soap, hunting the stars for cereal grains! And I’m not summing anything up; that’s his full origin story. This is how the world met Volto:
Volto’s people travel by exploding bubble, but the kind of exploding you can do next to a kid’s face. Children are best friends with professors, but the kind you go camping with. It’s the kind of bold storytelling that seems sarcastic today. He came from that direction and wants some fucking cereal. But okay, okay, fine. Volto knows you Earth monsters are going to have a few questions. Without being asked, he answers the most pressing one:
“SILENCE WHILE I EXPLAIN! ON MARS WE USE FOOD, AND I NEED THE FOOD FOR EATING! OKAY, WITH THE WEIRD STUFF OUT OF THE WAY, MY PEOPLE ARE ALSO MAGNETā OH, GOOD, YOU WERE ALREADY CARRYING A BOWL OF CEREAL.”
Volto finishes a bowl of Grape-Nuts Flakes, and thanks the Earthlings for recharging his magnetism. It sounds ordinary to you and me, but the professor’s keen intellect picked up on the multiple times this alien screamed about recharging his magnetism with cereal. He asks what the hell that could possibly mean, and we are introduced to the best part about Volto as a superhero: he is a full idiot and makes everything worse.
If you ask him, “What do you mean by magnetism?” he answers, “HOW SHOULD I EXPLAIN THIS? OH, I KNOW, WATCH ME PISS OFF THAT LION.”
I don’t know if this is normal on Mars, but Volto screams ‘VOLTO’ to infuriate wild animals, and Volto screams ‘VOLTO’ to pull children. Grape-Nuts Flakes could have sold cereal with a cute cowboy or a peppy train conductor, but instead they made this. What a perfect mascot. He needs your product to live and his adventures have three simple steps: shove it, yank it, forget it. He’s a magnet, but more like the idea of a magnet. To Volto, danger and cereal are the same word. Not philosophically, but because he is always confused. I love him, and we’re now going to look at every single ad he was ever in.
Volto would go on to have 19 more appearances across four different comic publishers, but the creators didn’t know that. So in his second appearance, they treated it like it might be his last. They raised the stakes to this: all possible things going wrong at once. A little girl is playing on a highway, about to be run over by a truck. An unmanned truck. An unmanned dynamite truck. It’s hopeless. Her only way out would be some kind of star man who attracts children with his right arm. Hold on, wait a minute.
You’ll notice Volto, the weirdest goddamn thing in our solar system, is always worried people will forget about him and his magnetic powers. Speaking of forgetting, the dynamite truck, Volto.
Speaking of forgetting, Volto’s magnetism! Be you truck or girl, remember it! This seems like an ordinary Martian punishing an abandoned dynamite truck with Grape-Nuts magnetism, but I think it’s important in understanding how his powers work. If I remember, Volto can attract and repel any material, but it seems like he must do both, one time each. Otherwise, I think even Volto would have thought to attract the dynamite truck to a stop rather than repel it into a farm and hope for the best. I mean, let’s take the boy’s word for it that this cargo truck of explosives didn’t kill ten cows and a family of thirty-five; this is still a decision you only make if your powers have strict rules. I know we have a lot to remember already, what with Volto’s left arm repelling and Volto’s right arm attracting, but it’s the closest thing Volto has to a weakness.
Speaking of forgetting, I remembered Volto’s other weakness. Once he uses his powers, he needs to recharge with Grape-Nuts Flakes immediately. So, lady, I’m glad you’re enjoying your lesson on Martian biomagnetism, but go get a bowl of cereal. Volto might die. And little girl, there’s no other lesson to take from this incident. Keep enjoying the highway with the energy you get from Grape-Nuts Flakes, the swellest cereal you’ve ever tasted!
There’s nowhere up to go from a DANGER EXPLOSIVES truck rolling into a child, so Grape-Nuts Flakes didn’t try. In his next adventure, Volto from Mars and his friends meet a purse snatcher. Admittedly, he’s pretty goddamn serious about it, but a mugger throwing a knife is the tutorial mission for a magnetic superhero. His lifeless body is being held up like a fish in Volto’s attract hand two panels later:
Like his magnetism, Volto’s confidence in his audience vanishes when he’s hungry. At the start of the comic, Volto’s like, “I’m from space, you get it.” But after a couple arm zaps, he’s like, “PLEASE REMEMBER, MY PEOPLE HAVE MAGNETIC POWERS, WHICH AGAIN, ARE RECHARGED WITH YOUR PLANET’S CEREAL. MY PLANET, OF COURSE, IS MARS IF I HAVEN’T MENTIONED IT, WHERE MAGNETISM IS COMMON AND ENCOURAGED, BUT REQUIRES GRAPE NUā SORRY, LET ME START AGAIN.”
“Jesus Christ, they know. Shut the fuck up, we’re trying to do a commercial,” interrupts the boy. He can’t work with this madman, and he’s already lost his mind with frustration. “THE CEREAL IS SIZZLING WITH VOLTO-ENERGY!” he shrieks at the reader, a legally actionable claim of magnetic powers he’ll have to retract next adventure. Speaking of, their next adventure sucks.
The boy and Professor have taken Volto on a South American jungle hike and a boa constrictor has wrapped itself around their pack mule, and this can’t be rightā¦ nothing else? The stakes are 43 cruzeiros of mule rental deposit? I’m here, from Earth, and I’m not sure what the crisis is. Volto is a visitor from the stars hearing the names of these moist shapes for the first time as he watches them make love, presumably as is their Earth custom. What is he expected to do? Watch a snake burst as it tries to swallow 800 pounds of donkey and 200 pounds of Grape-Nuts cargo? Intervene? Fucking how!? Space magnetism against a snake and mule fight? Can you hear yourself?
Wait, that’s really what he did? Volto’s repel arm uncoils boa constrictors and ignores mules? Even for 1944, this is desperate nonsense. “Nothing Detangles a Knot of Flesh Like Some Nerd Yelling About Magnets” sounds like a late entry in a Cracked article called “5 Things I Learned at an Insane Clown Posse Show.” It sounds like something Bill Nye’s wife would confide in a trusted friend. This writer was given the task of coming up with something exciting to defeat with magnets, with no limitations of scope or reason, and he came up with “Nearby Snake in the Caper of the Botched Mule Kidnapping.”
Oh no, the mule is frightened. My god, will this heart-pounding crisis ever slow down. Quick, Volto, do something to calm it down. Yes, that. Rip it into the sky with your animal-terror beam. Beautiful.
Because all the good men had left for Normandy, this script was approved and illustrated. Volto’s magnetism now canonically straightened snakes, pulled children, killed muggers, enraged cougars, and calmed donkeys. Also, it seems like Volto isn’t friends with these two people he’s always with? He interrupts the boy’s sales pitch to say, “VOLTO KNOWS WHAT GRAPE NUTS ARE, UNMAGNETED WORM, THEY’RE THE ONLY REASON VOLTO CAME ON THIS BULLSHIT TRIP.” The boy’s sales pitch, by the way, now clarifies “Grape-Nuts Flakes may not give you Volto’s magnetic power.” He’s also softened the description from “swellest cereal you’ve ever tasted” to “Tastes swell!”. It’s a cowardly admission by a browbeaten boy, which is why I’m giving this ad, “Untitled Snake One,” the lowest possible Volto From Mars score: The World Is a Little Less Magical Because of It out of 5.
Let’s do a good one!
Oh no! There’s a tree in the road! They’re going to be late for the train! Damn, nothing to be done. Unlessā¦ I don’t knowā¦ unless I’m forgetting something?
Oh, right! Volto’s magnetic power! I won’t forget it again. But I worry that while I’m remembering how Volto’s left hand repels, I’ll be forgetting something else. Oh, gracious! Where’s my bag?
Oh, hell yes. The Volto magic is back! He used his magnetic powers fueled by Grape-Nuts Flakes to rescue forgotten luggage! The end, buy cereal, what an adventure! Somehow, in only three issues, Volto has gone from Amazing Mars Hero to Pretty Handy Guy To Have Around. It feels like the next adventure will be him going into a gas station and screaming, “Remember, when I say ‘Volto’ my left hand rejects this flavor of energy drink! See? When I say ‘Volto’ my right hand attracts the bathroom key!” And maybe his creators sensed that because the next one they put Volto at ground zero of a full-on terror attack.
A gangster drives up and throws a bomb at city hall while announcing, “Fuck you, Mayor, I am doing this for crime!!” And any other moment of any other day, it would have been a flawless plan. Unfortunately, he didn’t notice the bodybuilding alien in the vampire shark hat standing in the way. You probably don’t remember, but this is Volto, and he has the exact right powers to throw a bomb somewhere else. Let’s recharge our magnetism with some cereal!
Oh right, the gangster. Thanks, kid! It seemed insane at first, but I’m starting to like how the Volto team shares a single hippocampus and only one of them can use it at a time. And it’s nice to see these adventurers getting some non-luggage work. So let’s see, we’ve done mountain lion, dynamite truck, street crime, jungle, luggage, terrorismā¦ oh, shit. It’s time for shark!
Somehow this ended up less dramatic than the missing suitcase. There was no way of knowing this beforehand, but when the crisis is shark and your left hand launches sharks, your adventure is over by the second panel. Unless I’m forgetting something dizzy dames did in the 1940s?
I honestly think fainting is pretty reasonable here. This woman learned Martians were real and sharks can fly while she was already in the middle of a shark attack. “I’ve got this,” says the little boy to an on-duty lifeguard and a superhero with lady-pulling powers. And Volto, Worst Wingman from Mars, responds,”REMEMBER, SONā¦ YOU HAVE FORGOTTENā¦ MY RIGHT HAND COCK BLOCKS! SORRY, ON MARS, WHERE WE EAT FOOD FOR MAGNETISM, WE SAY ‘SON’ WHEN WE CAN’T REMEMBER SOMEONE’S NAā” Hold on, does Volto not know this kid’s name? Wait a minute, do I? Iā¦ I don’t! Let me go back through theseā¦ oh my god, they never mention one. They forgot to give Volto’s sidekick a name!
In his next adventure, Volto ruins what would have been a bull national holiday. I don’t know all the rules for ritual bull murder, but this seems like cheating. At the very least Volto stole a moment sports fans have been waiting for all their lives. Volto, your heart is in the right place, but this is a profane violation of our natural order, like interrupting a state execution or preventing a juggling accident.
You may have noticed that up until now, Volto stories don’t have titles. For instance, this one is called “VOLTO FROM MARS” rather than “Volto inā¦ Robbing a Man of His Fated, Glorious Death!” But this is the last time they do that. From now on, the writers use titles, and like Volto From Mars himself, they immediately fuck it up.
“Our first title! What should it be? Wait, I’ve got it: VOLTO FROM MARS in VOLTO’S WEIRD MAGNETIC POWERS PROTECT A MERCHANTMAN IN SUB-INFESTED SEASā¦”. What the hell kind of title is that? That sounds like it should be followed by the words “a.k.a. ē儳 Japanese Bathtub Moms 3.” Ridiculous. I also reject the premise that Volto is “learning every minute.” The title of this says he’s there to protect a merchantman in sub-infested seas, and he doesn’t recognize a torpedo, the first and only thing they would have explained to him. And I wasn’t the only one disappointed. After this embarrassment, the military demoted Volto to Assistant Fruit Helper, the actual plot of his next story:
“HELLO, READER, BOY OH BOY ARE YOU ABOUT TO SEE CROPS AND MAGNETS BUT TO GET TO ALL THE ACTION YOU’RE GOING TO HAVE TO KEEP READING BECAUSE THIS IS STILL THE TITLE OF THIS VOLTO ADVā” oh, hey! Look at that! “Jimmy!” They gave the kid a name!
The moment the boy is given a name, God sends an unexplainable rock to kill him. You’ve seen the storytelling standards for Volto adventures, but there may never be a worse adventure premise than “sudden rock while picking peaches.” If I was telling this as a bedtime story, my daughter would say, “I hope mommy’s next husband has a soul, daddy.”
In an exciting turnaround, Volto picks fruit! They spin it like Volto saved the troops here, but good fucking luck getting five baskets of 1945 peaches across the Atlantic before they turn into toilet wine. There’s nothing better than Volto From Mars. He used his powers to pick peaches, pointlessly, and his sidekick almost died. It might be why Grape-Nuts switched to no mascot at all shortly after this.
Next up is the story known simply as “VOLTO FROM MARS in VOLTO UNLEASHES HIS MAGNETIC POWERS TO HELP JIMMY AND INTELLIGENCE AGENTS CAPTURE A DASTARDLY SPY RING..“
Readers today might have trouble relating to the rockcitement of wartime peach picking, but busting up dastardly spy rings is timeless. A classic adventure story! Now, let’s seeā¦ who would be spying on us in 1945? Oh nā
Oh, gracious! I forgot about racism. Let’s maybe skip this one.
Hey, Volto got his pilot’s license! I’m sure he and Jimmy will find some fun adventure inā¦ a 1945 unexplored jungle. Oh nā
They immediately find a race war. Great job, Grape-Nuts.
Volto’s arms attract and repel when he says ‘Volto,’ but he also attracts accidents and repels reason passively, at all times. His adventures always start with disaster, usually something basic like a peach accident or an ethnic canoe cleansing, but sometimes, rarely, we open with him riding neck-first into a noose while screaming, “BANDITS ARE STEALING THE SACRED DIAMOND FROM THE ANCIENT TEMPLE!” You never know when he’s going to be awesome because he sucks or awesome because he’s awesome, and here it’s sort of both because they introduce an entirely new element to a Volto From Mars story:
Volto’s in trouble! We get to see how he uses his keen Martian mind to get out of a jam!
Oh, that makes sense. Volto sat still and waited for his natural accident summoning ability to summon a second disaster. And even he seems surprised it worked. He had absolutely no idea he was immune to lightning before this. Everything else here seems normal, though. His left hand repels, Pedro mus’ run weeth the diamond, I think we can move on to the next one.
Volto’s natural disaster magnetism is so powerful he is about to have a head on collision on a roller coaster. This is a child’s idea of how roller coasters work. It’s a note Steven Seagal would give in a movie called Six Flags of Death. “In the rescue scene, Mr. Seagal wants to ride the roller coaster too,” his agent would say before holding a finger to his ear and adding, “… and we’ll need 12 more feet of party sub.”
Volto immediately reverses the direction of a speeding roller coaster, far beyond the safety regulations of 1945, and ejects the shattered remains of an unrestrained womā wait a goddamn minute. That’s the woman who was sitting behind him! Let’s get another look at her. Volto, can you grab her?
Yep, that’s her. And she’s definitely dead.
This makes no sense, even for Grape-Nuts Flakes. I’m worried maybe these are all hallucinations Volto is having while his body is being torn to bits by a savage beast…
Oh gracious! I think I was right! Luckily, this camper recognizes the struggling remains of Volto and fixes that bear with a rock!
That is one hell of a bear fixing, random passerby, but Volto has a particular way he does things, probably because of his memory issues. I’m worried someone else taking the first action in one of his comics could really fuck up his rhythmā¦
ā¦ I’m sure it’ll be fine, though.
In VOLTO FROM MARS and the case of HIS STRANGE MAGNETIC POWERS SAVE AN ARSENAL AND BRING CRAVEN CRIMINALS TO JUSTICE, it opens again with Volto in trouble. These saboteurs must have caught him when he wasn’t full of Grape-Nuts Flakes, his one weakness other than bears, memory, ropes, social cues, or a minor change in routine!
No, never mind. It was part of his plan to let them tie Jimmy to explosives to make sure these were the culprits tying children to explosives. And now, when those fools blow the arsenal, they’ll be blowing themselves right into Volto’s trap! I can’t believe I’m saying this, but maybe Volto should go back to saving peach orchards from loose rock? It seems like he was at his best when he went outside and someone said, “Look up! Hey! A piano!” For instance, look what happens when the Volto writers try to do a plot:
Volto’s boy sidekick and “Joe” are behind enemy lines saving “Lily” from sabotage kidnappers? This is several too many things and none of them are Volto. And by the way, there’s no way anyone could be expected to know Lily. She has appeared one other time in the Volto saga, maybe, when a woman named Lily was knocked out of a canoe back in “VOLTO AND JIMMY ARE FLYING OVER JUNGLE IN A HELICOPTER.” So if it’s the same woman, and it might not be, it’d be like the lost luggage returning for a cameo.
Anyway, here we are, Voltoless, but we’ve found our target. Joe moves into the second phase of Operation: Hot Lily: not realizing there would be two bad guys and shouting “WE’D BETTER GET VOLTO!” before leaving the woman to be tortured. And it takes Volto zero panels to arrive because he was right behind them the whole time:
“REMEMBER! I AM WITH YOU!” Everyone always forgets Volto’s left hand repels (when he says ‘VOLTO!’) and Volto’s right arm attracts (when he says ‘VOLTO!’), but now they’re forgetting Volto is there at all. I’m sure it was a one time thing. I’m sure nothing strange is happening. I’m sure it was a one time thing. I’m sure nothing strange is happening.
“You eat Grape-Nuts Flakes like ice cream,” says Jimmy’s mother, who I guess exists.
“What an insane thing to say. By the way, I have no interesting facts about Grape-Nuts Flakes or which Martian abilities it fuels,” says Jimmy, maybe forgetting something. Or someone.
“A meteor! If only someone could repel it! Aargh, I’m talking crazy. Just outrun it!”
Oh yeah, Volto! We’d forgotten about you. You threw the meteor at people, by the way. I guess when I forgot about you I also forgot your first magnet always makes the situation worse.
Hmm. You know, I think the title VOLTO FROM MARS inā¦ “VOLTO’S OUT-OF-THIS-WORLD MAGNETIC POWERS CONQUER A FIERY INFERNO IN THE TIMBERLANDS OF THE GREAT NORTHWESTā¦ SAVE JIMMY AND THE JUNIOR RANGERS FROM A TRAGIC FATE.” is so thorough we don’t even have to read this one.
“Can I hop in your top secret experimental rocket plane, Joe? I’m only ten, but I eat cereal!”
“Sure, Jimmy! You’re never more than five seconds from an unexplained catastrophe! Mess around in there.”
“AIIIIEEEEEE, I’M RIGHT HERE! WHY CAN’T ANYONE REMEMBER ME!?” shrieks Volto in what would be his final adventure. The memory-eating parasite Volto unknowingly(?) brought with him from Mars has completed its job. No one will ever know what happened here. Still, despite having every last thought scraped from his mind, Jimmy sensed what was happening. Something primal told him this was his last day at work and he should not give a fuck. And when he delivered the final Volto Grape-Nuts Flakes slogan, he did not.
Ha ha where am I, who am I, this cereal is THE NUTS.
This article was brought to you by our fine sponsor and Hot Dog Supreme: Joshua Graves, ALL JOSHES SHALL BE SPARED.
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Nerding Day: Mr. Stitch š
Although it has long been known that the swirl of individual galaxies is the product of black holes at their centers, it was only recently that physicists came to the consensus that there exists a similar and inconceivably powerful hole-like structure at the center of the universe itself which dictates the motion of all creation. By the mid-60ās, this idea had been explored but ultimately butchered in both Langenbothamās On the Motion of Gravimetric Entities Orbiting in Fixed Spacetime (1948) and the last scene of Men In Black (original 1959 version). Definitive proof of what scientists have since dubbed āthe goatse modelā wouldnāt come until 1978, in the form of a small-scale simulation later packaged for resale to the public. The device used sophisticated laser technology to represent the complex rotational motion of the universe as a flat plane spinning around such a hole. The only drawback was that the discs required flipping in the middle if you wanted to simulate a full universe.
Then about thirty years later my Dad made me watch a bunch, then I landed this column – you know, the one they callā¦LaserDiscs in the Rain.
To really understand Mr. Stitch, you first have to understand what the Sci-Fi Channel was like in 1995. What the world was like, really. This was before Battlestar, before SyFy – the cloning of Dolly the sheep was a year away (at this point they were still just fucking sheep while wearing lab coats and holding clipboards). In ā95, things were going from bad to worse for our nation: first there was the O.J. Simpson trial, then the Oklahoma City bombing, then the Internet became widely available to the public. Then, just when you thought it couldnāt get any worse, a Sci-Fi original movie would come on TV, making all those things seem paltry by comparison. Youād forget about all of them in an instant.
This particular Sci-Fi Original is a modern retelling of Frankenstein starring Rutger Hauer as the mysterious Dr. Wakeman. Get it? He WAKES a dead MAN! Hey, fuck you, you write a movie. Naturally, the monsterās names are equally clever – heās alternately called Mr. Stitch, Subject Three, and Lazarus. Get it? The third āsubjectā or book of the Bible (in which Lazarus famously appears) is Leviticus, which details how sacrifices are to be made to God, much as our Frankenstein analog is forced to sacrifice his own connection to the divine in order to to bring life back to dead flesh and thereby ironically become godlike himself. āMr Stitchā is because heās got stitches.
When it came time to cast the monster, the bigwigs went traditional, landing on an actor that some would argue is almost too on-the-nose for the part: Wil Wheaton of Star Trek: the Next Generation. In fact, Wheaton got so yoked for this role that itās said his dedication was the inspiration for Christian Bale going into Batman Begins.
Yep, thatās him! I guess youāre probably wondering how he ended up in this situation. Letās edit in a record scratch and a rewind effect, then start with the basics. This is Subject Three:
Heās in a bit of a pickle, and by āpickleā I mean a white void where John Hodgman and Justin Long have been replaced by Rutger Hauer and his floating eyeball friend.
Mr. Stitch awakens with no memory, yet a part of him instinctively knows that something isnāt right. A floating eyeball, sure, okay, but if Rutger Hauer is smiling, something is very wrong. Our bandaged hero springs into inaction.
What follows is a painful and laborious rehabilitation process. Subject Three probes Dr. Wakeman for information about the world and himself as he slowly learns to walk, talk, and feel humiliation again.
He shows remarkable healing potential though, and itās only a matter of weeks before heās mastered even complex combat and infiltration skills, like disappearing at will and karate kicks.
His body now a finely-tuned instrument, Mr. Stitch turns his attention to matters of the mind. Soon he has assembled no less than twenty-eight stacks of books, which vastly expands his knowledge of both stacks and piles. Perhaps one day, he muses, he shall even crack open a book, and feast on its tender insides.
For now, there is a more urgent task at hand – securing freedom. The pitiable monster hurls a weight at the security eyeball and it proves to be filled with nacho cheese, a fortuitous turn.
Starving, he falls to his knees and scoops the semisolid food product up with both hands, slurping it down ice cold and not caring in the least. By the time Dr. Wakeman bursts in through the vagina-door on his science segue, itās too late. Mr. Stitch is mad with dairy.
He quickly dispatches both guards and demands his bandages removed. At long last, weāre able to put a face to this thing of dark beauty, this life from death, this Prometheus.
Oh shit, heās just Sally from A Nightmare Before Christmas? Thatās kind of a letdown. Equally upsetting, Mr. Stitch starts to have nightmares that seem to be leftover memories from the eighty-eight dead people that comprise him. The first is of a car accident – a child, having their innocence ripped away as smoothly as sliding off a seat.
Or even being stuffed inside a tumble drier, for that matter.
But enough classic trauma metaphors weāre all familiar with! The tension between Stitch and Wakeman steadily ratchets up over the next week. The doctor even installs a port in the subjectās skull that allows him to monitor his dreams, which apparently you just need a standard eighth-inch aux jack for. Whatās cool is, you can plug your iPod into it and the music comes out his ear-holes.
But once again, Wil Wheatonās sheer berzerker-like rage takes over, and with the power of a silverback gorilla he dashes the dream machine to the ground like so much eyeball. Instead of nacho cheese, it proves to be full of the yellow ganache that they use for the yolk in Cadbury eggs.
Wakeman is unable to rebuild it, since of course the eggs are only available seasonally. Desperate, the good doctor assigns his associate Dr. English to the case to see if she can develop a rapport with the creature now calling himself Johnny Lazarus the Vanishing Karate Mummy.
Laz quickly falls for the first woman heās ever met, which isnāt creepy at all. Just when it seems like those feelings might be returned, Wakeman abruptly takes Dr. English off the project and upgrades his segue to an adult-sized razor scooter to show dominance.
But you can only push Frankensteinās monster so far before he pushes back! Specifically, pushes back with his thumb on the spot on your forehead between your eyebrows, which is a move I must admit Iām unfamiliar with.
Oh, sorry, were you using that wrist to jerk off, jerkoff? Thereās a reason they call him Wesley Crusher. As if to prove it, the rest of the movie is one long fight/chase sequence, with Wakeman and government forces trying to contain Mr. Stitch as he goes about ripping the lid off their secret program, which was designed to turn the dead into unstoppable killing machines for the military to deploy, presumably to keep those darn student protestors from cluttering up the quad.
Aw, look, he thinks heās a Die Hard! By crawling around, Lazarus quickly learns that the complex is a secret government facility housing all kinds of experimental weapons programs. He further learns that that same fabulous facility full of deadly deadly secrets is only guarded by one guy chilling at a night desk.
One judicious headbutt later, Subject Three discovers Subjects Two and Four. His younger brother is a new kind of lab-grown supersoldier Wakeman plans to use to replace him, while Subject Two is, wellā¦this:
To make matters worse, he unlocks some more dead people’s memories and realizes Dr. Englishās old boyfriend is in there, which is highly confusing for the pubescent pariah. Mayhap it is that selfsame confusion that shuts off his ability to process peripheral vision so entirely that heās immediately sideswiped by a car the second he steps outside.
Determined to take down Wakeman and his military masters, Lazarus steals the car and flees the facility. Wakemanās fleet of go-karts give chase, because apparently the weapons program can afford to acquire eighty-eight corpses but not a black Escalade.
The guy with no memory and no experience operating a car easily out-maneuvers the government goons, sending their caravanās only full-sized vehicle careening off a cliff so emphatically that the resulting cloud of smoke is skull-shaped.
He makes one brief pit-stop to tell a woman that although her son and husband died in a horrible car wreck, itās okay because they live on both in her memory and as part of a freakish amalgam of undead corpse-flesh. She takes it pretty well.
As all heroes must, Mr. Stitch returns home, but changed. Heās got his groove back now, and itās with a newfound sense of purpose and jaunty perk in his step that he knocks that same security guard the fuck out on his way back through the lobby.
He quickly tracks down General Hardcastle, the man that requisitioned the Frankenstein project in the first place. He only gets one scene to prove heās the Big Bad, and so has to cram four metric tons of on-screen evil into six seconds of writhing face.
Mr. Stitch ultimately opens a canister of nerve gas, sacrificing himself to take out both the general and Subjects Two and Four, ending the project for good. Dr. English is the only one to walk away, and she does so with a new appreciation not just for the partner she mourns, but also for the stitch-faced monster that he became a small part of.
Itās a tragic love story, a cautionary tale, and the kind of film only 1995 and the Sci-Fi Channel could produce. I personally think itās wildly underratedā¦and Iām not even Wil Wheaton paying Swaim to let me ghostwrite his column for the week!
This article was brought to you by our fine sponsor and Hot Dog Supreme: Matt Reiley, who is also filled with nacho cheese, but you don’t have to kill him to get it out.
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Nerding Day: Skeboarder
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Nerding Day: Black Grimoire App š
As we all know, the one problem with being a dark magic wielder is having to haul around a bulky grimoire full of spells. Sure, we could memorize them, but if we were good at memorizing things, we probably would have become a computer programmer and not a dark wizard. Ah ha, but what if we did both? Someone out there was smart enough to code an iPhone app and also dark wizardly enough to make it an app full of magic spells. That man’s name is Mr. zombie.
Thatās right, nestled between your Starbucks and New York Times Gaming App, you too can keep all of the best ancient spells for things like beginner telekinesis, summoning a dark spirit, and cold relief, for free! Yes, this is a free app that will give you the power to summon a dark spirit from hell! You would think that ability would be worth AT LEAST $2.99, but itās not!
You would also think there would be some kind of background check required to yield the power of demonic ghosts. No, the only requirement for access to this mighty digital tome is that you must be at least twelve years old. Sixth graders simply aren’t ready to unravel the laws of man.
Thereās also a serious legal disclaimer on the download page to discourage non-serious magicians. It explains that magic is real, and you should not joke about any of this. Weird that the author thought he would need to preempt the powerful spells in his Black Grimoire with a disclaimer that they are not funny.
Do you think the āplease use all spells at your own riskā disclaimer will cover Mr. zombie in the event that a twelve-year-old uses this app to summon an Old God to wipe clean the world of his bully? I worry that Mr. zombie didnāt consult a lawyer before making this app. Otherwise he’d know you can’t distribute telekinesis to 13-year-olds in seven states, and we are absolutely allowed to joke about wizards everywhere but Massachusetts.
The app does make sure to keep its ancient wisdom behind the protection of a mystical login page, complete with a stock photo of Criss Angelās actual hands logging into the app. This feature is essential because it will prevent your mom from looking at your most viewed spell tab and learning itās āSuccubus Formal Invitation Spell.ā As if there would be an informal invitation spell for a succubus, the most formal of fuck monsters. The point is, there’s a right way and a wrong way to ritually text š to a sex demon.
Let’s deep dive into these spells. Where do they come from? Who wrote them, and what are their spell-writing credentials? Most books on magic love to tell you all about the exploits of the fifth-level astro wizard of the frosting dimension who wrote them. The Black Grimoire app takes a more laid back approach to creating black magic. Most of the spells have no explanation of where they come from, and if I had to guess, I’d say it’s probably Google. There is one spell that comes with details of its creator, and it’s, of course, the succubus spell. It came from Mr. zombie’s supernatural wife. I think he was just sneaking a succubus brag into his app.
No magic book is complete without a supernatural wife name drop. It makes this app so much more authentic. I wish there was more Princess Saaraji Lilith in this app. Most of it is way more boring than the introduction of Mr. zombie’s succubus wife. For instance, there’s a recipe for Wizard tea that does not explain what makes it wizardly. Another name for it would be “tea” because that’s what it is, regular tea with chocolate, honey, and mint. They didn’t even try to make up a reason why it’s magic. They could have at least said it’s best prepared by your supernatural succubus wife.
Just to test my earlier theory, here’s the very first match on Google for “Wizard tea recipe”:
Now, let’s move on to the death spells. Sorry, first, we’ll have to pause for an ad from HelloFresh. That is not a bit; they will advertise anywhere. Although the Black Grimoire is a free app, they have to make money somehow. They can’t give these spells away for free. Normally, you have to pay a whole daughter for real magic, or at least the blood of a daughter-sized orphan. So one thirty-second ad for a food delivery box isn’t too much to ask in exchange for a death spell. Most of the other ads are for apps like this oneā insane sadness chum for a stupid person’s idea of a desperate person. There was one for a chat gpt girlfriend app, and one for a psychic app that was probably the side hustle of the chat gpt girlfriend. HelloFresh is the only mainstream company that wasn’t going to let the Grimoire audience slip by.
After I paused to learn about seared sesame tuna over rice, I was finally able to access over twenty death spells. The death spell section is one of the largest on the app. They’ve got all kinds of death, Cursed by Voodoo, Black Death, Death Potion, Blood Star, Bones of Anger Hex, but my personal favorite death spell is the Necrokinesis spell because it is the hardest of all kinesis.
I wanted to learn more, so I Googled “Necrokinesis,” and it looks like Mr. zombie might have done the same thing:
What will you need to learn Necrokinesis? Nothing. The Necrokinesis spell boils down to thinking about killing someone really hard. It’s suspicious because if this was possible, it would happen all the time by accident. There wouldn’t be a living boss or landlord. So let’s try another death spell, hopefully one Mr. zombie didn’t copy from a 4chan post. Maybe something more classic. How about this death potion from 1970 that sounds, frankly, delightful:
This Death Potion is adorable. I think Mr. zombie might have mixed up the death potion recipe and the strawberry shortcake recipe. It’s fine, that’s easy to do, but I think the results are going to disappoint a lot of wizards. It’s important to note that Death Potion isn’t meant to be ingested by anyone. All you have to do is put the ingredients in a pot and simmer them on the stove “for however long you think it needs to cook.” I’ve never made a death potion before and would not trust my judgment on when it’s done. I guess simmer until death occurs, or you’ve reduced Death Potion to a delicious coulis. Honestly, this is such a crazy idea I have no idea how Mr. zombie could have come up with it. The only thing I found when I Googled “death potion” is this:
There’s more to the black Grimoire than sex and death spells. There’s a pretty hefty section on wealth that includes a powerful job-seeking spell that is much more the shit I’m looking for. It’s got candles, visualizations, patchouli oil, and rhyming. Somehow, summoning a job is way cooler than summoning a ghost to bang.
One of the straā excuse me, I want to just check to see if there are any other job finding spells online we can compare this to. Ah, here’s one:
One of the strangest things about this magic spell book app is that it says this spell was written in 2023, but it sounds like it’s referring to mailing out physical copies of a resume. Did they let a ghost of someone who died in the 1980s write this spell? There aren’t a lot of summoning spells in the app so I kind of doubt it. In fact, most spells offer intangible results like good luck or confidence. There is one spell for hot sex, but it basically calls for you to have hot sex in a circle of salt, which seems like cheating. It’s like having a spell for wealth where one of the ingredients is fifty thousand dollars. If you have the means to do the spell, you’re done!
All you need is a hot sex circle and some candles! I found no trace of this on Google, so Mr. zombie might have invented this one, and good for him.
I’m not sure I would qualify this app as a good replacement for your typical black grimoire. It’s a gray Grimoire at best. It needs to be at least thirty percent more goth to get Satan’s attention. Aside from one hot sex circle, all he did was Google spells for us. This is no different than telling Siri to commit a sin against God. However, if you’re 12+ and promise not to make fun of it, maybe this circle fucker’s Google searches are for you!
This article was brought to you by our fine sponsor and Hot Dog Supreme: Jeff Orasky, who is the sworn enemy of Mr. zombie — a plagiarized smartphone app white wizard sponsored by Blue Apron.