Category: NERDING DAY

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NERDING DAY

Nerding Day: The Mortal Kombat Live Tour Promo 🌭

I’m really going to do it. I’m going to write 2,000 words about a six-minute interview between Los Angeles weatherman Mark Kriski-

And his interviewee-

That’s Sidney Liufau, a Polynesian martial artist who you might recognize from nothing. This, I guess. If you needed a Pacific Islander leading man, which the 1990s rarely did, he could stand in the background and be Chinese or whatever. He had bit parts in Bloodsport III, Blade, and was actually in the Mortal Kombat movie as Shang Tsung! 
 
 
 ‘s unnamed henchman. His biggest role was on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, the episode where Worf married Dax. He played the erotic Fire Dancer at an alien parasite’s bachelorette party.

Sidney’s chance to step into a major role came with the Mortal Kombat Live Show, because this was 1996, and studio executives figured if you wanted to watch Ninja Turtles or Thundercats or Mortal Kombats or whatever, you probably also wanted to watch somebody who kind of looked like them sing a song about friendship in a hockey rink. Local news affiliates fucking loved live shows because every time one swept through town, they could kill 5 minutes of show for the cost of a craft services table (accidentally pictured below).

This puff piece opens with thirty seconds of adequate stage fighting. The frantic techno Mortal Kombat theme plays. It is 8:31 in the morning. It is officially too early for this shit.

Right from the jump, we can see this promo is not going well. This appearance is beneath both Sidney Liufau and Mark Kriski, and they’re both in a race to see who can make the other acknowledge that first.

These two are the stars of this unfolding disaster, but they’re not the full cast. Let’s check in on your Mortal Kombat Players!

Everyone knows our first warrior, he’s the white drama kid earning Experience Credits, it’s-

Seen here wielding nunchucks he made from dowels and twine like he’s me in the sixth grade, it’s criminal mastermind-

Looking pretty good from afar, just don’t get too close to the-

Or you’ll see his mask looks like papier mache bananas made by Outworld children at remedial summer camp. This isn’t Scorpion, it’s-

A last minute replacement, it’s the hairdresser who owed his hungover stuntman boyfriend a BIIIIG favor, meet-

Fresh off the set of a Rage Against the Machine video where they played Socialist Raver #17 and On Call Crowd Filler (Uncalled), it’s-

Baraka should have full prosthetic make-up and blade arms or at least something, anything at all, while Kabal should definitely not have a military surplus vest, but I guess nunchuck twine is shockingly expensive.

That’s not the full cast, but we’ll meet Sonya Blade later in deeply unfortunate circumstances.

You know how these segments go: The real reporters can’t be assed, so it falls to the weatherman to toss an adult in foam suspenders softballs like “what kind of good time should children expect from Mortal Kombat Live?” But Mark Kriski absolutely does not give a shit about how well this piece goes. He’s vaguely heard something controversial about Mortal Kombat, and you know what? Maybe this is his chance to show he’s more than just a weatherman and host of Kooky Kriski’s Wild Wacky Animal Corner every Sunday from 6:15AM to 6:20AM.

He calls it a video, so he might not even know what a video game is, he definitely doesn’t know this is from one. It’s possible Mark Kriski thinks these people are Mortal Kombat, and they’re some kind of brutal dance troupe famous for their stage gore. Regardless, he leaps at this chance to fire some hardballs right down the gullet of a sleepy career extra.

Now, surely the Mortal Kombat Live showrunners understood the controversy around Mortal Kombat. The pearl-clutching morality police of the ‘90s, fearing their own increasing irrelevance, made that game a crusade. It was under constant fire to justify its own existence, of course the higher-ups would have coached their cast before all TV appearances. Take it away, Sidney:

He is a possum playing chicken with an 18-wheeler. Sidney has been coached on up to seven Mortal Kombat puns and nothing else. Now he has to wing an eloquent answer for a bad faith moral campaign.

Those of you with social anxiety might recognize this as a nightmare. Just an audible nightmare coming from somebody’s mouth on live television. To say nothing important, or to sidestep the question entirely would have been one thing. To reflexively fall back on positive martial arts talking points when you’re playing a guy who eats souls is what those of you with improv training will recognize as a nightmare again.

But shit. He got through it, right?

Mark Kriski takes one step forward, three steps back, and high punches.

This is quite possibly the worst thing that ever happened to Sidney Liufau and he was an extra on You, Me, and Dupree. This is a strong, confident adult man who got dressed up like 4th place in an elementary school costume contest and he’s getting dunked on by a weatherman. That’s so humiliating it’s somebody’s fetish now. They call it Krisking and you can buy special leather blazers for it on Etsy.

I’m not here to take Sidney Liufau to task. Mark Kriski is winning but it’s like watching the Washington Generals shut out the Harlem Globetrotters. It’s no fun, against the natural order of things, and possibly a hate crime. The morality panics of the ‘80s and ‘90s were in as bad faith as they are today, and Kriski is only doing this because he’s hungry. He knows the anchor desk is where you pull the real tail, and there’s no such thing as a weather groupie. Sidney Liufau is not trained for this, he shouldn’t have to be, he’s on the spot, he has a lot of excuses
 but he still might have just said the dumbest thing in knowable human history. Saying Mortal Kombat’s main message is teaching children to be concerned about violence is like saying the real point of Doom is to make Sunday School fun for toddlers.

Mark somehow lets Sidney bail without pressing that terrible answer. He does not grill Shang Tsung about how he just said that ripping out video game spines is an educational tool to keep kids out of fistfights. Either there’s mercy yet in Kriski’s dark heart, or he wants to skip to the part where Sonya Blade beats him up. I can’t tell which is the real answer, so let’s check Mark’s body language-

The clenched teeth smile, the little fists gripping the cuffs of his own blazer. Mark Kriski looks like he just found out that big box under the tree is a Playstation. This is what a dog does when you open a pack of bacon. A beautiful young woman is going to beat the hell out of him at his place of business and the only reason Mark Kriski is not visibly hard is because he just came and your refractory period ain’t the same in your ‘40s.

Mark interrupts the instructions to walk right up to Sonya and point at her body parts. He talks to everybody in the room but her about how hot he finds them. This is how you find out that thing has a hemi at a car show, it’s not how you react to a human being. This is a man who has absolutely been thrown out of a shoe store. I don’t know, maybe I’m reading the situation wrong. Let’s check in with Sonya’s body language-

That’s Kerri Hoskins, the actual motion capture model for the original Sonja Blade. She’s a Playboy playmate too, which means she has a Master’s Degree in Received Creepery and she’s going for a Doctorate in Unwelcome Touches. She’s not taken aback because of what Kriski said. Vanilla Ice has said ten times worse in the grotto, and praising someone’s six-pack is fine in most scenarios – if they didn’t want you to notice their abs they’d eat bread. It’s the fact that Mark broke a news segment to walk over and yell to his ancestors about the hot meat he found. Anybody would be thrown by that, because it’s madness. Kerri’s also been diagnosed as on the spectrum, so she might struggle some with social cues. Going on live TV to have a weatherman aha her body parts like he’s just found Waldo is an unsolvable social dilemma. And Mark isn’t done! It’s like he’s just discovered ogling, this might be his first ogle and he’s trying to explain to everybody what he invented. He starts to go on about Kerri’s body again and Liufau actually says-

What! What a fucking champion, holy shit! I’d say this is revenge for Kriski putting him on the spot earlier, but Sidney Liufau says that with the automatic authority of someone who has bounced for a stripclub. He’s a man very comfortable using his size to enforce a woman’s physical boundaries, and I’m going to go ahead and guess that if he’s an LA local, this ain’t even his first dance with Mark. He might have Kriski protocols and special holds that make use of a poorly tailored blazer.

The demonstration must go on, despite the dangers we have established: A scantily clad, very hot young woman within strangling distance of a mediocre middle-aged white man in a position of authority. We really should’ve seen what happens next coming.

Now, to be fair Liufau tells Mark “this is what happens when you try to go for her neck,” and gives him the nod. But nobody expected him to GO for it. That is not the lunging strangle of a first time woman strangler. Everybody knows what these martial arts demonstrations are – you move in slowly so they can show you some choreography that almost looks like fighting. But Mark Kriski just saw the last nut before winter and he didn’t give a shit that the hawk was circling. He charges past Sidney, gets to Kerri’s neck, and starts squeezing.

She’s once again thrown off – all the careful anti-choke strategies she uses on Pauly Shore at the Playboy Mansion go straight out the window. For just a fraction of a second, for one brief, insane moment, we watch the Channel 5 weatherman strangle a half-naked autistic woman on live television while six men dressed like video game characters idle helplessly. Mark Kriski will never beat this moment. You can see it carve into his brain like a muscle memory. He’ll be able to recall every second of this every single time the r/Strangling subreddit leaves him soft.

Then Kerri gets back in the game, throws her memorized stage combo, and Mark Kriski mock retreats to tuck his erection up behind his JCPenney belt.

The post orgasmic clarity hits Mark and he stammers through the rest of the interview. That hungry sleuth ready to nail a fire dancing himbo to the wall for video game violence is gone. In his place is a reedy and awkward Mark Kriski, most of his brain working on what to tell his wife about this. “I tripped going in, honey – you know these loafers are slippery! It’s just like that time in Foot Locker, darn it all sometimes you just stumble and a college student’s foot winds up in your mouth. We’ve been over this!”

He hops over to interview Kerri Hoskins about nothing, which was also clearly not in the game plan. Mark Kriski is trying to sell a sense of normalcy he does not feel after the real Mark briefly exploded out of its Kriski shell. I actually can’t tell if Kerri’s buying it, let’s check in on her body language-

Mark Kriski better memorize that expression, he’s going to see it again – first on his producer after the segment ends, and then again on his wife when he gets home.

Right as they cut away to commercial, Mark goes back in for some playfighting with Kerri Hoskins. He does a mocking crane kick pose, which we all recognize means “this karate stuff is bullshit garbage for children and fuck you for thinking otherwise.” Kerri steps in on him in a way that says less “sure, I’ll play” and more “I’m planting my feet for an uppercut.”

Decades later, Mark Kriski would be involved in another scandal with everybody’s favorite comedian, Kathy Griffin. If, totally unprompted, he just jumped in and started strangling again I think we as a culture would have been fine with that. But that’s not what happened: Mark interrupted during perhaps the only valid and reasonable point Kathy Griffin has ever made, that older women are vastly underrepresented in comedy, and said it wasn’t true. He wasn’t even doing the interview! He butt in to a separate segment somebody else was filming just to Well, Actually a woman comedian about women and comedy. Kathy shut him straight down by asking him to name five, he schooled her by naming zero, and then said “um, I’m not into the comedy thing.” The sole subject was comedy, Mark.

I don’t know, maybe if he’d gone and seen the 1996 Mortal Kombat Live Show he would’ve come out a changed man, I hear it had some really positive messages.




This article was brought to you by a hot Hot Dog tip from Cyberzone.

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NERDING DAY

Nerding Day: The Official Mortdecai Twitter Account

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NERDING DAY

Nerding Day: Insektors 🌭

In the early ’90s, computer animation was still in its infancy. Shows like Transformers: Beast Wars and ReBoot by Mainframe Entertainment and the decidedly more Christ-like Veggietales from this period have managed to stick in the public consciousness, but one CGI TV series from the era seems to have slipped out of history: Insektors. Produced by French studio Fantome in 1993, Insektors features all of the classic themes of early ’90s children’s entertainment: bugs, environmentalism, and the forcible conversion of your ideological enemies to your — the only correct — world view.

Starring a walking stick insect named Fulgor (David Gasman, who also voiced Goku in a bunch of Dragon Ball Z movies and has somehow appeared in every game by Quantic Dream), Insektors is the tale of the sunny, color-loving Joyces and their struggle against the villainous Yuks. It was a pretty standard set-up. The Yuks are industrialist bugs who have mined all of the coal out of their side of the planet and are now turning their sights on the abundant flower stalks in Joyce territory. It was very evil, and the exact same business model as most of the show’s sponsors.

What do they need all of these resources for? Building giant war machines to collect more resources, for one, but more importantly to throw into a giant furnace to keep their Queen warm. Is Insektors thus a metaphor for the real-world colonialist adventures that have fed the insatiable desires of the metropole through history? I’m going to say that yes, yes it is. Americans want low gas prices and the big insect Queen wants to stay warm. Same thing. Anyone telling you differently is about to throw you into an oven to keep their Queen warm. The oven knows it’s the bad guy by the way:

One might ask why the Queen doesn’t simply move someplace warmer than the Yuk’s frigid swamp. First off, maybe she likes it in the swamp. Maybe the swamp has good schools or it’s really walkable or something. Second, it’s implied that the Queen is in fact so cold because of how evil she is. This suggests that, were the Queen to cease in her quest for domination and destruction, she would be relieved of the very conditions which make it necessary in the first place. Oh, the irony! The cruel, probably not intended, Shakespearean irony!

Meanwhile, the Joyces are sustained by The Great Prism, a magical entity that can spontaneously grow plants. As it turns out, it’s rather easy to be pacifistic naturalists when all of your needs are supplied by an omnipotent crystal god. 

The Joyces spend their days embodying Marx’s adage of the man in communist society who spends the morning gardening, the afternoon making music, and the evening gathering pollen for the semi-sentient terraforming prism at the center of their culture. And we should follow their example. Let’s all work together and worship the prism.

It may seem like the Joyces are carefree layabouts who look like characters from a local exterminator commercial, but they aren’t idiots or cowards. When the Yuks start encroaching on their land and cutting down their flower forests to fuel their furnaces, they square up against the invaders with a ferocity that belies their beneficent image, like a drunk guy at Santacon.

Given how Insektors was aimed at young audiences and that it was developed well after the heyday of violent ’80s cartoons, Fantome seems to have been interested in portraying conflict in a way that didn’t rely on fisticuffs or laser battles. Thus, the Joyces resist the Yuks through technology like Fulgor’s Kolor Guitar. Behold:

When strummed, this instrument produces blasts of colorful energy which are harmless to Joyces, yet send Yuks into laughing fits. Rather than kill or maim, these weapons seem to literally convert their targets into peace-loving Joyces. An ethnic bioweapon, yes, but one where you can sincerely add the words, “wait let me explain.”

We should really stop to think about this for a minute. Mind controlling weapons were pretty common in ’90s cartoons, but they were typically wielded by villains. For one thing, it’s dramatic when a hero is turned against their allies. For another, bending the very will and identity of a living being is usually understood as pretty fucking evil. While plenty of kids’ stories end with the villains seeing the errors of their ways and recanting, few of these come to Jesus moments happen because the characters in question got hit by a personality-warping rainbow money shot. I hope. I actually don’t remember how Care Bear tummies worked.

The Yuks, those miserable bastards, don’t take this subversion of their free will sitting down. They have their own weapons called Koal Juice Guns, which cause depression in any Joyces they hit. Additionally, they’ve got a machine called the Dark Box they toss their incapacitated goons into to turn them back into sad industrialists. Presumably, they could also use it on Joyces to make them into Yuks. Again, the show was just acting out the best-case scenario for its advertisers.

So we have two civilizations — one industrialized and militaristic, the other nature-loving and peaceful. And both of them are armed with weapons that don’t outright annihilate their foes, but rather strip them of their very being and make them more like their wielders. Imagine living in this world, where in every conflict with your enemy you risk not just injury or death but the complete reversal of your personality. In their effort to make Insektors less violent, Fantome inadvertently created a vision of a hellish existence where the self is as fragile as the petals of a flower. It seems like something Philip K. Dick would come up with, not Saturday morning cartoon fodder.

Insektors isn’t all psychological horror, though — it’s also got some interesting worldbuilding. In the episode “Planet Karbon,” for instance, Prince Acylius of the Yuks has run away to live with the Joyces, preferring their music and color to his people’s… toil and misery, I guess. And yes, okay, that’s the exact same thing the show always does, but when he’s shown the Great Prism, Prince Acylius touches it and triggers a giant sky beam and booming voice that tells the story of the planet. 

Once upon a time, it seems, the only living things in the world were the Yuks. Then the Great Prism fell from space and introduced color and plants. While most were disturbed by this new presence, a few overcame their fears and were rewarded with the “awakening of their souls.” Which looked like the loading screen for a 1995 CD-ROM encyclopedia.

They developed a new way of life and became the Joyces. This is a fun kind of inversion of the typical “advanced” industrialist society versus the “primitive” hunter-gatherers. It suggests that the Yuks are the backwards ones, sticking as they do to their timeless plan of burning stuff for fuel until there isn’t any left.

That said, what exactly is the message here? That you should embrace novelty? That mysterious and incomprehensible sky shapes are to be trusted without question? Or is the Great Prism meant to stand in for clean nuclear power, perhaps? Was Insektors propaganda meant to get children onboard with fission reactors? Admittedly, probably not. But like all good art, it makes you wonder, right?

Lacking the brand recognition of Beast Wars and the on-trend computer theming of ReBoot, Insektors isn’t as well-remembered as its contemporaries. Maybe that’s because of how little of it there was — Fantome only produced 26 episodes, each of which is 12 minutes long. Maybe it’s because the characters look like first drafts of the cast of A Bug’s Life. Or maybe it’s because “Insektors” sounds like the name of a toy line of insect-themed superheroes sold exclusively at K-Mart for a few months in 1990 that six undiagnosed bug fetishists on the Internet are absolutely obsessed with to this day.

Insektors was released outside of its native France in both the UK and North America, and received two different English dubs. I grew up with the North American version, but watching it on YouTube it does seem that the UK version is the superior one even though it’s a little less faithful to the original. The voice acting is generally higher quality, and there are a lot of fun little bits that didn’t make it to the North American dub. 

For instance, in the NA dub a character complains that he’s allergic to flowers when caught in some rapidly-growing plants. In the UK, the line is “I’m in the Day of the wretched Triffids!” It’s truly a sad indictment of the state of American education that children of the ’90s wouldn’t get a John Wyndham joke.

And it isn’t just the voices or tenor of the humor that changed across the two versions — each region got different names for all of the show’s characters and locations, making the Wikipedia page for the series a real mess. Most of the differences aren’t especially notable — the Yuks become Kruds in the UK dub, and Fulgor is named Flynn — but there’s one crucial difference. 

In the UK, the evil Queen Bakrakra was named after a certain medical device. She isn’t Queen Krutch, or Queen Kannula, or Queen Kautery. Her name is Queen Katheter. In their effort to make Insektors more amusing to an audience of wry and sardonic children, the UK was, quite literally, taking the piss.

…

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NERDING DAY

Nerding Day: Balloonatiks 🌭

Who were your favorite superheroes in the 90s? The Power Rangers? The X-Men? How about the Balloonatiks? What’s that? You don’t remember the Balloonatiks?

Maybe you could be forgiven, considering that I am literally the only person on the planet who does. The Balloonatiks were a superhero team with a difference. Unlike, say, the Avengers, they were made out of balloons instead of the more traditional meat and bones.

You’ve got Flator, the macho jock of the bunch. He can inflate or deflate himself, but apparently can’t entirely control his power — he literally grows or shrinks in response to praise and criticism, respectively. He also wears huge sunglasses and pump-up sneakers, because he’s a totally cool ’90s dude– a terrible affliction when your super abilities are powered by compliments. Is there a darker backstory than this? Flator needs love to survive, and he’s the fucking worst.

Next, there’s Airhead. He’s your typical brainy character and he kind of reminds me of Widget the World Watcher. His power is inhaling and exhaling with great force. I guess you could say that Airhead both sucks and blows. I could have said the same about Flator, but that would have killed him.

Ballooney, whose name means Humaney in our language, is the joker of the crew. He can bounce around and roll himself into a bowling ball, which is apparently not only his special ability, but his hobby. It’s outrageous that any creator would see Ballooney and think, “Yes, this idea is coming together. I should keep going.” But they did.

Every ’90s superhero group needs The Girl, and The Balloonatiks have Squeeker. You know how balloons are squeaky? Well, that’s Squeeker’s power. Her bows are “supersonic superspeakers,” so you know she means business. We’ve covered all aspects of the balloon so far: insecurity, blowing, bowling, and noisy. What could be next?

It’s Stretch. He’s… well, he’s a cowboy balloon. He says cowboy stuff, like “y’all jus make me wanna rope a goat.” Is that something a cowboy would say? The Balloonatiks would certainly have you believe it to be. Stretch can, as his name implies, stretch out. He also has a sentient water balloon companion/gun that lives in his holster. The mask covering his face has its own face, and I think that’s worth repeating. The mask covering his face has its own face.

The Lex Luthor to the Balloonatiks’ Justice League is The Needler, a man in a shiny suit who is by all accounts a balloon fetishist. You know how there are poppers and blowers? He’s a popper. Just unashamedly horny for popping in his bio.

He’s accompanied by “Secret Agent” Barb Wire and here I want to point out that The Balloonatiks predates the Pamela Anderson movie by five years, though Barb Wire had already been the roller derby name for every city’s Barbaras for over a decade. Barb considers herself the “Queen of Pop,” which means ruining balloons makes up most of her personality. Their minions are the robotic Pinheads: Sticky, Tacky, and Al, a naming convention absolutely not ripped off of Pac-Man’s ghosts.

The Balloonatiks launched in 1991 with a single comic issue, written by the franchise creator as well as then-Chairman and CEO of Balloonatiks International, Inc, Tony DiIoia. Unlike the Conservation Corps, which I was able to find online, no scans of The Balloonatiks exist on the internet, so I had to purchase a copy myself in order to read it. The issue came packaged in a plastic envelope sealed with a sticker informing me that this was a Collectors Edition of Balloonatiks #1 and retailed for $4.95 US. With shipping, I paid nearly double that, so I guess it’s retained its value.

Removing the comic from its sealed packaging felt like a momentous event. For all I knew, nobody but the people who worked on this thing had ever seen it. The excitement drips off the first page, printed in all-caps and informing us that this issue is only the beginning of the adventures of the Balloonatiks. It’s even signed and individually numbered by DiIoia — I’ve got 853 of 1000. They really had high hopes for these sentient latex golems.

The comic begins not with The Balloonatiks themselves, but with The Needler and Barb Wire celebrating as they watch the Pinheads popping the tires of cars, their ultimate plan. And these low stakes are making Barb extremely horny. All in all, it’s a perfect intro. May it give everyone prickly heat.

Meanwhile, Dr. Sigmund “Pop” Swellhead, the world’s only “latexologist,” is working in his lab when he and his assistants/maybe grandkids find out about the traffic situation on the news. What’s a balloon-obsessed scientist to do? Why, put out an inter-“gallactic” S.O.S. on the “balloonicator,” of course!

Far away on the planet, sigh, Noollab, the Grand Exalted Windbag has a problem: The Balloonatiks. I have to admit, it’s a pretty bold move to have your superhero team be introduced as so fucking terrible that their home planet wants them gone. They’re apparently causing all kinds of problems on Noollab, so the G.E.W. is more than happy to pawn them off on Earth when he gets Pop’s distress call. 

The Balloonatiks don’t seem to get along very well, either. Flator blames Airhead for their predicament, while Squeeker goes off on Flator for being a meathead. And here’s something I hadn’t considered going into this: when a water balloon calls your balloon mother a whoopie cushion, is that a slur?

Regardless, The Balloonatiks travel to Earth and land in Dr. Swellhead’s balloon store. Swellhead goes by the nickname “Pop,” but they have no time to take the bait for this obvious dick joke. They’re terrified of the fleshy creature that stands before them. And who can blame them? They’ve gone from a planet where everything is made out of clean, colorful rubber to one where people and animals are made out of wet, filthy muscles and guts. If The Balloonatiks had been a bigger property, we definitely would have gotten an IDW reboot in the 2010s where one of them develops a compulsion to purge the world of unclean flesh.

Pop says he’s filled the Balloonatiks with “balloon juice” and gives them a supply to keep on hand. It is never explained what balloon juice is or why it is necessary. Is it required to stabilize The Balloonatiks on Earth due to the different atmospheric conditions of our planet versus Noollab? Is it a lube? Is it some kind of food? Is it a chemical Pop invented to keep The Balloonatiks under his control, which is why he’s so insistent that they consume it everyday? Is it a sexual lube? We will never know. But I feel like we landed on balloon sex lubricant.

While this transpires, The Needler watches from his villainous base of operations, the Haystack. He’s pretty committed to his bit, I’ll give him that. He’s apparently somehow already familiar with The Balloonatiks, but decides to take the fight to them in order to use their powers to take over the world. I thought his deal was that he was just an extremely specific kind of Joker who liked popping things, but I guess he’s got bigger ambitions. Good for him.

At this point in the comic, we get a two-page spread informing us of the exciting Balloonatiks products to expect in the future. I have no idea whether there were ever Balloonatiks toys, keychains, “Flator’s footwear,” or drinks (???). I do know, however, there was Balloonatiks bedding, because my parents bought it for me from a Costco in the early 90s, and it’s the only reason I’m familiar with them. Thanks, mom and dad — I wouldn’t be here without you.

The Needler sends his Pinheads to attack the Balloonatiks, so I guess his plan to use their powers to take over the world still works with their ruptured remains? Flator makes a snide comment about not having been deflated yesterday, which raises some questions about the Noollabian reproduction process. Some details seem intentionally wrong as if to wink at adult readers, “Yes, this is all a sex thing.”

The Needler bursts in with a static ray gun because everything here is exhaustingly on theme, and we learn his origin story. Pop popped a balloon in his ear at his 10th birthday party, and now he’s obsessed with the sound. This sounds pretty weak, but to be fair, consider that the most famous comic book villain’s most well-known backstory is “fell in some chemicals.”

Things look bad for our heroes, but then Squeeker says she “needs” Flator and calls him a “handsome hunk of He-Man,” which makes him get bigger. I’m not sure they considered the implications here. Or they very much did and their intended audience is, ngghh, almost there.

Flator pumps up his shoes, because it’s the early ’90s, and he and the rest of the crew kick The Needler’s ass and somehow reinflate all of the popped tires in the city, which again, were the stakes.

The Needler and Barb Wire (who didn’t get to do much) re-state their intention to destroy The Balloonatiks, and we’re out. It was an utter bankruptcy of ideas before they finished a single issue.

Balloonatiks #1 came with a poster and map of Noollab, featuring locations like “Big Knot” and “Inflation Station.” Moving on.

The comic also included a balloon featuring a print of the Pinheads on it, but when I tried to pull it apart to inflate it, the decades-old rubber, which was sticky and probably toxic, tore. They should have gotten some of Dr. Swellhead’s non-deflatable latex!

We never got another issue of The Balloonatiks comics, but the franchise didn’t die there. There was a Balloonatiks float with some Pinhead balloons in the 1992 Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, and Mr. DiIoia has tried to resurrect the concept a few times over the decades.

During the first effort to bring the Balloonatiks back in the mid-’90s, some of the character names and details were changed, as evidenced by the archived Balloonatiks site. Flator and Airhead are pretty much the same, but the other characters got some added details. Squeeker’s bio, for instance, explains she can not only crack glass or hypnotize her foes with her sonic powers, but also “turn on fax machines.” Even for the ’90s, that’s pretty lame. Creatively speaking, it has real “looking around the room at my day job” energy.

Perhaps because they realized that “Ballooney” was a terrible name, that character became “Bouncer.” In this iteration, he’s a big round guy who apparently gets picked on for being fat. First of all, not cool, other Balloonatiks. Second, he’s literally a balloon. Balloons are round! Bouncer can still roll around, but he can also impersonate people now, which feels less like a superpower and more like a weak party trick.

Finally, Stretch became L.A. Tex. His name doesn’t make any sense unless he’s like, a Texan transplant who lives in the valley, but that doesn’t matter — there are balloon puns to be made, damnit. Tex’s bio informs us that he “wishes he was born a cowboy instead of a balloon,” which is an immensely depressing sentence.

This revised Balloonatiks line-up starred in a 1996 cartoon Christmas special on Fox Kids in which The Needler and Barb Wire kidnap Santa Claus. The Wayback Machine’s snapshot of the official site around the time also features some newspaper-style comic strips featuring Flator and the gang. They are tragic. They’re like Family Circus if it was more sexist and -for absolutely no reason- everyone was balloons.

These efforts were evidently not enough to win America over, and The Balloonatiks once again sank into obscurity. But even this, this catastrophic failure, was not the end of The Balloonatiks. According to an old press release, DiIoia relaunched them in 2006. These new Balloonatiks were, as was the style in the 2000s, teens who transformed into CGI balloon-based superheroes.

Flator, Bouncer, and Squeeker were still there, though they’d been completely redesigned. Airhead had been turned into “Airbrain,” an objectively worse name. And L.A. Tex/Stretch? He’d been obliterated, stricken from the pages of history. In his place was Sparky, a second female Balloonatik with powers over static electricity. There was also a balloon frog.

As far as I can tell, the CGI teen Balloonatiks show never aired, but there were a few DVDs produced around 2010, and you can watch some clips as well as the intro — which is allegedly by Ray Parker Jr. — on YouTube. And that appears to have been the last hurrah for our inflatable friends.

The Balloonatiks site seems to have finally gone down in 2021. What happened to Tony DiIoia? Who is he, and why was he so passionate about balloon-based superheroes? Are we going to pretend we don’t know it’s a sex thing? Where did the money for all of this come from? We may never know. DiIoia has a LinkedIn account, but hasn’t posted in a while. (His experience is listed as “ceo” of “Kids projects.”) It seems like he’s possibly involved in an animation studio that does NFTs. Balloonatiks NFTs when, Tony? At the very least, give us that gritty reboot I mentioned. I don’t want to have to write Balloonatiks fanfiction, but I will if I have to. Consider yourself warned.

Merritt K is a game expert and designer. When praised, she can inflate in order to blow down enemies and doors.

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NERDING DAY

Nerding Day: MYFAROG 🌭

Now that we’ve sprinted past Cyberpunk 2077, I need a new escape. To watch megacorporations feed a civil war, I can open a window. So I’m going back to my roots: tabletop games, our culture’s unpaid interns. In terms of ideas making other people rich, pen-and-paper RPGs are right between Nikola Tesla and black people.

What’s sold and tacitly supported by Amazon these days?

That looks fine. But let’s try a different book. Didn’t Dungeons & Dragons just pump out a Harry Potter ripoff? That could be fun. People like Hogwarts more than each other.

Stop zooming in.

Varg Vikernes? A true modern polymath. Musician, author, and convicted Nazi murderer. He added “game designer” to that crowded resume in 2015. Because shame, like credit, is out of reach for the people that need it.

MYFAROG stands for “mythic fantasy action role-playing game.” For readers new to speculative gambling, that means “placeholder, replace later.” It kind of evokes the fan-favorite GURPS (Generic Universal Role-Playing System) to attract some swastika-free clientele. Or at least the classic failure FATAL, which is its own article. I’m not explaining celebrity arson and FATAL’s “anal circumference” stat in the same piece.

Varg’s game is a race between ambition, laziness, and hatred. It’s close. But with each stock quote pasted above an unedited aryan fairy tale, laziness inches ahead.

First, let’s break down the gameplay. It’s D&D.

I don’t mean one of those fancy games updating D&D’s ossified foundation, or putting it in space. I mean that Varg screencapped an old Player’s Handbook, gave it a pharma name, and called it fresh product. MYFAROG moves most stats to the left and gets rid of all the classes people like. Leaving time for extra race science.

Consider, but make no attempt to comprehend, this linear algebra test from MYFAROG:

It’s a kissing cousin of this old D&D quarterly earnings report:

Don’t sweat the details of these number mazes, and save “racial modification” questions for later. Reading this means you pay for entertainment, and need that energy for A) work, B) dynastic family politics, or C) panicking. Just know that this is very familiar. In a sea of copycats, MYFAROG distinguishes itself with nothing.

Of course, I could be full of shit. Changing “Wisdom” to “Will” and hitting print might be the height of creativity. The author of “Zany Neuromancer” shouldn’t throw stones. Once people remember Mark Twain wrote a fantasy novel, I’ll be panhandling.

Besides, MYFAROG isn’t about the mechanics. It’s about the world. And to understand that bugshit world, it helps to understand Varg. Varg is the person sane death penalty advocates think of. He has a flashy crime, zero apologies, and a legion of like-minded observers.

But he’s also a dork.

Black metal artists (the subgenre, not my dead dreams) stereotypically worship Satan, and that stereotype is true and awesome. Nothing’s keeping me from a Behemoth tattoo but future interviews/family hugs/I have two. The problems start when they drift from Satan.

Take Burzum’s Louis “Varg Vikernes” Cachet. He ignores our father below to worship paleness. Varg spent 15 years in Norwegian prison (about six American) for pentagram-free homicide and arson. Specifically, bandmate murder and church arson. He’s a white nationalist that has exclusively destroyed white people, culture, and property. Life is strange.

Granted, it’s been a while, and he’s served his time. When an artist burns down one church, there are natural questions about forgiveness, redemption, and online reenactments of The Scarlet Letter. But Varg burned down two churches. Just kidding: three. My favorite things are sacrilege, fire, and tremolo picking, and I still think he should’ve locked himself in first.

Given his race war scorecard, it’s unclear what Varg thinks subalterns will do in the Great Uprising. Cut him a check? Trade him for three first round draft picks? Varg’s done more damage to white people than talk radio. The Uprising’s chat is pretty calm these days:

Naturally, his fans buy anything he touches. If Varg kept his first matchbook, he’d be retired. Instead, we have MYFAROG, one of the strangest cash-ins in master history. It replaces power fantasy with white power fantasy.

Though, in Varg’s defense, I’m probably illiterate. We should let him introduce the game in his own words.

See? You’re safe. You know because Varg told you. Just keep the fire escape clear.

The setting’s called ThulĂȘ, which is a better name. If he’d called this game ThulĂȘ, people without backup copies of Mein Kampf or black stepdads would play. Publishing would just pasteurize Myfarog’s message into quirky trivia, like Warhammer 40k naming a subliterate warmonger after Thatcher.

That’s not a random shot: here’s the fearsome orcish warlord Ghazgkull Mag Uruk Thraka:

This school of satire’s known as “screaming at the television until the cops show up.” Which is my main hustle. Andy Chambers denies it today, because death makes old feuds awkward. Fair enough. I already have a book covering my ass locked and loaded.

My point? Varg isn’t the first guy to use dice as a soapbox. In fact, he highlights MYFAROG’s educational potential:

I love learning! Let’s learn more about ThulĂȘ.

ThulĂȘ’s coastal Norway without judgy prisons ruining the scenery. I’m down for that, but I’d introduce my Aryan paradise with a little more sizzle. Tolkein set the tone by putting the slam poetry before the textbook. A screaming specialist should care more about aesthetics.

There’s the juice. As far as worldbuilding goes, cheating spouses do better every day. But there’s nothing awful here. Odds are it only gets lighter as this article goes on. Maybe I’m bullying a reformed man for the crispy churches of his youth. What kind of people fled the Ettins?

Perfection. I came ready for all black people to be magic gorillas or whatever. Fine. That’s what I get for pirating paying lots of money for Dungeons & Darkies. But all black people being pirates or land pirates? That’s fucking awesome. I’m in. Hoist the black(er) flag.

I’m never using real slurs again. Going forward, friends are my Darklings. My drinking anthem is Real Darkling Role Call. Fistfights between grandpas and blind men are Darkling Moments. And no, ThulĂȘans can’t say it.

If the combat didn’t suck, I’d run a blaxploitation campaign instead of writing this. The villain would be the square root of Shaft, Killmonger, and Blackbeard. Sadly, two rounds of MYFAROG take longer than writing and pitching that movie. Wish me luck.

As for Weaklings, the texture’s less fun. While Darklings have a bonus to spear-throwing–which my local gym records confirm–Weaklings have a bonus to
trickery. According to my 5th Edition Monstrous Manual, that’s a +3 dogwhistle for–

There it is.

For the aspiring hatemonger, anti-semitism’s like dribbling. You drill it to a reflex, early and often. MYFAROG wants to give youth a real shot at pro fascism, instead of languishing on the bench like Varg. It’s his way of paying it forward to the next generation. If this metaphor seems odd, my brother’s a big fan of Kyrie Irving. And can’t take a punch.

Eagle-eyed readers might notice Khemetian instead of Weakling. Jewish stereotypes are split between the two. While Weaklings are the cartoony Putty Patrol, defeated en masse by the White Power Rangers, Khemetians are closer to the shadowy coalition your brother tweets about. Okay, my brother, but you know what I meant.

There’s a version of Christianity in here too, which is confusing if you only track Murdoch-brand reactionaries. On the metal isles, some resent Christianity displacing local flavors of theocrat. Fair enough. This is Varg’s chance to win me over, and he botches it by channeling everything I hated about Baptists.

That said, Varg’s worldbuilding isn’t all about race. He covers finance as well.

Varg’s tenth-biggest problem is staying focused. MYFAROG is, in theory, a game. This tidbit of redundant anti-semitism doesn’t help players fight black pirates, or add flavor to their band of identical heroes. The entire point of making Blondes & Barbarians is brainwashing me with mechanics, not getting mad at fictional subprime loans. Gamers and antisemites hate one thing: reading. Spend your words more carefully.

That’s better. This character generator gently encourages you to only play native ThulĂȘans. In fact, it’s physically impossible to roll an untermensch. D&D may have rules for playing giants, talking trees, lobbyists, content-starved podcasters, and endless dwarf subspecies, but MYFAROG lets you choose between five shades of white.

In case it’s not obvious: ThulĂȘans are perfect. They’re honorable sons of Odin from which all honor and guitar solos flow. They have serfs, but they’re cool about it. Every time a ThulĂȘan sneezes, a darkling sees the error of his breathing ways and dives into the sea. The swimming table is a page long, so I’m guessing they can’t.

According to the website, ThulĂȘan greatness is MYFAROG’s best selling point. From the “Why MYFAROG?” page:

Festive. I’ll honor my i-Mockery heritage with some close reading. Note the term “Native European.” It has a certain flavor. Some readers may check their bugout bags by reflex. Your grandfather might ask if “the Krauts are acting up again.” Because some phrases, while technically bland, inspire instinctive panic. Carbon monoxide. Tectonic friction. Native Europeans.

It fits: Varg’s not a literal Nazi in the white nationalist Pokedex. He’s an electric-type worshiper of the Æsir, who most of you know as “Thor and character actors.” Hence the myth in “mythic fantasy.” If those subgenre distinctions seem meaningless, keep in mind he’s a metalhead. Never confuse Post-Blackened Slamcore for Pre-Slam Blackcore. See: the comment below calling Behemoth blackened death metal.

Anyway, that’s enough education from Varg. Who’s ready for mythic action?

Fuck.

God, I could be recapping Oriental Adventures. A stellar HotDogger even sent me a clean copy. That game’s dated in a fun, admiring kind of way. It’s like a stoned cosplayer described Japan to Gary Gygax in a third language. Which, in Gary’s defense, is the history of cultural exchange.

Instead we’re stuck with action-adventure hate speech. And Varg forgot the action.

“It’s a society where leeches are healthcare, what’s wrong with feeding Baldur a few deviants?” There’s a world between Varg’s mythic fantasy—where the traits of noble society are sweet and good—and fantasy where society sucks the normal amount. Lurid or not, Cersei Lannister’s naked jog comes with a tone of “this is sub-ideal.” Varg is a hundred percent on board with every pre-Charlemagne hate crime. For him, Vinland Saga is a fun guy’s devolution into a spoilsport.

It comes through more clearly on polygamy, which is very important for fighting orcs:

The overlap of Akon, church arsonists, and Mormons is small, but extant. You might wonder how this helps you fight skeletons, but Varg can’t hold your hand through everything. Except prostitution. There’s plenty of time for the history of prostitution.

There’s been one society without prostitutes, and it was made of tiny blue Native Europeans. Even they toed the line with Sugar Baby Smurf and Paypig Smurf.

Alright, maybe I’m addicted to wedge issues. Here’s some less loaded nostalgia wank:

We have a new standard for optimism: seeing the lack of toothaches or allergies in cave paintings, and not assuming everyone with them just fucking died. For all the edge Varg built a career on, that is a gumdrops and sugarplums version of Earth. After three years of madness, I’ve never seen vaccines blamed for love handles.

These mythically pointless asides might seem like filler. That’s because of vaccination. Uncuck your immune system and embrace premodern science:

I’m experimenting with subtlety, so I hope MYFAROG’s first twist is coming across. The propaganda game by a convicted Nazi rockstar murderer is somehow fucking boring. Not leftie subtweet “I can’t admit I’m offended” boring. Six-hour mycology seminar boring. Wherever the line between studying and fetishizing the past lies, MYFAROG sprints past it like a darkling at a Burzum show. 

Forget basic morals for a bit, and consider tone. Chasing realism (or its edgy understudy) undermines MYFAROG’s mission. The title makes two simple promises: mythic and farog. “Mythic” plays poorly with reminders that your heroes wipe with moss.

I don’t think there’s a Blind Guardian song about that. 

It creeps into the combat too. All the prose poems about blonde greatness go for an Arthurian vibe. But you roll to avoid fleeing every turn you take damage. That’s fine for big-picture strategy games, where a teenager’s self-esteem isn’t invested in Space Marine #482. But in this hero simulator, your mythic champion’s favorite spell is Summon Urine IV.

Still, avoid thinking of Varg as a stupid fuck. MYFAROG hits its only real goal: a whites-only table at the RPG club.

In the lore brick, rampaging ettins pushed godless outsiders into holy ThulĂȘ. E.g.: global instability sparked tense migration into Europe. Varg melted fantasy cliches into a National Front PSA.

More proof his brain exists: this bit of careful cover. Heroes can battle the ThulĂȘan Klan:

“See? I hate bigotry. You can fight whatever you think bigots are. Run an all-inclusive dungeon crawl with your half-breed friends, while the rest of us fight white genocide.” The same section has four Khemetian “trickster” cults plotting from the shadows.

I’m extra skeptical because the lore’s thin by MYFAROG standards. I know what color spear a darkling carries to steal ThulĂȘan brides on Wednesday (purple), but I don’t know who runs The Gardeners.

That half-assed deflection has a quarter-assed layout. While Varg’s not a stupid fuck, he’s a verified lazy fuck. His moss trivia has zero presentation. That stands out in a game manual, which is basically a vision board for wizards.

Fantasy visuals aren’t free, since even AI art costs dignity. So Varg gives each page plenty of Lebensraum, and fills white space in MYFAROG with cliches. I don’t mean fantasy tropes. I mean literal stock phrases, reprinted without context or purpose in every blank corner of the book:

That’s the first quote, and closest to fucking relevance. Most are pointless enough to make me appreciate on-message xenophobia.

Here’s a few of the non-thoughts filling gaps in MYFAROG:

I cherry-picked for hilarity. It’s mostly shit like “If you fear death, you are already dead” and “Why won’t my son talk to me?” It reflects vast reading and negative literacy.

We have a “book dumb” stereotype of bigots, because it makes us feel smarter. Well, that and well-read bigots bought their way out of Pickett’s Charge. But let’s focus on ego.

Varg’s not book-dumb. He’s memorized heaps of white history month articles, and condensed them into the skeleton of a game. There’s more research and intent behind MYFAROG than any good game you’ll ever enjoy or purchase. Thank Satan he never finished it.

Despite everything I say, think, do, or experience, I’m a silver linings guy. MYFAROG has an interesting idea!

It’s vanilla-flavored karma, passing traits on from dead player characters to properly min-maxed murder machines. You can think of it as the struggle up the ladder of reincarnation, or Rogue Legacy for nazis. Dealer’s choice.

That lone creative spark? Steal the fuck out of it. It’s a tabletop game, no one will stop you. Netflix churns out six World of Darkness shows a year. D&D movies never work out because Hollywood already made them without Beholder puns. My next book is Dark Sun, Plus Headspins. Take Varg’s idea and run to the bank.

Or use the name for medication. Baphomet knows it fits.

…

This article was brought to you by our fine sponsor and Hot Dog Supreme: Neku104, who would play a Mystical Canadian if they played MYFAROG, which they don’t.

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