Category: NERDING DAY

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NERDING DAY

Howard Johnson’s Sega Game Tips šŸŒ­

Sometimes cross-promotions are successful, like when the Target Dog fought and ultimately killed the Taco Bell Chihuahua. Of course, today, we’re not going to talk about the most beloved dog murder in modern history. We’re talking about a period during the early 90’s console wars when Sega was so horny for synergy they got in bed with a hotel chain who willingly abbreviated their name to HoJo, which sounds like slang for something teenagers do to each other in the back row of movie theaters.

The branded Sega tip videos, which severely missed an opportunity to call themselves Just The Tips, started in 1993. Sega provided Howard Johnson hotels with Sega Game Gear portable consoles, Sega’s version of the Gameboy, and a library of games for kids to play. If they wanted, they could also request the Sega Game Gear tips video, a film fifteen minutes long, and written by someone who clearly hated children.

Watching this video feels like dying. This is something that your brain does to inform your body that something has gone horribly wrong. The premise of the video is a lie in every way. The only “tips” it’s able to choke out are that video games exist, and you can play them while staying at a Howard Johnson hotel. It delivers this information to you through a close up of a man’s face screaming at you while strobe lights flicker.

It feels very threatening, like watching the video has summoned this dude, and if you don’t purchase Sonic Triple Trouble within seven days, he’s coming for you.

The video’s plot is that a lame adult hotel guest is being haunted by a zany long-haired Howard Johnson employee who poses as a waiter, lifeguard, and bellhop to yell at him about Sega games whenever he needs something. It’s positioned as a Twilight Zone-esque nightmare that the SAME MAN has MULTIPLE JOBS, which in the 90’s was spoooOOoooOOOky but now is just called being a millennial. 

The strangest moment in this video is when the hotel guest walks in on a housemaid cleaning his room, and the camera closes up on the maid’s butt. Of course, it is not really a pretty lady at all but the same man who has been torturing the hotel guest with his fantastic video game tips all day. 

Realizing his mistake, the hotel guest passes out, I’m assuming from the immense rush of blood to his boner after discovering his extremely specific lifelong fetish of having a man in a maid uniform read him a Howard Johnson commercial.  

The Howard Johnson promotion went so well there is a sequel to Sega game Tips volume 1, Sega Game Tips Volume 2, which is just the exact same movie with updated “tips.” So, instead of watching a man being driven to madness by a lunatic screaming at him about the Aladdin game, it’s the same thing with The Lion King game instead.

Again, this video is fifteen minutes long, and most of that is one screen showing different video game tips. The amount of text on the back of the box has got to be just about as long as the script, and I know if I call 1-800-I-GO-HOJO I’m getting charged a dollar a minute to have a man in a maid outfit seductively whisper a Howard Johnson commercial to me, and actually, you know what that does sound kind of hot.

Once Howard Johnson was ready to move on, Segaā€™s wandering eye turned to Post Cereals as a vehicle for delivering their tips. They even reused the hotel employee from the HoJo videos! Jesus, that sounds so dirty, I grew a pencil-thin mustache while writing it.

This time the employee even gets a name! It’s Michael B! I assume with each video they’ll keep giving us information about Michael until the David S. Pumpkins bit they’re doing with him really starts to pay off. I Googled him relentlessly to find out if he’s some kind of professional wrestler who got lost and wandered onto the set, or a talk show host from the 90’s I was unaware of, but as far as I can tell, Michael B. is just Michael B., a regular dude who likes screaming in people’s faces about Sonic the Hedgehog. The strobe lights areā€¦part of it?

The Post Sega game tips video, which was available by sending proof of purchase to Post, features Michael in his kitchen of the future. That means the kitchen has a computer and two TV’s in it, which is not futuristic so much as it is a bad idea. Don’t put all of your electronics in one of the two rooms of your house with the most water.

There’s a lot of aggression toward Michael B. in this video. It’s almost like they rehired the actor but didn’t really want to, so instead of being the impish character who tortures the lame adult, here Michael is tackled by a football player from NFL 95 and blown up by the Sugar Crisp mascot.

Once again, the game tips are all like, don’t forget in Ecco The Dolphin, you need to come up for air, which is just a basic mechanic of the game and not at all a tip. The Ecco The Dolphin section also ends by flashing this quote, which sounds like it came from the day Sun Tzu was really phoning it in.

The third and final entry in the Sega Tips trilogy sees Michael B. replaced by a younger, nameless actor. I like to imagine that he became a real diva behind the scenes and started demanding that they give him a live Sonic The Hedgehog to finish the trilogy. 

Lunchables goes a little more meta with their Sega game tips video, showing a kid we’ll call Michael C. going to watch his Oscar Mayer Lunchables Lunch Combinations Games Tips Video. (Video title by George RR Martin). 

Michael C. is sucked into the TV by the tape and then enters an Oscar Mayer vault and gets into a Sega branded roller coaster, which shoots him down a tunnel. Following in the video’s grand tradition of doing something weird and vaguely sexual, the roller coaster pauses in front of a group of brown pulsating udders which Michael C. touches and then licks his hand, as any normal person would do when presented with a pulsating alien object. 

What does this have to with Lunchables? God, nothing I hope.

Eventually, the roller coaster stops at a sign that says Next Level, and Michael C. finds an Oscar Mayer brand TV that, once turned on, plays for the rest of the video. Hey, this time, at least the tips are actually tips! Like, real cheat codes, and advice for finding hidden stuff in levels!

It took them three videos, two hosts, and several upsetting skits, but they finally figured out what an actual game tip is! I never thought I’d be proud of Lunchables, but here we are.

The video ends with Michael C. safely waking up in bed, finding that the whole thing was a spooky dream, which I hoped would happen to me after watching all three of these movies. Still waiting. 

You can try and wake Lydia from her living nightmare on Twitter! 

ā€¦

This article was brought to you by our fine sponsor and Hot Dog Supreme, Jamie Gordon: Who has always instinctively known to use his sonar songs to get clues from glyphs, and never needed to be told.

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NERDING DAY

Nerding Day: The Night Man Rollerblading Episode

Malibu was a slipshod comic imprint that could have only existed in the gimme-gimme-glut of ā€˜90s comics. Malibuā€™s entire business model was ā€œmom knows youā€™re sick so she picks up comics and you appreciate the gesture too much to tell her to fuck herself for buying The Ferret.ā€ And yet, because there is no justice in this world, Malibu did get a TV show out of the deal. That show was Night Man — Batman for people who did not understand what was cool about Batman.

Hereā€™s a real quick breakdown explaining everything you need to know about Night Man:

His name is Johnny Domino and heā€™s a saxophone player, two things that would definitely get you fucked in the ā€˜90s and then never, ever again.

He was struck by a lightning bolt while playing saxophone on a cable car and obviously he deserved it. That let him tune into — no shit, the showā€™s words — ā€œevil radio.ā€ Now he can sense evil, but thatā€™s such a worthless power he also stole a suit that can do anything.

Here he is kicking a guy off of a motorcycle and into an explosion.

Now, itā€™s not everyday youā€™ll hear me say that a costumed man kicking a guy off of a motorcycle and into an explosion is not awesome, but thatā€™s because I donā€™t watch Night Man every day.

Instead of a Batmobile, Night Man drives a Plymouth Prowler. 

A crude drawing of a Plymouth Prowler is how you say ā€˜erectile dysfunctionā€™ in hieroglyphics. 

Basically Night Man sucks and everyone knows it except for Night Man, and he will never listen no matter how urgent or well-reasoned your arguments are. The whole show is a manifesto about why we must never allow the ā€˜90s to happen again, but I want to focus in on one episode. The rollerblade episode. You know: The one where Night Man fights a gang of super rollerbladers who have rockets on their skates.

This is because every ā€˜90s show was required to have a rollerblade episode, and they all drew the same conclusion: Rollerblades are definitely the coolest, but they can only be used for evil.

From Prayer of the Rollerboys to Hackers, pop culture loved to depict rollerblades as, at best, the tools of misunderstood criminals. This particular shot of dangerous teens rollerblading in formation was everywhere:

Hollywood genuinely thought that shot was terrifying. They thought youā€™d turn and flee if you saw that on the street, rather than gently inquire if they were training to display the pride flag in a synchronized sucking competition. 

It was a crazy thing to do – depict this slightly novel method of conveyance as inherently evil, or at least bursting with the potential to be. Pop culture saw the very first pair of rollerblades and immediately thought ā€œhow will this affect the world of crime?ā€ That didnā€™t happen with anything else: There was no wave of segway movies where roving gangs used them to encircle frightened seniors. There was no flurry of hoverboard villains immediately cracking their skulls open and ending the film on a downnote. But somehow the three primary fears of every old person in the 1990s were: Brightly colored gangs, carjacking, and different ways to make rollerskates. 

This, then, was supposed to be horror:

It was bold of them to cast a young black man in the role of ā€˜racist old white woman.ā€™ Right down to-

And all this because the gang really wanted hisā€¦ Jeep Grand Cherokee?

Nobody wants a Jeep Grand Cherokee. Itā€™s the least stolen car, right behind active-duty police vehicles and the Power Wheels Jeep Grand Cherokee. Kelley Blue Book lists the average retail price of a Jeep Grand Cherokee as ā€œ[heavy sigh] yeah I guess Iā€™ll take $200 and a dog for it.ā€ Thatā€™s depending on condition. If the paintā€™s faded, you wonā€™t even get the dog. 

Anyway, that driver was Johnny Dominoā€™s best friend because — as I mentioned — Johnny Domino sucks and takes what he can get. Heā€™s on the case of the stolen Jeep Grand Cherokee when Iā€™ve already solved it – they used it to drive to a better car and then stole that. They left it in an Arbyā€™s parking lot because it blends in. 

Johnnyā€™s keen detective skills take him toā€¦ the first rollerblading shop he sees. He basically just asks the clerk if he solved the case:

But no. No is the answer. 

Luckily the nerd friend uses computers, because no plot advanced in the ā€˜90s without somebody saying ā€œthe computer!ā€ After computering it, the nerd sees an old coworkerā€™s name crop up. 

Man, I do not know what to tell you If you blow all your cash on rollerblade contests. That is a firm commitment to not surviving the ā€˜90s. If you met a person who sucked dick to buy Slap Bracelets from KB Toys, they would use the brief respite between cocks to question the longevity of your investment plan.

Anyway, thatā€™s why Night Man has to enter a rollerblading competition. Hereā€™s the teenager that signs him up for the contest, and the actual dialogue that stayed in the script despite desperate margin notes that read, ā€œplease change this, I have been beaten up by every teenager I have ever met for asking if the word ā€˜coolā€™ is a sex thing, and even I can tell you this is not how teens talk.ā€

Johnny Domino of course gets his only friend — the one who still flinches when Johnny refers to them as ā€œthe Best Pals Clubā€ – to rig up a Good Rollerblading device. 

And yep, you guessed it: The sign-up kid — the one who talks like surfers making fun of the way old people impersonate surfers — turns out to be the villain. So no, the very first rollerblader Johnny Domino ever met did not turn out to be evil. But the second one did.

Here we see the gang with no name, so Iā€™m going to call them The Rollerbuds, using their elite technology and futuristic weapons toā€¦.

Rob one of those chintzy crystal stores in the mall. The ones that sell like, jumping dolphins and pegasus statues to ten-year-old girls.

They actually steal the pegasus statue! It is worth eight dollars! And only because thatā€™s what Stephanie will pay for it!

Hereā€™s the villain, whose name I forget so Iā€™m just going to call him Billy Bitch-Storm, badly lying to the new recruit in his teen gang — 37-year-old Johnny Domino — about how fast they are:

We see many shots of these rollerbladers going all out. Itā€™s like half the episode. It should be noted that even with altered footage, their top speed seems to be about twenty miles an hour — a speed easily achieved with just normal rollerblades. Their main adversaries are any car or bicycle. Their only weakness is moving aside suddenly so they run into a stationary object. 

Iā€™m not joking. Thatā€™s how Night Man defeats the villains of this entire hour-long episode.

Only Billy Bitch-Storm remains, and now the writers found themselves penning a tense standoff between a guy theyā€™ve established is bulletproof, superpowered, flies, and fires lasersā€¦ and a guy with skates that are up to 20% faster than normal skates. I really have to give Night Man credit here. The fight goes exactly how youā€™d expect.

And so ends the episode, wherein Night Man proved that at least half of all rollerbladers are evil, rollerblading is so super easy that even the olds can do it, and anyone can beat up a rollerblader. In short: Perfect accuracy.

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NERDING DAY

Dear Nintendo, My Life is a Goddamn Mess, Part 1 šŸŒ­

Many years ago, I put a thing on the Internet called “Seanbaby’s NES Page” which featured a section called “Dear Nintendo, My Life is a Goddamn Mess.” It was about weird letters fans wrote to Nintendo Power magazine which they somehow chose to print. And here’s something fun: That’s what we’re doing today!

Before we start, I want to update you on the main character from the original. You might remember Mark Discordia, a Connecticut plumber who loved Mario so much he asked people to give him the nickname “Mario!” He wrote in to brag about his Milon’s Secret Castle score and to say how he encouraged local children to be the best at video games by staying drug-free!

I ridiculed Mark, which anyone familiar with the word ridiculous would agree: was fair. But Mark did not have a sense of humor about my bullying, so he sent me a series of hate mails. The main theme of them was that he was wealthy, a frequent drug user, and just crushing ass, so in fact, he was the bully in the situation. I guess I can’t prove he was lying, but he told Nintendo Power about a Mario shirt he made, wasn’t handsome or smart, had a violently short temper, and spent his days unclogging toilets and volunteering as a video game coach for children that weren’t his. For him to take the angle of “You nerd, I fuck more than you,” is like a man biting into a dead rat and challenging anyone to bake a more, aiiieeeee, a more delicious pie.

For the record, ladies, I confidently rate the legacy of my sexual conquests somewhere above the winner of “New England’s Least Desirable Middle-Aged Mario Cosplayer (Plumber and Under Division).” Anyway, as time passed, me-readers emailed Mark to offer kind words or to ask for Mario tips, and he responded to all of them. He sent back deranged insults which, over the course of many different people, turned into death threats which turned into accusations of sexual abuse. Eventually he settled on a story about me getting arrested for an underage girlfriend in Seattle, a thing that didn’t happen in a state where I didn’t live, but it’s hard to be sure since the details were half-formed and spread across emails to all these different people. So my point is, if it looks like everyone who writes in to Nintendo Power is psychologically troubled, that’s because they absolutely are and I have proof. Let’s get started!

At first glance you might think, “Is this what it was like to live in the late ’90s?” No, for most of us, it was not anything like this. This is really stupid. This is the opening line about a movie where a warpdrive sends a ship into a dimension made entirely out of stupid. This is a letter you would write to a parole board to prove to the state you can’t be held responsible for marrying a horse. This guy wrote a letter to a magazine hoping it would get selected for their reader mail section months later so he could get an opinion on the difference between two websites, one of which was free to the world while the other was available on a service whose free trial was included with the purchase of literally any product at any retail location. This is like putting “Should I try the new gordita crunch?” in a bottle and throwing it into the ocean.

Think how lonely Edward must have been. He didn’t have a single person in his life he could ask to look up “Nintendo” on America Online? That means all four of his grandparents were dead. It means every single one of his classmates said, “I already told you to get out of my life forever, Edward.” And when this Nintendo magazine, the closest thing he had to a friend, finally responded to him, they said, and I quote, “NOAGeoff, our online honcho says: ‘We’ve recently revamped and jazzed up our Web site… Zip to WWW.NINTENDO.COM!'” So after all this waiting, hoping against hope his question would get noticed, this piece of shit asking a simple question about the Internet gets told to go check the goddamn Internet. This is the tragic legacy of Edward LaRusic, Nintendo Power reader.

Mike Gallagher isn’t here to ask questions– he’s here to give warnings, and he only has one: don’t poke random “unlicensed products” into your Super Nintendo! Warning! Warning! Warning! Not everything inside your electronics is meant to be poked by “unlicensed products!” Warning! Warning! Do not have sex with the Official Super NES-brand Game Pak entertainment port! Warning! My used (VG+) Nintendo game system is broken, dripping! Gooey! Warning, this is less important, but I’ve damaged my mint-in-box penis as well! Warning!

One of the best things about the Nintendo Power letters section is when they checked in with the winners of their weird contests. They would send kids on fantasy dates with celebrities with a high potential for disinterest like golfers or NASCAR drivers. In this one, they sent three children on a Hudson Hawk scavenger hunt, based on the rated-R action comedy of 1991 starring Bruce Willis and Danny Aiello!

Some movie characters endure forever. We all remember how Indiana Jones hates snakes, how James Bond can never turn down pussy, and of course, how Hudson Hawk is always looking for a cappuccino! “Hey! Where can we get a cappuccino?” says Nintendo Power, referencing our collective love of Hudson Hawk always wanting his favorite drink! Terrific!

ā–² “Who’s Handsome Hawk?” asked contest winner, Ross Moskowitz, as he walked right past the first clue in his once-in-a-lifetime Grand Prize Hudson Hawk’s Da Vinci’s Lost Treasure Scavenger Hunt Adventure.

ā—€ “Why would anyone do this?” asked contest-winning Ross’ father, who told Nintendo Power he had to use three unpaid sick days to fly out for this amazing experience. He raved, “You’re telling me with all that Segasonic Hodgemonster money I’m payin’ for, you couldn’t afford the licensing fee for something more kid-friendly like Barbra Streisand’s Prince of Tides? Maybe they don’t cover this in video game magazine school, but you can’t feed fuckin’ kids cappuccino! I’ve never seen the boy this bored with anything and he was once accompanied by me to a screening of Hudson Hawk.”

ā–¶ In the end, the lucky team didn’t manage to solve the mystery or decipher a single clue about Da Vinci’s lost treasure! Better luck next time, contest winner Ross Moskowitz! Hope you at least managed to get that trademark cappuccino!

I actually worked in video game media for many years, so I can say with some expertise that printing a picture of a young child holding up a magazine by a wall of human remains with the expression of a hostage’s proof-of-life is fucking crazy. I’ve also read enough issues of Nintendo Power to know their response of “We’d much rather see piles of creepy bones than the Eiffel Tower or the Louvre or something really ho-hum like that,” is a very specific FUCK YOU to young Raymond Camarillo from San Jose, California who mailed them this photo:

ā–² Nice skeletons, Raymond. Oh, there aren’t any? That’s why you look like a little asshole.

– Nintendo Power

Another theme of Nintendo Power contests is having celebrities come to your home and try out mediocre games their agent sold their likeness to. And if there is a way to make sports stars look like they’re having fun getting their ass kicked at SNES games by a teenager, Nintendo Power never found it. Charles Barkley looks like he’s suffering through a Hudson Hawk Scavenger Hunt safety orientation. He looks like he’s saying, “Good game, Mamp. But jokes on you, Monty, because I bet your mama $18,000 you would beat me. Ha ha. I’m not playin’, Melt. Go get your mama’s checkbook, or some people gonna come in here and break both our legs.”

From the darkness came a cough followed by a wretched, pathetic voice. “Please… give me free underpants, I have included a drawing of them.” Seriously, Nintendo Power, what the hell are you doing? You can choose not to print some of these. The section editor didn’t even bother to respond to it. They just let this weird idiot in West Virginia’s request for free boxer shorts fall there without comment like the leader of a tour group calling out, “I don’t need to tell anyone here what awaits us at the end of our Officially Licensed Hudson Hawk Scavenger Hunt…

…

…

…

…

… that’s right! A… cappuccino!”

Nintendo Power often called for Top 10 Lists, but not about anything specific. It was only the format that was important to them, and they had no editorial standards when it came to publishing them. Deranged, neglected children from around the country would mash together vaguely video game-related words and Nintendo Power proudly shared them all. Was the theme of your Top 10 list just “crime?” Okay, Karl Warsop of Gastonia, North Carolina. Was one of the “jokes” in its entirety just the name “Secret of Mana” except “Secret of Murder?” Fine. Did it open with a parody title referencing the World Trade Center bombing? Jesus fucking Christ, Karl.

This is a magazine about the whimsical and exciting world of Nintendo games and they printed this brain vomit from a future serial killer. If you handed this “Top 10 Crime Games” list to the creative director of a Laffy Taffy knockoff for death row inmates, he would say, “It’s a no. This is actually the kind of lazy shit we’re trying to get away from here at Bitchkiller Sour Chews.”

Ugh, Debby, this is worse than the kid listing felonies next to partial video game titles. Did “Someone took it” make the Nintendo Power editors laugh, or were they only trying to finally give a voice to Surinamese children writing jokes about stealing from Blockbuster Video?

10. My machete says Best of the Best: Championship Karate is now mine, coward.

9. Eat this shit instead. My life of hardship does not reward honesty or kindness.

8. Outer space aliens took it!

7. Bouterse’s soldiers are here in my home.

6. They are asking questions for which I have no answers.

5. They do not believe m

4.

3.

2.

1.

Is there a single coherent play on words in any of these? Hey, Ben Salinas from McAllen, Texas, did you learn English from the inside of a Hong Kong shipping container? You write Top 10 lists like the copy on an OK Fun-System Supergame 2000 (19.99 $USD). “16 bits of quality! It is not Sega!” You should be ashamed of yourself.

And look at what you’ve done, Joel Self from California. These aren’t “parodies.” This is nonsense. Did you really fucking write down, “Porthole Kombat: Adventures on the High Seas” and send it to Nintendo Power? I spit on the inbred Santa Clara bloodline that spawned you. I wouldn’t write that cursed series of words on the grave of someone named Porthole Kombat who died feeding flood-displaced refugees with his non-profit, Adventures on the High Seas, Inc.

I think I need to move on to letters with a happier tone than these miserable Top 10 lists Nintendo Power used to fill space between maniacs posing with human remains or asking for free underwear.

No, that’s not what I was thinking. At all. But speaking of AWESOME TWOSOME, this article is one! Come back this Upsetting Day for Part II of Dear Nintendo, My Life is a Goddamn Mess!

…

This article is brought to you by our fine sponsor and Hot Dog Supreme, Mike Stiles, who only writes to Nintendo the normal way: Erotically.

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NERDING DAY

Nerding Day: Chojin Sentai Jetman šŸŒ­

You probably know that Mighty Morphin Power Rangers was a recut of a Japanese show with new American actors. It wasnā€™t white-washing, but it was white-splicing, whichā€¦ actually sounds way worse, like an extremely popular thread youā€™d find on 8kun. To nobodyā€™s surprise except for apparently everyone in Hollywood, the original Chojin Sentai shows were often way better. But not every season got a Power Rangers reimagining — Chojin Sentai Jetman, for example, wasnā€™t deemed interesting enough to rob. Maybe itā€™s because the toys would have been boring — and they would have been — but the show sure as hell wasnā€™t.

The theme song alone is worth the price of admission, which is nothing. Itā€™s worth twice that! I know you canā€™t hear it from these images:Ā 

So let me sing it for you:Ā 

ā™«JET-TO JET-TO JET-TO MAN

LETā€™S GO FLY AWAY!

CHOJIN SENTAI…JET-TO MAAAAN!ā™«

Dang I really nailed that. Try to get that sucker out of your head now.Ā 

The show was filmed in 1991, but takes place in a far distant future with impossibly advanced technology.

Because they were certain — absolutely certain — this would happen within the next ten years, but they just werenā€™t willing to commit to a specific year and risk looking like fools. The first episode opens with my favorite character from anything:

That robot is not ā€œout of control,ā€ it is so fucking pissed off. Trust me, I know what that looks like: I once corrected a British person trying to say ā€œaluminum.ā€ Anyway some narc calls the robot cops, but itā€™s actually a good thing since this lady hucks babies like Jackie Chan:

The robot cops stop this massacre in seconds. Hereā€™s me when the Skip Ads button pops up on YouTube:

The high-jumpinā€™, baby-snagginā€™, button-slappinā€™ badasses are Ryu and Rie, the cutest supercop couple this side of Tango and Cash. After that aerial display theyā€™re promptly invited to space — the best place — where they receive an offer to become superhuman:

And this article is over.

Fuck!

Iā€™ll never write anything funnier than ā€œBirdonic Waves.ā€ If I was scripting a parody of Jetman with pigs instead of birds, I could call them ā€œHamma Raysā€ and it would be like spitting in your mouth whenever you open it to laugh. Every other joke is like ashes now. Thanks, Jetman.

Hereā€™s the rest of my stupid fucking article, I guess:

Ryu and Rie are of course game for a few dangerous blasts of clearly bullshit waves, but theyā€™re worried about being split up. Luckily the commander tells them the worst lie she can come up with:

Hereā€™s Rie two minutes later:

She barely gets a chance to nod politely at the commanderā€™s ironic lie before a hole rips open in the side of the space station and she vanishes into the void.Ā 

We are roughly five minutes into this show and weā€™ve had a leaping baby catch, met the angriest robot, weā€™re now in space, we got Birdonic Waves, and one of the leads just exploded. If anybody is taking notes on how to do exposition, you can stop now. You have everything you need. This is called the Shotgun Method and if executed properly, you can actually blast audiences with literally everything they need to know in the first eighteen seconds of your show, leaving the rest free for supersonic pig fights.

As the space station explodes, the Birdonic Waves escape and — every time! It gets me every time! – and they blast random bystanders below on Earth.Ā 

This guy gets it in the chest.

This poor lady takes one right in the gut.

This unfortunate son of a bitch gets a bolt to the head.

And this lucky young woman takes a full Birdonic Bolt straight in the ass.

She minds it the least, by far. Eventually they will all pick bird-themed names. Please remember to act surprised when she chooses Blue Swallow.

Now Ryu has to find and assemble all the potential Jetman, so they can battle evil aliens to save the Earth! It shouldnā€™t be hard to convince these warriors: Each Jetman is granted amazing powers, plus a bitchinā€™ jet!

Holy shit, Ryu has already found the first cadet, White Swan! And she wants to join up! Likeā€¦ immediately! With suspiciously little convincing!

She has no followup questions. She doesnā€™t even give a shit what theyā€™re called. She is down to join this deadly elite fighting force within one and a third sentences of meeting Ryu. And he is stoked at his luck, until she says:

Their very first recruit and she enlists not because she cares about saving the world, but because sheā€™s an adrenaline-junkie excited to risk death just to feel alive for a minute.Ā 

Then they find Yellow Owl. Hereā€™s how that goes:

So far none of the heroes in this show actually want to be heroes. And thatā€™s because Jetman is doing something very special: Every single character, save for Ryu, is on the Heroā€™s Journey.Ā 

You canā€™t do that!Ā 

Itā€™s tough to do even one ā€˜Hero Resists The Callā€™ right, and Jetman is doing four at once. The end result is less like weā€™re being introduced to a reluctant cast of would-be heroes, and more like everybody in the world is already aware of, and fucking hates Jetman.Ā 

Hereā€™s Blue Swallow, the Birdonic Backdoor Baby, who will only join Jetman if you pay her.

One by one, they all reluctantly sign up for the Jetman crew. Not a single one of them is happy about it except for Ryu, who wants to save the Earth, and White Swan, who wants to be choked until she flatlines so she can bring back a ghost to fight.

Finally, they come to Black Condor. Allow me to paraphrase his recruitment interview, and I promise I will barely touch it:

Black Condor starts off standoffish, and turns outright aggressive the second they mention Jetman. All four of the new Jetmen have only one thing in common: They do not give a single shit about Jetman.

To really drive that concept home, the very first villain they fight as a team is a literal jet man:

Hereā€™s how Ryu responds to the attack:

Ryu fights like every move is a condom: Single use only. Heā€™ll spend forty-five minutes bringing a jet to a fight to fire one volley at some henchman and then leap out as it crashes to earth so he can rabbit-punch a single confused dude. Guess what? The fight does not go well. They need a new weapon!

But donā€™t worry, of course they all come together at the end to triumph over their enemies, forging not only an unbreakable team, but a lifelong friendship. Hereā€™s Black Condor, after their first big fight:

In summary, I would like to close by saying: Chojin Sentai Jetman is the best show I have ever seen. Itā€™s Voltron but if every single member of Voltron hated every single other member of Voltron almost as much as they hate Voltron itself. These are only the first half-dozen episodes — there are fifty! At some point this whole thing must devolve into a fully-formed Jetman trying to tear off its own arm as it repeatedly punches itself in the crotch and both legs try to run it into a volcano.Ā 

This article was brought to you by our fine sponsor and Hot Dog Supreme, Daniel Kennedy: Who would never join Jetman! Fuck you for asking!

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NERDING DAY

Show Off! How To Be Cool At Parties šŸŒ­

The year was 1986, and being cool at parties was in. But cool at parties wasn’t something you could simply decide to be, nerds. You had to put in the work. You had to watch “top-rated star” Malcolm Jamal Warner on a VHS cassette for nearly 30 minutes. Think that sounds easy? You goddamn nerds, wait until you try getting through “SHOW OFF! HOW TO BE COOL AT PARTIES: Stunts, Tricks and Gags to Amaze Your Friends Starring MALCOLM JAMAL WARNER of the Cosby Show.”

I knew something was wrong when I first scanned this tape with the 1-900-HOTDOG’s WEINER 2600 Media Analyzer. Why would a tape on being “cool” set off the alarm for maximum Nerding Day content?

Right off the bat I saw what the WEINER 2600 was trying to tell me. The production logo is nine cartoon balloons floating next to the words “Children’s Video Library” to the tooting sounds of pan flute music. It’s how a dream team of the world’s greatest artists would communicate, “You’ve made a huge mistake, ’80s teen looking to be cool at parties.” The tape very nearly fried a second piece of expensive equipment, my COOLVIEW VCR/TV Combo from the Malcolm Jamal Warner Collection.

Malcolm Jamal Warner immediately starts doing an awkward magic trick with scissors and string. Except it’s nothing. He cuts part of the string and then dazzles you by showing the uncut part is still together. Whatever about it he meant to be amazing was not communicated. It’s like someone handing you a 7 of clubs, showing you a dead rabbit inside a nearby hat, telling you rabbits die when no one is there to care for them because you see, like magicians, they need fathers. But with a little magic, maybe… just maybe, we can turn things around. Then they pull the 7 of clubs out of your hand and say, “Is this your card? That’s the whole trick and this rabbit is still dead. Hi, I’m top-rated Malcolm Jamal Warner.”

I think the analogy got away from me, but it’s important to me you understand: a tape promising to make us cool opened with Theo Huxtable saying, “Psst!” and doing a confusingly bad version of the dorkiest thing. If he screamed, “OH NO, NOT NOW! NOT IN MY MEDICAL GARFIELD PANTIES FOR INCONTINENT GIRLS!!” while he visibly peed his pants it would be more co– no, sorry. I already did a whole thing explaining the magnitude and strangeness of this uncoolness. It’s just such an immediate and remarkable failure of the stated goal. If I didn’t know this tape existed, I could see myself explaining a different spectacular failure with “it’d be like a VHS tape on coolness opening with a child actor botching a rope trick.” I am a top-rated archivist of the absurd, and what Malcolm Jamal Warner has done in the first five seconds of this has exceeded my most cynical expectations. If the Titanic failed as hard as this video, history would know it as the story of one guy saying, “Gentlemen, I have an idea to build a gigantic boa– AARGH! I’M PEEING IN MY MEDICAL GARFIELD PANTIIIIEEEESSS!!!”

The next several minutes are Malcolm explaining the three rules of showing off– be cool, have fun, and courage. I wouldn’t call it inspiring, but at least he’s moved on from the bad magic trick. Wait, hold on, after he explains the cool rules he starts in on a lengthy tutorial on how to do the rope thing. I don’t know why anyone would need to perform such a terrible, joyless magic trick, though. If you performed this trick while a child watched Peter Pan, Tinkerbell would stay dead. This is not how you become cool. This is how you construct an anti-magic net to capture Santa Claus. For what need do you have this dark power, Malcolm Jamal Warner!?

Now you know how to do this awful thing, yay, cut to:

We are thrust into a musical number where an upside-down chin man lip syncs a ’50s song he did not have time to rehearse. Let’s take a step back for a second. I would describe coolness as doing something interesting effortlessly, which would make this little skit the second example in a row of the maximum limit of that concept’s opposite. If you were to sarcastically say, “Everyone knows what cool is– it’s putting sunglasses on your chin and singing oldies upside down,” I would marvel at your ability to construct a joke and communicate irony. It’s almost unthinkable something could not only be this bad, but this specifically, perfectly bad. This video is like a plot by a Turbo Teen villain to destroy coolness forever.

I thought this was only going to be a weird transition between coolness tips, but after the song, it pulls out to a bald, middle-aged man peeling the wig off his neck and struggling right-side up. Clearly in a lot of pain from a skull bursting with blood, he shrieks, and I quote, “LIP SYNCING IS FUN, BUT EVERYBODY DOES IT THESE DAYS. USE AN UPSIDE-DOWN FACE TO GIVE A NEW TWIST TO YOUR FAVORITE HITS.” So this wasn’t a failed attempt at a cute transition. It was a prelude to a lesson on recreating this, this blighted abomination.

This video’s advice has gone from bad to possibly dangerous. You know when superheroes are fighting a guy who absorbs power and they get the idea to lean into it and keep pouring energy into him until he overloads? You might be getting an understanding of my cool expertise from such a cool reference, but this feels like that. If you tell your fellow teens to stop everything to watch you blindfold yourself and perform your favorite doo-wop hits upside-down, you’re playing into your bullies’ strengths. But what this video seems to be suggesting is that you can humiliate yourself so much it can overload your bullies’ dickhead glands. Any sadist seeing this will instantly die in ecstasy.

Next up is Fred Newman, kids TV host, who comes into frame playing a drum solo with his mouth. He’s here to teach you, the cool viewer, how to beatbox. The producers didn’t get Biz Markie or the Fat Boys, household names for this very thing at the time, but the author of the book MouthSounds: How to Whistle, Pop, Click and Honk Your Way to Social Success. Again, this decision seems like it was written backwards from a joke. Forgive this abrupt code switching, but if you saw a crew trying to be legit and failing, a way to communicate that might be, “You sucker MCs couldn’t have been more wiggity-wack if you had hired the white children’s entertainer known for hosting the Mickey Mouse Club as your rap coach.” Fred is a talented blooper and honker, but “cool” is very specifically the last thing you’d call him. At least one time in his career, a cruise director has told Fred Newman’s agent, “We’ve already booked our headliner and I don’t think the ship needs a second Dave Coulier.” Jesus, I need to step away for a second because that’s the fucking meanest joke I’ve ever written.

The next thing on the video is the best type of thumb wrestling– scripted thumb wrestling with satirical color commentary by top-rated star of The Cosby Show, Malcolm Jamal Warner. If you held a gun to my head and said, “You have three chances to live. You can, One, name any way this All-Star Thumb Wrestling skit benefits mankind. Two, create a hypothetical person who would even smile at this. Or three, suggest any number of changes to make this concept work,” I’d say “Shoot me three fucking times and tell Malcolm Jamal Warner I’ll see him in Hell.”

For the next twenty minutes, a rotating cast of off-duty birthday clowns and clean comics come in and teach obnoxious dad gags and church youth group activities.

After you’ve massacred your chance of being liked again by anyone ever again, the video shows you a hilarious way you can leave for your life of loneliness by smashing your face into the door. You’re going to hate this gif so much:

“WAIT, NO! THIS IS THE WRONG KIND OF LAUGHTER! I MEANT TO DO THAT! STOP LAUGHING AT ME!“

This is going to sound weird, but SHOW OFF! How to be Cool at Parties reminds me of pickup artist techniques. They give you a specific set of tools to manufacture these high-risk, all-or-nothing human interactions. Most of your targets will hate you, mock you, or ignore you until you finally meet a susceptible target. Most philosophers would describe this approach to life as causing the maximum possible harm to others for a tiny chance at selfish pleasure, or in other words, “very morally excellent.”

As long as you don’t care about other people, this sort of works when you’re hunting strange poontang since Plan A is never seeing your failures again. If you scream “Show me your bush!” at a stripper and she isn’t into it, you can try it on a different one tomorrow after you follow the first one home and murder her. That’s not an option for the target audience of this video. You’re a kid performing these limp gags at your classmates and family– people you have to live with after you’ve made your shirt into a turban and screamed nothing more than, “I AM A SHEIK WHERE’S MY CAMEL, MAKALAKAFART, I AM A SHEIK!” Who is supposed to love you after you do these things? You reprehensible, shirt-turbaned fuck, you’re just a needy kid who knows four magic tricks and one way to mash your face against glass. There’s no party in the world where you’ll be cool. Malcolm Jamal Warner lied to you. He lied to all of us!

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NERDING DAY

Nerding Day: Zorklon

Once, long ago, there was a comedy website that only wanted three simple things: to make people laugh, to teach them a few things, and to make enough money to rescue every monkey that knew how to flip someone off. It succeeded in two of those goals, before getting piledriven into the dirt by corporate scavengers. Some of its archives have been deleted, some of them have been corrupted, and some just suck. You decide which one this is. Itā€™sā€¦