Category: NERDING DAY

Categories
NERDING DAY

Nerding Day: Symphogear 🌭

I wish I could have friends who love me more than they love schoolwork and boys put together. I wish I could find an enchanted hairband that signifies I’ve been chosen as the new Avatar of Aphrodite. And I really wish I could explosively jumpkick Ultra Jinma, Arch-Queen of Jealousy in a way that exposes both my True Heart and my panties. I don’t know, you guys. I guess I just wish I was in a Magical Girl Anime. But how do you start? By studying, of course. It’s time for…

Still haven’t changed that title, huh? Welp. Gotta be arrested for something, I suppose.

Let’s dive into today’s lesson, brought to you by Symphogear!

Symphogear starts off with some worryingly pretentious text that makes you think you might accidentally be watching a “good anime,” about like historical tragedies or divorce or something else boring. 

Yes yes, I know: All of the islands are in the shape of her tears — the woman who cried so much she became the moon. They say all humans are born with a hole in their heart that can only be filled when they trod on the shadow of their soulmate. The mountains breathed her name 16 times and on the 17th all cats died. 

Pretty much all modern anime has to start with weird poetry or they lose their Educational Tax Credit and won’t have the cash to faithfully render the cocks at the tips of Yggdrasil: The Monster Life Tree’s branches. 

But don’t worry. This is definitely a Magical Girl Anime, which you know because the opening credits feature an overly dramatic naked girl-orb spinning in a void:

That is mandatory. If the credits don’t feature a tortured girl-orb rotating in the space between spaces, just turn it off and maybe watch Revolutionary Girl Utena again. There are two gorbs in that credit sequence, so you know it’s good:

So far this is all par for the course, but Symphogear does do something interesting…

The most high stakes concert I’ve ever been to was a punk show where the bassist fired seltzer bottles from his ass, so I thought dodging bubbly butt-water in a mosh pit was Live Show Master Difficulty. But the world itself rests on this one! Now, I know there is one forbidden concert that will end humanity (Smash Mouth opening for Jimmy Buffet), but I’m on board to find out how a concert saves the human race. 

Ah, I see, it’s your standard “feed the Sacred Ammonite on hyper-dense girl band energy” plot device. That’s a pretty viable anime trope, actually. You see it a lot. Apparently the greatest source of pure green energy in Japan is how much a stadium full of 13 year old girls wishes they were someone else. 

I considered embedding this performance as a video so you could hear the music, but I don’t know how much of our audience suffers from arrhythmia and I don’t want to be a murderer. It is the sugariest JPOP backed by the most frantic beeps this side of a robot hostage negotiation. This is how a DJ tries to warn the crowd there’s a murderer in the club without tipping him off. These songs sound like every noise from F-ZERO happening at once. If you tried to dance to this you’d shatter your legs and then inhale them, dying from Pulmonary Legosis. If these girls are trying to fuel the Sacred Ammonite with the life energy from this concert, maybe they should dial the tempo back from Cocaine Ferret to Annoying YouTube Host, or else- 

Right. 

The liability on this is insane — you ladies are Rhythmically Negligent and you are going to get sued into the dirt unless you find a scapegoat, quick.

Oh shit, our villains are just called The Noise? I-is this the Pop vs. Noise Band battle royale I’ve always secretly hoped for? I could not love that concept more, Symphogear, but I’m torn on who to root for. I do like me some Noise Bands, unless…

They are literally vomitous maggots who spew out jellyfish-sperm and knock-off Tallboy Minions. 

Huh. 

I am as surprised as any to learn which side I’m actually on in the inevitable armageddon brewing between Girl Groups and Pedal Jockeys. But I’ve seen the Pop side’s Magical Girl Transformation Sequence, and they used the power of music to change from perky Idorus into a robot burlesque show…

While the Noise Band Guitarist Magical Transformation Sequence harnessed the power of Montucky Cold Snack to transition from “talented guy onstage” to “bitter misogynist ranting in the smoking area.”

Here’s where Symphogear’s glorious hook comes in. It’s not just about a Girl-Pop duo who secretly fight slugs in cyborg bikinis — that’s practically a cliche in Japan. The hook is that they have to continue singing the entire time they fight:

And the songs don’t even change! Their magical mechano-armor is powered by harried techno bubblegum pop, and holy shit are those robo-corsets powered. These girls warble mildly introspective diary entries and they get so hype about it they fucking chop their enemies in half the long way.

And god have mercy on your glowy lil’ tadpole-soul if a move gets its own splash screen:

These are anime rules: If a preteen Japanese girl shouts a random english word followed by a type of kick, you might survive — you’ll never walk again, and the only thing you’ll ever taste for the rest of your miserable life is the sole of a size 5 Mary Jane, but maybe you’ll keep sucking breath. If everything pauses so ROMANTIKU FOREBAA DUROPO KICKU can get its own graphic? Swallow your tongue so you don’t have to live through the seven-minute sequence of your body being blasted into space while every single part of it explodes individually.

And with Symphogear’s battle karaoke twist, it’s even more degrading. Imagine you’re a huge space maggot-horse. Life is great. You just puked up your astro-sperm, JPOP tweens are dying at your feet, this is a fine Saturday. Then some wispy young girl in Robocop’s underwear runs up and absolutely demolishes you while singing sugar-ballads about how her boyfriend better not miss the next train. 

All of the other space maggot-horses will make fun of you in space maggot-horse hell, which is honestly just like regular space-horse hell, but none of the corpses rot.

Despite absolutely working over these poor Noise Band aliens with her romance-themed typhoon uppercuts, our hero is overwhelmed and has to sing…

Oh shit, she’s going to sing Ginuwine’s “Pony,” everybody step back!

Aw, no, it’s the other kind of climax. I guess every pop idol knows one secret self-destruct song, aside from “The Star-Spangled Banner.”

Hey so if that’s not our main character, who is? 

This girl:

She was standing too close to the battle.

So both of our heroes have died, but as we have learned in anime, comic books, and every single season of Supernatural, death is really just a temporary inconvenience so Dean can film a subpar slasher over the spring. 

Anyway, let’s flashback ten minutes and meet our protagonist:

This was her first concert and she is spoiled forever now. Any musical performance that does not explode halfway through, get invaded by acidic alien sperm, and end with her actual death is just going to disappoint. She can basically only go to this, and GWAR shows.

But of course she doesn’t die, and actually inherits the previous hero’s Karaoke Battlemech Swimsuit. Let’s check out her sweet Magical Girl Transformation Sequence!

Hey, you try Magical Girl Transforming on your first day. My first Magical Girl Transformation Sequence, I spun my pants off, tripped on the dog, and wound up crashing through a window while screaming about love. Did you know there’s such a thing as double house arrest? There isn’t. They just extend the first one.

Anyway, after our hero shoots for ‘playful dazzling lightshow’ and winds up with ‘painful Cronenberg organ thrusting,’ she turns into a meek little foxgirl mech, and her very first song is about how much she likes holding hands.

So I guess this was like the first level, where you get to preview all the powers but lose them to some bullshit before you actually start the real game. I’m not fooled though, I recognize problematic powercreep when I see it. It’s cool as hell to start your show off with Pop Idols power-tornado’ing space worms into oblivion, but you have to escalate from there, and things are going to get out of hand, quick. Mark my words: By the third season there are going to be ten of those girls, and one is going to be fucking a sentient asteroid, and another is going to jumpkick god. 

And it’s so important that you know I wrote that joke before I went and looked up the last episode.

Categories
NERDING DAY

Birdman Theater, Episode 0001 🌭

In 1967, Birdman debuted on Saturday morning TV. He was powered by the sun, written by confused idiots, and brought to life by even more confused foreign animators. As a nerd of some renown, I’ve seen over seven cartoons, and the original Birdman is without question my all-time favorite. You are very lucky to be reading the first installment of Birdman Theater, a Pullitzer-eligible series where I describe episodes of Birdman to you, the hot ladies of 1-900-HOTDOG. Now, as soon as I stop fucking around, we can start Birdman Theater Episode 0001: Birdman Episode 03A: The Quake Threat!

Out of respect to the original writers, no dialog will be altered in these Birdman scenes.

Like every Birdman episode, “The Quake Threat” starts in Birdman’s volcano base with him getting an emergency call from Falcon 7. Two important things to know right away are that Falcon 7 is voiced by a man clinically unable to convey urgency and Birdman has no secret identity or hobbies. He is never putting down a book or rushing a woman out of his volcano who only knows him as everyday test pilot “Birdley Mantooth.” The only thing he is ever doing at the start of an episode is sitting here and waiting for his computer to turn on. We have no reason to believe he’s wearing a costume at all. We could very well be looking at his nude body.

Birdman cartoons cram an entire three act structure into seven minutes, so the plot is usually developed by Falcon 7 explaining who the bad guy is, what he’s doing, and what he wants. “The Quake Threat” is no exception. Professor Kairoff has an earthquake beam and he is going crazy with it– just pointlessly making earthquakes. Falcon 7 worries he’ll use it to demand ransom from the world or loan it out to other people who will demand ransom from the world. Birdman has a lot of trouble following along, and Falcon 7 seems pretty cranky that so much of his workday is being spent explaining the downsides of earthquake crime to Birdman. Once he finally understands, it occurs to him:

It’s a criminal madman causing earthquakes for no reason and Birdman’s main concern is him potentially giving his earthquake ray to the wrong person, and this seems like a great opportunity to mention Birdman is stupid as shit.

Falcon 7 has no idea where to find Professor Kairoff, but Birdman figures he’ll just follow the shockwaves and leaves screaming his catchphrase, which is his name. By the time he gets into the sky, the writers realize Birdman can fly and shoot lasers and neither of those abilities allow him to follow the shockwaves of earthquakes. Or, now that they think about it, the shockwaves from a ray that caused the earthquakes? Jesus, what are they going to do? Wait, hold up, Birdman has a “solar band,” a device used only this once during the show’s two year span, which is a bracelet that lights up when you’re going towards the source of an earthquake ray shockwave. Honestly, it’s amazing whoever sold this thing to Birdman wasn’t fucking with him. Real quick, I reverse engineered the schematics:

We are finally introduced to Professor Kairoff who is watching Birdman flying toward his base. If you know anything about old cartoons, you already know he’s got a real-time, full color security camera that can film anyone, anywhere. He knew someone might be coming, so he was scanning sector “Sky,” coordinates “Fucking Middle Of The.” Also, Kairoff is a weird little gremlin in a pink unitard with red panties and he’s been living alone so long he talks to his robots. He lives in the volcano next door to Birdman, and thinks Avenger’s name is Eagle. Most writers wouldn’t risk the confusion of having one main character forget the name of another main character, but Birdman doesn’t give a shit. He’s lucky if he stays the same color for a whole episode.

Notice the evil genius didn’t say, “Oh, shit, he must have traced my earthquake ray shockwaves with some kind of, I don’t know, solar band?” Do you know what this means? It means the writers of this, the stupidest goddamn show, have written a genius villain dumber than themselves! Let’s see if that ever ends up being a problem for him as we continue the story.

Kairoff tells his robot “Gorga” to take two metal men up the elevator to dispose of Birdman. These voiceless “metal men” are automatons so disposable even the writers and animators forget about them several times a scene, but for some reason Kairoff gave this one, Gorga, a name. Why? What makes Gorga special? The answer lies in his schematics:

Gorga and the two metal men he selected using a decision protocol you or I might call “love,” emerge from the mountain and immediately shoot Birdman and Avenger in the heads. To their credit, no one could have predicted their mitten claws would shoot lasers. Also, due to budget limitations, they can only change direction in flight once every six episodes.

I know you’re worried, but don’t be. Both of them are fine. Weirdly fine. It’s almost as if no one involved in this from the writers to the animators to the fictional characters seemed to care if these “force rays” work. I mean, one of them hit an ordinary bird square in the face. Gorga, if your laser can’t kill an ordinary bird, why bother shooting it? Because your best friend asked you to? Gorga, you may be a robot, but here you are teaching me what it is to be human. Anyway, the unharmed Birdman easily obliterates Gorga. Wait, oh no! Not Gorga!!

It might be because I’m having trouble dealing with what happened to Gorga, but this next part is confusing. Avenger is now in the clutches of one of the other metal men. I have no idea why this majestic eagle, flying hundreds of feet above only a moment ago, would dive down in the middle of a battle to nest in a robot’s ray-blasting robot claws, but here we are.

And now I know I must be crazy, because as soon as Birdman sees his amazing partner being used as an eagle shield, he says “DROP THAT BIRD YOU BUCKET OF BOLTS,” and full-power shoots the fucking shit out of his own bird. Birdman will absolutely kill you through a hostage. He loves justice so much he will pay for your robot execution with the life of his own dearest friend.

There’s no reason Avenger should be alive. Eagles are about 10 pounds of hollow bones and feathers and this one has eaten direct hits from two kinds of laser beams in five seconds. I have a theory that one of Birdman’s writers truly hates eagles and he brutally murders Avenger in the first draft of every script, but before they send it off a second Birdman writer comes in and adds “he doesn’t really die” in Korean.

The final metal man grabs a giant boulder and throws it at Birdman, demonstrating an absurd strength less plausible than tension in a story about a laser-proof eagle. Birdman easily catches it and throws it back, a defiance of physics so deranged Gorga and the other destroyed metal man spontaneously reform so they can be killed again.

Please know that two different characters made mention of there being exactly three metal men, so these are not extra robots from off frame– this is simply far beyond the number of things the writers and animators can keep track of. Once more than zero things are on screen, it’s anyone’s guess where they are or which ones died. But I’m sorry to say, this time Gorga really is gone.

Kairoff’s robots, the ones who shot things at our heroes with no chance of hurting them, didn’t work and their remains have already vanished, but the evil professor has one more idea. He turns on his intercom and says, and I quote:

Birdman, in his outside voice without guarding his mouth, says to his bird, who doesn’t speak English or understand the concept of deception:

Birdman, who you’ll remember is so stupid, gets into the elevator which is also a cage and is immediately squashed in a trap. Well, not immediately. First Kairoff makes a joke. Well, not exactly a joke. He laughs while he taunts him. Well, not taunt exactly. More like a welcome, and then the same welcome again, but with a laugh in the middle. Does that make sense? No? Well, then welcome to Birdman. Ha ha ha, welcome… indeed.

Why would he say this? Is he mad from loneliness? Heartbroken after seeing his precious Gorga die twice? Written by careless hacks? However Kairoff came to be, he’s the best. And when Birdman demands to be let loose, he replies with words that seem like they were formed by poking the brain of a cartoon writer during an autopsy.

There’s nothing better than Birdman dialog. It’s perfect. It’s like the producers were throwing cliches together and hoping for mediocre, but got everything a little bit wrong to form a masterpiece no competence or sanity could have created. For instance, Birdman responds to this by saying, “I SHOULD HAVE EXPECTED THIS. AND I’VE BEEN AWAY FROM THE RAYS OF THE SUN FOR TOO LONG. MY STRENGTH… IS… EBBING.”

This is the second act of all Birdman stories– the part where he runs out of solar power. Birdman’s weakness is that he can’t fight at night, underwater, inside, or when it’s partly cloudy, and he never remembers any of this. Here he is once again caught off guard by the very basic premise of his super power. The only thing dumber than a solar-powered hero walking into a dark elevator to battle a villain who can defeat him by refusing to open it is what happens next.

Kairoff turns on his video conference machine to brag to three men about how he caught Birdman who yells to himself:

No they’re absolutely not, Birdman. That’s clearly a reporter doing a story on a ventriloquist who helps the police solve supernatural crimes. Did he call the wrong number? Is Birdman looking at a different monitor? Are the leaders of world nations what everyone sees during the last moments of an elevator crushing?

This is all standard Birdman adventure right here– everything is crazy, and he’s trapped and powerless as a result of his unimaginable stupidity. To recap, his plan was to tell the bad guy, “I’m pretending to be a bad guy,” and lock himself in a cage. Luckily, whenever this happens, Avenger turns into an invincible rescue machine. He knows Birdman’s dumb ass is somewhere needing sunlight, so he rips through an air vent and goes nuts, tricking the “genius” into blowing skylights into his own roof with wild laser gun shots. It would be a weird way to handle a bird loose in your home even if you didn’t have a guileless idiot right behind you loudly narrating how your bad decisions are helping him.

Two seconds of sunlight recharges all the power Birdman lost from eleven seconds of being inside, and he breaks free! Kairoff and his last remaining metal man throw some lasers at him, but shooting at a full-powered Birdman this late in the story is like throwing a teddy bear into an orgy. Maybe it only bounces off, but it’s more likely you’re about to see a soft, helpless thing get destroyed by a lunatic’s violent penetration.

Birdman easily blocks their rays with his solar shield, a tiny energy field no one has ever shot around in the history of television. Then he leaves.

I’m serious. He decided he needs more solar power (while literally bathing in glowing sunlight), so he flew out through a hole in the roof. He called a timeout in the middle of a fight for a plainly unnecessary reason, and then flew right back around. Professor Kairoff was so confused by the whole thing this is what he said when Birdman re-entered:

I guess he figured he wasn’t coming back? He’s a pro, though; so he recovers quickly and grabs a lever. He warns, “ONE MOVE OF THIS LEVER AND I CAN START A QUAKE IN YOUR COUNTRY’S CAPITAL!” This is another strange quirk of Birdman in that it’s very obviously America but they always refer to Washington D.C. as “your country’s capital.” I think they were hedging their bets so if Vietnam won and moved the capital to Hanoi this cartoon wouldn’t age into something ridiculous.

You already know from earlier how Birdman responds to hostage situations. That’s right– double goddamn solar beams. He annihilates this little fucker. Kairoff’s tiny body is ground zero for 200 megatons of solar destruction. You do not threaten Birdman’s nation’s capital, wherever such a place might be, with an earthquake lever!

This isn’t a murder, though. Birdman hit Kairoff with the kind of explosion that only affects solid rock, sex robots, and earthquake machines. In fact, Kairoff seems completely uninjured. What is he? And why? Did a bat crash into a sperm bank? Is he a star vampire? Is he an ordinary Turkish child? And damn it, Birdman, was the secret to beating him just flying in and shooting him this whole time!?

Hold on, Birdman, you don’t have the authority to do any of this? And y-you know that’s the elevator out, right? You’re trapping him in the… Birdman, that’s how you get out of this place. He’s twenty inches tall and can very clearly fit through the bars, Birdman! And you’re leaving? You’re putting him in the elevator he uses to get in and out of his own home and leaving!? To get the same cops who asked you to take care of this guy!? Birdman, y– oh, I guess he’s gone.

Categories
NERDING DAY

Behold: SuperBook

When I first moved out on my own, I was so poor I couldn’t afford both cable TV and Pabst. It was clear that cable had to go. Also food. Sometimes rent. I lived just a few blocks from my local Christian Broadcasting Network affiliate, so that was pretty much all I could get with the bunny ears. I spent many a late night watching Kirk Cameron fight Satan using… the internet? Maybe Satan was the internet? And Kirk Cameron was actually Mr. T? I can barely recall the programming, and I certainly learned nothing of Christianity. But while most of my memories of that era might be smeared across a Denny’s bathroom, I’ll never forget the cartoons.

Let us discuss SuperBook, the very first and quite possibly only Christian anime. I’m not sure if Evangelion counts, because I’m not sure what happened in Evangelion. Let’s say “only.” We’ll stick with only.

I can hear that image. The theme song for the first season was performed by a man who only had music explained to him, but never experienced it firsthand. There follows his two-minute long best guess. He stretches words out in the oddest ways, as though he’s watching someone just outside the booth give him hot/cold signals while he tries to zero in on “human singing.” 

SuperBook wasn’t ‘anime-style’ — it was an actual anime. Written, produced, performed, and entirely confused by Japan. Christian anime! What a hilarious setup for absurdist jokes about what anime thinks Christianity is — “haha, where do they put the robot?”

Right here:

That’s Gizmo the Crusader Robot and don’t worry, it’s not just a name. He will commit ancient war crimes before this article is done. 

He’s there to protect Chris Peepers and Joy Quantum: 

Our main characters, who were named by running a Silver Age Comics Secret Identity Generator and picking the bottom two results. 

So what did Extremely High Young Brockway see in SuperBook? Was it the bizarre retellings of thrice-translated gospels? The weirdly shoe-horned antics of two anime children highjinking their way through Biblical tragedies? Was it the awkward dub that sounded like every voice actor was recording their lines from the bottom of a bricked-over well? 

Yes. 

But mostly it was the pretty colors in the time travel sections:

That is primo early-2000s stoner fodder, up there with Winamp visualizations and scrambled Cinemax. I’m pretty sure Extremely High Young Brockway had some theories about those time travel scenes. I’m pretty sure he’d talk to you about them for 45 minutes before realizing you were his cardboard cutout of James T. Kirk. 

Here’s the premise of SuperBook: Two plucky young children find out they can time travel… but only to bible stories. It’s one of those ironic genie scenarios. A ‘fine print on the devil’s contract’ kind of deal. You get a cool wish, but it’s followed by a really shitty ellipsis. These kids joyride time back several millennia and the first thing they do in every episode is trust the holy shit out of a stranger. 

Here they are five seconds after meeting Gideon, and subsequently following him into his cave:

Here’s how he managed that feat: 

He said, “Hello, I’m Gideon… it’s more pleasant in the cave.”

These children have never met a van floor they didn’t like the taste of. Murderers ask the pair to get into their Ford Taurus and before they can say “I’ve got candy,” Chris is buckling his seatbelt and Joy is stuffing her own sock into her mouth.

Here’s Joy and Chris, five seconds after meeting Job, and immediately following him to his house.

Here’s how Job managed that feat: 

He said, “you must be strangers here, why don’t you come to my house?”

Every single episode starts with these oblivious children following strangely dressed men in order to watch atrocities: 

Don’t pity those kids. Here is, no shit, what Joy had to say about those men above burning alive: 

“The flames are beautiful!”

I think the original pitch for this series was about a Hard Candy-esque time-travelling vigilante squad, but the CBN cut all the best torture scenes. Not all of them, mind you. Just the best. Pity the suspiciously single men of The Bible, who were so sure they knew the face the devil would take. 

Let’s check in on Job’s children, minutes after meeting Joy and Chris:  

That scene caps with ten seconds of Job just brokenly screaming “oh my children!” over and over and over again. I’m not even slightly joking:

Even if these kids weren’t using time travel to hyper-typhoon the families of child-murderers, they are absolutely destroying the timeline just by existing and — oh yeah, introducing everyone in The Bible to a furious robot.

There’s none of that “what a strange looking boy this is!” stuff — Gizmo the Crusader Robot does not give a shit if you know he’s a robot. In fact, if you doubt it, he’ll show you. Here he is just straight fucking up some old-timey guards, firing rockets out of his head and at their faces until they flee screaming “No! NNNOOO! SORCERY!”

Gizmo’s extremely low tolerance for bullshit is why you’re reading this on a jellyfish inside your Magnodome. He destroys timelines like they’re Aramaic sex criminals, and if you even tried to explain the concept of consequences to him you’d wake up tomorrow with tanktreads for legs thinking ‘autonomy’ was the worst swear you had ever heard. 

Let’s check out the Sodom and Gomorrah episode, that’s always my flagship for determining biblical cartoon hilarity, this one’s called…

Oh, n-no! He’s been watching! He’s in my chronology right now. I can feel my history bleeding! Gizmo, I knew not what I did! I wasn’t-

Categories
NERDING DAY

The Easy 40 Step Method to Cube Dominance 🌭

For this Nerding Day, I was looking through one of many books on Rubik’s Cube solutions I own. They have their own notation and terminology, complicated 3D matrices, and as I’ve told myself several times before, they exist in a weird gray area where they’re too absurd to exist but too boring to be funny. Rubik’s Cube guides are the post 2005 Steven Seagal movies of books. But hundreds of pages into THE EASY 40 STEP METHOD TO CUBE DOMINANCE by Calvin Puzzle, I noticed something strange… something I’m not sure he meant for me to see.

I found a really weird book. This book is very strange. I don’t know how to explain this book. I have found a strangely weird book. I feel like this book was a different, maybe less strange book before.

Categories
NERDING DAY

Nerding Day: Pat and Julian – Power Nerds

Database was a 1984 series about the fascinating world of computers years before computers were anything like fascinating, and decades before you could pay anybody to give a shit. It ran on Thames Television, which as near as I can tell was like British Public Access, but with marginally less full frontal male nudity and honestly about the same level of racism.

Much of Database was simply boring — just pasty middle-aged dudes who forgot to rinse out their conditioner talking to each other about wattage until the film ran out because the director died in his sleep and there was nobody to call ‘cut.’

There is no way in hell this niche disaster was a real TV show, much less one that ran back in the mid-1980s — when every other series was about a ragtag team of misfits waging guerilla-warfare against real estate tycoons with the help of their sassy talking motorcycles. But no, Database did exist, and to be fair, it was actually pretty revolutionary. For example, they ended their episodes by ‘sending’ the audience free software via sound — so instead of a credits song, they said their polite British goodbyes and then cut straight to cacophonous demon screeching for fifty solid seconds. 

It was an unpleasant show.

One that lacked any meaningful audience, any effective means of conveying information about their topic, or any clue why anybody should care. But that’s not why we’re here. This is Nerding Day, and for once, we’re going to use it to honor the nerds.

The Power Nerds. The Proto Nerds. The Nerds Who Came Before. The nerds who were here when we invented Nerds, and thus shaped our image of nerdom for the coming generations. Nerds who were so far ahead of their time that society hadn’t even learned how to hate them yet — so these dorks had to teach us.

This, then, is Julian and Pat — the least comfortable guest stars put to film before Joe Rogan started his YouTube channel.

Julian and Pat are here to demonstrate how to send an email, which is laughably simple now, but back then involved two dozen steps, eight plugs, three special machines and a backup letter in the post in case the email didn’t go through.

I feel for Julian and Pat — I recognize a lot of my own anxiety in their dry lips and juddering chests. They should not be on television and they both simultaneously came to that realization the very second the onsite director shouted whatever “action” is in British. “Gippy-gos,” most likely. But I relate to their discomfort, and I respect how they’re facing it anyway. So it is only with the truest of love that I mock them for it. Mocking is how I display affection. It is my problem, not theirs. I hope you all feel the love in this:

Julian looks like a chemistry teacher who’s still two steps ahead of the detectives hunting the Toe-Suck Killer… for now.

Both he and Pat resist moving their necks like they’re suffering internal decapitation and this is all some twisted Saw-style challenge.

Julian boldly exclaims that “this process is quite simple, really,” then proceeds to:

Remove the phone line from the outlet

Plug the phone line into the modem

Plug the modem’s phone line into the outlet

Switch on and set up the modem

Log onto the computer

Log onto the computer’s modem application

Retrieve his fucking enormous rotary phone

Make an actual phone call to the computer he wants to connect to-

At this point Julian risks certain death and burns a neck movement to shoot the camera a panicked glance — he only just now fully appreciated that he’s showing the world he takes eight extra steps and makes an actual phone call just to avoid making a phone call.

The host chooses this time to parrot his earlier words back to him — “so it’s a very simple connection to make?” She either does this in the hopes that her audience consists solely of drunk gullible children who enjoy lies, or because Julian said something snotty to her before filming and now she wants to watch him twist. 

Julian does not back down. “Extremely simple!” He proclaims, continuing to crank his archaic rotary phone wheel to and fro like a grizzled sea captain caught in a typhoon.

He then: 

Waits for the computer to answer

Flips some switches on his modem

Adjusts his modem application

Hangs up the phone

And voila!

Easy! 

You’re ready to think about sending an email now!

That was session zero of this campaign! 

You’ve only just now set up the characters — the adventure begins next time!

Julian has one more moment to shine, and that’s inputting his personal password.

It’s 1-2-3-4.

…

Listen, I know Julian is the kind of uber-nerd who thought ahead, who rehearsed this whole sequence eighty times before filming, who probably changed his password temporarily once he figured out he’d have to give it away on air. But this was 1984 — the only other person who would own a computer, watch this show, and log into the same highly local internet, is Pat. And look at the little smile she fights back when he pulls that move. That smile tells me Pat cracked your weak-shit real password months ago, Julian. “Oh, nobody will figure out NCC1701!” That’s the designation of the original Enterprise, Julian, you BASIC bitch.

Anyway, here’s the internet that arcane ritual got you access to:

You can: 

What’s New!

Or

Computermart!

The primitive internet was 9 things and 5 of them were horseshit. 

Now it’s Pat’s turn to shine! 

Pat moves like it’s her first day piloting a Pat-suit. 

Remember this is with love! 

She blinks like she’s been told exactly how many blinks she has left before she dies, but not how many days. She’s wearing some kind of short-sleeved Battlestar Galactica onesie just for the special occasion, and it is apparently constricting her breathing like a Victorian corset. 

I can’t believe how little you want to be doing this, but you’re still doing it, Pat! You are absolutely dominating social anxiety right now and if I point out that it looks like you’re trying to Morse code the entire Hacker Manifesto with your weird eye movements, I need you to remember that I am the broken one here. You’re doing fine.

Pat is very excited about the computer. What does she use it for? Mostly documenting the food in her fridge. That’s seriously her answer. I literally only use my computer to make fun of Pat and even I think that’s a waste of a computer, Pat. 

Pat says she loves to send email, and she really did not expect any follow-up questions. When the host asks her what sort of cool letters she’s sent, Pat hesitantly displays the time she emailed her doctor about a prescription.

Pat, my god, you are a beautiful human being and an inspiration to everything that feels fear but you are television mayonnaise. You’re the taste of cardboard. Your one job is to technically exist on screen and you are getting a C- at it. I love you, Pat. Get the fuck away from that camera before you kill somebody. You are the best. You’ve done enough. Please flee. Please flee.

But no, Pat has another task to complete before she can collapse in her closet for fourteen hours: She must demonstrate sending an email, which plays out exactly like you’d do it today, only with fourteen extra steps and seventy-three more potential failure states. They let her improv the content because it’s not like there are any viewers left to lose. Besides, what’s Pat going to do, write a vulgar screed abou-

Oh shit oh SHIT cut to credits!

Categories
NERDING DAY

An Ape History of Donkey Kong Ripoffs 🌭

The idea of a man climbing a construction site to rescue a woman from a gorilla seems like it should be unique. Of all the video games in the world to copy, no game lends itself better to being MADLibbed into something new. An unethical game designer looking to make a ripoff Donkey Kong could instantly change it so you’re… climbing a STAR RODEO to rescue a PREGNANT DENTIST from a CHARLES GRODIN. Even the least amount of effort like… climbing a(n) ASS to rescue a(n) ASS from a(n) CHARLES GRODIN’S ASS would be better than a failed attempt at precisely recreating Donkey Kong. And yet here we are in a world where 750 people copied the exact gameplay of Donkey Kong and also, pointlessly, the exact characters and plot. Let’s look at some of these pieces of shit!

KONGO KONG, 1983 (Commodore 64)

I’m not good at reading gorilla expressions. It’s why the first phrase I learned in sign language is “Strong gorilla, I’m drunk. Are we about to fight or fuck?” So I have no idea if KONGO KONG is a rampaging beast or a transfer gorilla smiling for his school picture. The game itself depicts him as a homeless man guarding a woman he made out of patio furniture, which doesn’t help at all. KONGO KONG looks like a therapist asked a child to draw the nude man who climbed onto their roof and declared himself Santa Claus.

KING KONG, 1982 (Atari 2600)

The original Kong must have been furious when some asshole normal-sized gorilla stole his name, added “Donkey” to it, and became way more famous. So to get revenge on Donkey Kong, King Kong copied his game to the letter. Well, not to the letter. It’s much worse in every way, and is arguably the laziest, shittiest Donkey Kong clone which is an extremely competitive field. If you held a gun on an Atari 2600 and said, “I don’t have the cartridge, but we’re going to fucking play Donkey Kong,” this would be the attempt not good enough to save its life. So King Kong didn’t exactly get revenge on Donkey Kong with this. As far as payback goes, it’s like getting revenge on your wife by making a homemade wig sort of like her boyfriend’s haircut and asking him to borrow $1200 for diarrhea medicine.

Let’s check in with an old friend for the next one…

KILLER KONG, 1983 (ZX Spectrum 48K)

I mentioned earlier how I’m not great at reading gorilla expressions, but that’s not the case here. I know exactly what this look means.

Krazy KONG, 1983 (ZX Spectrum 48K)

In the early ’80s, ZX Spectrum owners had an endless selection of bad Donkey Kong knockoffs. I should mention with the ZX Spectrum they could also just play Donkey Kong. And in a world where Donkey Kong is available to you, purchasing and playing Krazy KONG is like sitting down at an Olive Garden and asking the waiter if they can fly SpaghettiOs in from a Bolivian toilet.

KONG, 1983 (ZX Spectrum 48K)

These people very specifically made a copy of Donkey Kong so confused or stupid customers would think, “Oh, this is Donkey Kong.” And then the box art tried to convince them it’s actually about King Kong fighting airplanes, a different ape and a wildly different game concept. But whether you’re looking for a knockoff of Donkey or King Kong, you will hate plain KONG. It’s like they went out of their way to disappoint twice as many players while also doubling their chances of getting sued. You probably don’t need an analogy to understand how dumb this is, but KONG on Spectrum 48K is like ordering a dildo and being mailed a real human penis, only it’s terrible and crooked and made out of alpaca meat.

DONKEY KING, 1983 (Dragon 32)

Jesus, I didn’t realize there would be this many Donkey Kong knockoffs. But in the spirit of shamelessly copying shit and not caring, DONKEY KING on the Dragon 32 is like ordering a dildo and being made a real human’s pants, only it’s terrific and cooky and mad about feet.

KILLER GORILLA, 1983 (Amstrad CPC)

KILLER GORILLA on the Amstrad CPC is like orging a dorble and being mard poosto on tibble carga alpaca meat.

PANIC KONG, 1986 (MSX)

PANIC KONG on the MSX is the final words of a fish suffocating in a boat thinking of alpaca meat.

KONG, 1983 (Commodore 64)

KONG on the Commodore 64 is the meat boat thinking of fish and the beef canoe taking fish dreams, Dr. Alpaca Clock Penis.

WALLY KONG, 1984 (ZX Spectrum 48K)

Holy fuck, this one is named WALLY KONG. That’s actually a really elegant way to explain to a potential customer how this is Donkey Kong’s shittiest cousin. Wally Kong is what you would name an ape if it farted so hard it got its head caught in the zoo bars. Wallycop is what Marlon Wayans would name his Robocop parody. If you were writing a screenplay about the year 3000 and wanted to immediately explain how the last 980 years sucked you would introduce a character named President Wally Bush. WALLY KONG‘s box art looks like something you would show the Supreme Court in your case to make drawing gorillas illegal. 

CRAZY KONG, 1981 (Commodore 64)

This came out only months after the first Donkey Kong, which in the video game developing world is almost impressive. If you’re a sports fan, I can explain it like this: Imagine seeing Michael Jordan playing for the first time, then changing your name to Wally Jordan a few weeks later but remaining untalented at basketball.

PAC-KONG, 1983 (Atari 2600)

“Picture this: Pac-Man meets Donkey Kong with giant robots. Now take away the Pac-Man. And the giant robots. Now make the Donkey Kong much, much worse. I’m a mysterious intruder who broke into this building hoping to steal pills, the creator of PAC-KONG. I’m also the creator of the Yes Knife, this knife you say yes to.”

KONG’S REVENGE, 1991 (ZX Spectrum)

All these abs and titties makes this look like a sexy take on Donkey Kong, and it is, but not in the way you think. It’s about Kong and Mario, two jacked guys with lusty smiles working out together. Mario’s luscious gym muscles are crammed into a child’s t-shirt and he walks with a skip in his step like a man in love. If they gave a Nobel Prize for horny video game sprites, Abhijit Banerjee, winner of the Nobel Prize for Economic Sciences, would say, “I am proud to share this honor with KONG’S REVENGE on ZX Spectrum Cassette.” I haven’t been so certain a man and gorilla are about to fuck since a few minutes ago when the cover of KILLER KONG locked eyes with me.

King Cuthbert, 1984 (TRS-80)

In the ’80s, Tandy computers stole game ideas and plugged in “Cuthbert,” their mascot they stole from Mad Magazine. The idea for their Donkey Kong ripoff was to have Cuthbert murder him and declare himself king of the gorillas, but none of this made it into the actual game. This is basic Donkey Kong, the player is still Mario, and nobody is king of anything. This is like telling your kid you’re going to make up a story about them in Star Wars and then badly recapping the one with Jar Jar Binks with zero changes and telling them to go the fuck to sleep.

ZANY KONG JUNIOR, 1984 (BBC Micro)

The guy who made KILLER GORILLA, which was just Donkey Kong, went on to make a sequel called ZANY KONG JUNIOR, which was just Donkey Kong Jr.. This inspired the copyright holders to finally, in a world where a Donkey Kong clone came out every 11 seconds, to finally send a cease and desist letter. Steal our IP for your shitty Radio Shack mascot? Fine, embarrass yourself. Depict our characters falling in love at the gym and pounding sweat and passion into each other’s holes? Now that you mention it, yes please. But copy two Donkey Kong games in a row? We will ask a goddamn lawyer to request you stop. Speaking of stopping, should I maybe wrap this up?

…
This article was brought to you by our fine patron and Hot Dog Supreme, Brianne Whitney: who discovered the scientific formula for diagnosing a crew of being “through” or “2 legit 2 quit.”