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Punching Day: Rocket Robin Hood
Category: PUNCHING DAY
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1001 is probably too many secrets to be keeping about street fighting, but in 1997, Sammy Franco wrote this:
My experience with books starting with “1,001” suggests I shouldn’t bother looking inside 1001 Street Fighting SECRETS: The Principles of Contemporary Fighting Arts. This number is too high. Sammy is going to run out of punches and kicks by 47 and have to list his favorite karate songs and mid-maiming snacks to fill the next two hundred pages. Plus, is he even crazy? I’d better look up some of his other books to make sure I’m not going to be combing through increasingly boring variations of “remember to lock your car” and “every bulge on a bus passenger could be nunchucks.”
A good sign. These are fucking nuts. Okay, let’s get started.
Speaking of secrets, the book starts with a quote from Henry Ward Beecher, a historical figure who cheated on his wife so much his adultery is included in the first sentence of his Wikipedia entry. He was sniffing another man’s wife on his fingers when he said this and was absolutely not talking about karate secrets.
This is going to sound too cute and nerdy for a book about killing day drinkers with your hands, but the last secret in his book of secrets is a secret! The first 1000 secrets are a clue to decoding it! It’s the kind of idea you would have if the only people you talked to were adults in ninja costumes, and I mean that in the best way. I also mean this: if you’re a book that doesn’t do this, fuck you.
Eight pages in and we still haven’t started the secrets. Sammy first has to thank the United States Border Patrol (USBP), the kind of idea you have when you and the adults in ninja costumes you talk to have a secret favorite race. He also gives an acknowledgement to God (T.M.F.B.A.K.M.), an abbreviation he never explains. Which means this street fighter has an inside joke with God and I’ve made the right decision to read his book.
Right now would be the perfect time to start listing secrets, but I’m sure you’re wondering how Sammy Franco’s school, Contemporary Fighting Arts, got its name. He explains all three word choices for an entire page and during that time there are no twists or surprises. It’s obvious and no one asked. It’s like someone getting out of The Muffdiver Express and telling you how his van got its name. It’s like a man named Buck building an interactive exhibit so customers understand the creative process behind the name Buck’s Fishing Supplies.
Before we get to the secrets, Sammy warns he will be including some defense and spirituality. As he explains many times, these things will get you killed on the streets, but they are what separate you from the animals. Like most people training you for the imaginary, Sammy’s advice changes depending on whether he’s thinking of an underground kumite or a restroom pervert. Still, knowing your spirituality made you better than your local tough guys had to be a big comfort to an adult ninja in 1997.
Every moment is a potential attack. That’s why Sammy’s first street fighting secret is DON’T BLINK. I love it, but this is already too figurative to be useful and very, very much not a secret. No one’s last words in a death tournament have ever been, “The rules never said I had to pay attention!”
This rules. Sammy was out of secrets at number zero and he still has 999 to go. Wait, I forgot about entry ? ? ?. He only has 998 to go.
Really wanting to kill the other guy is an important step most street fighters forget. Sammy illustrates the 10th street fighting secret, “a virtuous killer instinct,” with a picture of one of his students thumbing a man’s eyes out. He is experiencing rage, happiness, and ecstasy– all the emotions you feel when taking a man’s life eyeball first, over a caption about how he’s demonstrating a perfect lack of emotion. It’s something to keep in mind, that this author who dedicated his life to surviving an afternoon in Jackie Chan’s body is weirdly incorrect whenever it’s possible to be objectively wrong.
After learning how to breathe and get comfortable with murder, it’s time to reveal the street fighting secret of standing like you’re in a fight. Sammy calls this BLADING YOUR BODY which is how you get a 1997 adult ninja to say, “Oh fuck yeah.” And they’re right.
You know, Sammy, you’re the one who decided to frame these as “secrets.” You only have yourself to blame for looking like an idiot here. You are revealing the secret of heads to head owners (this includes top, front, sides, and back). You’ve made a fighting system so basic you’ve accidentally written an operator’s manual for a parasitic mold colony. This is an instruction manual for when Jackie Chan wakes up in your body and you don’t want your wife to get suspicious.
I think we’ve learned enough about blinking, breathing, and the benefits of heads. It’s time to practice surrendering. Sammy has now spent over twenty pages explaining how to master every last thing your body does involuntarily. If you read 1001 Street Fighting Secrets to a baby their first words would be, “oh my god, no shit.” It would be so hilarious if after all of these exhausting essays on what ears and fingers are used for, Sammy finally gets to the actual fighting and goes, “I don’t know, hit him with your foot.”
No fucking way.
Groin kicks: the 40th street fighting secret! Sammy calls them “vertical kicks” because if he called them groin kicks he’d have to write three chapters on your changing body and how a groin swells when its owner blinds a man with his fingernails.
The 70th street fighting secret: poking them in the eyes! I know enough about literature to know every 1,001 Things author discovers there’s nothing left in their brain long before they finish their book. Here is where it happened for Sammy. He has explained both kinds of kicks– dick and regular, and now he’s shown the reader his forbidden eyeball strike. That’s all his moves. He genuinely thought there would be more karate in his head than 70 karates, but the rest of the book is the desperate panic of a frequent sword browser. You’re going to love it.
How are you going to tell me not to do spinning punches in a book for imaginary fights? If I’m taking out a hypothetical knifeman, I am doing only hypothetical rad shit. Full splits. Bikini beach setting. I might make him Dylan O’Brien so I can say, “You should have never run out of that maze, Dylan O’Brien! For no minotaur in there is as fierce as my very much spinning punch out here, Dylan O’Brien!”
Eating a raw opponent runs the risk of disease, which is not me making fun of Sammy, but actual advice he gives after telling the reader to deeply, penetratively bite their enemies, anywhere, to send them a message.
Reminder: the double-thumb gouge is a nuclear grappling tactic that can produce devastating results. My count might be a little off, but when Sammy Franco street fights something without eyes, he only has 814 secrets.
Exactly! Dylan O’Brien didn’t become a household name by defending mazes. I doubt this is good advice for a fight, but only the dumbest dumbshit would read a street fighting book for good advice. Sammy is telling the reader to put all their faith in dick bites and eye gouges, and that rules.
Shit, don’t be airborne? This sucks again.
Think of how desperate you must be if you’re sitting down to write street fighting secrets and you think, “Y’all ever look around at karate class and wonder who are these people? I know you guys have seen the shy one– always hesitant to participate in training. Why are you so shy, shy one? Is it because I told you to take a bite out of a sick man in our parking lot? And y’all ever do karate with a dilettante? Talkin’ ’bout karate isn’t important and shit. And that’s a double-thumb gouge! Nobody is safe from Sammy! Let’s see, who else…”
Oh no. I need to kick but I have the flu. Suddenly I flash back to my Sammy Franco flu kick training. You thought you could strike while I was weak, but I have been preparing for this exact situation, Dylan O’Brien. The two of us mount our combat wheelchairs and gossip one last time about who is the worst in our karate classes.
Find yourself a nice mannequin head at a cosmetology school to practice your eye strikes. This is a fantastic secret. I think everyone should have a few mannequin heads lying around their home. “They’re for poke practice,” you can tell your guests.
This is probably the most important street fighting secret. Non-street fighters do not respect books, especially street fighting books. Plus, if someone else reads your street fighting books, they will know all of your moves, like how your punches don’t spin and where you shop for mannequin heads.
Half of all street combat takes place in the library. Three of Sammy’s street fighting secrets are plugs for his other books, and I happen to own Killer Instinct: Unarmed Combat for Street Survival. The jacket says “On the streets of America, there is no bushido, the honorable code of the ancient warrior,” and speaking of insufferable weeb shit, Sammy also suggests reading The Art of War “at least 10 times.” Maybe check the newspaper to learn the methods of your local criminals? Oh, and be sure to pick up the Uniform Crime Report so you know which ethnicities to watch out for. This isn’t as useless as it looks. Racial profiling and untreated paranoia are a huge part of street fighting.
Everyone who says Sammy Franco wet his pants at the Boulder No-Contact Open, Blue Belt Adults and Under Division is a karate liar!
When Sammy finally limps his way into the 300s, he is filled with a new self-confidence. He is certain he must be a genius. He starts taking the most basic concepts and making them impenetrable with the biggest words he can find. Words that say, “buddy, be serious” when you look them up. So for about a hundred entries something like “hit them with a bowling ball” will become “cranialize yon Midgard child with the sphere of leisure!” It’s like he’s writing a Family Matters spec script called “Everybody Was Kung Fu Urkel.”
Oh no, this one feels real. I think Sammy Franco is still mad about the time he got interrupted biting a homeless man to death.
Real street fighters avoid crowds and events because no one has enough thumbs to blind an entire baseball game. “People get ambushed and trampled all the time outside,” says the non-paranoid man writing a perfectly sane book for real, awesome fighters.
Less than 700 entries to go! Um, park your car… at the end? This reduces scratching risk by half, and right, I forgot to mention– this curb has a mean guy who will fight you if you park where his car scratches it. I’m not sure even Sammy Franco knows what he’s afraid of at this point. His enemies are everything from sudden axe maniacs to grouchy shoppers to the general public. He has no idea what they want, but he is desperate to give it to them at any cost.
Don’t worry about thinking sometimes. Using all the judgment you have as a paranoid master of bites who knows which races do which crimes, know when it’s the right time to turn off your brain and get crazy.
Follow the rules of the death formula, the formula everyone knows for justifying deadly force. Wait, wait, I think Sammy got confused because instead of telling us that he told us to multiply where we want to hit our enemy by how hard we hit him? Ha ha that’s not anyth– wait. I guess… yeah, (1) Dick multiplied by (2) So-Goddamn-Hard does equal Death. I guess I knew this one already.
I love this book so much.
Really? The assailant’s inside position doesn’t sound very serious. Do you maybe have a picture of it?
Shit!!
There really is just the one street fighting secret.
Alright, I’m on it.
I really wish you put these in a different order, Sammy.
I … ha ha I love this book so much.
I love that Sammy made up a friend who once got massacred by a baseball bat ambush to help explain why revenge can be dangerous. He even called him a “street fighter!” Like, he wasn’t a dentist who won a fist fight after an arena football game. He was employed as a street fighter. How is this the first we’re hearing of this guy, Sammy? You thanked the border patrol at the start of this book but didn’t have room to mention this dear street fighter friend who died(?) in a Tom & Jerry skit?
In America you can walk right up to law enforcement officers and say, “That’s the man who bit me at the mannequin head store.” This is almost all of the book’s legal advice, by the way. It’s almost an afterthought, as if the possibility of a real fight is so far from Sammy Franco’s life it didn’t occur to him until secret #493 that you can get in trouble for it.
I can’t wait to see what these are going to be.
I love it.
Excellent.
Every country has its own stick strangle, but there is no better way to end a man’s life or a below average marriage than the American Stick Strangle.
Examining the motivations of the knife criminal may help you defeat him. “Reason number 8 of question mark: my lawyer said he has an easier time with my stab murders than my gun murders and, um, I’m not gonna pay a guy $40 an hour and not listen to him! Reasons 9 and 10: everywhere, affordable. God, listen to me go on. I just love knife crime!”
Everything about this is good advice. Anyone who tells you not to jump directly at a knife is probably trying to kill you with a knife.
Every street fighter should carefully, if possible, move to a house where they can own a gun.
Earlier you might have thought I was exaggerating about this author losing his mind after he ran out of special attacks. And here we are at secret #809 where he is listing all the skills you unlock if you spec your character into Gun Flashlight. He has listed four reasons it’s good to have a flashlight on your gun. Three of them are seeing in the dark, and the other one is not seeing in the dark. This is iconic in its dumbness. This is the American Stick Strangle of dumb.
Everyone thinks they’ll be able to trade jokes during a gunfight, but the fact is, cowboys and cop buddies learn specifically to shoot and speak at the same time. Without proper training, you might try to say, “Consider this a divorce, sweetheart!” and it will come out, “BOOMno no no what happened, what have I done?“
After number 867, Sammy gives up the longform street fighting secrets and starts writing little philosophical quotes. The only problem is he’s dumb as shit and his “Philosophy” is a child raised by television going through mood swings. These are fortune cookies that disagree with him and each other. They’re t-shirts you might see at an insurrection. They are bumper stickers you read on a truck before not making it out alive.
A bold stance to take in a book about ending lives by way of hand, knife, and gun is “the state should execute more people.”
I think you should have to wait more than 91 entries from your last failed explanation of flashlights before you start mocking stupid men.
In the early 900s, Sammy’s writer’s block crashes into the part of his brain that hates karate class. You’re not fucking magic, Karate. Sammy’s going to tell everybody, Karate. Maybe 15 or 20 times; it’s that important.
I don’t think kindness or consistency is fundamental to the Contemporary Fighting Arts System, but it will always protect you, you fat coward fucks. Why don’t you die already.
Easily, the most repeated theme in the book is how you can’t trust anyone, especially the trustworthy friends you trust. And yeah, I wasn’t expecting a self defense author to write a book about how things usually work out and you don’t have to worry about it, but this is a man who can’t order hot wings without telling the waitress she’ll die first if he tastes one single bite of poison. This is a man waiting for the world to betray him, and he’s ready with a flashlight on his gun that does nearly two things, or as he would put it, over four things.
Exactly like he promised, Sammy ends his book with ? ? ?. I looked everywhere for a code, but never found one. I thought maybe the first letter of each paragraph could spell something, but it was a dead end. After all, only a crazy person would do that. Only a crazy person would do that. So in the end, we can only guess what Sammy Franco’s final street fighting secret must be. All we know is that it’s probably dumb, crazy, and very different from something he said earlier.
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This article was brought to you by our fine sponsor and Hot Dog Supreme: John Minkoff, whose name is an anagram of AAIIIIEEE! AAIIIIEEEEEEEE!
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Monster Wars: Filler Time 🌭
Monster Wars’ only flaw is time. The god-tier promos? Thirty seconds. The tanks flopping through the air? Ten seconds, if they take it slow.
Then there’s the dead air stitched to each episode, like goat loins on a 1920’s patient or 2020’s fitness guru. That could probably go.
In case you missed enlightenment: Monster Wars showed monster trucks and wrestling mascots making magic. Twelve minutes of it a week, tops.
Between races, they panic. I would too; an hour a week sounds easy until the first engine explodes. That leaves three bad choices. They can replay everything six times (Physical 100), televise vast fields of nothing (Survivor), or dive behind the scenes (Brazzers). They enter Door Three, but emerge from Door Two. Which is still better than Door One.
Unfiltered insight would be interesting, but lifestyle brands (all nerd shit counts) don’t do insight. They’re in the filter business with Joe Camel and data miners. A segment either drives sales or fires you.
Glancing at the archives, my take’s odd. Most retrospectives claim Monster Wars needed more reality, and less of this:
Incorrect. Ignore the heretics. When Ragnatruck comes, they will meet The Sword. The Sword is a 12,000 pound truck, and his mascot’s Kenny Omega.
Every show needs this. From Jeopardy to state funerals. If pundits dressed like the Doomslayer, I’d still avoid TV news like death. But my third CNN joke would be nicer.
The Really Real Reality segments eat momentum and human memory. They’re holes in spacetime, absorbing all light between WCW promos. Turns out the Warp looks like early YouTube, before we learned that kid’s songs and terrorist manifestos did numbers. Especially combined.
Besides, have you seen reality? Here’s a snapshot:
Things are tense. Instead, we could have:
Easy example: the premiere has a mini-doc about a fan. Host Luanne Lee, a fellow member of the Peter Parker name club, introduces it at gunpoint:
The delivery? Think a person imitating a robot imitating a person. Which, given the cast, might be what she’s going for. 1993’s between Battlestar Galactica series, so that niche is open.
Every word rings with corporate insecurity. “Women watch this. Romneys of women. Studio women are watching races instead of cutting this take. Thanks, Jane.” And I’m sure plenty do. Monster Jam’s a Texas-sized Death Race, who can look away? But there’s an art to defensive bragging.
Here, it pays to be less like wrestling.
Then we get Jim Davidson. He’s the Monster Wars field reporter, and they grew him in a pod.
The delivery? Selling you your own catalytic converter.
I don’t know Jim or his story. He might be from Invader’s planet, where sincere people talk this way. But he sounds like a stooge to my Earthling ears. I don’t think any content could survive this tone. “Juliet–yes you, Juliet, with the hair–you’ve got it going on. IT with a capital eye-tee. Shazam! We should get hitched and chug poison p-p-p-PRONTO. Don’t tell your Dad.”
Our winner’s named Deb. Jim greets her with the same upbeat voice hacks use to wring content from juggalos.
Still, Deb’s game. TikTok hadn’t trained us to distrust anyone that smiled without sexual interest. She’s ready to connect with monster truck fans worldw—okay, nationwide. Monster Wars is more American than next week’s massacre.
Deb’s job fits her addiction brilliantly: she can warp zone to any heavyweight car crash in the country. It’s pure synergy, like being a Drake fan and fourteen.
I’m not sure the agency even pays her. She shows Jim and his hollow eyes a map of USHRA (that’s Truck WCW) shows she’s attended. It’s transcontinental.
Deb’s watched sumo racing in more states than I’ve breathed. That’s awesome. But it’s a big world, and she’s a sane human. The race is still on. I know the biggest Monster Wars fangirl tattooed Invader on her face. The words “scripted” and “carbon footprint” trigger acts of unimaginable violence. She watched Deb and Jim speak live, from a rooftop.
Well, that or we’ve since mastered creating and exploiting obsession. But that would be–man, monster trucks are sweet. Vroom!
At first, Invader’s color scheme seems to clash with his truck. Then you realize his space-gun matches, and life is alright.
Deb looks like a nice friend, so this segment is doomed. How many friends would you watch on Saturday morning? While they watched something more interesting? That you have easy access to? Twitch doesn’t count, that’s softcore findom.
Still, running one doc a season isn’t crazy. Invader needs time to translate “I LASER YOUR GOD” into space-peasant. Yet the premiere has two non-racing shorts, draining valuable crashing time. The second segment advertises Grave Digger, who’s already on the show. And wins this episode’s tournament. And is the monster truck people in Union states know.
It feels a little self-indulgent.
Monster Wars has a small tunnel vision problem. The kind that makes Anderson Cooper commit live PR hara-kiri. One truck matters, and it’s not the world champion. Each episode’s Grave Digger against the rest of Destiny’s Child/D12/Odd Future/G-Unit/The Z Fighters/The Cleveland Cavaliers. Salieri was right: Always poison the main act if you want to live.
It follows that Grave Digger’s driver, Dennis Anderson, gets a short. Even I have a doc, and I’ve never crashed into anything courts could prove.
Luanne eases us in again, and gets a much stronger start. This time, her teleprompter Elvira schtick enhances the material. It feels like a Robocop gag, complete with looming mechanical violence.
Bullshit or not, “I have no fear” is perfect. That’s my new go-to for dates, interviews, and DHS interrogations. The rest of English is a waste. Fearful nouns for fearful men.
Between that line and commentary’s worship, the UnderTrucker has a little mystique. Let’s destroy it.
Jim Davidson (God damn it) heads down to North Carolina, America’s best Carolina, to see how Dennis Anderson lives. Maybe I’m bigoted against TV hosts. With the company ringer, Jim still sounds like he’s harassing commuters for likes, or convincing a rich moron CNN+ is the future.
Lord knows what Dennis is actually like. I assume he’s been coached into a second personality. But in this narrative, he’s always Grave Digger. He’s become one with the lime green flames. For example, Dennis drives a miniature Grave Digger around town, which makes him mayor by default.
But Mini-Digger is old news. Dennis Anderson has a side project: a gift shop dedicated to Grave Digger, with a museum attached. The Grave Digger Center for Promoting Grave Digger sounds like a temple to human ego, since that’s the objective truth. I still admire it. If slamming Sherman tanks into arena walls doesn’t justify self-love, what does? Sometimes, you have to grow your own roses.
After this Grave Digger feature, Monster Wars gets back to Grave Digger. But the Pueblo, Colorado stop has time to fill too, and they don’t have a third idea. So we dive into another truck’s driver.
The best truck, free from human burdens like winning races and avoiding walls. Ignore Terran scorecards: Invader’s undefeated in Kr’zkk.
Are you ready? I’m not. Surely the best mascot represents a part-time secret agent. Or a real truck-driving, glark-loving alien. Right?
Meet Ray Piorowski. He’s perfectly normal.
That’s not a dig. I don’t expect LeBron to dribble in his sleep. I don’t expect Stephen King to tell real trains riddles. I don’t expect Wired profilers to hate themselves after five. Outside this show’s good half, Ray’s a normal human that eats solid food with his Earth wife.
Remember: this is a Saturday morning show called Monster Wars. The opening has four explosions and 1.5 vampires. Unless Ray’s hiding a grenade in his mustache, we’re off-message. The editor even taunts us with a slick description of crashing. Right before we watch Ray golf.
Bonus points to Ray. That’s circus life in a nutshell.
There’s another highlight: wrestling’s influence on Monster Wars includes labor eating shit. Ray has a side hustle towing cars. Great gig, if you don’t make a conglomerate millions pulverizing your spine every weekend. USHRA read Vince McMahon’s entire book.
The Pueblo stop has more air to fill. But Ray showed a bit too much humanity for the board’s taste. It’s time to expand the franchise. Now that Monster Wars has the juicy timeslot after Power Rangers, they’re soft-piloting tractor pulling.
.
For the uninitiated (me), tractor pulls celebrate Conan’s final victory. Steel is much, much stronger than flesh. It’s not close. A strongman can only beat a tractor with a bigger tractor.
Impressive stuff. But something’s missing.
Even mascotless, they’re fine altars to steel. Thulsa Doom is a streak on the back right tire. The first self-driving tractor will pull us into a new era, complete with sentient flame vents. USHRA can’t wait to pay drivers negative money.
With automation charging ahead, you might wonder what’s next. It’s unclear. Some say that after the machine war, we will envy the de—man, look at that tractor go!
Jim doesn’t sweat the machine war, because he plans to sell us out. Trust me: he plays the hunk of the week in a Charmed episode, so he’s villainous by default. Until then, he gesticulates beside two brothers without media training. The Walshes are a tractor-pulling family, and the stakes for designated driver have never been higher.
That shot’s from 1993, by the way. Monster Wars decided that Milwaukee looks like Dorothy’s farm. During my stay, it looked more like blacking out at 4 PM. But this plays better on Saturday mornings.
The interview’s more saber-rattling for the USHRA itself. Who else could help two brothers achieve stardom? Stardom requiring a second job, and a few new nerves down the line? Also, USHRA owns the vehicle branding. And usually the vehicle itself. Again, the wrestling connection only starts with the costumes.
Is anything worse than an ad for something you’re already watching? Yes. Resisting the machines. But in entertainment, recursive ads are a common sin. One of many MBA crimes our saviours shall punish.
Shit.
Purges aside, few things make me smile like Monster Wars. I just wish more of it was Monster Wars. My son had so much left to teach us.
Everything above is still worth it for forty seconds of sci-fi glossassia. I’ve sat through much more for much less. Anime that made Dragon Ball Z look like flash fiction. Seminars about colonialism in Wishbone. Green card marriage. Only one had a screaming, gun-waving alien. Quite the seminar.
I’ll remember Monster Wars for the peaks (Invader) rather than the valleys (all other content). Life’s better that way. At least my edit of it.
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Monster Wars Week is brought to you by a hot Hot Dog tip from Monster Mo, which is an anagram for Momonster.
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Monster Wars: Best Dressed 🌭
By now, you’re familiar with Monster Wars, thanks to the steadfast work of my hotdog colleagues. When I was introduced to Monster Wars, I said I felt like I could write an entire article just on the costume choices these maniacs made for their monster truck personas. Sadly no sane website would pay me American cash dollars to do that. Wait, I don’t work for a sane website! We’ve devoted a full week to Monster Wars! So, without further ado, I give you Monster Wars fashion police: a fashion article from a woman who owns multiple harem pants jumpsuits. Let’s start with the Carolina Crusher.
It’s difficult to build a personality around crushing. The concept they went with was a construction worker designed by someone who wasn’t a hundred percent sure what a construction worker does. Basically, in each appearance he gets a new tool and makes a lot of puns around that tool. At one point, they have him hold a drill, and they’re like, “he’s also a little drill sergeant this episode. Let’s add a special army hat.” Adorable!
He’s also got a chain that he wears as a belt, and sometimes he holds a big novelty wrench. My favorite accessory is when they give him a little 1930s tin lunch box to eat tiny sandwiches out of because he’s “starving for a victory.”
Carolina Crusher is the simplest Monster Wars look to cosplay. While those studded Hot Topic boots are fire, and jeans with a black tank top are a timeless look, I can’t rate this highly fashionable ensemble very well because I don’t think the stylist understood who the Carolina Crusher was as a character. Is he a drill sergeant or a construction worker? Decide before you hard launch the character—two and a half monster trucks.
Now I’d like to turn our attention to two characters with very similar looks. The bad wig and worse shirt depicting a cartoon animal combo of Predator and First Blood.
They’re very similar looks, but one is executed far better than the other, in my opinion. First Blood’s studded cape collar is iconic. The dark eyebrows and blonde hair looks fearless, and can we talk about the fact that they even made his lipstick bat shaped? There’s only one thing that could make this outfit better, and it’s a pair of red studded arm cuffs. Also, it would be great if they ditched the bangs. I don’t see a deranged blood-drinking vampire man having the attention to detail required to maintain bangs.
Oh my gosh, it’s the perfect outfit! That wig got significantly better between episodes. Too bad they didn’t do the same thing for Predator, the monster truck whose extremely problematic premise is what if Nikki Sixx were cast as the new Black Panther.
It’s a ballet unitard, some face paint, and styrofoam claws. The Carolina Crusher is low effort, but he also looks effortless. You can tell they were trying so hard to make Predator happen, but they spent his costume budget on VFX of a panther. Why did they paint on the mask, and why is it red? He’s supposed to be panther themed, but this thing on his shirt is in no way a panther. If you told a panther this was what it looked like, it would maul you, and you would deserve it.
It looks like a Scooby Doo villain that didn’t want to put in much effort. They very clearly didn’t like the first draft and added the fangs on top of an already-drawn mouth to give the potato some menace. In short, Predator is a dollar-store version of First Blood. He gets one monster truck, while First Blood gets four, and one is on fire but in a radical way.
Next up, we have a man who is definitely not Captain America, The Equalizer. When he speaks too emphatically, his motorcycle helmet slips down over his eyes and blinds him. His gloves also appear to be twice the size of his arm, making me think they cast a bigger actor who couldn’t show, so they shoved a cameraman into a bodybuilders costume and hoped no one would notice. This is a child in his dad’s Halloween costume. Luckily, he’s simply an actor portraying the personification of a monster truck in a sketch and not someone who actually needs to move at all in that costume because he wouldn’t make it two steps before eating shit on his own, I’m going to assume, clown-sized shoes.
While The Equalizer’s outfit isn’t practical, his shield is probably the highest-quality accessory in the show. The idea is thought out– it’s Captain America plus absolutely nothing. They made enough changes to keep Marvel from suing them and called it a day. He’s a solid middle-of-the-pack character that I’m giving three monster trucks for good execution of a boring idea.
Invader is such a missed opportunity. He’s a beige strapless gown at the Met Gala, a painting of a single triangle hanging in the Louvre, a drag queen impersonating Anthony Fauci. The costume is actually too good. It would have been so much more fun to paint a muscle man green and wrap him up in tinfoil like a sexy baked potato.
Where’s the drama? Where’s the emotion? Where’s the bad wig? My kingdom for a mullet. I can’t fault the construction, but if they had even just added a little color to this so he doesn’t almost completely fade into the black background in his black costume, that would have been dope. It’s a near miss that I’m throwing three monster trucks for the construction alone. Also, why is there an air hose going into his arm? If this thing’s mouth is on its shoulder, I feel like the Earth has a pretty good fighting chance.
There’s no other way I can put this, Grave Digger fucks. I hate to objectify Skeletor, but my god, those thighs look like he’s smuggling two cartoon hams into a movie theater. That’s one thicc skeleton man.
I can’t say enough good things about Grave Digger. I could also have written an entire individual article about the hot person energy he exudes through a skull mask. I would totally let this monster truck take me to dinner and a movie. Look at how he sits in a chair.
It’s a known fact that hot people don’t sit in chairs; they drape themselves across them casually. Look at him reading the newspaper because he’s an educated king. There were occasionally episodes where they didn’t mic him underneath the mask, and his dialogue all came out muffled. However, I can forgive that because he’s so damn dapper.
His accessories are on point, playful, and perfectly in tune with his character. Whether it’s a jaunty bowtie or a statement vorpal staff, his look is always carefully crafted. While I hated the across-the-board reliance on unitards for a costume base, Grave Digger elevates the unitard. Most people would say a skull mask and a skull belt buckle are too matchy, but I disagree; the face/crotch symmetry of this costume is part of its charm.
Monster Wars knew that Grave Digger was their Justin Timberlake. If a personification of a monster truck had the ability to go solo, he would have, and he would have been crushing cars in America’s hearts forever. Five flaming monster trucks for zaddy Grave Digger. He’s perfect.
Any character forced to follow up the Grave Digger is going to be a disappointment, so I guess that’s the end of the article. There’s a lot of Anti-Skeleton Man propaganda in the world, and I’m so glad that Monster Wars didn’t fall into the same boring tropes. They made their panther man hilariously unsexy and their skeleton guy the hot one. Who would have ever seen that coming? Truly the kind of genius that deserves a full week of dissection. We can cover Monster Wars, but we will never fully comprehend it.
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Monster Wars Week is thanks to a hot Hot Dog tip from Monster Mo, without Mo they’d just be nsters.
The jungle bends to no law save one: Man! In this issue of Man Comics, the moist savagery of the jungle meets the savage moistness of man for the wettest impact! Can you sense what’s coming? The jungle can, for what is coming is MAN!
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This article was brought to you by our fine sponsor and Hot Dog Supreme: Spotty Reception, who has never provably crashed a hippo.
We all know pain is the best way to defeat a calm, rational enemy. But what if you’re fighting a man too insane to feel karate? Or too drunk to know when to die!? In 2010, Loren W. Christensen came up with a solution. It is my great, eye-gouging honor today to show you his book called FIGHTING the Pain Resistant Attacker (fighting drunks, dopers, the deranged and others who tolerate pain).
When he wrote this, Loren was a 64-year-old former Oregon cop who had written over forty books about killing dirtbags with your thumbs and feet. “Oh no, this is going to be racist,” you might be thinking. You have good instincts, but you’re wrong. In fact, on the very first page, he explicitly says three different times this is not racist:
This is a story of his time in Vietnam. He was in the military police, which might be why he puts “racial tensions” before “snipers, bombings, and rockets” in his list of Vietnam Dangers. The story goes on for a few pages because he takes time to explain things like how hard he can punch. However, when he got behind this black maniac, and again he doesn’t have a problem with that, he started throwing punches into his spine and got completely ignored. He concluded it was because “he was padded with fat and muscle and flying high on drugs.” He had to watch as this unstoppable African American tore through people of all colors in an inclusive display of violent harmony.
It was this gigantic man, immune to the pain of punches, who inspired the fighting techniques we’ll be learning today. I want to warn you, though; we will still be using a lot of pain. In fact, it’s pretty central to all of these moves. These might be my keen former-Cracked-writer senses talking, but it’s almost as if this man wrote a normal self-defense book then someone else gave it a provocative, misleading title. Anyway, let’s go over which type of enemies are weak against this book:
It’s good against all huge guys, intoxicated guys, cranky guys, and the mentally ill. It’s also effective against the very bonered. See, some attackers want you to hurt them. When that happens, Loren’s advice is do it. Scrape and bonk them… see where the relationship takes you. The point is, this book is great against everyone except small, calm attackers. So if you’re being strangled by your kind dentist, get a different book or die. For everyone else, it’s maniac killing time.
This move rules. I went into this book expecting complicated techniques designed to cripple a Terminator robot. Instead, Loren went, “Here’s how you defend against a real jerk: steps one through three are slap them upside their fucking head.”
One aspect of Loren’s self-defense system is to imagine a worst case scenario, a mentally deranged assailant, but also be super optimistic about it– he probably looks around a lot and protects his brain with a papier-mâché skull. This would be so fantastically dumb in a regular fighting book, but it’s a stupid too magnificent to look at in this particular one. If you’re fighting a pain resistant attacker, these are instructions on how to secretly smack them without their knowledge, not disable them. Why would he ever thin– oh, right. “Pain resistant.” This is what self-defense is left with when you take away the dick attacks.
Loren livens up his groin strike theories with comedy. Like remember when figure skater Nancy Kerrigan had her knee shattered with a pipe? Ha ha you get it, she was in a lot of pain and had no idea why she was attacked. Groin strikes are sometimes like that, and sometimes not. And you can’t tell if someone has a kickable penis from looks alone. Sure, kick it, but also don’t bother? Another aspect of Loren’s self-defense system is that nothing means anything and karate is more of a desperate guess than a real answer. Okay, let’s learn how to defend against a Dumpster Push.
Step One: get pushed. Steps Two and Three: bash them in the goddamn head. Just flap your paw into them like an orangutan trained to safely box children. This is glorious. As advice, it is so much less than the first instincts you would have in your first fight. This is like teaching someone to swim by saying, “I don’t know, thrash around in a primal attempt at survival.” What gave Loren the idea that you could stop any grabby creep with a gentle rabbit punch? I’m glad you asked! It was the time it happened to him!
I know better than to trust an anecdote in a karate manual, but this book does make more sense when you consider it was written by a clumsy idiot whose body immediately shuts down when something bumps into it. His next tip is probably going to be, “Distract any attacker by shouting their social security number. Mine is 240-33-0183, and the first time an enemy screamed that, I had already lost the battle. He was black, but that’s okay.” Anyway, now you know the defense for Dumpster Push. Let’s learn how to defend a Dumpster Tackle.
Bash! Repeat as necessary! Leave! YOU ARE NOW A MASTER OF LOREN W. CHRISTENSEN’S FIGHTING ARTS! Or maybe you’re skating away from a below average hockey fight. What I’m saying is, if you needed a book to tell you “try clubbing the angel dust warrior with your human hand,” you’re going to die. Until someone creates a style of kung fu based around holding still and waiting for death, this is the laziest martial art there could be, and Loren fights like he knows all these punches and conks are a waste of time. And I think I found another story to explain why. It’s the time he and five cops had to restrain a bodybuilder:
What’s great about this story is it demonstrates how Loren’s fighting abilities, which didn’t work on a giant man who felt no pain, also didn’t work on a giant man who felt way too much pain. For almost an hour, Loren and five other police officers rode around on a man who went berserk every four minutes. I love this story, and believe every word of it. If you told six cops you were a muscle werewolf, they would absolutely jump on you. It’s called a police code 139, or a “Hulk Rodeo,” and it pays double overtime. What I especially love is how after their brilliant idea of grabbing him until he let them tie him up so they could tranquilize him like an escaped rhinoceros, Loren says “This is an example of improvising.” He thinks the dumbest fucking thing anyone could possibly do and barely winning a 6-on-1 fight was, like, an innovative solution!
A lot of Loren’s advice is barely more than “win the fight and leave.” His ground technique here is to already be beating the shit out of your pain resistant enemy, and if things start to go their way, smash their face against the ground and go somewhere else. “Somewhere with fewer dead bitches,” you could tell their remains.
Let’s get serious for a minute. This is the kind of takedown defense that might have been okay in the ’80s when most karate battles took place in a yellow belt’s imagination, but Loren published this book in 2010. He could have asked any casual MMA fan, “We now live in a world with 20,000 recorded tackles… has any man ever stopped one by clapping?” The answer is no! You can’t fluff a man’s head like a pillow and expect the methamphetamines to wear off.
If the clapping didn’t work and you find yourself mounted by your assailant, Loren’s aggressively optimistic advice is to keep clapping as needed. How would this hurt anyone? What am I, Brendan Fraser at the 67th Annual Golden Globes? Boom, roasted 2010 style.
This is how to punch a maniac in the neck when he is in your moun– wait, no. Loren, this is your “guard.” I get none of this would work anyway, but it’s worrying you don’t even know the names for the things you’re getting wrong.
You’re still wrong, Loren. About a very basic thing mentioned during every televised fight at least fifteen times. How can this be? This man claims to have 11 black belts. He has been a martial artist since Dwight D. Eisenhower was president. This is like spending your entire career editing encyclopedias and your retirement speech is, “What the fuck is a double U? Giraffes are bicycles, thank you.” It’s impossible. It’s stupid in what has to be a deliberate way. But why?
Well, I think I figured it out.
A lot of martial artists like Loren have to pretend MMA doesn’t exist because when you actually test these moves, it turns out you’ve been playing a pointless game of ninja make-believe your whole life. But Loren is feigning ignorance for a whole other reason. He seems to think you can’t get convicted for sitting on a man and beating him to death if you don’t know what that’s called. An entire page of this book is dedicated to pretending you’ve never heard the words “ground and pound!” To avoid prosecution after you do it! This is the kind of detail a fifth grader would make up to explain why Steven Seagal can’t be arrested for his death matches, but Loren W. Christensen was a fucking real cop. How many suspects did he let go because they claimed to have never heard the term “missing wife”?
Sometimes a maniac will try to kick you. Step one is don’t get kicked. Step two, three, and three again are FUCKING BASH THEM.
This is another great move you can try against your local unstoppable lunatics. After you’ve won the fight, try slapping them in the neck. Loren calls this move SLAP FROM BEHIND, but you better pretend you’ve never heard that name when your lawyer asks.
To save time, Loren sometimes skips past the easy part of the fight. Let’s assume you’ve already defended against their attacks, taken their back, and secured their neck in a choke. For legal purposes we’ll call this “the attacker’s left mount.” Great, now squeeze. Keep squeezing. Wait for them to be groggy. You’re listening for snores, possible whispered secrets, and… now! Flee.
A wall is not like a dumpster. If you are tackled into a wall, you want to clap, not conk. It’s in your best interest not to remember this, but this forbidden move is called Fierce Urkel Plays the Accordian, and if you land it the fight is already over. But, you know what? This would be the perfect time to see if you can really break a neck like in an action mo– oh shit, it worked! Flee.
Somewhere towards the middle of the book Loren remembers its premise. He realizes all these attackers he’s dropping from ear slaps and eye pokes are supposed to be immune to pain. It’s here where he comes up with his boldest pain resistant attacker theory– pain hurts again if you rub it. For instance, instead of poking your attacker in his eyes, which would do nothing to a madman, you rub your fingers across his face. It’s crazy, the childlike plan of a lifelong idiot, but fighting madness with madness is crazy enough to work. Let me show you another example:
Once you have the junkie trapped in any face clasp or advanced head clomp, saw your arm back and forth to “activate numbed pain sensors.” Wake up, pain. It’s time to party. You can also use this to check if a sticker smells like grape. The point I’m trying to make is, Loren thinks these moves are deadly because they’re how he lost a fight to his big brother in 1953.
You won’t always be grabbing the drunks and dopers from behind. Sometimes they’ll be grabbing you! If this happens (rare), do a little peek over your shoulder to find your attacker’s eyes. If they’re not where you look, they’re probably in the spot you’re not looking. No time to rub! You have to just poke and hope he’s not immune to pain! Sorry, this should have been in a different book, flee.
If you hate poking and rubbing eyeballs but still want to blind an unstoppable monster, you still have some options. You can delicately flick at the corner of their eye. There’s no need for violence when any gesture made anywhere near the eye will cause enough pain to disable a man who feels no pai– wait, okay, now I hear it. This one’s dumb. But you know what’s not dumb? Eyeball law.
Get your story straight for when you explain yourself to a jury. First tell them you tried all of your pain-based martial arts techniques. They’ll have a hard time believing this, but next you tell them your pain-based martial arts techniques did nothing. This part of the story they’ll believe. Then, and only then, do you tell them you decided to unleash the deadly face rub that landed you here in eyeball court. Again, it’s worth reminding everyone this author was a police officer. How many murderers did he let go because they claimed their wives could not be stopped by nerve pinches? Enough legalese– let’s learn how to stop a tackle!
If you’re being tackled, bash the pain intolerant attacker in the brachial plexus, the most painful part of the neck. It’s hard to find, but you can keep trying until you get it. It’s not a great plan, but it’s only a maniac attack. Have fun with it. Speaking of fun, here’s the origin story of why Loren W. Christensen thinks you have a magic off switch on your neck:
In the history of martial arts literature, no one has ever written a book like this. Loren has designed a combat system specifically to defeat himself, a man whose nervous system shuts down when you poke any part of him. From his point of view, Fighting the Pain Resistant Attacker is a selfless and noble act. It’s like Aquaman handing out hair dryers in case he ever loses his mind and must be stopped.
Of all the moves in the book, this might be my favorite. You wait for your attacker to swing a knife at you and fuck it up. Then you kick them in the neck after verifying it’s a justified neck kick and making sure your kicks are faster than knife. I’m not the one to say this because my kicks are faster than knife and I’m never wrong, but this, every word of this page, might be the worst advice possible under any circumstance. It’s spectacular. Maybe flee, but also maybe DEATH KICK YOUR KNIFEMAN.
Loren isn’t good at taking a hit, explaining karate, or defeating the pain resistant attacker, but he’s great at slapping. I don’t have any notes for this one. I only included it because I think slapping is the worst thing a man can have as his only skill. Almost suspiciously worst.
Wait, Loren once accidentally stomped on another cop’s leg in karate class? Is the lie in that story that it happened at all or that it was an accident? Would a police force even let a cop keep his job if he thought it was reasonable to accidentally stomp on a prone man? I’ll research that later, but first: HEAD AND NECK COMBINATIONS!
The Head and Neck Combinations section shows how we can chain our attacks together. For instance, you can follow up a headbutt with a headsnuggle to activate the junkie’s nerve receptors or whatever. Then you… I mean, you get it. Bash and flee. This sucks. I want a challenge. Aren’t there any moves for easily distracted attackers who kind of forget where they are?
Oh, perfect. Wait for them to try to figure out where they are and then BASH. Don’t even bother fleeing. This poor, confused man will never be able to identify you.
There’s a whole series of these toward the end of the book– moves for finishing a man already mostly dead from liquor.
For a guy concerned about the legality of street murder, it’s weird for Loren to advise his readers to shove a drunk by the back of the head to amplify his fall damage. Like, he’s not even trying to spin this one. This man is going through something totally unrelated to us and we’re smearing the skin off his skull for doing it too close. Grind it until the son of a bitch is more sidewalk than head; wait for help to arrive or flee when you can.
“Sometime all it takes is one powerful blow to activate the arm’s delete button,” says the man who thinks everyone’s arm has a delete button. “Don’t you guys hate when you hit your leg nipples on a coffee table and can’t get a boner for 15 years?” he adds.
This move almost makes me feel bad because bonking someone in the arm until it drops lifelessly is such a sweetly innocent idea of combat. It’s like the author still believes anything possible and I shouldn’t stand in the way of it.
Seriously, this is wonderful. Punch both arms until they don’t work! It’s something my daughter would suggest if we were being crushed by a robot.
Well, now you’ve ruined it, Loren.
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