Category: PUNCHING DAY

Categories
PUNCHING DAY

Punching Day: Karate Rock 🌭

If there’s one thing I’ve picked up from reading this fine website, it’s that there’s an ideal medium for learning the ancient science of self-defense: words and still photographs. However, I recently discovered on a trip to my local record store/drug front that I could find equally effective teaching tools there. Today I’m gonna crown the best people-kicking tutorial done through music. If you want to learn the five finger death punch without having to listen to Five Finger Death Punch, you need the 1985 vinyl LP KARATE MOVES: The mystical world of karate Narrated by Mike Faure featuring the Music of Steve Linnegar’s SNAKESHED.

Look at that cover. Every moment you’ve spent not buying KARATE MOVES: The mystical world of karate Narrated by Mike Faure featuring the Music of Steve Linnegar’s SNAKESHED was wasted.

The record claims to be, and I quote, “a vivid audio documentary on the mystical world of karate. It is a revelation to the layman and a great motivating vehicle for the karate student!” In other words, this is going to blow ordinary minds and give karate minds a reason to keep going. And it would be delivered by someone with firsthand knowledge of the kick secrets of the Orient– Steve Linnegar, who dedicated his entire music career to psychedelic/prog rock albums about Eastern philosophy and history. He surely studied with the masters, or at least has some Asian background… haha just kidding, it’s a white dude who was known as “the Hippie King of Cape Town.” Unfortunately, being known as the Hippie King of Cape Town in 1985 was like being known as Giggles & The Rodney King Dancers in 1992.

Well, maybe Sensei Segregation has some genuine wisdom to share with us, aside from how to make “mustache” your only physical quality. And he does! He starts off strong! After a kick-ass snippet of the title song that makes use of the finest synthesizer and slap bass available in a country cut off by international sanctions, we hear a narrator doing a Richard Burton impression in five-minute breaks between benders:

“In the mysterious world of karate, and Eastern martial arts, power and softness and extreme understanding are the qualities of the Masters. We are all learning her beauty and secrets. Karate takes years to master and its practice will change the trainee and make him more relaxed and in control of his emotions. It will also give him extraordinary powers, almost supernatural powers, these must not be abused.”

Extraordinary, almost supernatural powers! And you don’t even have to spin the record backwards and pledge your soul to luaP yentraCcM. Tell us more about these powers over some sweet psych rock jams, Afrikaner Chuck Norris.

“First secret revealed: you can learn to immobilize your opponent by the use of the KIA. The KIA is the karate scream. The force of the KIA scream is generated from the stomach and snaps the whole force of the person using it.”

So this karate shout doesn’t just “amplify” your power, it’s also a banshee-like screech that casts Hold Person on any deadly enemy or argumentative spouse nearby. And remember, this record doesn’t teach you how to do it, only that someone other than the speaker or the listener could. He’s risking a lot revealing this to you, but maybe sonic attacks exist. So move over, ninjutsu, there’s a new magical martial art in tow-

What’s this? Four black-clad strangers appear in a puff of smoke to defend the honor of the ninja! What do these dark avengers call themselves? The only thing that makes sense: THE NINJA. And they’ve brought a rebuttal called The Ninja Warrïors of Rock.

If Snakeshed sound like an eighties band that belonged in the seventies, The Ninja sound like a 1985 band that belonged in 1985 and no other year. They sound like the opening act on a seven band pay-to-play bill at The Cathouse headlined by Bang Tango. They sound like the kind of group that would play in the background of a bar in a zero-budget action flick called Sword of Heaven during a scene where a yuppie douchebag mistakes the Asian lead for a woman because he has long hair. That’s the most 1985 thing that could happen, because it did.

But who are they underneath those masks? Surely they would never reveal their closely-held secret identities on the back of an LP sleeve…

No wonder they took the costumes off. I thought that face-broom on Steve Linnegar was manly but just look at those manes! Those are the kind of feathered mullets that leave a river full of high-waisted panties stretching from the Rainbow to the Whiskey. By the time your eye travels from the outside of their hair to the tiny face in the center, you’re not the same person you were when you started. If The Ninja Warrïors of Rock ever encounter an enemy they can’t defeat, they simply sink into their hair and escape through a different cave in their bangs. And as masters of both rock and the martial arts, they thank their sensei right on the cover:

Hmm. Maybe Casamassa is his father’s name and he’s descended from –

Nope, it’s the white dude from Pennsylvania who wrote 1900HOTDOG classic, RAPIST BEWARE! Oh shit, the Internet says his brother Chris played Scorpion in Mortal Kombat. NO! Stay strong, we’re not here to go down a– whoa, he was Red Dragon on WMAC Maste— no. NO!

Back to The Ninja. Oh sweet, they have a fan club! And not just a fan club – a secret society.

And it’s in LA! I’m in LA! Let’s take a gander at what a real ninja lair looks like:

Hmm. Extremely ninja of them to hide their headquarters in an unassuming house under the 101 freeway. Every one of those people on the billboard? Ninjas in expert camouflage. The dirty benches? Ninjas. The streetlight? Just a streetlight. But behind it? Three skinny ninjas stacked one atop another, just waiting for you to turn your back while muttering “I think there’s something wrong with that bench…”

The point is: If you’re gonna reveal ancient mysteries in a private press record release, you need to be ready to defend yourself from your assassination. Secrets like…

Hmm. That’s about ninjas in the same way that American Ninja parts 1-4 are. It is ninja-adjacent at best. It would be absurd for these men to just be nerds cosplaying as glam rockers cosplaying as ninjas. There must be hidden knowledge in here somewhere…

A ninja worried about love is either a ninja about to die to the rival ninja clans he should be worrying about, or a ninja who has destroyed all of their rival ninja clans and now has some well-earned downtime. Either way, I was expecting more mystical combat and fewer cranky ex-girlfriends.

Panicking because there’s blood on your ninja sword? I can’t think of anything less ninja than this. This might as well be a song protesting the flea market’s throwing star return policies.

Ninja songs about… notable figures of the American Civil War getting dismembered? No one could have expected this, making it very ninja. “WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO MY LEGS? WHY DID YOU CUT OFF MY ARMS, MY LEGS! WHY ME?” Sorry, it’s just really stuck in my head. I love it. Nothing could get me to turn on my favorite new ba–

This is a nightmare, but I finally learned something! The age of consent in California in 1985 was 18! Now that’s in my search history forever, and this article will not help explain it.

How the fuck does a band called The Ninja have as many songs about ninjas as Blue Oyster Cult, a band that put a space station on the cover of their record called Club Ninja? I’m starting to think The Ninja are just posers, which again, is actually a very ninja thing to be.

Let’s check back in with Karate Moves and see what lessons the smoldering gaze of an outlet mall sensei can teach me.

Secret Number Two is “know your enemy and know yourself.” Secret Three is… punching. I’m starting to think the fourteen tax-deductible dollars I spent on a sealed copy of this may have been a rip-off. Then, at the end of side one, Secret Number Four… the supernatural sorcery I was waiting for: THE KIA SCREAM.

Which was…already Secret Number One? God damn it, karate. You’re worse than a ninja.

But who cares! It’s what we all came here for. The terrifying technique that can freeze your opponent in their tracks, allowing you to manually adjust them into humiliating poses before exploding their heart. Okay, this is really it! I’m going to listen! We’re all about to learn the secret of karate screech!

…

I’m back.

It was just a guy shouting “KIYAAAAH!” with an echo effect on it.

I remain entirely mobilized. Maybe it doesn’t work when it’s just a recording? Is it possible the ki force doesn’t transfer through speakers? Nay, unthinkable. There must be an explanation in Secret Number Five:

“The defender learns to watch the attacker’s eyes, not his body, as the eyes will telegraph his decision to move. The defender learns to react with split second timing, blocking and counter attacking either with a kick or a punch. This type of training is done many thousands of times and is the next step to kumite –”

He said the magic word, everybody SCREAM-

Fifth Secret: if someone attacks you with a knife, wrap your jacket around their arm. That sounds familiar. Sixth Secret: the karate chop. No one should need any at this point since all our opponents are paralyzed and split in half, but there’s more! Maybe the Seventh Secret will be an ultimate technique too deadly for smaller numbers? Nope, it’s a book recommendation!

At least the one actual song on here, “Karate Moves,” whips – it’s like Goblin for martial arts instead of artsy horror. Maybe you don’t understand what I mean by that, but I assure you it’s a compliment. But to be honest, my journey into the educational world of the mid-80s’ finest martial arts-themed rock albums turned out to be kinda disappointing. The Ninja had killer aesthetics but not much actual ninjutsu and Karate Moves had a lot to say but ultimately only taught me how to get a cat to leave the room. Maybe static images are the best way to learn martial arts after all.

…

When he’s not spending way too much money on novelty records or corrupting the nation’s youth, Jeff Treppel writes about music offline for Decibel Magazine and online for Bandcamp, Invisible Oranges, and The Shfl. Insert joke about Twitter here.

Categories
PUNCHING DAY

Punching Day: PUNCHES 🌭

I want to make this clear right away: this book is called PUNCHES. It’s by a Texas cop, it’s called PUNCHES, and this is the cover:

Self-published in 1988 with minimal proofreading, PUNCHES is a novel about a Texas cop, Sergeant “Jumpin” Jack Kellog, as he “takes on the Crime Confederation’s invasion of Texas.” The stupid among you might be thinking, “Texas cop? Invasion? Nothing about that sounds racist to me,” but you’re wrong. It’s a 1988 Texas cop trawling his imagination for crime he wants to punch. W. Hock Hochheim didn’t even know you were supposed to hide your racism. He probably has commendations for outstanding racism in the line of duty.

Speaking of great honors, my copy of PUNCHES is autographed. Which again, has this cover:

It’s stunning, and honestly, more than enough to make it a contender for Best Thing. But let’s read some of the words inside.

It opens with a group of three thugs stalking a nice suburban neighborhood. Here in the opening chapter W. Hock Hochheim’s words dance. Monstrous murder weapons have muzzles ready to bark death. K-Mart disco shirts are sleek and flapping. He gives shotguns mysterious histories.

The second man steals pants, is stereotypes, and has a dirty afro. Strangely enough, “afro” is the haircut all the book’s black characters have. Maybe 1988 Texas barber shops only had the one choice, but it’s possible W. Hock thinks “afro” is the generic term for black hair? I’m trying not to get too hung up on the racism, but it’s not a great sign when the black guy in the group has less backstory than the white guy’s shotgun. Anyway, he has a crowbar and his name is, I don’t fucking know… how about “Crowbar.”

“Crowbar” was so good with a crowbar that many undertakers, even talented and experienced ones, saw “Crowbar’s” victims and were like, “this will be my masterpiece.” Jack or no man messed with “Crowbar”! He and Shotgun had a friend named “32” because he used a .32 which he never lost, except for twice. Wait, that sounds insane. Let me find the exact quote.

The book says, “He’d always ‘tote me a piece’ – carried a .32, never had lost one yet, unless you counted the two police confiscations that resulted in two trips to the Texas State Penitentiary in Huntsville.”

So, okay, “32” carried a .32 except for the times he went to prison specifically for carrying a .32. I dare any author to imagine a more terrifying criminal. W. Hock Hochheim’s years of law enforcement experience has given him an insight into how the criminal mind works better than anyone. Just take a look at Shotgun, Crowbar, and 32’s plan:

This was a standard 3-man cop revenge mission. These bad guys came together to kill the man who arrested them, Jumpin’ Jack Kellog. They were going to get into his Victorian-style home, probably somehow. That part would be easy enough that waking up and killing the guy should still count as Part One. Part Two of the plan? IMPALA FLOOR WINE.

This is an author who hunted actual fugitives for decades, and his understanding of crime seems like it comes from a half-remembered Fruity Pebbles commercial. This plan isn’t stupid. This plan is a stupid person’s idea of stupid. And shockingly, their idea to bring their famous signature murder weapons and hope somebody left a window open does not go well. Jack greets them the only way he knows how: PUNCHES.

The second rule of a fist fight is to never stop to catalog your opponent’s armed robbery convictions. Jack broke this rule, but luckily Shotgun broke the first rule of a fist fight: never smile. One thing I noticed from W. Hock’s writing is that he has no idea how people think, but weirdly, he also has no idea how they fight. And weirder than that, I can prove it. Because this novelist is also a karate author. Let’s look inside W. Hock Hochheim’s 2005 guide to close quarters combat.

When you have mastered the art of combat like Hochheim, you need a challenge. You have to start defeating men using only a four directional Donkey Kong bonk. Seriously, though; his fighting system is a marvel of unlikeliness. He writes exclusively for people who want to live an embarrassing life and die in their first fist fight. If you’ll indulge me, let’s look at another of his techniques.

Hochheim’s advice here is to pound on your enemy wherever, for a while, until they’re hurt. It’s not “wrong,” but is definitely the winning entry in a dumbest shit you can say without being wrong contest. And then he shows you how to sit on someone’s face? I understand a middle aged Texas punch commando isn’t going to be a world class grappler, but this is fundamentally bad advice. A body’s natural flailing will escape from this position and a child with minimal horseplay experience should know this, much less a “martial artist.” Your enemy can now either bite your dick or leave. This is how you aim your ejaculate away from a CPR dummy, not kill a man. Come on, Hock.

Back to the novel:

Jack is a maniac written by a karate nerd who can’t fight, so he bites his enemy’s nose to begin a deliberate gun-disarming maneuver. This is a fundamental part of W. Hock Hochheimer’s fighting style. Here are some of the effective ways readers can take someone’s gun:

Scenario 1 is the simplest. You fucking bash the shit out of them and take their gun. It’s sort of complicated, so he explains in greater detail on the next page:

You might be thinking, “Great idea. But what if my enemy isn’t some nerd? What if my gunman is cool?” Great question. Hochheim demonstrates the defense against this is Scenario 12:

What you want to do is grab the gun and the rest of this sentence is just the word titties twice because now you have their gun, titties twice. Obviously, you’re ready for the two most common gun situations, none and grabbable, but what do you do if your gun enemy is far away? The one thing they’d never expect…

Fucking flying! Gun grab! Back to! The novel!

Jack is pretty sure he killed his home intruder, and he takes a minute to appreciate how heroic that is, in a fiscal sense. Sure, he’s dead, but think of the Harris County taxpayer savin– ARRGH! CROWBAR!!

Hochheim knows what the reader wants: justifications for off-the-books state executions and the mechanics of bludgeon-blocking techniques. He spends a lot of time explaining the masterful grips and tactics of pulling things out of another man’s hand– it seems a little cerebral for a crowbar fight. Even the author agreed 17 years later in the axe fighting section of his karate book:

I think all axe battle techniques get developed like this. Someone swings a weapon at you, and you either invent the perfect block by accident or you die before you get a chance to remember the wrong way to do it. Back to the novel!

Two men grapple! One for revenge! One for his very life! But first an author lustily explains each step of the choke escape he had to learn to get his yellow belt. This is bullshit, Hock. Pinky pulling!? Let’s get to some punches.

Yes! This is how you get out of a headlock! Dick punches to keep those legs busy!

Crowbar, the fool, tries a punch of his own, but Jack’s idea is better– punches. Specifically punches to the head, punches to the head. It’s not clear how many he threw, even to the author, but two of them were good ones. They knock Crowbar into Jack’s bar. “Stay for a drink,” he doesn’t say. “I have a bar and no friends,” he doesn’t realize.

After winning the fight, Jack executes Crowbar with a gunshot to the head. As he does many times in the book, the author explains how this technical– no listen! He had every right to legally kill these men by county law! In a lot of ways, this is good for everyone! Who is this equivocating for? Does he think I’m going to argue with him? I’m reading fucking PUNCHES. Kill whoever you want. In fact, shut the fuck up about everything else.

Though well within his rights, this killing of two and a half home intruders isn’t relevant to the rest of the story. It’s just to let us know Sergeant “Jumpin” Jack Kellog punches and kills a lot of guys on and off the clock. But he’s back on now, and on the tail of a man known only as The Knifecaller Rapist. He interviews a witness named Ida.

As an author, it’s your job to create imagery…. to help the reader create the scene and the characters in their mind. Watch, I’ll do it right now: W. Hock Hochheim sat at his typewriter wondering how to describe an African American woman. He sipped a warm beer, grimacing at the taste. “Later,” he told his dusty desk nunchucks. They, like his son, had long gotten used to the neglect of the dedicated writer. Though a White through and through, Hochheim’s police work put him in contact with many black families. He racked his punch-bashed brain for things about them he remembered. A sudden smirk formed on his thin, stupid lips. He had it. “Fatherless choldren,” he typed, racistly.

Hochheim writes like Ernest Cline in that he’s counting on his reader’s weak imagination to fill in a lot of blanks. For instance, Ernest Cline might say something like “Oh geez, it looked exactly like that scene in The Last Starfighter,” and hope you’ve seen that movie, and Hochheim will say something like, “She was black,” and hope you’re a cop.

Ida swore, to the Lord, she would never tell people about the Knifecaller Rapist whose attack she survived, but Jack’s face was too kind. Do you know what this means? It means each member of the different races has identified the other as one of the good ones. It’s beautiful when two people from such different backgrounds can come together to betray God by reporting a sex crime. Sorry, I’m making this scene sound crazy. Let me put it in another way. Jack met a sad black lady who looked like she would work harder if she could, and she betrayed her God to tell him about a sex crime he already knew about. This made ten legal decisions surge through his head and all of them were punch.

Jack starts his investigation, and he plays by 1980s cop fiction rules, which means he’ll play by your rules, all your goddamn hamstringing rules, but he’s not going to play by the rules.

There are a lot of moments like this where Jack ignores some kind of procedure that would only mean anything to a cop. And I guess you write what you know, but Hochheim dedicates at least 20% of this novel to law enforcement regulations. Is Jack Kellog a badass or a scumbag for violating statute 3A-2 of the Houston P.D.’s Code of Ethics? Author W. Hock Hochheim is so glad you asked, and will go over all the implications as Jack escapes this strangle.

You’re not going to believe me, but I swear to God, to the Lord, that pages 61 and 62 of PUNCHES are just an immunity agreement given to one of the characters. And I don’t mean a long-winded lawyer is explaining the details of it. I mean right before a marijuana plantation raid, the book goes, “here is the full legal text of the immunity agreement they gave this guy; let’s stop and read it.” I guess I’m a little disappointed he went so hard in this direction of Cop. I was expecting a bitter detective taking the frustration of his ex-wife’s restraining order out on crime, not all this paperwork bullshit.

Oh hell yes. This is what I wanted, Hochheim! In the chapter “SHITFIRE YANK!,” our hero meets up with a van prostitute! And he turns down a couple holes on the house not because of some fascist workplace safety guideline, but because the worn out old hag just didn’t get him hard like she used to. This is the kind of Cop fiction I like.

Soon Jack runs into an old boxing rival named John Handell where we learn some troubling news about our hero.

Sergeant “Jumpin” Jack Kellog is obviously an author insert, so part of his backstory is that he’s terrible at fighting. W. Hock Hochheim has seen himself fight, and he does not have a strong enough imagination to picture a man such as he winning a boxing match. Not once in eleven fictional, amateur bouts. Sure, he can picture himself squeaking out a victory in a pinky-maiming, nose-biting scramble, but in a test of skill and strength? Psh. Get real, reader. None of this ninja crap works.

Ow! Fuck!!

Ha ha ha this is maximum Cop. Our hero got so mad at this guy for making fun of him that he vowed to find something, anything to arrest him for. Then he got so fucking mad he forgot about that. It’s incredible! It would not surprise me if Hochheim starts one of these chapters by saying, “Shut up, wife! I command it! Sorry, I meant to scream that, not type it.”

This is getting too dark. I’ll clip a cute one.

Jack takes off all his clothes and gets a good look at his naked body. “You disgusting piece of shit,” the author calls him, the character clearly modeled after himself. “Look at how you’ve let yourself go,” he continues. “Go from what? You were never anybody,” he adds, and holy shit this one isn’t cute at all. Sorry!

You already knew this, but one of the themes of PUNCHES is how things used to be better in the old days before all these, whatdoyoucallthem, civil rights. These soft sons of bitches in their tiny panties… how is anyone supposed to tiptoe through this liberal hellscape of 1980s Texas, America? It used to be men were one of two things: Punched, or White. Why, it’s got me so mad I could… I could… 

… FRONT ARMBAR TAKEDOWN!

Speaking of 1980s Texas, Jack nabs himself one of those damn Communist hippies and has to dance around all the fancy regulations to get him to talk. Can you believe he’s only allowed to refuse the prisoner legal counsel and threaten him with sexual assault!? After holding him as a person of interest in a Cuban friendship? You can’t clip a cop’s wings like this and still expect him to soar. It’s like you fucking want crime.

W. Hock Hochheim writes Latino characters the same way he makes fun of a Chinese waiter– with the full cooperation of the Harris County Sheriff’s Department. Sorry if it seems like I’m leaving out a lot of plot and only showing you the violent rants of a racist idiot, but that’s what PUNCHES is. Jack fusses around like this, complaining his way through irrelevant frustrations. He’s forced to let the Knifecaller Rapist go because all he had was eyewitness testimony and evidence, but no knife. And by Punch Law, you can not make an arrest without a criminal’s signature weapon. Hold on… “not make an arrest?” That gives Sergeant “Jumpin” Jack Kellog an idea.

Jack finds “Tramp” Rasp, the Knifecaller Rapist, and does what any good cop would do– he stomps on the son-of-a-bitch’s feet and legs. He’ll kick a confession out of this scumbag if he has to! I’ll skip ahead to that part…

No, he’s still working those legs. Okay, let me jump ahead to the resolution…

Well, sure, nobody’s going to confess to murder from some light ankle beating. Jack adds some elbows, dick kicks, and a knee drop. Now he’ll talk.

Jack has a few more things he has to say before… holy shit, this is just a rage fantasy. Let’s skip ahead.

Okay, Jesus Christ, Jack. So he’s splintered most of Tramp’s leg bones and pelvis, hit him with a finishing move, choked him, given him a fierce talking to, slapped him, punched him, and threatened to cripple, blind, and torture him. Then most of those a second or third time. Tell him what he wants to hear, Rasp!!!

Oh, he’s still going. We’re at the “unrecognizable meat” stage of police procedure. This is, and I mean this in the clinical way, medically crazy. If you’re enjoying PUNCHES at this point you’re either an actual murderer or Hochheim’s ex-wife’s divorce lawyer.

Is this art? Has the attack become metaphor? He’s calling Tramp “the Tramp” now, which is either a typo or Jack stopped his attack on Tramp to kill a witness. This is something a werewolf would find in their typewriter after a full moon. Get it together, Hock.

Wait, what? “Then Jack snapped?” Fucking THEN? We are nine hours into a shrieking trash slaying!

Oh holy shit. Oh, holy fucking shit. That’s how he ends the book!? This… worked!? W. Hock Hochheim really said, “The guy in the book who is me won the garbage fight against the bad guy by so much they never did crime again, the end.” I have nothing to add to this; it’s beyond my every expectation. Punches.

…
This article was brought to you by a hot Hot Dog Tip from Javo. 

Categories
PUNCHING DAY

Punching Day: Captain Pronin 🌭

Captain Pronin was a short-run Russian action-comedy parody cartoon from 1992, and the only words I’m not half-sarcastic about are “Russian” and “1992.” It’s kind of like an experimental animation you’d find on early MTV, but the complete philosophical opposite of that. It looks like a 2FPS proof of concept done by a lone overwhelmed stoner in his first year of animation school on a budget of $200 over a few depressed summer weekends after getting dumped by a Debbie. But it had a staff in the dozens and the backing of an actual production company. Don’t ask yourself what went wrong, you’ll see it was all right by the end or you’ll see the inside of a gulag. 

Here’s the cover of something, I don’t know what. 

It’s not for a DVD or even a VHS, there was an inexplicable LP at one point but this image doesn’t seem like the right dimensions for that. This must be some other format only Russia had, like a Byetamax.

Yes, of course I found this on a YouTube channel that only hosts war atrocities and Captain Pronin. Did you even have to ask?

Every six-minute episode of Captain Pronin, all four of them, start with the Russian version of the MGM animatic.

And it fucking rules. I know we’re all rightfully down on Russia right now for their war and their crimes and their combination of those two, but don’t mistake a government for its people. My favorite part about Russia is that nothing kicks enough ass for a Russian. A lion roaring? Is pussy. In Russia it would open its mouth and its teeth would be machine guns. They would shoot down passing jet and eat ejecting pilot. This is animatic for very best Russian company: MGM (Machine-Gun-Mountainlion). 

If you’re going to search out and watch Captain Pronin yourself, you’ll have to give views to the war atrocities channel, so congratulations on being on the same list as me. We’re like bunk buddies! For horrors! But you better brace up before clicking play. I said they’re all 6 minutes long, but each one is still an hour and a half of cartoon. Every episode hits the ground running, every character breathlessly screams every line like they’re warning you of a loose MGM, and no scene lasts for more than 2 seconds. This is not an idle toilet watch. It’s like overdosing Adderall on Bring Your Own Bat night at a Russian fight club. You need to stretch first, have fluids at the ready, and tell your kids you’re disappointed in them in case you don’t get another chance.

We’re talking about my favorite episode, with all of its delicate cultural commentary:

This is a story about the ultimate Russian superhero visiting the USA, made just months after or possibly during the fall of the Soviet Union, as written and performed by sheltered and gaslit citizens who could only guess at the new and terrifying outside world available to them. If art is about understanding how another person sees the world at a certain point in time, this is the best way to understand an overwhelmed post-collapse Russian short of Freaky Friday body-jacking the little guy from Goldeneye. 

The opening two seconds of Captain Pronin always tell you everything you need to know about the plot immediately, so you can feed it straight to a pack of feral subway dogs and never bring it up again.

Now, because I’ve watched enough Captain Pronin to speak a little Captain Pronin and less of every other human language, I can tell you this is trying to say the American president is so scared of the cyborg assassin that the mafia sent after him, he’s losing sleep. But what it’s actually saying is that Don Corleone – not a letter switch, not a silly pun, the actual character straight from the Godfather – hates that the president can’t sleep, so he’s going to kill him with a cyborg to help him rest.

There’s actually no way of knowing which interpretation is correct because all of this happened four seconds ago, and is therefore irrelevant. There is only the present in Captain Pronin. The past is propaganda meant to fool you into thinking there were better times, and the future is for decadent westerners who take for granted they’ll see tomorrow.  

The police storm into Captain Pronin’s office, who may also be a police officer, there’s no time to even guess at that, and tell him they arrested a metalhead.

So you think, “okay, I get it – this is a parody, it’s mocking what the Russian police waste their time on, by fighting for arbitrary Russian values against the so-called corruption of the west and-”

No, shut the fuck up. I’m trying to train you out of thinking about things. It’s a betrayal, every time. The setup to a Captain Pronin bit is that it looks like it’s going to have an observation, and then something insane about an osmium goblin. I’m not being random, here’s the next sentence:

You think it’s a cutting observation about culture police; it’s really a punk rock cinnabar troll mafioso. Internalize this lesson. Remember Captain Pronin is a parody not of any single genre, but of coherence itself.  

The plan is for Captain Pronin to take the osmium goblin’s place and fly to America instead, in order to beat the shit out of something. It’s not at all clear what or why, but it happened three seconds ago, so it’s lost to history now. Just enjoy the way Captain Pronin flies: Unbrokenly staring out the window, waiting for something’s ass to foolishly come into view so he can destroy it.

Captain Pronin lands in America, meets with his contact, and is brought to a Typical American Alleyway, with its too much material garbage and not enough loose dogs. The lead goon tells him, in broken english, “this is your money, give me your smoking.”

Did I forget to mention something about black market cigarettes? Could this be a dig at how western contraband was actually the backbone of the Soviet economy? Fuck you, fuck you, and fuck you. You’ve forgotten the joke structure: We set up an observation, and then try to kill each other with bricks. 

Pronin replies, “No smoking, you gib me berry little money!” and tosses the cash back in his face. So the lead goon hefts a brick, and you see where this is going.

How dare you see where this is going.

Stop trying to predict Captain Pronin, no matter how many times I force you to do it.

Anyway, Pronin answers “yes I can,” and bashes him over the head with another brick. That’s… holy shit that’s actually a recognizable bit! It’s just that instead of setting it up by having the goon talk up how strong he is and try to prove it by breaking a brick with his head, there’s nothing. Nothing. It just happens. So it scans like a schizophrenic practicing self harm and Captain Pronin deciding that’s enough practice, this guy’s ready to go pro.

The goons all pull their guns and Captain Pronin runs away. It is 1992. It is time for a goofy action montage. It is time, you’re so welcome for this by the way, it is time for a barely post-Soviet Russian rap breakdown footchase. 

Again, I sort of speak Captain Pronin – I think it’s trying to tell you that he’s called Captain Pronin, but only to good guys. Villains might as well call him Captain Fear, for what he should inspire in them. It looks like I cut off the first part of the rap to make this look ridiculous, but no – this is the first part. It jumps right into the last half of a thought it maybe had, and then while you’re looking for the start, Captain Pronin flipkicks into a Guns Shop, which only sells spears, and throws an axe at the mafia. 

Look at this master of investigation investigating the mystery of why goons don’t have axes in their heads. Look at this fan of pursuits, all pursuits, from footchase to trivial. By telling me he’s the best investigator as he kicks in a gun store to throw axes, it makes me question his subtle deductive skills, but the rap knows this, and the rap will not brook questions.

The action montage continues, and in true Russian fashion it kicks fucking ass in a way that no second draft could. The goons hit Captain Pronin with a rocket launcher, he does not notice. He dives into the sewer and emerges into a fat bald woman wrestling match, like we have here in the States, so they instantly attack him, like we do here in the States. 

The goons hit him with a grenade and a car, neither of which he notices. He climbs the Statue of Liberty, who does not approve of the goons and vomits policemen. 

Oh shit, that’s actually kind of a brutal commentary on the American justice system, having Lady Liberty herself disgorge corrupt authority figures from every orifice like she’s got swine ebola. It’s the kind of cutting social observation you can get fucked for making, dipshit, this is Captain Pronin. He’s already gone, he leapt from the torch into a mafia helicopter, took the lead goon hostage, made him talk, flew to Don Corleone from the Godfather’s penthouse, and crashed the helicopter into the roof because it was faster than landing.

All of that took three seconds, and you missed it because you had a thought. Good luck revisiting it, Byetamax does not rewind, it only marches forward, forward like glorious Soviet Union!

We finally see Don Corleone from the Godfather, who is skinny, and pink. If you thought Captain Pronin picked Don Corleone because he was going to be a metaphor for the bloated influence of fatcat capitalism, you got an osmium goblin.

Don Corleone uses a computer. This is shorthand for evil, because remember: Russia. Remember: 1992. In the ‘90s computers were all pure magic, you should never trust them, and if you see anybody using one they’re a terrorist.

Don Corleone from the Godfather hits the Death Button on his computer, all Russian computers have one, it’s their most used key outside of Tab and that’s only because Tab in Russian translates to something like “I have become weary of joy, it is always proven a lie by time.”

This starts a countdown that, like everything in Captain Pronin, is already over. 

3! 2! 1! Captain Pronin is too late, we all know what happens next. 

Of course that sentence is a trap, but it’s too late – you read it. Write down what happens next. Do it, you sap, take a second and write down what happens next.

…

…

No, I’m waiting. You do it.

…

…

You were wrong.

Haha, you wrote down Carman right? You wrote the words “the computer turns into Carman, who does the Carman dance and is impervious to bullets and his eyes are headlights.” Right? Because that’s what the writers of Captain Pronin wrote down. That’s something other human beings wrote down in response to the prompt “Don Corleone from the Godfather hits the Death Button on his PC.” Then they put together a budget for it, and dozens of people animated it, and at no point did any of them turn to the other and say “hey Vadim, what the fuck are we even doing?”

Carman and Captain Pronin have a knockdown dragout breakdance fight where Carman punches Captain Pronin’s head straight off-

But he keeps fighting, Russians are just that tough. Is rattlesnake rules. Even with head off, Russian still headbutt. Is muscle memory.

Captain Pronin tosses Carman into a fridge, his one weakness, I guess, and then dies himself. 

But who’s this walking in? It’s Captain Pronin!

He built a robot double because he didn’t feel like doing all this. No really, I know you’re going to completely believe me, but there’s no explanation. An American show would have the hero be like “I had to build a robot because I couldn’t do this myself, for you see I was Dr. Blythe Smith-Woople all along!” And then George Peppard pulls off his George Peppard mask to reveal the Dr. Smith-Woople mask, and then he pulls off the Dr. Smith-Woople mask to reveal he was actually George Peppard. It sounds confusing, but if you’re 8 years old and being brain-barraged by quick-cut ads for skateboards and flavored slime, you wouldn’t question it. But there were no skateboards in Soviet Union. The slime? Is unflavored. Maybe that’s why Captain Pronin opts to not. To simply not.

Anyway, then Captain Pronin makes the exact word-for-word call I make every time I get drunk:

Guess how it ends. Fucking guess. I’m not even going to play with you. You’re in the shit now. You are pot committed to madness. You just ante’d up your brain against a weeping Russian who eats a little bit of a bullet every day trying to build an immunity.

You do it. Guess.

…

…

No, we’re not going to continue until you write down the very last scene in this cartoon. You tell me how it ends, based on everything we’ve seen so far. 

…

…

I’m serious, I’m checking your work. You have to post your responses in the comments and I’m going through all the traffic logs to match them up. If I find out you read this and didn’t write down your response, I’m going to be your computer and then turn into a man and fight you.

Write it!

…

…

…

…

…

You were wrong.

Haha, did you write down “a freeze frame of Captain Pronin, Russian Superman shaking hands with actual Bill Clinton?” You god damn liar. If you actually wrote that down I’m calling the cops, you’re a danger to yourself and others.

This is such pure lunacy you have to assume you’re missing something, and you’re right, and it will not help. I told you at the start this was an action parody, but not in the sense you’re thinking. It’s a parody of bootleg Russian action movies that poorly ripped off big-budget western action films Russians weren’t legally allowed to see. So this show is parodying tropes that were unintentionally parodying mistranslated tropes from another culture’s bootlegs. It’s not a copy of a copy, it’s a copy of a Turkish menu written with AI translation found long after the fall of man in the flooded wreckage of an amusement park by archaeologist aliens and remastered to the fickle tastes of the primetime Bip*rt audience of Gnorks ages 🦠 to ௵.

This is the deep madness, banality filtered through so many levels of abstraction that if you go down there, all the way down to the place of understanding at its core, you’re down there forever, you’ll die without ever seeing the sun again. 

And we haven’t even talked about the video game.

Categories
PUNCHING DAY

The Best Hot Dogs of 2022: Punching Day 🌭

A punch can be anything: An attack, a firm answer to a stupid question, a friendly hello to a son of a bitch, an expression of love to an insane Russian who no longer feels pain. Nothing is more flexible than a punch, and we used every part of the fist buffalo in the Year of the Punch: 2022. 

Best of 2022 Punching Day #1: Man Sports Comics by Seanbaby

Moon karate is the only way honorable men and Dougs settle disputes in the far-flung future of 1976. Waterfall hockey is the only way insane forest maniacs and Mikes settle disputes in the dystopian land of Canada. It’s a Man Comics dedicated to insane challenges like this one: Fistfight us atop a large bodysurfing man, you cowards! 

Best of 2022 Punching Day #2: The Fashion of Marked for Death by Tom Reimann

Steven Seagal told the world exactly who he was with his outfit choices in Marked for Death. The world did not listen, and that’s how we wound up with more than 0.27 Steven Seagal movies, which is the scientifically calculated ideal number of Steven Seagal movies. (Consisting solely of the tube scene from Executive Decision and a superclip of him running.)

Best of Punching Day 2022 #3: FaceGym by Lydia Bugg

There’s an ancient Chinese proverb which, roughly translated, says “the enemy of time is many small slaps.”* That’s the reasoning behind FaceGym, the only gym that’s not a gym but a series of low stakes attacks. This is the article that prompted Lydia to become a certified Slapologist!** She’ll slap you*** until you’re pretty again**** if you ask her!

*Not true.

**Not true.

***True.

****Beauty is subjective.

Best of Punching Day 2022 #4: Ninja Mind Control by Seanbaby

In this manual you will learn deadly, forbidden techniques to dismember a man completely, such as Make Yourself Big and Tiny Step. When the authorities find you knee deep in the quivering gore of your many enemies, remind them that you bowed first and are therefore unprosecutable. Oh right, also remember to bow first – we should’ve started with that.

Best of Punching Day #5: Billy Karate by Brockway

Much of Brockway’s Hot Doggery this year was delivered via jumpkick over modestly priced sports car. Billy Karate made its debut as a serial right here on 1900HOTDOG, and has now been pulled because they might be making it into an actual movie. This is all just here to remind you that the world is very stupid in ways you will never predict or understand. You must face it head on, with full heart, eager fists, and a mouthful of KIAI!

Categories
PUNCHING DAY

Punching Day: The Bansenshukai

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Categories
PUNCHING DAY

Punching Day: Carnosaur 2

By now, longtime HOTDOG readers are well acquainted with my dedication to write about the year 1995 specifically. I make no apologies for this fact, because none are required. We don’t ask the spider why she weaves, or the dog why he eats turds from the litter box. You don’t question the sky or its winds, because they’re going to keep blowing. Just as my mind will remain encased in the amber tomb of the year you could buy Batman glasses at McDonald’s.

1995’s Carnosaur 2 is the sequel to 1993’s Carnosaur, an $850,000 movie shotgunned into existence to capitalize on confused audiences trying to buy a ticket to see Jurassic Park. Carnosaur 2 ups the ante by being as close to a scene-to-scene remake of Aliens as you can get without being sued by James Cameron. Incidentally, the Carnosaur franchise was produced by B-movie icon Roger Corman, whom Cameron used to work for as a special effects artist. I have no idea what that means. Maybe nothing. Maybe everything.

Carnosaur 2 is a fascinating exercise in blunt force storytelling. It’s like a term paper written by a college freshman who missed most of the semester fighting a public intoxication conviction in Hilton Head, South Carolina. The creative powers behind Carnosaur 2 knew they wanted a sequel to Carnosaur, but they had so little inspiration that the film has nothing to do with the original, and is in fact a remake of a sequel to a different movie.

The film is set in the Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste Repository, which is a real place, sort of. It is a proposed underground storage facility for radioactive material, but it hasn’t actually been built yet. Allegedly. But Carnosaur 2 presupposes that it has. Not only that, but in the process of drilling tunnels deep beneath the earth, the government uncovered dormant dinosaur eggs. Uh, I think. They might have found the eggs in some other project dig site and transported them to Yucca Mountain. I can’t be sure, because I’ve already seen this movie twice, one of those viewings was in the seventh grade, and I’m not watching it a third time.

Anyway, the details don’t really matter, because the point is the dinosaurs have broken loose in Yucca Mountain and eaten absolutely everyone inside. They’ve also completely trashed the place, like the time I tried to install a wall mount for my television.

A badass team of mercenary nuclear technicians arrives, because that is a combination of words Carnosaur 2 boldly wants me to accept. 

But they quickly realize this is no mere equipment malfunction when they encounter evidence of a massacre, the lone survivor of which is a catatonic teen. 

Incidentally, this teen is dressed like a process server trying to sneak up on Eddie Vedder, because it is the year nineteen hundred and ninety five.

But then the team’s badass leader is killed in a sudden dinosaur attack. 

When they attempt to evacuate, their helicopter pilot is ambushed by a velociraptor hand puppet. 

The helicopter crashes and the team is stranded. 

Their boss, a swirling dickweed working for the government, attempts to betray them in order to keep the dinosaurs a secret from the rest of the world. 

But the team has to put aside their differences and escape the facility before radioactive material leaking from all the dinosaur violence causes the mountain to explode. 

But before they’re able to execute their escape plan, angry raptor puppets breach the control room. One badass technician gets snatched through a grate. 

The prickish company man and the perpetually angry badass blow themselves up to avoid being eaten. 

The only survivors are Scummy Teen and Fake Plissken, who is haunted by the loss of his Dead Family. Fake Plissken is played by John Savage, who was in The Deer Hunter, so his hauntedness is authentic, because he has seen what a good movie looks like.

Fake Plissken is captured by the dinosaurs, so Scummy Teen leaves the rescue chopper and goes back down into the facility to save him, only to come face to face with a Tyrannosaurus Rex.

The Tyrannosaurus is brought to life by the stunning special effects wizardry of a Robot Wars team that got cut out of their episode because their robot caught fire in the green room.

Scummy Teen carries Fake Plissken to safety, then fights the T-Rex with a power loader. 

Scummy Teen opens a 200-foot mine shaft using a button on the loader and forces the dinosaur into the pit, where it falls to its death. 

“Falls to its death” is a phrase here meaning “it bounces off the ground like a rubber toy, because that’s what it is.”

Scummy Teen and Fake Plissken escape in the helicopter just as the facility explodes, dooming the American southwest for centuries to come.

Does that sound familiar? Specifically, in an “exactly like James Cameron’s Aliens” sort of way? If not, please return to the beginning of the article.

Now, just because it’s a baffling remake of Aliens doesn’t mean Carnosaur 2 is totally without merit. After all, I watched this film, and then decided to watch it again three decades later. I didn’t have to do that. I could have lived the rest of my life instead.

No, something drew me back to this barely-remembered gem of a compromise Blockbuster rental from years past, and I’m glad I chose to revisit it, because it is one of the most earnestly shitty movies I have ever seen. It’s like a piñata full of beetles, or a Sega powered by fear. It has the desire to be fun, but not the ability.

The first character we see is a man in a cowboy hat. He is listening to country western music, because he is wearing a cowboy hat.

He spies a dinosaur and makes a face that can only be described as “Will Ferrell cumming at an improv class.”

Scummy Teen and his friend break into the Yucca Mountain facility using Terminator 2 hacking technology to steal dynamite from a storage room. Just dynamite in old timey crates. Like they’re trying to build a railroad in 1864.

And I really need to take a moment to introduce you to the team of badass repair technicians.

Everyone got a perm the night before. Except for their bald leader, who also has an eyepatch. He must have lost his eye during a particularly deadly repair mission. They look like an arena football team. Each one of them is dressed like a different kind of school shooter. Also, they’re all wearing a lightning bolt patch that looks like the SS insignia. Like, a lot.

John Savage shows up drunk, cooling his forehead with an empty beer can. He wistfully touches a photograph of his family in his locker, so we know that they are Dead.

The team plays an indecipherable rock-paper-scissors game in the helicopter, which is meant to convey how nonchalantly badass they are.

Their headsets are incredible. They look like they’re wearing old office conference phones on their heads. A Magnavox executive has spilled cocaine into one of those.

The control room at the facility looks like the bridge set from a Star Trek CD-ROM game. Jonathan Frakes has given players a side mission from this chair.

The filmmakers realized that having a character chew gum and/or eat candy is a good way to convey that they’re cool and don’t give a hoot. Consequently, four or five different characters are constantly chewing gum. One character is perpetually eating Twizzlers.

Two characters set tripwire traps throughout the facility and end up tripping over them themselves. I can’t stress enough that they are a repair team. These are repair technicians.

Finally, the acting in this film ranges from “poor” to “astonishing.” This is best illustrated by the several moments in which John Savage seems to forget his lines in the middle of saying them. 

Maybe he was thinking about The Deer Hunter.

Tom Reimann is the co-founder of the podcast and streaming network Gamefully Unemployed, where he is busily writing a sequel to The Deer Hunter that is a remake of Jaws 2.