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Punching Day: The Raid: Redemption
Category: PUNCHING DAY
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Text adventures were the video games we made before we knew how to make video games. They had all the thrills of reading a short story written by an unedited maniac, combined with the epic adventure of guessing syntax. A few were great, most were boring, some were war crimes waged against coherence. Please keep all of this in mind as we explore Marvel Questprobe: The Hulk.
Questprobe was a series of text adventure games tied to a Marvel comic of the same name, and their first one — their very first entry in a series of text-only games — starred The Incredible Hulk. There are eight hundred million Marvel characters to choose from, and they picked one who can barely speak and is famous for solving every riddle with punching. Here is the only logical way a Hulk text adventure game could play out:
YOU ARE HULK. YOU ARE IN ROOM. EAST IS EXIT.
>go east
NO
>look room
NO
>smash?
YES HULK SMASH
…
Here’s how the game starts:
It brags about how very advanced the interface is, introduces you to some basic commands, then begs you — begs you in hands-and-knees purple — not to punish the author for wasting a year of precious life on this. All of these things will be important. Please make note of them in your Questprobe Quizzler Quest Qhronicle now.
The game starts with Bruce Banner in bondage, and for a game that just bragged about knowing every command, it comes up immediately short.
Okay, so you’re the Hulk. When you have a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. When you are a Hulk, every problem looks Hulk-foot shaped. We gotta Hulk the fuck out.
Huh. See, the Hulk is famous for getting mad at fucking anything. Insult him, you get a hulking. Attack him, definitely a hulking. He sees you leave a carton of milk in the bread aisle instead of putting it back, that’s an especially brutal hulking. I mean, you’re getting a green fist enema right there, face pressed up against the everything bagels. So it’s weird that the game is being picky about how we get mad. But hey, in the passive aggressive post-it note at the start, the game did make a big point of telling us about its help command. Lets try that!
So the first screen goes out of its way to tell us there’s a help function, and when we use it, we are told to quit the game, leave the house, go to the kind of sad specialty store that stocks tip manuals for obscure text adventure games, and then have them order a book about this virtual book? I think this might actually be scammier than the modern video game financial model. Say what you will about microtransactions that let you buy neon shaders for your dildo bat, at least they’re both private and instant. They don’t have you travel just to get laughed at by a guy who wasn’t good enough to work at the game store and wasn’t good enough to work at the bookstore, but was okay enough to work at the game book store.
Let’s try again:
First, is that an unskippable cutscene in a text game? Hideo Kojima would describe that as “a bit much, maybe there is a sexy woman and you see her butt and there is a masturbation mini-game where your penis is a missile silo and your testicles are full of tiny babies with your face and you have to slap the babies to fire the missile and-”
Sorry, I’m going to have to cut Kojima off there, and go down in history as the first person to ever do so.
More importantly, every time I turn into the Hulk I get blasted with anti-Hulk gas? If you have to build an anti-Hulk mechanic into your Hulk game, you’re not making a Hulk game. You’re coding a text adventure about a weenie who makes a huge deal out of getting mad but ultimately does nothing about it. Fuck you, that’s Marvel Questprobe’s Ben Shapiro.
I do love how prominently the game has to display the ™ every time they mention the hero of their own story. That’s not distracting at all.
Oh shit, that was just a tiny gameplay break in between cutscenes!
This is so Kojima there’s actually a three paragraph section just transcribing a commercial for Norman Reedus’ Ride.
So wait, that’s really the story? You were given the rights to The Incredible Hulk and the unbounded world of text and you wrote an easter egg hunt where he can’t turn into the Hulk? That’s like being told to write a Spider-Man game and then having him take an UberPool to renew his fishing license. Why do you hate fun? Is it like teenage drinking? Did you get into fun too early and it became a problem as you grew older? Admit you’re powerless over good vibrations and take a fearless moral inventory, don’t take it out on the kids with well-meaning grandparents who don’t check reviews before they buy birthday presents.
There aren’t even any cool items in the game — no girders to swing into a rampaging grizzly bear, no little helmets to put on your Hulk dick that let you ram it through walls. There’s a tube of wax. A hand fan. A mirror that you can’t even use like a normal mirror.
There’s only one use for the Hulk in the whole game:
See that tunnel? You wanna go out that tunnel, huh? Well, this is an adventure game — a whole genre based on solving puzzles that head trauma patients make up to stump the pixies only they can see since the motorcycle accident — and that means you die all the time for reasons you couldn’t possibly deduce and are never given a chance to counter. If you actually use that tunnel, you are crushed by high gravity.
But if you Hulk out first, you can survive it. That is a god damn journey this developer went on, all just to figure out a use for Hulk powers which consist of “punching things real good” and “kicking things real good” if Hulk remembers he has feet.
Anyway, survive the riddle of the inexplicable ultra-gravity and you go to Vaporwave Eskimo Jupiter.
There is no explanation for this setting. In the grand tradition of every video game before 1995, there is no coherent sense of place or logic here, and every room is designed by a different prog rock fan violently disassociating from reality. Vaporwave Eskimo Jupiter is one of two main areas. Head any direction from there and you’re in:
A 1986 nerd’s Trapper Keeper, pre-swirlie water damage. Even by adventure game standards, which are “none,” this is pure gibberish. And that’s basically it: Try any direction from this puzzle on the back of a box of off-brand ‘Nontendo’ cereal, and you return to the Lazer Igloo.
I tried 17 million commands including “ponder life” and “quit” before thinking “maybe I should dig a hole, despite no prompting to do so.” That was the solution.
No matter how much shit I might talk about it, Marvel Questprobe does feature my favorite scene in any video game ever. I present it here in its entirety, unedited.
I like to think Hulk does that non-stop until he is no longer underground. It’s like a Hulk locator, in case you lose your Hulk at the beach.
After several more hours wandering between Space Alaska and Remedial Escher, I figured maybe I had to switch back to Banner to solve this puzzle.
This game punishes you for trying anything. Every new thing you discover comes with two guesses as to what to do with it, and then it’s instant death. Start over from the beginning. Remember, this isn’t like a normal video game where it’s kind of fun to run through an area again. You’re just typing the exact same commands in the exact same order to earn another two guesses as to what a lunatic thinks you do with an egg.
Through means I do not understand and could never replicate I did stumble across an interdimensional bureaucrat just hanging out in his quantum office. I thought I knew what to do here, but once again we see even the most basic logic is outright rejected:
In frustration, I simply typed “go west” eight hundred times, and then an anthill appeared. Clearly. Clearly!
That may seem out of left field, but that’s actually a reference to the classic philosophical essay GO WEST UNTIL ANTS by Franky Beefsteak, in his collection I CLAIM THIS LIBRARY BATHROOM UNDER SQUATTER’S RIGHTS published by the bathroom mirror and his own ruptured hemorrhoid blood.
I mean, obviously space ants.
Welp, those are my two guesses. Time to die.
O.K. Ants attack eyes. The game considered this such a foregone conclusion that it didn’t even warrant an exclamation point. Madness has become so routine to this author he no longer bothers transcribing the sounds he hears inside his skull as the amoebas eat his brain. “Chewing memories,” he types, “eat eat eat first kiss; gnaw summer camp. You get it.” His every waking moment is plagued by hovering flesh orbs that scream in his mother’s voice and it happened so gradually he never even learned that was weird. “Haha right,” he’ll add to a coworker’s anecdote about missing the train, “and then you gotta deal with the mommyballs negging you all the way to work!” He’ll hold his hand up for a high five and then bite off an ear when he doesn’t get one.
Jesus, I cannot live here, inside the dream journal of a man dying of xenon poisoning. We must get out.
Let’s trace our steps: First we tip back in our chair to Hulk, get anti-Hulk gassed, then bite our lip to Hulk again so we can survive Neon Canada. Next we wander aimlessly through the Children’s Activity Zone on the back of a Denny’s kid’s menu until we anger the bureaucrat. We go west until ants but not until ants attack eyes. Maybe we flee? We flee back to the Activity Zone and then read the sign that tells us to drop all our gems. Yes, that’s it! We just drop our gems and corrupt the game file.
The end!
Right? That actually seems like a pretty good ending. I’ll accept that.
But a game-breaking glitch is indistinguishable from storytelling in this reboot of Alice in Wonderland as told by a hobo who wears a tin foil grill for his electric teeth, so I looked up a walkthrough.
It turns out no, it’s not supposed to crash, and no, it doesn’t make more sense after this. Here’s a little snippet from the walkthrough. You just:
GO DOME, DROP FAN, GET GEM, W, GET GEM, BITE LIP (until you see
Dr. Strange), BITE LIP (until he points at the baseboard), EXAMINE
BASEBOARD, PLUG OUTLET, USE WAX, BITE LIP, ASK STRANGE (until he tells you to remember your worst nightmare), ASK STRANGE (until he leaves, dropping a gem), GET GEM, GET WAX, E, BITE LIP, GO TUNNEL, E, DROP GEM, DROP GEM, DROP GEM, DROP GEM, REMEMBER NIGHTMARE (you become incredibly strong), S (until you reach the field without mesh on the dome and without ants), GO DOME, W, PULL RING, E, BITE LIP, GO TUNNEL, E (to ‘Fuzzy Area’), REMEMBER NIGHTMARE, N (you stand in an underground room), EAT EGG (before it explodes!)
Right, I should have figured that out. I just go into a coy lip bite loop which arouses Dr. Strange so much that he alerts me to the existence of baseboards, and then I remember my worst nightmare while biting my lip to get super strong so I can eat the exploding space egg. Of course. They say hindsight is 20/20, and they also say the bus driver is the secret king of Reverse USA, which is why you have to spit in the coin slot to corrupt his copper hoard so he can’t forge the wires of the vaccination satellite. Both very good points.
There were supposed to be twelve of these games, complete with tie-in comics from Marvel, but they put out three and then the entire company went out of business. I know that seems like a sudden out of left field ending but ANTS ATTACK EYES.
…
This post was brought to you thanks to a hot tip from Hot Dog Johnny Unusual, and by our fine sponsor and Hot Dog Supreme, Neil Bailey: The only man alive tough enough to EAT EGG.
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Punching Day: The Best of 2020 🌭
It’s day two of the great comedy retrospective, where we look back at all the amazing jokes we brought to this screaming, stinking pukefight of a year. Today we celebrate the king of arm movements: The punch. The wave is all right, the wank is pretty good, but nothing beats a punch because if it does, it gets punched. It’s Punching Day! Punching Day is a surprisingly flexible thing, lending itself to everything from actual martial arts training manuals to wrestling cartoons, from video games to Patrick Swayze’s dick game, which has been qualified as “the punching of fucking.” Let’s take a look!
Chaz carries “dad lost in an electric slide” energy with him even when he’s alone in a studio. The man who brags about advanced martial dancers performing impossible feats of sweet, improvised moves looks confused in the two-step routine he himself invented. Chaz is a robot developed by ’90s stand-up scientists to archive how white people be dancing.
Man Comics Presents… Pouch Hopfucker!
How to Protect Yourself & Survive
In 1979, the streets feared only one thing: author Sidney Filson. She wrote HOW TO PROTECT YOURSELF & SURVIVE: from one woman to another which made all other books look like frivolous indulgences. This is 151 pages of kill-danger’s-dick-with-car-keys Karate. When star scavengers are one day picking through the remains of human civilization, they will use this book as an archaeological marker to determine which woman died last.
The Stunts of Steven Seagal’s Kill Switch
Even in his prime, Steven Seagal ran like a Tyrannosaurus losing control of its hula hoop. Now that he’s an elderly man hiding his mass under a two-person centaur costume, the idea of filming him in a rush is unthinkable. So whenever he’s hurrying, the film replaces his movement with flashes of him teleporting across the screen. So when he’s in a chase scene it abruptly changes from a film about a cop chasing a killer to a stop motion animation about the ghost of a rock n’ roll pig haunting the dark alleys of Memphis, Tennessee.
Hulk Hogan’s Rock ’N Wrestling Sketches
The sound design for Rock ‘n’ Wrestling is what the inside of your head is like in hell. Instead of laugh tracks we get ghostly, disconnected guitar riffs that signify both everything and nothing. They’re your cue to laugh, cry, transition scenes, or get to your bunkers because Macho Man Randy Savage is headed this way and the watchtower guards thought he looked lonely through the spyglass. Sound effects are chosen at random, happen at random, and present at random volumes — there are slide whistles in total stillness, wacky Scooby-Doo scrabbling noises in the middle of sentences, boings when somebody sits down and bicycle horns when they walk through doors. This show is not scored, it is haunted by the ghost of a sound engineer who died trying to cut together Rowdy Roddy Piper’s insane yapping into a credible sentence.
Steven Seagal’s World of Warships
Why does nothing fit him? Do they not make frog-closure jackets for Weebles? He looks like somebody’s squeezing a tube of shithead toothpaste.
If Night Man feels like a cheap store-brand ripoff of Batman that’s because this is a Malibu title, and Malibu is the Malt-O-Meal of comic imprints. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Eat shit, Malibu. I know the company is defunct, I know that society and good taste and justice have won out, but this is like hunting Nazis in 1960s Argentina. You’re not allowed to just commit atrocities and retire. This is Hunters shit, and it’s not over until I knock on your door with a copy of Mantra and a pistol.
Everyone in the Exiles sucks so hard it’s difficult to overstate. I’ll try: They suck so hard, if they were an album they’d be Imagine Dragons ironically covering NWA songs. They suck so hard, if they were a car they’d be a brown Nissan Juke. It’s not enough! They’d be a Nissan Juke with one of those family stickers in the window, only every member would be a Calvin peeing on a smaller Calvin until the final Calvin, who has to pee on himself. They suck so hard, if they were a sex scandal they’d be Martin Shkreli caught masturbating in a Foot Locker. Fuck! Nothing is landing. You’ll just have to meet them.
Here’s how Glen jumps:
The Bouncing World of Road House
Road House is not the Citizen Kane of bouncer movies. Citizen Kane is the Road House of newspaper movies. This is my third and possibly final column in the series I’m calling, “How The Eighties Convinced Men They Could Murder Their Way To A Bigger Cock, Inadvertently Causing All Of Our Problems Today,” and let’s just say there’s a reason historians refer to the eighties as the Road House of decades.
…
This article was brought to you by our fine sponsors and Hot Dog Supremes: Rhia, Dean Costello, Nick Ralston, John, Jeff Atwood, Aidan Mouat, Adrienne Hisbrook, and Zachary Evans. The ultimate fighting team, whose group attack “The Punch Orgy” earned them the title “Least Desired Opponents.”
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Kung Fu for Girls
Being a writer is hard. There’s a lot of self-doubts that can creep in. You start asking yourself, why am I doing this? Is what I’m writing actually any good? Which is why a book like Kung Fu For Girls: Self Defense With Style is so comforting. The author of this book clearly knows nothing about Kung Fu, or girls, or style. He’s just some guy who saw a Jackie Chan movie once and went for it.
It’s a good reminder that writing isn’t about talent. It’s about confidence, luck, and being the type of person who will dedicate your book to someone called “Mad Dave.”
Usually, when you pick up a book on self-defense, there’s a long bio of the author, including an itemized list of every ass they’ve ever kicked. It’s an explanation for why this person is qualified to write this book. A good bio for the author of Kung Fu For Girls would be something like:
Instead, the author of Kung Fu For Girl’s credentials remain a mystery. We’ll never know what clown school taught Simon Harrison that women can only learn self-defense if you treat us like morons or six-year-olds. The tips all assume that women will stop listening after five minutes if you don’t bring the topic back around to shopping or something cute.
Which is why the main principle taught in Kung Fu for girls is KISSIE KISSIE, an acronym for Keep It Simple, Simple Is Effective. The author advises women to “say KISSIE KISSIE to yourself over and over.” I like to imagine all Kung Fu masters are doing that as they crane kick dudes in the neck.
After explaining KISSIE KISSIE (the second KISSIE is silent), the introduction says, “Kung Fu For Girls can be your pocket bodyguard. Carry it around with you, and it will help you take care of yourself wherever you are.” I don’t know how this book is supposed to help you defend yourself. Are you supposed to consult it while fighting someone? If that’s the case, they really should have included a chapter on reading while being stabbed.
You might have assumed that the phrase “self-defense with style” was a metaphor, but no, this book literally tells you to attack a man with a tube of mascara, lipstick, or a comb. As if I wouldn’t understand that shoving literally anything into someone’s eye is painful. I don’t mean to say that stabbing someone in the eye with mascara is a bad idea. I do that shit to myself all the time, so I know it’s painful.
I love the fact that the end of number five on Handbag Kung Fu says, “try not to run into too many rapists, muggers, or murderers, in one journey!” Damn, I guess my trip to Sin City is canceled. Thanks for the great advice!
You might have noticed there’s an entire page devoted to beating a man with your cell phone. This book was written in 2004—the bygone days when a cell phone was sturdy enough to kill a man. Today the best you can hope for is blinding an attacker with the flecks of broken glass from your shattered attack phone.
This page also includes another list of the same stuff that a woman might have on her to fend off an attacker: pens, keys, pencils, combs, but it also adds bits of old wood. Who does he think is getting attacked here? Buffy The Vampire Slayer?
Don’t worry, Kung Fu For Girls isn’t full of advice that’s unhelpful because it’s so extremely obvious. Sometimes the advice is unhelpful because it’s so extremely specific. Like this page on what to do if you and one other woman get into a fight with an entire bar full of thugs who have never heard of ducking.
The only place this exact scenario makes any sense is in a ’90s Charlie’s Angels movie. All of the scenarios in the book have a weirdly descriptive quality. “You dozed off on the train. When you wake up, a scary man in a nylon tracksuit, white loafers, and no socks has placed his hand on your thigh.”
Why does what he’s wearing matter? This seems to indicate that the issue with the man placing his hand on your thigh while you’re sleeping is that he’s dressed like a real nerd. If he’d worn socks MAYBE, maybe this would be ok, but white loafers and no socks? This guy needs an ass-kicking.
If the scenario were, “you dozed off on the train. When you wake up, a scary man wearing a bespoke Armani suit, black loafers, and fancy black socks made by the sad Kardashian brother has placed his hand on your thigh,” would the solution just be, girl, you better lock that shit down now?
Another thing I don’t like about the examples is that the drawings are kinda horny. For most of the book, the woman illustrated to demonstrate movies is wearing pants, like on the cover, but as soon as we get to the part where she’s rolling around on the ground, they made sure to draw her in a skirt, with her underwear showing, which seems super necessary for educational self-defense purposes.
Also, every time the book advises to kick a guy in the dick, they really outline precisely where the dick that’s being kicked is. As if the reader needs to see the exact location of the dick in a diagram to properly kick it. Is he hoping we think the dick is located fourteen inches down his left pant leg?
Wait, he does? Oh, I get it! The author’s credentials are so clear now! This is the only book for women about fending off perverts that’s written and illustrated by an authentic pervert!
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The Magic of Martial Arts 🌭
Maybe you’ve always known this in your heart, but Karate is magic. And I don’t mean it has elements of ritualized mysticism– I mean it will give you a Chinese accent and the power to teleport children into and out of your Karate lair. I’m very excited to show you 1996’s The Magic of Martial Arts.
Karate is already violence we teach children, but The Magic of Martial Arts adapts it for kids. It speaks directly to an audience who believes their puppets come to life at night, and it’s singularly insane. It’s hosted by a man named Master Eastwest who is what happens when you combine the mystical orange belts of the East with the unearned confidence of the West.
My copy comes from an Ocean County library that described it as “DISCARDED.” And when a New Jersey librarian decides you’re trash, I know better than to put you in my VCR. So I did what any genius would do– I wired a trophy and a hot dog computer up to a yin-yang bird bath and projected the VHS tape from that. You can build one of these at home yourself if you believe enough in your Karate, and get your trophy and your sensei’s permission first.
The character of Master Eastwest is brought to life by Brandon Scott, an actor who once played a magician on an episode of WKRP in Cincinnati and who went on to become a “controversial UFO investigator.” He is affecting a voice like he came into the audition going, “AH SO SOLLY, ME MISTAH KARATE,” and the director said, “I love it, but take it down haaaaaalf a notch.”
After the tape tells you to go get your parents, Master Eastwest appears in a turquoise gi with dolphins on the arms and legs along with a rainbow yin-yang headband. In 1996, this was the exact costume children dressed their social studies homework in, so it reads less like “profound mysticism” and more like “ordinary Trapper Keeper.” He sings a ballad about Karate leading you down a path of mental freedom that turns into a bouncy melody about always running away from fights. If the key grip came into frame and said, “Not sure when you’ll see this, but sorry I couldn’t be there on your birthday, Brandon! There should be some Tuna Helper in the garage!,” I’d still think, “No one will ever be more disappointed than a viewer who rented this hoping to learn how to kick ass. They will never trust anyone or anything ever again.”
Master Eastwest is thousands of years old– the living spirit of Oriental fighting arts. From China to Japan, whenever an Asian was killed by hands or feet, Master Eastwest was there. “Wow,” two child actors add. None of this should be necessary to demonstrate the appeal of jump kicks to children, but Master Eastwest’s amalgamation of Oriental philosophies and sorceries seems very important to the filmmakers. It’s well-meaning racists whose exposure to Asian culture came from the safety warning on their throwing stars and nothing else, and normally that would just be my opinion. But I think this is a special case where I can conclusively prove The Magic of Martial Arts fails at its cultural appropriation.
As I mentioned, this tape was once in a public library, meaning it was given a Dewey Decimal Classification: 796.8. This categorizes it as “Combat Sports,” probably since there wasn’t a code for “Karate Kids Music But Weirder Than That Sounds.” But you know what there is a code for? “Oriental martial arts forms.”
Look, I get this is a weird digression, but I think it’s important. A librarian saw this VHS tape adorned with Eastern symbolism, made by a man dressed like a Cedar Creek Chinatown window jumping up and down and screaming he’s from the Orient, and they decided no– the state of New Jersey finds this to be not Oriental. It’s bureaucratically savage. It’d be like a record store putting Vanilla Ice in the “Comedy & Exercise” section.
Anyway, I rest my case, but after Master Eastwest, the legally not Oriental spirit of the Orient, explains his origin story, it cuts to two kids to reveal this was all a story being told by a young boy to the world’s most credulous girl. And since these filmmakers believe in magic, not second takes, the actress responds, “Wow. He’s ancient fossil.” He’s… he’s what? That’s what you got from all that? You know, this whole conversation is nuts. Let me show it to you, carefully transcribed, word-for-word:
This girl was told a lengthy history of a prehistoric Karate ghost who hides among us like a man and lives somewhere in a cave, and she is so eager to go there and be with him she promises. Fans of English will recognize that as a phrase missing a few words. What did she promise? Well, long after she makes it, the video explains this promise is to only use Karate when your life is in danger. It’s obviously a necessary step when becoming a living weapon, but presented like this it’s a reminder that children don’t have the best judgement. After all, this one heard an impossible story about a lonely white man who writes his own songs about cowardice and she is willing to do or swear anything to get into his cave to learn the most ordinary childhood skill.
She is transported inside, alone and confused. I don’t know how time works in the Karate cave, but she’s there at least long enough to consider how this might have been a mistake. Suddenly, Master Eastwest appears in her face! Facing the wrong way! Improvising Kung Fu movements! Casting a black girl in the role of “Kid Still Fucking Standing Here While This Bullshit Happens” was probably a mistake!
Master Eastwest eventually starts teaching everyone Karate after he’s certain you’ll never use it under any circumstances. It’s safe to say it’s not good Karate, maybe worse than pointless, but it gets kids worried about strangers murdering them in caves. Far too late for them, but maybe not for you.
Master Eastwest, or Señor Chinoracisto as he’s called in the South, starts by teaching one of the most important aspects of Karate– ducking. Well, not exactly teaching. He asks you to stand up and starts punching you in the face screaming, “DUCK! … DUCK! … DUCK! … DUCK!”
Maybe this is a New Jersey librarian thing to say, but if you change the word “DUCK!” to racial slurs, this is probably the same way Master Eastwest’s father taught him how to respect other cultures. So depending on how you interpreted “duck” you either know how to slip straight punches or you’ve trained yourself to bow directly into them. Either way, there is no door leading out of this cave, so it’s time to move on to screaming. Wait, first, let’s use our Karate to conjure juice.
Okay, now for screaming.
The “Kiai” is an expression of your Karate power! It’s awkward! Embarrassing! These unattended children abducted by magic from around the globe fucking love it!
Master Eastwest, a Dutch name meaning “Chow Mein Pizza,” isn’t really specific about punching and ducking, but there are a lot of things to go over when it comes to screaming. Unfortunately, no one is listening because he forgot to tell these kids what they’re supposed to do with their body during a kiai. It’s a loophole one awesome kid takes full advantage of by putting his entire soul into a kick with each scream. Little Dernell is kicking so hard he has to stop and put his outfit back together after each one. And while the failed birthday magician explains some long, secret history of Oriental shrieks, the other children become way more interested in young Dernell who clearly knows what Karate is all about.
The tape shows a few real world applications of Karate, like running away from school bullies or destroying the dick of a full grown adult mugger, but my favorite one comes when the little girl from earlier, who promised, gets a toy snatched away by her little sister and immediately threatens to kick her to death. Master Eastwest knew she was going to do this, so he followed her home and hid behind her couch. He leaps up, fingering the Karate Alarm!
Niaje’ steps back and stands at attention. She knows this person as the man who teaches her Karate in a cave. But her sister? To her, this is a white madman in her home– she has no reason to think she’s going to live. And remember, this is an Asian ghost who claims he can hear any child on the planet and teleport. So they should make a note of how this guy was just crouching behind their couch, waiting. “Kids, my Oriental powers are too depleted to warp back to my cave! There’s only one thing that can restore my abilities! I need to find… oh, but you couldn’t possibly be able to help, unless… no, there’s no way you have… a mommy’s swimsuit from the laundry?”
Master Eastwest reminds Niaje’ about her promise to never use Karate unless her life is in danger. And then, as if to prove she still doesn’t know when that will be, stays in her living room and starts dancing. He performs a song called “Three Deep It Out,” which is a fist-pumping Karate song about taking three deep breaths to calm yourself down. The girls know it and join in, and it is no exaggeration to say if their parents came home during this performance, they would react as if seeing their daughters neck-deep in the mouth of a boa constrictor.
I think I’ve made a strong case for how this shit is all the way crazy, but haven’t sold you on it being all the way racist yet. Fine, but what if I told you they stopped the vague Eastern mysticism to circle around two children while they performed an African dance for no reason, with no setup or explanation? You might say “nonsense,” or “You’re– y-you must be mistaking some common hip hop moves for Afric–“
Let me stop you right there, racist Karate apologist. Look at this:
Those kids are at the Zamunda consulate auditioning for Prince Akeem Joffer’s wedding. This is something that would get Rachel Dolezal to say, “A wonderful, enriching time was had by all at the Spokane Cultural Center.” Artistically speaking, this is like trying to whisper in your sleeping wife’s ear, “Karate can bring every culture in the world together,” but accidentally spraying a diarrhea swastika onto her biography of Martin Luther King, Jr. while you bite her ear off.
The last third of this tape is dance performances and awkward sparring matches demonstrating how ineffective Master Eastwest’s self-defense techniques are against even the gentlest untrained 8-year-olds. He watches silently from a rock as the children tug on one of the boys, not explaining if it’s a training drill or some kind of metaphor. If he turned around to grin at the camera and said, “This is absolutely a sex thing,” it would actually ease my mind a little.
It’s time to wrap up their musical self-defense VHS tape, so from a very normal place, the tender arms of her cave Karate teacher, a little Asian girl tells Master Eastwest, “I wanna be just like you when I grow up.”
Master Eastwest tells her, “You already are.”
She responds to this troubling insanity with the lack of surprise you can only get from untalented child actors and asks, “I am?”
“Yes,” he clarifies, before transporting her and all the kids into a forest where he has changed into his non-Karate clothes and a toupee.
Huh? He’s… got a secret identity? Or is this an innocent man who was only temporarily hosting the being known as Master Eastwest? The children are confused too. Was this his last act of Karate magic? Were they given drugs that are finally wearing off? Who made your wig, new guy? A New Jersey librarian’s back?
He tells the kids Master Eastwest also lives inside each one of them, but it comes across more like a warning or a curse than an inspiration they can take with them. Stripped of all his rainbows, dolphins, and baldness, these kids are starting to realize there’s something off about this Chinese-voiced white guy. “Surprise! Your first instincts were right! I’m an ordinary guy who is going to kill you!”
Whoever this man who was once Master Eastwest is, he looks like a police sketch of a driver who vanished with a full school bus. He’s dressed like he bought his outfit from a clerk at Party City who said, “Where did you find this? I thought they discontinued the ‘pedophile’ costume.” I have more questions, Rainbow Tribe Productions! Why did the plot call for this? To teach us anyone can decide to be a magical racist with lethal hands and feet even if they’re not allowed within 500 feet of a playground? To whom would that be a comfort? Is there a couple out there right now thinking, “Dernell left for that Karate video shoot 24 years ago. It’s weird he’s not back yet.”
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This article is brought to you by our fine sponsor and Hot Dog Supreme, Lane Haygood: Also known as Master Northsouth, an offensive collection of stereotypes about Swedes and Chileans.