Category: TEAMWORKING DAY

Teamworking Day: Cocktails 🌭

Post author By 1900HOTDOG
Post date 02/18/2021
18 Comments on Teamworking Day: Cocktails 🌭

Cocktails is the trailer for a show that was never made because this world is an unceasing tragic parade of missed opportunities and live-action anime adaptations. It’s a teaser for an epic gay drama made by a man named Ron Merk, who looks like an excommunicated Keebler Elf (the cracker and flatbread elves are a notoriously repressed people). Instead of just shopping an idea around, Merk decided he was going to make a seven minute testament to unintentional comedy. It’s going to seem like Too Many Cooks set in The Stud, but I promise you: This is completely real and totally earnest. Ron Merk is still trying to get this made, and if there’s any justice in this world, he will succeed.

It’s always recommended that you read Teamworking Days stripped down to your 1-900-🌭 Official Rubber Panties (Unisex) but that’s doubly true today because this article is going to be…

Brockway: Don’t give up in the first few minutes where Ron Merk just tells the extremely boring story behind the inception of Cocktails, which is that he discovered the San Francisco gay bar scene late in life and mistakenly assumed he’d uncovered a secret society, instead of a punchline from a 1997 Bob Saget standup routine. It’s worth watching just to hear Merk reverently tell of that time a friend demanded he call his show about gay bartender stories Cocktails. I don’t know if Ron doesn’t get the pun, or if he thinks the pun is deeper than it is, but he delivers that line with absolutely no humor. He reads that one line so straight that if his family could see it, they’d finally invite him back to the knothole for Elvesgiving.

Seanbaby: So the entire sizzle reel is a pointless explanation of how this was once a reality show project about gay bartenders. Maybe after seeing how the life of a Castro bartender is a single gasp of air every 700 vodka stingers, the producer thought, “What if we just made a show with actors?” And then he thought, “What if instead of only being about sassy men of leisure, it was about everything.”

The preview then does something I’ve never seen before– instead of setting up the plot or showing exciting moments, it introduces every single character and teases every single one of their mysterious secrets. It is an onslaught of drama without context starring the Bay Area’s most available community theater actors. It is a blinding, unfiltered look inside an uncreative mind’s proudest ideas. By the end, you’ll start to see the show’s plot form, but this seems to be entirely by accident. We should just get started because there are four million of them and the less you know going in the better. Here are The Characters of Cocktails, unedited and in their entirety:

Seanbaby: The very first character we meet is Detective Chuck O’Brien, whose only complications are his uncontrollable horniness and his obsession to catch a serial killer. His eyes dart in every direction. He’s going to get himself San Francisco’s most elusive murderer or a soft-lipped twink, whichever he sees first.

Brockway: That porkpie hat and soul patch combo is also out of control, Chuck. This was filmed in 2011, well past the sexpiration date for husky narcs into Reel Big Fish. I love how Chuck frantically looks in every direction when the subtitles mention a serial killer. Like he’s going to be in eyeshot. Clearly Ron Merk told the City College of San Francisco’s 17th greatest actor to pretend like he’s looking for something, and wisely cut the take where Chuck mimed pulling out a giant spyglass and tracking imaginary footprints.

Seanbaby: This guy’s backstory is that he fucks too much to be a pop singer. I can’t tell if that’s good writing, or the best writing.

Brockway: Oh man, one of these characters is into hard drugs and sex? What compelling drama! I look forward to exploring his downward spiral as others around him struggle with their own issues, unable to relate to his addictions.

Seanbaby: I bet someone in 1990 would feel comfortable making a joke about the show’s only African American faking a gender transition to trick her drug dealer. All I have to offer is, “You named the black character Jet? Were there no copies of Hype Hair in your cardiologist’s office?”

Brockway: This is what’s beautiful about Cocktails, and also why we have 73 characters left to go. Nothing is left off the page. If there’s a drug dealer hunting Jet, he’s a character. Now he’s in the show. He gets his own two-slide bio that maybe mentions how he left his keys with a valet. Now the valet’s in the show. He wants to be the battleprince of gay roller derby, but his rival, Skate Winslet, will not let that happen. Now Skate Winslet’s in the show, and he’s got a terrible secret, he’s actually Quince Waithwhite, billionaire heir to-

Brockway: “Hey, so I only got like four seconds to show this guy haunted by guilt and the suicide of his son. How should I frame this? Just have him standing inches behind a young man and staring intently? Yeah, that’s probably the best way to communicate that complicated emotion in this trailer featuring 47 other gay men staring lustily at each other’s backs.”

Seanbaby: “Okay, ladies, that’s three blended margaritas and I miss my boy. You want me to run the card or hold onto it because it’s my fault he’s dead? Cheers, girls, and as memories fade, how much longer will I still hear his voice?”

Brockway: And now you see where Cocktails starts to go off the cockrails. What kind of childhood accident turns you into a smoldering doppelganger? What kind of bartender can only mimic the actions of others? How does anybody get a drink and not just a mocking impression of their own order? I’m being too hard on Skip. Skip is the life of every party, since his Mimic ability allows you to doublecast Meteo.

Seanbaby: I hope Skip is central to the show. Do his powers only work for celebrity impressions, or could he rob a bank after staring at the world’s greatest safecracker? I’d love it if every episode’s B-plot was Skip stumbling into football games or pit fights. At first he would look confused and helpless, but then the camera would push in on his smirk. He’s seen everything he needs. He could save the bar by making a high-stakes bet against Brian Boitano who would say, “Impossible! W-who taught you how to dance on the ice like that?” And Skip would smirk, “You just did.” Holy shit, maybe his power could also work on motorcycles?

Brockway: I know this show hasn’t even happened yet, but Skip needs his own spin-off. I would absolutely devour the weekly adventures of Skip Slippins: Homosexual Copycat.

Brockway: One of the best things about Cocktails is how they slip a dud in there once in a while just to keep the pacing from going flat. If every single character is slamming dope straight into their eyeballs just to get the energy they need to strip for the Pope, you might get bored with it. You need a break from the drama just so you can appreciate it better. Jed Peterson is here to give you that break.

Seanbaby: Yeah, I didn’t even fucking write a joke for Jed and Austin.

Brockway: I have a theory that most of the duds are here to be cannon fodder to up the stakes. Beau Boudreau will make it to the very last episode on the strength of that name alone, but I promise you Merrick Da Silva will die in episode 3 just to teach Skip that you can mimic a lot of things, but can you mimic… love?

Seanbaby: Let’s say you met a stranger in a men’s room who offered to take you to dinner and then spent the entire meal bringing you to climax with his foot before holding you close all night. If after four days of sharing stories and making love you said, “Buddy, what’s with all the Adam Lambert songs on your playlist? Are we using your girlfriend’s iTunes or something?” you would have better gaydar than MERRICK DA SILVA’s wife.

Brockway: She’s sharing this on Facebook with the caption “my beautiful man just goofing around with his friends!” She pretends to laugh at all the eggplant emojis, but they haunt her. They do haunt her.

Brockway: So if I’m reading this right, Flavio is a stage persona that itself has a drag queen persona? We’re doing meta-personas? This counts exponentially, Cocktails. This is like sixteen characters. You’ve burned sixteen characters on Mocha De La Creme.

Seanbaby: I’ve never seen a screenshot that so clearly says, “Ay, you know what it’s like growing up gay and Latino with eleven sisters? Snap, what, they treated Flavio exactly like one of the girls! Oh, but they remembered Flavio was a boy when they needed something heavy lifted, right? It’s like, AYUDA AYUDA, FLAVIO! I FELL IN THE TOILET, FLAVIO! Um, heh, that’s not the kind of wet asshole Flavio is interested in, Abuelita! Snap, what? Ay ay ay, THAT’S an hamburguesa con queso. Ay gracias, San Francisco! I’m Flavio! Get home safe, but not before buying a “Snap, what?” shirt by the door! And THAT’S an hamburguesa con queso!” Like if he’s not saying word-for-word –exactly that– in the first screenshot, I will drink this entire can of Mocha De La Creme Ready-to-Drink Wet Asshole Gin Cocktail.

Brockway: I should probably be worried that this is racially insensitive, but mostly I just want to find a way to say I’m on that Duolingo lesson, too. I’ll try to work sandwich de pescado in here somewhere.

Seanbaby: So you’re telling me Jessica’s main personality traits are “Has no idea her husband is gay,” and “Uses drugs and alcohol to cope with how the first one’s not true?” Great. But this casting choice seems to demonstrate how few women the producers know. This actress is a Cat Mom or a Bride’s Friend #7, not a Death-Spiralling Junkie. Her copy should say:

Brockway: Jessica, you’re going to die in episode two in some kind of mechanical bull accident just to show Merrick that being true to yourself is the most important thing of all. And he’s not going to learn that, so he’ll die an episode later to that same bull. You’re both duds. Dead, dead duds.

Not like this delicious sandwich de pe-

No, I’m forcing it. I’m sorry. It’ll happen organically.

Brockway: He looks like he’s finding out about the second part of his character description right there in that frame. Holy shit, can Dante… can Dante read his own subtitles? Is Dante the fourth-wall breaking Deadpool of the Cocktails universe? Quick, jump down and warn Shimon that the Rabbi suspects! The Rabbi suspects!

Seanbaby: What’s a dream that would require your lover to never sing again? Another vocalist up for a spot in Bearmeat Danny and the Doughy Bad Beards? An aspiring podcaster sharing a studio apartment? Being a guy whose dying wish was for Dante to shut the fuck up? YoU gAve uP a gREat sInGIng caReEr tO MaKe YoUr lOVEr’s drEaM cOme tRUe? Dante, your bio sounds like a Facebook message you wrote after someone from glee club asked if you still sing.

Seanbaby: So Rosa is a lesbian. And her girlfriend, Jet, is a man, but only when she’s hiding from her drug dealer or her in-laws. I guess I get it, but I’m worried the writer doesn’t? This isn’t so much a spectrum of sexuality as a series of puzzles and tricks. Like a corn maze with a nude intruder.

Brockway: No I got it, she’s a lesbian who thinks she’s falling in love with a man and reconsidering her sexuality but she shouldn’t, because that man is a woman so actually — wait, she could think she’s straight but then falls in love with the woman behind the man she… Look, it’s just C-talk, baby.

This is already seven more characters than any show in history. Are we getting close to done?

Seanbaby: We’re not even done with the characters who are also other characters.

Seanbaby: This motherfucker’s real name is the sound Michael Jackson made when he grabbed his dick and he decided to call his shock jock character “SHOCK JOCK?” Who’s your co-host? A guy named Mamasaymamasaw Mamamoosah whose Habesha family doesn’t know he’s “CONTROVERSIAL SIDEKICK?” And who’s your band leader? “CARLOS HORNBLOW? He is the greatest trumpet player in the world… but El Cartel has sworn to kill his daughter if he ever plays again?”

Brockway: I’m not going to make fun. Sometimes when I can’t think of a character name I write a placeholder and forget about it, too. It sucks when you submit a manuscript and the editor tells you she doesn’t get how EXTREMELY HORNY ULTIMATE WARRIOR DON’T FORGET TO FIX THIS is relevant to Janet’s emotional arc.

Seanbaby: Seriously, though, what a revealing look into a lazy writer’s process this is. It’s like the only work he did was an hour of inserting his karaoke friends into a spreadsheet and he’s sure the show is all but made. I feel like I’m reading a sidebar under the words “Meet the characters from Rob Liefeld’s All-New X-N-Forcers, bursting into a comic shop near you in Fall of 1999!”

Brockway: Okay, I’m here now. I’m in the river of characters that is Cocktails. The river that will never end, that will flow forever, the river I was born in and that I float in now and will one day die in, washed until I disintegrate and my bones tumble to pieces so that the fish may feed so that the fisherman may feed on the fish. I am the sandwich de pescado. I am to be devoured and shat and flushed into the river again, because this is all there is. It’s only the river. There has never been anything but the Cocktails roll call.

Seanbaby: Weird. I haven’t noticed any effects from reading all these mysterious twists…

… while on the trail of the shark who knows my father’s real name.

Seanbaby: Great job, MIKE LARSEN. From among this massive group of uninteresting community theater actors, you’re the one that made the director say, “This guy is perfect for the role I didn’t come up with anything cool for.” All of these characters manage a gay bar in San Francisco and have parents who hate them. This is like being introduced with Rob Liefeld’s X-N-Forcers and your only power is “shares an outdoor space with the X-N-Forcers.”

Brockway: What happened here? I feel like a template fucked up. Ron Merk had a spreadsheet with 940 characters and seventeen thousand random personality traits ranging from hard drugs to sex to shapeshifter, and somebody forgot to fill out Mike Larsen. Even his name sucks. Mike Larsen is the guy in front of you at the DMV who wants to know the history of license plates. Mike Larsen is the sound you make as you barely orgasm from difficult masturbation. Mike Larsen is so forgettable that it’s… suspicious.

Oh. Mike Larsen is the serial killer. Chuck! Look down, you were right! He was within eyeshot!

Brockway: Holy shit the guy trying to kill Jet is also Rosa’s cousin! Everything is related to everything. This is a nest of snakes eating each other and themselves. This whole show is just a gay remix of the “I’m My Own Grandpa” song.

Seanbaby: “Rosa, your new boyfriend… Jet. He seems ah… familiar. He reminds me of a… woman I once knew. And I notice he ah… purchased your tampons quickly as if he knew the type to get and did not have to read the box. Curious. Perhaps it is nothing. Or perhaps I, the murderer hunting a woman with your boyfriend’s face, will pursue this suspicion more and more over the course of the season.”

Brockway: …She’s learning pottery!

Fucking Cousin Shelly, we have like eighteen gay drug dealing hard murderers living quintuple lives – you cannot be coy with your twist this late in the game.

Seanbaby: She’s the only one not actively abusing drugs or murdering, and in the context of Cocktails that counts as “a wonderful secret.”

Brockway: Wait, was that Cousin Shelley’s wonderful secret? Because that is a starting point for like four characters already. “Used to be a man” is nothing — that’s the setup for the audience to be stunned when slide two reveals you’re actually six drones working the strings of a man-sized puppet in the shape of the hottest bartender at SnaXXX. And Papa Behr gets no description? He’s trying to slide through here on Cousin Shelley’s non-secret? You’re both dead in episode one. Cold open. You’re the victims that send Detective Chuck O’Brien on his quest for justice and just ass.

Seanbaby: Any writer who names the group’s gay patriarch character “Papa Behr” definitely has a men’s choir named “Perfect Har-Men-y.” This is something Rob Liefeld would name a guy with bear hands. I’m surprised Shelley didn’t end up getting called “Mommy Gary.”

Seanbaby: The Amulet of Mill Valley lies unclaimed, for while DJ CALIFORNIA is taking female lovers, no one is working to solve the ancient riddle tattooed on his back.

Brockway: DJ California, the Californian DJ, sat down to write a list of potential DJ names for his gigs in California. It was one entry long. “Guess I’m going with DJ California,” he said, to nobody.

Seanbaby: Hey, Eric Ortiz, if you list how you have sex third in your bio after your side gig? You’re not fucking enough. If I was in Cocktails, it would say “SEANBABY – Power fucks you right in your face and writer. There are no limits to his dreams.”

Brockway: “BROCKWAY: Cries before, during, and after — not for himself, but for the genitals he’s destroyed and writer. Once saw two cats that looked alike!”

Seanbaby: That’s it? He’s a drug dealing photographer about to get a killer career opportunity? And “killer” isn’t in quotes? I guess I can solve that mystery then– he’s going to get asked to deal more drugs or take more photographs. John Padderson should team up with Mike Larsen to form some kind of Least Interesting Gays squad. “Mike, I’m home! With good news and Olive Garden. You didn’t finish the puzzle without me, did you? We are having a mild autumn. Did you get my text about the Real Housewives meme but the cat is Garfield.”

Brockway: Okay, now I’m torn. I don’t know much about Ron Merk – I know he knows upwards of fifty-seven gay men willing to be on camera for four seconds each and he’s destined to write this generation’s Gone With the Wind — but I also just feel it to be true that he’s the kind of guy who puts every pun in quotation marks. Maybe also italics, if he’s feeling saucy. If ‘killer’ is not a pun, then the twist of this show is that there are actually two serial murderers hiding in plain sight. I hope they hook up.

Seanbaby: You might remember Wayne Doyle from earlier as the daddy haunted by his son’s suicide. Anyway, it’s sweet when an age-inappropriate romance can blossom between a man with crippling son issues and a man with crippling father issues. I think a psychologist would explain this relationship as not unlike a heroin addict fucking heroin’s sister.

Brockway: This is the creepiest and most confusing relationship dynamic since those two basic bitch serial killers found love in the… last section? That was only one section ago? I am losing touch with time. How long have we been here? Are we dead? I feel like Cocktails is trying to subtly tell us that we might be dead so we can move on to the light without excess trauma.

Brockway: Okay yeah, we’re dead. We’re dead and we’ve accidentally(?) been sent to Gay Limbo. I get it. You didn’t have to make me feel stupid about it, Cocktails.

Seanbaby: Torch songs are usually about a longing for someone who will never love you back, so I think I’ve figured out why Pearl Lee and her man are having so many problems. Or she just likes to make karaoke less fun? Presumably some of these characters have to be “Mariah Carey fan gay” and not “Cocaine sex kidnapper gay.”

Brockway: I am not at all confident in that presumption.

Brockway: “Mr. The Weasel, your closing statements please.”

“[eloquent chittering]”

Seanbaby: I fully admit I have lost my mind. I made this:

Brockway: You’re not going to believe me when I tell you I did not make this:

Brockway: Wait.

Wait.

No, wait.

Wait.

So it goes 27 hard druggin’ hard bangin’ gay men trying to find themselves and then Italian FBI Street Samurai? Where the fuck does Tina Antonucci fit into this dynamic? How is she going to interact with literally any other character? Pearl Lee Gaytes is just good at karaoke. DJ California is the kind of human CalorieMate that plays Semisonic when it’s last call. What the fuck are they going to say to Special Agent Tanya Bushido? “Got any sword polishing tips?” That’s cute one time, Cocktails.

Seanbaby:

Brockway: So several dozen gay men wrestling with their identities, one razorgirl, and now a psychic archangel of the lord? This took such a hard turn from San Francisco’s Sex In The City straight into homosexual Shadowrun. Wait, was Cocktails not being metaphorical when it called Tina part angel? When it said Pearl Lee Gaytes has been to hell and back?! Holy shit is this the gay Supernatural we’ve always needed but never deserved??? Sorry, I mean the gayer Supernatural we’ve always needed but never deserved???

Seanbaby: It’s some kind of miracle that after 780 characters of escalating derangement, Ron Merk still didn’t come close to setting this up. This is nonsense. The only character who even has a religion is Shock Jock, and it’s the wrong one and only for a couple hours a day. Gabriel’s slide might as well say:

Brockway: THE ACTUAL DEVIL! The final character in Cocktails’ exhaustive list of the colorful San Francisco bar scene is the literal biblical devil. I’m assuming they’re not even being cute about telling us he’s a top. Every pitch should end with “oh yeah, AND THE DEVIL.” You name me one show that is not dramatically approved by the logline ending in unexpected Satan.

During a government experiment into time travel, a scientist finds himself trapped in the past, “leaping” into the bodies of different people on a regular basis and sorting out their problems, while accompanied by his wise-cracking sidekick, THE ACTUAL DEVIL.

Eight year-old orphan Beth Harmon is quiet, sullen, and by all appearances unremarkable. That is, until she plays her first game of chess. Her senses grow sharper, her thinking clearer, and for the first time in her life she feels herself fully in control of THE ACTUAL DEVIL.

No ordinary teenager; Raven Baxter can see glimpses of the future! Watch her schemes and misadventures as she enlists the help of friends, including best friends Eddie, Chelsea, and THE ACTUAL DEVIL. That’s So Satan, coming this fall!

Seanbaby:

Tags Free, tv

TEAMWORKING DAY

Teamworking Day: Photon 🌭

BEFORE THERE WAS TIME, THERE WAS…

PHOTON!

That’s how Photon opens. Well, that and a massive pulsing space cock.

Brockway: Photon was the name of the very first laser tag game back in the early ‘80s. Photon was also the name of the tie-in TV show, which explained and promoted laser tag in the least effective way possible. The concept of the game was “children can now shoot each other without need for a half-size coffin and a special sermon from Pastor Ted.” The concept for the show was “there’s a crystal energy force which creates and sustains life in our universe… and we use it to play laser tag.” There was, of course, an evil warlord that wanted to corrupt our precious laser tag mako. What a sinister fiend! What a dire creature!

He kind of looked like somebody strangling a muppet.

Seanbaby: He looks like something that would pop out of Robocop’s chest in a Saturday Night Live Robocop vs. Aliens sketch to say, “Where is the beef, creep.” And then the actual Where’s the Beef lady would walk out in full tactical gear, wait for the applause to die and deliver, “H-hey. robot… Hey, robo-alien. That’s my line.” Then she would fire a prop shotgun at it two seconds before a gun sound effect. “There’s the beef, you bitch,” would scream Jon Lovitz before host Sigourney Weaver walked on to add, “Hey, that’s my line. Ladies and gentlemen… Kenny Loggins!” Hold on, I’m accidentally making this really good. I’m going to go get some of these ideas down, Brockway. I’ll be back in two lazer tag guys!

Brockway: Don’t bring up Kenny Loggins! We’re in the middle of doing a thi-

Yeah, fine. We’re gonna need to give him some Loggins time. Let’s all pretend we don’t know exactly what that means.

All right, well, here are a few of the Warmuppet’s evil henchmen, looking like references I don’t get in the bathroom line at Comic Con.

Brockway: The temptation is toward pity here. Whoever sets out to fight Cybergoth Adam Ant and Reanimated Magikarp better hand out a lot of free swings or they’re going to look like a war criminal. But it’s actually a pretty even battlefield, because here’s our protagonist.

Brockway: Bodhi Li looks like an inspirational story segment in a very special episode of American Gladiators. He fights like he’s joking but he’s worried that your mom is watching and might think he’s serious. He will take every opportunity to do a somersault but he will take zero opportunities to learn how to somersault.

And he is the very best of our squad.

The rest of the hero roll call does not get better. We’ve got…

Pile of Shit in a Hardhat.

Seanbaby: “Ah, thank you for coming in. This is a very wet resume… it says here you’re currently employed as ‘ME FIX THE HOLES IN THE POTTY ON YUGOSLAVIA’S #9 KID’S SHOW.’ What if, Pile of Shit in a Hardhat, I could offer you a position as an assistant laser master? Gassy poop sound? Is that a yes? It is? Great, congratulations!”

Brockway: Yes, this is definitely a Wrong Universe children’s icon. This is what would come back if Bob the Builder went on the Event Horizon ship. He’s the mascot Troom Troom doesn’t know it needs yet.

Next up on our roster of heroes: A Make-A-Wish Kid just now realizing he could have asked for a ride in KITT instead.

Seanbaby: I knew going into this they were going to have a character whose superpower was Being Nine. I don’t know if it’s worth getting to know a character so obviously about to die, and besides, I’m still thinking about Pile of Shit in a Hardhat. His full, wide lips and gentle eyes… I’m wondering if he’s very handsome for a poop monster, or do his people have a grotesque, alien standard of beauty? He’s probably hideous to his own kind. Rising to the very top of a lazer toy game is not a thing you do when you’re a poop monster who fucks.

Brockway: This is crazy. This is pure free association. I can’t even point you to why I think this, much less any kind of evidence this is true. But…

Doesn’t Pile of Shit in a Hardhat kind of look like Rob Lowe?

Like if Rob Lowe banged a caricature artist’s wife and the man’s only impotent path to revenge was through his art?

I don’t mean Rob Lowe looks like a Pile of Shit in a Hardhat! He’s a beautiful man. I just mean that maybe there’s an outside chance that Pile of Shit in a Hardhat is his sewage planet’s Rob Lowe.

Seanbaby: Honestly, I’m glad you disagree because I had no confidence in my take on this. My gut told me this was a poop hunk, but my head told me even in space, you don’t find Rob Lowe playing laser tag.

Brockway: Continuing the roll call, we’ve got some kind of… papier-mache hunchback crocodile pilot?

Brockway: This is a classic case of a failure of imagination meeting one too many things. You wanted to make a cool alien but you started from a boring ‘crocodile man’ point and then just kept fucking him up until you wound up with this Swamp Thing Skeksis. This Michael Bay reboot of a beloved Ninja Turtles villain.

Seanbaby: If I built puppet men, this is how you would know I wasn’t handling my divorce well. I bet they had to re-record the first episode because you could hear the father of this costume’s designer screaming “YOU ARE NOT MY SON!” This looks like a courtroom drawing of an alligator on trial for diarrhea crimes. Are there any guys on this team who fuck?

Brockway: A single finger curls on a monkey’s paw. Meet… Robot Lionel Richie.

Seanbaby: “Photon Master Bodhi Li! Emergency! Emergency! I got too many panties in my intake filter, baby! Bodhi Li, I need your tiny Earth fingers, baby.” I have no notes on Robot Lionel Richie. He’s fantastic, and he proves my theory that “far too much” is the exact right amount of human hair on a robot.

Brockway: See, this is what that shitty crocodile puppet needs to learn: You only need one amazing hook for an iconic character. Lionel Richie plus one other thing is the secret to making an infinite army of badasses. Lionel Richie plus a robot: Lionel Robotchie rules. Lionel Richie plus a jetpack: Flyionel Richie jams. Lionel Richie plus a luchadore: Luchionel Richadore dominates. Lionel Richie plus a lion: Lionel Richie fucks.

In no way equipped to follow Lionel Robotchie is our mandatory strong, competent woman… who is in constant need of rescuing.

Meet — no shit — Tivia, Princess of Nivia.

Seanbaby: Here’s some trivia: Tivia, Princess of Nivia, suffers from basophilia caught via a pizzeria in space Bolivia.

Brockway: Tivia, Princess of Nivia prefers AMD over Nvidia for the way it renders Geralt of Rivia. She’s off sugar and onto Stevia but she still can’t poop without Activia.

Seanbaby: I don’t know enough about Nivia to know how dumb this name is, but it seems like the king of Luxembourg naming his daughter Truxembourg or the deputy mayor of Hackensack naming his daughter Lenny Hackysack. But maybe it’s a testament to the peaceful rule of Nivia where the king’s royal advisers felt comfortable telling him, “Your majesty, you can’t name our goddamn princess Lenny Hackysack. What about a dumb sound that rhymes with our planet? Like Splbbivia… Tivia? Nevermind, Lenny Hackysack is better.”

Brockway: Lets burn through one of Photon’s typical 15-minute episodes: Deadly Thorns.

We’ll jump to one minute in, and Tivia already needs rescuing because the team landed on the flower planet Zakoo and were immediately beaten into submission by large roses. I am not kidding. I am not skipping anything.

Seanbaby: Can you imagine the black heart of the bastard who could have picked anything as the villain and they chose big flowers? This is a universe where a robot can grow a mustache; where a crocodile mother can drink through her entire pregnancy and still raise a certified lazer pilot; and the writer went with roses. What could have inspired it? Did he walk by a romantic dinner and squeal, “What’s that!? That, you fools! That fucking thing on the table between your loving gazes! It’s perfect! I’ve found my show’s villain!”

Brockway: And they get absolutely savaged by these roses. It is not close. All of their weapons are useless against mean plants. Thirty seconds into the battle our main character, Bodhi Li, panics so hard he just fucking takes off.

Seanbaby: Ha ha Bodhi Li sucks. Just blasting lasers blindly in the direction of his friend before abandoning them and falling down. And if I’m understanding his helmet’s visor correctly, it doesn’t protect his face from rose mist? I’ve never seen anyone fuck up anything this hard and I’m an American.

Brockway: I’m going to assume that’s some kind of deadly pollen, which means Bodhi just got fucking wrecked by weaponized plant jizz. He leaves the woman and child for dead and tries to run off into the forest, but it’s too late. He’s going to die how he lived: Being a pussy on several metaphorical levels.

It’s important that you understand I’m not fucking with you while describing this next part. It all happens exactly like this: While Tivia is lying there unconscious, all the sound cuts out and Stevie Wonder’s “Isn’t She Lovely” starts absolutely blasting. The camera slowly pans over her prone body for and then smash cuts to this guy:

Seanbaby: This is impossible. There’s no way this didn’t occur to everyone reading, but licensing a Stevie Wonder hit had to have cost 70 times more than Photon‘s talent and costume budget combined. This is like hiring Bryan Adams to serenade your masturbation.

Brockway: And that’s why they use all of the song. We just listen to Stevie Wonder for several minutes while a pervert dryad contemplates which level of sexual assault this counts as. Then “Isn’t She Lovely” cuts out. An ominous bass line plays. And he makes this face.

Seanbaby: Was the beautiful song meant to soften this sex crime or add menace? Was it added because test audiences saw the grinning pervert tying up the young girl and weren’t sure if he thought she was pretty? And the best they could come up with was “Isn’t She Lovely?” I mean, I guess I’m glad no one has written a top 40 hit about coming upon an unconscious wom– wait. “Sussudio.” Nevermind.

Brockway: Tivia struggles awake to find out she’s been tied up, while the camera frames her terrified expression against his moldy yay nail.

Seanbaby: Jesus fuck. You know, it just occurred to me no one is going to believe this, but we picked this episode of Photon at random. We said, “This looks like a fun kind of dumb,” and the very first one we watch opens w-with… cocaine rape? Are they all like this? They can’t all be like this.

Brockway: I am unwilling to watch another until I work through my complicated feelings about this one. Anyway, the very strong implication isn’t explicitly followed up on, because this was a children’s show in the 1980s and you could only coyly hint at druidic molestation back then. But playing the song Stevie Wonder wrote for his newborn daughter as a woods pervert vinebangs an unconscious woman offscreen is a level of vicious soundtrack irony that Quentin Tarantino would call “fucking savage my n*****! I can say it with the hard “R”! Sam Jackson told me I can say it with the hard “R” after Jackie Brown!”

Seanbaby: To demonstrate his power and increase the stakes, the star pervert commands one of his flowers to lean down and eat a rabbit. There’s something almost innocent about a children’s show writer who looks at the current situation and thinks, “I need to add a bunny crushing so people know this is serious.”

Brockway: The children might think an implied sexual assault is all in good fun. But when a sketchy adult has a woman tied up and makes a bunny disappear? Kids, that’s when you know it’s time to start punching groin and screaming for the police. Sure it might ruin the magic show at your 9th birthday party, but at least you’ll live to see a 10th.

Luckily the Runners Up Cosplay Army jumps in to break the tension, and we get a fight scene choreographed by out of shape children who got too fired up during a Power Rangers commercial break.

Seanbaby: If police found a group of costumed men in the park holding a bound woman hostage next to the smashed remains of a bunny, they might ask, “What’s going on here?” And those men might say, “Shit! I mean, hi, officer! We’re filming a… kid’s show?” And then the cops might say, “Okay, great! Well, don’t let us stop you; go ahead.” If those precise circumstances happened, this, exactly this, is what their panicked improvisation would look like. To which the cops might say, “Looks like a pretty fun show. Do us a favor and put that bunny back together before you go, and have a great day. Great acting, ma’am. Very believable.”

Brockway: Speaking of acting, there is either none here or way too much. Never in between. An example: The bad guys realize they’re losing and start hucking hand grenades into the flowers, so Yay Nail Druid screams “My roses! Nooo!”

I didn’t actually have to transcribe that, because he acts every line like he’s putting on a play for deaf children with bad seats:

Seanbaby: It was a bold acting decision to deliver this line like his dick was stuck in a gopher hole. When this actor signs autographs at conventions he probably whispers, “You want to hear a secret? The director of my most well-known episode of Photon told me to stand up when I delivered the famous line ‘MY ROSES! NOOO!’ But I refused. I laid there, pumping my pelvis into the ground– because I knew The Caretaker of Zaku, even in his moment of greatest defeat, would make sure his garden received its seed. Want to hear another secret? I’m not Dabney Coleman. You’re in terrible danger.”

Brockway: The Photon team stops the flower massacre and it turns out the Yay Nail Druid was just misunderstood all along. I guess vine penetration is how his culture says hello. The good guys win, the flower planet is saved, and you should play laser tag for some reason? The laser tag equipment is barely used and never made to look cool. It loses – so badly – to large flowers in the first scene. Everybody lost their dignity, some their virginity, and we are all worse for having witnessed it. Photon was given fifteen free minutes to sell toy guns to children, the easiest thing to sell to the easiest demographic, and they wrote a morality play about why you should give forest perverts a second chance and how space lasers are no match for big roses.

Not even in their desperate pleas to the affiliates could Photon explain why it was supposed to be awesome:

Seanbaby: What are they going for here with Bhodi Li’s distinguishing characteristics? “SHOULDERS:BROAD?” “EYES: BROWN (AND PENETRATING)?” Are you trying to sell me a toy gun or moisten my grandmother? This ad had to explain what laser tag was to a world without laser tag and it spent literally the entire time talking about how yummy its barely legal teen boy mascot was. If I’m a 1982 arcade owner, I am 99% sure “Photon” is a service that sends escorts over to suck my wife’s toes.

Brockway: It is so important to explain what laser tag is here, too, because without that knowledge it looks like Bodhi Li got lost in a vacuum cleaner. You have to at least explain that the show is plugging this specific equipment, otherwise it looks like you bounced your last check to the costume designer. This whole ad is trying to sell a weird sci-fi show with no information about plot, other characters, or setting — only talk about how badass the hero is. And then they include a Sears photo of him wielding mom’s curling iron and wearing half a British post box.

But at least Photon never lied to you. The show promised that you would look like an utter dipshit while playing it, and they kept their word so hard. Here’s the actual Photon gear.

Seanbaby: A lot of ad copy in the ’80s started this same way.

Brockway: Remember, they wanted this to be a multimedia extravaganza. There weren’t just games, toys, and shows — some poor bastard even had to write full novels around the premise “Laser tag, but 58,998 more words than that!”

Seanbaby: If our fathers, maybe the Ultimate Warrior, was here, I think he’d want us to make the rest of this article about the Photon novels.

Brockway: Okay, listen: I know it sucks that they whitewashed both the male and female leads. In theory. But let’s pause for a moment. Would you really want representation here? Like this? I’d argue that replacing the multi-racial cast of Photon with generic whiteys is actually a form of civil rights protest.

Seanbaby: They centered the entire marketing of this phaser toy system around the brown-haired fuckability of its mascot. This is a blonde guy who looks like he should be named Astro Abstinence. A narrator should be explaining how, “Astro’s purity ray zaps away sinful urges, but it may never be turned on himself! His will alone must resist the allure of the beautiful Tivia of Nivia… the curves of her star bra! The silky penis hair of her robot companion, Robot Lionel Richie!”

Brockway: Tivia, Princess of Nivia? A mask does not hide your royal identity when you make it out of fishnet.

Brockway: Oof, I don’t know. I’m not feeling the “high stakes” here. Orcs lose a little something when you paint them Safety Orange. The ability to ambush, for one. Plus that monster’s wearing quilted slacks and his fingerless glove budget rivals a John Cougar Mellencamp roadie team. If I saw this guy running at me I’d assume he was going to hit me up for gas money because “the IROC is more like just a regular rock now, you get it? You got a cigarette? I’ve got some Rush. Band or drug, your choice.”

Seanbaby: I couldn’t possibly know this about myself for sure, but I think if I was painting the cover for a laser tag book, I wouldn’t have the main character pinned down by a shirtless alien while he gives it a footjob. HIGH STAKES? More like HI, STAKOR-7’S BONER! Seriously, though; I’m sure it makes sense when you get to this part in the book.

Seanbaby: This one feels authentic, like they polled actual laser tag players to find out what challenges they face and the most common answer was, “I lost my mommy.”

Brockway: In this very special Photon adventure, Bodhi Li must go “In Search of Mom” to show young children overstimulated by the many sounds of a laser tag game that they should never feel ashamed to ask for an adult.

I’m going to be a buzzkill here: I looked it up and the real answer is that “MOM” is the Photon team’s Zordon – the name of the computer that gives them missions. That uh… that doesn’t make it any better, does it?

Seanbaby: When your only job is prioritizing laser rescue missions, I’m not sure it’s heroic or even ethical to put “come save me!” at the top of the queue. But it must be exciting because, and this isn’t a joke, this book is currently priced at seven hundred sixty eight dollars and fifty seven cents on Amazon.

Brockway: I could buy half a scalped Playstation 5, or I could buy In Search of Mom twice. This is why we’re never allowed to get more successful than we are. If you gave me a real budget, I would have to explain a $1500 IN SEARCH OF MOM write-off to an auditor quickly running out of pity.

Seanbaby: Oh, dude. I already bought us each a copy.

Brockway: Look closely. See the little green boot by Bodhi’s gun? We’re looking at tasteful blocking here. Tivia is definitely getting powerful head from Pile of Shit in a Hardhat.

Seanbaby: Now I feel like I need to go back and see if I can spot any possible sex stuff we missed in the last Photon cover.

Brockway: Again, this is just good tie-in practice. Much like a real darkened 1982 laser tag arena, people are jerking off in every secret corner of a Photon book.

Brockway: Say what you will about Photon’s dorky, awkward laser tag gear, it sure does lift and separate titties.

Seanbaby: “Yes, yes, I understand your Photon sensor harness is uncomfortable, ma’am. These toys were designed for seven-year-olds. All I’m authorized to offer you is a coupon for a chicken strip appetizer with the purchase of a full entree and this: your tits do look great. Like a full two feet apart, ma’am.”

Brockway: I like my tits like I like my women: Bright orange and painfully distant.

Seanbaby: The title SKIN DEEP is more menacing when you realize Zxorgaxian skin is famously 11 inches thick.

Brockway: This is like that Men in Black test. Exposing our own xenophobia by seeing if we perceive a threat just because the creature looks alien to us. I know a four-armed snuggle when I see one. And god knows I’ve seen it enough times at the roller derby to recognize “naked lust barely concealed by clunky safety helmet.”

Seanbaby: This is why you’re going to die filled with Zxorgaxian skin eggs.

Tags 1980s, Free, tv, Video Games

TEAMWORKING DAY

Teamworking Day: The Best of 2020 🌭

Post author By 1900HOTDOG
Post date 12/24/2020
2 Comments on Teamworking Day: The Best of 2020 🌭

This should be a retrospective of all of our Fucking Days and the interesting and frightening ways they have penetrated you, but Seanbaby just did that for the last Reflecting Day. But if you think about it, fucking is basically just really good teamwork. So this is Teamworking Day. Wait, no it’s Tagteamworking Day — the day where Seanbaby and Brockway rail you from both ends (with jokes! Some penis!) As a sort of liability babygate to keep out the weak of mind and body, these are usually locked behind the Hot Dog Hero tier. But it’s the holidays: Not only the most festive time of year, but also the one with the highest death count. It’s a good time to party or slip in a murder. Let’s do both! That’s right: All of this year’s Teamworking Days are now free! It’s Tagteamworking Day! Get fucked! (In the nice way!)

Tagteamworking Day

Blaby Computer Games

Brockway: Oh. Oh no. I know that face. I know that face so well. That’s the ‘something in this room knows what the inside of my ass looks like, and you can’t leave until you guess with your tongue’ face.

Seanbaby: You’re acting like you’d hate that, but Killer Kong sort of has nice titties.

The Gorgeous Guys of Gaming

Seanbaby: I worry things are getting a little too hot here, so let’s cool them off with Snake Roy, who is the worst of both of those words. Roy looks like he and the python eating him died at the same time and there was some kind of a ghost mistake. But whatever it is, there’s a good chance we are looking at its anus. On dating profiles, Snake Roy describes himself as, “I look like someone dropped their wedding ring in an outhouse, but I’m also a fat fucking snake from the back of the head down. 2 inches uncut, forked”

Brockway: Snake Roy is an atrocity of human imagination. He’s why LeVar Burton had to start telling children “almost everybody can be creative!” From his squat nose to his mossy patches to his snake scales made out of dry human skin, I have to hate every part of Snake Roy individually because I just don’t have enough hate in me to hate him as a cohesive whole.

Baskin

Seanbaby: The cops hit a pedestrian and crashed their police van right into Silent Hill. There are spooky villagers, a plague of frogs, and meat totems hang from every single everything. It’d be a dangerous situation for anyone, but our guys whimper shit like, “You bust our balls, we’ll rip your ball!” into the night when nearby shadows rustle. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen any movie characters more doomed than these chicken fuckers.

Brockway: Honestly, we’ve spent so long exploring the shameless sexuality of proud Turkish perverts that I had completely forgotten this was a horror film. We have to acknowledge the possibility now that this was all intentional: A filmmaking technique meant to overwhelm the senses with such insane nothingness that you forget where you are, what you’re doing, who you’ve become. Now the audience will accept the sudden, unexplained existence of another world without question. It’s like being trapped in a yurt for fourteen years, with only a goat molester and a radio that plays Mongolia’s greatest hits from 1972 to keep you company, then emerging, blinking at the light, stunned at the sky, to find a world of flying cars and plant-people. “Is this what life was?” You will throat sing, to no one in particular. “Is it the world that changed, or I?” You will bleat, and none will answer you, for none share your unique language — not since Yogritz passed away six left-part-of-a-goat-vaginas ago.

Amazing-Man Comics

Brockway: Fucking only Amazing-Man would bring a knife to an aerial balloon fight. Hahaha is that lady in the background also shooting at them? Amazing-Man is a devout Catholic trying to get away with suicide on a superhero technicality.

Seanbaby: You can’t get into Heaven if you’re killed by the penis a balloon pirate tore off a gorilla. It’s not a rule on the books, but it’s like how they can kick you out of a Sizzler for tearing the penis off a gorilla even if there’s not a sign.

Hausu

Seanbaby: I would have never guessed from the first 40 minutes that this is the best movie ever made. This is like an ape falling backwards into a snowblower and spraying Matisse’s The Dessert: Harmony in Red onto your driveway.

Brockway: It is a beautiful shame. Like a Juggalo ballerina.

Worldwatch

Brockway: So many people were writing in to Marvel demanding that Black Panther have more tits. This had to happen. It’s simply filling a gap in the market. Hey speaking of filling gaps: Chuck Austen felt the need to specify that, if Black Panther were female, he would lick his own pussy.

Seanbaby: I love a good reference to jokes that don’t exist, but might in a different universe! Oh, and lets add “cat tongues” and “the human clitoris” to the list of things Chuck doesn’t understand, I guess.

…

This article was brought to you by our fine sponsors and Hot Dog Supremes: Zdarfan, Micah Phillips, Neil Schafer, Jaber Al-Eidan, David Fornuff, Dr. Awkward, Benjamin Sairanen, and Jamie Gordon. They survived that plane crash by having the fortitude to eat the other passengers, and they survived that rescue attempt by having the fortitude to eat the rescuers.

Tags 2020, Best of 2020, Free

TEAMWORKING DAY

Teamworking Day: Worldwatch 🌭

Post author By 1900HOTDOG
Post date 11/26/2020
20 Comments on Teamworking Day: Worldwatch 🌭

Seanbaby: Comic books take place in a universe where mad artists have been layering deranged ideas on top of each other for 80 years. An editor might say “yes” to your idea of Werewolf Captain America or “sure” to a summer-long event where every character becomes an ape. The point is, you don’t lose your job as a comics writer for being stupid or crazy. Unless you’re as stupid and crazy as Chuck Austen. Chuck Austen was so bad at writing comics, and this is real, DC replaced his credit with a fake name to boost sales and then fired him. He left mainstream comics and started an “adults only” project where his cranky horniness and garbage ideas could run free. Hey, Brockway! Let’s read Chuck Austen’s WorldWatch (2004)!

Brockway: I don’t want to! Let’s do literally anything else. Let’s help stupid cancer children learn to add or something, I really think we could give back to-

Seanbaby: WorldWatch was a disaster in more ways than should have been possible. If your 12-year-old handed you this, their very first comic, you would tell them, “Son, you didn’t make anything. That’s Wonder Woman and Power Girl. And Black Panther, The Flash, and Giant Man. You’ve joylessly repackaged tired superhero archetypes into something you can masturbate to, and even that is a tired idea done too many times to count. You’re grounded, and when your father gets home we’ll discuss whether we can even salvage you, our gross mistake.”

Brockway: Is the only difference between “adult comic book for sale for real money” and “embarrassing slash fiction hidden in the bad parts of the internet” the quality of the inks? Because those are some good, bold lines!

Seanbaby: So the premise of the comic is that it’s adapted from the autobiography of the Wonder Woman character called EXPOSING MYSELF, which Chuck Austen himself points out is very clever because she’s also mostly naked. This is the most he ever explores this pointless, artless conceit. There is no playing with the idea of an unreliable narrator or a commentary on how truth is reshaped as it travels through different media. This is porn fan fiction with a baby’s idea of a fancy storytelling device stapled to the front of it. And sorry if I don’t feel the need to construct a proper joke for this occasion, but nice fucking typesetting, guys. This is Times New Roman font with random line breaks, centered. It is, without exaggeration, the worst an untrained amateur can possibly do, and it would take a professional designer intent on sabotage to make this page look uglier. My point is, Chuck Austen has thought of the shittiest, most creatively bankrupt idea and can’t even get his notes for it down on paper without failing artistically.

Seanbaby: WorldWatch opens on an unexplained superhero fight where War Woman introduces the main characters. All it really does is introduce the reader to the uniquely hacky writing of Chuck Austen. He is both very proud of “creating” his own superheroes, but also knows he can yadda yadda through their intros because they’re just Wonder Woman and Superman. He even steals the old bit about Superman’s “real” name being Superman but figures you saw Kill Bill, so there’s no real need to explain what the fuck he’s talking about. Then he brings it all home with a joke about how The Intercessor’s other real name is “Ass-faced, dickwad.” But here’s a fun writing tip the rest of us learned in fourth grade: the comma here means War Woman is calling the reader, not The Intercessor, a dickwad. What you’re saying here, Chuck, other than “I have no talent,” is “The Intercessor’s name is Ass-faced, and in addition to that, fuck you, dickwad reader.” And fair enough; the reader here has made a terrible mistake.

Brockway: Chuck has shown he’s willing to, if not break the Fourth Wall, at least peek around it. He does play with some very interesting meta-fiction in his work. For example: In every single page of this comic book you can find clever hidden hints that imply it is not a good comic book.

Seanbaby: Next up is Wanda Jehu, “Tiger Princess,” who is an extremely naked lady Black Panther. And it should really help explain the thing Chuck Austen has with women that after fourteen words explaining nothing at all about her, he calls her “Fucking bitch” and has no more to say. I have no notes on this other than how it’s quite good.

Seanbaby: Every one of these bios is worse than nothing. This character, who is a topless lady Quicksilver covered in quicksilver, is an active member of the United States military only there’s some kind of confusion regarding her real name? What? Are you fucking telling me Chuck Austen created a female character wearing no shirt and dog tags that say her name and the description he has written for her is “NO ONE KNOWS HER NAME!” This is something a neurologist would hand back to you and say, “No need for a consultation. This is already more than enough to diagnose a serious brain disease.”

Brockway: I will say that I appreciate how the artist draws her titties just going everywhere when she superspeeds.

Brockway: Normal women with non-insane boobs wear sports bras just so they don’t get hurt while walking down stairs. Sergeant Mercury goes topless with size DDDs and then breaks the sound barrier. She is absolutely knocking herself senseless with those titties. Every time she uses her power she wakes up in the hospital with a concerned nurse asking if things are all right at home because it looks like she’s been slapped across the room by a huge man with no fingers.

Seanbaby: It’s absolute proof Chuck never considered or showed this to a woman. The slightest reasoning would reveal her to be the last character in this universe whose uniform should be cargo pants and flopping tits. Forgetting to give your speedster superheroine a sports bra is a virgin move. If Chuck Austen showed this comic to 2000 women, 1200 of them would condescendingly explain how tits work as if he was a little boy and 800 of them would spray him with bear mace.

Seanbaby: Doc Gulliver’s intro somehow says less than the others. Chuck has made Hank Pym, but black, which I have to be honest, worries me a bit. Or as I’m sure Chuck Austen would put it, “Homey, this trippin’ shit is going to get uncomfortable as a motherfucker, probably with something about larger than ordinary penises.”

Brockway: “All right, who’s left? Who haven’t we ripped off? Giant Man? That’s Hank Pym, right? The wifebeater? Let’s make him a black guy!” -Chuck Austen

Seanbaby: Now that you’ve met five members of the 135 member team and learned nothing about them, we see the ending of the battle. War Woman is screaming “FACE DOWN — HANDS BEHIND YOUR BACK, JERKOFF!” to an unnamed pharaoh who we later learn is named Pharaoh.

This is a mature, 2004 spin on children’s books, so Pharaoh does not scream, “By the bonesands of Sekhmet you shall pay for such an insult!” He goes, and I quote, “WHO YOU CALLING JERKOFF, YOU BONDAGE WHORE!!” It’s a term that’s both not a thing, but also wrong? I mean, yes, War Woman’s costume is aggressively porny. Comics have been putting women in sexy outfits for years with the understanding there’s some kind of function to leotards and catsuits. Readers don’t need much of an excuse to forgive boner pandering, but this woman seems to have glued tiny, sharp shapes to her erogenous zones. And in the behind-the-scenes section, Chuck’s excuse is, “You would do it too if you had these titties.” You might not like it, bad-tittied ladies, but some men just know how to write women.

Brockway: Solid logic, though. It’s why I walk around with my balls hanging out of my zipper. Don’t worry, it’s not obscene: There are sharp little metal bits covering 12% of them.

Seanbaby: BONDAGE WHORE!!

Brockway: If you call me a “Bondage Whore” again, I will pinch your dick off. I know that’s a weird and clumsy threat, but it’s kind of my trademark.

Seanbaby: War Woman’s costume looks like underwear scientists were trying to discover exactly how much material you could remove from a thing and still call it a strapless bra. She has a staple remover for panties which eliminates all fiction of functionality. This woman ruptures her liver and transverse colon every time she does a situp. So I’d argue “whore” is fair game if you’re saying hurtful things about her, but “bondage whore” is absurd. If anything, this is a costume designed specifically for escaping sexual restraints.

Seanbaby: The fight, none of which is shown to the reader, ends with Pharaoh simply teleporting away. Well, before he goes, he says, “When I find the Sphere, War Woman, you will be my most prized sex slave. And you will like it.” If you found a little boy in a sex trafficker’s trash, WorldWatch is what you would help him write in order to channel the unstoppable darkness inside him.

Seanbaby: The conversation back in WorldWatch’s space base is a spectacle of simple-mindedness. A stuttering bow-and-arrow character is introduced who only gets one line and it’s “Fuh-fuh-fuck you, In-In-In-tercessor.” It’s nothing– barely a placeholder for a line that undercuts the very serious drama between The Intercessor and War Woman who are arguing about whether superheroes should kill supervillains. It’s absolutely the most basic philosophical dilemma you could conceive of, and both sides are being argued by a man too stupid to know he’s making a parody of the very concept of thought. I should also mention during this, the other characters are complaining about how noisy Power Girl is when she fucks. This is Chuck’s contribution to the superhero genre: less than nothing, and cliches having loud sex (more on both later).

Brockway: There is no subject Chuck Austen doesn’t think he’s equipped to handle.

Brockway: Yeah, tackle the abortion debate this panel, Chuck. You earned that.

Seanbaby: I think I can tell which side of this argument the author is on because War Woman’s argument seems to be “there is a moral equivalence between unborn babies and SUPERVILLAINS” and that seems too dumb even for Chuck’s brain.

Seanbaby: The debate ends like I imagine most of Chuck’s interactions: with the man telling the woman all she needs is a hard cock, getting punched in the face, and calling her a stupid fat cow. WorldWatch is written from the perspective of War Woman, but The Intercessor is clearly the author insert. The Intercessor might as well turn to camera and say, “I’m Chuck Austen, and I dare any of you ugly sluts to try that shit in real life. Name the time and place.”

Brockway: I may not understand the fineries of grammar, but according to the rules we established earlier, he’s actually addressing a person named Stupid and calling the reader “fat cow.”

Seanbaby: Oh, shit. This is what I was worried about earlier. The omnidisciplinary scientist, who is black, talks like the gangstas from Chuck Austen’s TV fifteen years before he wrote this comic. And it took him, let’s see… one, two, three word bubbles before he brought up his gigantic black dick. Plus, this is all an inelegant contrivance. This professional superhero has a little black eye and he’s suddenly given “some shit that’s gonna make [him] heal like a motherfucker. But it may have some side effects.” Doc Gullivar might as well turn to the camera and say, “I’m Chuck Austen, obvious sex pest and fluent Black speaker, and that character is going to go insane or get tentacles or something later.”

Brockway: He’s in the same gang as Argyle from Night Man. Classic Argyle callback! Y’all remember Argyle, of course. This bit landed!

Wait, I’m suddenly worried we’re skipping over Chekhov’s Fuck Noises. There were Fuck Noises mentioned at the start of this comic; they must be used.

Seanbaby: Chuck Austen’s crowning achievement is the character of Omnia, who is Power Girl only more naked, and she noisily fucks everyone, all the time. This turns out to bite her in the ass since her only weaknesses are shame and not remembering which space bases are sound-proofed.

Seanbaby: You’ve already guessed this, but Omnia is Chuck Austen’s dream girl. She is a party in and out of spandex, so super hot, can be easily tricked into sex with anyone including -get this- other girls. Oh, and she’s cool enough for faaaaaarts! You can almost see where the author backspaced “Her favorite not-weird penis is mine, the genius who didn’t ruin Uncanny X-Men, Chuck Austen.”

Brockway: Stop. Zoom. ENHANCE.

The hot girl has a tattoo that says “HOT” on her arm. Chuck Austen thinks that counts as “foreshadowing.”

Seanbaby: I bet she has found her “HOT” tattoo to be a nice conversation starter for strangers too shy to mention her exposed labia majora.

Seanbaby: I can clinically prove Chuck Austen’s idiocy with this one page of comic book. It’s awful, sure, but that’s an opinion. I mean look at how he can’t even keep track of his own basic script. One of those characters having astronaut scream sex was told only two pages ago their space station was not sound-proofed. And then we cut to another character explaining how he has told both of those characters, multiple times, everyone can hear them fuck. A full 40% of this issue is dedicated to the noise they make in bed, it’s the only narrative arc Chuck Austen cares about, and not a single detail of it can be kept straight. And, remember the basic premise of this entire thing? Because Chuck Austen doesn’t– this comic is being adapted from a story told from the point of view of a woman who did not hear any of these conversations or have any reason to know about them. Chuck Austen is like an old pair of scissors in that he’s somehow found the only way to masturbate “wrong.”

Brockway: I just think everybody should see a full-body shot of Satyr.

I know what a satyr is, and I’ve seen them drawn well. They either have to be shorter than a person, or you need to enlarge all of them proportionately. What you can’t do is just use normal human proportions and then stretch out the goat legs to fit. Satyr looks like the front half of a Wolverine centaur. He’s wearing hipster skinny goat-legs. Also it’s mentioned that he’s naked all the time, but we don’t see his goat dick here. Which means it’s hidden away in some kind of goat-dick pocket, which goats don’t have. Get your dickbuilding right, Austen!

That’s all: Back to topless superheroes.

Seanbaby: It’s so incredible that the explanation for this superhero’s costume was she ripped two tank tops and decided the only solution was to retire from shirts completely. Chuck Austen can clearly think himself into a situation where a woman is exposing herself, but once he’s there he is so helpless to his boner he can’t look around to see if it makes any sense. I believe in literature this is called the Incel’s Inveiglement.

Brockway: It’s true. If you ruin a piece of clothing, you just don’t ever use it again. I had to wear holes in two pairs of underwear before I understood that I simply must have my balls out — for practical reasons. It’s why The Incredible Hulk is so careful to show that Hulk has NOT ruined his pants in the transformation. They know that if it happens even once the rest of the entire series will just be shot after shot of enraged green dong.

Seanbaby: So Sergeant Mercury is the second female character who is sexily naive and also the second female character showing off her tits because they rule. This means everyone is trying to have sex with her, including Doc Gulliver, the team leader which leads to this exchange:

Seanbaby: This woman who enlisted in and worked for the US Army, an organization Google tells me has the exact percentage of black people as the city of Chicago, is just now learning people of color are capable of getting horny. And look at the sneering delight the black character is taking in her awkwardness. This is, suspiciously, something an unskilled artist would create if they thought racism only existed as a way to give black people an advantage over Whites. I’m not saying that’s what Chuck Austen thinks, but there is no safer place in the world than under a 100-ton weight set to fall if Chuck Austen says something wise and good about racism.

Brockway: I’ve read comic books. There is so much room for a bad writer to hide in the realm of comic books. All you have to do is write fistfights about Eternity Crystals or some shit, and not say anything remarkably stupid about gender politics, racism, religion, abortion, or racism again. Chuck Austen didn’t just ignore that list, he went on a scavenger hunt trying to hit every one in a single issue.

Seanbaby: Injecting a real pop culture reference into a comic book has to be done carefully because it changes the setting from a world where nude magic celebrity gods who shower in crested, winged face helmets are normal to this one (where they are not). And it goes without saying if you want to impart on the reader the feelings you get from a song about determination, don’t pick an unreleased single from an album you misspell by an artist you misspell. Oh, too late. Better luck next time, #1 PLINK fan, Chuck! Anyway, these are the kinds of things that cross my mind during the part of the story Chuck Austen assumed I’d be jerking off to. Let’s learn about this Dr. Strange guy who is melting into her room while she’s naked, not for the first time!

Brockway: Actually, I don’t think Intercessor is Chuck’s authorial insert. I think Chuck wrote Intercessor as a strawman of every good-looking “norm” who bullied him after Sunday School. It’s just that Chuck is so dumb he influenced himself and came around to thinking Intercessor was making some pretty good points about how maybe it is the sluts who are wrong after all. No, I posit that Chuck Austen’s Mary Sue is Qabbala: The wise, wry — intensely sexy, yes, no question – boner magician that every woman wants to bang, but he’s just too aloof to let them. I think this for a number of very smart and shrewd reasons that I have carefully deduced from the work, and also because Chuck Austen just said so:

Gasp, it’s foreshadowing!

Seanbaby: You think Qabbala is who Chuck sees himself as? He’s a sexy, famous, majestic comic writer who is so smart and hot, but could destroy all of you with his limitless power if he felt like it, but he might not and that would be amazing and magical too. I guess I’m not seeing it, but speaking of foreshadowing, I hope they resolve that lingering plot of whether the topless white girl in the year 2004 learns to be okay with “race mixing.”

Seanbaby: Oh, good. She goes to him and explains “her parents didn’t like blacks” and they fuck. This was actually Tiger Princess’ cunning plan so she could watch them on a security monitor and masturbate.

Brockway: This is the face Tiger Princess makes while masturbating. It’s a mix of “watching the squirrels try to get to your new squirrel-proof birdfeeder” and “Willem Dafoe.”

Seanbaby: It’s the look of someone who gets a sexual thrill from manipulating two horny, already mostly naked people into having sex, but I don’t think she’s the bad guy here. If anything, she put an end to 4 minutes of systemic spaceship racism.

Seanbaby: Chuck needed a scene to show The Intercessor stewing in anger, so he wrote a page of plotless background dialog. Every word of it is people talking about pornography or getting ready to bone. Add it to the list of events that would be strange to put in a comic book based on an autobiography written by someone who didn’t know about them, but I mainly bring it up because “virgin alone with his impotent rage while seemingly everyone around him is having sex” is Chuck’s most on-the-nose self insert yet. It’s like Brockway writing a novel where the main character is a motorcycle centaur and the setting is everyone else shutting the fuck up.

Brockway: No, I think my authorial insert would be more grounded. Just an absurdly idealized version of myself. 30% funnier. A few inches taller. Ripped. Tiny pink mohawk.

Seanbaby: In a shocking reveal, The Intercessor overhears War Woman in bed with… the villain Pharaoh!? But instead of rushing over to superkill this international murderer in his home and confront his treasonous ally, he giggles. He, the hero(?) of this comic, will soon use blackmail to have his petty revenge on that cow for daring to reject his sexual assault!

This is top notch writing because Chuck gave us all the puzzle pieces. The Intercessor’s super hearing was mentioned twice, and the non-sound-proofing of the orbital base was mentioned 689 times. Which means War Woman had to be totally dumb to get caught doing this, proving she is a stupid, fat! Bondage! Whore!! THIS IS YOUR FAULT, ALL WOMEN!

Brockway: He stole my fucking trademark threat! Chuck Austen, I’ll pinch your- no, I can’t even use it anymore! Where am I going to find another threat so clumsy and awkward to say? “I’ll fondle your dong… on?” Oh shit, nevermind. I nailed it in one!

Seanbaby: Before we go, maybe my favorite madness in all of WorldWatch comes from Pharaoh’s character bio. Chuck wanted to write something to help explain the unrelatable amount of wealth possessed by “gazillionaire industrialist,” Rex Farrow. He landed on “more Learjets than pairs of underwear.” Then he realized in a comic where everyone was nude, that might mean as few as one Learjet. A normal writer might have backspaced and tried again, but Chuck pressed on. He added, “forty pairs of underwear, at all times.” Then he realized that’s, what, maybe a hundred dollars worth of underwear? That’s barely mid-range furniture salesman rich. A normal writer might have definitely started over by now, but not Chuck. He put a rich guy spin on those forty pairs of underwear. They aren’t, like, in a drawer. They are “brand new, laid out fresh every day to choose one from.”

Brockway: This is a guy clearly frightened to wear through underwear, knowing he could never use them again if he does. He must have weird, embarrassing balls.

Seanbaby: That’s the way Chuck Austen proves how rich this guy is! He buys one pair of new underwear every day and adds it to the 39 that did not please him yesterday. Or does he buy 40 pairs of underwear every day and throw 39 away? Wow, even when he’s making his third desperate attempt to explain a fleeting, dumb-as-fuck thought, Chuck Austen still writes with such compelling mystery! And thanks to his bizarre choices in typesetting, I think it’s also beautiful poetry?

He had forty

pairs of underwear, at all

times.

Brand new, laid out fresh every

day to choose one from.

We met when he was putting on

a fund raiser for child-

hood

leukemia.

Tags 2020, Chuck Austen, comic books, Free

TEAMWORKING DAY

Teamworking Day: Hausu 🌭

Brockway: If you’re talking weird horror flicks, somebody will inevitably say you have to see Hausu, the 1977 Japanese haunted house movie that confused and aroused Americans with screamed gibberish and panty shots long before Sailor Moon made it cool. I’ve actually never seen it, probably because I’m an obstinate shithead who immediately doesn’t want to do things you tell me to. Seanbaby’s never even heard of it, probably because he’s been slapboxing juiced-up kangaroos in the secret backroom arena behind a Thai boathouse bar for 3,000 baht a night. So this Halloween, we’re going to watch it together.

Only I’m going to replace the subtitles with a cheap Chinese bootleg version because I’m still an obstinate shithead who immediately doesn’t want to do things you tell me to.

Seanbaby: When I was in Japanese class I learned the word for “house” is “ie” and not “hausu.” This implies that before they made this movie it had never occurred to Japan to give a name to the things they lived in. The working title of Hausu was probably “the… I don’t know, wooden caves for resting and foods? What does the USA call these? Hooowszz? I can’t be saying that shit right.” Thousands of years of civilization and it took 1977’s Hausu to reveal this vocabulary oversight? That’s my contribution to the intro– half a Gallagher joke smeared across four sentences. Welcome to whatever the fuck Hausu is!

Brockway: Maybe you heard “made in 1977” and thought Japan worked differently back then, so as insane as it seems to even specify this: Hausu is about a group of cute schoolgirls. The main pair are ‘Beauty’ and ‘Fantasy,’ nicknames too spot-on for even the remedial strippers. Beauty is also called The Gorgeous, Magnificent, or sometimes just “Great” — like they’re fucking sick of sucking up to her. While Fantasy’s only nickname seems to be ‘fiction,’ and that might just be an artifact of the terrible translation, but it sounds amazingly sarcastic.

Seanbaby: They named the little girl “Fantasy?” Is this art or a confession? Here’s a fun Hausu fact– If you’re a sex offender and you name your fictional Japanese schoolgirl “Fantasy,” that legally fulfills your obligation of informing the community of your criminal perversion.

Brockway: No, silly, it’s because she’s always day-dreaming about romance! She wasn’t conceived for perversion — it’s only a coincidence that she’s going to get molested by ghosts.

Our other main character, Beauty, basically only exists to look good and say really obvious shit, because there’s a reason they don’t call her Brains.

Brockway: You’re lucky you got those looks to fall back on, The Gorgeous. You’re going to need several knights in shining armor just to save you from accidentally hanging yourself in the window blinds.

Seanbaby: “So it’s a horror movie about a, buhh… okay, you know those box shapes we inhabit with our families? Right, one of those. And the main character is an amateur stove philosopher named The Gorgeous. I am bleeding out of my skull, but that’s not part of the pitch.”

Brockway: That teacher looks like she’s racistly making fun of Run DMC.

Seanbaby: “I understand. Am I your father?” is the most useful Japanese phrase I ever learned. It’s second only to, “I ask because of my fertile, adventurous sperm but also because whoever your father is named you Fantasy and that sounds like a terrible mistake in judgement I would make.“

Brockway: As you might expect, this movie about naughty schoolgirls has some daddy issues. As you might not expect, they all involve not knowing what a father is. Here’s Beauty going through her old photos.

Brockway: Let’s meet the rest of the girls!

Seanbaby: I think my attention span is at capacity with the first two, but fine.

Brockway: We’ve got: Professor the Nerd, Mac the Fatty, Melody the girl who always brings an acoustic guitar no matter how inappropriate the moment, and Default. If she has a name, she was being too boring for me to catch it.

Not included in the above shot was Kung Fu, because she’s too fucking rad and deserves better:

Seanbaby: All of these characters are getting thrown at us in ways I have no visual language to understand. Every shot and edit feels like seventy exhausting decisions made by a madman determined to use every last effect on his Video Toaster. The actors seem like robots who have had several very important functions removed, like the screenwriter called for them to do something confusing and inhuman and then died before anyone could ask him what the fuck he meant. I am choosing these words carefully: each sequence in Hausu looks like a therapist hired a Mexican public access show to recreate G-rated versions of a pervert’s nightmares.

Brockway: You’re closer than you realize! Most of these girls had never acted before. Some could argue they still haven’t.

Anyway, these subtitles are my favorite amount of wrong: Coherent enough to get across what’s going on in a scene, but shitty enough so it sounds like everybody is drunk all the time.

Brockway: Also, somehow “good!” frequently gets translated as “Large!” and I say we start that shit right fucking now.

Seanbaby: Large idea! In fact, better than large– great!

Brockway: The movie is just packed with brief, random strangeness…

Those cowboys are never acknowledged, and play no part in this movie. They were barely even filmed — they’re just here to throw you off balance. That is some weird Japanese David Lynch shit, and I feel like every word of that description is redundant.

Seanbaby: I love how we have no way of knowing which insanity is on purpose. This could be the result of weeks of casting and costume design or it could be the script supervisor’s super cool real USA cowboy friends. Maybe the Japanese film union requires at least two kangaroo murderers on set? All I know is that when the ghosts show up I’m almost certainly going to be distracted by some child magician in the background stuffing ice cream into a mailbox.

Brockway: Yeah, I don’t know why any of this is the way it is. I’m not sure if the makers of Hausu were going for a specific aesthetic, or if they just didn’t have access to “outside,” but every other scene is filmed against a matte painting.

Seanbaby: Wait, in 1977 the Japanese language had two gendered words for TRAIN but not a single one for “house?”

Brockway: There are so many shots of uncertain young Japanese girls wandering around static images that it feels like a porn mod of Resident Evil. Hausu is made too well to call this unintentional. I’m sure it’s like how Kubrick filmed the Overlook in The Shining so the layout wouldn’t make sense to the audience, thus keeping them subtly unsettled. Only here it’s like the schoolgirls don’t fully belong to the world, so you’ll always question the integrity of their panties.

Seanbaby: To follow up my earlier point– in 1977, the Japanese language had 1236 words for schoolgirl panties. The word you’re looking for, “worn for eight hours with uncertain integrity and existential doubt underpants,” is kangaru-satsujin.

Brockway: Oh, also everybody is stoned in an aquarium.

Seanbaby: Yeah, everyone delivers their lines like they’re the last words of astronauts realizing it could be worse than suffocating out here in space with their best friends.

Brockway: All right, let’s get to the plot! Beauty’s father is savagely disco, and he brings back a new girlfriend and seriously introduces her to his daughter like this:

I’m not sure he even knows her name. When pressed, he just explains:

“Ahhh… what else? She’s got good tits, she doesn’t talk much. Did I mention the cooking thing? Did I mention the tits thing?”

Seanbaby: According to the subtitles, when the dad introduces her he says “I’m Ryouko Ryouko.” So if she takes his name, that would make her at least one Ryouko, but also possibly three if her first name is Ryouko and those two Ryoukos he mentioned were his last name. For instance, if his full name was Tyler Ryouko Ryouko and she was named Ryouko Ryouko, that would make her married name “Mrs. Ryouko Four Times,” or “Mrs. Ryouko Three Times” for short.

Brockway: If you know anything about teenage girls, it’s that they don’t take things well. Clearly Beauty is not happy with Ryouko³. Plus the girls’ big trip is cancelled when their summer camp either shuts down or is getting married; the subtitles are unclear. But thanks to a magic cat, Beauty remembers she has an aunt with a house in the country. The magic cat is not a fluke of the subtitles…

The magic cat is very important to the plot of the movie, for reasons I do not and possibly never will understand.

Seanbaby: I don’t know if this will help, but Mac, I’m surprised by your stomach code.

Brockway: It does help distract me from the last weird shit that just happened, yes. I believe they call this method of filmmaking ‘Bizarro Barrage’ — where you just keep throwing incomprehensible scenes at an audience until they give up entirely, and will accept any magic cat or cursed panty you have to offer.

Okay, so we come to find out that Beauty’s aunt has been shut up in her home since her fiance died in the war, and Beauty hasn’t seen her in years. In fact, she searches her mind for any memory of the woman, and only comes up with this:

Dang, I don’t know about aunt, either. That face is either ‘barely concealed madness’ or ‘doing kegels right now, and have no plans to stop even if you call me out for it.’ It might be both. Actually, it has to be both.

Seanbaby: Oh, shit! Hazy memory kegel lady is holding the cat! I think I’m starting to piece this together! Remember when it was on the train and wouldn’t eat the hamburger? It’s the key to everything:

Brockway: I don’t know. Remember the cowboys? There is simply no way to tell what nonsense is vital, and what’s just for fun. For example: The girls are supposed to be chaperoned by Togo, who is just the best. He’s got a dune buggy and a stupid hat, and he’s also the only character that lives in a Benny Hill sketch:

He took that bucket to the ass so fucking hard he has to go to the hospital for it.

And that’s why Togo isn’t in the rest of the movie: Assbucket complications. Is that… is that vital? Do I need to remember that? Is that cowboy or cat?

Seanbaby: To call this a shift in tone would be like calling Wild-Runnin’ Hulkamania a mild paradigm shift in a staged conflict. This is a film editor’s complete mental breakdown over the course of months condensed into fifteen seconds of deranged whimsy. Or it’s the work of a filmmaking genius demonstrating how even the silly is no haven from terror in the universe of Hausu? I guess my point is I still can’t tell if this avalanche of crazy bullshit was caused on purpose.

Brockway: I’m already accepting it. The Bizarro Barrage is working.

So the girls arrive, alone, to the house of a stranger they already don’t trust and find it completely, obviously haunted. They fucking love it.

That doesn’t just look haunted, it looks like shit. What about that is enticing to a teenage girl on summer vacation? The only reason these girls could possibly be excited is because they know this is a Japanese horror movie and some of the ghosts might have tentacles.

Seanbaby: This house is where you go to die when you know you don’t deserve the dignity of choking yourself to death masturbating in a drainage pipe. This place fucking sucks. The first thing I’d say to a ghost haunting this shit hole is, “Oh, man. I’m sor– no I’m not! GHOST PUNCH!”

Brockway:

Dang, I don’t know about aunt!

Seanbaby: That’s that hamburger cat from the train! This is a storytelling technique called “Chekhov’s Burger Cat in Wheelchair” It’s one of those things where once you know about it, you’ll start seeing it everywhere.

Brockway: Yeah, there is some truly advanced filmmaking going on here. Like this strangely angled shot where the girls first see the inside of Hausu, which is dark, rotting, and covered in cobwebs and again, they absolutely love it.

They cannot wait to die in this place.

Seanbaby: “Fellow teens, I am content with this godless spider nest screaming into our minds.”

Brockway: Immediately the lighting fixtures try to murder the girls, but they can’t because Kung Fu is immune to dying to stupid shit.

And nobody cares that within seconds of stepping into this cursed house, it tries to murder them. They literally don’t even mention it. I mean, I guess if I had Kung Fu with me I probably wouldn’t give a hot god damn about deadly lamps and other lame murderers either. Here’s how Kung Fu opens a stuck cabinet:

When you have a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. To Kung Fu, every ghost looks like an un-kicked face and all Kung Fu has is Jumpkick.

Seanbaby: Kung Fu and Ass-Medically-Fused-With-Bucket Guy are definitely relics from earlier drafts of the script where this movie was completely different genres. I wouldn’t be surprised if we meet a ghost who is a leftover ass-eating character from when this was a porno called “Large Place For Sleeping (Sorry No Word For It) Filled With Ass Eaters: Yummy Part IV.”

Brockway: Sean, as usual, you are right in a way which you will come to regret. Later — and I think there might be some foreshadowing here, see if you spot it — Mac the Fatty is lowering a watermelon down into a well to keep it cool, when aunt looks her up and down and says…

You guys, I just don’t know about aunt!

Seanbaby: The character of aunt makes more sense when you realize she was originally written as a blind, horny salaryman. He’d say things like, “I can hear your moist butt!” and “Who’s that using the watermelon crank? Vavoom, oink, you smell hot as fuck!” Are these jokes? I’m worried I might have lost my mind.

Brockway: No, you’re on the exact wavelength of the movie. Check this out: That evening, when Fantasy goes to fetch the watermelon, she instead finds Mac’s disembodied head! Which…

Yes, flies through the air and bites her straight on the ass. We told you there would be assplay ghosts! These girls know exactly what they’re doing, coming to Hausu. They might even be taking advantage of Hausu. I don’t know how many times I need to say this: Don’t use Hausu ghosts for anal pleasure, Japanese schoolgirls.

Seanbaby: Yes! If you’re all by yourself with a watermelon in the middle of the night, it’s better than a best-case-scenario if it turns out to be a ghost head that eats your ass out. This situation she’s in is like reaching for your jerking belt in a drainage pipe and finding a loving wife to grow old with.

Brockway: Fantasy narrowly escapes the ghost analingus, presumably after cumming and making it feel weird about the whole situation, then fetches the other girls. Of course, when they go to check it’s back to being a watermelon. But Mac is missing! Not to worry — one of the girls found loose potatoes on the road, and supposes that Fatty left because Fatty likes potatoes.

Look at this fat piece of shit. You were right to shame this girl, Japan.

Seanbaby: Maybe I have gone crazy from trying to figure out this movie, but I will never write a fat joke as incoherent as, “Look at those loose potatoes! I guess we have a lead suspect in the disappearance of the fat girl! Ha ha ha!”

Brockway: It’s classic backwards irony, you fool: because she makes potatoes gone, more potatoes mean she is gone.

Seanbaby: So how do they track their fat friend during non-suspicious circumstances? By going where potatoes are missing? Do you detect that by cross referencing current potato levels with a well-kept database or do you need some kind of trained animal? For instance, “Girls! My potato falcon says there are only 11 potatoes northwest of us! That’s where Fatty will be.” Wait, hold on, yes. Now I’m very sure I’m losing my mind. Go on without me for a minute.

Brockway: Large!

Soon, the other girls start disappearing to ironically spooky shenanigans as well. Beauty falls to her own vanity, and gets spooked the fuck up while admiring herself in the mirror:

Seanbaby: So the mirror contains a ghost and the aunt, and it gets shattered by eyebeams from Burger Cat, who is somewhere else? Then Beauty’s skin cracks until she’s an energy monster, and now we’re just in a Def Leppard video. I think I’m okay– this is my comfort zone.

Brockway: Welcome back. Default is getting attacked by bedding:

Because, no shit, she likes to clean bedding. If I met an ironic ghost and it was like “uh… I guess you like pillows? I’ll kill you with pillows.” I would beg — I would absolutely, open-sobbing, no-dignity plead for it to beat me to death with dildos instead, just so somebody would at least giggle at my obituary.

Seanbaby: “As we mourn our friend, Default, take comfort knowing she died how she lived… with something about pillows.”

Brockway: Then the house goes after Kung Fu… with haunted pieces of wood. That’s literally what she’s been training for all her life! That’s like going after Steven Seagal with an endless chili bar or a woman too drugged to give consent.

Kung Fu was expecting this moment so hard she doesn’t even realize it’s an attempted haunting. She jumpkicks straight out of her own dress, catches it, then throws it away forever. You can’t pay her to put clothes on again, because Hausu just realized it was behind on the panty quota. There will now be panties in every single scene.

Seanbaby: I can make a case for why that’s terrible in two screenshots.

Brockway: Terrible? No, I think you just sold copies of this movie to our forty-six greasiest fans.

StinkHunter Doug: Yeah, give me those gooey panties; oh no, how did that show up here?

Seanbaby: Thank you for your support, Stinkhunter Doug! At our highest patron level you get to write a line in a real 1-900-HOTDOG article! Is that not the one you wanted to use?

Stinkhunter Doug: …

Stinkhunter Doug: !?

Seanbaby: The deal was you got one line, Doug. Shut the fuck up.

Stinkhunter Doug: !!!

Brockway: You did great, Doug! ♫1🌭900🌭HOT🌭DOG!♫

Back to the movie: So three of their friends are missing or dead, or missing or dead without panties, but the girls aren’t worried, because they know Togo is coming soon:

Kung Fu has been beating this ghost like it owes her money since the moment she walked in the door, but you’re holding out for a hero in Mr. Assbucket? The guy who’s the only patient in the Shenanigans Trauma Unit (Ass Ward)?

Seanbaby: I think the advantage Togo has in a house haunted by an ironic ghost is that you can’t ironically kill a man who lives his life getting humiliated with his own ass. What are you going to do, squeeze his butt to death with a bucket? Fate already did that the moment he bumbled through the front door! You’re only adding spectral buckets to a stack of regular buckets! That’s not fucking anything, ghost.

Brockway: Turns out Beauty is not dead, but has been possessed by the aunt, who leaves the girls trapped in the house. In a stunning bout of self-awareness, Fantasy says “this is a horror movie!” And Kung Fu corrects her: “No, this is a karate movie,” she says, then she kicks the shit out of the walls. It doesn’t work, but it’s completely large.

The other girls decide that a piano song will cheer them right up, because Melody hasn’t done anything in a while and it’s starting to get weird that she’s still in the movie. Of course, the piano eats her fingers. If you’re trapped in a haunted house and your friends are dying ironically but you love the hula hoop, just put off hooping for the night or you will obviously be turned into the hoop yourself and get hula’d into a bloody mist. But more importantly, here’s my favorite character in Hausu: wacky dancing skeleton.

Seanbaby: Wacky dancing skeleton rules. He’s a naked, spaghetti-covered toddler strutting into a zoom meeting– just a pointless wrongness commanding everyone’s attention. In 1977, getting a girl’s fingers to fade into invisible meat chunks was a Herculean effort of animation, and he’s back there distracting everyone from it with, “Rahr rahr rahr, I’M A SKELETON!”

Brockway: Here’s your child magician stuffing ice cream into a mailbox. You really get what this movie is putting down.

Seanbaby: I was acting like I was better than it, but Hausu and I have been on the exact same wavelength this whole time.

Brockway: I have this theory that any horror scene which goes on too long turns into a fetish. I came up with this theory while watching Hausu, and all the proof I will ever need for this theory is Hausu. I’m not even kidding, Hausu owns it:

Seanbaby: This is going to really screw up the accuracy of my “Recommended CamGirls” but let me see if you’re right.

Only 1153 relevant results? Those are barely clown puke numbers. Those are barely deepfake Angela Lansbury feet puke numbers. Wait, hold on. I had the keyword wrong. This fetish is called “dismember concerto” and oh man… okay, now I’m getting some search results. Whoa, hot, they’re not brother and sister in this one. I’ll send this link over in Slack.

Brockway: Not brother and sister? What are they, then? Cousins? That’s okay, I guess. For a Sunday wank. When God’s watching.

Finally the house stops being cute with all the irony and just starts throwing everything it has at the remaining girls. All the big, classic scares are here. They fight floating objects:

Self-walking shoes:

Seanbaby: Jesus, they are so fucked.

Brockway: The dreaded Big lips…

Seanbaby: They have to fight Big lips? I don’t even know what I’d say if I had to fight Big lips.

Brockway: And worst of all: Lamp.

Yes, as you can tell by the battle panties, that’s Kung Fu being undone by her one weakness: Lamp.

Seanbaby: I would have never guessed from the first 40 minutes that this is the best movie ever made. This is like an ape falling backwards into a snowblower and spraying Matisse’s The Dessert: Harmony in Red onto your driveway.

Brockway: It is a beautiful shame. Like a Juggalo ballerina.

Kung Fu is banished to The Unhappy Disembodied Girl Parts Fetish Dimension. In Japanese, that translates as one word. A short word.

Seanbaby: The word can change depending on whether the dismembered girl is unhappy from a broken heart or regret. Aside from describing places where people live, Japanese is a very rich and descriptive language.

Brockway: But if you thought being only an ass was enough to stop Kung Fu, you were not paying enough attention to Kung Fu’s ass. You would know it don’t quit.

A literally-topless flying jumpkick from the lamp dimension into a cat painting turns out to be the bride’s one weakness — of course!

Seanbaby: This is fucking sweet.

Brockway: The jumpkick doesn’t kill the bride, but it does break the logical coherence of the movie. Apparently it had that! Professor is eaten by a floating piggy bank after the house floods with cat blood.

Then she comes back so we can see her tits a bunch:

Then she dies, so we can instead see Great’s tits a bunch:

Finally Fantasy nestles into her best friend’s aunt’s ghost-tits:

And that’s sort of the movie.

Seanbaby: I have nothing meaningful to add other than your Twitter handle so the Pulitzer mayor can tag you when he announces you won: @brockway_llc.

Brockway: You’re missing an ‘L’ in Pullitzer.

Seanbaby: Well, I can just look that up.

Brockway: Hausu keeps going for a bit, doing your standard “the curse is not over” sequel setup. The stepmother who always looks like she’s on her way from a shampoo commercial to a tampon commercial…

Comes to the house to check in, and finds it revitalized. The aunt — now living in the body of Beauty — greets her, and the cycle begins anew.

Oh, and Togo turns into a bunch of bananas in a dune buggy, as his character arc demanded.

Seanbaby: Is this like some Japanese folklore I haven’t heard of? Well, I can just look that up too. Oh no, this looks b

Tags 2020, Free, horror, japan, movies

TEAMWORKING DAY

Teamworking Day: PoxCo Regional Pretend Wrestling Qualifiers

Post author By 1900HOTDOG
Post date 09/22/2020
6 Comments on Teamworking Day: PoxCo Regional Pretend Wrestling Qualifiers

The results of the first round of Poxco Regional Wrestling’s Wrestle-By-Mail Wrestlaclysm are in! We, two men running a comedy website in the year 2020, formed a wrestle-by-mail game company where readers could create their own grapplers and battle our PRW All-Stars to see if their creations have what it takes to enter the PRW Tournament! Most of them didn’t! Many died! That’s how high these stakes are.

Participants selected six moves and a finisher, and Seanbaby designed an actual, functioning AI system that analyzed these maneuvers to calculate match outcomes. We know how ridiculous this all sounds. Seven computers exploded in cowardice during the design of this imaginary wrestling tournament, and three others died of a broken heart when they tried to tame its untamable spirit.

Some matches were technical marvels, full of high drama and impossible reversals. This output might not look like much to you, but it represents two astonishing athletes doing epic battle.

Other matches were over just seconds after they started. This output might not look like much to you, but it represents a woman getting immediately mauled to death by a stray dog:

Thank you to all the readers who sent in wrestlers. To eight of you, great job. Your instincts and courage have led you to the greatest reward in all of fictional postal combat — our respect. To the remaining crippled, broken, and deceased: your weak blood will lubricate the engine of the strong’s glory. Also: your condolence letters should get delivered later in this article. May they find your mourning loved ones in good health.

To all the wrestlers who didn’t make it through or survive, you will have already received these custom-printed condolence cards and no partial refund of your $3890.89 entrance fee.

Tags 2020, Free, pretend wrestling, wrestling