Category: TEAMWORKING DAY
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Brockway: It’s shorthand for despicable hackery now, but in the late ‘90s the Austin Powers series was the biggest comedy franchise in the world. On paper, I don’t hate it. It was an original, high concept comedy whose premise was deeply personal to Mike Meyers. Austin Powers’ entire vibe was just a mash-up of every show he and his dad used to watch together back when he was a kid. The comedy is dated, sure. That’s all of our fates. It’s not like it was a cultural crime.
Until the Collectible Card Game.
Seanbaby: Oh, fuck.
Brockway: On cardstock, I hate it. The Austin Powers CCG was designed by Decipher, Inc. for New Line Studios, and it might be the most cursed object I’ve ever found. It truly should not exist in this universe. Collectible cards for a weird comedy? Sure, ask Bingo the dog-murdering pet adventure for children. A CCG for a popular film franchise? Alien has one. So does Predator and Terminator. But a CCG for a horny autobiographical period spy parody? It’s an insane thing to say out loud, much less produce and market. It’s like making Woody: The Allening.
Seanbaby: This is unappealing in a criminal way. Like, if I found this box of cards I would assume I’m also about to find a dead body and say, “Looks like the Oh Behave Killer has struck again. Or the It’s a Man Baby Butcher… the No This is Me in a Nutshell Help I’m In a Nutshell Night Strangl– you get it.”
Brockway: Yeah, it’s such a powerful mind crime it draws other crimes to it. I think they call it a reverse-Caliban. Aside from absolutely everything, the weirdest thing about the Austin Powers CCG is that the designers have an obvious passion for card mechanics, and an alien dying from fart poisoning’s understanding of Earth humor.
Seanbaby: Oh, fuck.
Brockway: Buddy. Friend. My dearest one. If you’re cringing just from the ad copy on the back of the box, you are going to die here. Today. Alone in this cold forest where the light of joy does not shine. Please flee. I have to say that for legal reasons. Please flee. I have to say it twice. This goes for all of you. By reading the rest of this article you are agreeing to enter into binding arbitration for all past and future crimes Decipher, Inc. commits on you and your descendents.
Brockway: I have read every single word on all ONE HUNDRED AND FORTY cards in this very sexual CCG about a Canadian comedian’s childhood perception of his father, and I can tell you this in advance: “Four-play” is the cutest joke in here.
You will die in these woods.
I’m sorry, legally I have to repeat that one more time so you can’t possibly say you thought I was joking in a court of law.
Seanbaby: I want to keep following the chain of custody on these “laughs.” This is an uninspired sequel to a parody movie already quoted to death by everyone’s worst classmates and co-workers. Then it got adapted into a card game by board game nerds who had to live among those quotes for months. They had to translate them into upkeep phases and meeple placement, play test them, and rewrite them. This is like a Big Bang Theory watch party who died in a gas leak and trying to chew a laugh from the asshole of the coyote who fed on them.
Brockway: There it is. That’s the appropriate level of disgust. Okay, good, I was waiting for you to get your revulsion calibrated before we got into the real troubling stuff. Let’s begin. We’re going to delve into the game mechanics first. There are six colors of cards and you must have exactly five of each. It’s the comedy rule of thirties!
Seanbaby: “Pick five of each color, in the spring we’d make meat helmets.” Maybe I’m some kind of card genius, but what I just said was 5 times faster and still 58% Austin Powers quote.
Brockway: You’ve got the vibe. It’s like this the whole way down: a brutal mental war between rote comedy and resource management taking place inside an underpaid game designer’s atrophying brain. It’s the bad ending they deleted from Psychonauts 3.
It’s inhumane to do this to a person, so if this game was lazy, if the designer phoned it in, I could understand that. It’s not. It’s the hardest I’ve ever seen anyone try for guaranteed failure. It’s like doing a screaming ten episode Dragon Ball Z powerup just to puke out a cat turd. You can feel how much it hurt this person’s professional pride to make the Austin Powers CCG, but they fucking killed themselves doing it anyway. And then they built that exhaustion into the game itself like Chinese laborer skeletons in the Great Wall.
Brockway: “We can’t just say points,” the weary game designer said. “What does Austin Powers have that’s like points?”
He waited for an answer from an empty room, because if he had loved ones they would have saved him from this.
“Mojo,” he finally told himself. “I guess points are Mojo.”
“And what’s victory?” He asked no one.
His eyes became distant, as though listening to an answer.
“Ha, that’s pretty good. But I don’t think ‘the fleeting moment of delusion in between crushing defeats’ will fit on the card. I’m going to write ‘wearing the Daddy pants.’”
Seanbaby: “In the next game you play” is almost grotesque in its optimism. It’s like saying, “When your wife’s divorce lawyer tries to kiss you” or “There will still be people in your life after you invited them to play The Austin Powers The Spy Who Shagged Me Collectible Card Game.”
Brockway: Okay, there. We’ve calibrated your bleakness. Now we can get to the actual cards. You’re going to want to put up the Austin Powers: International Panel of Plasticry™ between yourself and the computer screen, or else you’ll get shards of glass in your hands when you reflexively attack it for showing you this.
Brockway: Take a closer look at that Happenings card-
Brockway: Whenever this card is laid down, all players must disgrace their ancestors. They do this by “making an evil pinky smirk,” like an embarrassing uncle trying to connect with high school girls in the TCBY parking lot. Players have to do this as fast as they can, because the game designer hoped to trick a few of them into punching themselves in the teeth. It was the best and only revenge he could manage, using the card-based skills God granted him.
Seanbaby: This is a fight. If you do this shit near me, I’m putting my fist through your mouth and memories. I hate this for every reason. It’s toddler day camp nonsense, sure, but is it also a misprint? It says “Bridal Shower” but the text and picture don’t seem to have anything to do with bridal showers. I guess it doesn’t matter, because like I said, if you play this card anywhere near me my karate rage is your much more urgent problem.
Brockway: Aren’t you glad I made you buy the Austin Powers: International Panel of Plasticry™ first? It didn’t save your cat, but your monitor still works great!
Anyway, don’t worry. That pinky stunt is not indicative of the game mechanics. That’s just a “fun” little aside for grandparents tricked into playing it. When I say there are deep mechanics to the Austin Powers CCG, I mean shit like this:
Brockway: All Agent or Frickin’ Bone cards can either Shag or Assassinate, but only if they’re radiating the correct kind of Vibes needed to power said Shag. Swinger cards tie struggling jokes from the movies to game alterations that reverse play, force disards, or alter Vibe distribution. Happenings dictate physical actions and punish other players, moreso than God already is-
Seanbaby: Use your Swedish-Made Penis Enlarger Pump (this kind of thing is in your bag, baby) to trace the path from your Randy agent to their Shag target. If it intersects any Fat Bastard or Stool Sample cards, your target is considered partially Cock-Blocked and you must Mojo with Disadvantage, baby. Pause gameplay until no player has an erection, use the included Margaret Thatcher Naked on a Cold Day Card as necessar– wait, where the fuck am I? What the fuck just happened?
Brockway: Oh, it’s the curse. I didn’t mention the curse. The designer of this game died of such intense despair that the echo of his emotional trauma lives on through the cards. It’s overwriting the parts of your brain that used to process children’s laughter and summer days.
I think we’ve calibrated your impotence in the face of overwhelming tragedy. You’re ready. Let’s move on to the real heart of the gameplay. Of course I’m talking about “Frickin’ Bone” cards that players can “throw.”
Welcome to the cold forest, buddy!
Seanbaby: “What. Sorry, I’ve seen this movie but I don’t… I’m just really confused,” says your friend’s wife.
“My card is trying to fuck your card,” you tell her. It’s horrible. Your words hang in the air like the stink of a mass grave. “Also, this Austin Powers quote,” you recite. It makes it worse, so much worse.
Brockway: You’re not joking. The ruleset actually demands you read all the quotes out loud in your best impression, and they’re all here. Every single catchphrase in the Austin Powers series is now a card, complete with full Vibe stats and Mojo ratings-
Brockway: Let me explain how it works. For example, if I were to tell you my Frickin’ Bone card “Oh, behave!” is worth 15 Mojo on a successful Shag, you might slap me full force without realizing what you were doing. That’s just a natural fight or flight reflex, because your body recognized that I was a threat before your brain did.
Seanbaby: These are the fucking cards!? This isn’t a game. This is the autopsied brain of a parakeet who starved to death while this DVD menu was looping. I would rather you handed me the murder weapon from an outhouse stabbing than another card from this game.
Brockway: That’s weird, your rage should’ve been taken from you back in the Vibe stage. We must not’ve calibrated right.
Anyway “Get in my BELLY,” the phrase that still haunts the therapy sessions of people who were chubby in the late ‘90s, provides two Shagadelic Vibes if used to Shag, but only 1 Randy and 1 Creepy Vibe if used to Assassinate. Fucking fuck YOU, and fuck this shit a Gex writers room would’ve rejected.
Oh hey, I can still feel anger, too? What a lovely surprise. A bright red flower in a dead and salted field.
Seanbaby: In the following thesis, I postulate how the Austin Powers CCG “I ate a BABY!” card represents a total victory against happiness. It commemorates a desperate, incoherent line written and delivered as if it would ever be a t-shirt. Pulled from context like this, it amplifies how there never was any. The script simply called for the obese man to eat something silly and they landed on a thing neither silly nor simple. A sudden child-murdering cannibal is no non-sequitur. It begs questions more important than the movie he’s interrupting. How much more of this film was written not in the interest of narrative or the craft of comedy? For a 6th grader to repeat until Dude Where’s My Car is relea– god damn it, what? Where am I again? Why does this keep happening?
Brockway: Your brain is still trying to fight back. It’s cute!
And you’re right: Breaking any joke down into a card game mechanic is an elegant system for slaughtering comedy. Likewise “Throw me a frickin’ bone here!” was never really anything. It was half of somebody else’s catchphrase said in a weird voice, and maybe that was enough in the 1990s. But when the game manual pauses for eight straight paragraphs to explain Frickin’ Bone play, there can be no mistake: The game designers hate this fucking movie their kids won’t stop quoting, and they want its corpse mutilated so its soul can’t enter heaven.
Seanbaby: Other players can get involved in your seduction attacks? I am 20% sure this was a group sex game reskinned to be about Austin Powers over a very sad, very dream-crushing weekend.
Brockway: If you get pregnant from an Austin Powers CCG orgy you have to give birth by C-section because the baby will not consent to enter the world that spawned it. It will leave clawmarks on the inside of the womb if you try to induce. Hey, is that too dark? I don’t remember light. I’ve been here too long, in this place where every tortured joke is dissected and spread across a full page of technical writing, like the segmented horse from The Cell.
You remember the long “names that are synonyms for penis” montage? It was kind of funny in the first movie. Not for its strained double entendres, but because they carried the joke on so long it passed beyond painful and became admirable. Then Austin Powers did it again and again, proving they never actually got what was funny about it, it was all an accident. That’s mirrored in the gameplay! Not just the joke – but the ensuing tedium and destruction of goodwill.
Brockway: When somebody lays this card, the game traps ALL players into a feedback loop that could potentially go on forever. So it starts out fun at first, and then joy turns to ash as you ceaselessly play Johnson after Dong after One-Eyed Monster until you all finally realize no days have passed, you died in that bus crash and the sun never rises in the cold forest.
Seanbaby: You’d think it would come back around. They took an endurance dick joke, explained it, killed it, cremated it, and smeared its ashes across a board game. By this point, you should admire their dedication. But you don’t. This is grandma starting the same story she just told from her tracheostomy hole.
Brockway: I want you to picture the following interaction. Truly bring it to life in your mind.
It’s 1999. You’re babysitting a 13 year old who should be too mature for a babysitter, but definitely isn’t. You allow him to pick the game you play if he agrees to be in bed by 9 so you can watch Girl, Interrupted and make out with a guy who drives a Dodge Neon.
He lays these two cards-
So you go for your turn and he says, “ExSQUEEZE me! A baking powder? I have played my Heather Graham bikini card, so you MUST discard your I Ate a Baby. Now, because I have an active Felicity, I lay my Cherry-”
I know all of you reading this are practicing nerds. I know you’re mostly kind or, failing that, physically weak. Are you seriously telling me you would allow the rest of that sentence to be finished? You would attack! You would attack to keep this aberration’s mutant seed from spreading. Not even consciously, but out of a genetic instinct to protect the unseen future world of your progeny.
Seanbaby: And you’d be free the next day. The worst, most overworked public defender could prove this game was a sex crime. Unless, of course, the DA countered with a higher mojo’ed Frickin’ Bone card such as an upgraded “I’m With It, I’m Hip, Tuka-Tuka Tuka-Tuka Tuka-Tuka Tuka-Tuka.” I don’t feel comfortable being sarcastic about this game. That’s probably a real card, and a real rule.
Brockway: Good instincts. You cannot make up a comedic low bar for the Austin Powers CCG. Everyone and everything in these movies has been turned into a card. There’s no way New Line truly appreciated the implications of signing over total use of the IP when they asked Decipher to burn months of their lives for this-
Brockway: Sure, Seth Green would love it. To become a meaningless collectible, a forgotten waste of time and resources quickly rendered valueless by the natural progression of society. It’s his brand now. But fucking-
Brockway: You can’t do this to Elvis Costello! There’s no way he foresaw this when he signed up for a fun cameo in a spy comedy. You go fucking tell him he’s worth 25 Mojo and free to play with an Active Felicity. He’ll spit in your mouth before you finish speaking.
Seanbaby: They gave him a point of Creepy! The maniacs who made a fantasy sex/murder game with a Heather Graham bikini card gave Elvis Costello a point of Creepy! That’s like a bus masturbator giving Elvis Costello a point of Creepy.
Brockway: It’s not the game designer’s fault. He was mostly card by this point. He was just doing his best to understand life in terms of the Austin Powers CCG that ate his brain. It’s not just people, like poor Elvis Costello, but broad human behavior outside of the movies. I am speaking, of course, about the homosexuality mechanic.
Seanbaby: Ongoing effects continue to apply as long as agents who have “come to embrace the love that dare not speak its name” are active? These are not rules. This is a maze of indelicate homophobia. And speaking of, I bet I could have called two cards gay faster than this in 1999.
Brockway: “There are gays in Austin Powers,” the game designer speaks, but of course they’re not his words anymore.
“The lesbian mechanic is obvious: Lesbian Agents can Shag females and must only Assassinate males. But how does bisexuality modify play?”
His answer and only friend is silence.
“You’re right,” he tells silence. “Bisexuals can only be Shagged by female cards when in the presence of a Lesbian Agent.”
Seanbaby: Bisexuals are just confused assassins who don’t know they’re CTETLTDNSIN y– hold on, where am I again? How did– okay, why is there a gay joke on my screen, in 2024, based on a clumsy euphemism in a rule exception for a CCG based on Austin Powers:The Spy Who Shagged Me? And I think this next sentence is some kind of pun based on that? In card games, this is called “homo-errata.” Fuck! What!? How!? Is Seth Green doing this!?
Brockway: You’re right. Somehow Seth Green is the game designer now. I can’t and don’t want to explain it. What’s important is that we’ve found the exact moment where Seth Green could no longer access normal human life. He built his own prison out of the Austin Powers CCG, and discarded its key to turn Fat Bastard Eats Turkey Leg into an NFT. Even if Seth Green wanted to end this farce, to escape the cold forest once and for all, he physically can’t do it. Because he has no Active Felicity, and cannot radiate the necessary Creepy Vibes for a Self Assassination.
“Fook Yu!” he might wail, using the only language left to him. “Oh, no. Oh. Oh, behave. Oh. Fook Mi. Fook Mi. God Fook us all.”
Seanbaby: I ate a BABY. No. I ate a BABY. Brockway, I ate a BABY. You know I ate a BABY. What you have to do, BABY. I ate a SHOOT. I ate a ME.
Seanbaby: Hi, I’m Seanbaby, professional game designer.
Brockway: I’m Robert Brockway. I live at my house.
Seanbaby: The game I designed this Teamworking Day, professionally, is called Rad n’ Roll Lookalike War Cards. Using the latest headshots from two different British celebrity lookalike agencies, I generated one deck of cards for myself and another for Brockway. These are not jokes, and I did not cheat. These people are all real, and as of press time, working lookalikes. I color-coded our cards so we could tell the owner apart, but something weird happened at the printer and Brockway’s came back like this:
Brockway: The holographic foil is there to verify it’s a real Fart Star.
Seanbaby: The rules of the game are, as always, simple. Brockway and I will wage lookalike war across eleven events. At each one, he and I must summon a celebrity knockoff to create maximum impact. End of rules, Brockway goes first.
Dr. Wendell Plant has finally sold his practice to make more time for online gambling. Ready your incredible lookalike decks, heroes! Make this orthodontist’s retirement special!
Brockway: I’ve long said Roger Moore is the orthodontist’s Bond, just like Timothy Dalton is the divorced speedboat salesman’s Bond. And who better for this job than Torben, the Dutch rat farmer? With James Bond’s trademark long greasy hair and fish suspenders, Torben brings a little extra special orthodontist flair by way of a shaved jaw and inverted chin. Dr. Wendell Plant of West Terracotta, Indiana, will spend his whole retirement party giggling with the other orthodontists, ecstatic that they now have a face mystery to solve but no moral imperative to treat it.
Seanbaby: Indiana orthodontists! And their families! I bring you another face mystery! I have played my Very Loose Interpretation of Tiger Woods Card on your Roger Moore’s Cousin Arrested for Swamp Vagrancy Mugshot Card. I understand it’s a futile gesture. I’ve lost this round; your guy is incredible. When Torben tells the retirement party he’s there as a Roger Moore impersonator, they will have a thousand questions. “Who hired you for this, and why?” “Roger Moore, the actor!?” “What is that fluid dripping from you?” When Angelo tells people he’s Tiger Woods, he’ll already be screaming the second half of that sentence at a Staybridge Suites security guard.
Anyway, congratulations, you get one lookalike point.
It’s finally happening for Bridgette. How will our two glorious masters of lookalike celebrate her love?
Brockway: Ladies love Robert Pattinson, with his waifish features and his waifish demeanor and his waifish little outfits, like a mischievous pixie pranking a college professor. I get it: Some women just want a man they feel comfortable taking in a fistfight. So I put forth Jon Fox. He doesn’t look anything like Robert Pattinson, he looks like he’s one trunk search away from being branded the Tire Iron Murderer, but he works all bridal showers pro bono, saying “the smells are my paycheck.”
Seanbaby: The only things women love more than a drifter with the same number of faces as Robert Pattinson are two sad, filthy Bruce Willi. “You fuckin’ white women sit down and take your talkin’ to, wait, this is a Bruce Willis gig, I meant to say… I see dead people,” says Terry Whiteman who is normally a Bill Burr.
Dave Cooke sweeps the room with his gun. “I see them too!! Who’s Bruce Willis!?” he screams. They are the last words anyone at the bridal shower hears. Police are on the lookout for a Bruce Willis, a Robert Pattinson, and a Bruce Willis, and they will never find them because that is an absurd way to describe these three men.
Point Brockway.
We weren’t invited, children, but don’t worry– we brought these exciting and almost celebrities.
Brockway: Roger Goold brings two things all kids love: Star Wars and balding. And baby? Roger Goold is all out of Star Wars. He’s got a flair about him that I can’t place, but I love. He plays harmonica in a Bob Seger cover band, so four out of five songs he just stands off-stage tapping his foot and they usually forget to thank him at the end of the set. He looks like Mandy Patinkin on Halloween, 1999. He’s the third phase of Qui-Gon Jinn animorphing into a quokka.
Seanbaby: I counter your wrongly-faced Star Wars Prequel character with an even more wrongly-faced Star Wars Prequel character– this blurry, distant photo of a guy named Samuel on his way to golf! This looks like a bit from a Detroiters commercial for “Near-Sighted Frank’s Racist Ass Lookalike Agency.” This looks like a man who said, “What? I don’t look like Samuel L. Jackson, you ignorant fuck. I’m here for the IT job,” during his interview. “And if anyone uses this picture of me in the future for a celebrity lookalike game, tell them they lost this round!” Oh. Damn it.
Two loving husbands invite their wives to a romantic dinner. How will they make it a sort of star-studded one?
Brockway:
“Honey, for our anniversary, I got you the greatest gift of all. Something every woman wants… Mike Cox.”
“Fuck you. Take this seriously.”
[opens the bedroom door]
“Oh! Oh.”
Seanbaby: Oh, man. I went in a way different direction. My wife is so fucking pissed. No, don’t cry, Ian. It’s not your fault. I mean, you are a working Kevin Spacey impersonator in 2024, so some of this is your faul– okay, yeah, you can take the rest of this food home.
You win this one. I am really losing this game.
Set sail for the skies, where there are no laws! No limits to your celebrity dreams!
Brockway:
“Darling, because you were so generous on our anniversary, I decided to get you a little something special for your birthday.”
“Oh!”
“A hot air balloon ride.”
“Oh.”
“With Mike Cox.”
“OH.”
Seanbaby:
“Honey, our balloon ride is today. Tell me you didn’t hire another sex offender lookalike.”
“How am I the sex crime lookalike guy after one Kevin Spacey?”
“He just seemed like the start of a running bit.”
“Gulp.”
“Why did you just gulp? Why is there 30% of a Woody Allen waiting for us in that balloon?”
“. . .”
“Tell Robert he won another round.”
Slap! It’s the sound, and the overly wordy description of Dana White’s premiere new fighting sport! Which superstar lookalikes will our boys bring?
Brockway: Nice try, Frank Stallone. Nobody was booking him when he advertised as “Frank Stallone lookalike Frank Stallone,” so I don’t blame him for the deception. Even kids are wildly disappointed when you promise a Sylvester Stallone impersonator for their Bat Mitzvah and his fucking brother comes and lives on their couch for six weeks. But not the Power Slap World Championships. It’s the only place in the world that still considers Frank Stallone a “get.” They’d seat him front and center, right next to Andy Dick and Fred Dudikoff.
Seanbaby: I think this round might be a tie. Because you’re not going to believe this– my plus one for the Power Slap World Championships is also a used Frank Stallone candle! Screaming his mighty Rambo battle cry of “No refunds, I’m sorry!”
I thought going into this article the bit was going to be us ruining these events with bad lookalikes, but two Turkish Frank Stallones telling you legally they can only answer to “Ranbar” is the least tragic thing at the Power Slap World Championships. Speaking of, our next event is…
With only moments to spare before the hospital finds out the Power Slap World Champion has no health insurance, nor a credit card, nor a valid piece of identification, Seanbaby and Brockway must rush to deliver a lookalike to his recovery room!
Brockway: If you’re recovering from acute brain displacement, nothing would pick you up like Leonidas kicking open the door to your hospital room and yelling that when your optic nerve explodes you slap in the shade. I know Marcus only looks like Gerard Butler when viewed from above, at a specific angle and when framed on a Russian grandmother’s stairs – but the Power Slap World Champion doesn’t. He only knows pudding time is exciting and uh ohs make warm.
Seanbaby: I see your Gerard Butler sleeping in a nursing home staircase and raise you one Blackface Sammy Davis Junior. Unspeakable to you and me, but I think Dana White and a divorced drug addict dying of a face hematoma would call Ray Ballard’s decisions “bold” and “a throwback to before woke ruined Sammy Davis Junior impersonators.”
Brockway: Holy shit, is that really a Blackface Sammy Davis Junior? My faith in humanity wants to think it’s a skin disease.
Seanbaby: I’m pretty sure? God damn it, now I have to look up Blackface Sammy Davis Junior.
…
Oh, fuck.
He’s very real. Blackface Sammy Davis Junior walks among us! And in 2016 he put on a 2 hour and 33 minute “night in vegas with the rat pack” for one (1) person! Or I guess we should say “missing person” now.
I did it, I w-
Brockway: You don’t need to say it. I know.
As our flimsy consecrations are undone by the touch of the hunter’s moon, three men prepare to honor their dark god with a sacrifice most foul! Which celebrity lookalike will Sean and Robert bring along?
Brockway: I don’t think Quentin Tarantino is relevant to this scenario, I just think Max Knight is one of the three robed men planning a murder.
Seanbaby: I hate to one-up your ritual murder, gentlemen, but meet this Ricky Gervais impersonator.
…
Fine, your point.
A murder thwarted, a dark ritual undone, our heroes take their celebrity lookalikes to a dog show!
Brockway: An unauthorized local dog show would be the biggest gig the real Alex Baldwin ever booked. I’m pretty sure this guy bought Frank Stallone’s MLM VHS Alternate Careers for the Celebrity Adjacent. He legally changed his name from Alex Baldwin to Pauk Hull just so he could book Alex Baldwin lookalike gigs without clients worrying the real Alex Baldwin would show up and steal their recycling. I’m sorry, I’m trying to say this is the real Alex Baldwin. I’m aware that person does not exist. I stand by it.
Seanbaby: Hi, Alex Baldwin. You are real! Have you met Grade School Librarian Elton John? He is not a divorced grandmother getting her real estate agent headshots. He is Elton John, not a Car Toys franchise owner after winning a burger challenge. He is not a bubble magician’s indecent exposure mugshot, he is Elton John. He pivoted to this after Rod Roddy died.
Round to Brockway.
Anyone can afford a vacation home, and your arrival and departure days are as flexible as our payment plans. Oh, i-is that…? Who is that you have with you?
Brockway: These meetings are so awkward. Yes, I need a free blender and do not value the remaining hours of my life. But I have a negative credit rating and I’m selling that blender for bus fare back to the city. The timeshare salesman will never accept that. It’s hard to make a graceful exit. Instead, I bring Carl Chetty along. When the pitch gets too aggressive, I just use his special rattle to call him out from behind the water cooler so he can tell them in a perfectly normal voice “I’m Mr. Bean.” They’re usually so confused I can slip out with an extra blender, and that’s called profit.
Seanbaby: Guy Combes is used to hearing people beg. “Whatever that is, please stop,” they plead. To their god they pray, “Please, Lord, let that be a Pauly Shore impersonator. An Ice Capades Mindfreak, anything.” But in their hearts they know. A forgotten, prehistoric sense warns them– RUSSELL BRAND Lookalike. This is both a throwaway character you’d meet in a holding cell during an ’80s comedy, and the most accurate lookalike we’ve summoned today. This Russell Brand could walk right into Joe Rogan’s office with a paper bag full of panties and Joe would hide them, no questions asked.
I can already hear what Carl Chetty’s Mr. Bean would say, clearly and perfectly enunciated: “You definitely won this round, Seanbaby.”
Brockway: …
Devastation! The Power Slap World Champion has passed away from just so many things. How will these Lords of Lookalike honor his sacrifice?
Brockway: This is a great national tragedy, and that nation is Moldova. Still, nothing less would do than a somber, dignified appearance from the most somber and dignified President. I bring all subspecies of Trump lookalikes. From left: I bring the man with the self confidence to call himself Donald Trump 6 when none of the others are numbered. I bring Dr. Wendell Plant after he realizes there’s nothing to fill his retirement days. I bring the haunted Trump from a Norwegian art film about how death comes for us all. I bring Jay Leno Max Headroom. And I bring Dr. Jerry Funk, who betrayed Dr. Wendell Plant’s friendship and stole his idea – kickstarting the orthodontic Trump clone rivalry that would tear West Terracotta’s second finest senior living community apart. I bring you all of these men – a parade of Trumps walking single-file past the Power Slap World Champion, each of them pointing at the closed casket and saying “you’re fired” in a different, unidentifiable accent.
RIP Cobra Steak, you’re slapping angels in heaven now.
Seanbaby: I’m fucked. You’ve invaded the funeral of a slap hero with an army of subTrumps, and the best lookalike I can field is this grouchy Huey Lewis holding a gilded pomegranate juice. Your lookalike agency is so stacked with imitation talent. I lost this 9 to 2! How did you rig a game I designed?
Brockway: I didn’t even use these-
Seanbaby: My god. Strawweight Tyson. Trevor Gandhi. Not-Even-Close Jackie Chan. The Never-Era Justin Timberlake. Hunk Tiger Woods. These are breathtaking.
Brockway: Shut up. I’m not done.
Seanbaby: This whole game you had a Hitler and a Cosby? A 50-Year-Old Virgin Keanu? Gus Scissors as Chris Rock Lookalike as Chris Rock Lookalike? The Christian Jesus, a double Mother T(h)eresa, and… is that…? No. It can’t be! You son of a bitch, you were holding your own Blackface Sammy Davis Jnr card!
Brockway: I didn’t want to take it from you. It was the only point you ever had.
Seanbaby: What about Flamenco Dancer Russell Brand?
Brockway: Flamenco Dancer Russell Brand has already been disqualified for something that looks like a sex crime if you squint.