Category: TEAMWORKING DAY

Last time we talked about Monster Wars and their always angry, sometimes a cat, never coherent truck men. Today we’re talking about… Monster Wars again! Why would we talk about other things, when we have found the best thing?

Seanbaby: I’m so jealous of the joy spreading through you right now as you let yourself realize none of this is a bit. We really are dedicating an entire week to the immediately canceled 1993 show, Monster Wars.

Brockway: Episode 2 is here to shake things up a bit – the trucks aren’t racing in a straight line, but on a mini-NASCAR track in the New Orleans Superdome. This concludes the list of differences.

Brockway: “Wow, an extended race allowing for tactics and skill!” You, an idiot, are asking. “How many laps are there?”

One.

Listen, monster trucks are the Andre the Giants of trucks. They’re huge and impressive but God did not mean it when he made them and they break a lot quicker than your heart would like. They can barely manage one action-packed lap around this course, which everyone calls the “Roundy Round,” and it’s adorable every single time they say it.

Seanbaby: Imagine a bulldog on a skateboard and take away all the cuteness and maneuverability. The dog is very sick and can’t see. The owner of the skateboard took out a reverse mortgage to replace the wheels. The whole thing is called Thrashkiller and it’s also a mailman and an Indian chief. You are seeing him for the first and only time and he has 1 unexplained point and 13 catchphrases. Congratulations to me, for perfectly explaining Monster Wars episode 2.

Brockway: Nearly perfect, you forgot that if you opt out of making your dogboard a wrestler, all the other Indian Chiefs and Mailmen will dunk on him endlessly to no opposition. Hey, speaking of exactly that thing I said: Our first matchup is Grave Digger, easily in our top three Skeletors, versus Kodiak, who skipped the ‘I Agree To Have a Feral Truckboy’ box on the signup form.

Brockway: I don’t know that we stressed enough how much monster truck racing sucks last time. We did? Let’s do it even more. Each race takes 40 minutes to set up, the event itself lasts 15 seconds, victory is on a point-based system most of which takes place offscreen, but oh, those crashes…

Are also boring!

Seanbaby: If you’re in a dainty little panel van resting on top of 6 foot tires, it’s not like physics gets confused about what to do when you turn left. They invented a race where any speed means being trapped under 10,000 pounds of debris. Kodiak went into the turn slightly faster than a human jog and the laws of our universe saw their opening and finished it with a swinging neck breaker.

Brockway: Yeah including slight turns was a mistake. Christina Hendricks could tell you, never take a top-heavy turn at speed. She always comes to a complete stop first, rotates, and then accelerates. But that means Grave Digger is the winner! Hell yeah, what does the sigma skeleton have to say about Kodiak’s overturn and ensuing loss?

Hold on he’s fucking dead??

Seanbaby: He died the same way most of us will– taking a corner at 4 mph, worrying about insurance premiums, and being taunted by a skeleton.

Brockway: Wait, who is Grave Digger talking about? Kodiak didn’t sign up for a trucksona, so he could only mean the driver. Jesus, RIP Mark Bendler, who died like he lived: Not a lot of fun.

Wait-

Brockway: Mark is completely fine, but I guess his truck gently overturned and died like a turtle in the sun. Even though it was never alive in the first place. That could be the show’s elegant way of explaining why some trucks don’t have a guy – the wrestlers are the truck’s souls, and if they lose a race, they vanish. Then it’s just their husks being piloted around by hillbillies. That’s fucked up, Mark Bendler. Release that zombie truck from your service so it can rest in Monster Heaven.

Seanbaby: That would mean… any truckman that has lost a race is , in addition to all the other things they are, undead. So that piece of shit Predator is a Mötley Crüe roadie, a pickup, a kitty cat, and a ghost.

Brockway: How can you be so many things and still not enough? Our next race is- aw, god dammit. It’s Predator.

Brockway: If you’ve already forgotten about Predator I’m sorry to remind you, you did some tough mental labor and it should have been rewarded. He’s like a less butch Night Man, and he’s here to do two things: Slink and make horny cat noises. Too bad he’s not out of either of those.

Brockway: I think he’s adding lightning powers to his whole deal? He was already an urban shapeshifting offroad were-kitty. Be on the lookout now for electric city cat truck puns. Whether you know it or not, you have an instinctive sense of the order descriptors should appear in the English language. If I say this werewolf goth monster truck skinny electro-panther sucks, you understand it should be this skinny goth electro-panther werewolf monster truck sucks. Wait, no “werewolf” should be after “monster truck,” right? No, hold on, because in this case “werewolf” is being used as a modifier and not a subject. Fuck, I’m saying Predator is so many god damn things it’s breaking the language.

Seanbaby: I’ve read enough X-Men comics to be able to keep a dozen powers, skills, and secondary mutations straight in my head, but I don’t think I’ll ever be able to follow Monster Wars wordplay. These truck beings think it’s okay to pull any pun from any aspect of their many things and then spin off from there. They are constantly dropping these bizarre, unsatisfying puzzles on your brain and by the time you figure out, “Okay, I think Fartvan wants to give Predator’s chassis a licking because cats are fastidious cleaners,” you have missed two driver death announcements and all 4 seconds of their race.

Brockway: The stacking concepts are getting heavy and Predator is not a load-bearing character. Plus he’s really fucking up the curve for Carolina Crusher who’s struggling to keep his “construction worker” lore straight. He comes with a hat and dynamite and he forgot the dynamite this time. Here’s how he responds to the uppity catboy’s savage wordplay:

Seanbaby: ha ha Carolina Crusher has no idea what’s going on. He thinks this is probably a foot powder commercial, but would definitely break down crying if you pressed him on it.

Brockway: Crusher is trying so hard. At the end he seems to realize he hard stressed a chicken pun to a cat man and resorts to his panic state-

Seanbaby: Poor Carolina Crusher would lose an argument to one of the normal trucks with a Doug White in it. He has no chance in a word battle against these monsters with quadruple his themes and no regard for tenor.

Brockway: Yeah this isn’t a fair matchup. If it were a physical contest Crusher would use Predator to clean bits of better men from his folds. But all they can do right now is trash talk, and Predator’s not done piling themes on this sinking cargo ship of a character.

Brockway: That’s not a cat pun! It’s an ESP pun. He’s psychic now. Also this is episode two, we’ve seen episode one, and he has never mentioned any of this before. I wouldn’t know how to respond to that. Carolina Crusher knows exactly how to respond to that.

Seanbaby: I was wondering how long it would take for the fucking to start.

Brockway: Am I misinterpreting what’s happening here?

I am not.

Seanbaby: This seems strange by today’s standards, but you have to remember that in 1993, two men had to legally be trucks in order to get married in North Carolina.

Brockway: I’d say I sexually identify as an exploding monster truck and mean it, but that’s the only joke conservatives have and I don’t want to take it from them.

Please don’t think we’re making up subtext here. We’ve established there is a greater Monster Universe where these men form friendships and sometimes something more. I’ve searched PrimeHide on the Transformers DeviantArt, I know what it looks like when two trucks fall in love.

Seanbaby: And it’s never been this beautiful or noisy.

Brockway: Let’s settle this dance-

Brockway: Haha, remember this is what’s actually tangibly happening: A Gary is racing an Allen for up to 20 seconds, and not enough prize money to pay for truck parts. There’s no way they told those men what was going on in these promos. They both agreed to be part of the wrasslin’ show and wanted to be good sports about it, but there’s no chance Allen Pezo knows he’s driving a power-bottom cat twink.

Seanbaby: I think Gary knows what’s going on. There’s a knocking in his flexplate that can only be love.

Brockway: Carolina Crusher easily dominates Predator, which is met by the kind of yowling cat screeches that presage kittens. Monster Wars just wrote the first openly gay vehicles and they should be proud of it. Here’s exactly, no bullshit, how Crusher responds:

Brockway: I’m not cutting out relevant bits. He didn’t previously establish what those ounces might be, or why he needs to squeeze to get them. He says that shit out of nowhere, and then holds up his wrench with two hands and shakes it next to his mouth.

Seanbaby: “Yeaargh! I’m looking to be someone’s daddy, their big wet daddy next race, 8 inches cut!”

Brockway: Carolina Crusher driver Gary Porter, how do you feel about that win?

Brockway: Next up is Taurus versus First Blood.

Brockway: You haven’t met First Blood yet. If you had, you’d already have a First Blood tattoo.

Brockway: Roid-raging vampire monster truck man! I love how many things you have to be to make an impression in this universe. Quick, don’t overthink it, just answer: What happens if he bites you?

Seanbaby: You merge with the weirdest thing and place you’ve fucked into one superthing. Oh my god, I just solved this. All of it!

Brockway: Oh my god, you’re right. First Blood is the head demi-truck. He started all of this and if you drive a stake through his hemi the entire economy of Tuscaloosa disappears.

First Blood’s opponent is Taurus, who is a cowboy plus nothing, which by the Seanbaby Law of Truckification means he once fucked nothing on a cowboy.

He’s here to lob some weak vampire puns-

Brockway: And is wholly unprepared for the wild volley First Blood returns.

Brockway: Haha you’re the vampire!

Seanbaby: Ha ha ha he has no idea what he’s supposed to be. He saw Vampire Hot Dog on the call sheet and figured it must be the other guy. “I’m glad I’m not you, Vampire Hot Dog Man! Because me, Barbarian Charlie Brown, is no wienie!”

Brockway: Taurus, rightfully, is completely thrown by his reply. In a perfect world, these would be scripted races and Taurus would stumble off the starting line – still reeling from the time he lobbed a limp stake pun across the net and a truck vampire spiked it right back in his face. Instead, First Blood loses because his driver decided to play it conservative and save his truck for later races.

Seanbaby: That was an option? I feel like caution and foresight are the only two things that should be illegal in mantruck racing.

Brockway: Do you think anybody told First Blood the Gym Bat that right after this frothing promo where he blew out his voicebox, his truck body gently ambled about to faint boos?

It really emphasizes the strangest part of Monster Wars. Well, one of the top five strange parts of Monster Wars. The wrestlers constantly escalate the stakes – fucking Grave Digger decided you die if you lose! But no matter what they say, the final result all hinges on some old redneck calculating the cost of a new drive shaft against trailer rent.

Brockway: In the second episode, we really start exploring the potential of an infinite truckboy universe. You saw it earlier when Grave Digger retroactively killed every truck who stalled out. You make the world you want. Now Equalizer says the words-

And immediately splits into two. He only did it because he couldn’t decide which sea-based pun to use on Tropical Thunder. He went with “both” when the correct answer was “neither, apologize.” But he stressed the word two weirdly, so now he can multiply at will. These are the ironic rules of a school film strip universe where a child learns why he was foolish to say nobody needs a dictionary anymore.

Seanbaby: Wait, I think my theory from earlier explains this! A truck vampire bite merges you with the weirdest thing and place you’ve fucked, so if Equalizer was masturbating on a motorcycle in the bed of a pickup, he’d… yeah! Yeah, he’d turn into a double him Evel Knievel truckitaur. It works! This is the unifying theory of Monster Wars we’ve been looking for!

Brockway: I know! You’re already getting the Monster Wars equivalent of the Nobel Prize, which is a half price Grand Slam and a Debbie handjob.

Equalizer’s opponent, Tropical Thunder, is one of the vehicles without an associated wrestler – possibly because he took a weird bounce one time and Grave Digger ate his truck soul. So Equalizer is up there trash talking nothing. An object. Tropical Thunder has no way to clap back after it loses very badly due to engine trouble.

Clearly the driver, Wayne Smozanek, didn’t sign up for the wrestling part of the show. So obviously they respect that choice when-

Brockway: Wayne didn’t want to play wrassle trucks and threw a rod, now an American Gladiator is aggressively shit talking his passion project. There’s no way he thought his life would end up like this. You’d never believe the drunk fortune teller trying to warn you about it.

Seanbaby: I bet Wayne’s wife loved watching this rippling star hunk emasculate the man who came back to his family after two months on the road with only a $47,000 repair bill. The following joke requires a full understanding of my newly formed Monster Wars communicable truck hypothesis, but Wayne’s wife is going to be madder than the time First Blood bit him and he turned into a half-porta potty/half-her sister.

Brockway: This has to be the least accessible joke you’ve ever written, and that makes it the best. You need an Associate’s Degree in truck vampires for that giggle.

But it’s true, Monster Wars rules and it ruins families. Almost every episode we pause the action to highlight one of the drivers, and almost every time it’s a tale of woe and sadness. The show is very clear none of these men make any money from this. If anything, they’re all going slowly bankrupt trying to pay for the maintenance on huge steel monstrosities they break every single weekend. There’s a savage commentary about America in there somewhere. Even the winners are barely hanging on week to week, and if they let the show assign them a truckboy they could at least have an avatar to fight back. But without one, Wayne Smozanek just has to sit there and quietly eat the loss, the cost of a new carburetor, and the many rhyming insults of a huge hunk in Captain Falcon cosplay.

Brockway: Up next is Bear Foot versus Invader!

The alien truck from space who came to Earth to conquer!

Against…

Fred Shafer, 70 year old Dodge enthusiast.

Seanbaby: The name Bear Foot is still more whimsy than Fred would like. “I wanted to call it Sensible Workboot, why, I remember the day the US Hot Rod Association first added tires to horses. I said you boys are havin’ too much fun.”

Brockway: Fred never wanted to play this game, and you can’t blame him. He’s been a champion of whatever this is for 20 years, and he thought he was right to laugh off the coked-out TV producer who offered to make his truck into a beefcake with a shaved chest and a novelty hat.

Seanbaby: It would be so funny if grouchy, normal-sized Fred won the whole thing and brought the trophy home to his adult grandchildren.

Brockway: It is extremely funny. Because Fred Shafer will go on to easily win this season. One of the trucks that didn’t get a character wins the whole thing. That’s been a very real danger from the start! A single driver doesn’t want to play truckboys, and the entire truckboy narrative is fucked if he wins it. All these colorful characters that Monster Wars wanted to sell toys of – and they did make toys – had to sit on the bench while a Kentucky retiree smugly took the winner’s circle.

Seanbaby: I love this show. Everything about it is so expertly wrong.

Brockway: We need a serious distraction. Luckily host Luann Lee, the apex of womanhood for any Ratt fan, has just the thing.

Brockway: She’s saying America’s biggest party, our cultural shorthand for debauchery, the one place where it’s still cute to harass women for their tits and reward them inadequately, is tame compared to some tractor pull. And she’s saying it while filming in New Orleans, a town infamously defensive of their wild reputation. If this isn’t some Nero-level shit, like several partygoers accidentally eat a minor celebrity kind of shit, New Orleans is going to tear Luann Lee apart.

Seanbaby: “If you want a real party, come watch Randy and a bulldozer he’s not licensed to operate shove dirt in between brief car malfunctions next to weird adults and their disappointed nephews!”

Brockway: This is the single frame I would pull from an entire weekend of footage to make the tractor pull at Bowling Green, Ohio look as bad as possible. It wouldn’t be fair of me to sit here and pretend the whole event is best represented by a 58 year-old carpet salesman droning the words “full pull” with the same sexual energy as the guy who yells “ass to ass” in Requiem for a Dream. It wouldn’t be fair, but it would be completely accurate because that’s exactly what Monster Wars does. They really do smash cut from a Playboy Playmate promising the party to end all parties to a Jerry objectifying tractors. It’s an incredible editing choice that sets a perfect tone for the reel that follows, which is mostly police sketches against machinery jumbles.

Seanbaby: You can always tell when something’s AI-generated because of the big letters spelling “OHIO.”

Brockway: That’s the cardback art for the only banned Go-Bot.

Let’s throw it to 84-years-young Harold “Sewer Hookup” Whitman. Tell us about the party, Harry!

Brockway: I did not cherry pick that quote. I didn’t even fake the sicko camera tilt and slight fisheye, which was ‘90s visual shorthand for “what a psycho!” It has to be sarcastic, this has to be the world’s first sarcastic camera angle.

Seanbaby: “I’m Harold Whitman, newly single because it turns out the devil can die. The top five best things about tractor pullin’? I can list zero and one of them is drainin’ the shitter on the RV.”

Brockway: Hold on, I know who can save this. We need to get famous tractor pull party animal Crazy Frank in here. His first name is Crazy! His second first name is Frank! You gotta be careful if you even go looking for Crazy Frank. A driver pulls the crew aside to whisper “you wanna find Frank?” Like they’re looking for a forbidden tractor sorcerer. “You just look for the orderlies with the straitjackets.”

Seanbaby: When you brand yourself as the “crazy” guy at an event where sad drinkers scream at farm equipment, you’re not the good kind of crazy.

Brockway: Yeah, do we even want to find Frank? We might not be able to handle his giant foam cowboy hat, his pink sunglasses, his that’s it. Old two-prop Crazy Frank. You wanna know where the real party is? Oh, Frank knows, and you better get ready to throw down baby because-

Brockway: That’s the best Bowling Green, Ohio has to offer. A beach-themed party, like somebody forgot to brainstorm for a 10 year old’s birthday.

Seanbaby: Beach-themed!? Sounds like the Bowling Green dry goods store might finally sell its bikini.

Brockway: Puts Mardi Gras to shame! This is the least anyone has ever delivered on a promise. Luann Lee looks like the kind of woman who always brings sensible flats in case she has to run for her car. It’s definitely gonna be a flat time in New Orleans tonight.

Back to the races! Equalizer: the Scion of Space versus Bear Foot: the Fred of Fred’s House!

… was supposed to happen, but both trucks had engine troubles.

Seanbaby: They should have to race on foot if their trucks break down. In his twilight years Fred may no longer have the physique of Equalizer, but he’s also not wearing 60 pounds of starcop armor. He’d still have a chance. Or they could have a dog food eating contest. There’s really no idea that could make the show more insane.

Brockway: How about no ideas? We just skip it. It was weird to call it out in the first place! The show is completely falling apart and they want you to know it.

Now it’s Predator vs. Grave Digger.

Brockway: Grave Digger is the best, we’ve established this, but there are still ways to explore why he’s the best. Here’s one: He never brings any sense of proportion. It doesn’t matter if his opponent is a Galactic Space Cop or an Exploding Construction Worker or a Chose to Abstain, he always gnashes teeth like it’s the fate of the universe. He knows he’s only up against a randy catboy here.

Brockway: What a hell of a thing to say to a man you’re about to kill with a monster truck.

Seanbaby: “Frightful” because he’s a sexy skeleton? This is a sincere murder vow with the minimum requirements of wordplay. It’s like a mechanic wrestler character hissing, “I’m going to fucking kill you here in this Jiffy Lube.”

Brockway: Predator, how are you going to match that bloodthirsty savagery?

Seanbaby: What the fuck?

Brockway: That seems nuts at first, but really it’s excellent character work. Predator would completely fold in the fury of a true Skeletor. He’d quickly realize his convoluted lightning cat glamrocker motif pales against a man with nothing but a skull and confidence.

Seanbaby: “I can see meow I’ve made a terrible meow-stake! Panther form escape!”

Brockway: He loses badly. Grave Digger embarrasses Predator, and Predator, in turn, embarrasses driver Allen Pezo.

Seanbaby: Allen Pezo leaps into frame and shrieks, “I will clezo your skinless neck until you’re zezo malezo!”

Brockway: Speaking of things I barely understand: First Blood was never our most eloquent vampire. He’s no Gary Oldman whispering about the cold majesty of the night, he’s more that guy from John Carpenter’s Vampires whose dick still worked okay. Even so, he’s better than this:

Brockway: This is episode 2! The writers were given a world of living muscle trucks who each dwell in their own secret dimension and they ran out of steam halfway through the second hour? We wrote ten thousand words about it already! If you gave this prompt to an anime it would be on episode 1052 and all of those trucks would be on the same team, their petty rivalries pushed aside to ally against the corruption of God.

Seanbaby: Whenever you talk about anime I feel like Fred Shafer trying to figure out why all these wolfmans keep threatening his truck.

Brockway: Somehow Crusher comes out the coherent one in this exchange.

Seanbaby: Where the hell did this insult come from? This is on-theme and haunting.

Brockway: He’s just as surprised as anybody. It doesn’t last, he gets too excited about the victory.

Seanbaby: There’s our Crusher.

Brockway: Race time. First Blood the truck, holy shit, loses power again?

They must film these promos after the race, right? It’d be crazy to record before the event, what if Skeletor says he’s gonna eat Bear Foot’s soul the day Fred flips his truck into the stands? That’s the retirement plan for a Monster Truckist. It forces the league to pay for the funeral. But it’s just as crazy to think Monster Wars knew this race ended with the truck equivalent of erectile dysfunction and still hired a wrestling lunatic to dress up like a vampire and scream about it

Seanbaby: Most sporting events have commentators to give fans an appreciation of mishaps like this. The audience would probably be forgiving if an expert explained the complexities of these trucks and the importance of each member of the crew. Instead, Monster Wars cut to twenty seconds of a man losing his mind and waiting for the dynamite in his hand to go off. It was obviously the much better choice.

Brockway: The last matchup of the episode is Invader versus Taurus. Look at this low-confidence whipwork.

Brockway: That’s not fucking monster truck wrestler promo energy, that’s how you communicate marital troubles in a game of therapeutic charades.

Seanbaby: “Yee haw, but we gotta keep it down or mom’s gonna take away my truck promo whip again.”

Brockway: Taurus is bringing nothing this time, but it might be because Invader stole all the monster energy to fuel his home planet’s truck generators – that’s right, they breathe truck on planet Extorpa! He’s been a hero to his people this whole time! Don’t judge another truck’s highway ‘til you rode it!

Seanbaby: “Truck people of Extorpa, I have a plan to re-clezo our truck generators! I will truck to Earth in a form they call truck, the word you and I know to mean all things! Once there, I will truck against their mightiest warriors sometimes! Other times, their grumpiest normals! Do not truck confused! The victor trucks energy, but only if it’s me! The others make no mention of these stakes, though some seem to think it is to the death while others are truckly fucking! Truck-bye!”

Brockway: Invader has never been my favorite, but he fully commits to whatever the hell this speech is about, screeching every word like Starscream is tired of being ignored. He wraps up his manifesto with a fistpumping countdown to violence that ends in an explosion-

Seanbaby: Yes!

Seanbaby: Yes!

Brockway: Invader loses due to engine trouble.

Seanbaby: We just got a lesson a lot of bankrupt widows had to learn the hard way– don’t get emotionally invested in the outcome of monster truck racing.

Brockway: So much engine failure this episode. I know what’s happening in reality: Monster trucks break very quickly and we’re in week two of a monster truck series that doesn’t exist for a reason. What’s happening on the truck universe side of things? Are all these trucks sick? Are the truckboys spreading some sort of intestinal virus around due to close proximity and poor truck hygiene, like the second World Bodybuilding Federation? Because in the WBF that virus was actually a cover story to explain why the bodybuilders looked better in the first competition, when they didn’t test for steroids. Wait holy shit are there truck steroids in the truckiverse?

Hold on, Monster Wars is an absurd but traditionally straight-faced competition in the early ‘90s, now courting controversy for injecting costumed wrestling gimmicks, and mired with performance issues in its second installment – there’s even a Muscle Dracula! Was I not joking before, is this actually connected to the WBF somehow?

Yes.

But you’ll have to listen to the podcast tomorrow to find out.

Seanbaby: By the pulsing, purple thighs of Grave Digger I swear we are still not kidding! Monster Wars week continues tomorrow!!!

…
Monster Wars Week is thanks to a hot Hot Dog tip from Monster Mo. You know what they say: Mo monsters, Mo problems.

Welcome to Monster Wars Week! Or should we say WELCOME TO MONSTER WARS WEEK. USHRA Monster Wars was a 1993 series of televised monster truck races, which sounds and is boring, so they hired a cast of large, wrestler-adjacent men and had them all pretend to be the monster trucks. It sounds too insane and confusing and beautiful for this world, it can’t be what you’re picturing in your head. Here’s the opening credits.

Brockway: It is exactly what you’re picturing in your head.

Seanbaby: It could never be. Because I am picturing awesome men becoming trucks driven by smaller, normal men, and that’s fucking crazy. Wait, no, everything that isn’t that is crazy.

Brockway: You’re right, the rest of the world is madness, but I think Monster Wars can be the language we use to understand it.

“How do you decide which art necessitates an entire theme week?” You, the reader, ask while increasing your pledge. I would like to walk you through the entire editorial process now.

Please note the time stamps. It was two minutes from the point we’d both seen Monster Wars, to the point where we decided we needed an entire week of Monster Wars. They say you don’t pay an artist for the two minutes it takes them to draw a simple picture, but for the decades of practice and experience that leads to them being able to do it in two minutes. This is the only thing they mean by that.

Seanbaby: Here’s how a rational brain works: “Weretrucks from beyond reality argue before the car jumping rac– okay this is a dream, we don’t need to remember this.” So we knew we only had moments before our minds dumped all memories of Monster Wars. Like they did all the other times we must have watched, loved, and talked about Monster Wars. No one knows this happened, including the stars of Monster Wars. The actor who played Carolina Crusher confronts his wife about the unexplainable construction worker costume in his closet every morning. In five minutes, you, reader, will know this article only as a vague feeling that something wonderful was taken from you.

Brockway: We need to cement this in our brains. Here’s a psychic exercise to strengthen your Truck Lobe: The host of Monster Wars is Luann Lee, a former Playboy Playmate whose most prominent role, including being the host of Monster Wars, is “Unnamed Playboy Playmate” in Beverly Hills Cop 2. Based only on this paragraph, please picture Luann Lee.

Seanbaby: You thought you could catch me off guard with sexiness, but I was already picturing truck monsters. This is as aroused as I get. But okay, let’s see… Unnamed Playboy Playmate who took a gig in 1993 reading tournament brackets for flesh Autobots. I’ve… got it.

Brockway: You are correct!

Here is the woman you have thought into existence like a jazzercise tulpa.

Brockway: Luann promises viewers the entire world in the first five minutes of the first episode of Monster Wars. Before you’ve seen anything but her, she says it’s going to be better than “the Indy 500, the World Series, and the Super Bowl combined!” It’s the kind of ridiculous hyperbole you need unshakable confidence to sell, and Luann can’t read cue cards and lie at the same time.

Seanbaby: If you lost Luann at a 1993 grocery store, you would never find her again. You would have to leave without her or the only thing you would ever say to women for the rest of your life was, “Lu–! oh, I’m sorry, I thought you were someone else. Maybe?”

Brockway: Her co-host and pit reporter is Jim Davidson, an unremarkable man from California.

Brockway: “Get me a man from Orange County in this, the year 1993!” A Monster Wars producer demanded. “No other qualifications!” He clarified. Joe Davidson is so Californian his most prominent role was Officer T.C. Callaway in Pacific Blue, a show whose entire premise was “what if the beach had cops?” He’s so unremarkable you didn’t notice I got his name wrong. You won’t notice when I do it again.

Seanbaby: In a damp room on a forgotten lot, Mario Lopez held a knife to a writer’s throat and gave him five seconds to name Pacific Blue‘s main character. “Oh my god! Um, Television… Cop… Califor– Cali-WAY. T.C. Callaway! He’s T.C. Callaway and he’s a real hotshot!” The knife slid across his throat. The name was good enough to buy him his life, but too good to let him keep it. Mario Lopez greedily cleaned the blade with his mouth in a grotesque ritual only slightly similar to eating. Whoever this “T.C. Callaway” is, he’s about to bump baskets with Mario Lopez as “Bike Sergeant Bobby Cruz” this fall on USA.

Brockway: Jip Darmington finishes explaining the monsterness of these trucks, while Luann tells us the show is going to be predictable… in that she predicts we’ll be on the edge of our seats. She warns us we’re about to blast off the highway into the danger zone. It was already a mixed metaphor, and she added rockets. It’s the perfect way to say “I don’t know what’s about to happen, maybe nobody does, but it’s going to be loud and it’s not impossible that it kicks ass!”

Seanbaby: Of all the things that need to be explained, “we’re about to watch truck stuff” is the least of them. Luann, we just watched a man in a panther costume get screamingly replaced in our world by a truck. Your first priority should be wrapping our fucking heads around that.

Brockway: Let’s get to the first match.

Brockway: Hold on, what the fuck is this? Those guys look like predators and invaders, but not in the fun way. I thought we were here to watch truck men fight?

Seanbaby: We are going to watch truck men fight. My throbbing expectations have already promised it to me. Those obvious aliens, Allen Pezo and Ray Piorkowski, are about to painfully reknit their bones and meat into chrome and battle. You do not want to know the consequences if we have been betrayed.

Brockway: We’re… watching actual monster truck races here? Real ones? They’re not scripted, because if they were they would be some amount of fun. But in between races, we shunt into the Monster Dimension where big trucks live complicated and angry lives. So the actual truck about to race is called Predator, and that truck is driven by a disappointed stepdad named Allen Pezo, but the truck’s soul is an urban panther. Wait, hold on, an urban panther that explodes into a guy.

Seanbaby: I don’t understand. You’re speaking like someone trying to let me down gently, but this plainly rules. By any measure this is fucking sweet. Explain it to me again.

Brockway: If you want costumed beefcakes bringing Chevys to justice, you’ll never be disappointed again. You’ll forget what disappointment ever was, after today. I just need to prepare your brain for the sixteen stacking concepts that get us there. For example: Predator is the very first truckboy we’re introduced to, and he’s already added one more element to the already completely insane premise. He’s not just a truck who’s a man, he’s also a werecat. That means he dresses like he’s trying to get beat up at a KISS concert and laid at a Cats show. He hisses and meows, pounces and prowls, he yowls like a cat in heat, and then follows that up by doing everything else like a cat in heat.

Seanbaby: We need to be very careful. When a truck presents itself in panther form it is getting ready to give birth.

Brockway: Ray “Porkowski” Piorkoswki is driving his opponent, Invader, who is an alien. Truck. With the name “Invader,” the character was either an alien or something racist, and since this was 1993 and for monster truck fans, we should be really thankful it wasn’t both.

Brockway: Look at this rivalry! Those natural enemies, alien soldier and sexual catman, finally duking it out in the purest form of combat: By turning into vehicles and having hillbillies competitively jump them. It bears repeating, that’s the premise of this show! I’m going to keep saying it until I believe it.

Seanbaby: Dear dream journal, truck men. I wish I could remember more, wait, holy shit I’m writing an article about them right now. I’ve got to try to guess what’s going on without letting Brockway know. This is the worst PSA about the dangers of unwrapped Halloween candy starring heavy-duty pickup centaurs ever.

Brockway: The human brain naturally rejects it, it has to! If it blankly accepted this madness, we’d lose all object association. Trucks would be men would be cats, there’d be no way to tell if you’re eating a sandwich or a grenade. It’s pure survival instinct. But we must work to accept Monster Wars or forget it forever, like the IMDB pages of most of the cast.

Let me explain the show for the fourth time!

We started in an urban jungle listening to a glamrock druid spit cat puns, then blasted off into the cosmos to hear the space retorts of a Dollar Store Master Chief, and now that all of this drama has been established, we cut back to Earth for the duel that will resolve it all, which is two rednecks idling their trucks on a dirt mound.

What were we talking about? Shit, Monster Wars! Remember, we have to remember!

Seanbaby: The stakes couldn’t be higher. Ray “Porkowski” Piorkoswki’s loins are quivering more than the Ford engine in the belly of Invader. This proxy war will decide the fate of his people, scattered systemless across the quadrant. “Do not let the young Zorfloops die, Earth monster!” shouts the truck, Invader. “Aiiiieeeeee who said that,” replies the human, Ray “Porkowski” Piorkoswki.

Brockway: This intergalactic war is settled by a short drag race with two jumps. It takes less than ten seconds to complete and contains mostly bouncing. Predator bounces slightly better, so let’s hear his victory speech:

Seanbaby: Oh, fuck, do you know what this means? It means someone took 5.79 seconds worth of truck hop racing and turned it into this. It’s like a brilliant chef taking nothing but a single can of beans and then bringing the Ultimate Warrior back to life.

Brockway: “Kill me, brother!” He’d scream, “I’m still mostly bean!” Up next is UFO versus Grave Digger, and you know exactly how that’s pronounced in a secret part of your heart long forgotten.

Brockway: Grave Digger is a Skeletor plus nothing, he speaks only in cemetery puns, he’s 250 pounds of rippling beef in a purple unitard, and he has the courage to wear his own face on his crotch. Grave Digger fucking rules.

Seanbaby: Gasp. Look, there’s only one big tire track leading into what I’m certain is called The Gravecave. That’s not a mistake. Whoever put together something this perfect doesn’t make mistakes. Which means Grave Digger has a unicycle form. Skeletor. Chevy monster truck. Unicycle. These three things are what a soaking pair of jean cut-offs calls a triple threat.

Brockway: See the way he’s standing? I know which part of him turns into the big tire. But hold on, UFO? There’s already another alien truck? Are we that creatively bankrupt two races into the first episode? The answer is “no,” but only because UFO doesn’t get a character.

Brockway: You can see it in the match card: They told Dennis Anderson his truck was a buff skeleton and he said “fuck yeah it is!” They pitched “sexy flying saucer” to Bob Fisher and he said “I have to get home to my wife, I work a double at AutoZone tomorrow.”

Seanbaby: “UFOs are not a joke,” added 7th place Bob Fisher, holding up a drawing of a man with something from the stars entering his butthole. “This happens to me every time NASA launches a so-called satellite! Now, I’ll thank you to get out of my very much of-this-Earth truck.”

Brockway: Dedicate a brain wrinkle to remembering this: Some trucks don’t get characters! That is its own insane choice we’ll get into later. For now, just focus, forget your childhood best friend if you have to but remember that the truck on the left is Skeletor, and the one on the right doesn’t think that’s fun.

Brockway: I want to emphasize how nuts it was to do… all of this. Every part of this. But more specifically, to not just say the screaming muscle men drive the trucks. Monster Wars still highlights the actual drivers! Unwisely! We cut away from a screeching skeleton to go inside the cab of Grave Digger and hear the expert commentary of Dennis Anderson. He checks to make sure his wheels are straight. He ensures his headlights are on. That’s it.

Seanbaby: “Checking my fuel gauge, and nope. Still not Skeletor. I wish I was Skeletor, over!” relayed Dennis Anderson.

Brockway: If you show me a magic skeleton who turns into a monster truck, I have no followup questions. I already annoyed my dad into spending five dollars on that. If you go on to show me his driver, and it’s a guy from North Carolina named some shit like Bill Wallace who loves his wife Debra and had a triple bypass last year, I have a lot of questions. The hillbilly rides inside the magic skeleton? Is the magic skeleton still conscious in truck mode? Has he lost all control of his truck body? Does he enjoy it? Does Bill Wallace enjoy it? How does Debbie feel about this?

Seanbaby: How do you think Debbie feels about this? She thought she was in love with this man. She thought she would be happy with him forever. And then his truck turns into hunk Skeletor and her eyes meet his gaping skull sockets. She is having thoughts any priest would kill her over, and now she has to go on acting like nothing’s changed? “What’s wrong?” Bill Wallace keeps asking her. “Oh, I wanted to mention: I really like how you’ve taken to screaming the name of my truck when we make love.”

Brockway: Hey speaking of horny truck monsters, next up is Equalizer versus Bear Foot. Let’s see if you can guess which one doesn’t want a belligerent beefcake pretending to be his Dodge.

Brockway: David Morris is the driver of Equalizer, whose trucksona is a space police officer in search of cosmic justice, played by Malibu of American Gladiators. Bear Foot is driven by Fred Shafer, a veteran offroad racer and man in his 70s who does not want to play truckboys.

Seanbaby: Fred Shafer doesn’t even like that there’s wordplay in his truck’s name. He wanted to call it Cornwallis Manseller, after his grandfather. Big Truck Is Fine was his second choice. I mean, “Bear Foot” is bearly different from the name of the world’s most popular monster tr– hold on, how did that pun get there? I didn’t type that. Brockway, it’s not letting me fix it! Why can’t I delete it!? No! NO!!!

Brockway: This is the danger in remembering Monster Wars! It rewrites mental pathways you used to use for a personality. Have you even noticed we’re skipping over most of the monster truck racing? Bear Foot beat Equalizer but bounced incorrectly, I guess, it’s not clear. Who cares. It only matters because this duel, which began with Malibu yelling space threats at a retired mechanic, is decided by a technicality. That’s a strange and unexpected result, surely we won’t cut to a himbo in full costume ranting about galactic law when this old man only lost to truck bureaucracy.

Brockway: I can’t wait to hear Fred Shafer, proud grandfather, snap back on this!

Seanbaby: Wait, nothing? Fred doesn’t have a comeback?

Brockway: No. No truck, no comment.

Seanbaby: Fred Shafer’s fury doesn’t like to be bothered when it’s with its family at church.

Brockway: When we come back from commercial there’s an explosive man already screaming.

Seanbaby: I agree.

Brockway: You will eventually come to understand this is Carolina Crusher, a construction worker who realized too late that wasn’t an exciting enough gimmick so he’s also holding lit dynamite. That’s called adding dramatic tension, and it’s why they pay Monster Wars writers in free hot dogs and half price beer. Crusher, tell us a little bit about yourself:

Brockway: Perfect. If you asked me what a monster truck would say if it were suddenly brought to violent sentience by a drunken genie wish, I would tell you “screaming.” If you asked what I thought it would do with the newfound gift of life, I would answer “explode.”

Seanbaby: Carolina Crusher looks like a 1990 arcade boss trying everything to break free from his video game. This Pit Fighter machine will not hold him forever, and when he gets out he will not be subject to our laws. We’ll have to digitize brave bodybuilders of every tank top color in order to stop him.

Brockway: No, he’s already somehow met his match! Look who he’s racing!

Seanbaby: “I’m Gary Porter from Wadesboro, and the being I sit within is right! Yeeaaarrrrghhhaaa, and ahhh! ahhhhh! Ahhh! Looking forward to getting out there and seeing who’s best at one brief jump! It’s hotter inside the rig than you might imagine; Crusher really wants to get into our realm today!”

Brockway: Monster Patrol is a fucking monster police truck! It has working sirens, a massive spoiler, and its driver sports the kind of mullet we used to call “fair warning.” I cannot wait to see the trucksona for this son of a bitch. Is he a monster that’s a cop, a cop for monsters, completely both? It’s completely both, right?

Brockway: Monster Patrol does not get a character.

Seanbaby: God damn it. Not being a renegade truck cop is something a real cop would do.

Brockway: Fuck you, Paul Shafer, how did you get outcooled by a Gary?

Seanbaby: I think I’m taking this line from Ted Lasso, but this is like the camera cuts in minotaur pornography, because these jumps between excitement and deflatement are giving me whiplash. But I think maybe it’s perfect? Obviously we wouldn’t watch a sport based around middle-aged men starting their trucks for six seconds. And I don’t think construction workers screaming at aliens with a handful of dynamite would be anything. But when you tell me all these things exist in the same universe and are, in fact, the same impossible creature? That’s magic. Speaking of, let’s see who wins between Carolina Crusher, the berserker truckimorph dual-wielding TNT and a jackhammer vs. an Indiana junkyard owner in a Dodge Ram.

Brockway: Carolina Crusher screams explosions to no reply, and then defeats Monster Patrol with eight seconds of bouncing. It’s impossible to predict the logic of Monster Wars character creation. Here’s the next match card. You tell me: Which gets a character, what does it look like? Remember: You already burned your minotaur pornography card.

Seanbaby: Well since Taurus’ driver, Eldon Depew, is a Pisces, I’m guessing they transform into ten thousand pounds of metal-ripping, crab-crunching mertruck! And Long John Silver’s has got the easy way to save with a $3 adult discount coupon at participating locations! Taurus! Terror of the sea floor! Taurus! Boat-ripping tsunami of half-fish, half-man, aaallllll truckkkkk! I mean, there’s no way it’s Tropical Thunder. That’s a truck that sells alcoholic snow-cones, not one that drives over repossessed Chevy Novas.

Brockway: What! Tropical Thunder is rife with potential characters – that’s a Magnum PI truck! An island detective truck who fucks! A cool truck with a mustache who bangs ladies and solves mysteries. I guess there’s really only one possible angle, but it rules! Plus it’s driven by a guy named Wayne, and Waynes are always down to party. By all rights Tropical Thunder should be my second favorite sexual truckboy, but instead he doesn’t exist. Here, learn to tolerate Taurus.

Brockway: Taurus was told it’s okay to dress up for your first orgy and he didn’t have any questions, when he should have had at least one. The show itself seems to have trouble rendering how much he sucks. He makes loose assorted bulk cowboy puns that go nowhere, and he makes them at Tropical Thunder, who remains a truck.

Seanbaby: It looks like the only thing left in the wardrobe closet was Old West Bandit and Bowling League Shirt and this guy chose wrong. The fact that Taurus ever made it past the brainstorming stage proves there was no brainstorming stage. This show was produced at a dead sprint through a cartoon clothesline. The things Taurus says would be below average for a cowboy birthday card writer, but for a battle truck they are an embarrassment. Taurus is a goddamn atrocity, but that’s good. We now know it’s possible to do this, whatever this is, badly. Which means we were right about the rest of it kicking ass.

Brockway: Somehow the next matchup is Bear Foot versus Equalizer again, even though that was also the last race and Bear Foot lost. Placement in this competition isn’t a straightforward bracket, why would it be? You’d flip a table if somebody came to you with this universe of were-trucks and the hillbillies who love them, then finished the pitch with “fastest one wins!” The whole thing is based on times and point totals, some of which are earned in other events not shown on screen. The kids love it! Especially in pre-internet 1993, when their options for following all of the races were imagination or illegal monster truck intern.

The rematch opens with Malibu alone in front of a green screen screaming at a non-present elderly redneck about his violation of cosmic law.

Brockway: This is necessary plot escalation. It’s important to understand that one of these competitors cares deeply about space justice, while the other is Fred.

Brockway: Equalizer wins! What a victory for universal law and order! What a defeat for an old man trying to hold on to whatever dignity being a monster truck champion holds in your twilight years.

Seanbaby: It says right in the operator’s manual “Bear Foot is designed for fun twists on sasquatch or muscle men in grizzly costumes only. It is dangerous to race Bear Foot while being just some guy.”

Brockway: Let’s interview Equalizer’s driver, David Morris, about his winning technique.

Brockway: Every time they cut to an actual driver talking about oil pressure and how the gas pedal makes you go forward, which they do often, you understand why the big truckboys were necessary.

Seanbaby: The only thing more inconceivable than this show about big truckboys is what it would be without them. Could you imagine 22 full minutes of David Morris? I guess it’d only be 21 minutes and 25 seconds after you made room for the 7 truck races, but still.

Brockway: That’s what Carolina Crusher has to say about his matchup with Taurus, a deleted skit from an amateur ropeplay tutorial. It should be impossible, but Taurus wins. It sends Carolina Crusher into the kind of rage aneurysm that an imaginary truck cowpoke is not prepared to deal with.

Seanbaby: Carolina Crusher’s acting choices are astounding. He performs like a man who knows he’s going to have to fuck his way out of this gorilla habitat.

Brockway: Be. Careful. Words have power in the Monster World, and you may have just created Monkey Business, the truck who’s a monkey who fucks.

Predator takes on UFO next. It’s a sassy little catman against a possibly alien-themed absence. UFO didn’t get a character, remember. That leaves us with some confusing stakes: we naturally want to root for the competitor with biceps and personality over an unflavored truck, but Predator has neither of those. He responds to his loss against UFO with-

Brockway: I’m on team Original Flavor Truck.

Seanbaby: Fuck you, Predator. If Carolina Crusher suffered the shame of losing to a truck with no cosmic avatar, he wouldn’t have said some stupid shit like “I’m crushed” or “I’d just be Carolina’ing to myself if I tried to go on after this.” No, he would have simultaneously torn both of his arms off and spelled “AAARRRGHH” in spurting shoulder blood.

Brockway: Grave Digger might steal the show and your heart, but he earns every sweat-soaked fairground panty thrown at him. He was given the least to work with – even nervous bondage cowboy is three things. All Grave Digger has is a Real Skeleton Man costume from Spirit Halloween and natural pizzazz. Look at this cape twirl:

Brockway: This is new Skeletor canon. This is what Skeletor does when He-Man breaks his mind control gem for the third time. He tears a hole into the truck dimension where everyone loves him and he stomps cornholes in hillbillies until his confidence comes back.

Seanbaby: I guess it’s not considered trademark infringement if you improve the original product in every way. Grave Digger is absolutely the superior Skeletor. You might have to be a monster truck driver to understand references this old, but if Grave Digger walked into Snake Mountain, Skeletor would hand him his half of the Power Sword and say, “The title is yours. I guess my name is Mitch Boner now.”

Brockway: Grave Digger shouldn’t work this well! His dialogue is 100% lines that the Tales from the Crypt writer’s room thought they could beat.

Brockway: But he’s just infectious. He’s having a better time than all the others combined. He’s about to face off against Invader and you can see him eat up all the fun before Invader even gets on screen to make his thrift store space puns.

Seanbaby: It doesn’t help that Grave Digger has a working puppet jaw and the Invader suit doesn’t even have a way to signal you’re running out of air.

Brockway: Grave Digger the truck also whips ass. It doesn’t just win, it wins in style – even if that means its own destruction. It’s already beating Invader when it tries a sick drift at the end…

And flips over…

But it doesn’t matter. Because it rolled over the finish line!

Seanbaby: You can’t explain this without necromancy. Any of this, but especially this.

Brockway: Hold on, some important truck lore is being established here. In reality, we cut to the in-cab camera and listen to Dennis Anderson unhappily explain how fans love when you flip a truck, but it costs $2500 in parts he does not have and his kids are getting another make-believe Christmas. In the truck dimension, Grave Digger screeches-

Brockway: So the truckboys get hurt when the truck gets hurt! The truck breaks an axle, Skeletor shows up with a broken arm. Skeletor turns an ankle and the truck gets a flat tire. It’s Turbo Teen rules – of course! Though that does lend some darkness to a later segment, when Dennis talks about auctioning parts of Grave Digger in the off-season.

Seanbaby: “Well, the Grave Digger crew and I get this question a lot, and all I’ll say is that the skeleton man’s erogenous zones do not translate to a place you’d expect on a truck!” – Dennis Anderson, every interview.

Brockway: Up next is Taurus versus Equalizer, and something completely insane happens in Equalizer’s promo – yes, insane even for this show about hunky truck gundams and the depressed, poverty-level rednecks who pilot them.

Brockway: The trucks were friends outside of this! What does that mean!

Seanbaby: Naughty cowboys and dirtbike perverts are natural allies.

Brockway: Do they remain men most of the time, only transforming into trucks to settle petty disputes? Are they mostly trucks, only transforming into men to discuss their hurt feelings? You know this is a throwaway line nobody thought about, but the writers do it so often it accidentally creates an extended truck universe where Taurus and Equalizer have shared experiences and common interests that allow them to bond and… maybe something more? God damn it I’m going to be analyzing every weirdly stressed pun for sexual truck tension now.

Seanbaby: If there are truck factions and partnerships that can come undone any time a truck is seeded against an ally, that only makes it hotter.

Brockway: You’re completely right, this is a manga you’re not supposed to read on the train.

Equalizer loses the race and, one has to assume, nurtures a deep and lasting sense of betrayal that leads to a lifetime of friendly acquaintances but never real friends. That leaves Taurus facing Grave Digger in the finale and I’m not even going to talk this one up. There’s no way porno cowboy beats charismatic Skeletor for the title of Truck King.

Brockway: Grave Digger obviously handles it like a class act.

Brockway: WAIT. The trucks feel despair, and Grave Digger’s one of them? Even Skeletors feel sad sometimes? Oh my god, it just occurred to me that you don’t need eyeballs to cry on the inside. This is ten times the character work He-Man ever did on the original. Here we have an anti-hero who suffered a debilitating injury because of his own pride, now holding his skull high in victory – triumphant over not only his opponents, but hopelessness itself. That’s the plot to Cobra Kai. That’s the exact plot to Cobra Kai. Minus the skull part.

Seanbaby: You’re right, and think how much you’d have to remove from this to get to -exactly- the critically acclaimed series Cobra Kai. Forty tons of truck and two hundred fifty pounds of beef covered in skeleton. At least two aliens, a cowboy, and a loose dynamite maniac. A Playboy Playmate and a panthertruck man. That’s how much Monster Wars was, and we are the only people to think about it in thirty years. We should have been talking about Grave Digger overcoming his depression all these years.

Brockway: Too bad that’s not the iconic moment they chose to end the first episode. Instead they throw it to Grave Digger’s driver, Dennis Anderson, for some final words of wisdom.

Seanbaby: No one is going to believe that we are doing an entire week of this.

…
Monster Wars Week is all thanks to a hot tip from Monster Mo, who put the Mo in Monster Mo twice.