Category: TEAMWORKING DAY

Teamworking Day: Elden Ring 🌭

Post author By 1900HOTDOG
Post date 03/25/2022
12 Comments on Teamworking Day: Elden Ring 🌭

Seanbaby: Like the rest of the world, Brockway and I are playing Elden Ring. And like the rest of the world, our experiences are wildly different. FromSoftware basically made a game the same size as our actual planet and let you go off in whatever direction you want without any explanation or backstory. Your character’s statistics are Savvy, Gardening, Pep, Robustness, and Fingermancing, and none of them do or change anything. Each individual weapon requires 3 weeks of training to properly operate. The tutorial covers 1% of this, doesn’t care if you’re listening, and is located in a cave you’ll run past. The entire world agrees (and is right) when it says Elden Ring is the fucking best.

Brockway: Elden Ring is maybe the best game I have ever played. It’s beautiful, terrifying, enormous, and every inch is dense with atmosphere. And that’s coming from me.

This cannot be overstated: I don’t just hate FromSoftware games, I think they indirectly ruined gaming for the last decade. If I were given one corporation-killing bullet and sent back in time to eradicate a game company from pre-existence, I would file as an S-Corp and blow my brains out. It is impossible to pick just one video game developer that deserves destruction. But FromSoftware would be on the list – not because they made edgelord no-compromise games full of hateful bullshit (they did), but because every single company saw Dark Souls and thought they could do it, too. They could not. I started this game personally angry at it, and now I love it so completely I’m going to write one half of an article about how I don’t understand it. That’s how fucking good it is. I’d say I’m about to eat crow but I’ve literally been eaten by a crow several times in Elden Ring so I think they anticipated this turnabout.

Seanbaby: Anyway, I’m a bit further along than Brockway, so I decided to write him this walkthrough and explainer for the hit game Elden Ring. Hopefully it will be useful to you too.

Brockway: Holy hell, your character looks like that? Here’s mine:

She looks like an anemic schoolgirl dressed as a lost sock for a Halloween party whose theme is Sad Things You’ve Forgotten. We are already not playing the same game.

Seanbaby: To start, let’s explore! Pick a point on your map that looks like it has something and head there. This is easy because every corner of every room or landmass has something. A crucial item, a hilarious sudden bear, at least once an entire lost continent– the people who made this game are maniacs. There are more lootable remains and dungeons in this than in Steven Seagal’s Russian home. If you’re used to games like Grand Theft Auto that will render 6,000,000 square miles of woods to hold one health pack and a .0004% chance of Bigfoot, Elden Ring will feel like an hour long orgasm, or as it’s probably called in the gaming community, “mommi 5pr0inging.”

Okay, so once you find your destination, ride that way on your ghost horse. This won’t work since the landscape is a maze of impassable mountains and unsurvivable chasms.

Brockway: I pointed toward what looked like a lovely tree and I fell down a well into a city beyond time and now I’m hiding from ghost cavemen. Is this normal? Is this the normal first level?

Seanbaby: No problem, just put a vague description of what you’re looking for into Google until you find a Reddit thread where someone is trying to get to the same place. You’re almost one tenth there!

Brockway: I looked up “ghost cavemen” and I just get a Scooby Doo episode. Here’s the thing: There are exhaustive guides for every part of this game because it’s the biggest thing in the world right now, and every single human being on Earth is currently putting 600 hours into it. But you will never find one cohesive place to reference that information, because there’s too much missing. I would argue that is the gameplay loop of Elden Ring: You don’t know shit, try to survive it.

Just read through all 40 pages of the IGN guide on the Poison Swamp? Too bad, you were actually looking for the Blighted Wetlands, which are behind the Poison Swamp – if you see the Rotten Delta, you’ve gone too far. Check out Polygon’s guide on the Bog of the Unclean, but don’t just rely on that or you’ll miss the entrance to the hidden dungeon (an invisible wall beneath a dragon’s ass) containing the Grandsword of Fervent Sundering, a weapon which splits the world in two with every swing and is vital for beating the sub-tenth secret megaboss of the Udderdark. Sean, I am barely making this up. What the fuck am I supposed to be doing and please hurry, I just saw a spectral neanderthal squat by my bush and sniff.

Seanbaby: The place you’re looking for is named something like Hargoth’s Fingerless Sorrow, and to get to it you need to have first ridden Majesta’s Carousel into The Moist. You’re going to want to Google one of those next, but by now you’re going to run into a second problem. Because Elden Ring doesn’t exactly have a story so much as a random series of very strange events happening in a different order for everyone, telling anyone about anything is a spoiler. For instance, I shouldn’t have ruined your first hilarious sudden bear death, and I’m sorry. The point is, if getting to a location involves riding past a pretty waterfall, smaller-than-normal man bat, or unexpected bear, people aren’t going to want to tell you about it. Plus, you can’t even get to The Moist until you’ve taken the lesser pubic bone from Moff Torment the Key Pubis.

Brockway: Oh, is that what that’s for? I accidentally stole it from those guys (he’s eight men fused together at the pelvis) after I missed a jump to a rooftop and fell into a whirlpool that did kill me – oh, how it killed me! – but in a way where I then woke up in a special realm of slughell that is only accessible by dying in that exact fashion.

Seanbaby: Okay, I know where that is. Search for “lavaslug +maze -scooby” and you’ll find a map someone made. Not of that cave, but keep following the different wiki links outward, some of which will be empty placeholder pages by SEO clickbait sites, until you get to the second of eleven optional questlines leading there. You did the 13th, which is not recommended. Okay, you’re going to run into some trouble along the way, so let me talk you through Elden Ring combat.

Brockway: Jesus Christ, thank you. I thought I could take the ghost of this giant because he was chained up, but it turns out he just uses that chain in horrible ways and he punted half of me over a mountain. I still woke up in hell though, because you can’t leave hell until all parts of you find the exit roughly at the same time. Gimme some tactics.

Seanbaby: No problem. When I come across a sounder or shrewdness of enemies, I use my small laser spell against them. I think it’s called Glintsparkle Fingerburst, but Sparkleblade Virginurge should work fine. Getting the drop on them is easy because Elden Ring creatures can only detect shapes four feet in front of them, and no noise at any range. Here’s where you have to be careful, though. After the first guy dies, the others will carefully and slowly decide to ignore it, giving you barely enough time to kill any number of others.

Brockway: This looks familiar! I also use that and only that magical rock on literally everything I see. It’s the most powerful spell in the game as far as I know. I actually saw a clip of it before I started and it made me giggle, so I made my character a magical girl from an anime, figuring I’d find a little sailor outfit at some point. And I did find a little sailor outfit, but it was made from little sailors.

Hey check this out, I was really proud of the way I barely killed these hideous children who live in a shrub with my magic rocks.

Seanbaby: Oh, you’re doing it the hard way. You want to shoot all your star pebbles at them before they form a child tornado. If they’re leaping around like this, run fifty yards away and wait a few seconds before they forget about you and take naps. At its core, Elden Ring is a stealth game. And by stealth, I mean flinging noisy laser frisbees from across a small room. You must be the unseen frisbee vengeance of The Shrub Child Woodlands. If there’s an afterlife in this game, and there’s definitely at least seventeen named things like Darkroost of the Forgotten, I sent 70,000 souls there and they’re all wondering what killed them. Oh, but be careful! Not all enemies are normal-sized! If you come across a big enemy, switch to the big laser. I think I use Moontinkle’s Astral Lubricant, oh, but be careful again! Some of the enemies will get all the way turned around and give you a heartbreaking look before they die.

Brockway: …

I don’t have that laser. I have Magical Rock, and Three Magical Rocks (Worse). I can merc a whole camp of sleeping peasants doing their best, but if anything moves my Plan B is to find a safe place to die. Is there literally anything else you can teach me about combat?

Seanbaby: No, that’s all you need to know for combat. Oh wait, sometimes you’ll run into a fast boss who jumps out of your laser before it’s done melting him. When this happens, do a somersault and then laser again. Refer to this paragraph later if you’re having trouble with a boss.

Brockway: I found this really cool spell that’s Three Rocks (Purple) and I tested it out on this fucked up moth and he showed me what rocks are really all about.

We are not playing the same game.

Seanbaby: Yeah, powering up is important in Elden Ring since your Glintfaith damage is determined by your Verve and Beekeeping.

Brockway: Fucking!! I specced fully into Platitude and split some points into Dogma for extra Principles Regeneration. How do I get more runes? Like, I save a good amount to level and then the Dread Children of Maura Tierney eat me from the knees up because I got off Femur Grover’s Hayride before the Bridge of Soft Regret.

Seanbaby: The fastest way to do this is at the Cliffside of Cranky Emu. Ride past the, spoilers ahead, awesome neon skeleton, to get on the ridge overlooking a swamp of fussy emus on the other side of a bottomless canyon. Equip one of your 70 bows, I like Prince Giggle’s Bonestinger, and drop an arrow onto the nearest bird’s head.

Brockway: I have one bow. It is called ‘a bow.’

Seanbaby: Search online for how to upgrade that to Har Danal’s Creamshot, but you’re going to have to really wrestle with the advanced search settings. Anyway, after you’ve done that, here’s how the plan works: these birds hate with a fury irrational even for birds, and they will charge you with no thought to the certain death between them and you. They will fluff and bluster right into the void and they’re worth 11,000 experience points. That’s the Elden Ring equivalent of a three year community college program. And this game doesn’t care if a bird died from your laser or its own stupidity– all of those points go to you.

If there’s an afterlife for birds in Elden Ring, and there probably is called Duskwind’s Eternal Aviary, I sent 2,000,000 emus there who will spend eternity agreeing that they are all just so goddamn fucking pissed.

Brockway: Okay, but how do you get past the Blood Ocean? Because I keep dying in the Blood Ocean. You see the Blood Ocean in your gif, right? That’s where I live. That’s my house. I opened a treasure chest and it moved all of my stuff into the Blood Ocean.

Seanbaby: You can leave, but it takes three tarnished on three cross-platforms to summon a Blood Raft, which reminds me: If you’re really having problems, you can try teaming up with other players. To do this, you can’t invite them using a sensible interface. Instead, you use a Wet Finger item to draw your name on the floor. If the Elden Ring servers are online, which are only available between the hours of 25 and 7, this might work after several tries, depending on the number of fish in your inventory. Other players can then use a Grave Melon to witness your Fingershard and Maidencall you into their Tarnishrealm. Depending on the Poise of your armor load, this will tell a number of people, “Unable to summon golden collaborator” before you are pulled into a world with one boy who has abandoned his Playstation and another who wants you dead. To streamline this process, it only works in certain areas, and also doesn’t work.

Brockway: You literally need to use all of these fingers in a nuanced and undocumented order just to play multiplayer. True story: I had to explain this process to my 74 year old father. We play games together and he wanted to check out Elden Ring. I think the design bible of FromSoftware should be updated with the mandate “you must be able to explain this to your 74 year old father.”

Seanbaby: In Japan, they have a whole holiday based around explaining a sack of fingers to an elderly man. It’s another tough thing to Google, but speaking of explaining, be sure to watch out for messages from other players! Notes can be placed anywhere, especially stupid spots, which means the world is graffitied with mean-spirited pranks, people tattling on the pranks, and I’m done listing things. Every four inches of cliff has a note urging you to jump off, but in a high fantasy code. Because Elden Ring didn’t give players the ability to type to each other– you have to MADlibs messages together from Game of Thrones speech templates and Narnia keywords. So a cliff might say…

… when what it really means is:

Brockway: I get what you’re saying, but three of the times I committed a trust-fall suicide, it turned out to be the only way to open a portal to a secret cabinet full of Agony Ghasts who, once defeated, gave me a four-handed axe that apparently casts something called The Hungering Hurricane every time you swing it (I can’t use axes).

Seanbaby: Yes! Some people will wallglitch back up from the depths of The Ghast Wardrobe just to help other players find the hidden entrance. It’s madness, and you never know when something is a helpful hint or The Dire Sanctum of Yarg’s most pointless prank. Every single dead end has a note that says “try attacking” right in front of one that says “liar ahead” right ahead of one that says “plump but hole.” You have no reason to believe anyone, so you have to hit every wall. Plus, I wasn’t kidding earlier when I said those lunatics hid a secret hidden in every place. There’s no such thing as a hallway that ends without an item or an invisible door in Elden Ring. Besides, what’s the harm in telling you to punch a wall? You’re poking around for extra skeleton chunks in a spider cave– those three seconds weren’t precious to you. But here’s the thing– while I was writing this, a video went around of a secret door you have to hit like 50 times to open. That’s a nightmare. Think of the chaos that level designer put into the world by telling nerds, “Oh, some of these walls only open if you hit them for a half hour. Enjoy your new life. LET ALL JOY DIE HERE IN THE INFINITELY POINTLESS STABS OF YOUR SISTERMILF KATANA +7.“

Brockway: Oh I have that, but I don’t have the Perspicacity to wield it. I dumped too many points into Sobriquet thinking it would let me use whips, but it turns out there’s only one whip and it’s a joke reference to a Japanese folklore character that appeared in a spin-off Souls rhythm game that didn’t see western release. It took me several hours of research to get that joke, but it’s pretty funny. First you have to understand that desire resides in the butthole and anti-desire, which also resides in the butthole, are paired concepts that-

Seanbaby: I’m not sure what’s going on or why we’re killing so many emus, which isn’t unusual for me since I’m a cutscene skipper, but the only cutscenes Elden Ring shows me is when a boss pulls a part of himself off to reveal more tentacled version of himself. Wait, sorry, spoilers– every guy in this has half a Resident Evil octopus living inside him, and you don’t have a maiden which seems both very important and not something that has any effect on anything you do. There are some people you can talk to, but most of them are sad ghosts and don’t seem to care whether you’re paying attention.

Brockway: And yet, and I’m dead serious here – I love it. Hardly anybody talks about anything and they make no sense when they do, because all dialogue is just for atmosphere. The actual storytelling seems to be done just by exploring an area.

Here’s my favorite example: I wandered up a hill and then went completely insane and died.

“Huh,” I thought, “that was weird. I don’t remember eating a bunch of insanity. I wonder what happened.”

Three madness deaths later and I had it figured out: There was a tower on a distant mountain flaring an intermittent insanity star. By dodging and rolling between cover so I never looked at the crazy sun, I circled around and climbed atop the tower. There were fifteen starving maniacs and the burning star of lunacy flared with the rhythm of their screams. I managed to slaughter them all in between bouts of explosive sky mania, and broke the curse of the random hilltop!

That picture isn’t me, it’s somebody competent enough to use a melee weapon – I can’t go back and take a screengrab because I fucking beat it! That’s the best sidequest I ever played, nobody gave it to me, nobody said a word, and nothing was ever explained. Later, I killed a village of starving maniacs (who had not synced up into a choir and therefore manifested no lunacy star), and found a note that was like “the king of madness lives at the bottom of some city.” I don’t know what that means or where it is, but I do know I’m suiciding off of every ledge until I find his cabinet – me and that motherfucker maybe have some unfinished business, I guess?

Seanbaby: Anyway, let me know when you hit the guy who has the unbound star axolotl inside him and I’ll tell you the best laser to use against him.

Brockway: Okay I’m at that guy, and I hope this makes sense, but now I’m him? Like I think I’ve become him and it is definitely a punishment. I can’t save until I betray something dear to me and oh – oh no. Somebody’s somersaulting into the room. Seanbaby, you didn’t use The Fingerous of Tarnation did you? That was not my Realmsign! Sean, I’m so sorry, I feel the revulsion growing inside me and it tastes like Axolotl – you cannot dodge my Glitterstar Vomitblast! The Swampwitch lied! Charge your Virginous Nightlaser!

…

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Tags Best of 2022, Free, Video Games

TEAMWORKING DAY

Teamworking Day – Celebrity Guide to Wine

Post author By 1900HOTDOG
Post date 02/10/2022
11 Comments on Teamworking Day – Celebrity Guide to Wine

Wine: you’ve heard of it, you don’t understand it, you’re possibly scared of it but you want to keep your enemies close. How do you even go about getting it? Is there a communal wine tap at Williams Sonoma? Are there wine boys, who carry around measured wine doses and must be summoned by a playful series of claps? What are those claps, which pattern do you clap to summon them, and which alerts them of ATF raids? To answer these questions and more, we’ll need celebrities. They’re more right than normal people, because you’ve heard of them. This is the…

Brockway: It’s a complete beginner’s guide to wine presented by people who seem to have heard of it somehow, are mostly uninterested in it, and may be able to read a cue card about it but almost certainly not. Here they all are, pretending as though you popped into existence after a teleporter accident.

Brockway: Robert Loggia is a sun-damaged hobgoblin most famous for playing disapproving fathers in hour-long tv dramas. Our older readers probably remember him from Big, while our younger readers probably don’t exist.

Seanbaby: This looks like it was filmed during that magic hour right between saying, “Hey! Robert Loggia!” and getting chased out of Robert Loggia’s backyard.

Brockway: Shelley Hack is a replacement Charlie’s Angel, which sounds like I’m making a snap dig at her generic good looks but is actually the reason why she’s famous. She is immediately the drunkest woman at any party, and if you try to deny her service she will drink from the bar’s spillover mat.

Seanbaby: Hold on, is every celebrity in Celebrity Guide to Wine not quite sure who is filming them or why?

Brockway: It is very possible this was the celebrity version of a timeshare scam. Each received a note promising them a luxury spa weekend and then eurotrash thugs pulled their distributor caps until they said something, anything about wine.

Brockway: Whoopi Goldberg is most famous for doing exactly this: being in anything for a short amount of time in exchange for $2000.

Seanbaby: “Cut! Whoopi, let’s take it again and this time make it look like we’re just some tourist with a camera bothering you during brunch, that’s perfect YES.”

Brockway: Dudley Moore was a comedian, I guess, whose entire schtick was that he was about to die from alcoholism. Although he did eventually die from alcoholism, so maybe we just all really fucked up. He’s kind of like his generation’s Amy Winehouse, but a little more Hobbity.

Seanbaby: “Waaiine? Dorf mand iffai doo,” zings funnyman Moore. “Prgblb ersk ME fr divorce… trb dith drb fart?” he quips through heavy tears. You know, there’s a decent chance this was originally called Dudley Moore’s Guide to Hosting a Star-Studded Dinner Party and they had to rewrite it around his performance. The same thing happened on the production of Stopping a Knife Rampage with Gary Busey, which of course was originally called Untitled Dog Training Project.

Brockway: Herbie Hancock was an actor, musician, and film composer, but we mostly knew him as a guy who liked to fuck. Now, everybody likes to fuck, but nobody likes anything as much as Herbie Hancock likes to fuck. If he’s not fuckin’, then he has just fucked and I assure you he is making more plans to be fuckin’ soon.

Seanbaby: Again, from the intro it looks like these celebrities aren’t “in this” so much as they were “alone for a moment at Alf’s wedding reception.” Which is good news for us because it means we won’t have to watch them stumble through a bunch of wine skits.

Brockway: We’re out of credits, and into our first skit. You dumb son of a bitch! Of course there are skits! This is how we learned things before the internet: All supplementary education was a supporting role from Magnum, P.I. telling a puppet “my name isn’t Sid, I’m here to talk about SIDS.”

In our first skit, Robert Loggia is putting ice cubes into his red wine-

Seanbaby: Oh, looks like Robert Loggia is making himself a Cool Herbie on the rocks.

Brockway: He’s putting ice cubes into his red wine, so a nearby caterer tries to divetackle him. It is nowhere in Robert Loggia’s contract that he will accept a divetackle. You can try it, everybody does, but he’s always ready.

Seanbaby: “Good evening, Mr. Loggia. I loved you in Kojak, Gunsmoke, Bionic Woman, Starsky and Hutch, Hawaii Five-O, Falcon Crest, and The Six Million Dollar Man. Can I get you something to drink? We have red wine, but if you want it with ice it comes with a fucking ass whooping.”

Brockway: This is the one and only inexplicable stunt in Celebrity Guide to Wine, and it’s our cold open here to sell the dire stakes of wine education. It’s hosted by Bernard Erpicum, a name which I surely made up just now. No? That’s actually his name. Okay. It sounds like the noise Robert Loggia makes before saying “steak’s fightin’ back” and pouring himself a digestive whiskey. But okay.

Seanbaby: “Greetings, I am B.E.R.N.A.R.D. E.R.P.I.C.U.M. – B.ionic E.nergoid R.obot N.o A.rr R.ggh D.on’t E.ngage R.obotic P.enis! I. C.U.M.!!!”

I have to be honest; I almost finished several anagrams about this guy being a robot with a really slow boot time before it got away from me. Somewhere along the way he became a premature ejaculating robot and I’m not sure how. Maybe I should let you describe Bernard.

Brockway: Yeah, I’ve studied him intensely. I have this. Let’s go:

Bernard is a freshly activated animatronic from a theme park built to mock the French. There’s no way that’s his face, and he talks like DJ Screw remixing Gerard Depardieu.

That is a crazy reference.

Let me go again: He looks like a merchant from Oblivion hiding a dark secret and he talks like a drowning Frenchman approaching the event horizon.

Fuckin’… come on, Brockway.

One more: He’s kind of like a skinless european knock-off of Teddy Ruxpin running out of batteries. No! Again! He talks like you shrunk Andre the Giant a little and gave him enough horse tranquilizers to kill a normal-sized Andre the Giant. Dammit! He’s a backwards-played message at the end of a Parisian trip-hop record that encourages children to do nitrous.

Fuck! I don’t have it!

Look, I need to sell you on the otherworldly presence of this man because fully half of this article consists of the surreal four-second short films I made of him failing to be human. Let’s drill down on that credits sequence. What is he doing here?

Brockway: He’s holding his wine-tasting medal to the camera.

Sideways.

So you can’t see it.

Also that’s a GIF. It’s not, but you would never know if I didn’t tell you that.

Seanbaby: Maybe he holds it that way so the wine can see it? The same way you might menace a chicken with your barbecue sauce medallion. It’s so fucking weird– absolutely the choice I would make if Robert Loggia asked me to play Alien Bronze Medalist in the film Ski Buddies.

Brockway: The promise of this movie is that Bernard and his celebrity friends will “stop you from worrying about those hard and fast rules of wine,” like never while driving, or always through the mouth. But it will also “stop you from being afraid of wine mistakes,” like thinking that it makes you a better boat captain, or always through the butt.

Seanbaby: Hey, Bernard, when you learn how to hold objects like a human maybe I’ll let you tell me which butts I chug my wine with.

Brockway: Bernard’s speech closes by assuring us that “wine is simply a good tasting beverage, meant to enjoy,” which would be more believable if it didn’t come at the end of a ten-minute introduction to an hour long movie about the proper way to enjoy it.

Brockway: Here’s provably human Bernard again, doing the traditional human elbow salute and telling us: “Aye loaf why, aye loaf ze tastee why, hand ze whey eet goose wit foo.” I don’t think it’s cool to make fun of accents, except for French ones, but this is something else. It’s like he’s swallowing every word and trying to use internal air pressure to blow it back out through his eyeballs. I’ve already built a kind of mental decoder ring for most of Bernard’s gulps and bellows, but I legitimately don’t even have a guess what that was supposed to mean.

Seanbaby: I don’t know what they mean either, but when Bernard uttered these words, I swear I heard a baguette in my kitchen answer.

Brockway: After the Bernard troll is done stalling adventurers with its language puzzles, we launch into one of many short informational films that are somehow both childishly simplistic and also stunningly pedantic. We’re told that grapes can be grown in almost every state, but a lot of wine comes from California. We’re told many French wines are named after the regions they come from, but those regions don’t exist in California. I’m not sure who this is for – some kind of agricultural idiot savant? Like a Lawnmower Man but for grapes, who does understand which varietals are grown in the Burgundy region, but doesn’t understand that some places are different from other places?

Seanbaby: Hear me out: I think you can learn everything you’ll ever need to know about wine in five minutes. More than enough about both colors of grapes, pairing, whatever. And every single moment you spend studying wine after that only makes you a bigger asshole except to people aspiring to also become giant assholes. Wine knowledge is the NFTs of old fruit, and I apologize to anyone coming back and reading this in 2023 who doesn’t remember what the fuck NFTs were.

Brockway: Let’s segue out of this to a Dudley Moore skit. Bernard, can you give us a real quick human point? A point, with your finger, like humans do?

Brockway: Excellent, excellent. You are six thousand space crickets pulling levers inside a corpse, fantastic.

Seanbaby: “Wine alert, priority two. B.E.R.N.A.R.D. detects Dudley Moore whimsy at sector… vrrrp… seven point three alpha.”

Brockway: Dudley Moore orders “wine” from a snooty waiter, and is unprepared to specify further. So the premise of this skit is that Dudley Moore doesn’t know enough about fancy wine to order a bottle of it, which actually jives with his character, who always wears a tuxedo but would happily drink wood alcohol out of a hobo’s asshole. The skit tries to do that hilarious thing where Dudley Moore mumbles the choice and hopes things work out, but he’s also visibly wasted so it comes across less like a comedy sketch and more like a waiter politely trying not to overserve a drunk woman’s ventriloquist dummy.

Seanbaby: In this same situation, Robert Loggia would say, “I’ll take a bottle of your coldest red,” and fight his way out.

Brockway: The alpha release of Bernard Bot is idling in a darkened wine room, waiting to assure us that you don’t have to know anything about wine to order it. Then he explains the 11 things we need to know about wine to order it.

Seanbaby: “I’ll take two of everything with a splash of Sprite and anyone you got in the back man enough to stop me,” Robert Loggia would say. But back to Bernard, he really does move like he was raised by marionettes. He has the body language of assembly line stock footage.

Brockway: At one point he is programmed to smell a peach, and I swear to god he’s making fun of the way humans are always ‘enjoying things.’

Seanbaby: Speaking of sniffing peaches, Herbie Hancock.

Brockway: What a gross and gross oversimplification of Herbie Hancock. He’s more than an erect penis and a patented system of thrusts and gyrations guaranteed to satisfy any unhappily married woman. Let’s actually see what he’s up to before you go judg-

Oh. Herbie Hancock is at a pre-threesome picnic, himself and two ladies carbo-loading to generate enough fluid for the next six hours. He quickly introduces himself, saying “I don’t know much about this wine thing… but like my friends say, go with the flow.”

Okay, this is definitely about fucking.

You can just smell that screengrab, right? It does not smell like wine.

Seanbaby: “I don’t even drink wine, but the glasses are a great way to visually demonstrate the things Herbie does to panties. Isn’t that right, ladies? By the way, what are you guys filming?”

Brockway: Whoopi Goldberg is here because this tape was released in the ‘90s, back when Whoopi Goldberg was legally contracted to be in everything for at least 45 seconds. Whether she wanted to or not. True story: Whoopi Goldberg tried to turn down a role in Theodore Rex, and the producers sued her until she agreed to be in it. And it worked! Whoopi Goldberg was in an entire movie against her will, and it broke her. From that point on, she agreed to be in everything for no more than an afternoon. For Celebrity Guide to Wine, she wouldn’t even fully leave her car, she was so afraid of being abducted by another production.

Seanbaby: Whoopi Goldberg was once roasted by her boyfriend, Ted Danson, while he was wearing full black face. She has been in over 3000 insane movies, at least two of them about undercover nuns, and she was just kicked off TV for for saying the holocaust wasn’t racist. But if she finds the cure for death and lives forever, “sued to remain on a dinosaur buddy cop movie” will always -always- be the first thing I think about when I see her. If a movie studio took you to court to force you to act alongside a tyrannosaurus cop, go ahead and sleepwalk through the rest of your life. You’ll never top that.

Brockway: And she’ll never try. You can see her mentally counting down the contractually obligated seconds as she launches into a little skit with the first thing they hand her: Some crabs. She does wacky crab voices while wandering absolutely no more than two steps from her car at any point, until she realizes she doesn’t have an impromptu punchline about crabs, so she throws them in the trunk and talks about wine instead. I’ve never seen anybody give less of a shit about anything and I’ve seen me, watching this video.

Seanbaby: If you paid Bruce Willis, today, $20,000 to let you deepfake him into a wine video, he would put in a more sincere effort than Whoopi “Sued to Remain on a Dinosaur Buddy Cop Movie” Goldberg did in 1990’s Celebrity Guide to Wine.

Brockway: Shelley Hack is here to educate us about Chardonnay, which she drinks instead of talking to her husband about the state of their marriage. Shelley positively gushes about her love for Chardonnay and I changed my mind – I believe Shelley Hack loves Chardonnay more than Herbie Hancock loves two chicks at the same time.

Herbie Hancock: Did somebody say “gushes?” I brought my measuring glasses, baby.

Brockway: She is prime Hancock prey. Herbie Hancock sees her and his eyes turn into little cartoon diaphragms.

Wait!

Another skit: A car screeches up, it’s an emergency. Kelly LeBrock enters, looking like she’s playing Greed in a 1986 porno called Seven Deadly Skins.

Brockway: She’s panicked, she knows she fucked up bad and is terrified of the consequences, apologizing profusely to somebody off-screen…

It’s Steven Seagal. Looking how he always does: like he just ordered something billed as The World’s Largest Chili Dog and he knows from life experience that it’s a lie.

Seanbaby: Steven Seagal hasn’t said a word or even moved yet, and you really get the sense that Kelly LeBrock is in terrible danger. He’s often criticized for his acting ability, but when you put him in the right role, his performance can be almost hauntingly believable.

Brockway: She kisses him. He’s too furious to acknowledge it. Why is there a skit about domestic violence in this wine video, you ask? No, you’re reading it wrong. This is erotic roleplay, and Kelly LeBrock is Steven Seagal’s Special Little Bottle Slut.

Seanbaby: Oh, is that what they’re going for? In that case, this acting is quite bad.

Brockway: “Same as usual?” Kelly LeBrock breathes.

“It’s right there,” he nods down, and you think it’s his dick.

No! Don’t be vulgar.

Kelly LeBrock gives a bottle of wine a handjob.

Seanbaby: This has all the eroticism of Robert Loggia doing a spit take and asking Herbie Hancock what the hell was in that glass. There’s an element of crotch and fluids to it, but it’s way closer to becoming a fist fight than sex.

Brockway: “This better be good,” Steven Seagal chunkily whispers at his disappointing chili dog woman.

“With me it’s always good,” Kelly LeBrock says, and awkwardly struggles to open a bottle of wine while the director screeches “more like it’s a penis! Kelly! Kelly. A human penis!”

Seanbaby: “Oh, like how you wipe it down with a chamois and blow the dust off it? Or are you thinking something more like this? Quack, quack! Let’s balloon you to your dentist race, Senator Wine Penis!”

Brockway: She pops the cork. It means cumming.

She pours the wine for Steven Seagal. He sips her wine ejaculate.

“You’ve done well,” he says, only the meekest approval. Like the chili dog may have been a lie, but it did have the decency to be filled with cheese.

Seanbaby: I can’t fucking believe this scene isn’t disappointing. You see Celebrity Guide to Wine starring Steven Seagal and you can’t help but get your hopes up. But here he is, making a wine corking into this deranged ritual of inhuman confusion.

Brockway: “I hope that was as good for you as it was for me,” Kelly LeBrock croons, infuriating the unseen director, now showing her the proper way to masturbate a bottle off-screen.

Kelly LeBrock gathers up her things. She’s leaving! This was not foreplay. The sub/dom wine ritual is complete, and both will leave delightfully frustrated.

“If you need your bottles opened, you know who to call,” she says.

“Maybe I’ll whistle,” Steven Seagal adds, completely misreading this classic exchange. The whistle-blowing, you see, is meant to be a woman tastefully implying that she sucks dick. If you’re the one offering to whistle, Steven Seagal, you are offering to suck Kelly LeBrock’s dick, which is cool. Cool. I do not think you understand that, though.

Seanbaby: “MAYBE I’LL WHISTLE,” Steven Seagal growls, in the same tone he might say, “It’s going to be hard to swim when I tear your toes off, Saltano. But that’s what you’ll have to do, because you just fell in the shark tank. And blood is in the water. Me: Jake Blood. And the Jake is silent.”

Brockway: “Y-you do know how to whistle, don’t you?” Kelly LeBrock says, having been volunteered for the wrong part of a sexy knock-knock joke.

“MMM-HMMM” Steven Seagal hums, trying to be Mommy’s Naughty Little Wineboy but coming off more like he’s demonstrating to a conference of helper-monkeys that choking doesn’t always look how you think.

Seanbaby: This is a professional actor who had to pretend to have chemistry with legendary sexpot Kelly LeBrock while she was also his wife at the time, and you’d swear he was phoning in the role of Alien Who Didn’t Like the Soup in Robert Loggia’s Ski Buddies.

Brockway: Let’s see what Bernard’s up to…

“WHAT wine is aPOOSHamated for eez fweshnizz,” he says, now clearly drunk but how on Earth would I ever prove that?

Seanbaby: Buddy, this is America. Either learn to poosh the fweshnizz right, or get the hell out.

Brockway: “NOT AGAIN!” Whoopi Goldberg quips!

I didn’t leave something out. This is in response to nothing, and about nothing. I even left the bookends in there so you could see how jarring and contextless this was. Some producer just knew this film needed some pizzazz-

“We’ll have Whoopi Goldberg sass something funny, like ‘not again!’”

“That’s great! But what’s the start of that? Like ‘not again’ in response to what?”

“We’ll figure that out later,” he replied, and pinned all his hopes on his future self. It hurts the worst, when you let yourself down.

Seanbaby: Somewhere there’s a tape of unused Whoopi Goldberg lines like “Are you talkin’ for real?” or “Jump back, kemosabe!” Wait wait, holy shit, what if she recorded one of those in 1985 and people have been using it ever si– oh my God, I think this explains Whoopi Goldberg! This is it! This was the missing piece in the puzzle of Theodore Rex! My life’s work! Brockway, don’t ignore this! This could be the key to Bordello of Blood! Sister Act 2: Back in the Ha– everything!

Brockway: Hey, Robert Loggia, something about wine?

Brockway: “Grahhh,” Robert Loggia grumbles, “Cabbaneh sobinyin goes wit any red meat suchis lamm beef, even veeeeel an’ powahk.” He slams the bottle down. He stabs a steak and slaps it onto the barbecue, inexplicably furious.

Seanbaby: Robert Loggia’s agent told him this would be a “wine thing” which he took to mean a few cold reds at his Malibu place. He did not expect to lose a Saturday explaining how to swallow goddamn drinks alongside clips of Whoopi Goldberg shouting “who farted!?”

Brockway: This skit is eight seconds long and it runs ten seconds longer than Robert Loggia’s patience.

Seanbaby: The emergency doctors will never forget the day that would go on to be known as “The Time Robert Loggia Lost it and Stuffed Wine Bottles Up All Those People’s Asses.”

Brockway: Bernard tells us more about wine, probably, and drinks a lot of wine, definitely. He’s doing okay though, because Dudley Moore is way more tanked at the same party and taking all the heat off him.

Brockway: Together, they slur that merlot is a girl about eighteen times, and at one point they describe wine, a liquid, as “damp.” If you ever got the sense that maybe wine people are more sophisticated than you, watch two European muppets talk about how damp their little wine girls get.

Seanbaby: I missed most of this because whenever Bernard is on the screen I find myself searching for more of his sideways amulets.

Brockway: A good call. They’re his spies. They’re like the balls from Phantasm.

Brockway: Whoopi Goldberg shows up to reiterate what foods pair well with red wine again, because Robert Loggia’s bit was supposed to be 46 seconds long but he killed a grip with a barbecue fork and drilled murderholes in his trailer so none could approach. Whoopi goes through a series of child’s drawings of friendly animals you’re supposed to eat, then points at a nearby woman and says “did you write this? You’re fired. White women! You can’t control ‘em!”

It is the only genuine laugh I got in this movie, and I do not think she was acting.

Seanbaby: Brockway, you can cut this, but what’s crazy is Whoopi originally recorded that line for a reverse slavery movie called The Blunderground Railroad after she misheard almost every part of a 1987 phone call with Mel Brooks.

Brockway: I’m going to leave it in because by the time they figure out why it’s a problem, we’ll already be back on the stickbug piloting a man-ship that is Bernard.

Bernard tells us he’s a Pinot Noir freak and I have no reason to doubt him. Especially not when he describes a Zinfandel as “pleasant, intense, and attractive,” and Robert Mondavi as “thick and mouth filling.” I hate this, but he tells us not to drink Beaujolais aged, as it’s “meant to be drunk very young.” Then we throw it to Very Young Expert Herbie Hancock at his sticky picnic so he can coo the exact same thing but with a filthier emphasis on “very.”

To drive it home he pulls out a tiny one-handed synthesizer that he keeps in his picnic basket, clumsily picks out an offkey tune, exclaims “HA!” and then waits for the camera to leave. Takes longer than you think.

Seanbaby: This is magical. Exactly, to the tiny synthesizer, how I picture Herbie Hancock ending every interaction.

Brockway: To explain Zinfandel, we need Shelley Hack. She starts the skit weirdly sexually aggressive, because it now occurs to me that this is a fetish tape, but ends it mowing through a pizza while slamming Zin straight from the bottle.

Seanbaby: “Where’s my mark? Fuck it, I’m partying,” glugs the charming and beautiful Celebrity Guide to Wine standout, Shelley Hack.

Brockway: You know what? Shelley Hack can hang. The next time we see her she’s Hasslehoffed on the stairs, drunkenly hammering a wine opener into a champagne cork and I’ve never seen a more relatable and attractive woman on television.

Seanbaby: I think I finally get wine.

Brockway: I’m in love, but that’s the end of the skit. This is the only vignette with absolutely no informational value. It’s just Shelley Hack wrapping up a Tuesday.

Seanbaby: I bet Robert Loggia is going to be even more pissed when he finds out he could have just ignored the cue cards and gotten smashed.

Brockway: “Champeen! Awyneuf seebrasion, eegunce, a dreeee!” The broken Bernard-Bot slurs, locking its arms in forklift position.

Brockway: I legitimately have no idea what this was supposed to convey. This entire section is totally incomprehensible. He might be speaking French, but I don’t think there are this many hiccups in French. The director understands there is no time for second takes, though – soon Bernard will be on the roof again, his dick stuck in a Reisling, trying to explain grape breeding to passing clouds. Shelley Hack will be topless-dancing to Fleetwood Mac, Whoopi Goldberg will be at home four hours ago, the paycheck already cashed. Dudley Moore will be sprawled in a fountain, giggling at the funny noises the bubbles make as his brain shuts down.

Seanbaby: And Robert Loggia will be calling his charcoal a no good son of a bitch after it refuses to light a third time. Me? I’ll be here doing what I’m always doing: not expecting Robocop.

Brockway:

…

SURPRISE ROBOCOP.

Brockway: It’s motherfuckin’ Peter Weller, walking from a spaceship and into a saloon to say, and I’m not fucking with you here, this is the actual quote.

“Hello, I’m Peter Weller and you might know me, amongst other things, as a big metal cop. But one thing you don’t wanna have happen, is to have that guy or any other policeman for that matter pull you over for driving while intoxicated. EVEN ON WINE. So please be responsible for the safety of others as well as your own, don’t drink and drive okay Bernard?”

That is the correct punctuation. It’s so phoned in he does not finish the sentence before asking if that shit was good enough to leave. It accidentally comes across like this whole thing was a warning specifically to Bernard. Micless and from three rooms away, Bernard shouts back “OK PETER THANKS.”

Peter Weller has this to say in return:

Nothing. Just a slow smile full of strange malice, staring at a man we can’t see after threatening him with his role as a cop he’s not allowed to legally name.

Seanbaby: What a perfect ending. For anything, but especially for a celebrity guide to wine. Magnificent. Well worth the cost of Dudley Moore.

Brockway: And now, for the craziest part of this entire film – Bernard crops up one last time, surely being held upright by sticks and tape, to explain that the great thing about a video is you can watch it as many times as you want. He thinks you’re going to watch this again! And then he warns you against it!

“Remember, before you push that rewind button – the right wine is the wine that you like.”

Seanbaby: What!? This is like getting to the end of the Bible and finding a chapter called “Or Maybe Not? I Don’t Know, Science Makes Some Good Points.”

Brockway: We cut back to revisit every celebrity in this video solely about the rules of wine, explaining in their own words that there are no rules to wine.

We check in with Robert Loggia, spitefully dunking ice into his red even though it’s wildly insensitive to that stuntman who died earlier. We hear Whoopi deliver her last line, never fully leaving her car for this entire shoot. We say goodbye to Dudley Moore, possibly for the last time ever, as was always the danger with saying goodbye to Dudley Moore. We wave goodnight to Shelley Hack, who is definitely going to be knocking on our door three hours later, too drunk to positively consent so we’ll tuck her into the tub with couch cushions and a spare blanket. Herbie Hancock is finally ready to seal the deal with his picnic bitches-

Seanbaby: These poor women have been trying to have sex with Herbie Hancock for seven weeks.

Brockway: And back to Bernard one more time, who would like a final chance to prove he was human all along and there is no need to call the army.

Brockway: So remember! Those were the rules to wine. This was all pointless. There are no rules to wine. You can watch it again. A wine DUI is only 2/3rds of a real DUI. DON’T WATCH IT AGAIN. Goodbye! Wine!

Seanbaby: I have nothing to add other than a second unexpected Robocop.

Tags Best of 2022, Celebrities, Free, VHS

TEAMWORKING DAY

Hot Dog Year in Review: The Very Best Teamworking Days of 2021 🌭

Post author By 1900HOTDOG
Post date 12/30/2021
3 Comments on Hot Dog Year in Review: The Very Best Teamworking Days of 2021 🌭

In 2021, we formed the ultimate Tag Team to take down some of the mightiest comedy material. Material too dense and terrifying for one comedy writer alone, material that would rapidly age and destroy any one solo comedian who dared approach it with fear in their heart. But all of this magnificent material fell easily before our patented combo attack: The Crotch Stomp (x2). Please enjoy the very best of our Teamworking Days, all free!

Cocktails

Ron Merk had a dream: To bone as many San Francisco bartenders as he could, under the guise of making a show about them. Then a better idea came to him: A drama about the San Francisco gay club scene that quickly spirals out of control, encompassing serial killers, mimics, street samurai, and the actual devil! That dream was called Cocktails, and now we all dream it. Every night. Nothing else.

Dirty Tennis

It’s like nothing else that has ever been made– a guide to playing tennis obnoxiously for aging actors with unlimited budgets and no shame. It’s a tiny fraction of a bad idea stretched across 33 earth minutes and probably made at gunpoint. Dirty Tennis stars Dick Van Patten alongside Olympic gold medalist Caitlyn Jenner, and humankind called it “an unthinkable betrayal; we will not forgive you.”

The Thrilling World of Men Showdown

The concept was madness. The finished product was insanity. We drafted story titles from ’60s man magazines and battled them like pet monsters in a game with loose rules and even looser women. Get your eggs ready to fly down our stacks, because we are bringing back the Bitch of Bingh Kan.

Couch Potato Workout

We got through Dirty Tennis only to discover it wasn’t the only “parody” anti-instructional VHS out there. So set your burgers to cheese and fart your wife’s meatloaf ready, couch fans! It’s fart for Couch Potato Workout!

Photon

Among the stars, flower perverts and sentient poop clash in battles of laser! Photon was a game! A television program! A book series! A horror immediately forgotten by history! It’s the reason 1984 landfills were mostly safety helmet: Photon: The Ultimate Game on Planet Earth*!

* It wasn’t that or there