Category: UPSETTING DAY
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For more than thirty-five years, I’ve always begun this column with the same words: “All joking aside.” This has traditionally been used as a facetious overture before laying satirically into the various causes celebre with which I take umbrage. It’s really quite funny, if you’re smart. If you don’t find that funny, there’s a good chance you are considered the dumb person in your area. But even you, your area’s dumbest person, must have it within you to imagine how serious I am when I throw aside three decades of tradition to say what I say to you now…all joking really aside, my partner and I are pregnant with our first child. Neither a bit, nor a government experiment, nor the culmination of a Romani curse, the human baby currently in a parasitic relationship with my wife will soon be among us. That’s going to happen. It’s too late to change that now. I asked.
In my own estimation and that of the state, the least I can do as its presumptive father is learn what I can of the proper feeding, clothing, schooling, and defenestration of the modern baby before its ejection from the womb. For example, a brief skim of the first parenting book in my collection – Oxford’s English Dictionary – informs me that I didn’t mean to say “defenestration,” and am probably confusing that word with a different one. Good. This is going great. Let’s reset.
Babies! Everybody loves babies. As you join me on a continuing journey of learning by doing and discovering by googling, my hope is to leave my joking days aside for good and all, and pick up instead the heavy mantle of the pater familias. My goodwife is presently nineteen handspans across and our local vet is busy hobbling horses until the spring thaw, so we’ve got some time yet. For an easy start on our road to fatherhood, where better to turn our attention than things sartorial? The kid will need clothes, that’s certain. Fortunately for me the internet has some, and all it took was a quick survey via the Shopping tab to educate myself on the subject. For example, did you know onesies can be worn by children even before age one? Or that pirates will not constantly attack your baby to try and steal their booties? That time in our history has long passed.
What seems to be hip these days, see, is –
uh, okay, haha. well jeez –
ew, do i have safesearch off? No, that’s not it. What if I –
wow
holy fuck
holy shit
I kind of don’t understand how the F.B.I. aren’t knocking on my door right now.
After further research, it looks like there are five main types of baby clothes available online, which I’m now going to present in order of how painful it will be for you to learn each category exists. Please treat this inventory not only as a crash course on clothing your baby, but also like your own personal episode of Hot Ones with implied pedophilia in place of wing sauce. Okay? Please do that. Here we fucking go.
Horror Level 1 – For the Memesters
Babies are essentially our attempt to project the best of ourselves further into the future, so it’s hardly surprising to learn that people like to get a little cheeky and slap pop culture references on their baby’s clothes. It’s a fun way of showcasing their own taste, and signaling the kind of cultural legacy they hope to pass on. It hardly matters if the baby “gets it;” in fact, that’s a part of the fun! Do you think this smiley boy understands the significance of combining Van Gogh’s Starry Night, Munch’s The Scream, and the killer from Scream into one painting? How can he? I don’t!
What I do understand is the reference below, uttered over thirty years ago in a film that child will absolutely never watch unless forced to, and the subtext of which is “hey, come over here and try to shoot me, let’s fight to the death with our guns, this statement is an open invitation to attackers.”
Another thing it is fun to mock babies for is their ignorance. Thanks to the toddler shirt below, we adults can share a good laugh about the fact that the baby wearing it obviously doesn’t remember that time RoboCop shot that dude in the dick. Hopefully they also forget that we dressed them like this, then stood around with our adult friends laughing at them.
Oh, and it says “dick” on it, too! That’s extra funny, because traditionally babies are supposed to be shielded from profanity. I wonder how far we could take that idea and still think it was very, very funny? This far?
Nope, too far! Let’s pull the lever in the opposite direction.
Oops, I pulled the lever in the same direction so hard that now it’s just spinning around and around! But in its defense, the intended joke of this shirt isn’t strictly that the toddler understands proper blowjob technique, merely that they can hang with dank memes enough to [child removed from the home by social services].
Horror Level 2 – For the Hipsters
Snobby baby clothes are just like meme baby clothes, but one notch worse because they require effort to understand. Prove your superior intellect by turning your baby into a puzzle that reveals the word “HORNY” if you stare at it long enough!
Now, strangers will stare at your baby for a long time and then go “Ohhhhh…horny,” and you and your kiddo can laugh and laugh as they receive swift mob justice. Come to think of it, this is a great way to punish anyone that solves the puzzle. Congratulations, your baby is the Lament Configuration.
This other toddler shirt from a completely different shop nevertheless utilizes the same puzzle design, which by its very nature encourages strangers to ask you things like “may I raise your baby’s shirt up a little, just to fold it up, just to see? I just want to see something.” In video game design this is referred to as “ludonarrative,” and is illegal in forty-six of the contiguous United States.
Or hey, maybe you just want strangers to photograph your baby’s chest? I can understand that. With this handy tee, anyone who points their phone at the fruits of your loin will be linked directly to the results page for a google search of the phrase “rock out with your cock out.” So, you know, if anyone takes a picture of your toddler and then starts to take their cock out, be careful – the rock music might wake the baby!
Horror Level 3 – For the Edgelords
That’s right, bitches. Not only have all the baby shirts up to this point not been explicitly trying to offend you, we’ve now reached levels of offensiveness so grimy that I’ve unconsciously transitioned from my intellectual comedy writing voice to the comedy writing voice I do where you can hear my real voice in your head saying the words as you read it. Dude, check this shit out.
You can tell it’s for girls because it’s pink! Here’s another one you can tell is for girls, because of the deep folkloric connections between elephants and fertility in both Hindu and Buddhist cultures.
Or perhaps I’m the one with his mind in the gutter. “Squirter” does seem like a pretty fucking wild thing to print on what you’re explicitly marketing as an “embarrassing” toddler shirt, but maybe the manufacturer means that the kid pees during diaper changes and embarrasses you. There’s still wiggle room here! Humanity could still be worth saving! Cue next shirt.
It’s cotton though you guys, at least there’s that. Not a single hair of synthetic fiber will rash up your poor kid’s skin as they suck titties, shit themselves, or take an important business call.
If you’re uncomfortable printing swears right directly on your kid, fret not! There are several other options that allow your child to theoretically maintain their innocence while still achieving your core goal of automatically telling every single person who looks at them to fuck off. Here’s a shirt that takes “flipping the bird” literally, and “the sanctity of childhood” lightly!
This of course opens us up to a whole range of visual puns, neatly circumventing social norms and allowing for even the most obscene aspects of our shared cultural lexicon to shine through. Think of your baby as just another social media feed – a place to post some funny images to let everyone know how funny you are.
Oh yeah. If I saw your baby wearing that shirt, I would immediately know exactly how funny you are. And there’s no limit to how much “get to know ya” information can be transmitted in shirt form! Thanks to fine outlets like Brisco Baby, your child’s shirt can indicate everything from where they just came from…
…to a bit about their cultural background…
…or even some of their favorite hobbies!
Naturally, true edgelord maniacs won’t want to stop at sexual innuendo when there’s a whole world of woke snowflakes to offend through the medium of child abuse. Why wrap your son or daughter in basic filth when you could be denigrating a whole civil rights movement at the same time?
The further down the unwell you go, the more the offensive toddler shirts do away with any semblance of design sense or wordplay until we finally reach the bottom, a thin stack of tiny black tees with big block letters spelling generically awful things presumably written by an A.I. that’s been fed the entire rotten.com forum archives.
And in case you’re sitting there thinking “well, that could just be a normal edgelord slogan aimed at adults and mistakenly printed on a tiny tee,” wrap your fractured mind around this shirt, clearly designed for a baby to wear by someone who understands at least the rudiments of how babies work (ie, they come from whores).
Please note that this particular shirt can be tricky to deploy, since it’s only at its most funny if you hold the baby facing a particular way. If you don’t, it’s less funny, but still quite funny.
Horror Level 4 – Don’t Molest My Kid!
Now, however, I’m afraid we’re moving past funny and into offensive. I know I’ve used the word “offensive” many times already, but what I’m about to show you redefines what offensive means to the degree that the “smells like sluts” shirt is, in retrospect, actually totally fine. Like, I would much rather clad my child in the sluts shirt than a shirt that invites people to, say, show them their butthole – however classily.
My concern, see, is that I’d end up in a situation where I’m telling a judge that someone showed my kid their butthole and the defense attorney pulls out a little vacuum baggie with this shirt in it marked “Exhibit A” and they drop the case. Fortunately for people like me, there are a number of toddler shirts that explicitly warn people away from their precious, developing junk.
See? You’re thinking of that boy’s scrotum now, but not of touching it. You’re thinking of not touching that little boy’s scrotum. Isn’t that a much nicer kind of way to be thinking about that boy’s scrotum? Sure it is.
Hell, the kid rocking this tee couldn’t be clearer! Their eighteen months on this earth have already taught them that life is one non-stop ass-reaming, so molesting them would just be overkill, ya dig? Stay away, stranger! Just maintain your distance and look at that teddy’s expression, for its dead eyes are the perfect avatar for the baby who’s seen it all, the jaded newborn already well aware that existence is one big diaper and we’re all the poopoocaca.
Horror Level 5 – Don’t Molest My Kid 😉
That was the end of the article. The title above this line is a misprint. You can click away now, or do one of your little comments, or call your congressman or exorcist, whatever you need. The rest of the stuff below here is not even content, in fact, but rather a handy device I invented to quickly ratchet up the level of disgust you are able to feel inside of you at one time. The more you scroll down, the worse it gets. Ready?!
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-eeeeeeeeeeee’re so cooked.
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Well its kinda weird if you think about it that there was only ever one Halloween 1987. Ever! Now Im not tryin to pretend one year is objectionally better than another, i just personally happen to have a fondness for some more than others, due to nostalgia you see, and well, just think about that October. Lookin back on a summer of Robcop and Predator and Lethal Weapon and did you hear: the guy from Moonlighting is going to be in a action movie!? And then lets make it more specific and suggest that on this paticular halloween you happen to be a college student in LA. Oh yeah, Summer School was also 1987, so we know pretty much exactly what you might look like:
So your too old for trick or treats and maybe even costumes but that dont matter because your bud calls you on the dorm phone and says i got us two tickets to the hottest halloween party in town; that young new comedian everybody loves from Saturday Night Live and movies and who is becoming a superstar is coming to film his new special on Halloween Night right here at UCLA!
Haha no not THAT SNL superstar,
the OTHER one:
Yeah him. I honestly have no idea if I need to explain him or not to you, so real quick that’s Joe Piscopo, he was on SNL with Eddie Murphy right after the whole first group left or got fired and some people thought the show would end, but nope, it kept getting popular and Joe knew it was probably because of his killer Frank Sinatra impressions that saved the day.
So you can see why Joe had the showbiz juice that would make the shoulder-padded suits at HBO say: “Let’s give this man full creative freedom to do a Halloween comedy music show with a costume party for the students and we will broadcast it live to the homes of America.”
And thank goodness one of those homes had the prescience of mind to VHS record it and many years later post it for me and you and this guy to watch:
Joe wastes NO time in lettin us know what were in for. Maybe we were expecting just a hour of the best Jerry Lewis impersonation we ever seen in our lives but this aint that, he declares that we are in for some BAD BOY comedy by ridin out on the stage on a harley davidson motorcycle and wearin a harley davidson shirt that shows us his muscles AND sets off his hair real nice.
I believe that particular mullet variety is referred to as the Jersey Tidy.
He bellows a welcome to us and the crowd and then IMMEDIATELY suverts our expectations of what were in for by putting on a outfit that signals to us that we are about to see: some Rap Singing.
I been watchin this pretty closely and have come to the uncomfortable conclusion that he actually does seem to be scratching for real there. You may scoff and doubt at me about that right now, but I invite you to stay with me and see what you think when we finish up here today.
So Joe raps for second about how rap is so easy, you just say stuff! And then he does a on-stage costume change into WHITE BOY RAPPER
So a rough start, I know, for you and me, but the crowd responded with like ecclesiastical levels of ecstatic hollerin on this one.
You’ll maybe join me in the dilemma I had watching this one: It would be very bad if there were only white people in the live audience, but also any black people who were there could probly use a kind thought or prayer.
He finishes the rap sketch, makes a joke about UCLA parking tickets that KILLS, just as much for me at home as it did for the students, and then introduces John “The Tooz” Matuszak
(who for real I just learned played Sloth in Goonies, and who sadly would not live to see a 90s Halloween) The Tooz is on loan from the Raiders tonight to judge the costume contest, winner gets $1000, which back then was enough to buy about half a three wheeler! Let’s see our first contestants!
I thought haha thats funny, a person with their whole face covered up as a mummy is lip syncing, I wonder whos the 80s celebrity under there, I hope so much its Balki, but nope it was just a student dressed as a mummy.
I wish i could fully communicate the FRANTIC pace of this thing so far, Joe and and the kids and everybody seem kinda terrified about taking too much time on the live broadcast so everyone is just HUSTLIN.
Next they have some primo ‘87 high-cut and bethonged babes rush out and dance and the announcer yells please welcome to the stage WHAT HATH GOD ROTH to complete silence from the audience and then Joe comes out and shows us why doin impressions of singulurly physical performers like David Lee Roth is a bad idea.
Its like when your biology teacher would get a little loose on a friday afternoon and try out his Jim Carrey bits for the class. Hes a nice enough guy and its better than doin more pundit squares but lets not pretend its as good as the original.
Again, we are movin at a pace here somewhere between frenzied and panic. KEEP IT MOVING, I imagine the director yellin, WE ARE LIVE PEOPLE NEXT SET NEXT SET
Oh no. This is probably what you think it is, Joes doing a extended vocal impersanation of a black musician. Who he insists he has full respect for.
You can maybe see why at first I thought he was actually doing black- and possibly blind-face on this one but thats just a artifact of the poor recordin quality and Joe’s immence perspiration. Heres the thing though; if you watch that part, you’ll see that even though hes “just” doing the voice, that doesnt make it any better. He enlists a bandmate to join him, perhaps to provide some sort of cultural cover an counter-fire by showing us “See, even there laughin!”
Oh nope i guess i gave joe too much credit, its not even that, its just his white friend who is also real good at talkin like a black guy i guess.
If you listen close you can hear John Hughes screamin with laughter
But then here comes another curveball! That saxophone is not just a prop, Joe actually starts to play it!
With the same high-level enthusiasm and mid-level skill (ahem) he brought to the turntables, Joe makes that puppy wail, mournful and soulful such that we can clearly hear the intended message: “I AM NOT A CLOWN!” We draw a respectful veil over comedy for the moment, the show is now just two sensual sax buds tradin the most stanksome of jersey-flavored licks with each other.
Back to the costume contest: we get a skit with that ol’ halloween chestnut of one frat boy dressed up as Sherlock Holmes hitting another fratboy in the nuts with a hockey stick again and again and again.
Just inexplicable. Possibly brilliant in its moronery.
Joe returns, transformed in our eyes from when he played the sax so good. No cheap jester, he!
He does a Phil Donahue impression that is mostly wig and he interviews George Wallace dressed up as Oprah.
Every line Joe says is a fat joke. He does it 8 times.
Oof, this is getting a little rough, let’s take a little break from the special. Here, let’s rest our chemistry with this video of Joe hollerin a bob seger love song at his fiance who he met when she was 17 and his sons nanny and he was already married and makes her come out on stage and give him flowers and say she doesnt mind when they go on Howard Stern together and he pervs on her:
Okay breaks over, back to the special. The next costume contestants run out and sing their song and then a man dressed as a tongue comes out and licks them up.
Spoiler: they win.
And then we have a bit with two kids who are trick or treatin but when they knock on a door, its Joe Piscopo in a spittin image of Bruce Lee.
Again we all of us remember the david lee roth lesson. In this case its that Joe hasent yet learned that you have to be at least a little bit good at karate to be good at making fun of it. Hell aint that the way for pretty much anything? Anyway you can maybe see it comin that their gonna lean real hard into 80s Asian accent humor.
Im sure your brain is fillin in the blanks on how he says Halloween. The child actor is forced to say Tlick or Tleat my god for real what are we doin out here. I need another break, here lets watch Joe do the white boy rap at a recent Mike Lindell rally:
Okay another long saxophone thing from a special guy Joe flew all the way out from Atlantic City, and i dont know whats worse: if he thought the LA kids would actually like it or if this was his way of expressing California Hate-Spite as only a jerseyman can.
Then Joe and a lady that i think is supposed to be madonna come out and sing a song with no jokes. Just singing and dancing, but i guess hes supposed to be Dean Martin and thats all you need?
Still at a nicotine + cocaine speed, all of this. But then, all of a sudden, time slows. We enter a pre-recorded bit, shot in majestic black and white and moving at a stately pace.
Dignified.
We watch (and I guess the audience in UCLA did too on a screen or something?) while Joe once again transcends the bonds of base and vulgar comedy to show his breadth, depth, range, and reach of being able to play 4 different Robert DeNiros!
Uncanny.
Its so long, and totally ununcumbered by jokes. Joe seems to believe that his savant impersonation skills will carry our tired bodies for as long as needed, or perhaps this part was meant for Martin Scorsese’s eyes alone. Whatever’s going on, it just keeps going on.
We realize they were compressin the rest of the show so hard to make sure that this thing could be shown in its entirely.
It made me say a complicated prayer by the end, i could tell this part was finally about to end with as much nothing as it began, and just kinda the agony of it and thinking about all the unlaughin young faces there at UCLA realizin that they gave up the only 1987 Halloween they’d ever have? For this!? So help me, folks I found myself askin God: please, make it that Joe wrote a joke to end this…
A button, a crazy credit…
…anything to wrap this one up. Please.
Nothing. It feels like God did this to test how much i’d debase myself and abandon dignity in the face of despair, and I failed. I feel just like the end of 1984. Lets take another break with this old Joe Piscopo Miller Lite commercial.
Goddammit that was just the worst parts of the bruce lee thing again that wasn’t no break, fuck it i guess were just white knucklin through the rest of this one. Take each others hands and exchange reassurin nods were almost there.
The live show continues. Joe returns to the stage to accept the adulation of the audience about his cinema artistry and gives the fans what he knows they want, a lil live recap of what we just saw:
Its time for a finale and Joe has the consummant entertainers awareness of how to knock the socks off of these college kids with all the neon heat that only a live show in ‘87 could muster:
Yep, I probably don’t need to tell you but thats professor Tom Tomlinson playing focaccia and fuge on the world famous UCLA Royce Hall Pipe Organ!
You can tell he knows he has finally won the admiration and respect of the youth. But this aint your grammas phantom of the opera: In a move Andrew Lloyd Weber could only dream of, Joe Piscopo, renossance man, rises from the below the stage and joins Tom Tom to just EXECUTE on the rock and roll drum set!
Wildly, Joe pounds, he sizzles, he kicks, his grip on the sticks as firm and unyieldin as a step-fathers on your neck when you start to mouth off.
The rest of the band and professor tom valiantly strive to match and follow his, um, unconventional rythms.
Holy shit you guys, they fuckin did it, they came in at the hour, roll credits, high fives in the production booth, the costume kids and bikini babes and george wallace return to the stage as the crowd rises and roars at the spectacle recently beheld. But where’s Joe? Surely, he’s well-deserved restin among the laurels and panties bein hurled up on the stage in his honor, right? Hot Dog, if you believe that, I worry you havent been payin attention.
Back on the drums, sacrificing his body, emptyin his life essence out on this stage, this time with a Garth Brooks headset mic to make sure his voice is the loudest one singin Louie Louie. I was worried this would be where Joe blew up his big, tanned, veiny heart right there on the stage for the public, but he thoughtfully added a lil bumper at the end so I’d know that not only was he ok, he was still cool as hell.
Thank you Joe, thank you for what you did for them back then. I bet they never fully appreciated it, I hope I get to ask you about it one day. Well I did try to ask him, i got up real early and tried callin into his AM radio show he does for 4 hours every morning, but they told me Joe doesnt want to talk about old halloweens, this show is more for talking about the stuff fox news said to be mad about. I’ll keep tryin tho, I know the ol Joes still in there somewhere.
In the name of jesus christ amen.
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Categories
Upsetting Day: Blah Girls
Can you predict puppet? Can anyone? We’re about to goddamn find out.
Today we’re playing a deduction game of puppet climax. Pulled from thousands upon thousands of comic books, I am going to show you the opening to puppet stories. Many puppet stories. More puppet stories than you thought there could be. Your job will be to guess the ending. It’s the perfect way to measure whether you can see puppets coming or whether you’re already dead. Let’s go over the rules.
You must choose Ending A, Ending B, or Ending C for each question.
Ending A is “Gasp, the puppet is actually the puppet master.” A lot of them will be this one.
Ending B is “Aiiieee, that puppet is a small human.” It’s another very safe choice.
Ending C is a uniquely insane thing. Could it be the kind of zany absurdism that makes me such a delight, or the real answer? You won’t be able to tell.
We’ll start with a nice easy one. Puppet Story 1 comes from an issue of This Magazine is Haunted from 1954.
So we have ventriloquist Harry Trent and his dummy Zingo. They do a fun bit where the puppet threatens to kill Harry after each punchline. Jeff Dunham does a modern variation of this gag where after a joke, his puppet will turn to the crowd and list the five worst races. That’s not a clue, only a fun puppet fact. It’s time to make a decision. How does this story end?
Ending A: Gasp, the puppet is actually the puppet master.
Ending B: Aiiieee, that puppet is a small human.
Ending C: By Puppet Law, puppets can never lie about murder. That’s a murder puppet.
With your answer locked in, let’s see if you got it!
The answer was C! It was a murder puppet! See, all this time, Zingo was upset about the jokes made at his expense, so he got revenge by breaking his thumb off in Harry’s neck. “He definitely wasn’t killed by this obvious murder puppet, don’t even bother asking it questions,” say the two men who are definitely the shittiest detectives and best dressers on the force.
Now you’ve seen how the game works. It’s great, right? A coherent and relatable activity made by a sane man! A sane man! Here’s Puppet Story 2, a Vigilante comic from 1943. Guess! The! Puppet Ending!
A puppet is holding a cowboy hostage with his own revolver because comic books are awesome. Or are they? How did they end this?
Ending A: Gasp, the puppet is actually the puppet master.
Ending B: Aiiieee, that puppet is a small human.
Ending C: All of the above, plus he gets a spanking in front of a little boy dressed as a sailor. Oh man, I hope you pick this one. I hope you know I’d never type something like that from my own imagination. If I was writing a fake joke one, I’d say something more like “Spank the little naughty man in front of the sailor boy.” Oh no. Remind me to fix this before publishing, Brockway.
Oh thank Christ, it was C. So there’s a lot of madness leading to this sexual violation, but the main twist is that The Dummy (that’s his name), is not actually a dummy, but a tiny man on a pervert’s lap. He was the perfect comic book villain for 1943 because the real world already had Nazis, and the only thing worse than a Nazi is a lying ventriloquist.
I’m sure you’re doing great, but I’m going to give you another easy one. Puppet Story 3 comes from a 1952 issue of Adventures into Weird Worlds.
Laura is in love with Ventro, who is a ventriloquist, but it’s not going to work out because Ventro keeps all of his sex drive in his puppet, Kevin. Maybe I just gave you a clue? That the normal human is called Ventro, and the demon gremlin is named Kevin? And only Kevin fucks? You’d better hope it was a clue, because it’s time to guess:
Ending A: Gasp, the puppet is actually the puppet master.
Ending B: Aiiieee, that puppet is a small human.
Ending C: Ventro parks outside Laura’s home and sends Kevin in to act as a surrogate for their lovemaking. They bear a child neither puppet nor man. Decades later, in the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe, the entry for Kevin’s Sperm spanned four pages and was mentioned 17 times in additional errata.
Of course the answer was A. Everyone saw this ending coming except for Kevin. Hooters regulars pick up signals better than this guy. The second Laura came into the ventriloquist dressing room, Kevin was so sure she was there to fuck the man’s puppet he shattered the real dummy against the floor and revealed himself. “We can be together now! Also, hi, until moments ago you thought I was your lover’s goblin doll! Where are you g– okay, bye, please don’t tell my boss or the world about this!”
This is a uniquely horny variation of Ending A. I promise none of the rest of these will be like that. The idea of a weird little freak seducing a ventriloquism fan with a phony human ventriloquist and then ripping off their puppet disguise is a tale never to be told again, and here’s Puppet Story 4 from Strange Fantasy that came out the same year.
See? This is without question some kind of murder puppet story. But I’ll give you some more details before it’s time to predict the ending.
Mignon is a “girl ventriloquist” which is a lot like a normal ventriloquist except the audience has a troubling parasocial relationship with you and your puppet. For instance, Georges Dufy has gone to see Mignon, Girl Ventriloquist, ten times, and he’s thinking what everyone is saying: “You’d be a lot prettier if you had fewer gross puppets. Boo! Sexier puppet, booo!!!” Okay, time to guess.
Ending A: Gasp, the puppet is actually the puppet master.
Ending B: Aiiieee, that puppet is a small human.
Ending C: This is going to sound crazy, but I think that’s just a standard murder dummy. This ends with Georges running from puppet death, only far too slowly.
This can’t be right. It’s another Ending A, but the specific kind of Ending A where a goblin poses as a puppet to honeypot ventriloquism fans. This could be different from Ventro’s story, though. You never know what a man as horny as Georges is going to do. Maybe he’ll look past the betrayal and lunging for a night of casual sex on the wooden debris of his celebrity crush?
One skill men don’t develop is the ability to let their suitors down gently. We need to get on with the quiz, but I’m sure you’re curious to see how they wrap this up.
She jumps out a window for him, falls on his head, and they both die. “Ha, that’s pretty fucked up,” notes one great cop. So I guess this means you were correct no matter which ending you picked. That’s how good I am at making puppet quizzes. Puppet Story 5 comes from a 1962 issue of Archie’s Madhouse.
A reporter is doing a story on a ventriloquist act. One with an unusual twist. With only this information, can you predict the ending?
Ending A: Gasp, the puppet is actually the puppet master.
Ending B: Aiiieee, that puppet is a small human.
Ending C: I’m no dummy. This is a third puppet honeypot sex trap. “I’m no dummy either,” a sudden creature on my lap says. “We shall be together forever,” it hisses, ripping open its little bra.
The story ends after three pages with a no-frills, classic Ending A. Only it’s delivered as a punchline, not a horror reveal. “Am I terror or comedy? Is there any difference?” asks the puppet, his ventriloquist now a lifeless heap. “Oh, that’s perfect. I’m going to use that,” says Jared Leto on the set of 2016’s Suicide Squad.
Let’s keep things moving. Puppet Story 6 is from a 1954 issue of Baffling Mysteries. It’s called “THEY STRANGLE BY NIGHT,” and I’m not making up any of these names. This is just how nerds talked in the 1950s.
. 
In this story, a wizard called upon demons of hatred to bring his puppets to life. Not for any real purpose. All he wanted was spirits, preferably evil, to “make his dolls move” with no explanation. Either life insurance in ancient Bavaria paid double when you got torn apart by puppets or this was a sex thing. Now guess.
Ending A: Gasp, the puppet is actually the puppet master.
Ending B: Aiiieee, that puppet is a small human.
Ending C: This guy is so fucked. This whole town is so fucked. Or maybe he leads the puppets on fun fish-out-of-water adventu– no, I’m being crazy. This guy is fucked.
The answer was C– everyone was so fucked. He unleashes immortal strangle puppets, they come to life whenever the moon is full to hunt necks, the end. Not every puppet story has to mean something, or have a surprise. Sometimes the most Baffling Mystery of all is how a dumbshit such as this could hold down a writing job. Puppet Story 7 comes from a 1951 issue of Crime Clinic. It features this cover, a masterpiece in every possible sense:
It’s beautiful– a special moment from a show no one will ever forget. I want you to please look at it for at least thirty minutes, not for clues, but to honor the 7,000 lives we lose each day to exactly this.
The cover wasn’t a metaphor or something. This is a story about a puppet with a gun shooting into the audience. How does it end?
Ending A: Gasp, the puppet is actually the puppet master.
Ending B: Aiiieee, that puppet is a small human.
Ending C: I’m having a really nice time, but I’m concerned this is too many puppet comics. The fact that they exist at all is one thing, but for one man to somehow find them all? What drives such a quest? What foul god would forgive you for it? In many ways, how dare you.
The answer was B, but let me explain. See, during the ventriloquism explosion of the early ’50s, vaudeville acts were falling out of fashion. So this performer disguised himself as a dummy, infiltrated a local ventriloquist’s lap, and executed a terror attack in a scheme to bring back little person comedy acts, HA-HA! Once you know to look for it, you’ll see this is the motivator driving most puppet shows. Let’s do a bonus quiz. What ironic fate awaited this little guy?
A: Some random doctor knocked him out with the doll he was impersonating.
B: In the end, vengeance would belong… to the dummy.
C: He went and fucked himself, HA-HA!
You were right!
Great job, moving on, Puppet Story 8 comes to us from a 1952 issue of House of Mystery.
The Great Lang and “Blockhead” was a very, very strange ventriloquist act where instead of jokes, they would solve murders suggested by the crowd. I’d say this would be a bad idea for a show even if you hadn’t killed a guy and owned a loose-lipped puppet who knew about it, which is the situation here.
Sure enough, someone in the audience asks The Great Lang to solve the murder he himself committed– The Mysterious Case of The Last Guy To Own That Puppet. Now any competent ventriloquist would do exactly what he did– have the dummy accuse him of the crime, cover its mouth, then shriek as if the puppet bit him. But Lang was not performing. The puppet really was accusing him of murder, and it really did bite him. All puppets bite. Every puppet bites.
Lang did, again, what any ventriloquist would do– he gave the audience a full confession and tried to beat his own puppet to death. He was stopped only by the bravery of one head butt to the dick, the only attack comic artists knew how to draw in 1952. You’re probably saying, “Oh, that’s the whole story. I don’t need to guess the ending.” The fuck you don’t. That wasn’t the ending at all.
Ending A: Gasp, the puppet is actually the puppet master.
Ending B: Aiiieee, that puppet is a small human.
Ending C: Hold on, are you a cop? You son of a bitch, are you police!? Was all of this an elaborate puppet sting operation!?
You have the keen instincts of a cocaine distributor. Yes, it was C. It makes me so happy to explain that the police hired a civilian circus performer to pose as a man’s puppet in a dangerous undercover mission to trick him into confessing to murder. Now imagine that last sentence much dumber, and smeared across 500 words and seven word bubbles, and you’ll understand the ending to “The Dummy of Death!” No time to think about it, Puppet Story 9!
The next exciting entry in this, the world’s first puppet ending guessing quiz, comes from the same comic book, House of Mystery, five years later.
“Puppets of DOOM!” is a story about a sinister puppet carver who killed you by making a puppet of you. And you know it the second you see him. If you went into this man’s home and saw his puppets, the first thing you would say is, “You have a lovely home, it’s pretty clear all these people are dead and these very puppets are responsible.” Here, I’ll show you what a normal conversation with him looked like:
“A puppet of me!? What an honor, pervert making a tiny clown grope!” Hey, I know you know this, but if someone asks to make a puppet in your likeness, it is like all puppet things– probably a murder thing, but always a sex thing. It’s time to make your guess!
Ending A: Gasp, the puppet is actually the puppet master.
Ending B: Aiiieee, that puppet is a small human.
Ending C: Something here isn’t right. You goddamn son of a bitch, are you also a cop!?
The answer is C. Because let me tell you something it took me 78,912 pages to understand: if you are reading a puppet story in House of Mystery, there’s always a twist and that twist is always an undercover puppet sting operation. Puppet Story 10 comes from a 1959 issue of Journey Into Mystery, and I promise there are no cops.
Oh, I must have screwed up. This is an alien invasion story, not a puppet story. Sorry about the mistake. Maybe it would be fun to guess the ending anyway?
Ending A: Gasp, the puppet is actually the puppet master.
Ending B: Aiiieee, that puppet is a small human.
Ending C: One thing I know about you is you never make mistakes. This space vapor bastard is going to invade a puppet.
Jesus, the answer was C? The aliens’ plan to dominate Earth was to send down one vapor monster and hope it didn’t mind control a ventriloquist dummy? And then it mind controlled a ventriloquist dummy? I don’t buy it. No non-cop would write that. Could this comic be an undercover sting to expose my puppet hypnotizing operation? Just to be safe, code red, wake the puppets up. All cells, wake the puppets up. Remind me to fix this before publishing, Brockway.
Puppet Story 11 comes from a 1953 issue of Spellbound.
“The Death of a Puppet!” is about the producer of a murder puppet show who has killed his poor Pepé puppet so many times he’s starting to worry it has feelings and they are hurt.
Today we see paranoid loners pouring their hearts out to artificial people any time we accidentally hit the “For You” tab on Twitter. But in 1953, this was an unusual kind of guy. Is he going to snap and try to get revenge for Pepé? Is he going to be right about puppets developing emotions from too much theater? That’s for you to guess!
Ending A: Gasp, the puppet is actually the puppet master.
Ending B: Aiiieee, that puppet is a small human.
Ending C: Wait, this had better not be some stupid shit like, “are not all of us puppets!?”
Aw, that’s too bad. It was C. The puppets are real, sort of. It turns out -bwaaaaaaaahhhmmmp- you were one of the puppets the whole time! With, you know, skeleton hands pulling your strings. Okay, okay, stop screaming in mortal terror. It’s time for Puppet Story 12! It comes from a 1960 issue of Strange Tales.
These men are about to shoot a ventriloquist, so you already know it’s A.
Ending A: Gasp, the puppet is actually the puppet master.
Ending B: Aiiieee, that puppet is a small human.
Ending C: You wouldn’t just give me the answer, that had to have been a trick. I think this is two undercover puppet operations going terribly wrong at the same time.
Don’t overthink it. 84% of all ventriloquist dummies are tiny monsters piloting a corpse.
Let’s do a normal one from something you’ve heard of. Puppet Story 13 is from a 1956 issue of Superman.
How will the Last Son of Krypton survive being mildly marveled by a magic trick!? Could this little doll dressed like him spell the end for the Man of Steel!? Only you, The Puppet Guesser, can know!
Ending A: Gasp, the puppet is actually the puppet master.
Ending B: Aiiieee, that puppet is a small human.
Ending C: It’s a 1956 Superman comic, so the doll didn’t have x-ray vision, except Superman tricked people into thinking it did so criminals would steal the doll for crime so he could use his super-ventriloquism to pointlessly make them question their sanity while he trapped them in a fence and then spent three pages “explaining” every detail of these petty, stupid, inconsequential things he did because there are 1500 traffic accidents and domestic assaults an hour in America, and Superman heard the screams from each one while he did all this.
I have some bad news. It looks like it was C. Alright, let’s move o–
I guess Superman had some more to say before we wrap it up. Thanks, Superman. Great work. Next up i–
Okay, Superman. Got it. An x-ray machine under the table, and a secret accomplice. We appreciate the thorough explanation. Thank you again. The nex–
Oh my god, shut the fuck up, Superman. You smug alien asshole, are you still explaining a magic trick that took place in a comic book? Is that what you’re doing? You know when Zeus comes to Earth to get a deer pregnant? That’s a more likable use of godlike power than this, Superman. We are moving on to Puppet Story 14. It comes from a 1956 issue of Strange Tales.
In “the MAN WHO TALKED!”, a comatose man is performing both sides of a ventriloquist routine from his hospital bed, and a nurse holding enough syringes to stop his heart thought the same thing any of us would: “Hell yes, free puppetless puppet show.” How does his story end?
Ending A: Gasp, the puppet is actually the puppet master.
Ending B: Aiiieee, that puppet is a small human.
Ending C: This isn’t enough to go on and you know it. So I’m just going to guess his dummy is far away on a Polynesian island, saying everything he is saying, and natives are worshiping it as a god.
What? Hold on, let me check my notes. Wow, it really is C. The islanders find the haunted dummy and start a religion based on ventriloquist routine punchlines. I hate this for a lot of reasons, but at least it’s not a Superman story. Puppet Story 15 comes to us from, oh damn it, a 1963 issue of Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen.
Verro the Super-Ventriloquist has created a Jimmy Olsen puppet to– you know what? Forget it. I’m already exhausted by the plot and it’s still the cover. I think you can guess the ending, though.
Ending A: It’s not this.
Ending B: There’s no way it’s this one.
Ending C: Superman is going to scream every last insane detail of some convoluted plot with at least five too many things, each of them dumb as fuck and solved with a tiny child’s idea of science.
You were absolutely right. C. I guess Verro was not an evil Superman comedian, but a space gorilla, and stopping his Jimmy Olsen dummy saved the entire planet. For more information on the doll and how it worked, please see the unhinged shouting coming from Superman’s mouth above.
Puppet Story 16 comes from a 1951 issue of Tales from the Crypt.
Morty is the most realistic puppet anyone has ever seen. It’s a dummy so lifelike, so fleshy, you’d swear it was a real boy!
Ending A: Gasp, the puppet is actually the puppet master.
Ending B: Aiiieee, that puppet is a small human.
Ending C: Hmm… it wouldn’t be a twist if the lifelike puppet turned out to be a live boy. I don’t know… maybe the ventriloquist has a human head for a hand? Ha. Listen to me. I’ve finally lost it.
If you guessed C, you’re a lunatic. A lunatic with a puppet point, that is!
Puppet Story 17 comes from a 1961 issue of Tales of Suspense. Since it was the first time a ventriloquist dummy appeared in a comic, it was simply called…
“The Dummy” was about a dummy, and from that alone you know the twist.
Ending A: Gasp, the puppet is actually the puppet master.
Ending B: Aiiieee, that puppet is a small human.
Ending C: It’s definitely an A or a B. What else would it be? Like… aliens who look like dummies? Fucking why? It’d be nonsense.
Of course it was a B. Even the characters in the comic saw the reveal coming. Someone from the audience did what every brave person at a ventriloquism show does– they charged the stage and accused the puppet of being a man, undressing him to prove it.
Wait, what’s this? Wooden limbs? B-but how? We were so certain.
Oh. It was two Uranusians, a big one and a small one, who traveled to Earth to become ventriloquists. That’s it? What the shit was the point of that? Sorry, I thought I was reading Tales of Suspense, not Tree Dork Team-Up.
Puppet Story 18 comes from a 1974 issue of The Unexpected!
If a ventriloquist drags a human skeleton onto the stage and makes it say, “This is the man who killed me,” it’s not a joke. Believe them. But that’s not what this comic is about. This is, believe it or not, another story about a ventriloquist act where they solve murders instead of doing comedy.
Mitch Randall is a secret murderer with a girlfriend who hates skeleton puppets. So there are a lot of reasons it was weird to take her to see the skeleton puppet who solved murders. “That guy right there is the killer. Mitch is his name,” it immediately said. “The puppet knows you’re a murderer, Mitch,” his girlfriend noticed.
Great save, Mitch. Now, how does this story end?
Ending A: Gasp, the puppet is actually the puppet master.
Ending B: Aiiieee, that puppet is a small human.
Ending C: We are overdue for another undercover puppet sting.
It was A! Despite being a skeleton, it was somehow a little boy with all his organs controlling a puppet wearing his dead father’s head. Not as a mask, though. His dead father’s head was balanced gently on top of the skull of a second boy-sized skeleton. Luckily, Mitch drove neck-first into a tree before having to consider all that.
Puppet Story 19 comes from a 1952 issue of Tomb of Terror. Pay close attention, you really need this point.
Ventriloquist Peter Mordann has a strangling problem. Man, woman, puppet– if you have a neck, he’s going to wring it. Please trust me that it’s extremely unusual to see this many strangulations across only four pages of comic book:
Peter strangles so much there is no time for any other character development. You know as much as you’ll ever know about him. So how does his story end?
Ending A: Gasp, the puppet is actually the puppet master.
Ending B: Aiiieee, that puppet is a small human.
Ending C: The tables turn on this choker when he… chokes on stage! Ha! A fitting fate for a strangler who lives by the choke!
You’re right, it’s C! Or it would have been if the story ended here. Instead, Peter gets into an argument with his puppet backstage and decides to kill himself. And, of course, our lifelong strangler finishes himself off with one final…
… stab to the heart with some knife he found. Don’t blame yourself for getting this wrong. No one saw this coming. Let’s do a fun one. You will fall in love with…
Puppet Story 20 is “The VAMPIRE PUPPET” from a 1952 issue of Witchcraft. He’s our precious, adorable boy. He’s two words blurted out by a horror writer a month behind deadline. He’s how a Mormon driver screams “motherfucker.” He is all this and more, and you must guess his fate, puppet quizzler!
Ending A: Gasp, the puppet is actually the puppet master.
Ending B: Aiiieee, that puppet is a small human.
Ending C: Ha, this little bat fella has no fucking chance against an old lady with a mallet.
It was C. The VAMPIRE PUPPET was not designed for battle. What confused fiend drank the blood of a puppet to begin with? Can I hear myself? Should we stop this? We should stop. We need to stop this.
Puppet Story 21 comes from a 1948 issue of Adventures into the Unknown.
Quick! How does “KILL, PUPPETS, KILL!” end?
Ending A: Gasp, the puppet is actually the puppet master.
Ending B: Aiiieee, that puppet is a small human.
Ending C: BURN, PUPPETS… BURN!
As a matter of fact, it was C. Ralph’s quick thinking led him to the library where he looked up ghosts and got the idea to shoot the puppets with a flamethrower. Oh, Ralph! What a victory against puppets! What a great one to end on!
Puppet Story 22 comes from a 1953 issue of Adventures into the Unknown.
There is something suspicious about the dummy Oswald Foop.
Sometimes Oswald Foop moves by himself, which is unusual for a puppet. He also bites any flesh that gets near his mouth, which is not.
On stage, Oswald Foop often goes off script to scream about the ancient wizard who put his soul in this accursed puppet body. Most people wouldn’t notice these red flags, especially not a ventriloquist’s girlfriend, and yet even she starts to suspect this evil talking puppet is the thing he claims to be.
She was right! Oswald Foop is coming for her! What happens next!?
Ending A: Gasp, the puppet is actually the puppet master.
Ending B: Aiiieee, that puppet is a small human.
Ending C: This worked last time, maybe it will again! BURN, PUPPETS… BURN!
Hell yes! It was C again!
We can’t stop now. We are on a puppet-burning roll! Puppet Story 23 comes from a 1952 issue of Worlds of Fear.
It’s about a dick puppet named The Devil Puppet who comes to life and throws things at his puppeteer. How does his story end?
Ending A: Burn that little prick.
Ending B: Burn, puppet!
Ending C: BURN!
Yes! It looks like The Devil Puppet’s puppeteer went a little nuts in the process, but it’s still a big win. This is the third puppet in a row to burn to ash in agony, begging for its life. The perfect way to end a puppet story ending quiz article.
Oh no, why are these words forming another paragraph? Puppet Story 24 comes from a 1954 issue of Adventures Into the Unknown.
Okay, so the puppets are making fun of this guy for murdering. It looks like they’re doing a “Tell-Tale Heart” only with puppets and puppet dick smashing. That should be enough for you to make an educated guess about the ending.
Ending A: Burn, puppets, burn!
Ending B: Four in a row!
Ending C: BURN, PUPPETS, BURN! FOUR IN A ROW!
You were way off. For on this day, it is the puppets who burn their enemies! Fortunately, the murderer’s non-wooden body burns slowly enough for him to decide on the perfect last word: “YEEAAHH!”
I feel like this puppet article is really murder-heavy. Before we go, let’s end on a cute one. Puppet Story 25 comes from a 1975 issue of Reggie and Me.
I guess this one doesn’t work for a puppet ending guessing quiz because the first line was already the ending. Let me try again. Puppet Story 26 comes from a 1977 issue of Reggie’s Wise Guy Jokes.
So the setup is Archie and Jughead are at a costume party. Fun! How does this end?
Ending A: Gasp, the puppet is actually the puppet master.
Ending B: Aiiieee, that puppet is a small human.
Ending C: Probably the same goddamn joke about Archie being the dummy.
Damn it, I knew it was going to be C. Which also makes it an A. And I guess it was always technically a B. Forget it, we’re not ending on that one! Puppet Story 27 comes from a 1979 issue of Everything’s Archie.
No, what is happening? Reggie made an Archie Doll? And carried it around where people could see him!? And the first person who does says, “Hey, terrific!” rather than, “Hey, pervert!” And his response is the same dummy joke he’s been making for four years!? No, I refuse this. I do not accept it. P-puppppet Stooory 28 comes f-from a 1978 isssue of Reggie’s Wiiiiiiiiiiiisseeee Guuuuuuuuu
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