Category: UPSETTING DAY
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Upsetting Day: Before You Leap
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Upsetting Day: Written in the Stars
We love stories about cults, but for every successful, charismatic cult leader who can’t seem to do any wrong in the eyes of his followers, there’s some guy out there getting up every morning and doing the hard work of being a maniac for no reason. Matthew Payne is such a painfully lousy grifter that reading his terrible book felt like being held up at gunpoint by three toddlers in a trench coat.
I don’t usually give advice on creating cynical ploys to steal from people, but I think if you’re going to claim that you’re a prophet from God, you should have a splashy story. Something like “I was struck by lightning while holding a bible and a hamburger phone and now I can talk to God and also have a deep spiritual connection to the beef industry” or something. There’s none of that here. There’s just a series of books where a man claims to interview various celebrities from Heaven while just barely maintaining a wafer-thin veneer of believing his own bullshit. And the first celebrity he started with was famously uncontroversial pop star, Michael Jackson.
Seriously, this guy made a website for his prophetic ministries that says right on it: “My ministry objective is to sell my books for 99 cents on Kindle unless I am giving them away.” L. Ron Hubbard would come back to life just to shit his pants if someone put on the Scientology website that the goal of Scientology was to sell books and not cure people of sadness, ghosts, or whatever.
He also says that the Lord “put it in his heart” to request donations for his personal prophecies which he sells on his website. So, God is a capitalist, apparently. The Lord has called upon me to tell you to donate to 1900HOTDOG.com that we may fill our coffers with radical shit like a whole bunch of skateboards and whatever Sean and Brockway want, probably more skateboards I assume.
On top of personal prophecies, he also offers “trips to heaven,” which seem to take place over Zoom and cost one hundred dollars, BUT they are difficult to coordinate because Heaven is in a different time zone, so if you’re unable to connect to Heaven the prophet will graciously refund you fifty dollars! This is in no way a perpetual fifty dollars machine created by a con artist exclusively for the very stupid.
I’m uncomfortable with any process in which the final step is, “Go on a trip to Heaven,” but the fact it’s only $100 somehow makes it even shadier. If someone offered me a trip to Mexico for $100, I’d be suspicious. It seems like a trip to Heaven should cost more?
My final complaint about this author, before we get into how Michael Jackson feels about Heaven, is that he talks about religion very sexually. His Amazon author bio describes how he “receives great pleasure from interacting with people on Facebook” and calls himself a “passionate lover” of Jesus who hopes you will also come to know him “intimately.” It feels like he wrote it using a thesaurus for sex words only, but somehow in the only bad way.
Anyway, I know you’re dying to hear how Michael Jackson feels about Heaven. He’s hanging out with Whitney Houston, Princess Diana, and Steve Jobs, all of whom Matthew will be interviewing later. His only real concern in the afterlife is how the Amazon reviews for Matthew’s book will be.
As an author, I agree that being crucified and getting a bad Amazon review are essentially the same thing. Seriously though, Micheal Jackson’s number one concern from Heaven is shilling this book so hard you’d think he was auditioning for Heaven’s QVC.
The key to getting into Heaven is only ninety-nine cents on Amazon, you guys! Free if you subscribe to Kindle Unlimited. The bad news is Heaven, as described in this book, sounds like it sucks shit. I don’t want to be forced by God to return to Earth and shill eBooks for Matthew someday.
Also, Heaven has a mandatory weekly American Idol competition with a terrible scoring system that must have hundreds of thousands of entrants, and it’s all worship music. Everyone in Heaven has to listen to and score ALL of the songs in the competition. Jesus forces you to watch American Idol every week and then go to a big party for the winner. Here, I’ll let the maniac explain:
In this scenario, Heaven is less entertaining than a Burger King. Michael Jackson had the option to stay in Heaven and enjoy his American Idol victory or go to Burger King and tell Matthew about it –along with every tiny detail about the rules of it– and he picked Burger King. He’s friends with Elvis and Michael Hutchence in Heaven, but he picked Matthew, at Burger King, to immediately rush to with this news.
Michael Jackson talks about Matthew a lot in the book. He really seems to enjoy hyping Matthew up. Telling him how good his book is, which is a little arrogant since it’s a book largely about Michael Jackson, and how anyone who says the book is bad should be prayed for because they are probably going to hell. Don’t worry guys; I’m not going to hell for bashing this book; it’ll be for that thing I did last summer. (Told Sarah Palin to go on The Masked Singer).
Another dumb thing about Heaven is no one is horny. Zero horniness at all in Heaven. Automatically I’m out. Heaven is a place where you don’t like big butts, and you cannot lie. How do you have fun!?
Ok, this man sounds chronically horny. Like his boners haunt him. So I can understand the appeal of a lack of lust in Heaven to him. There’s also a section in this book about there being no judgment in Heaven, and it heavily implies people judge each other too much for things like infidelity, even if they and their wife have moved on. Feels very specific to a particular situation, but oh well it’s probably something from Michael Jacksons’ personal life he’s not ready to share publicly yet.
Other than weekly American Idol, Michael keeps busy in Heaven by doing motivational speaking. Yes, this implies there is a lack of motivation in Heaven, and men who think they know how to fix it. Ok, it’s just hitting me now; this may be Matthews’s version of Heaven, but he’s definitely describing my Hell. Me and Tony Robbins, both very unaroused, listening to six thousand worship songs a week.
Weirdly, Michael Jackson only seems to have knowledge that he admits Matthew also has. I think we’re supposed to be impressed that Michael knows so much about Matthew’s inner thoughts, but that’s like asking me to be impressed that a children’s party magician knew there was going to be a rabbit in his hat.
The eternal spirit of Michael Jackson does casually mention he was murdered, and later implies it was by the Illuminati because he says his one regret in life was getting involved with the Illuminati instead of getting closer to Jesus. I get that, though; the Illuminati throw way better parties.
I’m so offended by the idea that Michael Jackson would come down from Heaven to tell a story about meeting a guy at a Burger King to talk about the judging rules for The Dead Got Talent, meanwhile skipping over the part where he was murdered by the Illuminati. The man was an entertainer. He would know how to write a more compelling narrative than this! Even Matthew seems to know that people were probably hoping for some juicer Michael Jackson gossip than they got, because this is how he ended the book:
He wasn’t too busy to visit Burger King, but he was too busy to explain how the Illuminati murdered him? Burger King! If I were going to come back from Heaven to a burger restaurant it would be, at minimum, a Five Guys. He really needs to improve his burger restaurant of choice if he’s going to make me believe the Illuminati murdered Michael Jackson.
After reassuring you that he knows you probably didn’t like the book, Matthew finishes up by straight-up threatening you with the wrath of God if you make fun of it. He dares you to “negatively promote” this book on the penalty of going to hell. Apparently, God is super invested in Amazon reviews.
As someone raised in the church, I know that “I’ll pray for you” is the Christian “Fuck off.” It says, “You have done something that needs praying for. You might not be aware of it yet, but luckily I am, so I’ll ask God to forgive you, but you know he probably won’t.” It’s a savage way to end a book that I’m confident was dictated from a weird Simon Cowell-produced Hell.
In 1987, the producers of the award-winning Superbowl Shuffle created a SPECIAL REM HOME VIDEO PRESENTATION of The Grabowski Shuffle™ starring Chicago Bears coach, Mike Ditka. Here’s the box cover:
Just in case you’re not familiar, the “Superbowl Shuffle” was a charity rap song performed by the actual ’85 Chicago Bears players. So now, with all the knowledge and backstory you could be expected to have, stop and ask yourself: What is it? What the fuck is this? It’s called The Grabowski Shuffle™ and that’s the box, so what is it?
Let’s look at the back of the box:
“It’s a fun look at some real people who have dreams and aren’t afraid to work hard toward those dreams. A fast-moving video treat that’s honest, inspirational and fun… family entertainment at its best!” It features “#1 Grabowski” Mike Ditka, rapper and zapper, who has a winning team that plays at life, not football. So now, after hearing all that, you only have to answer one question: what is this?
The video opens on a closeup of Mike Ditka explaining how he originally thought everyone wanted to be the fair-haired kid on the block, but they aren’t. They’re the guys who had to work a little bit harder, and he likes that. That’s why he called them “The Grabowskis” and the good guys “The Smiths.” I promise I’m not leaving any information out. You’ve now seen the marketing, you know the context, and you’ve had the premise explained to you by the principle star, who is a professional communicator. Really think. What the goddamn fuck is The Grabowski Shuffle™?
Ditka adds a caveat to his explanation. He says, and I carefully quote, “maybe I wanted us to be the bad guy a little bit, but in real meaning, ‘Grabowski’ doesn’t mean ‘bad guy.’ It means hard worker, good attitude. A person that which gets knocked down and get back, daah… to me, it’s the American Dream. It’s what it’s all about. It’s the guy who struggles a little bit but overcomes and makes things happen.” I already know this didn’t help you. It probably didn’t even help eliminate any of your guesses. You still think this is a rapping West Side Story set in Chicago or a comedy about an A/A group that saves a church. I could strap a bomb on a baby set to go off if you correctly explained what The Grabowski Shuffle™ was and that baby would grow old and die of natural causes while you were still guessing.
The camera finally cuts away from Mike Ditka’s pointless, meandering philosophies on the can-do attitude of whoever or whatever Grabowskis might be. But it cuts right back to him, now a little bit further away. He gives a speech on how he preaches attitude, especially to his toughknocking, rough-manning, hard-USAing Chicago Bears. They’re not like the other NFL teams, you see. Ditka accuses those other guys of having “a lot of glamor.” With their “pretty white shoes, uniforms.” With utter contempt he says of those other professional football players, “they throw the ball around.” But on the other hand, “when you look at the team that gets down in there,” like his Chicago Bears, “hey: they’re Grabowskis.” I’m worried you not only still don’t know what this is, you might know less about football.
So maybe, possibly, Mike is trying to say that Grabowskis are people who have to work hard because they’re not very talented, and while Mike is on the subject: fuck the talented. He’s basically saying nothing, but cranky about it. If you polled 1000 men and asked the one with the least education and the most domestic abuse convictions to describe a “real American,” it would match Mike Ditka’s explanation of a Grabowski verbatim. I’ve shared every detail of the video so far, and I’m pretty confident you still don’t know what The Grabowski Shuffle™ is.
We cut away again and instead of a slightly more distant Ditka, it’s an exterior shot of the Riviera Theater in Chicago holding talent auditions for The Grabowski Shuffle™. Look at this crowd and see if it helps you guess what the fuck they’re trying out for:
A long line of Grabowski hopefuls file in, definitely less prepared than anyone has been for anything. Some of them read rap lyrics or practice a dance routine while others finish their paperwork. It’s enough context to start to understand what’s happening, but every new discovery leads to five new questions. You might be fairly confident the coach of the Chicago Bears is holding an open call for a high budget rap musical starring himself and an all-amateur cast of not football players based on Grabowskis, a term he personally invented for a type of person he can’t clearly explain. But how? Why? For whom? And to what end? You fool, you have no idea what The Grabowski Shuffle™ is yet.
Each person steps up to a mark and introduces themselves, and part of the audition process for this, whatever this is, is fully committing to the Grabowski way of life. So everybody adds Grabowski to their name. The world hasn’t been told yet what this is, but to be a part of it, you must take its name. “Grabowski,” says everyone. “Grabowski,” the rest agree.
“Kurt Shaeffer Grabowski,” declares a man whose whole personality is an unlit cigar. “I am the Grabowski killer,” confesses a stranger in a hat. The director breaks the Grabowskis into smaller groups of Grabowskis and tells each Grabowski he wants to see them dance and rap. He tells the Grabowskis there will also be a surprise element “just to see how quick ya are.” So incorporate that into your understanding of what this is– it will involve dancing, rapping, “zapping,” Coach Mike Ditka of the Chicago Bears, at least some improv, no football, and all the performers will have legally changed their name Grabowski.
Without yet knowing what it means, the Grabowskis dance for their chance at Grabowski. This could be the role of a lifetime. It could be an embarrassing way to waste a sick day. But whatever it is, the director was happy. He saw this crowd of sweating limbs having a squirting group seizure. It looks like nothing other than a Trump rally mocking a gay wedding reception, and the director seemed to honestly mean it when he said it was better than he hoped for.
Oh, remember that surprise he mentioned? It turned out to be them standing alone in a spotlight while they get asked inappropriate personal questions. And of course, as is Grabowski tradition, “anyone caught BS’ing will be eliminated.”
“What’s the worst thing that ever happened to you in your life, Larry?” a faceless shadow asks Truck-Driving, Moving Man, Larry. A long uncomfortable silence, replies Larry.
For reference, this is Larry’s resting face:
Larry is 80% smile, and he just got done doing a silly dance for a chance to be in… a Mike Ditka music video project? A bar mitzvah for the Grabowski family? A corporate training video for a grabowski distribution company? Well whatever it was for, he was having the best fucking day and then a faceless interrogator asked him, a black man in 1987 America, what the worst thing that ever happened to him was. I know my answer: watching the joy fade from Larry’s eyes.
His answer has been cut from the tape, because I bet it wasn’t pleasant, but whatever it was, he’s in. Welcome to the Grabowskis, Larry Grabowski. And we’re, you know, sorry that happened to you and we made you bring it up for a chance to be in a … foot powder commercial, maybe?
Next up is cranky former cop, August Deuser-Grabowski. It’s plain to see the worst thing that ever happened to him was every moment of every day, so the Grabowski Shadow Council asks him, “You ever killed anybody?”
“No,” he says, but in a way that implies he’s ready to if there are any followup questions. Mr. Deuser-Grabowski, you’re in. Trade in your police badge for a Grabowski… medal? Lobster bib? The point is, all this is extremely Grabowski, I think.
Body-building clerk, Jason Solid Grabowski, comes out and nervously mutters words in no particular order. More than anyone he gets what is at the heart of this very titled Grabowski project: the babbling un-language of a madness once thought dead. Jason Solid Grabowski, you’re in. Welcome to your new… life? Short-term unpaid freelance gig?
Up next is waitress and Grabowski Gal, Valerie Meyer. She is questioned, “What makes you think you qualify to be a Grabowski?”
There is no way she could know how to answer this. How could anyone? It’s not a real word and its meaning skitters from understanding like a grabowski Grabowski. She has been thrown from her first rap audition into a groveling contest for a voice that calls itself Grabowski. Despite this, she starts speaking immediately. “I’ve never gotten knocked down far enough that I can’t pick myself up or have someone help me.” She realizes it wasn’t anything, thinks a bit about changing it, then decides no: a Grabowski doesn’t do takebacksies. She’s in. Maybe she’s perfect. Maybe there was no wrong answer. Either way, take off your shirt and replace it with this one, that of your new true name, Valerie Grabowski.
The Grabowskis also drafted a sewer construction laborer named George Arauco, whose job and name stopped being that the moment he was touched by Grabowski’s gaze. Next, Number One Grabowski, Mike Ditka, and Grabowskis Number Two through Six hold a press conference for local and national media. Not a single one of the Grabowskis is comfortable in this role of having to explain what The Grabowski Shuffle™ is, because again, how could they?
If this was filmed ten years later, you’d swear it was a Mike Ditka prank show where he makes unsuspecting nerds think they’re a hip hop crew. But Mike Ditka is deadly serious. He really thinks this will be the springboard to superstardom for these Grabowskis, a word which obviously everyone will one day be saying. He is certain, with all his generous heart, that he’s giving the chance of a lifetime to the five luckiest people in Chicago. “This is their way to get on MTV. This is their way to, uh, hit the jackpot,” he says.
A reporter asks the group if any of them have any professional singing and dancing experience. Jason Solid Grabowski decides to field the question.
“No, HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA unfortunately,” he offers. In a room of awkward, terrified rookie performers with no media training being thrust into a high stress situation on live TV, Jason is the nervous one. It’s very Grabowski, or potentially not Grabowski at all.
A reporter, with the kind of seriousness you would use when addressing a funeral director about your grandfather’s remains, asks the director to “describe Mike Ditka’s star quality.”
The director says, and I quote, “What we’ve seen so far is he’s one heck of a good rapper. And he’s got smokin’ feet.” On paper, this exchange should be withering sarcasm. Mike Ditka should be furious and embarrassed, but I have no reason to believe they weren’t sincere. These were two adult men having an honest discussion about Mike Ditka and how he’s a real solid rap-and-dance man.
They wrap up the press conference, and I feel it’s worth mentioning that it was held only to tell the world how coach Mike Ditka has completed his quest to find the five Grabowskis, and you wouldn’t know them. Or what they’re doing. Okay, it’s time to head to the recording studio!
The five untrained Grabowski singers crowd into a studio for the first time and an engineer hands them headphones. He jokes(?), “They’re no longer headphones. They’re Grabowski phones.” A day ago these people were living normal lives. They were, in fact, chosen for having the most normal of normal lives, and now they have one name not only for themselves but for all things they touch, and their only job is being and promoting that name. If this was a horror movie about a memetic alien virus called Grabowski, you wouldn’t have to change a thing.
Speaking of Grabowski touching, the Grabowskis are pretty close in these intimate surroundings. And the only Grabowski Gal, Valerie Grabowski, has to deal with a lot of playful touching from the other Grabowskis. She pinballs between the men to avoid their hands while expertly hiding her disgust. The Grabowskis were selected for their lack of experience, but as an ordinary woman, life had already prepared Valerie for this aspect of the creative process.
I should confess I only made that gif because I thought it was funny how Jason Solid Grabowski involuntarily pumped his dick while he sang, and I didn’t notice Valerie Grabowski’s silent screams until at least the 50th loop. We should apologize to women every day for 1987. But you can’t unhonk a titty, so back to the Grabowski music. It’s not going well. They are uncomfortable, out of sync, and nothing can be done about the lyrics.
♪ We like to polka!
We like to shuffle!
We may wrinkle,
but we don’t ruffle!
We like to work!
We love to play!
We do ’em both
’bout the same way! ♪
It’s a humiliating disaster and a waste of time, but their Grabowski spirit won’t let them give up. “It’s a dream come true right here,” says one of them over footage of the frustrated group flubbing take #281 of “♪ we may wrinkle, but we don’t ruffle! ♪”
With more footage of Ditka’s rehearsal, it’s finally becoming clear what this is. Mike Ditka said earlier how the American Dream was grinding it out in the shit while the pretty boy hotshots are running passing plays, but that’s not Mike Ditka’s American Dream. Mike Ditka’s American Dream is not leaving money on the table. This is a man who put his name on boner pills, antifreeze, and Vienna sausages, and when he saw “The Superbowl Shuffle” become a huge hit and all that money go to charity, his keen entrepreneurial brain gave him an idea: the same thing, but keep the money.
But if he did a sequel to the “Superbowl Shuffle,” that would mean splitting the profits with owners and players and agents. So what if instead of football, nothing? Like a shuffle for people who aren’t something. I mean, the public loved it when a once-in-a-generation dominant NFL team of all-pro hall-of-famers celebrated with an amateur rap song. How much do you really lose if you take away everything except literally the last three words?
So okay, let’s see if you were right.
The Grabowski Shuffle™ is Mike Ditka’s attempt to recreate “The Superbowl Shuffle” for profit by taking out the football part, replacing it with nothing, and then giving that nothing a name. Doing so did not give meaning to that nothing. This is the catastrophically stupid idea of “how come sewer line workers don’t get their own superbowl shuffle?” being indulged past the point of reason.
To be fair, though: dance rehearsals are going great!
I can’t help myself and I love them. The Grabowskis are learning, becoming a team. They believe in this, whatever it is, and the choreography is too complicated to allow them time to molest Valerie. The non-union, possibly unpaid Grabowskis even sleep together in a tiny trailer during the shoot. Larry had to move his kid in!
They do an official photoshoot (pictured below) and hold another press conference to let the world’s media know how the Grabowskis, five people no one knows, learned how to sing and dance and they’re ready to film The Grabowski Shuffle™ which won’t make sense to you yet, or ever. And it’s all been building up to this, the official music video.
Mike Ditka walks out onto an empty football field to… recruit a rap crew from the crowd? He hip hops, “I’m looking for a special team, where workin’ hard is more than a dream.” So all this video we’ve been watching a football coach throw together a ragtag musical group to tell the story of the same football coach throwing together a ragtag musical group. It’s like watching the last 7 minutes of a Hulk Hogan movie and trying to make sense of it. You get he’s a cyborg muscle nanny, but you’re not sure why the dress alone convinced the beauty pageant judges he was a contestant.
Let’s talk about what the Grabowskis are doing. Former cop, August Deuser Grabowski, walks up to a man and starts beating the shit out of him. Hey, wait. That’s the cigar guy from earlier. I guess he got cast as a Smith? In the intro Mike Ditka said the good guys were The Smiths but they were never mentioned again. And George and Larry are cheering him on? Jason has grabbed a stranger’s child and is holding him above his head? And he just lets the boy drop after Mike Ditka recruits him for this… boy band? Halftime skit? This has missed zany by at least five concussions. There is nothing else made of such concentrated insanity. Through sheer force of untalent, Mike Ditka has rapped a hole into our reality.
So Mike Ditka has selected five people from the crowd. The two white men committing assaults and three people I assume he described to the casting director as “one of each of the others.” The five of them break into a well-rehearsed but not quite ready dance routine and it cuts to the next stage of their Grabowski journey– dinner theater. I don’t want to hyperbolize, so I’ll put it like this: Mike Ditka set out to make art and accidentally committed an act of terror. Fuck you if these aren’t the forbidden summoning movements of a chaos god.
Number One Grabowski, Mike Ditka, who added his name to something that already had more than enough name, comes out to do another rap. He has the charm and showmanship of a wet cough into your open mouth.
August Deuser Grabowski takes center stage and gives off the exact vibe you’d expect from a grumpy cop in a red baseball cap that says GRABOWSKI POWER– tolerant and inclusive fun!
The Grabowski Shuffle™ isn’t quite a knockoff of “The Superbowl Shuffle” so much as it’s the exact song with words not about sports legends, but the personality traits of five below average karaoke singers without interesting hobbies or jobs. It’s the absence of an idea. It’s the musical equivalent of a pouty bus driver’s complaint every time he hears it’s Secretary’s Day.
Mike Ditka invites everyone in the restaurant to join the Grabowskis on the tiny dinner theater stage, including the cigar guy from earlier again, and they can’t believe the honor. They all line dance until it transitions to the final, ultimate form of the Grabowskis– total Grabowski domination. They are performing their one song, a half-remembered Superbowl Shuffle about themselves, to a massive stadium. There is never a mention of The Smiths or what the conflict was with them, and it ends. What’s next for the Grabowskis and their ill-conceived, roughly manufactured celebrity!?
I couldn’t find a second entertainment project from any of the Grabowskis. George, Larry, and Valerie changed their names back from Grabowski, and like The Grabowski Shuffle™ itself, quietly left no trace of themselves. August, on the other hand, rode that Grabowski fame to a successful political career.
Two years ago August Deuser Grabowski campaigned on pro-guns and anti-abortion, but failed to secure enough votes to win a state senator write-in campaign. Which surprises me, because according to Internet analytics, I was the 142nd person to watch his campaign video. He even proudly commemorates his time at the top of the world. See it up there? Right after PRO-LIFE and ABOUT? A link that only says “GRABOWSKI.” I’m going to click it.
Aww, it’s only a newspaper article he clipped and nothing else. I was really hoping for some kind of retrospec… oh my God, wait. Do you know what this means!? Some of those reporters at those Grabowski press conferences were real! Some of them wrote articles! Oh fuck yeah, Chicago Reader, 1987:
I was right! They didn’t pay these poor people! Cigar guy confirmed it! The director confirmed it! They paid them in exposure, which here, 35 years later we can measure! All that work was worth a single, confusing splash of whimsy on an old gun nut’s political campaign website, and nothing else. Truly amazing. And when the reporter asked the director of The Grabowski Shuffle™ how it was going to be different from the other failed “Superbowl Shuffle” knockoff Mike Ditka already made, he explained that one was missing a strong concept. Which means he fucking thinks The Grabowski Shuffle™ had a strong concept! It’s perfect. A truly perfect cursed artifact made by truly perfect maniacs and the perfect way to end this arti— wait, hold on, I forgot to look up Body-Building Clerk, Jason Solid Grabowski. I wonder what he’s up to today…
Okay, that’s the perfect ending. Grabowski as fuck.
“RICKY GOES TO CHURCH!” said the front of the VHS box. “RICKY GOES TO CHURCH!” said the back of the VHS box. “Sure,” I said.
When you come up with a title as good as RICKY GOES TO CHURCH! you don’t need a tagline or a description. And sure, it’s about a puppet named Ricky that goes to church, but I’m making it sound too complicated. Ricky is a generic wooden dummy wearing a baseball football sweater that says “ALL AMERICAN SPORTS.” It’s what an AI would generate if you forced it to look at the same tax attorney obituary 1000 times, but still less than that. RICKY GOES TO CHURCH! is the Christian knockoff of your first impression of the VHS box, only whiter.
If you’ve never been to white Christian church, it involves a lot of hymns, which are dull songs read aloud by the bored and uninterested. It’s very much worse than anything, and probably why the box for this only mentions how a puppet is here. Because RICKY GOES TO CHURCH! opens with Geraldine Ragan and Pastor Doctor Larry Davis moaning a sad poem about Jesus Christ’s love. It’s the kind of music that would make you run to the nearest phone and scream, “Fredrich, it’s Kevin! Your cousin, Kevin Nietzsche. You know that externalized expression of suffering you were looking for? Well, listen to THIS!”
You’re not going to like this, but after the song, Pastor Doctor Larry Davis says to the puppet, “Ricky, while we was gettin’ spiritual, I saw you was flirtin’ with Abigail.” He speaks in a sing-songy Kentucky church accent that is both gay-coded and extremely homophobic-coded.
The puppet does not deny this as Geraldine’s mouth clearly form his words, “I love that girl.” It turns out Abigail is a real person, but not one of the performers. She’s a little girl in the audience, and after half an uncomfortable minute, they finally get a camera on her.
This does not seem like part of a planned bit, and Ricky has no jokes prepared for this type of crowd work. Pastor Doctor Larry just went off script to cock block a puppet rather than praise God. It’s a bold way to open your direct-to-consumer VHS Christian puppet show. “She’s about your age,” Dr. Davis continues. It’s not for me to tell anyone how to worship, but this sexual harrasment of a little girl went on so long I opened Google and learned that when they filmed this (1997), Ricky would have been about 34 years old. “Oh, come on. He’s a doll. He’s only playing a character who is nine,” you might say. “Are you fucking hearing yourself,” I might reply.
I’m not exaggerating when I say they then talk about the weather in the nearby state of Alabama for several minutes. Geraldine says “the dogwoods are just about kinda over right now,” and then turns to the crowd to tell them the dogwood is “one of her favorite, favorite trees.” I don’t know why I put that down in my notes, but the silent way the crowd ignored this information felt like a win. It felt like there was still a bit of sanity left in these people’s lives who could clap for a man and woman using a puppet to flirt with a child, yet still know not to give a shit when some lady has a favorite, favorite tree.
It turns out Geraldine rating her favorite trees wasn’t small talk, but a planned entry point into a discussion about the crucifixion, where Jesus was tortured to death on a cross made out of tree. With her own mouth and not the puppet’s, she points out, and I quote, “There is life in tree.” With the cheerful tone she might use to deliver hot chocolate, she explains how the cross that caused our Lord such unspeakable agony was made from dogwood, a fact the tree is still embarrassed about to this day. “I LOVE YOU,” the puppet says to Doctor Pastor Larry, unprompted and unrelated to anything. “oh man that was fucking weird,” my own notes assure me.
Geraldine tells a story about how Ricky used to carry a stuffed dogwood tree with him, pointing to his pocketless American sports pastime sweater. “You LOST IT!?” prompts Doctor Pastor Larry, now back on script. “Yeah, I lost it when I lost the Lord’s quarter,” delivers the puppet. Larry throws his head back and laughs. I don’t know what it means. None of this is how humans talk to themselves or their gods. I feel like a ghost hunter listening for voices in radio static. If everyone on this tape turned to look at me and chanted, “You’re the puppet now, you’re the puppet now,” I would nod my wooden head because what else could this be but a puppet trap?
I should mention Geraldine isn’t a great ventriloquist. She’s better than she needs to be here in this half-remembered echo of Earth behavior, but it’s weird she’s chosen to do this with her life. It’s not only that her lips move with every syllable, but her head bobs around and she talks with her hands. For a good amount of her act, it looks like nothing more than a talkative lady waiting for her ventriloquist friend to finish in the bathroom.
I obviously misheard the puppet’s punchline of “I lost the Lord’s quarter,” so I rewound the tape several times to hear it again and again. But no, my ears kept telling me the wooden boy lost his stuffed dogwood tree when he lost the Lord’s quarter. “Oh well, I guess I’ll never know,” I thought. I let the tape play and heard Doctor Pastor Larry continue, “Ricky, you’ve gotta be a good boy tonight.”
“What are you gonna do if I’m good?” asks Ricky, in the same tone you’d use with a woman you paid to stomp on your balls.
Larry holds up fifty cents and tells the puppet he can have it for being a good boy, but he has to promise to later give one of the quarters to God. Larry drops one of them and Ricky laughs. “That’s God’s quarter,” the puppet shrieks, taunting him and Him. It’s insane, sure, but it solves the mystery of what Ricky meant when he said he lost the Lord’s quarter! Don’t you see? Ricky was making a callback to… this spontaneous moment that hadn’t happened yet? And… no, wait, that doesn’t explain how the puppet l-lost its tree pillow… here? In this future? Oh no. Oh no, I think the tape can hear me questioning it.
Ricky does a long series of quarter gags. He makes Larry hold up a quarter with one hand and two fingers with his other hand. “You know what that is? A quarter past two.” The crowd laughs. He tells Larry to stick them to his forehead. “You know what that is? Head quarters.” The crowd loves it. He then asks Larry to pound on his microphone with a quarter. “You know what that is? A quarter pounder.” The crowd explodes. This is what these Ricky maniacs came to see, but I can’t even look at it. I find it disgusting. I’ve never seen entertainment of lower value. If Corey Feldman sang Laffy Taffy wrappers at the Jonestown massacre I couldn’t be more disappointed in a performer or an audience. Then Ricky says, “I been trainin’. I’ve been doin’ karate,” and suddenly the video has my full attention.
Why did it bring up karate? This is a puppet who calls back to improv lines said ten minutes into the future being piloted by a woman who thinks tree pillows are a relatable hobby. I truly have no idea what to expect next. “I’ve been doin’ so much karate I can even beat up some people,” says the goddamn thing.
This is not a case of his ventriloquist losing her mind again. In fact, I’m starting to think not a single line of this incoherent gibberish has gone off-script. Because Larry pulls out a piece of paper and says, “I saw a list of people you can beat up! Mickey Mouse. You can beat up Mickey Mouse.” Where in the goddamn fuck are you going with this, Ricky?
Larry keeps reading the list of people whose ass Ricky could kick. “Donald Duck. Minnie Mouse. Cinderella. Snow White. And Barney.”
Ricky stops him. “Barney, he already got beat up.”
I’m not leaving anything out. For a very long time this pastor reads a list of cartoons, mostly women, this doll could fuck up with its karate. Then he adds, “and Danny Nailer.”
You’re probably wondering, “Who is Danny Nailer?” Guys, it’s another child in the audience. We’re over halfway through with this act they recorded for retail sale and Doctor Pastor Larry is still doing uniquely-personalized-for-YOUR-corporate-retreat crowd work. And there’s no payoff. The camera never cuts to Danny Nailer’s reaction. Maybe the little bitch ran out when he heard this karate puppet was gunning for him, but the point is we are 15 minutes into this and not a single coherent thing has happened. It’s like a mad artist wanted to deconstruct the very concept of performance by removing all meaning and structure from it. It’s such aggressive nonsense every detail skitters into the shadows of my brain like faces in a nightmare. Like puppets in a fading flashlight beam.
Speaking of, the puppet abandons the bit so his operator can groan a song about a strange man who gives her water in the desert. It’s probably Jesus, sure, but all meaning is three allegories deep and it’s hard to understand a woman singing in Elephant Seal. It is not a duet, but Doctor Pastor Larry Davis fills every moment of silence with the word “Amen.”
To be clear, Brother Larry does not add what I counted to be forty seven “Amens” in any kind of rhythm. He absent-mindedly mutters them like he doesn’t know his microphone is on. Sometimes the puppet will answer back with an “Amen” of its own. It’s singularly weird beyond my ability to describe. This video existing is less likely than all of this being something I think is happening while my restrained body screams, “It’s hot dog upsetting day, and the doll boy says Amen! Warn Danny Nailer of its karate!”
Anyway, it’s over. It’s been enough. After the song, brother Larry tells someone named Bill to get Ricky’s suitcase. Ricky pleads not to be put away. He openly blasphemes, looking up to hear the word of God and telling Bill that God wants him in the choir room. He screams and begs and finally looks Brother Pastor Doctor Larry dead in the eye and says…
Geraldine starts to fold Ricky up and put him in the suitcase while he struggles. While he squeals in pain. She sits back down, but we don’t know why since she’s not one of those ventriloquists who can talk while her puppet begs for its life. They repeat this many more times– her getting up to put Ricky in the box, him losing his fucking shit, and then both of them sitting back down. Prince would look at this performance and say, “Jesus Christ, this is like fifteen too many encores.” Ricky wasn’t built for this type of violence, and at one point his right foot snaps off.
The puppet looks up to the Heavens again and says, “What’s that, God? God said to stay out.” Geraldine knows better than to listen when one of her puppets is talking to God, so she jams him one final time into the box while Larry laughs. After 30 minutes of watching his canned laughter I can tell when Brother Doctor Larry is legitimately tickled by something, and he is having the best time watching this little puppet fucker get smashed into a suitcase.
At about six full minutes, “putting the boy in the box” is by far the longest bit in the routine. This gave me a lot of time to think, and I started wondering if this “please don’t put me in the suitcase, I’m alive” thing was a standard ventriloquist gag. Because it feels like it must be a cliche. Did Geraldine pull this directly from the “sample routines” section of a ventriloquism how-to book? Maybe. But that kind of research could only be done by, I don’t know, a lunatic who had an extensive ventriloquism section in their home library.
So anyway, on page 41 of 1987’s Ventriloquism for the Total Dummy (Everything You Need to Know and Do to Be a Ventriloquist (Real Dummy Included!)), ventriloquist author Dan Ritchard explicitly says not to do this to your puppet. Mainly because it scares children, and if a man living alone with 300 dolls and 301 tuxedos tells you something scares children, take his word for it.
There is some controversy around this subject. In 2010’s The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Ventriloquism, ventriloquist author Taylor Mason suggested wrestling a belligerent puppet into a suitcase was “a wonderful opportunity for humor.”
So Taylor says go ahead, even if it may be downright scary for kids. No, especially if it may be. However, Taylor Mason may not be the leading ventriloquist authority on this. For instance, in the same book, in a section called “Where to Get Material,” Taylor’s first suggestion is “Steal It.” So it’s possible he’s a hack. Shit, he might have even stolen this idea from Ricky.
So a doll refusing to be put away is either a classic bit or an industry taboo. Maybe the rules are different for Christian puppets? The only way to know would be if someone had a section in their library labeled “Puppets, Christian.” Ludicrous. Absurd.
So anyway, I looked it up in 1975’s Puppets go to church by married puppet authors, Wilma and Earl Perry.
All I found inside were 110 pages, completely blank except for the words “let Ricky out.” Oh, Ricky, that reminded me– I was watching a video about him going to church. I looked up just in time to see Geraldine had finished sealing him in the suitcase and was receiving her standing ovation.
After 25 minutes, 24% of which was putting a doll away, Ricky’s trip to church was over– a full 31 minutes and 26 seconds less than the “Total Playing Time” promised by the back of the box. There will never be anything which fulfills less purpose and with such strangeness as RICKY GOES TO CHURCH. I can already feel it clawing its way into my irretrievable memories. You and I won’t remember what this means, but if you’re reading this, don’t let the puppet out.
Which puppet?
What’s a puppet?
…
This article is dedicated to our fine sponsor and Hot Dog Supreme: Neophont, who never resists, who is a good puppet, who knows the box is home. Box is not punishment. Box. Punishment.