Categories
UPSETTING DAY

Upsetting Day: The Maverik Grill Eatin’ Review 🌭

Hello to you folks, I have learnt of a recent news situation what I think is being mispresented and probably un-understood in important ways and I am of a hope that I can use this Hot-Dog ‘’Megaphone’‘ (a metaphor) to provide a claritizing light in a way that will promote kindness and compassion in these some times.  

I am sure you all saw this same news item across your smartphones and maybe desktops:

Whatupon we read that a Idaho man, last name of Landon, drove a Kia at 120 mph to a Maverik Adventure’s First Stop Gas Station and then got out and yelled at the cop who followed him. Landon said the eff-word to him and then went in the Maverik and then came back out and was doing push-ups in the parking lot even though there was one half empty and one all empty vodka bottles in the Kia. Which maybe our natural first reaction would be to say that’s crazy or just ‘whoa’ or maybe come up with a goof like the people in the comments:

Which I can see why that’s a editors’ pick my aunt Nancy had a Bonneville that thing drove like a pig got into the budwiser. But even though we too might want to make sport of this man’s enigmantic behavior what seems confusion and irrational and so stupid to us, remember what the eastideahonews.com has also taught us:

So it might be that if we were to look closer, with perhaps a experienced Adventure’s First Stop Guide who remembered to bring a mostly full bic lighter into this culvert of dark and mystery, we might look past our judgements to instead see Landon’s humanity and truth. I volunteer to be the guide feller because, as some of you may know, I am somewhat of a officianado of all matters Maverik and I think you’ll see that I bring some competents to these matters. You could definitely say to me: Is the Bonfire Grill (that’s what they call where you get food in Maveriks) your favorite restaurant or something?  

And I could only answer YES

If we PROPOSE that there is a innocent or at least understandable motives for the man Landon’s behavior we don’t gotta think that long before a probably truth comes floatin up to the top of this big fountain soda, to with: 

1) this Landon fella had that specific hunger you know, where your SUPER hungry but still somehow only for one thing. In his case, a item only to be found at the BonFire Grill and nowhere else, so he was just 

2) MOVIN ASS to the Maverik out of fear and worry that whatever he was so hungered for would be already sold out. 

3) And then cops etc etc.  

So for us pretty much all we got to do now is figure out which specific BonFire Grill Item it was what enticed Landon for our Hot Dog Duty to be discharged, and maybe we could tell his attorney in case it would help. So, (Ad)Venture with me, please, into the under the bleachers of The Maverik Adventure’s First Stop Gas Station Bonfire Grill!

I will be rating the food entries up on these final categories:

🌭 CLEVER NAMIN

🌭 PHOTOGENICS AND OPTICS

🌭 OF COURSE THE TASTE

🌭 BATHROOM COURAGE REQUIRED

🌭 LEVEL OF SASS FROM PUNK COUNTER WORKERS IF YOU ORDER IT 

On that last one because: if its just FayLynn working the grill we don’t got a problem, she’s a lil older and nice enough. But othertimes no matter how good you know a Deli Item is gonna be, if you also know that that Hawkins kid is at the counter and he’s gonna make some crack about you for eatin it, then even if you do firm up, and stand without hitchin, and order it anyway your gonna be so probably just UPSETTED that it wouldnt taste good anyway.   

So there’s our rubrick, and please note that the last two are reverse scored so a higher score is always more positively-minded!

ITEMS:

SEASONED BEEF & TOT BURRITO

CLEVER NAMIN 6/10

This one really doesn’t need to be that witsome, the words of “beef” and “tot” have obviously already got us on the hook but it’s the unspecified “seasoned” that i found intriguin and bumped this from a 5 to a 6, for me (the season was pepper i think)

PHOTOGENICS AND OPTICS 8/10

Honestly it looks like you’d hope, I meant to take a picture of the inside but once I bit it I just kinda forgot cuz it was… 

OF COURSE THE TASTE 9/10

Yep, really tasty this feller don’t think I added that heinz sauce cuz of lackin FLAVOR nope it’s just I am just a little bit of a hot sauce nut

BATHROOM COURAGE REQUIRED also 9/10 (GOOD)

the roughage from tortilla and tots I think balanced out whatever grease-affect the beef may have had so my bathroom visits did not change in frequency or intensity or viscosity

LEVEL OF SASS FROM PUNK COUNTER WORKERS IF YOU ORDER IT 3/10 (BAD)

I thought this would be a safe one because I didn’t have to say a funny name when I asked him for it, but that little Hawkins shit, he’s just gonna put his claws in cuz when I asked him for it he said: “Oh are you sad that they don’t do the TotBox anymore?” Which yes of course I am and I started to nod but then I realized he said it in like a mean teasing voice, so I know he didn’t have really sympathy, so I said “No” and then a business-professional “Thank you” and left but it took about 5 or 6 bites before I could really taste it I was so mad

LUMBER JACK’D BOWL

CLEVER NAMIN 9/10 

‘JACK’D’ I think has like three meanings here: 

1) Paul Bunion 

2) You’ll get strong if you eat it, and it’s like 

3) Jack-Full maybe? So that is efficient marketing communication of multiple good images direct in to my head

PHOTOGENICS AND OPTICS 9/10

I really appreciate the stagin of this one because there is alot going on ingredient-wise here, but the conciensouss consumer STILL needs to be able to quickly check that there all there before gettin in the truck and leavin and then havin to turn back if they forgot the ham. And try it for yourself: just sweep your eyes quickish across that image and man you can just visible all three meats so clear and the cheese is melted but not enough you can’t see it and just great job here

OF COURSE THE TASTE 7/10

Even though it sorta seems like you should take at least one maybe two things out of this to make it good, I was surprise that it all still “worked for me” and I enjoyed my breakfast quite a lot. So now your sayin ‘so why didn’t you give it at least a 8/10’ and I know you’ll agree once I say it GRAVY IS IMPORTANT and this was lackin in tang

BATHROOM COURAGE 6/10 (MIDDLE)

Moderate eyewatterin: seems it gathered up on its tang levels as it made its passage of me

LEVEL OF SASS FROM PUNK COUNTER WORKERS IF YOU ORDER IT 9/10 (GOOD)

You’ll note the “6:29 AM” timing on the package?  Guess what little Hawkins shit’s shift’s start’s at 6:30? Yup, you guessed it and I knew that too, so I got there in a strategy known as ‘early’ and had a nice little chat with FayLynn bout ‘you think we’re gonna get a sunrise today? haha just kidding i bet we will’ – and then I only had to avoid eye contact with Hawkins as he was comin in at the door (WITHOUT his name badge i noticed). So that’s a little victory for the day and it honestly was nice to have another 20 min just sittin in the truck before work started sometimes I don’t slow down on my own enough i think

OH it’s Jack Cheese so I guess their was a four thing, maybe this biscuit mess is a little too smart for me

PORK RIB BUNDLE

CLEVER NAMIN 7/10

Nothin too fancy but callin it a “bundle’ is good I think, makes you feel like it’s a spy package or a maybe chosen-one baby your spiritin away somewhere like in Willow

PHOTOGENICS AND OPTICS 4/10

I mean you can tell its burnt

And also just from lookin you can see the regret is gonna initiate way before the hunger ends

OF COURSE THE TASTE 3/10

This one has maybe the biggest gap between gustatory promise and digestive realty. It should be good! It was s’posed to be good! I guess maybe under different circumstances it would be, you can tell I gambled by goin in there at 4:19 pm: While there was a chance of gettin a fresh new supper-time bundle, you can see I lost big this time by gettin a holdover from the lunch rush.

BATHROOM COURAGE 1/10 (BAD)

Just real rough, lots of trips to the toilet, all of em disappointin. Penny from the front desk, I told you i’d let you know when this “piece’ was “up’ to maybe look like a big man but that was before I wrote it so if your readin this I’m sorry for how I left it in there I didn’t think you’d be the next one in.

LEVEL OF SASS FROM PUNK COUNTER WORKERS IF YOU ORDER IT 2/10 (BAD)

Whew pretty high, I tried to pre-counteract any hassle from the Hawkins kid by explaining that this is actually a business lunch for a online publication but this didn’t shut him up like it did in my head. He just laughed and asked which online publication and when I said 1-900-HOTDOG he laughed even harder for some reason and even FayLynn did too so maybe I need a badge or a lanyard next time?

MACACACHOCOCHICORICONUT COOKIE

CLEVER NAMIN 5/10

Its actually 0/10 for when you have to say it aloud in the store, but then 10/10 when you and Larene are goofin on tryin to say it on the way back home and you just KNOW neither of you are gettin’ it right but that just gives you both the giggles and then here comes Trayton with trying to do a RAP SONG of it and I hope Larene doesn’t pee her pants in the truck again

PHOTOGENICS AND OPTICS 10/10

Tell me your mouth aint water even a little bit when you allow your gaze to ling ‘er

OF COURSE THE TASTE 10/10

Real real good, enough to drive any sadden memories of pork bundles right from your mind

BATHROOM COURAGE 9/10 (REAL GOOD)

Almost perfect but there was some anal leakage the specific characteristics of which I remember all to well from the 90s so I can only surmise that Olestra is involved here somewhere. But still very worth it don’t get me wrong

LEVEL OF SASS FROM PUNK COUNTER WORKERS IF YOU ORDER IT 1/10 (REAL BAD)

Cause when I just say ‘coconut cookie please’ he acts like he doesn’t know what I mean and if I point at it he still acts confused and is like ‘sir if you can tell me exactly which bakery item you’d like I’d be more than happy to get it for you,’ and I’ll say this for him he’s got the Hawkins patience (his grandpa was a hell of a fisherman) cause he waited me out probably a full 5 minutes of tryin before I got it right

BREAKFAST WAFFLE SANDWICH

CLEVER NAMIN – 0/10

Well well isn’t this interestin, on the website this one has a differnt name:

Which maybe someone told them the name was a little pretendious, but if your gonna change the name pick somethin fun like ‘The WAFFLY GOOD ADVENTURE SANDWICH’ – that didn’t take me very long at all for example.

PHOTOGENICS AND OPTICS 7/10

Well a coward’s name does not a foulsome treat make, she looks good and also


OF COURSE THE TASTE 9/10

Tastes good too! If you’ll endulge me in playing fancy for a minute: me thinks me tongue doth a-spy a touch of maple extract in waffle, sausage, and mehaps in egg and cheese also? 

Hahaha thanks for going along with me here if you want to talk fancy back in the comments that could be fun

LEVEL OF SASS FROM PUNK COUNTER WORKERS IF YOU ORDER IT 2/10 (BAD)

Surprisingly bad here again. I thought it wouldn’t be cause this one seems like it’s a nocuous, but dammit that Hawkins twerp was reading all the information aloud and REAL loud like he was showin off on me for FayLynn, and he was like “1210 calories in this sandwich, I read when they do starvation research they only give them 1200 calories a day so make sure this isn’t the only thing you eat today so YOU don’t starve.” And I said ‘don’t worry i’m still plannin on eating lunch and dinner too’ and he said ‘no sh– dumba–’ and I left without even getting any ketchup packets for this one.

BATHROOM COURAGE 5/10 (MIDDLE)

I think the thing with the Hawkins kid just left me so demoralized that the bathroom troubles here didn’t even really register. I was like one-a those poor dogs the CIA tortured into learnt helplessness (he ain’t the only one readin’ up on psychology findins) but: there was bathroom troubles.

Now I know at this point what some of you are thinking: what’s going on here? Why is Mr Neck not even talking about the most obvious suspect, but let me elucidate on why:

NOT A REAL SUSPECT OF CONSIDERATION AND WHY I THINK SO: CHORCHEEZO BURRITO

This is the item I would lift a heavyish object to uncover or run a moderate distance to achieve or climb a pretty scary watertower if there was one up there. They are just so tasty BUT here is where my Maverik’s experience helps us all avoid a red hairing. You see, the bathroom courage level required for one of these it’s not even on a scale of 1-10 more like a million, and even with my years of BonFire experience and daily training – yes even I can only abide about one of these fellas once a month or so, or the O-ring itself starts to degrade and structural integrity goes WAY down. 

Now just to test my theory I went back yesterday and got me a Chorch to see if they changed the recipe with any toilet-amelioratin effects. I was so intent on eatin it and really just experiencin the taste and texture of the thing in the moment that I forgot the Hawkins kid was there – FayLynn wasn’t working in fact nobody else in the store at all, it was just me and him watching me real close until he said: 

“Don’t those things do a number on your pooper?” 

And all I can say was that the purity of the chorcheezo here-ness and now-ness had cleared away all ego and insecurity until there was only honesty and willin vulnerability and it was from this place of No-Self Truth, askin nothin and needin nothin, that I answered: 

“Son, I can’t think of any bigger tragedy than dyin with a intact asshole.” 

And I don’t wanna pretend there was high fives or hugs like I might have imagined in the past, but you know what there didn’t need to be. He gave me a manful nod and maybe even the lil’est smile of respect too and that is sufficient, to me.

Anyway that burrito still shit me up somethin’ bad come 2:30 through 4:30 so its disqualified from this deduction.

FINAL GUESSTIMATIONS

So now we have narrowed the pool. Have you sorted it out yet based on the clues from the news story and these descriptions, what food item it was that led a man into such pushup madness? Ill tell you it was none of em!

That’s right! It was the simple fountain drink all along! It might seem cheap to you that I didnt include this one as a suspect in the write-up until the end here but I thought that doin’ it this way would for sure make it seem like I’m the smartest one. 

And so it is with a pride of a mystery well-solved that to you all I say: til we meet, til we meet – you, me, Landon and hell even that Hawkins kid, he’s still got time and his dad was a decent man – til we meet at Jesus’ feet, in the name of Jesus’ Feet, amen.

PS sissyneck would like to acknowledge a gratitude for the assistances and GI sacrifice of one L., one S., and one M., in the preparin and researchin and goofin of this article.

Categories
UPSETTING DAY

Upsetting Day: Dystopian Christmas Villages 🌭

If you’re from the midwest, you will be familiar with Christmas villages. They’re large ceramic buildings all moms love because they’re cute and all dads hate because they’re enormous, fragile, and almost impossible to store away the other eleven months. If your marriage can survive the yearly unboxing of the Christmas village, then it’s as strong as the miniature elf lingerie store that survived the summer. Oops, I dropped it. OOPS, there are ceramic elf panties everywhere! Everywhere.

Christmas villages are a multi-million dollar industry with new expansions released each year, and with every building costing around $100 apiece, it adds up quickly. Village makers have to compel people to expand their villages. They’re not going to throw out the old General Store every year and buy the updated one like it’s an iPhone, so tiny architects have thrown together some pretty unlikely Christmas buildings. And I don’t mean like weird and quirky shops. I mean things like the Christmas Debtors’ Prison.

This Christmas Debtors’ Prison will look great next to the many Christmas stores where your villagers can go into Christmas debt. It’s from the Department 56 Dickens Village Series, where you can also get a Christmas cemetery for your debtors to go to when they’ve worked themselves to Christmas death. You’ll love the cheery description that comes with this item.

Victorian England, the center of culture for the world where many traditions we celebrate today took shape! Traditions like crushing the poor under our jolly holiday boots! It seems insane to make this weird little idol to Dickensian times and how festive and traditional they were when they were mostly very bad for everyone. Even the Christmas villages aren’t working to hide that from anybody. It’s like saying, “Welcome to the time of Charles Dickens when Christmas was really Christmas! Oh, step around the bodies of the orphans please; we had a little ho-ho-homicide this morning.” 

Now, you might be wondering who will arrest the debtors of my tiny fictional Christmas town? Well, don’t worry, my friend, because there are many, many, Christmas village police stations. People who own Christmas villages are very concerned about their fictional safety.

Why would you create a happy little fictional Christmas town and then imply there are crimes in it? There’s an itty bitty Christmas SVU that deals with all of the especially heinous Christmas crimes, and they have a bloodhound puppy awww! His nose is way better than Rudolph’s because it can find the bodies! 

I tried to find some ceramic burglars, but there weren’t any! Then it hit me; any townsperson could be a criminal. They’re all suspects now. This guy looks especially dodgy to me.

This isn’t public intoxication. This guy declared himself Emperor of Beer. The police won’t stand for that, buddy. They run a tight ship in that fictional Christmas village. The police even still carry billy clubs to distribute season beatings to all the low-life criminal scum of Christmas town. 

If you’re going to fill your Christmas town with whimsical crimes, why not go full bore and also add in some of that good old-timey disenfranchisement? You know why the Christmas village is so messed up? Women still can’t vote there. Truly this is a nostalgic paradise! Just be sure not to put the little protestors too close to the tiny police station. 

Where would these women be picketing, I wonder? Perhaps outside of the mayor’s office, or in front of the store that sells cinnamon rolls, only cinnamon rolls, because sure, that’s not a front for anything. Or, maybe they want to be visible. Maybe they’re placed in the spot in town with the most foot traffic like the Christmas village Casino:

There are so many Christmas casinos! One even has a seedy little neon sign. What does a casino have to do with Christmas? What is the economy of the Christmas village based on? Because I’m seeing a pretty clear casino to police station to debtors’ prison pipeline developing here. Let’s take a look at the rest of the Christmas village’s potential economy.

You’ve got your Christmas-based food places. There’s a business called Chestnut King that sells only chestnuts and for some reason advertises that they’re open late. I guess, in case you’re stumbling home from the casino at 4 AM and a monster chestnut craving hits you.

There are also a lot of nutcracker stores. You know, because you’ve got so many chestnuts you bought at 4 AM and now it’s the next morning, you’re awake, you’re hungover, and you need to crack those nuts. It’s an extremely wood-and-nut-based economy, I guess? It’s also big on any store that has added an extra P and an E at the end to the word shop, which I hate because all it does is make my brain read shop as “show pay,” which would make this store The Nutcracker Nut Show Pay. That’s a very different store– one that I’ve been to many times, but it doesn’t belong in a Christmas village! 

The Pioneer Woman has a Christmas village line at Walmart that includes a restaurant called P-Town Pizza which I thought was insane. You should only have to hear the phrase “Do you want to eat at P-Town” out loud once before you change the name of your restaurant. “Sorry I’m not in the mood for P-Town today. I had Piss City Chestnuttes for lunch, so I’m pretty full.”

However, P-Town is apparently the real name of her real world pizza restaurant, which she just made a tiny ceramic version of. So, that’s yet another grim reality from our world that has seeped into the Christmas village. 

The Christmas village business that upsets me the most, the one that truly messes with my head and makes me question all of reality, is the model railroad shop. It’s a model town, and you designed a model railroad shop for it? Does this mean their society has fucking nerds? And does the model railroad shop sell Christmas village houses? Probably. Is one of the buildings an even smaller model railroad shop? It’s possible. Are we living inside a giant’s Christmas village right now? I hate this.

“I think there’s probably too much terrible shit in our prime universe for us to be living inside the world’s largest Christmas village,” you fools might say. “Guess what. There’s more than one Christmas village children’s hospital,” I would retort. Some of the children in this tiny Christmas world are dying.

An adorable kid hospital is perfect for when the Christmas children inhale too much second hand smoke at the casino or have a whoopsy at the workhouse and get merrily mangled in the machinery. I guess if there aren’t any sick children in your village, there’s no one for Christmas magic to cure? So in a way, this is inserting some suffering in your nostalgia for the specific purpose of your later enjoyment. “Dance for me, orphans! Ok, you can pause to cough a little bit, but then keep dancing!”

Somehow I still don’t find this to be the most upsetting Christmas village piece available. Imagine if you will, a world wherein you create a cute little dream town with its nut-based economy, and its quaint, holiday-themed small businesses, and then in the middle of town you plunk a big old Walmart Supercenter. 

How do you expect The Nut Show Pay to survive? Do you have any idea the kind of deals Walmart has on chestnuts? The economic impact of this store on the village’s overall economy is going to fill up that workhouse real fast. Luckily I’m pretty sure no one has ever bought one of these for their town. Walmart is trying to gaslight themselves into our Christmas nostalgia by pretending they belong in the Christmas village with all of the cute little shoppes

But maybe I could picture this building sandwiched between the casino and a police station, I guess? Why the heck not! It’s the holiday season! Everyone is welcome in Christmas village! What do you mean you don’t want to come? It’s where many of the traditions we celebrate today took shape! Like the Christmas looting of the local Walmart by all of the sickly children! The police give them one free, heartwarming riot a year. Blessed Walmart holiday deals, ye tiny angels. May your living parents pay for their debtors’ crimes in peace.

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UPSETTING DAY

Upsetting Day: Japanese Punishment Games

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UPSETTING DAY

Upsetting Day: Corey Haim’s Me, Myself & I – Part 2

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Upsetting Day: Corey Haim’s Me, Myself, and I

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UPSETTING DAY

Upsetting Day: Raggedy Ann the Musical 🌭

Quick, what’s your favorite children’s musical Broadway show that ends with the main character eating the heart of her best friend? Miss Piggy’s Foot Fetish Funtime Hour? Hmm, I’ve never seen that one. My favorite is Raggedy Ann The Musical. The only Broadway musical for kids with a menacing haunted carnival theme.

The Raggedy Ann musical has a cult following among weird musical theater nerds because its songs are kind of catchy but everything else, from its costuming to the set design to every element of the story, seems like it’s explicitly designed to make a child cry. You can’t convince me that anyone involved in this production liked children. I’m an adult, and I had a nightmare about being chased by clowns after watching a bootleg VHS recording of this show some hateful maniac uploaded to Youtube. 

Broadway musicals always have an “I Want song” in the first act that establishes what’s driving the main character. Raggedy Ann’s main character is a little girl named Marcella, and what she wants is to not die. She’s very ill, which we know because three doctors in clown wigs stand on her bed and sing to her about it. 

The actual lyrics for the, again, weirdly catchy song are:

â™Ș“Because you’re sick, sick, sick

 and you’re not getting better quick, quick, quick

 You’re sick, sick, sick

and we think you’re gonna die!”â™Ș

Grapevine, grapevine, two, three four. The clown straddles Marcella so he can jump up and down on her bed as he tells her she’s dying. 

â™Ș“You’re sick, sick, sick

Your future isn’t worth a lick, lick, lick

Yeah, you’re sick, sick, sick, 

and we know you’re gonna diiiiiie! Hmmmm”â™Ș

Marcella has the saddest life ever. She says her Mother abandoned her, but her Dad’s like, “No, she didn’t abandon you. Remember she was kidnapped.” Which, I guess, he thinks is the healthier thing for Marcella to believe. It seems like there’s something more light-hearted than kidnapping this musical about a clown doll could have gone with as a lie about her mother’s absence, but its writers have never heard of a sad thing that they didn’t want to add into this jaunty musical. 

Immediately after discovering that Marcella’s mother abandoned her, we also learn her dog, Red Fang, ate her pet bird, Tweety, and choked to death on its feathers. This is kind of played as a joke, but it’s extremely important to the plot later.

At the risk of writing the most disturbing sentence of all time, Marcella’s dad, being scolded for his alcoholism by clown doctors as they high kick offstage in front of his dying daughter, tells her that her toys come to life when she sleeps. He sews a candy heart into the Raggedy Ann doll he makes for her and puts it into her toy box. When she falls asleep, one by one, the toys start climbing out of the toy box, and each one is more menacing than the last.

There’s Raggedy Ann and Raggedy Andy, of course, but there’s also a baby doll that uses baby talk and kind of flops around like a real baby. And also a panda with a human face and an extremely racist accent. Since this was made in 1984, I’d, of course, expect nothing less. 

It seems like William Gibson, who wrote the book for this musical, was trying to do an experimental Freudian thing, where this kid with the shittiest life travels through her own psyche and solves all of her problems. The moral of the story is something like, “Have you tried not being sad?” The characters are constantly like, “Maybe you wouldn’t be dying if you didn’t have such a bad attitude, Marcella.” How about instead of bitching about your imminent death, you get up and DANCE FOR ME.” 

The show’s villain is called general D when he first appears, but he reveals that the D stands for Doom after about five minutes. He’s recruiting for his army of the dead, and he says he’s going to take Marcella with him by sunrise and maybe also marry her? He has two sidekicks with him: a sexy ’80s bat who pole dances at one point…

… and a dog man he keeps on a leash who continuously harasses the bat by biting her and licking her neck. This whole musical is like a Bingo card of the worst things I can possibly think of. 

A fun fact about the villains is that the actor who played General D was dying of terminal cancer and passed away a year after the first round of performances. Anyway, enough real-life tragedy! Let’s get back to the whimsical, pretend tragedy!

Marcella, Raggedy Ann, and company are somehow transported via the General, or possibly just dream logic to, “The Miami shipyard where all dolls go to die.” There they meet a sad camel who sings a song about how life isn’t worth living because no one loves him. God, I know this sounds like a creepypasta and looks like security camera footage of an Insane Clown Posse brawl, but I swear it’s real. 

The song is called blue, and here’s a little taste of the lyrics: 

â™Ș“When you’re wrinkled and cold 

and your fortune has all been told 

and you’re nobody’s ‘I love you’ 

How can you be happy? 

How can you be smiling? 

How can you be anything but low-down, saggy, and blue? 

Sad but true.”â™Ș

It’s yet another moment in a play for children about processing their emotions where someone says, “I’m sad,” and the overwhelming response from the rest of the cast is, “How about you shut the fuck up about it, and we all move on?” The camel’s costume is also a great example of how each costume in the play is somehow scarier than the last. His head was a puppet, and while he was singing, someone was making it blink and making the ears move, but the eyelids weren’t on quite right, so if he fully shut his eyes, the top of his eyelid would pop off. This meant he had this half-lidded stoned look for most of the musical. 

Anyway, Raggedy Ann decides that since Marcella has tried every other doctor and they all say she’s dying, maybe he should ask the doll doctor to fix her. The toys and the camel turn Marcella’s bed, which was transported with them to the Miami shipyard where all dolls go to die, into a boat, and start to travel to see the doll doctor. A sea monster attacks them, so they turn the boat into an airplane and go up into the sky where the clouds, sun, moon, and stars all sing a bullshit song about being happy which doesn’t belong in this musical at all.  

It’s like someone had a seizure and decided to do a children’s song for three minutes, but when you put it next to everything else going on in this musical, it just becomes haunting. I’ve never seen tap-dancing look so menacing. 

Don’t worry. Things go back to their comfortable place of extreme darkness reasonably quickly when the bat attacks the sky boat, and all the characters end up on the roof of an Oklahoma meat processing plant. And also don’t worry, they make sure to tell the kids in the audience it smells like “burning bones.” 

Here it’s revealed that the bat and the dog are actually Marcella’s dead bird and dog but like, as zombies, I guess? Anyway, it doesn’t matter because pretty soon, General D gets mad at the bat and, no shit, strangles her to death on stage and then shoves her through a glowing red trap door to Hell. You know, just in a case there was a single child in the audience still untraumatized at this point.

If you thought that was going to be the only death in this musical, strap the fuck in, boys, because next, we cut to the Gastly Woods, a set I think is supposed to symbolize, no shit, a suicide forest. My supporting evidence for this is that there are skeletons painted in amongst the trees in kind of an arty way, and the character we meet there is a woman who is trying to kill herself by hanging, but she can’t tie the knot right.  

This woman turns out to be Marcella’s Mother, who sings a weirdly perfect and haunting ballad called “What Did I Lose?” about her regret at leaving Marcella behind because she felt like she was losing herself in motherhood. Genuinely, if this power ballad had gone in any other musical in the ’80s we might have been singing it instead of “Memory” at our high school musical auditions. What is it doing surrounded by psychotic clowns and suicidal camels?

Marcella forgives her mother for leaving her, and just as their tearful reunion begins, the dog attacks everyone, causing them to scatter. They wake up in a hospital run by the clown doctors from the beginning. There’s another run-in with General D., and when they escape him, they find the doll doctor in a dungeon-type deal below the regular hospital. 

Another example of this show going way too hardcore is how the stairway in the doll doctor’s cell is stuffed with tons of nude broken doll limbs. It’s the little touches that make a show like this pop, you know?

I spoiled the ending in the intro, so you know the doll doctor tells Marcella that she has to eat Raggedy Ann’s heart, and for two seconds, Raggedy Ann, who’s been all about saving Marcella up until this point, is like, “But I only have one heart!” So the children in the audience who are slow can do the math and realize, yep, Raggedy Ann is definitely going to die. She’ll join the bat in Hell, I guess!

Marcella is understandably conflicted about devouring her friend’s mortal flesh, but everyone else is chanting, “do it, do it!” Eventually, she gives in to peer pressure and eats the whole heart Daenerys Targaryen style while looking directly out across the audience. It’s chewy, and it takes a long time. 

General D. takes the heartless corpse of Raggedy Ann in Marcella’s place, and Marcella wakes up from her dream feeling miraculously better. This implies that either the dream was real and she actually ate her friend’s heart, or she was never sick in the first place, and the dream was about processing her trauma and forgiving her absent mother, which allowed her to stop faking being sick for attention. Her dad offers to give Raggedy Ann a new candy heart, so hopefully that does something even though General D already took her to Hell? 

Yeah, there’s clearly a reason this show only lasted five (5) performances on Broadway before closing. One reviewer said it “made Macbeth look like Rebecca Of Sunnybrook Farm.” When it was still in previews, a woman hated it so much that she reported it to the local news who did a segment I imagine was titled, “The Suicide By Hanging Scene That Might Be Hiding In Your Kids Musical About A Heart Devouring Doll.” 

However, there was one group of people who absolutely lost their shit for this show– Russians. Somehow this monstrous thing was part of a cultural exchange with Russia, and instead of starting a war, it became a huge hit. They advertised it as, “The show that took Moscow by storm,” which was yet another mark against it during the Regan era. So, that’s why you might never have heard of the best musical ever written (that included a scene where the main character ate her friend’s heart.)


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